In the heart of any city, there are times when things take on a quiet aspect, times when a quiet view of a usually busy scene arises. That was the case with this view of Buchanan Street in Glasgow, Scotland, which for me took on a bit of the aspect of an impressionist painting when seen from the steps of the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall one winter evening.

This is a time of year when Scots across the world, and all who enjoy Scottish life, history, and culture, take the opportunity to celebrate around Burns Night, the anniversary of the birth of Scottish poet Robert Burns on 25 January. They may do this with the traditional meal of haggis, cock a leekie soup, and cranachan, or with other dishes and festivities suited to their own tastes. Burns wrote a poem famously using haggis as a metaphor for Scottish pride and independence of character, which is why the dish often turns up on Burns night celebrations.

Care to learn a bit more about Robert Burns?
Visit Scotland tells you about Burns Night, past and present
Eddi Reader sings his graceful song of enduring loveJohn Anderson My Jo, and his lively one celebrating good friendship, Willie Stewart
Emily Smith, who is from the same area of southwestern Scotland where Burns lived, has recorded a fresh look at his songs on her album called Adoon Winding Nith

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Story and photos by Jessica Lee

While traversing the countryside of Kenya by bus, a traveler gets a lesson in the country’s peculiar acronym-laden buffet of Christianity.

Haman Peter gripped his tattered green bible in his hand.

“You know Jessica,” he said eying up my cigarette, “addiction is wrong.”

He brought the bible down with a slap onto the metal bar in front of my seat.

“You must (slap). Give this smoking up (slap) Jessica. The Lord does not want you to smoke (slap). I Haman Peter know this is true (slap). That is Haman Peter me. Not the one in the bible (slap).”

I nodded as I lurched to the left, smacking my head against the window frame as the bus pitched over a particularly large muddy pothole.

“Haman is a man in the old testament book of Esther,” he told me. “Haman he was hung by Queen Esther. But Jessica (slap), I am not that Haman. I am me (slap).”

He balanced remarkably straight as he loomed over my seat and thumped his chest for emphasis.

“I am P.C.A.” He announced, “Pentecostal Church of Africa.”

And as the bus juddered and shook, and the pile of boxes and luggage in the aisle shifted dubiously into a position ready to avalanche on top of me, Haman Peter raised his eyebrows and thrust the dog-eared bible towards me.

Haman Peter’s sudden confession of Christian devotion didn’t surprise me. In Kenya, I’d already found out, religion was a serious business. My first morning in Nairobi I had picked my way along the pitted pavement of River Road; past the ragtag touts hollering their sales pitch over pirate CDs and cardboard boxes of cast-off clothing. The city smelled of fried chicken and exhaust fumes, and sounded like the bounding bass of Benga but the capital’s backbone still seemed strangely straight-laced.

I’d sprawled on the saggy bed of my cheap hostel and flicked through the local newspaper. Under the hole-studded mosquito net, I skimmed the entertainment section and the daily radio schedule stopped me in my tracks. Nation FM’s Early Morning segment promised “inspirational soul food” to start my day. In the evening Radio Waimini gave its listeners a double helping of Vatican Radio while Family FM headed up the major competition with a line up that included Family Prayer Circle, Through the Bible and the ominously titled “Music You CAN Believe in.” It all sounded rather depressingly staid though the cinema schedule cheered me up somewhat.

Down on Jogoo Road, Eastlands Cinema was running a six-movies-for-one-ticket promotion on both of their screens. Screen Two’s billing was a heavy going thwack over the head with a bible featuring Jesus Christ Movie, The Ten Commandments and Samson and Delilah but curiously on Screen One the schedule was advertised as “Strickly [sic] Adults Only.” A flesh-marathon with enigmatic names such as Touch of Love, Honey Moons and Hot Dreams.

I wondered what happened when someone accidentally walked into the wrong screen at the movies. Think of the shock of sitting down with your popcorn, expecting a robed-up Charlton Heston on Mt Sinai, and finding yourself facing some up-front action with Hot Dreams instead. Or making the opposite mistake—probably just as traumatizing for the would-be voyeur. Did anyone ever move between screens on purpose for a dose of porn and prayer? Watching a bit of ‘Touch of Love’ and then jumping over to Screen Two for some old prophet action in The Ten Commandments would be sort of like an instant confession. Bless me father for I have sinned. It’s been five minutes since my last masturbation.

Kenya’s rather conservative outlook was obviously a lot more complicated than I first thought.

Are you A.I.C. or P.C.E.A.?

I traveled north to Nyahururu simply because I liked the way the syllables sounded when I said them. It was a scrappy mountain town of low-rise concrete slab buildings where the two paved roads were busier with bicycles than cars. Just down the road, among the wooden shacks of the tourist bazaar beside Thompson Falls, I met Peggy at her stall, surrounded by a Lilliput zoo of miniature wooden giraffes and elephants. As soon as I sat down, she announced that she was A.I.C, the Africa Inland Church.

“Jess what religion are you?” Peggy asked and I answered that I didn’t really have one and don’t go to church.

She looked at me and frowned.

“Lots of people in New Zealand don’t go to church.” I tried to explain.

“No churches in New Zealand?”

“No, lots of churches just not a lot of people go to them.”

“People in New Zealand no go church but still good people?” Peggy asked.

“Well, some good and some bad.”

Peggy sighed and smiled. “Kenyan people all go to church but still do bad things.”

She showed me photos of her children, both still toddlers and born to different fathers.

“No husband. Only boyfriend,” she said as she tucked the photos back in the drawer. “Only boyfriend to make baby and then boyfriend run.”

Continue to Page 2 – Kenya

Looking up at the sky is a good way to clear your mind and find quiet wherever you travel, whether you happen to be in the midst of a city or out on the country side. Winter skies in the northern hemisphere often seem to hold especial clarity, too, whether it’s a full moon you see, or a dark sky with stars, or the shining bit of a crescent moon, or any of that seen through passing clouds.

Native Americans recognized this in the names they gave to the moons which arise during this season: Hunter’s Moon, Long Cold Moon, Wolf Moon…

This photograph was made in the season of Long Cold Moon, at the end of December.

At times, these days, it is difficult to find places to see the dark in night sky. The well named Dark Sky Organization is an international group working on encouraging people to recognize the value of night skies and what may be lost to light pollution in the night. Starlight Reserves works on this as well.

Have you been in a place where the night sky is truly dark? There is a certain peace about that experience., if you let it sink in.

What country has the most opportunity to experience dark skies, as researched by these international organizations? Scotland.

Should you be traveling in Ireland this winter season, or in one of the places the far flung sons and daughters of Ireland have made homes, from Wyoming to north Florida to Western Australia to Cape Breton, from Norway to Inverness to Fairbanks, to you’ll see see lights set in the windows, especially on Christmas eve.

A light in the window to light the traveler’s way: that’s a tradition which goes back into history. long before the time of Christ. A story told in Irish families, though, is that the light in the window is to light the way for the Holy Family. Mary and Joseph were out on the road, seeking a place to stay that night in Bethlehem. On that night their search is remembered, as is the traveler out on the road these days. In earlier times, when hospitality was perhaps more respected that it is these days, it used to be the custom to leave the door unlocked on Christmas eve, to bank the fire, and to leave a loaf bread and something to drink out on the table so if a a traveler weary on the road sought shelter and rest, he or she would find that and more. I’ve sometimes wondered if that’s where the ideas of leaving cookies and milk for Santa Claus had its start.

When I was small we had this really heavy glass holder into which we’d put what was known in our house as the Christ candle. It had a thick base and was clearly hand blown, not machine made at all. That made it all the more interesting to watch the dancing flames of the candle through the wavy sides of the glass, which had a slight tinge of steel blue. We always placed an ivory colored candle in this holder.

When I was small, I liked knowing that candle was burning, welcoming, keeping watch, and I liked hearing the stories, both of the houses in Ireland which would have lights in their windows too, and of the travelers who might be out on the road. Later, when I was old enough to go to midnight mass, when we came back around the corner of the road that brought us home, I’d always see that candle in the window, and it always gave me a smile.

I inherited that heavy glass candle holder some years back, and kept it in use each December. Even when it cracked right down the middle one year, I glued it back together and it went on shedding its Advent and Christmas light for a few years longer. Finally, though, it told me it was time to go.

I do not still have the blue glass holder for the Christ candle, and I do not live in that house by the curve of the road. There will be a light in my window this Christmas Eve, though, and as it welcomes me home from midnight mass, I will still remember the traveler’s stories, and the story of the Holy Family out on the road. I will think of homes and lodgings and places all across the world with lights in their windows, and smile.

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By Shelley Seale

Visiting the driest place on Earth, a writer is captivated by the alien landscape but longs to look deeper into the lives and traditions of the hardy people who inhabit it.

It is still dark when the Colque family makes its way up the volcano, climbing steadily in the early morning hours. The air is cool and arid here in the Atacama, the world’s highest and driest desert in the far northern reaches of Chile, along the Andes mountain range at the borders of Bolivia and Argentina.

The small group of indigenous Atacameños reaches the peak just before sunrise on this winter solstice, June 21—the New Year for the Atacameño people. The eldest male, the grandfather, leads the animal they have brought along to the edge of the volcanic crest. Perhaps it is a llama, perhaps a sheep or a goat. All have been used in previous years.

As the sun begins its climb over the horizon the elder pulls out a knife and, with great respect and reverence, cuts open the animal’s chest. He reaches inside and pulls out the still-beating heart.

He holds the heart up toward the rising sun, an offering to the gods and to the power of nature in this harsh, forbidding land where very little grows and some places have never seen a drop of rain in recorded history. The entire family watches intently, in silence, for however many times the heart continues to beat will reveal how much prosperity and good fortune the family will have in the coming year.

After the ceremony, which has been a part of many Atacameño for thousands of years, the Colque family returns to the valley and goes to church—a Spanish Catholic church in the village of Machuca, where they live.

“It is very, very important to do this,” says Joel Colque, one of the younger adult members of the family at 24 years old. “With it we receive blessings, and a good year.”

This blending of cultures and beliefs may seem incongruous, until you realize that in this desert region at the northern tip of Chile is home to an incredibly hardy people with a long lineage in human history. Some mummified remains in Father Le Paige’s Museum at San Pedro de Atacama are the oldest in the world, pre-dating Egyptian relics by thousands of years.

The Atacameño people were invaded by the Inca, colonized and relentlessly persecuted by the Spanish, and at times under the control of Bolivia and Peru. Their religion, culture and language have been under attack for centuries, yet somehow they have preserved a way of life that is little changed, and very welcoming to visitors.

“My people have made rituals at the top of volcanoes for 600 years before the Spanish,” Joel tells me. “We make animal sacrifices, though when the Incas came to this area they were known to make human sacrifices. Many of their constructions are still up there, in the Andes.”

The Atacama Desert presents a geography that is almost like another planet. Its otherworldly appearance and terrain have been likened to Mars; so much so that it has been the location for many movies filming Mars scenes, and NASA tests instruments for future Mars missions here. The lack of rain — an average of only .04 inches per year in the entire region—has created riverbeds that scientists believe have been dry for 120,000 years.

The immensity of the landscape is breathtaking, as you pass copper and lithium mines made famous by Che Guevara and the 2010 incident that trapped 33 miners for two months, with smoking 35 million-year-old Andes volcanoes of up to 22,000 feet looming over it all. And at six to nine thousand feet of elevation, altitude sickness is common; visitors are cautioned for the possibility of some initial lethargy, headaches or insomnia.

Into the Salt Flats

For a real look at the history of the Atacameño people, hike up the Pukara de Quitor, a fort just outside San Pedro de Atacama that was built around 900 B.C., until the Spanish overtook it centuries later. As I approach the entrance I hear guitar music; the ticket seller is sitting languidly in the corner playing music. As I pay my $2 entry fee, I attempt a conversation in very broken Spanish.

The man’s name is Luis Salva, I learn; he has worked at Pukara de Quitor for two years. He plays five instruments, and performs another song before I start my climb into the fort. “Atacama es muy bonita,” Luis says.

I must agree. The fort is dotted with signs explaining its history of invasion upon the peaceful people, in both English and Spanish, and my arrival at the top yields a magnificent view of the desert gorge below. After my exploration, I hop on a loaner bike from the Alto Atacama Desert Lodge to explore the surrounding valleys and villages.

After a traditional asado (barbeque) lunch, Joel Colque arrives to take me to the Salar de Atacama, the largest salt flat in Chile and third-largest in the world. Joel is a guide working for Alto Atacama, and he represents the straddling of two worlds that many of the region’s younger generation undertake. Until you hear the story of his family’s annual animal sacrifice, you would think he was any adrenaline-junkie adventurer in his twenties. He’s big into sandboarding, but also attempts to ride his board down the snowcapped volcanoes. Joel guides not only for the hotel but also his aunt’s adventure tour company. He’s young, cocky and brash; if he threw in a few “dudes,” he could be a California surfer.

Continue to Page 2 of Atacama Chile story