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Wednesday 2006-09-06 - Mangyongdae, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
A little farm house
On the way to Namp'o city, 50km from P'yŏngyang, we pay a visit to a small, restored farmhouse in Mangyongdae. When we enter the landscaped grounds, there is soft background music. The house itself is actually more like a little museum: this house is the place where Great Leader Kim Il Sung was born in 1912. In one of the rooms there is a photograph of him at 19 years old, together with his parents, both of which died young while in exile in China, during the Japanese occupation of Korea. Also interesting are the various tools and implements used on a small farm at that time.
After our visit to the birth house, we make a little walk through the park. From the highest point we have a nice view of P’yŏngyang city; directly below us we see Turu island in the middle of the Taedong river and almost in the middle of the city, where vegetables for the city are grown: we see a small village in the middle of the fields, and small groups of houses, each for a work team, the smallest unit of a cooperative.
Thursday 2006-09-07 - Namp’o, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Taming the waters
In the Netherlands we’re used to large dykes like the Afsluitdijk and the great barrages that are part of the Delta works. So the West Sea Barrage we’re driving to this morning from our nice hotel in Namp’o should not be all that impressive for us Dutch visitors — but it holds a surprise. Not only is it big, with its length of 8km and 36 locks of which three are shipping locks of various sizes and a revolving bridge, with 5 gates set in a group normally open, and passages for the migration of fish; not only was it built in just 5 years with locally-developed building techniques; and it does not just tame the sea like we do in the Netherlands: it also — and mostly — tames the river to make it useful.
The Taedong river which flows through P’yŏngyang flows out into the Korean West Sea here. By holding the river waters back, it is possible to irrigate a huge area with the river water. But at the same time the barrage prevents too much sea water backing up during high water which would make the water too brackish for agriculture.
When we drive away over the 8km long dyke, the effect can be clearly seen in the landscape: near the barrage, the water is still slightly brackish, and there are large areas here devoted to salt farming; the salt farms produce (not: mine) salt by evaporation of the brackish water in shallow ponds. Farther on there is a landscape with endless rice paddies, with beans grown on the edges between the fields, interspersed with maize. The land is mostly flat, all of it devoted to agriculture, with the houses built on the sides of the hills sticking up through the flat land: this way the area devoted to agriculture is maximized.
Mr. Pak tells us that in the North they grow mainly potatoes though in Korean cuisine these are used mostly for side dishes, not as a staple food. As a result of the famines, the president has started a program to teach the people how to use potatoes as a staple food as well.
Monday 2007-04-09 - Wadi ’Adim, Yemen
Camping under the milky way
From Tarim we go into the valley of a side arm of Wadi Hadramawt, the Wadi ’Adim. The landscape is stunningly beautiful here: weird shapes both in the totally bare table mountains and in the water-eroded layers of sediment; in the middle of the wadi valley we see open water for the first time in this area. The available water enables the thick palm groves to be grown here (date palms); around the fringes there are fields with other produce. Although the surrounding mountains are bare, the wadi bottom is green and lush.
At a nice spot we go through a ford to the other side of the river where our drivers can have a quiet qat-chewing session in the shade, and we can go for a walk through the palm grove. Theoretically, we could walk to the village (that was the idea) but although we can see it in the distance, the water-eroded thick layer of sediment is hard going: you constantly have to find your way around deep grooves — there is no way to walk in a straight line. We only make it to a lonely little house; nobody home but a little goat. There are some small fields nearby so somebody must live here, but we see no one.
The qat session (and our walk) over, we go further into the wadi. Suddenly we go halfway up the mountain where there is a stony plateau. Here we set up our camp, with a nice view of the village Ghayl ’Umar in the middle of the lush palm grove. The idyll is somewhat spoiled by the sound of a generator belonging to the tank station at the foot of the mountain, but once it gets dark it’s offset by the sound of frogs calling to each other near the river — hearing that it’s hard to believe we are actually in the desert.
One of our drivers, Mohamed, cooks us a nice dinner, with some assistance from Hussein (mostly holding the lamp) and Khamal, as well as some of our group to chop the vegetables. Gradually the stars come out, and the Milky Way appears above us in all its glory — a sight we can rarely see any more in our crowded and light-polluted country. On Hussein’s assurance that it’s not going to rain tonight, I left off the outer tent when I set up my tent and go to sleep in my sleeping bag with a light breeze caressing my face.
