CONVERSATION
CONVERSATION
CONVERSATION
HUMAN TRACES:
ETHIOPIA
HUMAN TRACES:
ETHIOPIA
THE BALANCE OF FACTS
THE BALANCE OF FACTS
THE BALANCE OF FACTS
THE BALANCE OF FACTS
DESTINATIONS
DESTINATIONS
The Dreamtime, or the Dreaming, portrays the Aboriginal beliefs in spiritual existence. According to the tribes that first settled down in the continent, the Dreaming's roots date all the way back to the very begging of the creation of the world. The meaning and ideology of the term is generally not so well-understood by non-indigenous people as it is referred to as part of the culture of one of the early nations, which differs from modern perceptions.
The Spirits were the creators of everything. They made the land and the seas, the rocks and the plants, the sky and the earth. They were the higher power and the Australian Aborigines spent their lifetimes honoring this power, which guided their path and shaped their way of thinking. Not only creators of everything, which could be seen as well as felt, the Spirits also gave the Aborigines the Dreaming.
The time when everything started existing according to the initial Australians, was called the Dreaming. This is the foundation of the continent's culture. The origin of the Dreaming goes way back - 65 000 years back in time to be exact. The Ancestors of the nation shaped the land, forming some parts of it as sacred. The Aborigines were very careful and overprotective of those places, strongly believing in their significance.
The Australian Aborigines are known to have believed that the world didn't have any shape and was therefore empty. Darkness dominated, and life was simply asleep, but this changed when the creation began happening. After the Dreaming and the influence of the Spirits, objects began taking shapes and came to be. They created the four elements: water, earth, air and fire, as well as all the planets, the Sun and the Moon. The Dreaming therefore is a continuous process, which never ended. It is a small cosmos on its own, unifying the past, present and the future into one.
The Australian Aborigines' home riches so many vivid areas of the continent, including Fraser Island, Tasmania, Palm Island, Groote Eylandt and Mornington Island. The Aborigines had very strong believes in relation to the powers of the land, claiming that they never owned it - it rather owned them. The only reason they were able to call it their home is because they were looking after it and the land was taking care of the people in return.
Equally important to the Dreaming was the tribes' understandings of the disappearance of the Spirits. There came a time, when the creators of everything vanished from sight. Some of them were thought to have started living in sacred places, which is why the Aborigines perceived their homeland to be so sacred. The ancestors of today's Australians used to believe that the creators started living in rocks, in water holes and some went up to the sky to guide the people from above and keep them safe. Others transformed completely, taking the forms of the rain, the lightnings and the thunderstorms so they could be part of peoples' life.
Among the hundred's different Aboriginal languages, there isn't a word to describe 'time', because to them this simply doesn't exist. Dreaming and Dreamtime are used to replace it and summarize the ideologies of the Aborigines about everything they knew, everything they could see, feel and experience. This is why the Dreaming has such a vivid, and overwhelming meaning and has survived the obstacles of time. For the past couple thousand years, the Dreaming has built a rich cultural heritage that can identify a whole nation.
Read more about the Land, its connection to people and the way it has been perceived from different generations in the very first print issue of ORIGIN. The Land Issue covers varied topics, most of which remain related to cultural aspects of the land and its importance.
A lot of people travel to explore places and learn about them which is the message that ORIGIN wants to spread. With traveling, however, comes certain responsibilities that we should all be aware of. Elephants riding has become a popular way to explore locations by land. People have been doing this as part of their trips, mostly to places such as Thailand, Nepal, Cambodia and other parts of Asia. It is a common thing to see in certain places in Africa as well. We investigated the activity to explain why it is wrong and riding elephants should be banned everywhere.
Our first print issue studies culture and traveling represented through the land. We explored various location around the globe and learned what makes the land so valuable, which nations cherish it and how it helps us establish an identity. Traveling is important to us but traveling responsibly and making an impact is what we feel proud to stand behind. This is why riding elephants as a way of amusement should be reconsidered.
Let’s talk about the details. Elephants are very caring and extremely intelligent animals. It is a well-known fact that they never forget anything. When kept in captivity instead of spending their life in the wild, elephants die younger. Unlike in other species, this is common for the gentle giants and is often a result for stress.
Many African cultures respect elephants, believing they symbolize strength, loyalty and power. However, power can be a very tender concept. Elephant used as a tourism tool suffer from great pain daily. Elephants can be hurt very severely from the weight of carrying people and a trainer on their backs. The reason for this is the design of their spines. They have sharp protrusions, extending upwards from their spine instead of having round spinal disks. The protrusions and the tissue that serves to protect them can be harmed easily from weight pressure. Once a damage to their spine has been made, there is no going back and sometimes the harm can be irreversible. While this can’t be physically seen, the harm that the chairs can do to the elephants’ skin is. It is often the case that the chairs and the weight on their back can damage the animal’s skin and cause pain to their body. The chair, called Howdah, that gets attached to their backs, rubs on their skin and can cause blisters, which can sometimes get infected.
The training that elephants are required to go through when in captivity sometimes adopts a traditional Thai ‘phajaan’ or ‘crush’ technique. Explaining the technique would compare it to the animals’ spirits constantly and continuously being broken by the means of torture and social isolation. This is done in order to tame them. Elephants are wild animals, this is their nature as they are born in such conditions. Making them safe and obedient around people requires them to go through such training. As horrible as it sounds, in some places young elephants are taken away from their mothers to be abused with nails, bull hooks and bamboo sticks to make them obey rules, given by people. The animals often lack sleep and are starved to become submissive.
Actions from such nature are cruel and harmful as the technique is used to crash the animals’ spirit. Once wild and free, elephants become a source of tourism and entertainment. Nobody, who cared about sustainable tourism should ever ride an elephant.
In a sense, elephants have a human soul. They socialise and feel everything – pain, happiness, grief, sadness etc. They spend their life building families and finding friends. The largest land animals are a gift from nature and it is our responsibility to take special care of them and make sure they live according to their nature. Many animals, who are kept in captivity, are forced to live in isolation and carry heavy loads all day long, which is a wrong way to treat them. Their strength and power shouldn’t be abused but treated gently and celebrated by people. Elephants require minimal care to stay happy and healthy, which comes from giving them freedom to behave naturally and socialise. It is our responsibility to be culturally aware while traveling and make sure to spread awareness about the problem.
You can read the rest of the article as published in the LAND issue.
THE BALANCE OF FACTS
Follow this quick review of some of the positive and negative facts and figures on Switzerland
Words: Aleksandra Georgieva
Photography: Malte Schmidt, Artiom Vallat, Simon Fitall
15 August 2019
Over the past years Switzerland may consistently have been ranked amongst the best places to live in, but there is a fine balance between the facts and figures that measure the European country’s economic, social and cultural progress.
Home to approximately eight million people, Switzerland is leading the global reports’ lists regarding positive livelihood of local people. The World Health Organization (WHO) puts the country at second place for the location with the longest average life expectancy. It was outranked only by Japan. But with the estimated 81.3 years life expectancy for men and 85.3 years for women the Swiss population has also began ageing. In 2015 around a fifth of the citizens were over sixty-five years old.
While the figures battle the two sides of the coin in regard to the prosperity of the country, Switzerland has additionally been facing gender equality issues for longer period of time than the remaining western European countries. Alongside the considerable wealth gap between rich and poor, there has also been a significant difference in the percentage of full-time employed women as opposed to men. The pay gap is another pressing issue alongside the gender inequality in the national decision-taking posts in the country. However, there have been attempts to balance the figures. In 2017 one-fifth of new executive positions were taken by women. According to the Schilling report the rise in female positions in this sector over last year was as much as the rise of the previous ten years combined.
It is safe to say that Switzerland is one of the most well-organised countries in the world today. For example, if there was ever a nuclear war, the Swiss would be safe with enough nuclear fallout shelters prepared to accommodate the country’s entire population. Amidst some of the most populated villages the Swiss military also keeps fully stocked artillery bunkers designed as country homes. The possibility of a foreign invasion is yet another concept well-thought of. An estimation of 3000 locations alongside Switzerland’s main access points are wired to blow at a moment’s notice.
The European country is also the birthplace of some of the world’s leading scientists in research of mental illness treatments. In 2017 Switzerland was the world’s innovation leader for seventh year in a row, ahead of US (4th) and UK (5th), according to the World Intellectual Property Organization.
Switzerland has an ongoing need for people suitable for executive positions. The number of foreign executive workers rose to 45 per cent according to a 2017 Schilling report. The cultural diversity in the country is vividly present with four official languages and a population that consists of representatives of nearly every ethnic group or nationality worldwide. The country has been renowned for admirable tolerance and direct democracy. Controversially since the beginning of 2014 Swiss voters have been attempting to impose anti-immigrating initiatives and limits to the amount of elsewhere born people allowed to enter Switzerland. Despite that close to 25 per cent of the Swiss population consists of foreign-born citizens, in the future there might be an end to the free movement accord between the country and the European Union.
Switzerland also faces climate change issues and on the verge solutions to some of them. Large snowfalls in the mountains, freezing temperatures and severe winters have been having less and less impact especially across locations with lower altitudes. The summers become hotter by the year creating dangerous climate anomalies. The Alps create an effect similar to a climate barrier. The north part remains colder due to Atlantic winds and the weather in the south is milder by influence from the Mediterranean. Alike any region on the planet, Switzerland faces various negative impacts of the ongoing climate cataclysms. Yet, the government finds ways to create some balance by developing ecologically friendly projects. The most important renewable energy of the country is hydroelectricity. More than half of Switzerland’s households are powered by hydroelectric power plants, which produce around 19 million gigawatt hours a year.
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NOMADSofORIGIN is an independent annual publication with a focus on sustainable travelling and global cultural values. Each issue features interviews, engaging articles and photo guides, which take our nomadic readers through different destinations and introduce them to local people's perspectives.
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