The Origin of Life (part II)

What was it about the early earth that first breathed life into lifeless matter? Are we unique, exceedingly rare, or was our planet but one in a million hatcheries scattered across the universe? These are questions to ponder, simmer and sin over. These are questions to discuss with good friends over good wine over good tasty dead life-forms in a good restaurant. These are questions to which we, for the first time in our history, now have sensible answers to. No longer is it deemed necessary, or even respectable, to invoke fantastical gods, talismans, shamens, and fairy tales for answers. We have a wonderful tool at our disposal -  a tool the ancients lacked, a tool which today is taught in all good schools throughout the world. A tool called chemistry.

The Origin of Life, as we shall see is a chemical problem. True, classroom chemistry, as taught today by boring dusty old teachers in dilapidated damp-cold laboratories, can extinguish (like blowing out a candle) the curiosity of many a bright and promising student. Students are told to memorise staid formulas, molarities and learn the Periodic Table - by rote. Hardly, an exciting endeavour to entice the curious amongst us into a world of science. But there are a few dedicated souls amongst us who do devote their lives to science, who look beyond the formulas and staid equations. Who breathe new life into the equations. Don't worry, I won't be throwing equations at you, but I will expect you to understand and appreciate the one's I do fling in your general direction.

But first before we begin, a little warning. We can never know for sure how life really started on earth. Even if we succeed in producing bacteria that crawl out of a test tube from a swirling soup of chemicals, we will never know if that is how life actually started on our planet. All we can say is that such things are possible. The quest for the Origin of Life is not about answers to what happened at a particular moment in the year 3,851 million BC, but it is a quest for the general rules that must govern the emergence of any life, anywhere in the universe, and especially on our planet, the only example we know of where life exists. I believe the rules that apply to our planet also apply to life elsewhere - wherever it may be found in the universe. The story we’ll trace is almost certainly not correct in every detail, but it is broadly accurate, and as we’ll see, perhaps almost inevitable once certain conditions are met. It is a story of chemistry and the ancient past. It is a story of many teenage years spent in angst mulling over lifes mysteries. It is a story of Life, the Universe and Everything. It is also very exciting. I'm excited. So let's begin!

There is a fundamental rule that governs all life on earth. All living things need to generate energy in order to build bodies and survive. Without energy life reverts back to the state of lifeless inanimate matter from whence it came. Most creatures on earth are consumers and get their energy from other living things - by eating them. Every time you eat a chicken drumstick a la KFC style, you are absorbing the energy stored by the chicken in its flesh. Where did the chicken gets its energy from? From seeds. It spent hours and hours converting seeds into chicken flesh. A chicken is a fascinating device. Through its mouth enter the seeds, and down its oesophagus they go into its tummy. Eventually via a complex cogwheel  of reactions called 'respiration' these seeds are converted  into tasty yummy chicken flesh. The chicken converts the seeds into feathers too, and muscles, and guts, and feet, and a brain and nervous system (albeit a very small one). And the seeds? Where did they get their energy from? Or to pose the question in another way: where does the energy trapped inside all living things ultimately come from? Answer: the sun. It is the green plants and other so called 'producers' that harvest the energy in the sun to build organic carbon molecules with which to build bodies. The equation is that of photosynthesis:

6 CO₂ + 6 H₂O  C₆H₁₂O₆+ 6 O₂

carbon dioxide + water ------ (energy from the sun absorbed by leaves) = glucose + oxygen

Let's stop and think what is happening here. Plants are effectively stripping away the hydrogen atoms in water, and then recombining them with the carbon and oxygen atoms in carbon dioxide to build glucose. From glucose they then make bodies and power their myriad functions (this is a little simplistic but it is essentially what is happening). The energy to power the combination of hydrogen with carbon dioxide comes from sunlight. The sunlight is trapped by the leaves by the green pigment chlorophyll.

The first life on earth had to be a producer. It couldn't have been a consumer; i.e. it couldn't have fed on other life, because there was no other life to feed on. At first the only producers that scientists knew of were green plants and photosynthetic bacteria. But this painted a paradox. You see the problem is that photosynthesis is a wonderful process. In fact it is too wonderful! And it is wonderful precisely because it is very efficient and very complicated (as any 1st year biochemistry student will attest to) - and therein lies the problem. It requires organelles (tiny spherical green bodies) inside cells called chloroplasts with an origami network of twisted internal membranes. It is inside chloroplasts that the reactions of photosynthesis take place and it is is an extremely complex biochemical process. It involves a chain of protein molecules embedded in the membranes. It involves a vast array of protein catalysts called enzymes to help and control these reactions. It requires a green pigment called chlorophyll to trap the light, and it requires molecules to shuttle electrons along the complexes at break neck speed. In short photosynthesis as we know it is far far too complicated to have arisen in the first life. It is way too complicated. See image below:

(Phosynthesis is far too complicated to have arisen in the first life forms)

The first life that arose, therefore had to be, by definition, very simple. It would have had to generate energy from a very simple process not involving enzymes and proteins and membranes. In short it couldn't have photosynthesised. So how did it generate it's energy? And more importantly: what did it look like? The answer as you'll see is a strange and wonderful one. In fact, the first life probably did not look like life as we understand it. It looked almost alien. To find it we must travel deep down into the ocean depths...far down, on the sea bed where strange things lurk...

It was in the early 1970s when the first pieces of the jigsaw puzzle were found. We've been putting them together ever since. The first clues to an answer to the origin of life came in the early 1970s, when rising plumes of hot water were noticed along the Galapagos Rift, not far from the Galapagos Islands. Little happened for a few years and then in 1977 a submarine descended to the rift seeking the source of the hot plume of water. What it found were hydrothermal vents; huge 80 metre tall chimneys at the bottom of the ocean venting black smoke and hot water into the cold salty sea water. What surprised everyone even more was the existence of giant tube worms, some of them eight feet long, mixed with clams and mussels, all living off the heat and minerals from the deep dark undersea vents many miles below the waters surface. The sheer abundance of life down below was astonishing; a veritable cornucopia of life approaching the exuberance of rainforest's and coral reefs; and all powered by the energy from the exhalations of underwater vents rather then sunlight. You see sunlight cannot penetrate these murky depths. These vents soon acquired the name ‘black smokers’ and since then over 200 ‘fields’ of black smokers; tottering as high as skyscrapers, have been found over the earths ridges, in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. But this is not smoke as we know it. The black stuff consists of broiling metal sulphides, hydrogen gas, ammonia, all seeping up from within the earth’s magma, reaching temperatures of 400 degrees centigrade in the crushing pressures of the ocean. The chimneys themselves are composed of sulphurous minerals, like iron pyrites, which settle out from the black smoke and amass as thick deposits over wide areas.

('black smokers' - deep sea hydrothermal vents - did life begin here?)

This bizarre and alien world seems like a vision of Hell itself and comes replete with hell fire, brimstone and the foul reek of hydrogen sulphide gas. And what lives in these conditions? Life. Large 8 foot worms with no mouths and no anuses, and eyeless shrimps swarming in countless multitudes on the ledges and cliffs below the smoking chimneys. Life doesn’t just scrimp by and earn a living here; it positively thrives in these infernal conditions. It needs the hydrogen gas, hydrogen sulphide, and ammonia to survive! On the surface of our planet this stuff would be poisonous. But not here. How can life survive down here? What is going on?

The answer as we’ll see will tell us something about the Origins of Life itself.

The Origin of Life (part I)

Well actually I lied! Life didn't start with a tree...trees come much much later in our story. But before we begin our odyssey I have something to tell you. A little secret. I feel a little embarrassed telling you this. But the devil take it! You see, the reason I studied Biochemistry at university was because I wanted to discover...nothing other than...the origin of life! I know, I know, how childish! Unfortunately somewhere amidst the boring lectures on the Krebs cycle, glycolysis and gene transcription the question got lost and I became embroiled in the serious business of passing exams. It is sad how academic study, instead of becoming an exciting quest for new knowledge; an adventure into the unknown, can turn into a wearisome struggle to pass exams. But I am back with a vengeance! Oh yes! After a break of almost ten years. The good thing is that ten years is a long time in science. Entire world views can crumble and brand spanking new shiny edifices rise up in their place. The scientific landscape I see before me today is different to the one that existed when I was an undergraduate. Things have moved on - and in science that is always good.

Before we begin our journey to the Origin of Life we must first understand what it is we are trying to find the origin of. Or, put more bluntly: What exactly is life? Is it something that moves? something that grows? that eats? that reproduces? that breathes? that shits? Trees don't move yet they are living. Viruses don't breathe and they too are living. Flowers don't shit and they are definitely living. Is there a definition of life that encompasses all? Yes there is:

Life is something that can maintain a state of order via the expenditure of energy.

We are blobs of order in a chaotic universe. What is the difference between a bird and a mountain? (apart from the obvious). A bird is vastly vastly more complex than a mountain. It has intricate parts that work together to make it do 'birdy' things like fly, bob its head, eat, and make copies of itself in the form of baby birds. It looks as if it was designed. Nobody looks at a lump of rock and says: 'Hey, look at that! It must have been designed by someone' - but the same can't be said for birds, worms, insects and humans. Look at the different parts of a human - the muscles, the guts, the bones, the nervous system. Surely a human being couldn't have come about just like that? A human being has purpose written all over it. There is the famous story by William Paley about stumbling upon a watch in the heath. If you spotted a watch upon the heath it would be obvious it was designed by someone for a purpose - wouldn't it?

The complexity of the living world is crying out for an explanation. From bats to penguins - from flowers to bees - from spider webs to birds nests. Where did this complexity come from? Surely it was designed? By someone? For a purpose? Just like a car, a laptop, a TV. But living things are vastly more complex than any man made object. If you think that this bewildering complexity does not deserve an explanation than you've got issues. If you've never marvelled at the natural world and thought: 'Hey, wait a minute! Where did it come from?' - if you've never done that than you need to sort out your priorities and start getting down to some serious thinking. In short: you need to get a life!

But enough philistine bashing for now. I'll get plenty of chances to bash you later. There is another point I want to make: it is important to note beforehand, lest I furnish you with unrealistic notions, that we can never really know with certainty how life began. It was an event that occurred such a long time ago. 3.85 billion years is an unfathomably long time. Imagine the age of the earth can be represented on a 24 hour clock. The earth was formed 4.5 billion years ago at 12 midnight. Life emerged at 4am in the morning and remained single-cell bacteria like until 8pm the following evening. After 8pm in our 24 hour clock it became multi-celluler and grew bodies arms, legs, guts and heads. And humans? Humans appeared in the last second at 11:59 (59secs) (!). The fact that we can say anything about an event that occurred so long ago is astonishing in the least. But we can do more than that. We can make educated inferences, based on what we know about life today and in the past, about the kind of process that the origin of life was and had to be. We know it had to be a chemical process; because there was no biology at the time. Thanks to recent advances in gene technology, thermodynamics and the discovery of hitherto unknown branches of life - we can now say, with a high degree of confidence, how life is likely to have begun.

It's been a long time coming. Man has lived in a state of 'duh-duh I dunno' for far too long. It is about time the veil of ignorance was lifted and our minds opened to the weird and wonderful. So lets venture into the well of the long deep past. It is the year 3.85 billion BC. It has been 700 million years since the earth was formed out of a red hot ball of interstellar material. The oceans have cooled and land risen. The atmosphere is noxious with methane, ammonia and carbon dioxide. Something momentous is about to happen...the story begins deep in the chasms of the earths oceans, in the mid-ocean ridges, many miles down, where thanks to the forces of volcanism and plate tectonics, continents collide and slide beneath one another, creating earthquakes and raising mountains... weird and wonderful and wholly extraordinary conditions are being created. It is safe to say that life probably began on earth in an alien environment...

Coming soon...The Origin of Life

Set against the consuming blackness of space, the earth is a beguiling blue-green ball. Barely a handful of people have experienced the emotion of seeing the planet from space. Petty human squabbles over borders, oil and creed. Tiny everyday worries about life, love and money - all these whimsies vanish in the knowledge that this living, breathing, spinning marble surrounded by deep dark emptiness is our shared home. A home which we share with the most wonderful invention in the universe - wonderful, splendid, beautiful life.

How did it begin?

There was a time, many many years ago when night followed day swiftly. When the planet spun madly on its axis and a day was 5-6 hours long. A time when the moon hung heavy in the sky, far closer, and far bigger, than it is today. A time when stars rarely shone through the dull red envelope of the atmosphere. Humans could not survive then, no oxygen - we would have asphyxiated. Our eyes would have bulged our lungs would have struggled to find something to breathe. Yet 3,800 million years ago something momentous happened. This is the story of that high water mark event. This is the story of that showpiece extravaganza. This is the story of us and who we are. This is the story of life itself...everything else fades in comparison. Without understanding this you understand nothing. Without knowing this all of literature, all of poetry, all that has ever been said lacks context. This is the story of the Origin Of Life. Come and join me and I will take you on the finest adventure that Life has to offer.

It starts, well it starts like most great adventures stories, simply. It starts with a tree...

The railway bazaar (revisited)

Diary folio A-1

Earlier we had kissed to a window-framed backdrop of rutted origami fields cropped by belching cows, and as our lips parted, I had opened my eyes. It was then that she had laughed.

'Why are you laughing?'

'Because silly…you kiss with your eyes shut'. Her eyes were shiny with a moist film. Her mouth was clapped tight forcing it into a twisted smile. She was trying desperately not to laugh.

'I've never known a man who kisses with his eyes shut' she said - she of a thousand lovers.

I looked on embarrassed. Did I really kiss with my eyes shut? I was suddenly engrossed in a picture of my own sillyness. To my surprise and horror my cheeks had begun to sprout a blush. I tried to think of something else to get the colour to fade lest she noticed. I thought of something to say but knew not what. I concentrated on the first irrelevent thing that came to mind - A sultry tale from a thousand and one nights! This is not helping. I said nothing, pursed my lips and continued to stare her out (our faces were almost touching). She saw the ripening whorls of rose red colour form on my cheeks and burst out in laughter. Unable to contain herself any longer she raised her hand to her mouth in a gesture of apology. I leaned back, twisted my mouth in a metallic frown, dug a deep furrow in my forehead and sulked. I was upset; or at least feigned to be...

The railway bazaar (revisited)

Forward

The sun hung low like a bloody bruised orange tearing long wreathe like shadows into the flatscapes. It was so low that the light from the sun flooded the carriage in slanting beams whose edges were marked with dancing eddies. The train tottled along in nervous agitation sending the dust motes into ever spiralling orbits. The mood was morbidly portentous; strange forces were a-foot in the country threatening the placid calmness of my thoughts. Opposite me, above her head, warm air currents were stirring friskily in the heated square patch of sun reflection. The smell of mellow cow dung entered through the open windows and wrestled with the smell of passengers curry and fish dinners. It was dinner time in the train. I felt instantly better. I had purchased my dinner from a kiosk at the previous station. It had been handed to me by a skinny dark-skinned Tamil; skillfully wrapped in 'India Times' newspaper print. As I opened the package, the whiff caught me by surprise and I realised the oil had forced the newspaper print to emboss itself onto my fish dinner. 'Terror in Karnataka' ran the headline along the scaly back of my fish. Hence the morbid mood. I stabbed the fish with a rudimentary tooth pick and saw its eyes watching me forlornly. I gouged them out angrily with the tooth-pick (nobody likes to be stared at by their dinner). I separated the bones carefully from the white juicy flesh which I then moulded into a ball with my fingers and sponged with the rice. I was copying the other diners. I pushed the whole messy concoction into my dry mouth. It was saucy and a spicy-hot trickle ran down the side of my lips, then along the inside of my arm and unto my crotch between my legs. She sat opposite -  laughing. I gave her a wounded lion look. She snarled back with her eyes glowing fiercly; showing her perfect teeth and perfect smile - that seemed for moment to be studded with a million diamonds. I was in love with that smile. God! I was in love with a lioness...

Escape from thyself

It is Saturday morning and I am in a charmingly philosophical mood. The freshly ground coffee nesting warmly in the pot to my right has little bubbles on the surface like fish eggs and when I raise the cup to my mouth I notice that the bubbles contain rainbows. I sip the brew...Ahh rich aroma; Ethiopia crashes through the sensory divide and invades my private space. Though I am clearly not in Ethiopia but London, Stoke Newington - the greatest place in the whole Universe. Oh, yes I have been to the stars on the back of aching mahogany beams.

Back on Earth the waitress shuffles busily to my left leaving a trail of sweet perfume and broken hearts in her wake. I look at her and oddly sadistic thoughts flutter into view - thoughts of the sexual things I'd like to do to her behind the counter and on the shiny table tops. Naughty sexual things that I can't describe here as this blog is rated PG. I swipe the thoughts clear; like one swipes a truculent layer of grime off a window pane, and continue with my work. But I am finding it difficult to concentrate.

Presently a man walks in, a Turkish man, and sits down. He is wearing a badly fitting suit jacket with enormous lapels and not-very-shiny brass buttons. He places his elbows self-consciously on the table and looks around wide-eyed, his gaze scanning the clientele and stopping for longer than is necessary on some of the prettier faces. The waitress comes over to take his order. He orders in a series of low guttural barks that betray his lowly uncouth origins. 'I am Man. I want food'. He continues to stare at some of the prettier faces; staring for longer than necessary. How long should a man stare at a woman not to make her feel uncomfortable? I think about 7/10th's of a second is long enough to acknowledge her existence. Anything longer betrays a keen healthy interest. 4 seconds or more and we are looking at unhealthy sexual interest that borders on psychotic disturbances in the frontal lobe area of the brain. It is 20 seconds and the man is still staring - at the same woman.

Oddly enough (or maybe not oddly enough) the reaction of the female in such cases will depend on her perceptions of the man. Is he well dressed? Does he appear as a gentlemen? Well to do? How is he groomed? His mannerisms? Are they coarse and slovenly or urbane and refined? What are his shoes like? His eyes, how deep are his eyes - can you see straight though them all the way through the emptiness or are they impenetrable and how close are they to his nose? It's funny how you can read someone within a few seconds of having seen them. A useful device in the small tribal bands in which we evolved. Women are much better judges of pseudo-psychotic-sexual tendencies - for obvious reasons. The woman shuffles uncomfortably under the murky gaze of the sexual predator. Is he on the prowl? Finally she gets up to go to the loo. Yet the man shifts his gaze not an iota. What is he looking at? An empty chair? Oh! The television! He is looking at the television positioned to the right of the woman and my field of view made me think he was looking at her...oh well. I chuckle to myself and think of something to write.

The waitress returns and I order another pot of special brew. I do come here often and she knows me by face and we do chat occasionally in between the sound of clinking china and wooshing 15Bar pressure espresso machine. I can't quite recall what we talk about, all sorts of pointless stuff, but just to see her smile at a little joke of mine is bliss. I imagine seating her, with legs akimbo, between the knobs of the coffee machine, and making love to her whilst the coffee beans swivel about in the crusher and the milk frother for the cappuccinos reaches bursting point...and starts dripping all over the counter.

Oh God.That's disgusting...

___

Coming soon...Tierra Del Fuego

Magellan named it 'Tierra Del Fuego' because of the many campfires he saw dotted along its shores. Fed by continuous Antarctic winds the sea around Cape Horn bubbles and spits in an angry foamy morass. This is one of the harshest places on earth. This is the end of the world. I will go there. I can't help it - Ants in my pants. What me? Never!

Ihaveanitchyfeelinginmybum.com

'Among the scenes which are deeply impressed on my mind, none exceed in sublimity the primeval forests undefaced by the hand of man; whether those of Brazil, where the powers of Life are predominant, or those of Tierra del Fuego, where Death and Decay prevail. Both are temples filled with the varied productions of the God of Nature: no one can stand in these solitudes unmoved, and not feel that there is more in man than the mere breath of his body'

(Journal 'Voyage around the world' 1839)

Picture perfect

Food for thought

When did man become truly modern? Is there a seminal moment in our history when we can say 'this is the moment when we became modern'. I believe there is. It is the moment when man (and woman) strolled down the long supermarket aisles and picked strawberries. But this is no ordinary strawberry picking. Oh no, our ancestors may have delighted in the occasional handful of berries found in the bush in summer, viewing them as the gifts from a munificent creator, but we became modern when we gave up waiting for sporadic and capricious gifts from above and instead sought immediate and year round strawberries - in the supermarket. Walk down any supermarket today at any time of the year and you will find strawberries. They journey from Israel in midwinter, from Morocco in February, from Spain in spring, from Holland in early summer, from England in August and from San Diego between September till Christmas. All year round strawberries. No longer do we allow the tilt of the earths axis to decide what we can or cannot eat. Of course strawberries are just one example of our emancipation from the fetters of seasons and climate. Thanks to the genius of logistical science the seasons no longer exist - when it comes to food anyway. But there is, for me, a worrying side affect of our new-fangled modernity.

If you had lived 200 years ago the chances are you would know where your food came from. You would be intimately connected with its providence. Your bread no doubt would have been freshly baked by Mr Crumpet the baker. The cheese you ate would come from the Cheddar farms in Wiltshire. Your beef stew courtesy of the cattle belonging to ole farmer Henry and his wise chickens and nagging missus. Strawberries (only available in July, August) from the fields of East Sussex. Fish from the burgeoning fisheries of the North Sea. The handful of exotic items you consumed would have come from suitably exotic places: tea from Darjeeling and Ceylon, pepper and nutmeg from the Spice Islands of Banda off the coast of Indonesia, coffee from Arabia, wine from Bordeaux and if you were wealthy, Caviar from Sturgeon eggs caught in the freezing arctic waters of the Russian empire.

And today? Today the average supermarket has 20,000 produce. You'd be lucky if you knew where half-a-dozen of these came from. Let's take Tuna for example. Your Tuna comes from the Indian ocean waters off the Maldives. There it is caught by illiterate skinny Indians, hauled out of the water impaled on huge hooks and weighing 50kg's, clubbed to death until the water on deck turns red, lungs and bladders removed, gutted, sliced and diced into cubes and processed in factories in the Maldives. There they are packaged in Sainsbury's own brand plastic wrap, loaded into the cargo section of a Boeing 747 under aisle seats 34-45 headed for England. Finally, it is taken to the central processing warehouse near Birmingham from where great articulated lorries carry your Tuna steaks into the night, to every corner of the British Isles while you sleep, to your local Sainsbury's store. All within 48 hours. 48 hours ago that Tuna was happily swimming away in the warm blue waters of the Indian ocean...now it is seal-wrapped in the 'fish and seafood section' of a Sainsbury's in leaden and cold skied Middlesex. Welcome to modern life.

So what is my point? Why am I describing to you this wonderfully complex feat of logistics? Do you not see? We, in the West, no longer have any idea where our food comes from and how it got here. We cannot even begin to contemplate the human story that unfolds like a comic strip behind the food that finds itself on our plates. But most importantly of all, and this is the point I am driving at, we have lost control. We assume the food will always be there. We assume there will always be bread and milk and eggs in the supermarket in the morning. We have traded bewildering choice for control.  But what if things were to break down? What if the logistics system that brings our food to us, from all over the globe, collapsed? - from a major catastrophe perhaps: war, natural disaster, financial meltdown, alien invasion, nuclear holocaust. Would we starve? Would we Londoner's be reduced to nibbling away at tree barks or foraging for scraps of edible plant matter in Hyde Park?

You have no idea how precarious your existence is. Your entire lives are dependent on the workings of electronic machines, embedded in walls, handing out wads of paper - for the correct password. The card swiping machine in your local supermarket stands between you and your morning croissant and newspaper. The bank clerk stands between the crediting of your salary to your bank account and pecuniary. The delivery of that croissant depends on an army of human robot workers; most of whom are miserable and feel they are nothing but part of a soulless logistical network - which they are. And the sublime irony of modern life? For choice, for selection, for bewildering variety - we gave up control and freedom and have subjugated an army of humans to drudgery and inertness.

Contrast this with the peoples living in the Hunza valley in northern Pakistan. Yes, there choices are limited. Yes, they don't have thirty different breakfast cereals to choose from.Yes, they rarely eat Tuna. Yet, they don't have to suffer the ignominies of standing in front of a cheese counter trying to make an impossible decision.  They are the few people left who know where their rice, bread and corn came from. The rice grows in fields in the Punjab and the wheat and corn they grow themselves on terraced fields. The pears and peaches they grab off the trees and as for Coca Cola and Sprite - who needs such calorie-laden americanisms when you have tea and fresh sparkling mountain mineral water! And most importantly of all, they don't live lives of mindless drudgery.

But does it not scare you? To know that you no longer have control over basic things like your food source? That your entire life is dependent on the efficient workings of banks, ATM's, logistics, crude oil, electricity, gas, share prices, and political stability in the Maldives. Politican instability in Maldives = no Tuna. Welcome to the modern world. I hope this has been food for thought.

____

To leave one must first arrive...

'To leave one must first arrive

To arrive one first has to die

Flap those wings and cry:

What dost seeks is nigh'

...so says the peregrinating philosopher...mulching on 'Khat' leaves in the Ethiopian Highlands. But first I must apologise for a digression:

Khat also known as qat, qaat, quat, gat, jaad, chat, chad, is a flowering plant native to tropical East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Khat contains the alkaloid called cathinone, an amphetamine-like stimulant which is said to cause excitement, loss of appetite and euphoria.

____

Allow me to whisper something in your ear: 'Khat is good'. There is an alaborate ceremony for its consumption. You lay upon the sand a cloth to sit upon cross-legged and in a circle. The Khat leaves arrive, preferably fresh and not older than two days, and you strip the stems and proceed to thrust them into your mouth...chewing vigorously - like a goat.  Like a bunch of stupid goats you sit there mulching and ruminating until the base of your mouth goes numb, until your tongue has lost all power of brain dependent movement - so what you utter in that Khat induced haze has nothing to do with what you wanted to say. But nevermind, your listeners too have lost the power of hearing and seem to have vanished out of your field of view - you remember what it is you wanted to say. But don't worry your train of thoughts will get lost again. So what was it you wanted to say? Oh yes. Here we go:

The best bit about Addis Ababa is getting out. But first you must get in. As the aeroplane sat on the tarmac I caught a glimpse of the terminal building from the spy-hole of the plane: industrial chic. That was my first impression. Long before the designers of Canary Wharf underground station unveiled their version of industrial chic; a similar, albeit unintentional design experiment had already taken place in Addis Ababa. It was King Menelik who had ordered the construction of a new fangled city. A capital city befitting a modern capital age. Like Albert Speer before him, and his right hand man; Alfred Ilg, plans were drawn to construct a metropolis to wow the visiting delegates. Oh no matter if half the population is on the brink of starvation; this is theatre – this is make-believe - wool over the eyes diplomacy. I have visited many capital cities and the following maxim generally holds true: The more pretentious the capital city the greater the poverty

Oh yes, a seething GutterStink of BuZZingHuman frailty and weakness. I longed for the Ethiopian highlands. But, like most capital cities, I had to arrive before I could leave. Arriving in Africa is like being born again. Recast from the womb that begot you. Instinct tells you to suck from the teat of the familiar. So I latch onto a group of touring Westerners who, after a while of friendly banter, start wondering who I am. So there is nothing to do but head off on my own and find a hotel: preferably a nice safe looking hotel - not too expensive, neatly laid towels, soap and toiletry packs, complimentary tea and coffee sachets, and cable TV with frosty picture. No that's not my style at all. I was joking! I look out of the dust covered window of my grimey hovel of a room that cost me the better part of a fiver for board and breakfast. A couple of syringes greet me in the toilet bowl: Beggar women with band of straggling kids shuffles along outside the window. Same old story. Poverty can be such a cliche. I close the curtains and lie down on the bed and stare at the ceiling. It has cracks in it. I imagine they are ancient waterways now dried, rivuletting through parched and scrawny bush. 'Afar' – that is where it all began. In fact it is from Addis Ababa that humans migrated around the world. I am merely coming back...albeit after a gap of a million years or so. I sigh. It's a long dusty trailing sigh pregnant with history and the burden of knowledge. Do I want to do this? Yes! Fuck it I'm off. I’m not hanging about this forlorn shithole - Adios Addis! I’m heading for Harar...Where a man, a famous enigmatic poet once said: 'I is somebody else'. 'I is somebody else' I repeat to myself. But first I must cross the crazy-hazy street traffic with the horns. The city is full of skyscrapers from the 60’s and early 70's – where are the modern glasstop furnished buildings of the promised SpaceAge? It's as if the Ethiopian economic miracle took a break in 1975...and never returned. Probably chewing Khat leaves somewhere.

But this is spurious history. Ethiopia has been home to a sophisticated civilization for millennia. It is home to the oldest Christian, Jewish and Islamic populations outside the Middle East. In fact Islam in Ethiopia dates back to its founding in AD 615, when a group of Mussalmans were consulled by Mohammed to escape persecution in Mecca and travel to modern day Ethiopia. Also Bilal, the first ever muezzin (the person who calls the faithful to prayer) and one of Mohammeds foremost companions, was from Ethiopia. Ethiopia also has its own written language – something that is decidedly rare in the African continent. Its people are tall, high-boned, beautifully crafted specimens of humanity and proud too. But there is much history to be proud. Let's take coffee for example. It was in Ethiopia that coffee, according to legend, was discovered. It is a wonderful fable, probably apocryphal, and I will share it with you:

Once upon a time, circa AD 500 there lived a goat herder by the name of Kaldi. While tending his flock he discovered that his goats were brazen and friskier then usual when they grazed near a certain bush with red berries. He tasted the berries and found that they enlivened and lifted his spirits. So with pocketfulls of berries he ran home to tell his wife of his wonderful discovery:

‘They are heaven sent’ she solemnly declared ‘You must take them to the Monks in the monastery’

So off he went to the monastery where Kaldi presented the berries to the chief Monk, a mousy looking creature with short cropped chin whiskers and covetous eyes, and related to him the story of their miraculous discovery

‘Devils work!’ exclaimed the Monk in indigantion and hurled the berries into the flickering fire

A few moments later the Monastery was filled with the heavenly aroma of roasting beans. The beans were raked from the fire and placed in an ewer with hot water to preserve their aroma. That night the monks sat up till late drinking and savouring the rich fragrant brew and from that day onwards vowed that they would drink it daily to keep themselves awake during their nightly devotions. Coffee then spread to Yemen thence Arabia and finally the rest of the world - Coffea Arabica was born. The governor of Mecca, Beg, saw some people drinking coffee in a mosque as they prepared a night-long prayer vigil. Furious he drove them from the mosque and ordered all coffee houses to be closed. A heated debate ensued, with coffee being condemned as an unhealthy brew by two unscrupulous Persian doctors, the Hakimani brothers. The doctors wanted it banned, for it was a popular cure among the melancholic bipolar patients who other-wise would have paid the doctors to cure them.

The picture of Arabic coffee houses as dens of iniquity and frivolity was exaggerated by religious zealots. In reality the Middle East was the forerunner of the European Café society and the coffee houses of London which became famous London clubs. They were enlightened dens; meeting places for intellectuals where news, gossip and revolutionary ideas mingled in their own heady brew over the hot water soaked beans of coffea arabica. This is exactly the sort of place I am sitting as I type this. Enlightened Revolutionary - yep that's me.

And now we have Starbucks and Nescafe...coffee for phillistines. Coffee for idiots!

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One Life - One World - One People

Classics revisited