THE NETHERLANDS

 

READ

The book I selected for the Netherlands, The Following Story, written by Cees Nooteboom and translated by Ina Rilke, was something of a departure from the types of books I usually read. It is the story of a man who went to bed in Amsterdam, and woke up the next morning in a hotel room in Lisbon, Portugal.

How could that be? The man in question, Herman Mussert, doesn’t understand how it happened either. “I had waked up with the ridiculous feeling that I might be dead, but whether I was actually dead, or had been dead, or vice versa, I could not ascertain.” As he takes in his surroundings, he realizes that he has been in this room before. In fact, he has been in this very bed before with the wife of another man.

Mussert is a bachelor living in Amsterdam, and a writer of travel guides under the pseudonym Dr. Strabo. He is a classical scholar, working on a translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in his spare time. But the book takes the reader back twenty years, to a time when Mussert teaches Latin and Greek in a Lisbon school. He is a popular teacher, nicknamed Socrates, and is happy in his work.

There is a student in the school, Lisa d’India, who is everyone’s favorite. Not only is she beautiful, but she is good in every subject. According to Mussert, he is the only person in the entire school who is not in love with Lisa, although he cherishes her as a student. Things begin to unravel for Mussert when one of the teachers, Arend Herfst, who is married to another teacher at the school, Maria Zeinstra, begins an affair with Lisa.

Mostly to spite her husband, Maria Zeinstra decides to have an affair with Mussert. She is the only woman whom Mussert will ever love, but things end badly for everyone.

At one point, Mussert muses that maybe he’s back in Lisbon on a sort of pilgrimage and must visit “all the stations where the past had a face.” He finds himself aboard a ship with an interesting assortment of passengers, including a priest who always hated hearing confession (“And they kept coming back, and one kept being forced to forgive them.”)

Being of a more literal bent, I had a hard time figuring out what was going on during this voyage, or, for that matter, in many parts of the book. The plot occupies a sort of twilight zone between life and death, with Mussert as the hapless soul trying to make sense of his metamorphosis.

COOK

I didn’t get any help coming up with food ideas from The Following Story. Mussert’s style of eating is “opening a can of beans.” So I went to the Internet and found a recipe for a vegan version of a traditional Dutch dish called stamppot, which consists of mashed potatoes, cabbage, and sausage. The recipe I found on the My Green Passion website called for seasoned tempeh instead of sausage. Since I’m not a fan of tempeh, I decided to use Beyond Sausage Brats. It turned out well – I even had seconds! Good thing, since the recipe made a huge batch, and I’ll be eating it for days.

GIVE

I didn’t find any climate-related projects that interested me on the GlobalGiving website, so I turned to Google instead and found Milieudefensie, a Friends of the Earth organization located in Amsterdam. According to their website: “Our mission is a good life for all people on earth and for generations to come. For this mission, a safe and healthy environment is needed, a just distribution of and access to the natural wealth of the earth, respect for nature and a voice for people on how to manage these. We choose just solutions – solutions without adverse effects for the Global South or for generations to come, and which can involve more people in our own country and create jobs and opportunities for everyone.” They have been very active in campaigns and lawsuits against Shell, and in creating pressure against other large polluting companies.

More information about Milieudefensie is available at A good life for all people on earth and for generations to come — Milieudefensie.

NEXT STOP: NEW ZEALAND

NEPAL

 

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Buddha’s Orphans, by Samrat Upadhyay, tells the story of a baby who is abandoned by his desperate mother in a public area in Kathmandu. His mother then goes and drowns herself in a nearby pond. The baby is found by an old homeless man, who takes him to a poor corn seller he knows, a woman named Kaki. They name the baby Raja, and Kaki takes it upon herself to raise him.

Buddha’s Orphans also tells the story of Nilu, a girl about the same age as Raja, who lives nearby with her widowed mother. Nilu grows up privileged and well-to-do, but her mother is a heavy drinker who eventually moves her young lover into the house and takes up other vices.

Raja and Nilu meet as young children when Kaki goes to work in Nilu’s mother’s house. They form a bond that lasts even during the times that circumstances keep them apart, such as when Raja is stolen away from Kaki and raised by another couple. Eventually, Raja and Nilu marry, against the wishes of both their families.

A baby boy is born to Nilu and Raja, and they name him Maitreya. Their marriage is happy, with Nilu working as a teacher and Raja eventually finding a job as a writer for a travel magazine. Tragedy strikes, however, causing them to separate. When they finally get back together, they have another baby, a girl named Ranjana. She gives them great joy, but her life takes an unexpected turn.

The book’s timeline spans decades, during which time the political situation in Nepal is volatile. Raja becomes involved in protests against the monarchy, and is jailed briefly during one of the protests. Over the years, the demonstrations intensify, especially after the fall of the Berlin Wall, which reminds the people in Nepal that change is possible. Finally, the King gives up his power and becomes merely a ceremonial figure.

Throughout the book, Raja is never able to come to terms with the fact that he was abandoned by his mother at birth. The narrator explains the circumstances towards the end of the book, but that only satisfies the curiosity of the book’s readers, not Raja himself, who never knows why his mother left him.

I found Buddha’s Orphans to be interesting and easy to read. Both Raja and Nilu were likeable characters making their way on their own, rather than asking for help from the families who had often failed them. This was the type of book I had hoped for when I first began this reading-the-world project, one that tells a compelling story, while also providing a glimpse into the culture of the country.

COOK

Raja spends many of his childhood years in the home of Ganga Da, a government worker, and his wife Jamuna, who is afflicted with a mental illness. Jamuna becomes very attached to Raja, and at one point in the book, Jamuna asks the servant to cook Raja some kheer. I googled to find out what kheer is, and discovered that it’s a rice pudding. I found a recipe for a vegan version on the VegNews website, and I’ve been eating it for breakfast the past couple of mornings. It’s quite good, especially served cold, and it's made with coconut milk, rice, brown sugar, coconut, dates, almonds, cloves, and cardamom.

GIVE

GlobalGiving’s website lists dozens of projects in Nepal, so I searched through the list until I found one with a sustainability focus. Many areas of Nepal have no electricity because of the difficulty of building an electric grid in such a mountainous region. For this reason, people often rely on kerosene lamps for lighting. This is a problem for many reasons: “Fumes from the kerosene lamps affect eyes and lungs and contribute to global warming with the release of greenhouse gases. The quality of light is inferior and there is a high risk of accidental fire.”

This project would “provide solar powered lamps as a sustainable substitute.” In addition, village youth and students would be given an orientation on renewable energy, and would be trained in maintenance and repair. Multiple charging stations would be installed in schools.

More information on this project is available at: A Clean Solar Alternative to Kerosene Lamps, Nepal - GlobalGiving.

 

NEXT STOP: THE NETHERLANDS