Together in diversity

The photo is the centre piece of the mosaic floor at Domus Romana by Mdina gate.

This post is about the National Forum on Intercultural Dialogue that I went to yesterday at St James Cavalier Centre for Creativity in Valletta.  I am starting to appreciate that St James Cavalier is a significant hub of arts and cultural activities in Malta.   Sarah Spiteri, the violinist who leads the concert series at St Catherine of Italy, is based at St James Cavalier and indeed features in a short documentary that has been produced there about the EU year of creativity, 2008.

That reminds me that the concert on Thursday was German Baroque for flute and harpsichord with Silvio Zammit on flute and Ramona Zammit Formosa on harpsichord.  It was an excellent concert even though both musicians were battling with colds.  The court of Frederick the Great enabled many musicians to flourish and we heard pieces by Fred himself, Telemann, CPE Bach, Handel, and JS Bach.

The forum was the summarising event for the 2008 European Year of Intercultural Dialogue which was coordinated in Malta by St James Cavalier.  It was opened by Dolores Cristina, Minister for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, who, like several other politicians who were present at first, disappeared as soon as she had given her speech.  The session before coffee was chaired by Dr Mark Anthony Falzon, Head of Sociology at Uni of Malta.  He did a great job of summarising the contributions of Prof. Paul Clough, Head of Anthropology at Uni of Malta who gave an interesting perspective as an Anglo-American-Maltese and Dr Katrine Camilleri, a lawyer with the Jesuit Refugee Services.

Paul Clough spoke about the significance of humour, music and dance in building bridges between cultures.  None of the speakers used terms like integration but rather emphasised respect for diversity and the building of links between difference.  Paul Clough mentioned two points that have stayed in my mind.  One was a personal anecdote about how playing with words to bring out humour can make us feel momentarily more alive.  

The other point about age and cultural diversity needs more expansion.  Drawing on his own experience as a young adult establishing himself as an academic in Malta, he compared his own experience in building strong links with Maltese people, with that of his parents who tended to stick with people from their own English background.  He then generalised to suggest that whilst younger adults enjoy looking out for cultural diversity, older adults seek cultural similarity.  My own experience indicates that it is more complex.  

As a young woman living in Bahamas I tended to hang out with other English teachers from the Bahamian school where I taught Bahamian children.  I remained an ex-pat socialising mostly with other ex-pats.  I think the workplace, marital status and the structure of possible links between a local community and a visiting 'foreigner' determines how we relate to a host country rather than age.  Certainly in Malta today, older English 'couples' tend to hang out with other older English couples and I think there are plenty of remnants of colonial culture influencing the relationships between older English and Maltese people.  But as an older Anglo-Australian returning to Malta and deciding to come and live here more permanently, I find that I am more open than I have ever been to Maltese culture and the Maltese people.

After our coffee break, we divided into four workshops to focus on local communities, education, employment and the arts.  I chose the latter which was well facilitated by a young man, Caldon Mercieca from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Youth and Sport.  Our discussion settled around three areas in terms of how the arts might build bridges between diverse cultures: public art, community art, and artist to artist relationships.

I have to go and hang out my washing and prepare to go walking this afternoon from Naxxar so will publish this and then add some more later.

Sunday afternoon and I've just got back from the Sunday concert at St Catherine of Italy.  Today, I was a little late arriving because I stopped in St James Cavalier for coffee, so I missed out on both my front row seat and a programme.  The concert focussed on Hayden's flute pieces and I loved it.  It started with a solo flute piece by CPE Bach moved through two works for flute, violin and bass and finished with a Hayden flute quartet when Sarah Spiteri joined the group.

I wanted to add a couple of points raised at the forum on Friday.  Katrina Camilleri talked about her experience working with refugees in Malta.  She quoted from some of the irregular migrants.  One said that Malta is like a bus terminal where people are waiting for their future direction to open out.  This metaphor is literally played out at the Valletta bus terminal which is always teeming with African migrants who seem to have made the windy circle their social gathering point.

The other aspect that emerged strongly for me is how the experience of the Marsa community and the refugee centre located there is put forward as an example of what can be achieved.  In the general forum, a migrant from Africa, who is now settled in Malta and married to a Maltese woman, told us about the 'Clean up Marsa' campaign that he had been involved in together with the refugees who now live in Marsa.  That campaign did a lot to raise local awareness and build bridges between cultures.  Marsa councillors who had never been to the refugee centre previously have now become regular visitors.  

But as well as enabling people to see the positive contributions that can be made by people from diverse cultures, we need to address issues that arise in economic competition.  Paul Clough made the point, again drawing from his own experience, that sometimes we explain tension between people as cultural competition when it is actually competition in the job market.  Another factor that was touched on at the forum but we all tended to skate away from it is the strong Roman Catholic conviction held by many Maltese that may nurture a social system that is closed to cultural diversity.

The 'Clean up Marsa' campaign was also mentioned by a young man who works at the refugee centre and who attended the arts workshop after the coffee break.  He used the campaign as an example of community arts because it had brought people together and had changed the local landscape.  He also talked about how he is now working on finding a space for art in Marsa where the work of artists from diverse cultures can be exhibited.

A young woman from the Museum of Archaeology also talked about her vision of opening up the museum space to exhibits from the diverse cultures who have influenced Maltese identity today.

After the arts workshop, the 'stayers' in the forum gathered back in the St James cinema to hear the reports from the four groups and to hear about the launch of a new website that features the diverse cultural organisations currently operating in Malta.  This site can be accessed on www.diversemalta.com

Maltese natural heritage

On Wednesday evening I started a short course on Maltese natural heritage being offered by University of Malta.  It is at the old University building in Valletta and there will be four two hour lectures and two Saturday afternoon field trips.

It took me a while to find the location as the old building occupies a whole block in between St Paul's street and Merchant's street.  Valletta is laid out on a simple grid system with straight streets criss-crossing the peninsula so it should be easy to find a particular building but in fact it is so rich in historic buildings that it becomes difficult.  I had to ask for directions on the cold, wet streets before I finally found my way in to the building and then I had to negotiate a maze of ancient corridors. 

I arrived at the right room just as the session was about to start and I was feeling a little flustered.  The room was full of young students and I had to find a seat at the back of the room. This week the session was about the geological beginnings of Malta and it was fascinating.  I have heard about Gondwana in relation to the origins of Australia but I had never pictured that at one point in the beginning of the planet, what is now the Northern edge of Australia was washed by the sea that eventually became the Mediterranean.  

I also came to understand much more about the layering of Malta's rocks which are entirely sedimentary and the way in which the southern edge of Sicily and Malta are actually part of the same lump of rock that collided with another lump of rock to form Sicily.  The links between Malta and Southern Sicily are natural as well as cultural.  So when I go over to Catania for the feast of St Agatha next week, I'll be looking out for the Southern landscapes as well as the cultural stories.

The photo that heads the post is of weathered rock formations from the globigerina limestone cliffs  that rest on a bed of harder coralline limestone at Delimara. 

Valletta, Fgura, Birgu

The photo is of St Barbara, beautifully embossed on a canon at the Maritime museum in Birgu.  St Barbara was the patron saint of guns and sails.  Sailors used to pray to her when they were in strife at sea, particularly in thunderstorms.  Saint Barbara is also the name of my brother's sailing boat which was built in 1940s for the British artillery service.

Yesterday I had another full day.  I started out in Valletta again for the Sunday morning concert.  This time, the St James consort were into the third part of their Scarlatti project.  They performed two chamber cantata with bass vocalist Albert Buttigieg.  These Scarlatti cantata were particularly composed for small, intimate settings and are not well known.  Writing cantata for the bass voice is even rarer and so it was a treat to hear about the sadness of love from such a profound perspective!   We also enjoyed a Corelli sonata for two violins and harpsichord.

After the concert, I hurried to the bus terminus to get the 19 bus to Fgura where I was invited for lunch with Mary and Joseph, the parents of our local librarian.  The number 19 goes to Marsascala and I had instructions to ask the driver to put me off at the Chain supermarket where Carmen would call me on my mobile.  I kept my eyes peeled as we went through the main street of Fgura but didn't spot the supermarket and the bus driver didn't say anything.  When we got to Zabbar, I decided to ask!  The bus driver had forgotten me.  So he dropped me back at a corner and pointed down the road to walk back.  My glimpse of Zabbar made me make a mental note to go and visit there soon.  Somehow I have missed it although it is close to the historic three cities area.

As I walked along the road towards an old gate in the middle of a roundabout, Carmen phoned me with instructions to wait there until she picked me up.  It seems I hadn't spotted the supermarket because it is just round a corner from the bus route.

Lunch was great!  We had chicken soup, chicken with roast potatoes and vegetables, and fruit salad with ice-cream.  Carmen's son was playing football that morning.  He is captain but the team lost 2-1.  His dream is to go to Australia to play football.  Mary and Joseph would also love to return to Australia, but Mary would miss her grandchildren too much.  Joseph told us stories about his birthplace in Birgu, learning his trade in the dockyard and the family's experience in WW2.

Joseph and Carmen translated the letter I received earlier in the week about the Brockdorf prints I ordered some time ago.  The letter was in Malti and I learnt that I have to go to an event at the National library to pick up my copy of the prints and of the book that accompanies them.

After lunch, Mary, Carmen and I headed off to the Maritime museum in Birgu where there was a special event on, organised by Heritage Malta.  The day was about life at sea 200 years ago and there was an exhibition supported by a small booklet 'The Malta Maritime Museum Sailor's Pocket Book" designed to guide children around the experience of setting off on a voyage from Malta.  The booklet tells us about food rations, knots, how to evade your enemy and slavery, and how to trade goods.   There was also a guided tour by the same young man who lead the Heritage Malta tour some months ago and gave us the lecture in English about the knights navy (see previous post).  This time the tour was in Malti and the large crowd was entirely Maltese apart from me.  

We also went outside and watched the firing of a small canon down the channel between moored boats in the marina.  After the loud bang, I was expecting to see one of the luxury boats starting to sink, but they all sat there quietly!  It seems that in the days before workplace health and safety, many of the gunners were deaf by the time they finished work.

There was still a huge crowd in the museum when closing time of 5.00pm approached.  Mary invited us back to Fgura for a cup of tea before Carmen dropped me off at Marsaxlokk.  I now have two oranges from Mary's yard sitting in my fruit basket and I thank them all for a special day.

Before I close this post, I received an email from my neighbour, Sally pointing out that I hadn't said anything about the arrival of my tambour and flute on Thursday.  The tambour arrived safely, delivered by a young man from Sierra books and I will receive a phone call when the flute is available.  Once they are both here, I'll compose a photo for posting.

St George's Bay

Yesterday morning it was still raining when I set off early to get the bus to Valletta and then the 62 to St George's Bay at St Julian's.  I was going to a conference called 'Voice for All' organised by the National Commission for the Promotion of Equality and being held at the Intercontinental Hotel.  The conference presented the results from a research study on good practices against discrimination conducted in Northern Ireland, Cyprus, Italy and Malta and part funded by EU.

The photo is of the street sign for Saint Rita street.  This is where I lived for five years when I was six years old until I was eleven.  

I weep for what has happened to St George's Bay.  Lourdes House where we lived for the first year has become a Burger King although I think the garage shop next to it is still there.  St Rita street is unrecognisable except that it still runs down in the same direction to a street on the valley floor leading down to the bay and I can still pick out the hairpin bend street leading round from the top end where we used to race our go-karts.  But the fields at the bottom of the valley are covered in hotels and apartments.  St Rita street is a maze of bars and hotdog places.  The Intercontinental Hotel has its grand entrance on the street at the bottom where we used to play cricket and the nunnery with its high wall and bell at the door that we pressed in trepidation when we needed to retrieve our ball has disappeared.  I think the hotel is built over the field beside our house and probably over our house as well.

The rocks where I learnt to dive have been covered over with concrete and turned into a beach club.  The lido where I sometimes went with my friends to swim with the luxury of changing rooms and diving boards has been covered totally with apartments.  They have planted palm trees on the beach but they can't stop the seaweed that has always washed up at this time of year!  Villa Rosa is still there proud on the hill at the head of the bay.  I think the wall between the rocks and Dragonara Palace is the same one that we used to climb cautiously around to go exploring the strange channels cut into the rocks beneath the old palace but of course now those rocks have been covered by pink apartments for the casino.  I also think that a plain, square stone building on the rocks by the beach is the same place that the nuns used to come to and get changed into their voluminous swimming gear.  They used to enter the water in a group and their black habit would blossom out around them as they formed a circle to chat.

When I came out of the conference, the rain was stopping and I walked around the bay taking photos of the devastation.  Then I decided I would walk over to Sliema taking the route that we sometimes did when I was a child.  Going down the hill to Spinola where the buses used to turn around, Dick's bar is still there on a corner and the Spinola Bazaar where I used to buy Beano comics is there at the side of the creek.  The front has been 'embellished' like St George's and so many other bays around Malta and for some reason a sculpture with two huge words 'LOVE' placed upside down face each other on either side of the promenade.  I used to go roller skating at Spinola at Rocky Vale rink and I think the area is still there but seems to be shut up.

The street up and over to Ballutta Bay is much as it was, as is the hill up the side of Ballutta Mansions to Sliema.  When I got to the top, I phoned my cousin and she directed me to walk the further ten minutes or so to her place where she warmed me up with coffee until her grandson arrived from school.  She has given me one of her brown woollen coats to keep me warm for the rest of the winter!

I now have the research study publication so will have to read up on the conference proceedings but St George's bay won't draw me back very often!

A rainy day in Valletta

Here in Malta we've had more heavy rain this week.  Today is sunny but still cold.  I've got my washing out on the roof but it is very windy and I think I just heard my drying rack get blown over.

This post is about my day in Valletta on Thursday.  The photo was taken some time ago in the armoury in Valletta.

When I got off the bus at the terminus outside Valletta it had just started to rain.  When it rains hard in Malta, you start finding abandoned, fold-up umbrellas all over the streets because they just can't cope with both the wind and the rain.  I was glad of my sailing wet weather gear that I was wearing because my umbrella was hard to manage and started dripping on me very quickly.

Before the lunch time concert at St Catherine of Italy, I decided to duck into the water services office to find out about the new water/electricity bill I had just received.  It looked like they were charging me again for the first bill I had paid a couple of weeks ago.  This time, the office wasn't so crowded and I got attended to as soon as I took my number.  I had to wait for an hour last time!  It looks like the flurry of enquiries resulting from the raising of the tariffs has started to subside.  The young woman on the desk was as courteous as last time and quickly explained that they had made a mistake and when I go to pay (I have 45 days grace) I should let them know.

The concert at St Cat's was a programme I had heard before - Colour me... a spectrum of Baroque vocal music with Ramona Zammit Formosa on harpsichord and piano and the young soprano  Dorothy Baldacchino.  I learnt that the piece from the opera 'La Bella Molinara' by Giovanni Paisiello is about an old lady who regrets that she can no longer feel love!  Another song, 'Pursue thy conquest, love'  from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, I already knew because some 30 years ago I choreographed a production of this opera at Townsville College of Advanced Education in Australia.  Dorothy sang it at an incredibly fast pace that left me breathless!

When I came out it was still raining and I hurried round the corner into the Auberge d'Italie to see an exhibition by Richard Saliba called 'Vanishing landscape'.  He has managed to capture the rural landscapes I have become familiar with as I walk through the valleys with Malta Ramblers.  The artist has a website www.richardsaliba.com

By then, it was time for lunch and I walked through the rain over to the Valletta band club on Republic street where I read the paper and enjoyed my rabbit with a glass of red wine.  By then, it was still raining and I still had a couple of hours before I was due at a travel agency to confirm my tour to Catania in the first week in April.  I couldn't quite remember where it was so I wandered off through the wet streets dropping in to a shop to buy some warm pyjamas that were on sale and lingering in the covered arcades.

By the time I was due at the agency, it was still raining and I hadn't found it so I asked two women who were hurrying through one of the streets parallel to Merchants street in Valletta's neat grid system with their umbrellas up.  They just happened to be going on the same tour as me so I accompanied them!  A charming old man from Gozo will be leading the tour and he offered to translate the brochure itinerary into English for me and post it.  It arrived this morning so I'm all set for February 2nd when I fly off for four days at the feast of St Agatha.

It-tanbur and il-flejguta

The photo was taken on the walk from Mellieha. 

This is a brief post about the tambour and Maltese flute I have ordered.  It-tanbur will be delivered this Thursday and il-flejguta sometime in the future.  A few months ago, I posted a blog about a Maltese composer, Ruben Zahra, that I went to hear at a lunchtime concert at Manoel Theatre in Valletta.  He introduced one of his pieces that used old Maltese folk instruments including a Maltese bagpipe. 

At the end of last year, I found Ruben Zahra's book, A guide to Maltese Folk Music and bought it as a Christmas treat to myself.  It has a CD of music included.

This year, I started to find articles in the local papers about Ruben Zahra's campaign to revive Maltese folk music.  He is running a programme in the schools and distributing tambours and flutes so that the children can learn to use them with the aid of CDs and their teachers who will attend a series of workshops.  There is a website with sound and video of an ancient Maltese tambour player, www.soundscapes.com.mt

So I emailed and am waiting for my delivery on Thursday!

Mdina, old city of Malta

It's bitterly cold today so I need to get out and walk to warm up!  

Yesterday I went on my second Council for the Arts and Culture tour, this time to Mdina, the old capital of Malta, also known as the silent city because you have to walk.  The city has been written about since the Phoenicians who noted that it was also occupied by the Carthaginians but there was almost certainly a prehistory to the Mdina plateau and hilltop.  It still is the home of several Maltese noble families.  The photo is of St Paul's catacombs which were our first port of call. 

The dead were kept apart from the living by putting burial sites outside the city gates.  We were dropped off from the special English-speaking bus (this was the first time the Council laid on an English-speaking guide) outside the Mdina gates and we had to walk through a winding Rabat road to get to the Catacomb entrance.  There is also a small catacomb beneath St Agatha's chapel further down the road and I made a note to visit there another time, perhaps when I get back from my trip to the feast of St Agatha in Catania.

The catacombs are a maze of interconnecting corridors between larger chambers and there are different kinds of burial plots, some on the floor but most on the sides or with vaults stretching away one after another into the distance as you can see in the photo.  The walls were washed in red and green but most of the pigment has disappeared.  When the Romans occupied the site, they kept the treasures and got rid of all the bones together with the DNA that might have yielded useful information today.  So we can only wonder at the painstaking work of quarrying out the social and burial areas.  The guide pointed out the ventilation shafts and we noticed the chimneys above ground when we came up.

There were three busloads of us on the tour, so you can imagine the juggling that had to go on to get us all through the confined spaces.  We stuck together in our groups and our guides tried to get us in and out without colliding with another group but it meant a bit of waiting around in between visits.  Our next visit was to the Mdina dungeons and as well as leading us back through the winding street to the Mdina gate, our guide briefed us on what to expect.  She suggested that if there were any children with a sensitive disposition, the parents should leave them for her to entertain above ground whilst the parents went down.  I wondered what horrors awaited me in the dungeons just inside the city gates.

In setting up the dungeons as a museum, the organisers gathered together all the nasty examples of torture, imprisonment and death in Malta and made life-size tableau in each of the cells to illustrate these horrors.  There is ample blood, chopped off heads and limbs, plague infestations, hangings and gunned down mutineers and patriots.  There is even a depiction of St Agatha with her torturer wielding the huge nutcrackers he is about to use to cut off her breast.  It seems the pre-Christian Romans were the nastiest of rulers and cut off any bit they thought was relevant to the crime before finally crucifying or burning.  But the Roman Inquisition, which was implemented in Malta rather than the Spanish version, was much more benign and only did a small amount of stretching, dropping from great heights whilst tied in nasty positions or strapping over a sharp, wooden horse with weights attached to the feet.

The Maltese people have valiantly managed a procession of colonisers until they finally gained their independence in the second half of the last century.  On the rare occasion when they rebelled without arms as they did after Napoleon sacked and looted the churches, the ring leaders were put in front of a firing squad and their end is bloodily depicted in one of the cells.

After this relentless procession of horror, it was a relief to find two cells occupied by knights who eventually became Grand Masters!  But by the time I got to them, I seemed to be alone in the dungeons so I hurriedly found my way out past the blood and gore and went into a palace next door to have my bread roll and orange juice that was included in the tour offering.

I sat on a doorstep in the sun by the Mdina gate until our guide started to round us up to go to our next adventure, the Domus Romana, just outside the gate.  As we walked over, I chatted with an Australian couple from Brisbane with their young son.  They had been traveling for a while through Egypt and Africa and were visiting relatives in Malta.  

I had had the difference between a domus and a villa explained to me somewhere before.  It seems that a villa is in the countryside whilst a domus is a townhouse.  Since the old city in Roman times extended much more widely than the current walled city, Villa Romana, which is what it was called when I was in Malta as a girl, became Domus Romana.  We had to wait outside the Domus until another group went through and I chatted with a Maltese woman who turned out to be a real estate agent about the rental market in Malta at present.  It seems that 2009 will be a good year to buy!

The most significant aspect of the domus still visible are the mosaic floors.  One has an interesting 3D effect and another has the bowl with twin doves as the centre piece.  After my experiences in Libya, the remaining pieces of Roman statuary were unremarkable.  How blase I have become!  Archaeologists assume that there are more Roman remains under the Moorish burial site behind the domus, but they are reluctant to destroy the site to find out.  Layers on layers!

We had another short wait outside the domus for our train ride which was the culmination of the tour.  I decided to go in search of coffee and found a tiny, dark bar around the corner where cheesecakes had just come out of the oven.  There was a queue and by the time I got my take-away coffee and cheesecake, the train had arrived and people were starting to get in.  I had to gulp down my coffee and put the hot cheesecake in my pack as it was forbidden on board.  The road train is a new offering and it takes a route around the Mdina hill through Mtarfa and back up to the city gate.  It is interesting to do it once and it gave me the opportunity to chat with an Englishman who has a house in Zurrieq which his family visits from time to time.  He encouraged me to put my name down for the Victoria Lines walk that Malta Ramblers are planning in a few months time.  It is described as a rugged, all-day walk and I wasn't sure if I could manage it but it seems it is well worth it.

On the tour bus back to Valletta I made a mental list of some of the things I need to return to Mdina for.  These include St Agatha's chapel and catacombs, a craft shop that I was introduced to at the lace-making exhibition, and another shop that apparently still sells Malta weave that I was beginning to think was no longer made in Malta.

Mellieha to Selmun

This has been another catch-up week.  I managed to do some writing, got my hair cut, went and had another look at a townhouse in Birgu, bought a gas heater although it's taking me longer to organise the gas bottle to go in it and did my laundry on the first sunny day for a week.  Yesterday and today have been fine, sunny days and I've been out and about for the weekend.  The photo is of wild flowers on the garigue between Mellieha and Selmun where I went walking yesterday with Malta Geographical.  That's what this post is about.  In my next post, I'll write about the Department of Arts and Culture tour to Mdina that I've just returned from.

Malta Geographical tours start with a bus pick-up from Valletta.  Yesterday there were two bus loads and more than 100 people set off on the walk.  Unlike Ramblers Malta, there is very little commentary on Malta Geographical walks and so I'm a bit hazy about where we actually started from and what we saw en route!  But we started out from a newly built up area at the top of the ridge before going down into Mellieha bay and we walked out along the cliff at the southern end of the entrance to the bay.  The garigue looks great - very green after a week's rain and the wild fennel which has looked dead up until now has sent out lovely green fronds.

When we turned off the country road onto the garigue path, we walked along a fault line valley that has been used for beehives for centuries.  We walked past honey hive holes carved into the rock face alongside neat doorways into cave dwellings where the honey gatherers must have stayed when they were collecting. 

We followed a kind of zig zag way out along the edge of Mellieha with great views to Gozo, back through honey valley and then out again to a small bay that is used for swimming in summer.  Yesterday, a group of off-road bike riders were making the most of the mud to ride their bikes up and down the edge of the embankment and the eroded carpark.  There were also some people camping there.  The terraces all round were lush and green and it was here that I took the photo above.

We walked back inland and then out again through fields with dry stone walls and tomato canes, then climbed steeply up through a tiny old hamlet.  At the top, we again walked along the ridge of the garigue to a collapsed tower on the headland.  This had formed part of the knights' early warning fortification system but had collapsed in the great earthquake whose date I can't remember.

Not surprisingly, the views from here are great - north to Gozo and south to St Paul's island with its huge statue.  The headland before St Paul's island is a good example of the green clay  that makes up one of the layers of Malta's geology but is rarely exposed to the extent it is here.

 Again, we walked back inland along a country road with views to St Paul's bay over Anchor Bay and what looked like a sewage treatment plant on the top of a ridge.  We arrived at Selmun Palace where our bus was waiting to take us back to Valletta.  The walk was about 3 hours and again it was an area that I hadn't explored before so another fragment of Malta fell into place.

Two days in Valletta

I spent most of the weekend in and around Valletta.  The photo was taken some time ago on the dhajsa crossing from Birgu to Valletta.

On Saturday, I caught the bus up so that I could go to a travel agent to confirm my four day trip to Catania at the start of February for the feast of St Agatha.  I have mentioned in previous posts that I have become interested in this saint who died so horribly. The advertised trip seemed a good opportunity to find out more about her.  The brochure is in Malti and all the other people on the trip are Maltese, so I'm not entirely sure what we will be doing, but the guide assures me that there will be English spoken on the four excursions we will be going on.

After I found the agency in St Paul street, I decided to visit some of the art shows on in January.  Joseph Farrugia's show, Contemporary Icons, is at St James Cavalier.  He seems to be exploring images of paper planes and the clothes people wear - sometimes the folds of paper planes are embedded in a jacket hanging on a coat hanger.  Strange.

Isabelle Borg's show, Strange Cargo, is at the Museum of Fine Arts.  I particularly liked her portraits on the inside of suitcases.

On Sunday, I got the bus up again, this time to go to my first concert for 2009 at St Catherine of Italy.  The St James consort performed two concertos by J.S.Bach.  As usual, it was an excellent concert but this time it had been sponsored by the Zarb family to celebrate a 50th wedding anniversary so the front two rows of seats were reserved.  I felt quite deprived because I wasn't privileged to sit on the front row and feel connected to every string and key and valve in the ensemble!

I left hurriedly at the end of the concert because I was invited for Sunday lunch at my cousin's in Sliema and I planned to get the ferry across.  I cut across and down to the ferry landing to find that the ferry had been cancelled.  I hadn't noticed how strongly the wind had got up and it has been blowing ever since with plenty of rain.  Today, the sun has come out, but the prediction is for strong winds until Thursday.

In spite of having to hurry back up the steep, stepped streets to the bus terminus to catch the bus to Sliema which was crowded, I still arrived at my cousin's in plenty of time before the Maltese pasta was served but had to leave again soon after 2.00 pm to get back up to Valletta for 3.00.  I was booked to go to the matinee of Swan Lake on Ice being staged at the Mediterranean Conference centre down at the bottom end of Valletta some 15 mins walk from the bus terminal.  I found my seat in a box at the back corner of the theatre and settled into the rather cramped space that was in a great position to watch the full house come in and take their seats.  

When the show started, I enjoyed the flowing, gliding choreography of the ice-skaters.  Somehow, the moves and patterns of ballet work better on skates than on block shoes and the costumes were lovely!  But the drama and pathos of the show didn't really come across and I was disappointed with the dismembered black swan (the hunting crossbow seems to have been abandoned).  It also seemed to be a rather facile ending without anything that resembled a dying swan.  The pampered prince lives happily ever after with his own little swan after ripping the wing off an endangered black swan.

Yesterday I was out again - invited for morning coffee in Fgura with the parents of the local librarian who has introduced me to so many useful Melitensia references.  They have a spacious house with an orange tree and well in the courtyard and a mural of a tree on their dining room wall.  I enjoyed chatting about Malta and their impressions of Australia where they had all lived for several years.  I was also interested to hear that some Maltese houses have their plumbing linked into their wells to minimise dependence on Government water.  Many thanks to you all!

I got dropped off at Birgu afterwards to keep in touch with the 3 cities property situation for when I return in 2010 but the wind was too strong to get a dhajsa crossing to Valletta so I got a bus to Paola where I bought an Aroncini at the kiosk in the square and then the Marsaxlokk bus home.  

Ghar Lapsi

The photo is of the Valletta bus waiting outside one of the three churches that surround the square in Siggiewi.  This is where I had to get off to walk down to Ghar Lapsi because the buses only run there during tourist high season.  I had to walk down the road to the left of the church.  

As I was taking the photo, a Siggiwin (someone who comes from Siggiewi), walking through the square, stopped and said to me "You look like a happy person."  It was a great way to start a conversation!  Like many Maltese, he had lived in Australia for some years and was glad to talk to someone from those parts.  I have noticed that I present myself primarily as Australian here, even though my British passport makes it easier for me to travel in and out and settle in Malta.  After chatting for a few minutes, the inevitable question came up, "Is your husband with you?"

"I have no husband," I said, hoping that the unspoken "and I am not looking for one because that is why I look like a happy person" was understood.  He then invited me for coffee at his house just off the square and when I responded that I needed to start walking as I was due in Ghar Lapsi at 2.00pm, he offered to give me a lift.  By now I was pretty focused on my intention, so I declined the offer as politely as I could and we parted as friends with a vague hope that we would meet again someday.  As I set off to Ghar Lapsi, I thought about how many Maltese people present themselves as very friendly and open to visitors from other parts of the world.  It makes Malta a welcoming place for tourists and overseas residents but I'm not sure to what extent 'foreigners' are allowed more deeply into the Maltese culture where people seem to argue and joke with each other very passionately.  Perhaps I have to learn the language to find out about that.

By this time, I had walked through the outskirts of the town of Siggiewi and was heading towards Ghar Lapsi on a major road lined by high rubble walls.  I was starting to worry about getting to the Ramblers Malta meeting place at the old police station in Ghar Lapsi on time when a car pulled up and a woman leaned out to ask if I wanted a lift - it was two women on their way to join the walk so I accepted with gratitude.

In my library book on Malta's Southern villages, Siggiewi is described as a town on three levels, hills, plains and coast.  The Ramblers' walk was planned to take us up from Ghar Lapsi down at the coastal level up the magnificent cliffs to the plain where the town is built and most people live and then on a circular route back down to the coast.  Ghar Lapsi is a tiny fishing village at the base of the cliffs with a series of caves, some used as boathouses, others collapsed into the sea to continue the work of cove building.  Like most Maltese place names, there could be more than one derivation.  Ghar means cave (as in Ghar Dalem in one of my earlier posts) but Lapsi could be a corruption of Habsi, an escaped prisoner who hid in the cave or the Greek word, lapsi, which stands for Christ's ascension to heaven on the 40th day of Easter, a Thursday.

Because of my lift, I arrived in Ghar Lapsi with half an hour to spare so decided to go into the local restaurant/bar to get some lunch.  As I was waiting for my spaghetti with rabbit sauce, I found myself chatting to a woman whose story was very similar to mine.  Her mother was Maltese and her father was in the navy; she had spent some of her childhood in Malta and had been visiting for over 30 years.  This time, she was visiting with her husband staying at Ramla bay and had come to Ghar Lapsi for the wild flowers.  It seems it is still a bit early for the full wild flower display but I had noticed on the way down that there was plenty of heather in purple bloom and I have been noticing other flowers ever since we started getting rain at the start of the winter in November.  I now have quite a collection of wild flower photos which I'll have to collate for my friend, Carol, in Australia.

So, all this had happened even before we set off on the walk!  By 2.00, most people had gathered across the road from the police station and Dr Gunter led us off but first we just went to the left hand side of the village where we had a good view of the collapsed cave that gave Ghar Lapsi its name.  This remains a popular swimming cove in the summer, but people have to be cautious of the rocks scattered under water.  Yesterday, there was a strong swell running and I would also have been wary of being swept onto the rocks. 

We walked back through the village, past the Reverse Osmosis plant that has been built here to help with Malta's growing water shortage, past a solitary castle/house built on the rocky garigue,  and on up the road past a deep gorge plunging to the sea below.  Geologically,  this area is important because it demonstrates clearly the layering of the rock that makes up Malta as well as the massive folding of the earth that has pushed up the Maltese archipelago and the mountain peaks between North Africa and the Alps.

Shortly after the gorge we left the main road and started up a country lane with irrigated fields and high stone rubble walls on either side.  In the Times of Malta that morning there had been a short article about the government demolition of a high stone wall somewhere in this area.  It seems it has become common to build up the usual waist high rubble walls to a height higher than human.  Several people, including the Ramblers Malta Association, have complained that this is altering the nature of the rural landscape and it seems that the government are starting to take notice.  This first demolition using a bull dozer had to have police in attendance because the farmer, who had been notified of the intention, was protesting strongly.  This kind of scenario is being played out in different ways as government organisations try to regain control of public space where individuals have traditionally stamped their own dreams and endeavours onto the landscape.  This has given us the amazing array of shrines and chapels that dot the rural areas, the great street cafes and restaurants in the built up areas, the lovely rubble walls that surround the fields and country lanes.  But it has also enabled some abuse of public space and now the government is finding it hard to establish policy to prevent that.

The country lane narrowed and it became difficult to walk up an overgrown stretch that appeared to be used as an irrigation ditch.  When it opened out again, we were walking along a flat stretch at the base of the cliffs reaching up to the Gebel Ciantar plateau that has Siggiewi, Rabat and Dingli on the edges.  We came to a tiny hamlet that has two chapels; Tal Lunzjata is a familiar medieval chapel and further on Ta-kammnu has a fascinating history.  It was built over a spring by the noble lady Gebel Ciantar who gave her name to the plateau above.  The spring dried up, and Gebel Ciantar prayed to Our Lady and made a vow that if the water started running again she would dedicate a chapel.  When the water came in again a few years later, the lady kept her promise.  She later presented the chapel to the safe-keeping of the religious order associated with the chapel of St Paul shipwrecked in Valletta.  This is why there are excellent records of the development of the chapel and it is very well maintained.  It also explains the milestone nearby saying Miles to Valletta.  The number of miles has been erased, probably in WW2, to avoid giving useful information to an invading force.

After the hamlet, we started in earnest up the rocky path to take us up the cliff.  It was very steep despite the hairpins and many of us were breathing heavily as we came up to the top and gasped at the stunning views of the Dingli cliffs to the North and Ghar Lapsi to the South.  Right at the top we passed a high rubble wall that I realised had letters built into the wall using quarry stones amid the rubble.  I tried to work out the word that had N, A, Z, I, and C, I think, but one of the local people said that it was just advertising for some kind of battery!

The pace quickened as we walked along an old Roman road because our leader had realised that we were running out of time to get back to Ghar Lapsi before it was dark.  As we got back onto more established country lanes, we passed the Madonna tal-Girgenti, where someone had seen a vision that inspired the large outdoor seating area for people to contemplate the three statues and the trough where running spring water still comes out.  Several walkers renewed their bottled water from the spring.  

We also passed the Girgenti palace that I had visited before with a Malta Heritage tour (see one of my previous posts).  The orange trees in the valley were heavy with ripe fruit.  Soon after, we came closer to Siggiewi before turning towards Ghar Lapsi and I decided to leave the main group and head towards Siggiewi to get the bus back to Valletta.  It was getting dark as I walked into the main square and a bus was waiting for me.  What a rich day!

2009 settles in

Today we started back at the lace-making class and I have fish bones on the stove for soup, so the routines are returning.  The photo is of the lane down to Marsaxlokk from Delimara.

This week I also started planning the stopovers on my trip back to Oz and anticipating visits from friends and relatives before I leave Malta for the time being in the middle of April.  I went up to Valletta yesterday and booked two of the Department of Culture and the Arts tours for this month and next.  I also managed to get one of the remaining seats for Swan Lake on Ice with the St Petersburg State company which is on this Sunday at the Mediterranean conference centre.  It's not the kind of event I would normally seek out, but it just seems such a strange combination of art forms and venue that I decided the opportunity should not be missed!

I caught another bus from Valletta down to Msida where I wanted to seek out Amphora travel who are advertising special Egypt tours.  I eventually found them halfway up Testaferatta street which runs over the ridge between Msida and the Sliema front.  A very helpful woman worked with me on planning the first two stopovers of my return journey.  I now have a pile of brochures on Cairo, the Nile cruises and Sharm el Sheikh on the Red Sea as well as some more details on Dubai and Oman to add to my two guides.  When I set off in April, I'll be spending about 10 days in Egypt and then 6 days in Dubai/Oman before traveling on to Singapore.

It's shaping up to be another full year!

The airport villages

I'm finding Charles Fiott's book on the villages of the South very helpful in building my general map of the area.  He suggests that we can group the diverse southern villages into the "bay villages"  including Marsaxlokk, Birzebbugia and Zejtun; the "central wadis" including Qormi, Zebbug and Siggiewi; and the "airport villages" including Ghaxaq, Gudja, Kirkop, Safi, Zurrieq, Qrendi, Mqabba and Luqa.  It was the "airport villages" that was the focus of Malta Ramblers' walk on Saturday.

The photo was taken just off the main square in Qrendi where we planned to meet at 9.45.  The full walk was planned as a 7 hour circuit leaving from Luqa but I could not work out how to get to Luqa for 8.00am without adding a further two hour walk from M'xlokk so I decided to get buses to Qrendi and join part way along the route.  Other people had also decided to take this option.  Qrendi is already familiar to me, but this time we were not intending to walk out to Hagar Qim although we did start off heading towards Mqabba which was the direction we started out for our previous circular walk from Qrendi.

The focus of this walk was to visit four of the seven Santa Marja churches on the old processional route from Mosta.  The difficulty was that we set off at a cracking pace in order to cover the distance and everyone else on the walk was Maltese so the leader used Malti to explain what was happening.  As a result, everything is somewhat blurred and I'm not sure what churches we visited.  

I do know that we visited a lovely medieval chapel at Mqabba that was dedicated to St Basil and had all the features of the medieval chapels that I've visited elsewhere - square construction, vaulted arches, single bell tower over the door.  It has probably had several additions since it was first built and it appears to have been renovated recently.  There is an interesting skull and cross bones in the courtyard with the date 1776 and a date on the side of the church is 1669.  

We visited here just after leaving the main square of Mqabba which I think is where one of the Santa Marjas is and where we stopped briefly for refreshment.  I called in to one of the band clubs around the square and ordered a black coffee because I was feeling a bit off from the Maltese winter cold that I have finally picked up.  When it came, I just had time for a couple of sips before I noticed we were all on the move again, so I had to leave my mug steaming on the table.

Somewhere on the route, I found we were walking past a familiar chapel and the country road was familiar.  I realised it was the place I got lost when I was on the medieval chapels tour with the department of Culture and the Arts (see previous post).  Another piece of the jigsaw fell into place, but I'm not sure now where it was - I'll have to look back through the blog!

We passed the edges of Kirkop which is where my father used to work when I was here as a child but I couldn't really remember where the workplace was.  Then we skirted the airport which has had such a dramatic impact on the landscape of the South.  When it was built, many ancient sites were lost forever and during WW2 the "airport villages" suffered very badly in the bombing that targeted the military stronghold.  Even walking around the air strip now is difficult and we had to scramble over an overgrown rubble wall and walk along the edge of the red fence that surrounds the air field.

Once round the Southern end of the air strip, we headed once again across the fields towards Gudja where we could see the triple steeples of Gudja Parish church dominating the landscape.  We paused once again in the square where I tried for another black coffee with a similar outcome to the Mqabba attempt!  By now I was starting to feel very tired but I had been offered a lift from Ghaxaq which was our next port of call so I was able to march on again across the fields.

It was exciting for me to discover as we came to the outskirts of Ghaxaq that the road came out at the cross roads where one road leads back down to Birzebbugia so I now know how to get from either M'xlokk or Birzebbugia via Ghaxaq to Gudja on country roads.  My mental map of Malta keeps extending!

Some of the more intrepid walkers now continued on up Wied Garnaw (see an earlier post) back to Luqa but I was glad to walk with a couple from Birzebbugia, whom I had met on the Malta Habitats course in Mosta, back to their car.  After doing some car shuffling so that they could pick up their other car in Qrendi, I was grateful to be dropped off in my home town.  Sylvia tells me that she has been reading my blog, so hello and many thanks!

M'Xlokk to Ghaxaq to Birzebbugia

I set off to see if I could find the live crib in an air raid shelter in Gudja but instead completed a circular walk from Marsaxlokk via Ghaxaq and Birzebbugia.  I already had most parts of this walk in my repertoire but this was the first time I linked them all together.

I set off at about 3.00 pm to walk through the valley from M'xlokk and then along the main road to Gudja to get to the crib site at 4.30 when they open.  The walk up through the valley feels like home ground now and I noticed the farmers were out spraying their crops using a back pack - not sure what they use.  Not for the first time, I wondered about the lines of holes a bit bigger than a tin can that edge the roof of some of the older farmhouses.  I learnt on Saturday that these are for pigeons to nest in so that the farmer's have a ready supply of pigeon pie.

When I got to the main road that leads to the roundabout outside Ghaxaq, I guessed the continuation of the country road lead off from the other side and a little further down.  When I had made the journey before, I had followed the main road and found it uncomfortable so I was very keen to find an alternative.  I headed left down a winding country lane that seemed to be going in the right direction.  After a while, I saw a farmer walking towards me carrying a bundle of crops under his arm.  I asked him if this was the way to Ghaxaq or Gudja but since I'm not used to pronouncing these two words, he looked at me with amusement.

"Do you speak English?" he said

I repeated the question, leaving off Gudja this time in case that was confusing.

"Oh, Ashah," he said with a wry smile and I realised my English brain was still insisting on a k sound at the end because of the q spelling.   "Keep going straight", this with the up and down gesture of one arm along the line of the road.

The road curved on through well maintained rubble walls, past the local firework factory and eventually came out at the main road to Gudja on the outskirts of Ghaxaq.  I turned left still debating whether I should keep going on the main road and hope to find the crib and then get two buses back to Marsaxlokk because it would be after dark when I got out.  

Noticing the start of the walk back to Birzebbugia made up my mind for me and I set off to return down through the other side of the valley.  Even so, I had to walk quickly to beat the setting sun and it was getting dark with all the lights coming on as I walked back along the coast road past Fort St Lucjan.  The photo of clouds was taken on a different walk but captures the feel of the walk back down through the valley.

St Peter's Pool

My first walk for 2009 was again up onto the Delimara headland from Marsaxlokk but this time I explored the cliffs at the Northern end looking out towards Sicily, only a 2 hour fast sail across the Mediterranean.  The trip across the water has been made for centuries.  As far back as the temple era, there is evidence of links between Malta and Sicily and the ancient animal bones found at Ghar Dalem on the other side of Marsaxlokk suggests there was even a land link at the dawn of time.

The photo heading up the post is of a weathered rock at the base of the globigerina limestone cliffs.  The weathering in this area is stunning and on some ledges I felt I was entering a sculpture gallery.  

After walking up the steep path to the Delimara ridge, I found a country road with lovely freestanding stone walls freshly maintained that had a makeshift sign saying simply 'Pool'.  There is someone living around here who pours love into the building of rubble walls!  They include everything not wanted in the fields, including an old gas stove, and still make them look like a work of art!

After following one of these walls that included garden beds built into the road with mature shrubs in them, the wall encloses a field chapel with a well next to some kind of fortification, a battery or redoubt probably build in the last century or two.  A little further on there is a walled up Italian style villa with an Alpen style wooden hut in the garden.  One of the practices I have noticed here is that when a house is left vacant for any length of time, the ground floor doors and windows are walled up with blocks.  

The road leading up to the villa has stunning views across a bay to a natural tunnel in the headland through to the next bay around.  I think from my map that this must be Ras il-Fenek.  The globigerina limestone cliffs have been tilted here and it looks like the sea is running downhill.  I think I can remember coming into this bay from the sea when I was a little girl.

Walking on around the cliff track, I came upon St Peter's pool from the Northern end.  This is a popular bathing area in the summer because the smooth weathered limestone ledges make good sunbathing spots  At this time of year the few people that were there were well rugged up and one person was sleeping in the last remaining pool of sunshine as the sun was heading down behind the cliffs and her two dogs were exploring the rock pools that patchwork the whole area. 

I took a track that crossed the steps leading down into St Peter's Pool from the carpark and walked around to the ledges below the Southern cliffs that I think are called Ponta tat-Tumbrell (Tumbrell Point).  I've made a mental note to find out why it has this name but it was at this point that I walked into the stunning sculpture garden.  Here the ledges leading out to the sea have been weathered into a mosaic of rockpools as well as cut into salt pans.  Massive boulders have fallen from the weathered cliffs and eroded into fantastic shapes.  Some have melted back into the base stone and smoothed into beautiful curving shapes, others have ridges of harder stone running through them and punctuating the smooth weathering of the softer stone.

I had to linger, and when I noticed that the sun was close to setting, I realised that I had run out of time to find the path round to Delimara bay so that will have to be another expedition.  I took the steps up to the carpark and found my way back to Delimara road, passing very cautiously by a barking farm dog that looked like it had an Egyptian temple dog ancestry.  Coming back to the path down to Marsaxlokk with the sun going down behind the power station, I got some great shots of the chimneys and the Freeport at Birzebbugia.

Today I want to walk up through the valley to Gudja and see if I can find the live crib that the council has put on.

And first for 2009

My friends and relatives in Australia started a few hours before me, my friends and relatives in UK were nearly the same time and my friends and relatives in USA were a bit behind, but we're all into 2009 now so I hope everyone manages to find whatever they are looking for in this bright new year.

Here in Marsaxlokk, it's a bright, sunny start to the year but cold.  I will go out walking this afternoon to get warmed up.

My last walk for 2008 was to Delimara point, the headland that marks the northern border of Marsaxlokk harbour.  It's amazing that I've left it this long to discover it but I assumed that it was now dominated by the Enemalta chimney and fuel tanks located at the edge of the bay so whenever I walked up over the ridge towards Marsascala and St Thomas Bay, I by-passed the country road leading towards the point.  

Yesterday I decided to explore.  I'm glad I did!  Once I got past the Enemalta power plant which is not as dominant as it is on the Birzebbugia side because it is built down inside a quarry, I discovered a dramatic headland with another Maltese story etched on the landscape.  The photo that heads the post is of the light house that now stands towards the end of the peninsula and staffed by a surveillance branch of the army.

Delimara got its name from the lighthouse - Dejr l-Imnara in Malti means lantern house.  It was built in 1855 which is recent in Maltese history.  Before that, at the time when the soldiers of Suleyiman the Magnificent sailed into Marsaxlokk harbour in 1565 there was nothing to mark this peninsula that stands between the Straits of Sicily and the largest harbour in Malta (yes, Marsaxlokk is bigger than Grand Harbour).  

The knights built some fortifications at the end of the peninsula in 1770s  (earlier batteries and forts, including fort St Lucjan were built prior to this in the 17th century) but no lighthouse was put up for fear of making it easier for further invasion.  The British then built fort Delimara nearby in 1880 and this now straddles the end of the peninsula with a ditch all around and sloping fortified walls.  At the seaward end, the globigerina limestone from which it is made has been weathered dramatically.

At that point, I had a phone call from my friend Celia to wish me a happy New Year and we chatted for so long that when I continued the post and pressed to publish I found that I was no longer on line so lost the end of yesterdays walk.  So this is a re-run!

What struck me most about Delimara point were the sea and landscapes that have been etched by the culture of Malta over the centuries.  At the end of the peninsula there are salt pans rippling silver in the afternoon sunlight, waves surge around the rocks at the foot of the cliff and the circles of the fish farms mark the undulating sea further out.  On the land there are the familiar terraced fields with rubble walls and the hunting hides with stone bird tables.  What was new to me in a couple of places near to hides were what looked like cricket wickets surrounded by bird tables.  It took me a while to work out that they were cleared ground where the bird trappers would put up their nets ready to pull the string and drop them on the birds that came down in response to the calls of the caged birds on the tables.  Now that bird trapping has been banned in this brave New Year, I imagine that these cleared areas will gradually be reclaimed into the landscape.

There is also a lovely rocky bay on the seaward side of the peninsula and it looks like there are walking tracks that go around the cliff there so I determined to make that my first walk for 2009.  I've just got back from that walk and will write about that in my next post.