FATTEST COUNTRIES IN THE WORLD

I just wrote a post  about healthiest countries on earth and was happy to find that I was associated with many of them. Then I decided to look for the fattest and thus the least healthy countries (not in lifestyle, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Libya etc would win those prizes, but in obesity induced by injudiciously bad eating habits of industrialized food)
To my surprise, i am also associated with or visit regularly many of the countries listed.
They can be grouped in this way:
Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain . all oil rich and all saturated with bad quality American or American style food.
Of course the mother of the fatso countries: America itself
Mexico like Porfirio Diaz said: So far away from God but so close to the USA
If you draw a graph of Obesity in Mexico against the distance from the border, you would see an interesting connection, the further away you are away from the Yanquis, the thinner you may remain.
Egypt in the list was a surprise. South Africa is a time bomb when it comes to ill health AIDS and Diabetes..

Belize is also in the list..
But many countries in the Caribbean tip their scales to the right .. Bahamas Barbados ..Malaysia is not far behind..

It is also an anthropological explanation that the majority of the top ten do not have responsible governments.. or shall we say have obesogenic governments when you think that stress can also cause obesity!

Which are the healthiest countries on this planet? Of course a scientific survey such as this would take into consideration a multitude of factors but in general the longevity is taken into consideration and the reasons for their health looked into what that society provides its citizens, to maintain a lifestyle that helps them lead a healthy life.
Those of us who are acquainted with USA know that it is one of the unhealthiest countries, in fact it comes at number 35, four places behind our little CUBA..

SPAIN
ICELAND
NORWAY
SWITZERLAND 
JAPAN
SINGAPORE
AUSTRALIA
ITALY 
SWEDEN
AND JUST GUESS THE LAST ONE 
ISRAEL 
Being a frequent visitor to Israel I can tell you the reason for their inclusion : excellent food based on Mediterranean Nutritional guidance based on culture and history.
I have either lived or visited repeatedly most of these countries and this list requires an anthropological explanation.

Spain and Italy are not surprises, because of their longstanding cultural nutrition and as well as leisure habits.
I would put Iceland Sweden Norway and Singapore in one category for an innate (and in the case of Singapore, artificial) sense of order of things. Australia and Israel share a genuine desire among its enterprising young people to live a healthy lifestyle which includes good food. We have also to thank the multitudes of Greeks and Italians who migrated to Australia after the war and contributed the mediterranean element .

Thank you Gracias Toda Grazie 

An Israeli plate of salads..

THE NEW ICON . FRIDA KAHLO

THE NEW ICON

The icon you grew up with stays with you especially if you have an ideological connection with that person.

For me it has always been CHE and I must say my respect for him started long before my affiliation with Cuba and perhaps even influenced the decision to put my faith in Cuba.

Che was iconic of a generation who wanted to see changes in the political systems, which would help the majority of the population rather than a minority. Che became a symbol of people’s hopes for a better tomorrow.

In Cuba, the tourism industry has propelled CHE into teacups and magnets and hats and tee shirts. But elsewhere his popularity is on the decline perhaps it is like that in history, as new generations do not study their earlier revolutionaries while they struggle to reinvent the wheel.

I have paid homage to CHE, visiting the places he had lived and grown up in Argentina as well as his final resistant phase in Bolivia in La Higuera, Vallegrande.

Bob Marley shone for a little while and is on the brink of extinction as an ICON. While it was the taste for revolution that attracted one generation to the ideology of CHE, the blackness and readiness to fight injustice, under the smoke umbrellas of ganja, his music truly created a universal revolution.

I was lucky to be associated with Jamaica when Bob Marley’s fame was at its zenith.

I truly enjoyed the message in his music, did sport his colours while I was a junior doctor in Melbourne.

Move over Marley, the new icon is…. Guess?

It is Frida Kahlo

I think it is congruent with the new resurgence in the Me Too movement as Frida was an early feminist and independent soul who strived to portray herself as a tormented person in rally against the societal stereotypes in a macho society such as Mexico.

I had gone to visit her house, Casa Azul on a visit in 2008 to Mexico City but when did she enter my life?

Indian oppression was well portrayed in a mural by Diego Rivera in the Government houses in the Zocalo in Mexico City, and one cannot think of Diego without Frida.

A Jewish father and an Amerindian mother, born and raised in Mexico City as a rebel when such things were unheard of, poetry and art and selfies of her soul garishly portrayed, Frida had become a symbol a very long time ago.

But the iconization is quite recent.

At the markets in Cuernavaca one sees Frida appearing on tee shirts and dolls, but it was in Buenos Aires that I saw the full extent of Frida’s iconization.. They have everything with Frida’s face or caricature of her with her prominent eyebrows.

I had decided to seriously take up the MATE drink and sip it during my travels. And I needed a small bag to hold my Mate with its Bombilla and Yerba. So I bought a small bag with the countenance of Frida on it.

I look forward to sipping Mate sitting at a favourite restaurant, Genevieve’s in Siem Reap in Cambodia, anxiously waiting for my Khmer fish amok dish.

EASTER ISLAND TO PALERMO IN BUENOS AIRES AND A MATE HABIT IS BORN

Under a very hot sun, with only a slight breeze from the oceanfront just a few feet away, my good sister-friend from Rapa Nui and I were looking at the various stalls set up along the oceanfront, in conjunction with the TAPATI annual celebrations.
Let us have an Empanada, the snack cum meal of Rapa Nui usually with thick chunks of Tuna (which her husband may have helped fish!). She led me to AHI AHI, one of the three or four restaurants sitting side by side.
Rapa Nui attracts tourists like bees to honey, and all restaurants seem to be full all the time and the waitresses are usually chilean casual workers, usually young men and women, taking some time off to see the world.
I noticed the waitress, assumed her to be Chilean, and watched with astonishment as she juggled orders, service and at the same time managed to keep some sort of composure.
My sister friend said hello to her as she came over to our table and she ordered empanadas for us and a hamburgesa for her pregnant daughter in law. 
These offerings are rather large and one can barely eat ONE empanada or the large hamburgers.
we had a lot to chat about and when we finished the young lady came over and took our money.
That is how I met Micaela.
We were about to leave when my sister friend casually mentioned, she is not Chilean but Argentine. Of course, that spiked my interest. At one time Buenos Aires was my favourite city and had a great time exploring it, various famous cafes and restaurants and the usual sight seeing and meeting up with old and new friends. It also happens to be the place where my close friend from Cuba, a brilliant psychiatrist lives.
I called her over, Micaela is from the BA provinces and was here for a while, after graduating with a degree in Tourism. The usual question to me, where are you from and I said: I am Australian but I live in Cuba. She jumped with joy as Australia was her next destination. We spoke briefly and excitedly and I promised to help her in the search for a good place in Australia to live and work. Australian government has a programme for young people to come and work in the country and perhaps even migrate there, as long as they can speak English well, have an university degree and can contribute to Australia. 
I mentioned to her that I would be in Buenos Aires in a few weeks time, alas, a couple of weeks short of her return to the Port City. Then she said, I have a close friend there, who is also thinking of going to Australia, her name is Ana, and then gave me details, assuring me that Ana would like to meet me and perhaps even help me with my tourism needs in Buenos Aires.
We said good bye hoping that I would meet this young woman from the Argentine countryside again, at least I would be able to give her some advice about Australia, the brown land that rounded up my personality.
After Rapa Nui, I went back on a tortuous route to Havana and then Miami and began the second part of this trip, at first to Mexico City, then to Montevideo of Mario Benedetti and now to Palermo of the city which had captured my imagination many years earlier.
Ana and I met at a coffee shop Lattente, in Thames Street, reputed to serve some of the best coffee in BA. I requested Colombian beans and a cortado which is like a macchiato with a little bit more milk, similar to our beloved Cortadito in Cuba.
The young lady poured the coffee but there was no sugar in sight. You dont need it, you would enjoy it without sugar. Sure enough the flavour of the coffee was such that I had forgotten my sugar addiction to coffee, a gift of my island, Cuba.
Recent studies of my own MICROBIOME had revealed that I must cut down on sugar and sugary substances and I was going to listen to my microbiome. 
I am in Argentina, close to Uruguay and Southern Brasil where the MATE drink was born and cultivated. The herbal tea, which the Indians drank for its many purposes added with medicinal herbs is a bitter tasting concoction which is mixed in a hand held pot which is called MATE and stirred with a BOMBILLA. I plan to drink MATE and cut down on my Coffee with Sugar. In Rapa Nui I saw raw pure STEVIA (beware of Stevia sold in the USA it is adulterated with corn sugar), which I hope to obtain to curb the moments of nostalgia for that Ethiopian bean with such a pungent and delicious taste packing caffeine.
Ana soon came and I mentioned about MATE and she being from the provinces of Argentina, knew one or two things about MATE. Next door to the cafe was a shop, manned by a young man who looked an argentine from the NorthWest, and we spent a while looking at various MATE and bombillas and I decided to buy them, and I had already stocked up with a special MATE from Uruguay (Uruguayans think that MATE is their national drink and that Argentines just copied them).
We had a nice chat as we walked around the delightful streets, many of them paved, of Palermo. We stopped at a Creperie, and it was good to see the crepes being made, and thought of the fond moments, hundreds of times, that I had eaten at Creperies in their native land, Bretagne in France.
Argentina like Uruguay is a carnivore country and if you want to eat vegetables, you are in a bit of a quandry. I ordered a crepe with spinach, aubergine and cheese and watched as the young man poured out the wheat mix on the round plate and smothering it with his ladle to make the crepe. 
Ana and I continue to talk, I had made small talk with the workers at the cafe before. When I ordered the crepe, they asked what name, Ana, she said and when they announced Ana, i went up to them, and said, I am Ana, and we all had a laugh.
I enjoyed my crepe especially the crunchy feeling of the spinach leaves and the berenjina (aubergine).We continued our chat and we heard the name Ana announced again, but we were not waiting for anything. A few minutes later, the friendly waiter with whom i had laughed moments earlier, 
came over with a Dulce de Leche crepe, and said: someone 
with the name of ANA had ordered a dulce de leche crepe but no one picked it up. Since I had announced that I was Ana, they thought it fit to offer it to me.. nice gesture. Ana who was with me, relished her dulce de leche crepe and i tasted the familar taste of dulce de leche.
We walked around Palermo once more and a few minutes later said good bye.
I told her about Australia and once again stressed about the importance of speaking English properly if she is going to work in Tourism industry in Australia. 
A recent BBC article had stressed the importance on spending time each day when you are learning a new language. and the authors recommended that half an hour with a native speaker PER day will allow you to achieve fluency in the language within one year if it is a class 1 easy language or class 4 difficult language. I am trying to improve my French at this moment, which is considered class 2 difficulty for an English speaker, but not spending enough time speaking to native speakers, but try to read Le Monde Diplomatique when it arrives on my Inbox. 
But my next destination is France.. 
with my MATE y BOMBILLO and Yerba Mate in my hand..

A DAY WITH BENEDETTI IN MONTEVIDEO URUGUAY

I am not sure when Benedetti entered my life. His association with Cuba 1977 was long before mine. I visited Colonia with . my brother Itzhak and another time with a friend I met at a Tango class. 
But this was my first visit to Montevideo and it was love at first sight.
I had been thinking of Mario Benedetti and Eduardo Galeano two great Uruguayans and giants of Latin American Literature. 
In Cuernavaca I had gone in search of Cafe Geneva, where Gabriel Garcia Marquez was understood to have occupied a table. On a recent visit, my search was in vain. Cafe Geneva was no more. Gabo while passing Cuernavaca got the inspiration to write Cien Anos de Soledad which was to bring him the Prix Nobel..
Mario Benedetti 
a co founder of the  Casa de las Americas in Havana
exiled there by the civic-military dictatorship of Uruguay.

(the above photo was taken in Cuba)
I knew that Mario Benedetti frequented a cafe in Montevideo and I was intent on sipping a cafe there.. to imbibe the spirit so to speak..
The flight from Panama City was comfortable enough. There was no one sitting next to me and I had twenty winks and when I woke up the sun was rising over the Uruguayan coast and we landed soon.

 There were no immigration officials only machines and within minutes of arrival I was on the other side of one of the smallest terminals of latin american capitals. ( I must confess it rivals Asuncion in size but much cleaner and quietier and far better looking people)

Thank God for UBER, and the driver was informative and talkative and very soon I was discharged in front of Hotel Palacio in a good location between two plazas and two churches.
As the room was not ready, I went out looking for breakfast. at 9 am, nothing was open and this city slowly woke up. Breakfast at Cafe Passiva was just ordinary, walked around the plaza and got back to the hotel only to find that I had been assigned to a lovely room.

view from my room.
after a short rest and shower, once again UBER took me to Mario Benedetti Foundation where I had a nice chat with the person in charge (he has been to Cuba, and thus able to explain the Cuba-Benedetti relationship)
My heart began to feel with a strange sense of contentment, I am in the city of Benedetti! (similar to being in Palermo thinking of Jorge Luis Borges or Cartagena thinking of Gabo)
Another UBER ride took me to Plaza near the cafe San Rafael where Benedetti used to pass time, reading,writing and drinking coffee and chatting. He lived close by.

 this painting is by a Cuban painter, a gift to the writer/foundation

At this conference room at the centre, the table which used to grace Benedettis house now occupies the lectern.

 this iconic photo, above and not below, was also taken in Cuba ..

I walked around the plaza a little, looking at the ornate architecture that graces Montevideo from the 1920s and 1930s.

this was the table Benedetti used to sit and confer with his colleagues and visitors.

It was a pleasure to walk along the streets of Montevideo, vaguely reminding me of Melbourne, Australia.

statue of Artagas at the Independence Square, and a very short walk to the hotel from there.

Indians have taught me that when the Spirits grant your wish, you must thank them (they also taught me the rituals). Having received the good news of a medical condition of someone close in Europe, I decided to take a detour and offer tobacco.

 time for an organic vegetarian empanada.. Uruguay meets the New World..

I had been given a lovely room with a large balcony from where I could observe the sunset. Earlier I had gone and acquired a bottle of Don Pascual Sauvignon Blanc which went down well as the Sun went nether to other horizons.
I wanted to thank the Sprits to look after the two people who are unwell, one in Brussels and the other in Havana, to implore the spirits to look after the Little Poet of Quiberon, say thanks to the friendships of my brother and sister in Miami. Once again hope my friends in the far east, my close friend YMC who has taken on extra duties lately, MD in VN and friends in India, Thailand, Philippines and Indonesia, Qatar.. also thought of some good friends in Melbourne, G and G..
lots of people put in an appearance which is good sign of my being grateful to all of them for their presence in my life.

This is how I spent my first day in Montevideo, Uruguay.

TAPATI FESTIVAL 2019 IN RAPA NUI . FOREIGNERS ARE WELCOME TO PARTICIPATE

A RAPA NUI  family with their Foreign Friends. 

Everyone joins in the celebrations, I can see my Argentine friend in the photo ..

Rapa Nui are Polynesian and the Continental Chileans are of European extraction, so cultural conflicts and misunderstandings exist. 
But new laws are being introduced to protect the Rapa Nui identity. 
Many Rapa Nui admitted their fear that what has happened in Hawaii to their native population and also to the Maori in Aotearoa (NZ) might happen to them, where they will loose their language and rituals. 
During the Tapati I was so happy to see that the language that dominated was not the language of the colonialists (Spanish) but Rapa Nui.

I am grateful to have had a chance to witness TAPATI along with my Rapa Nui friends as well as meet some Tahitians from Austral Islands.

DAY 7 OF TRIP 2/2019 . LEAVING RAPA NUI WITH A CONTENT MIND

I was leaving Rapa Nui after a very content stay and saying goodbyes to my newly found friends, Pauli and Kutchi and their families and the Tahitian friends, plus an Argentine connection through Micaela and Ana..
My destination was La Habana, Cuba
There may be shorter ways of getting to La Habana, connecting at SCL and LIM taking only 28 hours, but my trip:
Easter Island IPC to Santiago de Chile SCL to Lima, Peru LIM, ASU Asuncion, Paraguay to Sao Paolo GRU to Bogota Colombia, stay over night in Bogota and then the next morning to Havana .. it took me 48 hours! Vagaries of Frequent Flying.. 

 (inedible food on LATAM BRASIL from Asuncion Paraguay to Sao Paolo Brasil)

 HAPPY TO BE BACK IN HAVANA, CUBA