Reykjavík Grapevine - 04.05.2012, Blaðsíða 16

16
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 5 — 2012 Ragnar seems like a pretty nice guy! Want to help him help Kenya? He plans on selling Icelandic dried fish (harðfiskur)
in bars all over Reykjavík this summer with some of the proceeds going to Kenya. You can find it right now at Kaffi
Haítí and Volcano House. Harðfiskur is a must-try anyway, so you should definitely go for it.
All eyes were trained on
Iceland during Chinese
Premier Wen Jiaobao’s
recent two-day sojourn.
Many were particularly
curious of the fact that Ice-
land was the first nation on Wen’s Eu-
ropean trade agenda. I mean, Iceland’s
hardly on the way to the Bundestag, is it?
Why then, would Wen be so inter-
ested in visiting this so-called bankrupt
nation teetering on the edge of the Arctic
Circle? And although Iceland’s geother-
mal resources are certainly of interest to
energy-starved China, would one think
it necessary for the head of the Chinese
Communist Party to make a personal
visit?
The Chinese media seem keen to tell
us that Wen’s university education as a
geologist is why he holds a special inter-
est. Others are perhaps rightfully more
wary.
The Stefansson Arctic Institute’s Em-
bla Eir Oddsdóttir told Reuters, "Given
China's investment pattern around the
globe, people have asked questions. Is
there some ulterior motive? [...] For the
next decade they are going to be battling
some sort of suspicion as to their motive,
because people have a tendency to link
them to some type of regime.”
What sort of a regime would that be,
Embla Eir?
Mia Shanley of Reuters said: “China’s
interest in ties to resource rich lands is no
secret. Its businesses have also been on
the lookout for opportunities in a Europe
weakened by financial crisis—a crisis
felt nowhere more sharply than Iceland.”
And the fact of the matter is that the
polar cap is receding far quicker than
may have been initially anticipated. Sci-
entists say we could already face rising
concerns as early as 2040. A free ice pas-
sage over the top of the world “could slash
the journey time from Europe and the
east coast of North America to Chinese
and Japanese ports by well over a week…”
(by all conservative estimates 6.400 km
of sea voyage). “I wonder if under the
surface the race is already there, to gain
a foothold in the Arctic,” Embla Eir says.
As Deutsche Welle was keen to point
out, “around 46% of the Chinese gross
national product is linked to shipping.
China also imports 85% of its energy
from abroad.” A lion’s share, of course,
is currently imported from that bone-of-
contention nation, Syria.
According to Taiwan’s Taipei Times,
“The Arctic’s oil reserves were high on
the agenda…during the high-powered
delegation’s visit to Iceland [despite the
fact that Prime Minister Jóhanna] Sig-
urðardóttir touted the…deal as [nudge-
nudge] ‘research collaboration.’” So it’s
not just rocks that Mr. Wen is interested
in, but the potential of Icelandic oil? “Es-
timates suggest around 13% of the worlds
undiscovered oil reserves and at least
30% of its gas are buried under arctic ice,”
says Deutsche Welle.
Or perhaps Chinese scientists have
found a way to harness the power of the
Aurora Borealis?
In an April 21 article in China’s Xin-
Hua News Agency, Iceland was touted as
the untouched jewel of the North Atlan-
tic: a premier destination for adventure-
seeking nouveau-riche Chinese. Could it
be that Chinese investor Huang Nubo’s
thwarted plans for purchasing a giant
slab of Iceland’s north were actually quite
kosher? China Daily shows that “around
7,000 Chinese people visited Iceland in
2009 [and] the number is on the rise.”
FYI, 7.000 Chinese isn’t even an
apartment complex in Shanghai.
Taiwan’s China Post noted that the
same Huang Nubo had recently urged
the Chinese government to promote
overseas Chinese firms and investments
in the wake of Wen’s visit to Europe. “Ris-
ing Chinese investment in Europe—hit
by a sovereign debt crisis—has caused
concern, although Wen earlier this year
sought to allay fears, saying Beijing did
not have the intention to ‘buy Europe.’”
Whether we like it or not, China’s
foreign currency reserves are high; and
they’ve got to do something with all
that foreign capital aside from buying
up mines in Africa. More recently the
slowdown of China’s domestic growth
has been of growing concern, and it may
well be that diversification of Chinese in-
vestments, and in particular investments
abroad, are of greater interest. On April
19, China Daily said: “…Premier Wen
stated earlier this month that the nation
would…begin fine-tuning its policies to
promote continued economic growth…”
Which rather sounds like someone’s in
an investment mood.
Shortly before leaving for Iceland,
Wen called for a domestic crackdown on
governmental corruption following the
suspected murder of a British business-
man by politician Bo Xilai’s wife. Appar-
ently Iceland-based Bloomberg journalist
Ómar R. Valdimarsson got a right wal-
loping from Wen’s bodyguard for even
broaching the subject.
A trip to Iceland is probably just what
Wen needs to take his mind off things.
Cui Hongjian, head of the European
department of the China Institute for
International Studies, recently told re-
porters: “…China insists that the Arctic
belongs to everyone just like the moon.”
Insistence, of course, gets you every-
where—especially somewhere between
the moon and the Arctic. Surely everyone
needs an Aurora to light up these dark,
Arctic times.
News | Iceland in the international eye: AprilAfrica | Kenya
Somewhere Between The
Moon And The Arctic
Out Of Africa
MARC VINCENz
Ragnar Sverrisson is an engineer and
technician who has been active in the
humanist movement for thirty years,
both in Iceland and abroad. In recent
years, Ragnar has devoted his time
and money to humanitarian work in
Kenya. “When I first went to Kenya,
I instantly fell in love with the coun-
try and its people. I've been there five
times since 2004, and in fact I met my
wife there,” Ragnar says.
Ragnar's affiliation with the country
began when a young man from Kenya
named Ken sent an inquiry to the inter-
national humanist movement website.
The site administrator in New York was
a friend of Ragnar's and the humanists'
in Iceland, and he thought it might be a
good idea to put Ken in touch with the
Icelandic humanist sect. “Ken wanted
to know if he could help out in his own
homeland, so we started corresponding.
Three of us visited him and that's how our
humanitarian work in Kenya began. He
was very ambitious but now, sadly, he's
deceased,” Ragnar says, adding that in
Kenya, death is very much part of every-
day life.
“It's completely different there;
throughout my whole life I've known per-
haps ten people that have died, but since
I first went to Kenya I've known about
twenty to thirty people that have died ei-
ther from AIDS or in car crashes, which
cause more deaths among children there
than AIDS.”
BRINGING WATER AND ICE TO
KENyA
Ragnar experienced the difficult way of
life in Kenya firsthand when he tried rent-
ing land and growing vegetables. “It went
well at first, but when the crops came
there were these massive droughts and
we had very little to show for it. During
drought season two years ago, one third
of the population suffered famine,” Rag-
nar says.
Coming from a place where water is
in abundance, namely Iceland, Ragnar
has been working on a project to build
water pumps in Kenya. There is a massive
water shortage in Africa, and Eastern Af-
rica in particular is experiencing some of
the worst droughts in 60 years. “I wanted
to use my knowledge of technology in
helping out down there,” he says.
He has also spent five years building
a refrigeration system. “Basically, you can
capture the heat from the sun and use
it to freeze food and even cool houses.
They have very primitive fishing methods
in Kenya and they almost never refriger-
ate their food,” Ragnar says. “To build this
machine, we received a 10 million króna
grant from the Rannís Technology Devel-
opment Fund. We've finished all stages of
development and the machine works. It
might sound strange here in Iceland, but
globally speaking, seventy percent of all
the world’s electric energy output is used
for refrigeration.”
In addition to using his technological
expertise to work on refrigeration and
water shortage problems in Kenya, Rag-
nar has been working on another press-
ing social concern. Due to AIDS, Kenyan
society has an overwhelming problem of
orphaned children. In a nation of about
50 million people, the number of orphans
is estimated at five million, a staggering
ten percent of the population.
“There are a lot of people who want to
help by starting day care centres or sup-
plying food, but they badly need money to
fund these projects,” Ragnar says. “After
kids finish elementary school they have
to start paying school fees, so a lot of kids
drop out. I started thinking how I could
help these older kids and came up with a
project that could make them some mon-
ey. The idea was to start a young people's
co-op, where the profit would be used to
pay their school fees.”
LEARNING FROM KENyA IN
RETURN
Along the way, Ragnar discovered that
Kenyans have a very different way of
thinking and dealing with things. “Their
mentality is completely different and
when I first went there, I thought I could
teach them a lot, but as time passes I've
realised that there is rather a lot they can
teach us,” he says. “We can bring the
technology and the forward-thinking to
them but they can help us with living our
everyday lives in a happier fashion.”
However, Ragnar thinks that one of
the things that hamper progress in Ke-
nya is the incredibly corrupt government,
which often steals government funding
allocated for bettering the community.
Icelanders tend to complain about the
situation here after the crisis and some
are disillusioned with the Icelandic poli-
ticians and the current state of affairs.
Compared to the problems of a devel-
oping country like Kenya though, these
problems are miniscule.
“My friend Paul Ramses [Icelandic
immigrant from Kenya] laughs at the
crisis here in Iceland because they live
in that situation every day. There is mas-
sive shortage of food and water, poverty,
corruption, AIDS and not many natural
resources,” he says.
Drilling for water, humanitarian work and bad politics in Kenya
Words
Þórður Ingi Jónsson
Photography
Alísa Kalyanova
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