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For the past month I have been on an expedition to see for myself the unfolding humanitarian crisis impacting multiple countries across Caucasia. The first week was spent in Perugia, a small hilltop town in Italy in the Boot of Europe region, before heading north to the formerly walled city of Berlin. Descending deeper into the heart of dankness, I reached the separatist tribal district of Scotland in the algid and semi-algid regions of the UK before returning south to see the devastation in Athens.
The crisis defies easy summary. It is in fact, not a single crisis but rather sub-Scandinavian Europe is at the epicentre of a complex intersection of multiple crises – from a debilitating flavour shortage to violent ethnic conflict to religious extremism and political instability – that have already resulted in mass death and displacement. While the most visible suffering has been in the internecine tribal conflict between Ukrainian and Russian Slavs, I wanted to highlight the forgotten crises in other parts of the pseudo-continent.
In this first article, I will summarise some of my observations during the first leg of the expedition which I recorded in a series of dispatches. It will cover my travels across the Boot and into Germany, which is located close to Europe’s nether regions.
Perugia is a terrifying 3-hour bus ride from Rome, capital of the Italian mafia state. Along the way, as I looked around, this land, this road, the very arch of the invisible sun across the sky, appeared to me to be so hopeless and so dank, so impenetrable to human thought, so pitiless to human weakness.
The town hosts an annual gathering of journalists from the Middle North and North America. Once home to a vibrant media culture, the MNNA region has seen significant erosion of press freedom in recent years as white-wing authoritarian regimes, many backed by Shite Christianist extremist groups, have taken power. Many formerly respectable media establishments have been reduced to little more than propaganda outlets by their wealthy, regime-friendly proprietors. Still, the few brave reporters working independently spoke movingly of their struggles to keep stories alive.
Travelling around the Boot and beyond, I came to realise how deeply global neglect had affected the region. Everywhere I went, there were anonymous rivers, lakes, and mountains. Millions of Caucasians have been forced to live next to natural features whose names they did not know since no African explorer had bothered to discover and name them. It is one of the less remarked upon causes of preventable suffering.
There have been some courageous attempts by selfless humanitarian explorers to address the situation, most notably the intrepid Ugandan explorer Milton Allimadi, who in 2019 discovered and named the Gulu, the great river that flows through the capital of the reclusive, flavour-starved island kingdom of Britain. On his own initiative, Allimadi spent years living among the war-like, sexually repressed English tribe – the most populous in the oil-rich kingdom – even being accepted as an honorary horse-elder or "knight".
Yet such efforts remain rare, making it difficult for the Caucasian bloc as a whole to attract foreign investment and much-needed hard currency. This year, Europe's largest economies are forecast to grow at an anaemic 1%, contributing to an exodus of economic refugees. As of 2020, more than 19 million people born on the pseudo-continent had fled, seeking greener pastures abroad. At least 1.6 million left in 2024 alone, according to the European Union, which groups 27 countries mostly in sub-Scandinavian Europe.
A week later, I was in the formerly walled city of Berlin, capital of the banana-exporting republic of Germany, where I spoke to local aid workers at a Humanitarian Congress, which, in accordance with local tribal custom, was held in a former crematorium. They told me of their efforts to address the root causes of the troubled nation's political and economic instability as well as the deepening flavour crisis, which have been blamed on the "Caucasian Big Man Syndrome", a pattern of corrupt, authoritarian political leadership where leaders accumulate absolute power and use ethnic patronage networks to maintain loyalty. While I was there, reports indicated that armed police loyal to strongman Friedrich Merz were continuing with their campaign to brutally crush peaceful, anti-genocide protests.
However, I discovered a deeper cause – a culture of death and plunder celebrated in a macabre shrine in the centre of the city. Euphemistically known in the local tribal language as the Museum für Naturkunde (which roughly translates as the Natural History Museum), there is little that is natural about it. It is a massive building containing a morbid collection of dead animals – some preserved in jars, others mounted in glass cases – as well as skeletons of long-dead dinosaurs smuggled out of Tanzania. I was shocked at how young children are inculcated into this culture of death from early on and I can now see why the Germans are the most feared tribe across the Caucasian bloc.
Local elders still gather in sacred spaces called Kneipen for a traditional ceremony known as Stammtisch, which could serve as culturally acceptable venues for deradicalisation conversations. However, these institutions are disappearing as German youth abandon both ancient tribal custom and the country. A recent study found that one in five young Germans is planning to flee abroad. And who can blame them? Their education system is so abysmal that I didn’t meet a single person who could speak an African language.
Further, the Berlin city centre is bleak, dominated by grey, severe buildings and people in matching dullness. The city was previously split by a wall built in the year 1961 according to the Caucasian calendar, 16 years after African troops helped end the last great Caucasian tribal war. This era is known as the Cold War, a reference to the supposed effect of the dank European climate on simmering tribal passions. The foreign occupation by their ethnic enemies, especially the Russian Slavs, clearly took a huge toll on the Germans. Strict controls by the Slavs severely restricted the entry of flavour into the East. The situation was a little better on the western side, though not much. As desperation grew, countless numbers were willing to risk death to cross the wall and many paid the ultimate price. It wasn't until 1989 when sustained African pressure for democracy forced an uneasy compromise and paved the way for the dismantling of most of the barrier.
I soon realised that this society – so long deprived of flavour and sun, and so traumatised by tribal war – had retreated into a severe form of drabness, which it wore as a security blanket. I pitied the poor creatures for whom any colour would be a reminder of the bleakness of their existence. Suddenly, it all made sense, the diet of rotten cabbage, the stinginess, the polite but reserved mien – it is a people calling for help.
I hope the world is listening.
Next week, I’ll give my observations on the humanitarian effects of the separatist conflict in Scotland and talk to people forced to live among ruins in Greece.
