Monday, March 13, 2006
From Mine Fields to Strip Malls and Small Town America (Late February 2006)
I doubt that there is a border crossing anywhere on the entire continent of Africa more jarring than the one between Angola and Namibia. Most people who deal with culture shock when moving between first and developing world countries typically experience many hours of intervening luxurious though inconvenient air travel that numbs them and insulates them from the brute force of scenery change. Between Angola and Namibia is a rope with flags on it held by multilingual cops in poorly chosen camouflage.
The Angolan infrastructure is as degraded and unreliable as possible; the number of destroyed military vehicles rusting and acquiring spray paint by the roadside is difficult to estimate and the mine field markers are omnipresent. Trash strewn areas full of raggy children sprinting between ruined sputtering transport vans with junkyard toys must give home to 80% of the urban population. Namibia feels like a first world country. Instantly, the roads are flawless. Suddenly, there are western restaurants like KFC and Wimpy Burger, tucked beside Shoprite or Woolworths. Street vendors disappear: I can no longer find an instant shoe repairman, purchase rip off sunglasses or trick sandals; there are no all night sticks of ready to eat grilled animal, no shacks for the tea pouring omelet men. Nobody is even having their hair braided on the street.
This makes me uncomfortable and less enthusiastic about continuing southward. It stopped feeling like Africa and the signs of unusually entrenched and defensive white land ownership makes even the roadside forbidding. Racism is much more obvious and we can no longer feel at ease wandering into black areas unguided or unjustified. There are tourists all over the white areas, often listening with dropping jaws to accounts of the savagery of black Africans or the robberies and violence suffered by visitors.
In the first town, at a somewhat costly establishment catering to backpackers, we spent two days washing every garment, sheet and tent accessory that we dragged with us across Angola. The only internet café in Tsumeb-a highly developed cookie cutter mining town-cost five American dollars for an hour and had a horrible connection speed. In the struggling and slandered, West and Central African countries we have never experienced so much difficulty finding an affordable connection.
Sean and I tried to see what was in the city at nighttime and became familiarized with the Namibian ghost town phenomenon, during which a handful of cranky establishment owners wait amongst their empty chairs for closing time to permit their disappearance by vehicle. Since we occasionally clapped eyes on young people emulating the pre Kanye West style of hip hop clothing, we asked one where people with energy went to drink at night time. When we arrived at his recommendation at perhaps 9pm that evening we heard a great deal of shouting from behind a barred gate under a "private bar" sign. We stood around looking confused until someone sidled up to the grating and asked if we’d like to drink. They let us in to the all black, football fixated, male dominated establishment and permitted us to purchase tasty Hansas. I sought orientation at the pool table while a series of people approached Sean to assure him that we were safe, to introduce him to the owner and the off duty policeman. They repetitively assured him of our safety, promising that they would not make problems. This welcome was a bit unsettling, as nobody has ever bothered drawing such immediate and intense attention to our color or well being.
A few weeks and a couple of towns later, it is evident that we had walked into the miniature township of Tsumeb. The concept of a township is not radically different from the idea of a ghetto-of either notorious variety of ghetto. They are almost entirely black. They are almost entirely poor and, originally at least, underprivileged people were expected to live or coerced into living within their boundaries. Also, most white and wealthy people are scared of them.
These lively and slightly more threatening areas are not on the map. After a few days of wandering around Windhoek's uncanny, rounded, pastel, fresh-faced, Indianapolis district for the well-heeled and visiting, I began to wonder where the black people lived. I had seen them in great numbers at "the black club" shortly after my arrival; but they weren't in evidence and I'd been almost everywhere in my guide book map during my interminable search for helpful car mechanics.
Nearly two million people live in Windhoek; but it felt like a city of two or three hundred thousand. People spoke of Katatura from time to time-usually when suggesting where we could have some of our low quality items fixed or replaced or when frightening new comers away from an ill-advised stroll. Katatura is the township of Windhoek. That is where African life continues in a recognizable way and it is not on my guide book's map of the city. It is not in any map of the city that I have found; neither are any of the townships of any of the other Namibian cities on the other maps. Guidebooks do not even reference them by name or suggest what could be found there.
There are predictable and defensible reasons for this; but it is creepy to suddenly emerge into what feels like an upper middle class white country after all that we have been through. I've started and destroyed a stack of blogs on the subject of our new situation and still have trouble finding a way to focus. If we stay within the campsite of this youth hostel in the nice part of town-the beautiful scenery loop-we could travel for the next three months without connecting to the enduring—though temporarily suppressed-real life of this continent. Thankfully, we can't really afford to stay within that segment of these countries. What causes confusion is that we can no longer just drive into the shadier parts of town and find a flop house motel, park our car and walk around. There is too much evidence of car jacking, mugging and other street crime.
We delighted, over the past eight months, in finding no evidence of white people or tourism for weeks or months at a stretch. We would reliably turn away from a bar or a restaurant or a hotel that was full of white faces. Now our guts flow in the other direction and the appearance of white faces on the street can easily feel like a reassurance of safety, like confirmation that we have walked in the right direction. I hate this.
When I try to write about my recent experiences—seeking mechanical help for a car, walking around the shopping malls of the first world, conversing with low budget travelers from all sorts of countries, discovering the difference between clubs for black people, clubs for coloreds (usually a Portuguese plus Bushman mixture that looks Latino), clubs for whites or clubs for everyone-I realize that I am still too unsettled by this obscene focus on color and by this obvious partitioning of cities to narrate events or discern my own point of view.
For nearly a week, I was sure that Namibia was a terrible foretaste of much of the Southern African region. I talked about turning around and driving back through Central Africa; I began to doubt our decision to linger for any length of time in this area. The idea of tacitly declaring a racial allegiance every time I walk through a door or enter a conversation began to nauseate me. But Namibia has been growing on us. We even talk about moving here. How did that happen?
I doubt that there is a border crossing anywhere on the entire continent of Africa more jarring than the one between Angola and Namibia. Most people who deal with culture shock when moving between first and developing world countries typically experience many hours of intervening luxurious though inconvenient air travel that numbs them and insulates them from the brute force of scenery change. Between Angola and Namibia is a rope with flags on it held by multilingual cops in poorly chosen camouflage.
The Angolan infrastructure is as degraded and unreliable as possible; the number of destroyed military vehicles rusting and acquiring spray paint by the roadside is difficult to estimate and the mine field markers are omnipresent. Trash strewn areas full of raggy children sprinting between ruined sputtering transport vans with junkyard toys must give home to 80% of the urban population. Namibia feels like a first world country. Instantly, the roads are flawless. Suddenly, there are western restaurants like KFC and Wimpy Burger, tucked beside Shoprite or Woolworths. Street vendors disappear: I can no longer find an instant shoe repairman, purchase rip off sunglasses or trick sandals; there are no all night sticks of ready to eat grilled animal, no shacks for the tea pouring omelet men. Nobody is even having their hair braided on the street.
This makes me uncomfortable and less enthusiastic about continuing southward. It stopped feeling like Africa and the signs of unusually entrenched and defensive white land ownership makes even the roadside forbidding. Racism is much more obvious and we can no longer feel at ease wandering into black areas unguided or unjustified. There are tourists all over the white areas, often listening with dropping jaws to accounts of the savagery of black Africans or the robberies and violence suffered by visitors.
In the first town, at a somewhat costly establishment catering to backpackers, we spent two days washing every garment, sheet and tent accessory that we dragged with us across Angola. The only internet café in Tsumeb-a highly developed cookie cutter mining town-cost five American dollars for an hour and had a horrible connection speed. In the struggling and slandered, West and Central African countries we have never experienced so much difficulty finding an affordable connection.
Sean and I tried to see what was in the city at nighttime and became familiarized with the Namibian ghost town phenomenon, during which a handful of cranky establishment owners wait amongst their empty chairs for closing time to permit their disappearance by vehicle. Since we occasionally clapped eyes on young people emulating the pre Kanye West style of hip hop clothing, we asked one where people with energy went to drink at night time. When we arrived at his recommendation at perhaps 9pm that evening we heard a great deal of shouting from behind a barred gate under a "private bar" sign. We stood around looking confused until someone sidled up to the grating and asked if we’d like to drink. They let us in to the all black, football fixated, male dominated establishment and permitted us to purchase tasty Hansas. I sought orientation at the pool table while a series of people approached Sean to assure him that we were safe, to introduce him to the owner and the off duty policeman. They repetitively assured him of our safety, promising that they would not make problems. This welcome was a bit unsettling, as nobody has ever bothered drawing such immediate and intense attention to our color or well being.
A few weeks and a couple of towns later, it is evident that we had walked into the miniature township of Tsumeb. The concept of a township is not radically different from the idea of a ghetto-of either notorious variety of ghetto. They are almost entirely black. They are almost entirely poor and, originally at least, underprivileged people were expected to live or coerced into living within their boundaries. Also, most white and wealthy people are scared of them.
These lively and slightly more threatening areas are not on the map. After a few days of wandering around Windhoek's uncanny, rounded, pastel, fresh-faced, Indianapolis district for the well-heeled and visiting, I began to wonder where the black people lived. I had seen them in great numbers at "the black club" shortly after my arrival; but they weren't in evidence and I'd been almost everywhere in my guide book map during my interminable search for helpful car mechanics.
Nearly two million people live in Windhoek; but it felt like a city of two or three hundred thousand. People spoke of Katatura from time to time-usually when suggesting where we could have some of our low quality items fixed or replaced or when frightening new comers away from an ill-advised stroll. Katatura is the township of Windhoek. That is where African life continues in a recognizable way and it is not on my guide book's map of the city. It is not in any map of the city that I have found; neither are any of the townships of any of the other Namibian cities on the other maps. Guidebooks do not even reference them by name or suggest what could be found there.
There are predictable and defensible reasons for this; but it is creepy to suddenly emerge into what feels like an upper middle class white country after all that we have been through. I've started and destroyed a stack of blogs on the subject of our new situation and still have trouble finding a way to focus. If we stay within the campsite of this youth hostel in the nice part of town-the beautiful scenery loop-we could travel for the next three months without connecting to the enduring—though temporarily suppressed-real life of this continent. Thankfully, we can't really afford to stay within that segment of these countries. What causes confusion is that we can no longer just drive into the shadier parts of town and find a flop house motel, park our car and walk around. There is too much evidence of car jacking, mugging and other street crime.
We delighted, over the past eight months, in finding no evidence of white people or tourism for weeks or months at a stretch. We would reliably turn away from a bar or a restaurant or a hotel that was full of white faces. Now our guts flow in the other direction and the appearance of white faces on the street can easily feel like a reassurance of safety, like confirmation that we have walked in the right direction. I hate this.
When I try to write about my recent experiences—seeking mechanical help for a car, walking around the shopping malls of the first world, conversing with low budget travelers from all sorts of countries, discovering the difference between clubs for black people, clubs for coloreds (usually a Portuguese plus Bushman mixture that looks Latino), clubs for whites or clubs for everyone-I realize that I am still too unsettled by this obscene focus on color and by this obvious partitioning of cities to narrate events or discern my own point of view.
For nearly a week, I was sure that Namibia was a terrible foretaste of much of the Southern African region. I talked about turning around and driving back through Central Africa; I began to doubt our decision to linger for any length of time in this area. The idea of tacitly declaring a racial allegiance every time I walk through a door or enter a conversation began to nauseate me. But Namibia has been growing on us. We even talk about moving here. How did that happen?
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