Closing Remarks.

I suggested that I would take advantage of my time in Naboomspruit to "decompress" because it is customary to use that verb in circumstances like these. Well, I waited to decompress for a foothill of vacant hours and discovered that I must not have reacted to this trip's stresses by pressurizing myself. Now that the familiar set of nuisances and obligations has begun to fade into the year behind me, I am not struck with a need to let my hair down or to take deep breaths.

This forced me to consider what sort of coping mechanism would have helped me through the difficult moments of our campaign only to deposit me, coasting, thoughtless and numb before the paralyzing television set of my friends. I suppose it would be truest to say that I responded to pressure with dissipation and lopsidedly therapeutic outbursts of frustration and rage. That was a strategy bought on credit. Now, instead of enjoying the settling into normalcy of decompression, I will have to labor, tediously and with low volition, to reconstitute my self.

What that means, to a large extent, is that the things I have learned about myself on this trip have yet to be determined. I suspect that they will be born of the choices that I make over the next few months. When I try to follow that thought with specific details or predictions, I end up in the swirling headspace of mediocre options that I have been escaping with sleep and television for the last two weeks.

The knowledge that I have gained during these travels can be a solitary delight when, for instance, I cycle through memories of the exceptional people I've recently met or scenes of Africa's natural beauty; but taken in its entirety, my experience of Africa is a vast, unblinking challenge. That is why I am not currently filled with high-fiving jubilation. It is why I am overwhelmed and a bit more directionless and paralyzed than usual.

One of the purported motivations of my trip was to learn whether or not I could see myself settling into Africa to work for some sort of non-governmental organization. The non-profit sector that I encountered while traveling across this continent is more vibrant, more committed and less venal than I expected. It is also, in many cases, well-staffed and intelligently managed. (Here I am discussing the locally founded organizations to which we gave attention.) The organizations that I respect the most, need funding more than they need the skill-set or experiences of a person like me and I have not taken to fundraising.

The premise of our trip was a good one. I wish that independent observers were regularly tasked with evaluating the relative merit of different humanitarian organizations (instead of, for example, evaluating digital music players and sports cars) and I wish that their assessments had an immediate and significant impact on the funding of all the organizations involved. I would be happy to involve myself in such research in the future; but it needs to be carried out with greater thoroughness and expertise. Unfortunately, there are no jobs of this variety currently on the market; so, the bottom line is: I don't see myself slotting into the existing positions offered within AIDS based African non-profit organizations.

A second motivation for this trip was the hope that I could backdoor the fortress of international journalism and occupy one of its rooms. This hope must've been rather thin however; since my colleagues and I did not devote much of our time or energy to the sort of legwork that might have generated publicity and strengthened our campaign. I am ill suited to networking, self-promotion and tedious requests to be rejected; other team members proved equally uninterested in this sort of drum-beating. Also, when we finally met with someone who took the time to explain how the game works here, we learned that the highest paying news agency on the continent could not support our dinner habit, let alone our fuel costs, accommodation and other overhead. So, it is unlikely that I will be diving into that profession either.

Since a succession of frustrating years at poorly run secondary schools has temporarily hardened my heart against classroom teaching and since I am not committing myself further to the fight against HIV/AIDS or to print journalism, it is not immediately clear what I will be giving back to the continent of Africa, to which I feel both attached and indebted.

Those disinclinations left me in pursuit of other employment for the last couple months and that pursuit has landed me in New York City. I will shortly be joining a non-profit organization that works on mentoring students through the internet; I will work as their Director of Education. In that capacity I will work to develop the curriculums necessary for their online mentorship programs. That might sound a bit dry; but after several years of slogging through badly designed curriculums that I was forced to use, I look forward to bettering them and to creating resources that won't hinder a good educator. Also, after dedicating a substantial amount of time and attention to rather dense and unimportant books, I particularly appreciate the organization's overridingly practical approach to education and goal setting.

The worst thing about this job is that it pulls me away from Africa and the rest of the developing world. I am hoping that the organization's aspiration to expand their operations into East Africa will prove realistic and, failing that, I am hoping that my experience with them will enable me to find more influential employment when I return to the developing world a few years later on.

As a sort of closure, I would like to attempt an explanation of why I feel so powerfully compelled to return to this continent; I would like to devote some time and attention to what I have learned about Africa and to why it has begun to influence me so deeply.

When I first took my appointment in Gambia I did so out of ignorant necessity. I had not been aware of the country's existence or location and I had no special motivation for working there. My first impressions were not favorable and I very nearly left half way through my first year; now, I am addicted to the subcontinent. I do not prefer any of the splendid and benignly famous countries that I visited in my youth to the countries I have just passed through. Two years in Gambia bent me out of shape; but ten months on the western side of Africa showed me dozens of neighborhoods and communities into which I could fit.

My decision to stay for a second year in Gambia was as insubstantial as my decision to go there in the first place and my little trips during school holidays were enticing without revealing anything in particular. I took the opportunity to travel with Sean and Tuuli because I suspected that descending through the continent would be a positive experience. When I began to draft the text of our website, I remember discussing our desire to counteract the sort of media coverage that prejudices the west against Africa. I set out to show that Africa is an enjoyable place to travel, full of excellent people and fewer real problems than one would expect. I set out to do that with a great deal of doubt; breaking news about violence surrounding the coup in Togo, about famine in Niger, about widespread, sporadic and severe violence in Nigeria gave me a fair amount of anxiety and that was before I had even begun to consider Central Africa a realistic possibility.

The ten month surprise began almost immediately. In Kayes, Mali, a massive and labyrinthine industrial city, one of the pedestrians who we asked for directions abandoned his plans and accompanied us half way across the city; he then replaced himself with another man who had been in the middle of a meeting, who jumped into our car and guided us far from his office, through dozens of devastated, muddy, unmarked shanty roads until we parked beside a discreetly marked compound that was our destination. He accepted our gratitude, until we tried to solidify it with a gift, and then he set out through the dirt on what must have been a twenty minute walk back to his normal affairs. The tendency of urban Gambians to expect a reward for any rendered service had filled me with cynicism about Africa's poor. But; after a couple of months and several countries, I managed to rid myself of those assumptions that were two years in the making and to realize that they were based, in fact, on exceptions-an exception no doubt created by the enormous imbalance that tourism introduces to that miniscule and poorly governed land.

Our guidebook was essentially useless. We were introduced to Africa by Africans. It wasn't long before all three of us would admit to being entirely dependent upon a temperament and an integrity that we found in every country and in most people. Grasping this temperament and being reassured by its omnipresence gave us a sense of safety that made it possible to enjoy all the other emotions and experiences of life. I am not talking about benefiting from a formulaic respect for visitors, a passing enthusiasm for the distraction that they present or an indifferent, reputation-based protectiveness; those are receptions to which I am accustomed and they may provide a certain level of security; but they don’t fill a traveler with the urge to return or the urge not to leave.

After five countries I had to stop myself from writing "I would be totally happy to live here" in each of my blogs about the large African cities that we visited. That was not a consequence of a sudden lack of such wonderful cities, it was because I didn't think that anyone would believe me and it was because the compliment started sounding thin when I applied it so liberally-though I can confidently say that there are not any cities in Europe, the United States or other wealthy nations that draw similar praise.

So, what was it? What was I getting out of these places that made me want to connect? I was being sustained and enlivened by an openness, a curiosity, a festivity and a decency that I now crave. I loved the conversation; it was never about television, never about fashion, never about celebrity gossip, rarely preachy or confrontational and its silences, when they occurred, were comfortable. Generally, I felt like I was being sounded and situated as a human, not as a member of a sub-culture or someone's network. The talk had very little pretence and the encounters were genuine.

One optimistic theory would be that the mature African people who we encountered saw our own willingness to engage with their culture, on their streets, over their drinks and their meals, as a sufficient overture. People often shared how complimented they felt by nothing other than our attitude and presence, by the fact that we didn't turn up our noses, foreground their difficulties with unnecessary photographs or hurry off. Our leisurely pace and ground level approach to movement paid dividends everywhere.

And the festivity that I mentioned earlier was rarely hard to ignite and never staged. Nothing recharges solitary wandering people like good, heartfelt shared time, whether that involves soft drinks and grilled fish, coffee and eggs or millet beer and chunks of dubious goat. I feel deeply grateful to all of the people who shared their time with me and my colleagues as we made our way south. They made the trip worthwhile and unforgettable. And I remain deeply indebted and similarly grateful to those of you who supported us. You made it possible.

Your Post Script: Keep your eyes open for the book.
* posted by Nathaniel at 8:11 AM  —  3 comments

The End

As the website will shortly reflect, our campaign and our travels have concluded. Thanks again to everyone for the crucial support and encouragment.

Within the week, I will try to post a wrap-up of sorts. At the moment, Mike and I are housesitting in Naboomspruit in order to decompress.

My next post is likely to be the last, so please feel free to let me know--by commenting here--if there is anything you would like for me to answer or address before exiting your cyberspace.
* posted by Nathaniel at 5:35 AM  —  7 comments

Trust in the Government

The rural equivalent of a township seems to be called a "trust." These areas fill the less desirable valleys and mountainsides with houses and compounds ranging from modest to appalling. Few of them have electricity or running water; many are quite far from medical clinics, transportation routes, educational opportunities or means of communication. The farm and factory laborers and the unemployed have their residences in trusts and white people speak of them as dangerous places. In appearance and detail, they have a great deal in common with the rest of black rural Africa, only, in South Africa such areas seem to foster greater resentment on account of the obvious wealth and opportunity that hedges them in and puts them to work. Also, the trusts seem more like overcrowded reservations than the holdings of a community in harmony with its land.

Our hosts in Greytown connected us with a local organization that provides home based care for the most desperate cases in the nearby trusts. After our initial interview of their director, a white pensioner named Joan, we received an invitation to accompany her distributors on the following day's rounds. Early the next morning, Mike and I climbed into the back of a struggling pick up truck and sat on top of blankets, clothing bags and boxes of nutritional supplement. Sean sat in the cab with three black staff members and Joan, who drove around the narrow, deviating, mountainous dirt roads with obvious familiarity.

A number of the compounds that we visited boasted several well constructed concrete huts with thickly thatched roofs, small gardens, passable fencing and a handful of animals. They were not, however, in good repair. Mamsie, a Zulu woman in her late middle age shared our admiration of the huts and their construction but explained that, in many cases, the men of the families had left for Joburg or other large cities, where they find work and girlfriends or start new families. In consequence, many compounds in the trusts are populated exclusively by women, the elderly, the very young or the sick and dying. Mamsie has little respect for Zulu men and describes them all as "cowards." The one young man we saw who was caring for a deathbound "woman of little virtue" prompted Mamsie to comment that, "Zulu men are only capable of showing care or affection when they are unemployed and homeless."

Mamsie knows the AIDS patients and their situations quite well; it is clear from their demeanor that they respect her and appreciate her visits. Since Joan was along on this occasion, Mamsey gave her the case histories and Joan tackled the sticky legal issues. In one case an attractive nineteen year old girl huddled under synthetic blankets, answering questions in Zulu. She had recently returned from Joburg where she had likely been involved in the exploited portion of big city night life. For a fair number of the glamorous young black women in Africa, cowering under donated blankets in the hut of an extended family is the conclusion. This is where they end up. She should be receiving ARVs; but, she doesn't have a national identity card. Without that little booklet, a citizen will not receive government assistance. The trouble is that it can take well over six months to apply for and receive this basic and essential card. One man recently held a government worker hostage at gunpoint out of sheer frustration at the enormous amount of time he was being made to wait. Joan encouraged the young girl to make her way to Greytown-a relatively difficult trip-and promised to accompany her to the relevant ministry to explain and expedite the application process for her national identity card.

On another hill, a grandmother inched carefully down from her crumbling home loudly berating her dogs that were pestering us. She cares for the offspring of her son, who died, along with one of his wives, of HIV/AIDS. This grandmother needed advice on how to coerce one of her son's other widows to part with the man's death certificate (temporarily, just long enough to make a photocopy). Without this, the grandmother cannot receive government food grants for her grandchildren. Again and again, Joan tried to help these rural people through the red tape of social services. Since they need to visit urban centers, stand in long lines, understand legal documents and present a precise assortment of their own papers, many less fortunate people are unable to navigate the process. Politicians, who understand it quite well, have taken to claiming grants for thousands of children who don't exist. Self-serving bastards who understand it well enough have taken to using their child welfare grants to get drunk and spoil themselves. It's a beautiful system.
* posted by Nathaniel at 10:56 AM  —  0 comments

I try to discuss the "Racism" of South Africans

An appointment in Kwazulu-Natal forced us inland, away from the ocean that I am tired of leaving. We skipped Durban and drove two hours into the mountains to reach Greytown, a municipality with perhaps 25,000 residents. I was unenthusiastic about visiting a rather isolated, white farming community; but, Sean and Mike assured me they had met a good man who was lining up an interesting article.

We discovered that our Thursday afternoon arrival corresponded to the beginning of a four day weekend, which made me feel like sketching waves with gloomy fingertips. Upon arrival in Greytown, we pulled into an electrically fenced compound with the usual assortment of well bred, racist attack dogs, where our hosts were enjoying barbequed ribs and beer with their wives, preparing for the beginning of a significant rugby match that all men were expected to watch at the local pub. We went through our usual stories and explanations, defended the honor of our sorry looking car and gathered that all of the men in the room had lengthy and successful military careers ranging from paratrooping and high intensity conflict throughout Southern Africa to counter-insurgency, interrogations and police work. In the eyes of many black Africans in the region and many leftward leaning people, these men had been the bad guys during apartheid and during South Africa's dubious efforts to "stabilize" their neighboring countries. Many South African men of their color and age group have histories like these.

Common ground means everything. In my limited experience, South Africans frequently go out of their way to ensure that you, as a visitor, adopt their own interpretations of color and national events. As a result of this tendency, I have been subjected by white people to the narration of dozens of brutal farm murders, child rapes, senseless assaults and instances of gross corruption, dishonesty or pathetic laziness. These stories resemble the occasional news items that make their way into American newspapers to horrify readers with savage Africa-the sort of stories that are the essence of the enemy of this whole trip. However, most of our South African narrators hasten to apologize, contextualize and disclaim; the ones that I bother listening to are not trying to reinforce the sort of fearful, ignorant racism that occurs in areas where contact with other races is minimal and insignificant. They are trying to explain a bitterness or a suspicion, an outburst or a deaf ear. Many of them preface or conclude their stories by saying, "Don’t get us wrong. You have to understand. Yes, maybe we are racist; but, it's not the same here. You have to understand how things were and what these people have been doing." Their narratives are designed to shed light on the specific variety of "racism" to which South Africa’s white people can openly admit.

The racist joke becomes an art and the ability to distinguish between habitual slurs and malicious accusations becomes a necessity. I find it appropriate to tolerate this sort of discourse partially because I am a visitor and a guest but, primarily, because the people from whom it originates (the ones with whom we associate), tend to have a strong desire to better their country, a strong sense of civic responsibility and the habit of letting their actions speak louder than their words. Together, especially over drinks or in front of outsiders, white South Africans can start to bluster, struggling to present the most outrageous and instructive true stories about shooting or being shot at by black people. These same talkers are, at times, deeply involved in assisting the impoverished black people of their region in person or on committes. They may be developing the infrastructure, handing out food and blankets or consulting for the municipality. A number of them campaigned vigorously against apartheid and, perhaps most importantly, many of their children have friends of different colors. A number of South Africans who acknowledge the present levels of racism, predict that future generations will be much more willing to put skin tones behind them-and they sound pleased to say so.

On another odd note: at least in the southern and coastal regions of South Africa, the whites who seem particularly reactionary or red necked in their opinions and taste of clothing and vehicles, are more laid back than any other bigots or semi-bigots that I have ever met. The best of them can downshift effortlessly from rugby racism and a truck full of beers towards relaxed eclectic music and late evenings of all embracing conversation. It is a complete paradigm shift that I find disconcerting and, oddly, pleasant.

By the end of our week with Les and Robyn in Greytown, I was glad we had skipped Durban and come to their unexceptional farm town.
* posted by Nathaniel at 7:54 AM  —  1 comments

Lotus Eaters on the Long Cold Coast

After Jeffrey's Bay we headed for East London, one of the larger coastal towns with a reputation for liveliness and consistent surf. There was absolutely no secure parking to be found, so we set out after two hours of circular driving, for the nearest isolated backpackers, which was in Cintsa Bay-a tough location to find in the dark with the Stingray's laughable headlights. (Despite having about twelve different white lights on its face, the Stingray reveals nighttime passages with as much enthusiasm as a microwave oven with its door ajar.)

The change in our plans proved fortunate since our night blind driving landed us at one of South Africa's finest backpackers. The "backpackers" of this region have nothing in common with the youth hostels of Europe or, from what I've heard, of Australia and New Zealand. Rather than processing visitors with a dormitory totalitarianism or impersonal, time obsessed condescension, the more successful of these establishments create a sense of community, abolish formal divisions between staff and visitor, all while sharing their pride in and knowledge of the region. They are difficult places to leave. I benefited from the patient mentoring of several resident surfers and enjoyed the biggest and best formed waves of my life at places with names like "graveyards" that I would completely have avoided without their pressure and encouragement.

The temptation was certainly to drive about forty kilometers each week, while soaking up the slowly transforming atmosphere of the coast. Many of the most memorable spots along our route from Senegal I would only recommend to a handful of long time friends, owing to their unpredictability and rough edges; this stretch of South Africa, I can recommend whole heartedly to any one of our readers who is not committed to traveling in luxury. It is the only place in the world about which I could currently say this. That does not mean that I love South Africa and it does not mean that these establishments can't prove disappointing when the wrong busload of doe-eyed, inebriated students trample into the common rooms. However, travel between these backpackers is cheap, daily and simple. With adequate time-and you'd need at least two weeks-you would find whatever atmosphere you sought. The backpackers replace the conventional bed time oriented family mood of Bed and Breakfasts with the sense that you are staying with friends of good friends who happen to be on vacation and will match or raise your level of festivity or connect you with their community and let you read in peace.

It was a pleasure to be compelled to stay in such places by the fact that they are the cheapest safe accommodation-we camped, on average, for seven dollars each, per night. After realizing that everyone at one such place was glad to be working and after seeing the waves, I very nearly stayed to work there. The only deterrent—and this is not true of all of them-is their relative distance from African life and the tendency of many guests to dedicate themselves exclusively to the pursuit of adrenaline or predictable, self-inflating accomplishments.

Conrad, a dreadlocked barman in his thirties at the most laid back and under-populated of the backpackers that we visited, shared with us that his mother frequently attacks his choice of work, insisting that he find a conventional job. He gestured out the window, down the hill, over the terraced lawn, palm trees and flowering shrubs towards the ocean, "Every morning when I wake up, I see this. This is how I want to start each day of my life. I could wake up early, jump in a car, drive to a box and sit at a desk uninterested in all of my tasks. I could labor to make small piles of money, sink into a bathtub and slit my wrists. I don't need any of that. I will stay here until I am bored and then I will work somewhere else." A similar philosophy is espoused all along the coastline, sometimes by extremely articulate and politically aware individuals of all ages and sometimes by playtime people, uncriticized in their harmless, meaningless and unconcluded childhood. There is a definite lotus-eaters vibe to this region and that sort of pastime has always brought people together.
* posted by Nathaniel at 6:42 AM  —  1 comments

Nelspruit, South Africa

None of us expected to endure a prolonged internet blackout in South Africa. I had assumed that the first world prosperity so visible in scores of its towns and cities would have trickled down to the provinces in some useful fashion. However, we have recently traveled through areas that precisely resemble an Africa that none of us have seen since the Democratic Republic of Congo. At my most cynical, I would not have expected this country to fail its citizens so obviously. But the bitterness or resignation of nearly everyone with whom we have spoken reveals that South Africa is not currently impressing its people.

We spent a recent week in a province called Kwazulu-Natal, where approximately 70% of the population—which is larger than that of many small African countries—is infected with HIV/AIDS. We met a number of these people while dispensing food, clothing and blankets with a small organization based in Greytown and then we drove back into the fortified, retreat of its white citizens who shared with us their disillusionment and experiences fighting for the former apartheid government.

I have been continuously defeated in my attempts to write about these experiences and conversations because of my difficulty contextualizing all of the remarks that would instantly be considered racist or unacceptable by an audience who has not spent time in this or neighboring countries. Now that we are mustering strength in Nelspruit, I am prepared to tackle the issue in the following days—along with a description of our last three weeks, which resembled precisely no other part of the last ten months.

In the meantime, we are currently preparing for something of a last stand. In the coming week we are meeting with the editor of a news agency that may be interested in purchasing some of our articles and photographs. If we are capable of reaching an agreement that will support our costs, this trip will have new impetus and there will be a visible flourish of activity. Presently, we are refraining from publishing a couple of stories that may find their way into print before landing on our website. If things work out, we should have some good news and an updated itinerary. If they do not, there will still be a considerable thickening of our South African section, even if that occurs at roughly the same time that some of us start arriving in U.S. airports with tattered clothing and grimy, suspicious passports.
* posted by Nathaniel at 7:58 AM  —  0 comments