As I pulled into Joburg, my first thought was: This is LA. Nobody walks in LA... or Joburg. It is a city dominated by cars. The hectic and busy central downtown area of the city is surrounded with hilly suburbs of wide, tree-lined streets. Like LA, in order to travel through the city in comfort, you need a car and a map that will help you navigate the network of freeways and six lane streets. Unless you are me, of course. I don't have a car, but I have spent the last two weeks mentally mapping the routes of the hundreds of trusty minibuses. I wish they had minibuses in LA! At least through these buses, I can still cling to a semblance of familiarity with the Africa I have left behind.
Another comparison with LA (although it is much more disconcerting in Joburg): segregation. I have gotten some strange looks as I board these tro tros (shared minibuses). I get the feeling like this is a color thing. In all places except Southern Africa, I have been welcomed into these transporting machines with smiles and curiosity. Here, things are a little different. In my first two weeks in Joburg, I have never seen another white person board these buses (except for Andrew, the Greenpeace activist who came to visit me over Easter). On board these buses, one can often witness an interesting social experiment which highlights how people mediate conflict. One person sometimes doesn't pay the fare and the whole bus erupts into a swarm of accusations in Zulu.
During most days, I go from the wealthy suburb that I am staying in by minibus to visit the city center. Mostly this is because Internet and everything else is far cheaper in town. Compare 5 rand an hour to 60 rand an hour. Through this commute, I have come to understand the not so subtle reasons for a government initiative called Black Economic Empowerment. If the discrepancy in prices varies this much with all goods and services between black and white neighborhoods, there is a huge inequality present here. Recognizing this, the government has taken bold steps to require businesses and government sectors to equalize race ratios. Black Economic Empowerment is a program designed to level the playing field, fast. But for right now, it is happening too quickly for comfort and is causing a lot of disorientation.
Where do I fit in? I am not so economically empowered at this point. The campaign is quickly running out of money. For the time being, I belong to the less empowered population here in Joburg. But, I am one of the only whites I have seen in this category. Despite the robbery, I like walking around "town" or central Joburg. I am way too fascinated to stay away and fear the place. It is a city unlike any other I have seen. Hawkers and food sellers line the sidewalks, selling goods at bargain prices chanting tenrandtenrandtenrand. Yet, these distinctly African market sellers are nestled in between a grid of gray skyscrapers that house offices and stores. Two blocks down (beyond an invisible boundary that keeps these sellers out: South of Market Street and West of Harrison), is the headquarters of a continent-wide bank. I inquire from a young white office worker how to find an Internet cafe in town. He replies: "I don't know this area at all, I only come here to work and then I go straight home." Hmmm. It seems people are scared, which I understand from the experience of the knife in my throat.
Third comparison point: commercialism. Luxury cars, shopping malls, mansions with electric fences protecting all of the stuff people buy, bars with strict dress codes with names like fashionbar that hire extremely nice people to turn you away, cocktail happy hour, bed and breakfasts, vacations to Durban and Cape Town, shall I go on? This only highlights existing inequalities.
The pace in Joburg is overwhelming. And things are changing, with an unreal pace. South Africa is moving from a time of insecurity to one of prosperity and economic strength. I spoke with a white South African man today whose wife had recently been murdered. He described South Africa in the following way: "It's like Alice in Wonderland." South Africa and its epicenter, Joburg are such a strange and psychedelic mix of poverty and wealth, morality and depravity, black and white, that to begin to understand all the undercurrents will only get you drowned. A survival mechanism could be to know that "everything is changing" and that you should look out for the wormholes. The last ten years since the end of apartheid have forever altered the priorities, goals and hopes of the nation. People are trying to figure out if they should join the tea party and where they should sit.
I am up for the challenge of Joburg because anyone can recognize that this is an exciting place filled with promise. Most multinational companies operating in Africa have headquarters here. Businesses can rely on a rule of law (and a court system) that is unparalleled in Africa. Furthermore, I like Alice in Wonderland and the hallucinogenic way that time and space collide.
Fundraising challenges
Piggybacking on Nate's last blog: We are almost out of money. But don't lose all hope yet. I have been working on getting us sponsors every day. I don't have a computer, I can barely afford a phone but I am doing my best. As every professional fundraiser knows, finding money is not an overnight effort. It is about building relationships. Realistically, I don't want the boys to rely on the fact that I can secure enough funds ($15,000) in the next two or three weeks to complete the trip. Joburg is not like West and Central Africa, where you can waltz into a board room without an appointment. But I have a strategy and it will take some time to execute it. I have been chatting with various people, making calls incessantly and speaking with a few key people to build relationships. Hopefully, we can get sponsorship through these efforts. Hang in there!
Before embarking on this trip, I understood that basically, colonial history is often characterized by horrific and inexplicable acts. But I do not always know the details. Unfortunately, my history classes didn't prepare me well to understand African history and I have lacked facts about the time period. I can recite battles from world war two, but I don't always know where an African country is geographically (how embarrassing!). But these details are valuable. They can set the places I visit within a historical framework. Unfortunately, aside from the Lonely Planet summary in the guidebook, "King Leopolds Ghost" (which explained Congo's history) and the few casual historians that I have encountered, facts and details have rarely been available.
Maybe it is because the historical record is so sinister. Stories of oppression, forced labor and racial brutality are not recorded by the colonial powers. Even oral histories of Africans fade with the passing of time, with each generation the wounds of history heal. But seeing one film at the Gaborone Human Rights festival really opened my eyes and understanding of Namibian history. "Namibia and the Second Reich" narrated the story of the systematic genocide of the Herero people of Namibia by the German Second Reich in the first decades of the twentieth century.
The film itself was a History Channel style narration of the episode with dramatic reenactments and historical archive photographs. It was in the style of a war documentary... and this form of documentary always manages to bore me into changing the channel. However, having just visited Namibia, I was riveted. In Namibia, the wounds of the apartheid era are very obvious: the division of neighborhoods, the economic inequality between races and even the rage of some Namibians toward unjustified and justified enemies. But the wounds of the colonial era have all but healed: the consensus about the Germans is that they were fantastic colonialists (even the most avid nationalist freedom fighter that I spoke with attested to this). German tourists today find Namibia a favorite vacation spot in Africa.
The film relayed a forgotten past, one that seems buried by the magnitude of other atrocities that happened in the twentieth century. It told the story of the genocide of the Herero, a semi-nomadic people of the Kalahari region. In the early 1900's the colonial government made a decision to quell a rebellion by the Herero, who spoke up against the forced labor practices of the colonialists. They sought the help of the national government. The rebellion was heatedly debated in the halls of the Second Reich in Berlin. The newspapers screamed for protection to be sent down to save the lives of German colonists from the brutal hands of the savages.
In Germany, mass hysteria seemed to be interpreting an event that in reality, may have been manageable. The actual rebellion, according to local German representatives was localized and small. But Berlin decided to send down a special commander to systematically eradicate the entire tribe in retaliation. As the ships of cavalry German soldiers arrived, they were instructed to drive the Herero off their land. They were forced to walk east, east to the Kalahari desert, the largest desert on earth. Once they reached the edge of the desert, the Herero seemed to have little choice but to escape into the harsh desert. With little food and water, most of them died.
In the coming months, thousands of survivors were rounded up by the German cavalry into cattle carts and transported by train to Swakopmund, a port city along the Skeleton Coast. There, the commanders of the Second Reich ordered the building of the first concentration camps in history, within the city as well as on an island off the coast...
A searing comparison arises to events of thirty years later. The chief commanders in charge of the camps were later sanctioned to build and operate similar camps during the second world war. The methods they had perfected on the last remaining survivors of the Herero were used to commit later atrocities in Auschwitz and other camps.
The most forceful message of the movie was how little sympathetic awareness the genocide provoked back on the European continent. German military visitors to the camps in Namibia posed in photographs next to the 'savages' with apparent satisfaction. The pictures were kept in family albums because they weren't thought shameful. Who could care about a tribe in the Kalahari?
I admit that I had never heard of the Herero or the genocide before seeing this movie. But I have to wonder, in how many places that I have visited has there been a back story like this? History from the western perspective has a way of categorizing such events pretty low in the order of significance. I just wish I could know more about the places that I am traveling through.
I came to meet Eddy, Man of Action because of our shock (the one that broke into shreds of twisted metal in the middle of the Namib Desert). I returned to Windhoek with Mike to find a solution to our predicament. We found Eddy, who agreed to give me and the German welder, Holger a ride out 200 kilometers into the desert for the fee of $100. Holger originally agreed to work for free as long as we paid Eddy, Man of Action. I thought this was a sweet deal.
Eddy had been a freedom fighter for Namibia's SWAPO movement, a sometimes violent rebel group that formed the only organized form of resistance to the apartheid regime of South Africa in Southwest Africa (former Namibia). Eddy was born into a wealthy, upper-class family in Windhoek. His first house was in a neighborhood later reserved for whites. When the apartheid regime became worried that the instability and the expanding communist movement in Angola would permeate south to South Africa's borders, Pretoria decided on a policy of expansionism that would engulf the Southwest African state. Eddy at that time was a young boxer. He decided to join the freedom fighters resisting the South African forces in the Angolan bush.
The year he spent fighting against the South Africans with his troop of Namibian rebels was demanding. They had to survive off of the bush, dodging the better-equipped South Africans with minimal equipment. "It was a strategy of hit and run," he said. As night approached, his troop would surround the enemy installments and hit them with everything they had. Then they would run in different directions in the bush and hide until danger passed. While Southwest Africa was not able to stop the annexation of their state by South Africa, the Angolans were able to fight them off with help from SWAPO and the USSR. South African tanks still line the roadside in Angola, their empty hulls rusting away with each dry and wet season.
After the fighting ceased, Eddy returned to Windhoek to find apartheid had forever changed his world. All the blacks were rounded out of their houses and forced to live in a neighborhood outside of the city, a place they came to name Katutura which means "we don't want to stay here" in the local language. He was forced to leave his family's house that he had grown up in. The neighborhood was now reserved for whites only. But after his return from the war, Eddy continued to fight... in disguise. He became a championship boxer who stood undefeated for several years on the local circuit.
One day, he was confronted with four South African policemen who had been installed in Windhoek to ensure apartheid policies. After taking verbal abuse from one of them for minutes in defiance, the policeman started to beat him with his club. He looked up at the man and said: "Don't you fucking hit me again. If you hit me one more time, I am going to kill you!" The policeman didn't know that he was clubbing a championship fighter and hit him one more time. As promised, Eddy, Man of Action fought back with all the anger he felt. He sent the three other policemen of the squad running.
But Eddy’s fight didn't end there; he was persistent in offering his voice to the resistance against the regime and became one of the lead members of SWAPO. Pretty soon after that, the South African intellegenicia placed four mines around his house, where he lived with his wife and four children. A neighbor warned him and he was able to remove them without injury. But at this point, he decided to leave the country and go into exile.
For the next nine years, Eddy did not set foot in Southwest Africa. And while his exile was difficult to endure, he spent many years in Germany which he came to enjoy. He especially liked the relations he had with women from all over the world, white women with open minds and hearts, something that seemed impossible to do in Namibia. After watching the Berlin Wall fell in Germany in 1989, he decided that the tides of history were going to change for his home country also. He returned home to his wife and children.
Eddy's cousin ended up becoming the first President of newly independent Namibia in 1990. Eddy today is working as an entrepreneur; he introduces foreign investors to business opportunities in his country. He carries a book with the business cards of every Minister in government with pride. "These are all my friends," freedom fighters and resisters of apartheid that he fought beside.
The first time that he introduced himself to me, I thought he was pretentious. His anti-Americanism was also a little unsettling. He kept repeating that "Americans are enemies, I will never trust them" (this has to do with the war in Angola). But on the ride in and out of the desert with the new shock for the Stingray, I came to like that he calls himself "Eddy, Man of Action," because that's what he is. And, I taught him a new word on the trip: universal love. I asked him to give my three American friends a chance. After Nate explained that he was working to collapse the American media machine, Eddy genuinely exclaimed that he would fight beside him.
Eddy can offer you a tour of Namibia. He knows a lot about his country and will offer tourists a unique perspective of Southern African history as well as an insight into village life at his home of Okahao in the North. Eddy N Willibard, Man of Action, PO Box 7997, Katutura, Windhoek, Namibia, tel. 261449
I have made it my mission on this trip to delve into women's issues. However, throughout the trip, I have learned to be very sensitive about how I bring up gender issues with the people that I am speaking with. I often hold my tongue during interviews. Instead of asking whether some of the behaviors that men practice towards women should be challenged, I use neutral statements such as "It must be very difficult." I have chosen this approach because I do not want to alienate my interviewees with feminist rhetoric. It helps to be diplomatic, especially when your own point of view is labeled as extreme.
In Windhoek, all of this changed. Who knew that Namibia has some of the most progressive gender policy in Africa? I, for one, was surprised. To begin my research, I swung by the Finnish Embassy for advice. This is only the second country along our route where Finland has an embassy, so I decided to take advantage. My mother had recently sent me a tip that the Finnish government was very active in supporting HIV/AIDS programs in Southern Africa. Elise Heikkinen, the Program Officer for the embassy grant program, confirmed this and was able to give me some wonderful contacts with women who are running organizations working on gender equality. The two women I ended up speaking with were like a breath of fresh air.
Rosa Nemasis is a former Parliamentarian who had worked to pass legislation to further women’s legal rights in Namibia. She was an extremely amicable woman who had quit Parliament the year before and was now counseling victims of domestic violence (which is something she also did in her spare time during her time in government). Rosa was the first person I spoke with about apartheid. She had lived in Windhoek during the apartheid years and joined the ranks of the rebel group SWAPO. Once independence was won in 1990, she had high hopes for her government. But as she began work on gender equality and minority rights, she realized that her former party was not protecting the rights of all of its citizens. She decided to "do the unpopular thing" and become a member of the opposition party. Since then, she has fought incessantly for the rights of minority groups, such as gays and lesbians, and rastas. When in 2001 the President spoke out against rastas, she was shocked. "He just attacked these people, said that they should all be banished to the desert to die. So what did I do? I decided to grow dreadlocks."
Next, Mike and I spoke with Elizabeth !Khaxas, a writer and women's rights activist who runs writing workshops for women who want to express their stories, but do not have the education or opportunity to do so. While some of the stories she shared with me were heart-breaking, she told them with an honesty and candor that has been unparalleled on this trip. I laughed out loud as she told me: "Even today, women have to kneel to give their husband food. What does this practice say about our dignity? Kneeling down and worshipping men must be debated!" During both of these interviews, all I could think was: "This is exactly how I feel." I have rarely been able to relate so effortlessly.
During the last nine months of the trip, we have visited countries where women have few or no legal rights. This has caused a big strain in communicating (because of my own ideals and beliefs). When I have decided to speak from my own vantage point, I can expect unpleasant glances from the men who may be sitting around. Sometimes, these glances turn into remarks and impassioned speeches about how women are the weaker sex. It has been very tiring. But speaking with Rosa and Elizabeth, I feel like something has finally shifted. I feel absolutely refreshed. The mutual understanding in our conversations brings me new energy for my research in Southern Africa.
There hasn't been another border crossing during this trip, where one side differs so dramatically from another, as the one from Angola to Namibia. What made it even more striking for us was the fact that we had no idea what Namibia was like before we arrived. For some reason, none of us had brushed up on Namibian history (ie. read the Lonely Planet's history section, at least). We didn’t know that Namibia would be the most developed country so far along our route. On the Angola side, as we inched across the country at snail speed, we naively wondered whether there were going to be any supermarkets in Namibia that sold such rare items as tampons, dark chocolate and hot sauce. I never imagined that as I entered Namibia, I would be entering a place that looked exactly like America, more specifically, Idaho. The whole ordeal brought to mind a similar experience that I had about three years ago.
When I arrived to the States from Ghana three years ago, I went to visit my mother in Idaho. The whole experience was surreal. I arrived from the chaotic (but delightful and surprising) environment of Ghana, to one that I disliked. When I arrived, I remembered why I disliked the scenery so much: strip malls, straight roads, right angles, convenience stores, and Walmart. I remember how fragile I felt when I went to Walmart. I ended up crying in the parking lot, asking my mother between sobs why people think they need so much useless crap?
I was surprised by all of these feelings again in Namibia. All of a sudden, consumerism was everywhere. Commerce, wholesale, warehouses, buy, buy, buy. The shopping centers were of the exact same model as Anytown, America. People were walking around with the newest cellphones, shoes and Chinese plastic products. Prices for our most common purchases, like food and beverages, rose by 100%. Hotels refused to bargain on the price of a room. The roadside was no longer lined with friendly villages, but instead by barb wire fencing that indicated the presence of large-scale farms.
The most inexcusable part of our experience of coming to Namibia was that I was completely unprepared. At least when I arrived from Ghana, I had prepared for where I was going. But our immediate reaction to Namibia ended up predominantly negative. There is so little beauty in mediocrity and homogeneousness. All I could think was, "It is so ugly here." The thought of hopping the border back into Angola even crossed my mind (which, if you have read my previous blog, seemed like an impossible idea when I was in Angola).
Even arriving in Windhoek, to a backpackers lodge full of young, western tourists was disorienting. It took me a couple of days just to begin to speak with people. But slowly, my negative first impressions began to change. Speaking with Namibians themselves gave me a new understanding about the immense strides that this country has taken in the past 15 years.
The roads in
So each morning, we were compelled to wake up at dawn. We would wake up in our tents in different villages each day. Sleeping in villages was our best option for making it through the country in the least amount of time possible. We figured that bush camping was out of the question in
A few kilometers outside of the village, we would stop to use the bathroom. The villages we visited often didn't have facilities, so we would always opt for doing our business in the bush. But in
The roads were poorly maintained due to the forty year civil war that has made this country suffer more than any we have visited. Any new roads created during armistices had been destroyed by tanks during the new spurts of fighting. Even today, there are few passenger vehicles on the road because of their condition. The potholes in
Personally, I began to dread driving. The roads were too punishing. Parts of the car fell off, twisted and caved in each day. The floor was pushed up by giant rocks in the road. I began to fear that it would be on my watch that the car finally broke down and quit.
The villages we passed were poor. Supplies were hard to come by, markets scarce. The towns we drove through were like ghost towns. Businesses had folded. Buildings had collapsed. Houses shelled. Bullet holes in every government or administrative building. Bullet holes in houses. People living in half collapsed apartment buildings. But with the war over now for three years, the most hopeful residents had began to caulk and paint over these scars of the war. We passed many minefields along the way, some marked with signs and placards, others just with white flags. One time, we passed a sign that announced the site of a mass murder. The sign pronounced it the site of a genocide. Countless times, we passed destroyed hulls of tanks. Each sign and flag and tank was a grim reminder of the country’s past.
Taking all this in was straining. But apart from the difficult setting, we felt very welcomed by the people that we encountered. Each night as darkness fell, we would prepare to camp. We chose our villages by size, the smallest being the most preferable, as kids can often create mobs with their curiosity. Nate would approach the village chief to see if he understood Spanish. None of us speak Portuguese very well, so even the simple communication of requesting to camp was sometimes challenging. Nevertheless, we were always welcomed with a warmth and hospitality that has been unsurpassed on this trip. As we settled into cooking and the night’s chores, we would speak with the men and women of the villages in French, Spanish, hand gestures or a mixture of all. We would offer the chief a plate of food. We would listen to the chattering of the villagers, who made us feel welcome by keeping us company around us. Finally, we would settle into our tents to sleep. The next morning, we were up at dawn again to repeat the same routine.
Even though
There is a woman in
When Sylvie decided to come out to her community about her status, the decision was anything but easy. She had been approached by a local TV station to discuss her status on the air during a fundraising drive for HIV/AIDS organizations. She hesitated.
She decided to consult her family. While most of them were supportive of her, her father spoke out angrily against her choice to speak openly. While it broke her heart to do so, she decided that she must go against the wishes of her father.
The day of the broadcast, Sylvie felt sick to her stomach. She was nervous about who would see the show, whether people would approach her on the street, whether they would recognize her, whether they would shun her. She thought of her father. But then she decided: "I have to go ahead with this. If I don't do it, no one will. Sometimes you have to act in the way that you know is best."
For a week after the show, Sylvie was depressed. The decision to speak out hadn't been easy. Going on TV had been a traumatic experience. She didn't want to leave the house as a result of her fears of rejection from her community.
But eventually, with the help of her friends and family, she was able to carry on. And she realized that those people that still held unkind thoughts about her were unimportant to her anyway.
Today, Sylvie heads an organization that helps hundreds of AIDS orphans to get an education at the school that she operates. HIV positive people are hired as teachers. She helps young disadvantaged orphans to get training in the seamstressing trade. She gives widows of AIDS a roof over their head, and their dignity. Her life is selfless and she works hard. If there were ever a more worthy person to give assistance to, they would be difficult to find. If you are interested in making a donation to her, please read a proposal for her newest project. You can email me for a copy or wait for it to go on the site. The link will be on this page.
Arriving in
Once we were on the dock in
We arrived in
We ended up staying in a working class neighborhood next to the
Our new friends encouraged us all to dance and to feel at ease. Tcheques made sure that I didn't get trampled when the various gangs of
After the initial false start at the ferry, the warmth of our reception in
There are no condoms being sold in this village of 1500 people. Predictably, most of the people are children. Children flocking around the car to stare at the peculiar arrivals in the red car. Children staring at me sleeping in my tent. Children staring at me cooking pancakes and taking a poo. The chief asked me if I knew of an organization who would come to distribute condoms and to teach his villagers about safe sex. He lamented that the young girls were running off with just 'anybody.'
The chief of this village was a very kind man who let us camp on his yard while we waited for our tractor escort to pull a two wheel drive truck up a hill that its completely incompetent driver had managed to jack knife the truck on. We camped in Leketi for two days waiting for the tractor to arrive. We didn't really have a choice since the road would have been impassable alone.
The chief said his hospital had been washed away three years ago by heavy rains. Everyone we spoke to in the village lamented this tragedy. It seems that the government had once been able to open a hospital in this inaccessible and isolated place but that the recent war had made its repair impossible. The hospital would have to stay closed. Villagers would have to travel 100 kilometers to the nearest health center. The children being born were dying as quickly from curable diseases such as malaria. Rural health is simply too large of a goal for the besieged government. In this way, war affects every section of society, even if a battle is not being fought near.
Rural areas could seem safer than urban ones during the worst times of the war. But now after the fighting has finished, Leketi struggles even with basic necessities. Why? Because the road connecting it to the main highway hasn't been repaired in years (and certain two wheel drive vehicles have to be pulled 150 kilometers by a tractor to make it). The disrepair of the road drives the price of basic commodities up due to the cost of shipping. Leketi's only restaurant serves bushmeat caught from the surrounding forests and rotten eggs with sardines.
A woman in Africa… We are told by the media that African women have no rights, need empowerment, are underrepresented. But what does this actually mean? Can a Westerner truly understand the complex social and economic status of women in Africa? I would argue that yes, but one must be careful with absolute judgments.
Why, you ask? Take for example one European NGO in Ghana who opened a brand new high-tech women's resource center with fanfare. But nobody showed up to use it, certainly not any women. What were they missing? Did they not really understand the context? Perhaps not. Perhaps Ghanaian women are happy with the rights they have. Perhaps they think that Western women who come to tell them that they must be empowered are silly.
When I embarked on this trip, I wanted my work to highlight women's issues. But as I have come to find out, writing about women in Africa can be challenging for a Western feminist. I create injustice where sometimes there might not be. Sometimes, I don’t understand all the circumstances. I don't have all the same experiences. There are certain behaviors and attitudes that I react emotionally to that are really quite normal and accepted by local culture.
For example, in Libreville I was once again challenged to understand the behavior of a large cross-section of women whose experiences are echoed across the continent: young women who have sex for money. I am hesitant to write about them because I do not want to condemn behaviors that in reality, may not be all that complicated. But I will try to explain as sensitively as I can.
Today, Libreville is filled with amazing nightclubs full of gorgeous women. "The prettiest in all of Africa," I am told. Women flood into these nightclubs to dance. They dance with their friends or if they are alone, they dance with the mirrors. They wait for men to pick them up. They make love to their reflections. The men who frequent these expensive nightclubs are French legionaries and Lebanese business owners. For them, it is not too hard to pick one of these girls up.
While many of the women that I saw in these night clubs are in the commercial sex trade, some are not. Some are local girls who live at home with their families. But most of the girls who frequent these clubs do not have other jobs during the day. Yet, as young women, they want to buy a nice dress and new shoes. They decide that to have those things, they must find a man who will give them money to help them look good. They come to the nightclubs, wait for men to pick them up, dance with them at the club and in the bedroom and collect 5000 CFA of 'taxi money' the next day. They don’t hang their heads. In fact, they look like they have a great time.
But while I accept that these women are having a good time, I wonder whether they are actually free. Are these women making positive sexual and emotional decisions? If they had jobs and other means I would say that they were sexually free, that they were enjoying themselves and having fun. But because this is the primary way that these ladies make money, I cannot believe that they are free. Many of them are choosing to have sex because of economics. Many people would disagree with my interpretation. Some would even get angry at me for placing my Western value judgments on behavior that is seen as quite normal.
The thing is, most everywhere that we have traveled in Africa, it is common for there to be an exchange of money within relationships. Girls that do not receive money after sex with a partner will come to believe that they are being treated badly. So what is it about this normal practice that I find hard to swallow?
Even while these young ladies will act as if they are truly in love, of being happy with the relationships that they engage in, ask yourself this: what are her choices? Is she truly happy with the exchange? I take the more cynical view. There are simply not enough opportunities for young women to make money. Perhaps this way of earning a little cash is better than other ways. But for me, it is leaping to the wrong conclusions to think that it is adequate. It is true that she may spend the money she makes on self-indulgent things like new clothes, hair and makeup. But this does not mean that she is squandering the money she earns. It is only natural that in a business, you invest money into your assets.
When I have spoken with workers of non governmental organizations about the status of young women, they have insisted that they are a group who is extremely vulnerable to contract HIV/AIDS. It is because they are clandestine sex workers. Many are not insisting on protection because they want to appear faithful to their partners.
Even while I think that the practice of monetary exchange is hurtful to women in general (the men will always be seen as providers), I am trying to understand it. I think that to outright condemn this practice would lead me to completely miscontextualize the status of women in Africa. It is a common and accepted practice. It is even arguable that in the West, women receive gifts, dinners and sometimes even money in relationships. Should I accept that this is a cultural peculiarity that will not change? Should I accept that this is a gratifying way to make money? Should I accept that this practice is actually empowering to women who have no other means of earning income?
The more I think about it, the more I believe that accepting this behavior as a part of culture that should be respected as is, would be a greater wrong. It is not that having sex is harmful to young women (any woman can choose who she will or will not have sex with and under what circumstances). But relying on money that is exchanged during sex as a way to generate income is risky. What if the partner insists on unprotected sex? What about pregnancy? What about the future? Will these women still be doing this at 40? Of course not, they will have been replaced by younger, prettier girls. I have also been told that being labeled as one of these girls can be very damaging. Many African men that I have spoken to say that they consider the young women who frequent nightclubs as 'putes.'
I find it sad that many women from all over West and Central Africa flock to Libreville to chase a dream for a better life, because I think it would be very difficult to find it in these nightclubs. A woman in Cameroon told me a story of a friend who moved to Gabon in search of work. She had intended to trade goods and set up a little business. This friend had come back with no money, having prostituted herself in Libreville for two years. She was broke and depressed. She had not been able to save anything during her time in Gabon. Her community members knew that there are few options for work for young girls in a foreign country. Everyone guessed that she must have been having sex for money. If this is the fate of these young girls, I cannot believe it to be a happy one.
From the moment we arrived in Douala, tired from the long dusty road and the infuriating police check points during which the Stingray and its passangers mired in a perpetual series of temper tantrums, we knew everything was going to be OK. This is because Francois Happi, a wonderful stranger, a friend of a friend decided to take us under his generous wing and meet us at the city’s entrance. We waited until the cursory greetings and formalities were done with (about two minutes) and then launched into an illustration of our ginormous task list of car repairs, the need to meet with HIV/AIDS organizations, how much we needed internet café and telephone communications and our never ending banking problems. Francois merely said: “No problem. I will help you do all of those. I am on vacation for the next week. I will arrange everything.” Seriously?
Francois did not let us down. True to his word, we immediately sped off to a party being thrown for people living with HIV at the SWAA community center and clinic. Our faces red from dust and slick with sweat from the outrageous humidity that is characteristic of Douala, we crashed the party and were soon sipping on our favorite drink, Pamplemousse (grapefruit juice) and talking to the women who ran the organization.
Francois made everything this easy. He drove us around town ceaselessly to cross items off our task list. The car repairs were the hardest to solve. The repairs turned into a week-long ordeal during which Francois’ trusted mechanic scratched his head and insisted that the car was fine while we tried to explain in broken French how it was not acting ordinarily. Eventually with patience and a lot of test runs, the Stingray decided to expose its secret ailment (which turned out to be small) and be cured by the mechanic’s trusty hands.
Francois also set us up to speak with an organization who is working on providing much needed HIV education and awareness projects to the people of Douala. SUNAIDS, an organization run almost entirely by people living with HIV had been solicited by Douala prison’s doctor to coordinate HIV education and testing of inmates. We were hosted for a remarkable visit to the prison, marking the first time that I had set foot in a prison in Africa.
My work within the jail system in San Francisco prepared me for what we encountered. As Nate and I walked through the prison gates and into the courtyard which housed at least 800 prisoners, I did not feel the least bit nervous despite recognizing that the set up here would be considered a sizeable security risk in the States. The female guard told us to stay close as we walked across the yard of inmates towards the prison’s clinic. Hundreds of eyes followed. In front of the clinic was a man who had a serious infectious disease on almost half of his body. He lay in the shade and did not look up.
The prison doctor (the only one for the city and the only doctor enlisted to provide the entire state’s prisoners with HIV education) was an amicable man who talked about his work with a sense of justified magnitude that I admired. Compared with San Francisco whose jail conditions are exponentially better, the work that this doctor had cut out for him was substantial. With a limited budget for medicines, he spent his days in a perpetual state of frustration, drawing on a strength and conviction that I have previously only ascribed to missionaries.
I had anticipated that the inmates would be indifferent about knowing their HIV status. But upon spending five minutes conversing with a group of four peer educators that had were trained to provide counseling and education to the entire prison population, I began to understand that the program was working exceptionally well. The peer educators ran weekly workshops and periodic sensitizations for the whole prison about HIV. There were no other services or programs in the prison, except for a religious service run by a local church. As a result of these efforts, the prisoners were extremely enthusiastic about getting tested. The numbers of tests performed were staggering. Each week, fifty inmates lined up to complete the tests, fifty being the number of tests available through the grant. I thought this was very impressive.
Archives for Tuuli's Blog:
July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006