Chatting with Feminists in Windhoek

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.
* posted by Tuuli at 7:28 AM  —  2 comments

Coming to Namibia

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.
* posted by Tuuli at 7:19 AM  —  1 comments

Angola

The roads in Angola are strenuous. As we planned our itinerary for the fifteen day tourist visa we had purchased in DRC, we could never have expected that the trip would be so difficult. After the first few days of driving at 10 kilometers an hour, we realized that we had to continue driving across the country during each hour of daylight available. We heard reports from other travelers about pot holes, corrupt police and landmines. Fifteen days seemed like too short of a time to cross the country. Angola is huge. We counted the kilometers between the northern border post and the southern entry point into Namibia… 1800. The thirteen days we ended up spending in Angola were like an endless race against time. I was in a constant state of exhaustion. We were constantly shocked by the deterioration of the roads, which became horrendous condition in the middle of the country. If we didn't drive all day, every day, we would have overstayed our visa in the country. And the officials at the two Angloan embassies in Gabon and DRC that we had visited made us fear the bureaucratic nightmare of a visa extension.

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 Angolabecause of the instability of the country and the danger of landmines. Besides, we couldn't have planned to stay in certain cities because we could never have calculated the time that it would take to get there. The road kept throwing us curveballs that way. We had no idea how long each stretch of road would take us. Sometimes, we would drive only 100 kilometers a day. But thankfully, each village we stopped in showed us great hospitality by allowing us to set up our tents under the watchful eye of the chief. Each day that we woke up, someone would cook breakfast while the others packed the car, or fetched the water, or did the dishes. We would take a photo with the chief and get on the road.

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 Angola, where hundreds of people are killed every year by landmines, we often couldn't wander very far from the road. It is really very embarrassing to be surprised by villagers walking to their fields... After this morning ritual was finished, we would begin the drive. We took turns and switched off driving two or three times a day. Three or four hours of driving these roads and we would start to experience vertigo and exhaustion.

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 Angola are the worst we have seen, the sharp edges of the gaps in the asphalt punished our tires, tearing them to shreds. Being the rainy season, rivers had formed down the middle of the road, creating canyons that had the potential to break our axle with the slightest miscalculation. Driving the sides of the road was risky because if we slipped off, we could accidentally slip into a mine field.

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.

Angolahas a dark past. The people have been forced to be resilient. They are survivors. Imagine forty years of civil war. This is one of the only places in the world where the cold war got hot, and stayed that way until the cold war became irrelavant. Imagine Cuban, American and South African forces fighting over ideology on your soil. Communism, capitalism, apartheid and expansionism. Imagine trying to choose a side. Imagine weapons pouring in to encourage the murder of your countrymen. Imagine children picking them up. Imagine walking through a field while farming and having your leg blown off. The civil war ended with the death of the rebel leader Jonas Sabimbi. He had once been very good friends with Ronald Reagan, who had funded his movement against the establishment of a communist state. He became a very sick man with a lust for power so great that he prolonged the peace process in Angola for another fifteen years after the cold war ended.

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 Angola was difficult to travel as a tourist, it is home to many hopeful people. Not one person complained to us of their poverty, few begged us for money and assistance. On the contrary, Angolans are citizens of a brand new land that will hopefully find the lasting peace they have earned through countless years of struggle against slavery, colonial oppression and ideological warfare. The name of one village that we stayed in captures this hope vividly with its name: Terra Nueva (New Land).

* posted by Tuuli at 8:20 AM  —  2 comments

Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo

There is a woman in Kinshasa who really made an impact on me. She works for a small non governmental organization providing young people, mostly orphans of AIDS with education, training opportunities and care. She is HIV positive.

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.

* posted by Tuuli at 8:11 AM  —  0 comments

Kinshasa, The Democratic Republic of Congo

Arriving in Kinshasa on the morning ferry from Brazzaville across the Congo River was one of the most nerve-wracking experiences of the trip. The border and ferry formalities turned out to be shady and corrupt. After paying six taxes for our persons and our car, the tickets for the boat, the taxes for the port and some other tax we were told to by the Mayor's Department, we boarded the boat a little defeated. Arguing and discussion hadn't helped. We had heard the ferry also was riddled with thieves. Many people wanted to sit on our car, knock on it, talk to us through the windows. I tried to smile to at least the two police officers on the ferry and answer their questions. Thankfully, they took a liking to us and shoved people off of the car with beating sticks.

Once we were on the dock in Kinshasa, we could never have expected what would lie ahead. Immigration and customs turned out to be a piece of cake. It was the Department of Public Health that would put us in our place. It turns out that the Stingray was infected with microbes. Oh, no, you can't see them… they are microbes… invisible. The disinfection cost us $20 after bargaining. The most humiliating part was when some small boys started to point at us and accuse us of bringing diseases into their country.

We arrived in Kinshasa a little lost. Our guidebook was from the year 1989 (thanks, Connie for finding it in a garage sale in San Francisco!). While the book was able to orient us a little on facts about the city (watch your back, be careful of police and don't carry anything valuable), hotel information was assuredly outdated. As we were all concerned about safety and finding accommodation blind, Nate and Sean decided to use their sway as Americans to request information from the US Embassy. While I was waiting outside by the car, an old man carrying a wooden carving approached me. I told him that my grandfather also worked with wood. This conversation turned out to be gold. The guys returned with a list of expensive hotels, so the old man decided that he would escort us to an affordable hotel he knew about 30 minutes away from the hustle of downtown.

We ended up staying in a working class neighborhood next to the University of Kinshasa. We were lucky enough to meet some wonderful guides in the neighborhood to show us around. The highlight was undoubtedly Saturday night when a journalist named Tcheques and his two friends took us to an outdoor concert. While the music was mediocre, the crowd was definitely out for a good time. Everyone was dancing and singing along to the music. I asked Tcheques why there were so few women in the crowd. To this he replied: "We cannot let our sisters come out alone, it is not acceptable." Tcheques said that he is the only person who is allowed to take his own younger sisters out to events such as this one. I felt a little depressed by this thought. I would be in such trouble if I were born in Kinshasa... I think that I would disobey my family and go to concerts such as this one.

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 Kinshasa made their exits through the crowd. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me behind his back as the crowd separated like spooked goats out of the way of the Red Army, Dragons and CIA. While these were tense moments, I felt confident that as locals, our new friends had an accurate gauge of the security of the crowd. The final reassurance of this fact was given when a group of drunk men surrounded us and they decided that it was time to leave.

After the initial false start at the ferry, the warmth of our reception in Kinshasa was heart-warming. We had plenty of home cooked meals from Mama Tcheques. The Director of a local broadcasting station, Mr. Serge, assured that we completed kick ass research on AIDS. One of his journalists, Nelly, accompanied us on rounds of interviews. Cops rehabilitated their evil ways after hanging out with us. Armand, a worker at our hotel, showed us good cheap food options and took us on a tour of the neighborhood. A wedding party invited us to dance with the bride and groom for good luck. Overall, my sense of security was high. This is because I always felt taken care of. There were really only a few times that we were ever alone.

* posted by Tuuli at 6:13 AM  —  1 comments