Hilde's world

Kigoma High Street

2008-06-16T11:39:00.000-07:00

Kigoma main street, as seen from the window in the government office where I got my licence.

Dodging the police

2008-02-12T09:04:00.000-08:00

I have every intention of avoiding the police. But they’re not easy men to dodge.

It all started when I drove to the Kigoma police station to apply for a licence. Yes, drove. And went in and asked to see Big-Bellied Traffic Police Officer to explain to him that I had no licence whatsoever with me, not Norwegian, not international, nothing, but had been issued a licence at that very police station ten years ago. He helpfully explained the procedure to get a new one and asked for my number and suggested we have a drink at a bar in town, did I like ugali etc. So I had to smile and do the fake-number trick and leave without him seeing me driving, and come back on someone else’s shift to ask the same question. The next time I met the Bigger-Bellied Chief Traffic Police Officer(BBCTPO), and all he seemed to want in return for a licence was the usual small talk. Until I came to pick it up a week later, and he asked when I would be back to see him and if I wanted to go for a drink. Of course I would come visit as soon as I was back from Ilagala, and I very much liked ugali.

In the meantime, driving without a licence, I did some very successful police-dodging: U-turns, subterfuges, smiling, smiling, smiling …. I even hired an out-of-work taxi driver for the longest trips. But then bang! One day they stopped us. A skinny, bleached-face woman in her blue skirt, blouse and cap. It turns out she knows the driver.
“Yes! You are carrying people! That’s an offence.”
I’m in the back seat and let my assistant and the driver in the front do the initial kow-towing. But it seems she’s skipping the pleasantries and has already started writing “Name of the accused…. Age….. Tribe….”in her book.
Carrying people? I think to myself as I see the usual overloaded pick-ups whizzing past, with chickens holding on by their beaks and kids clinging on from the outside. I have allowed three women who asked for a lift to sit inside the pickup with their bundles of cloth. Is a car not allowed to carry people?
“Now, offence number two: where is your insurance sticker?”
My assistant points to the sticker in the window.
“Your vehicle registration book! You are not carrying it in the car. Second offence! And also you have no emergency triangle. Third offence!”
We dig out the emergency triangle and show it to her, but she’s on a roll: “Too late!” Also your reflectors are very old: Fourth offence.”
I’m waiting to explode at her till she’s had her notepad-filling fix, but now even the driver is exasperated:
“Is it all you ever do every day, wait for me to pass? Ok, stop me one day, but the next day stop someone else! This thing of, of - always stopping the same person…!”

Apparently what one should do in this case is insist on going to the police station so as to get a receipt for the fine. This gives them some juggling work come audit time. But when we got there the guy on duty recognised me as the good friend of BBCTPO, gave me his number for me to call, and promptly tore up the charges against us. Thus instead of 40,000 shillings, it cost me more fawning and another promise of a date. Or, as all my fellow-passengers explained to me, they realised they had made a mistake. They send out their underlings to the Checkpoints, aka Highway Robbery Sites, to collect money from people. Like Mafia bosses they sit at the station and wait for the loot to be brought in. Then – oops! – the underlings made a mistake. They brought in the wrong one, they tried to rob one of their friends. Big faux pas, bad strategy, could become an incident. If they had fined me, they would have been reprimanded as clumsy and tactless. But not as corrupt. Robbing people is their job, robbing the wrong people is not.

So that was police encounter number one. After that I heard the skinny lady who stopped us is HIV positive. It might be true since police are usually the epitome of ‘watumbo’ (big-bellied power-holders in Swahili) and that would explain her skinnyness. Does her positive status change things………?

Police encounter number two

Driving back into town from the villages, I am stopped once again. At the traffic police checkpoint. You’d never guess there are these many traffic security checkpoints when you look at what goes on on these roads. Anyway, the guy stops us. Signals for us to pull over for a check.
And gets in the car.
“Don’t worry, you are fine. I just need a lift into town. Let’s go.”
???!!!
Ok everyone knows they do this. Fewer people know it’s a criminal offence, but still, it’s no skin off my nose. But honestly! I think: The nerve! And no-one to call them on it. He does it because most people, ordinary people, are powerless to say no, would never dare to say no. Or maybe because only an idiot would say no?
Idiot is usually my call. But everyone else in the car wants the No Trouble option. So I compromise. I smile like an idiot. Smile with my mouth, my eyes, my whole face, turn around and look at him and say I ‘m very sorry, I would love to help, but I cannot, I simply cannot (siwezi kabisa) and start moving the car to discourage him from climbing in through the door he has opened uninvited.

I drive back to town in silence as all the Tanzanian passengers ponder over what I assume they see as my unnecessary rudeness and hankering after confrontations, ponderings I have no wish to confront them about.

Police encounter number three

My mum is an expert. The fundi.

We are stopped on the way to Jomo Kenyatta airport. 2 minutes before latest baggage drop-off time. I have a fantastic ability to be late for every plane I ever catch, and this is no exception. My mother is driving and she’s left her driving licence at home. Moreover, I’m in the back seat without a seatbelt. Two offences, real ones. He has the law on his side, we have time against us, and he knows his game. Ok, he says, she can go back to the police station to pay after having dropped me off, but it has to be at one specific police station, and names the police station of an area of Nairobi where many better-off residents are afraid to go. Moreover, these are riot days …..

But he hasn’t reckoned with my mum. Unruffled she takes down the name of the satation and asks some location questions to suggest she knows exactly where it is. She’ll go straightaway, she says, and really she is so sorry for our offences: “See this girl, she is my last-born, she is my smallest, and she is flying now to Ulaya (Europe) all alone. So we are almost at the airport and we decided to pray for her. You know, she will be living all alone, and I was praying that she would be safe, that things will go well for her… So she took off her seatbelt to be able to lean forward to pray, and then we saw you. She has been working in Tanzania you know, and we drove from there yesterday in this car. So yesterday, I was driving in the car, with this bag with my Tanzanian money, and my Tanzanian licence – you see? – and we arrived late last night. Then, this morning, we got in the car to drive to the airport, and now I see- kumbe! I still have my Tanzanian bag! No Kenyan licence! So I’m sorry. We will go straight to this police station to pay. Thank you.”
The smooth police officer is disarmed. Of course he still plays the next step of the game (ok I forgive you, you can just pay 200 Ksh here now instead of going to the staion to pay more), but his heart is no longer in it and when she says her usual ‘no, I cannot do things like that, I feel bad inside if I pay like that, I want this country to do well, to endelea’, he’s already decided to let us go.

After all, he got the wrong people. My mother didn’t tell a single lie. She just overwhelmed him by our common humanity. He stopped the wrong people. He stopped people who were just like him.

Plane conversation

2008-02-06T20:13:00.000-08:00

Fat man in Armani suit, blubber spilling over the armrests : “Ah! Kigoma! Finally we are going back!”
Stewardess says nothing, fastens her seatbelt after giving the security demo.
Fat man: “You don’t like Kigoma?”
Stewardess : “Mmm”
Fat man: “So you don’t like Kigoma – where are you from?”
Stewardess:” Arusha.”
Fat man: “Arusha! All of you people you like Arusha. Tell me, what does Arusha have that Kigoma doesn’t have? “

The Precision Air flight to Kigoma was packed and I got the back-to-front seat next to the stewardess. She was pretty and the men sitting opposite her were watumbos – rich men who show their wealth by the size of their bellies (literally ‘bellied people’). One of them fixed his eyes into a lover’s proprietary gaze on her which would last for the duration of the trip. In other words, I had a front-row seat for some full-on flirtatious (or sexually harassing?) banter. This guy was ready to show his rhetorical muscles. Everyone prefers Arusha to Kigoma. Arusha is where the big bucks come in, where all the good schools are, Arusha is just like Europe, Tanzanians have told me in other parts of the country. Kigoma is Siberia for civil servants – the posting nobody wants. To argue for Kigoma over Arusha is to take on a devil’s advocate’s role so ludicrous it displays not only eloquence but humour. Tanzanian flirtatious banter at its best.

Stewardess: “Arusha has better climate. The soil is more fertile. You can grow many things.“
Fat man, poker-faced : “Oh. I see. Are you a farmer?”
Stewardess smiles – gives him the point. Hearty laughter all the way back to row 3.
Stewardess: “But for tourism. Not just farming. Also for tourism Arusha is good. What is there in Kigoma? Nothing!”
Fat man: “Tourism! Yes, the tourists from these cold countries, they like Arusha! But where do the rich tourists come from now int eh future ? From hot countries! From Qatar! The rich tourists now from the Middle East! Will they like this cold Arusha climate? They will freeze! “
Guffaws even from row 4 now. The guy himself is from Moshi, just near Arusha, and even I can’t help laughing.
Fat man to me: “And you? You think Arusha is better?”
Me: “Well, I was in Arusha and I left to go to Kigoma.”
More laughter: the plot thickens! Fat man’s neighbour’s laughter is incredulous! The way this conversation is going! So far he’s been delighted by Fat man’s sheer genius in finding arguments for the inarguable: Kigoma over Arusha! And now an mzungu leaving Arusha to go to Kigoma! What a tickle!
Stewardess: “Then you also have something to add!”
Me (passing the baton to the star, unsure I can rise to the occasion) to fat man: “So why do you think life is better in Kigoma?”
Fat Man:” Everything is cheap! And you can do business! In Kigoma, you have everything. You have the lake, you have the borders….”
Me:”… you have the immigration officials…”
I did it. Shrieks of laughter.
And so it went on. How we had fun on the way from Dar to Kigoma. The passengers in the front half of the plane were thrilled, delighted, tickled to death by these straight-out ludicrous arguments being made with such dexterity, their laughter like the applause for a gymnast or magician who does the undo-able. Kigoma over Arusha! Hah!

Imagine if I’d told the watumbo the truth. That honestly, seriously, I’d take Kigoma over Arusha any day.

Nairobi traffic conversation

2008-01-07T09:11:00.000-08:00

"So who did you vote for?" I asked Patrick, who picked me up at the airport. He had just been telling me how things had cooled down here in Nairobi now. Schools haven't opened yet but businesses have at least, and it's safe to drive through town. Last week was - noisy is the understating adjective so many people are leaving it at. It's kind of a misleading term, so I'm guessing it's chosen for that polite small-talk neutrality that enables people to talk about it without plunging the conversation into the controversy that left 500+ dead in only a couple of days. So perhaps it's bad form for me to be asking like this?

But Patrick just smiles wryly : "The one who won, of course."
I try to match his smile : " So who won?"
We're passing Uhuru Park, where Raila Odinga had planned his Million-Man Rally on Thursday as part of his challenge to Kibaki's claim that he'd won. As it turned out nobody made it through the Special Forces' teargas and harsher weapons. It's still a no-go area guarded by uniformed men with guns who look back at me sternly.

"Our President. Kibaki." (He doesn't have to add 'of course'. His tone says it. But is smile knows the humour in it.) I probe a little and he explains that Kibaki got economic growth up by 7% whilst he was in office. So he knows how to run a country.

An incredible sight comes towards us. A HUGE car. Quadruple-size. Flying. No, hovering. Like the angel of cars presiding over all the matatus and worn-down peugeots struggling through the Nairobi traffic, like a car deity come down to us from heaven.

It's a Hummer billboard. A huge, hovering Hummer. Like Odinga's infamous Hummer, that's come to epitomise his ostentatious displays of wealth.

"Who is richer, Odinga or Kibaki?"
"Of course Kibaki is richer! How can he not be rich? He has been in government for so long! He must be rich."
"So he became rich from working in government?"
"Of course! How can he not be rich?"

We pass by the Heavenly Hummer and there are a few tattered-looking old men gathered underneath the billboard. It seems to me that being in government is supposed to get you rich, and this is a good thing. But then we got to talking about other things.

I'm glad to finally be on my way back to work. And also it's nice to see that the 'noise' seems to have died down. It's kind of frightening how power-seekers can incite young men in poor areas to violence - only briefly in Kenya thank God, but so devastatingly elsewhere. Yesterday my sister read me some Langston Hughes (a poet she likes) and I was struck by the generality of the phenomenon:

Let us kill off youth
For the sake of truth.
We who are old know what truth is --
Truth is a bundle of vicious lies
Tied together and sterilized --
A war-makers' bait for unwise youth
To kill off each other
For the sake of
Truth.

Democracy & Kenya

2008-01-04T02:22:00.000-08:00

An excerpt I liked from

Democracy on trial: Kenya elections by Mukoma Wa Ngugi

Full article at http://blogs.independent.co.uk/openhouse/2008/01/kenyas-nightmar.html

Toward a solution, Kenyans should realize that something beautiful didhappen during this election. Most of the big men of Kenyan politics werevoted out of Parliament and hence out of office. Even the sons of formerdictator Moi did not win seats in Parliament. There seemed to be a beliefthat voting was a way of talking back the Kenyan political elite, and thatdemocracy could be made to work for the majority poor. This is the flamethat we must not let die.

To nurture this flame, a recount of the votes in a transparent manner is necessary. This, no matter what one thinks of Raila or Kibaki, or whetherone thinks the elections were fair or not, should be the meeting ground of all those concerned about the future, immediate and long term, of Kenya.

If the votes can be recounted in full transparency, this election will notthen become the death of Kenyan democracy but rather a test along the wayto a democracy with real content – the content of security, equality andjustice for Kenya’s majority poor.

Services offered

2008-01-04T01:31:00.000-08:00

Boxing Day is no day to read serious news so on reading the papers I stuck to the classifieds. Since then I've developed a taste for the classifieds in Zambian papers. They remind me of Alexander McCall-Smith's Botswana (of First Ladies' Detective Agency fame), totally unreal for sure but SO amiable. So, under The Post's Classifieds on December 26th, 2007, after the baby photos, Wedding dresses, Lost & Found, For Rent, For Sale, Wanted, and just before the Obituaries, is a the category 'Herbal Remedies'. Here's one of the half-dozen ads I found in this section:

Musango situated at Soweto Market opposite Mukupa Guesthouse – call: 0977 570395 . Email: mmusango yahoo.com.

To have more customers in your business, to recover stolen property, all venereal diseases to be cured in one week, grades 7, 9, 12 college and University of Zambia passing exams, warmth and dryness in women, best mutoto for men, solve marital problems, job seekers, bring your application we post it for you. Court cases, infertility, swellings and stomach, TB, diabetes, asthma, headache and backache, love potion between woman & man forever. Runaway husband / girlfriend/ wife/ fiancé if you want to win in sport, gambling, how to get rich using your spirits experience within a week. If you want to get married to man of your choice, Manhood enlargement, NB Love information the above address. SB08379-24-27

#&%!!!! Kenyan NONelections

2008-01-03T01:34:00.000-08:00

(venting some steam!)

The unrest in Kenya has extended my holidays, and so I should be grateful. Like I was at 16 during the Molo ethnic clashes, when my boarding school postponed the semester until further notice because the stables were burning. That u-turn on the way to the airport was every student's dream come true.

But now I'm just p#%&ed off. Not that I don't find both candidates creepy. But somehow I just think people should get to choose their own leaders. Ordinary Kenyans have gone to the polls to say who they trust to make decisions about their country, and with all this noise nobody can hear what they said or even seems to care. BBC World Service, the best of the mediocrity that passes for international news, talks of Mwal Kibaki and Moi Kibaki, Kah-bera slums, calls the party who won the parliamentary majority for 'the opposition', and mixes Luo with Kalenjin with Kikuyu as they tell the world what is happening. Election observers can't quite sink to the level of denying the blatant rigging on both sides by rubber-stamping it 'free & fair', but what the heck, who do they think they're fooling? The international community doesn't give a shit about democracy in Africa. Given the choice between stability and people getting to choose their own government... My bet is everyone will stand way back until either Kibaki's forces have either teargassed, shot or beaten people off the streets (ie delivered stability) or until some deal has been brokered between the 2 factions. And that, not the preferences of the ordinary people whose country it actually is, will decide who gets to pillage the coffers next.

Hurrah democracy. Bravo the Free World. And all the other Cold War slogans.

Zambia

2007-12-31T02:22:00.000-08:00

Family tradition has it we all meet for Christmas, and this year it's in Zambia. My sister just moved here a few months ago. I'm not sure if she actually invited us all to descend on her only 2 days after she and her husband moved into their new unfurnished home here, but with the way the Kenyan elections turned out, we're all quite glad we opted for Lusaka instead of our parents' place in Nairobi. I'm changing my return ticket to Nairobi today, since there were fresh dead bodies on the streets this morning and people are advised to stay indoors.

ANYWAY.. Zambia is interesting. People who lived in Zimbabwe before say that Zambia is the way Zim was 10-15 years ago, and Zim is the way Zambia was 10-15 years ago. With things actually working etc. Since I'm kind of nostalgic about the time I grew up in Zim, I kind of like Zambia.

Though what I actually know about the place is pretty limited:

My sister says she's seen more female drivers, including truck drivers and taxi drivers, here than any other African capital she's lived in. Interesting.

An economist from Lund university I met in Arusha says she's studying inequality and that Zambia is the most unequal society in Africa. Though I found that a bit strange at the time, and even stranger now that I'm here. On further investigation I found that at least 50 nations have been claimed to be the most unequal country in the world, and it all depends on how you calculate the Gini coefficient. Poverty seems pretty average by African standards, and it's hard to see who those super-rich people would be, compared to for example Namibia where people have private jets and all that. Intriguing.

Bars and Restaurants serve shandy. Rock Shandy and Malawi Shandy. Important.

Idd and other December events

2007-12-19T03:53:00.000-08:00

December. Idd ul Hajj for Moslems, Christmas and confirmations for Christians. Increased expenditures for everyone. In this predominantly Christian region, it’s the month of Christmas, confirmations, and crime.

Just like for Idd, everyone needs new clothes for Christmas. But before Christmas come the Barikio – the confirmation season. I had no idea this was so big here. Like in Norway, protestant confirmations have very little to do with the original idea of confirmation - a child learning about the faith and then taking an independent decision to follow it – thus ‘confirming’ their adherence to the faith they were baptised into. Polls of Norwegian teenagers getting confirmed usually show that the main motivation is tradition plus the presents they get. Here it seems to be a kind of ‘rite of passage’ for both the family and the child. The child has become an ‘spiritual adult’ as it’s been said at the ceremonies I’ve attended, and the family is clearly happy to show that they have succeeded, that they've reached this far, that they can throw a party and serve up an entire goat, crates of soda and piles of rice, that their kid has turned out well and is going on to secondary school.

It is quite costly for ordinary people. I know because I’ve helped finance some. Including the one that these pictures are of, which was really quite a party. The confirmed boy was placed on a podium draped with shiny white satin and decorated with Fanta, Coke and ribbons, until the ‘goat cake’ ceremony when he descended to feed his godparents and parents in turn with the first carvings of roasted goat.

So they say there’s always more theft in December. Last week a thief in the area I live was killed by a mob. Mob killing are on the increase in the area according to human rights monitors, and I’ve heard quite a few stories recently. It used to be more of an urban thing, and the place I live is rural. But two weeks ago they tyred a guy at nearby town Usa River one evening – apparently he’d been caught by the police but got away and people were just fed up with him. The next morning his body was still burning. This time some people were shouting to get a tyre and some petrol, but then others shouted it was a waste of time and just hacked him to death with machetes instead. It’s one of the things I ask people about, what they think of these ‘mwizi!’ killings, and so I found it interesting.

Ethnocentrism

2007-12-15T23:20:00.000-08:00

Afew days ago I spent some hours at a village school waiting for my respondents to turn up. I noticed this map painted on one of the walls outside, next to a diagram of the inner ear. I kind of liked the way for once it was the Africa part that was drawn in great detail, and the other continents that were neglected. Usually it's the other way round: Time and again while looking for soem African country in an atlas, I've had to flip through pages and pages on the internal states of certain Western countries, before finding that the country I was looking for had disappeared into the mid-page fold of the one page to which the entire continent of Africa had been relegated.

Christmas shopping!

2007-12-14T10:02:00.000-08:00

A funeral cancelled my the afternoon's focus group yesterday, so I went into town to have lunch with a friend and spend the afternoon Christmas shopping. Kind of fun! We went to The Blue Heron, a leisurely cafe-boutique housed in an stately 1950s bungalow and pretty much overflowing with pretty things made locally.

I don't know many shop-owners, so I get a small kick out of the fact that I know this one from school. Though I was pretty much constantly intimidated by her in those IB days, since she looked like Claudia Schiffer and was brilliant at everything I was not. I think we all knew someone like that in school! Anyway, it was fun to see this beautiful shop she's made. Also my old classmate N. helps out there when she's not busy partying or dealing her Tanzanites - she's this incredibly vivacious Goan girl and it was fun to see her with her smile just as wide and her nails as long as they were in school.

Jurassic park vs. Paradise

2007-12-13T09:06:00.000-08:00

I live in an incredibly beautiful place.
Right next to a river with a thick forest of trees so big I'm in awe. My closest neighbours are a horde of colobus monkeys and at least 30 silvery-cheeked hornbills. A friend always tells me I live in Paradise. I sort of agree: it's beautiful! But not half as uneventful and predictable as Paradise.

You sort of think of paradisiac nature as quiet - but thses guys are noisy! Once in a while the colobus monkeys engage in some serious logging, felling whole branches at a time, making it difficult even to have a conversation. And the whirr of this crazy-looking bird's gigantic wings makes you think there's a flying dinosaur right above you, ready to swoop you up in his claws. Not to mention the absurd sound of his crow - lika an annoying old woman croaking into a megaphone and set to high speed. Incredible. And much more comical and invigorating than a peaceful, predictable paradise.

Incidentally, an elderly man told me the local fable about the hornbill. The moral of it is, he said, when you have something good, don't try to 'shape' it too much, or you will spoil it. The mother of the hornbill, or Hondohondo as it is in Swahili, wanted to get his bill just right, and then she 'overshaped' it.

Images of leadership

2007-12-12T07:45:00.000-08:00

Whilst sitting in the Oldonyosapuk Village Office last week, where I was to interview people about their ideas about power and leadership, I couldn't help but notice the fabulous gender imagery of this calendar on the wall.

Great Christian Leaders, each with a - (whatsitcalled?) - microphone, looking determined and strong and zealous in their suits. And then women as well of course, one smiling affably (without a - um - microphone) , and then as a group, less than half the size of the men, singing. So I thought I'd post it here, just cos I found it funny.

Prudence.

2007-12-07T22:09:00.000-08:00

Is it prudent to blog pre-coffee ruminations? You know, the slow-motion thoughts you have before your brain kicks in the morning? Well, here’s risking it:

Because the obvious irony of an issue I mentioned in the previous post – of giving in to the inhibiting ‘you shouldn’t walk here’ mantra – just dawned on me. That this is actually pretty much connected with the stuff I’m researching.

Not being able to walk that stretch is annoying: it inhibits my freedom of movement . Although I’m a woman of extraordinary economic means and can therefore call a taxi, having to organise transport or walking company every single %&dy time I need to leave my home is not as simple as just picking up the phone. Sometimes the network is down, sometimes my battery is out and there’s no power, sometimes I’ve run out of phone credit and no way to top up unless I get to a shop, which means calling a taxi, which I can’t because – you guessed it! – I have no credit. Not to mention when the taxi guy doesn’t answer because his battery is flat, or his network is down. So when any of the above happens, I feel like this ‘you’ll get mugged’ advice has me tied within a certain radius to the kitchen sink. How the heck is a single woman ever supposed to get out and DO things?!

So I’m reminded of the discussion the focus groups have had on rape. Rape is caused by women who go to places where they shouldn’t, according to all the focus groups. Not that the stretch I walk is a designated raping area (it’s more mugging) – but the effect is the same - restricted mobility. To tell the truth I’m not even that bothered about having my old freebie Allergan bag with a $3-5, a pen and a notebook stolen. It’s not the thought of that that’s scared me into taking taxis. Rather, what’s bullied me into this infuriating restriction of movement is the prospect of all these arrogant ‘I told you so’s if something should happen. There’s even a specific phrase for it in Kiswahili – ‘amekoma’ – ‘she’s learned her lesson’. A phrase I first heard on a friend’s great Bongo Flava CD; a discourse linguistics professor at UDSM told me it’s said by the more powerful to the less powerful, or as a means of asserting power.

So there it is. What fieldwork does to you. Even trivial daily life frustrations like calling a taxi, you start fitting into big academic constructs like the patriarchal dividend. And I haven’t even gone into how the idea of these roads being dangerous, of people being potential muggers, threatens the way I’ve liked to see the country, the Tanzania of childhood photos where my sisters and I stand as tanned kids with impossibly windblown hair in cotton dresses in front of acacia trees and other wilderness, drinking warm sodas (because that was the time before duka fridges and bottled water….), and how I can sort of understand now why in academic contexts, anthropologists and other whiteys who’ve done their stints in Africa, can pounce on me tooth & claw, when I say I’m studying attitudes to gender-based violence, and tie themselves into illogical knots defending ‘their tribe’: the idea of violence sort of tarnishes those rosy pictures. Yup, I won’t even go into that – clearly blogging pre-coffee can get a bit serious!

Today's work

2007-12-06T06:39:00.000-08:00

Several months later : so much for good intentions! And so much for easy fieldwork. I now have two weeks left of my Arusha fieldwork before heading off to Lusaka for Christmas and then to Kigoma, my other research site in Tanzania. And it's been anything but easy! Though with regards to my previous post, none of the discomfort has been in any way connected to self-sacrifice to help the natives / save my soul / subjecting myself to the endless suffering that is Africa.

Anyway. More on ups and downs later.

But here’s what I did today. Got up at 6:30 to light the little paraffin contraption behind my one-room house, for 10 seconds of tepid water 45 minutes later. Then at 0800 I followed the path through the forest to the main road, where I caught a dalla-dalla bus to Tengeru, the town where I was to meet my assistant.

Ok, I didn’t. I'm lying! No longer can I claim to be part of the dalla-dalla crowd! Last week I finally gave in to the 2 months’ hype about how dangerous that walk is, and started calling Max, my local taxi driver. So today I just crossed the river and walked over to the dirt road where he picked me up. Max is a skinny guy in stonewashed jeans, driving a cobweb-stickered dark-windows cab by day, and breaking hearts with his Bongo Flava crooning by night. And on Sundays he turns up in pastel suits, ready for his afternoon church service. I am his ‘sister’ and so he only charges me $5 for the 20-minute ride. Hrmph.

I met my assistant JK at our usual hang-out, a hedged-in dirt patch with some trees and plastic furniture in it. At one end there is a cement cubicle structure with a woman, a sink and a microwave in it, as well as a bougainvillea-covered shade roof over some soda fridges standing in the dirt. In other words, a fully equipped roadside café where the local middle class meets.

We met to go through some transcription issues and to plan next week’s focus groups. I’ve only covered one of my two topics so far, and we need to go back to the same places with my second one. Actually we should have done this last week, but then one of JK’s previous employers, an economic historian from Lund University, turned up, and asked to ‘borrow’ him for a few days. So now we have nine days for 17 focus groups in 8 villages. Should be ok though. We discussed a little whether we should use the same groups, or new ones. Some have been chosen by the Village Chairman, others were more random, some were, as JK puts it, trying to paint a rosy picture of their village, and others were looking for money. And then other groups seemed to just genuinely enjoy the opportunity of being able to discuss things. At one place, people kept trickling in to the discussion room and joining in with such spontaneity and apparent earnestness that we couldn’t ask them to leave – especially as they were all old men of 50+. Afterwards they didn’t ask for money but asked us to come back since they had more to say on the subject, and had never realised how important it was to discuss this. So we’ll be asking to speak with those men again, but in 3 instalments.

JK had a list of most of the ‘mwenyekiti’s and ‘mtendaji’s as the village officers are called, but the two most remote ones were missing. So we drove to the villages to make the arrangements in person. At the first village we met the chairman immediately – a skinny guy with a wide smile. At the next village, the office was closed, and no cellphone number posted on the door. The woman in the shop next door said they had gone to a district-level meeting, but the sub-village chairman would have the number. He was at a church further down the road.

So we walked a few hundred metres until we heard the church. That is, we heard the praying. JK smiled. We walked down the path though the greenery, and a white-painted plank building with no windows and a closed door appeared on a green green lawn, surrounded by haphazard flowers. A man was shouting inside, loud and fast, with melodrama. We stood on the lawn. Ten minutes passed. JK excused himself and came back. Another ten minutes passed. I excused myself and came back. After half an hour I asked:
H-Is it common here, to have church services in the middle of a weekday?
JK (smiling) – This is a pentecostal church. They don’t like to follow fixed.. you know, procedures. They just do it anyhow.
So I start asking him about Pentecostalism. It’s growing here, he says, among the illiterate and the poor. And they don’t even teach them things to help themselves! Some young semi-literate men, they go to the US, they come back with some things to say, and after a while you see them with a big car, with money… And these people who go to the church, they are poor! I don’t even know if they believe.. but there is the funding, maybe they think if I start going to this church, I can get some clothes, some aid. But if they could learn how to work hard, they would not be depending on the pastor. Sometimes they call people to spend a whole day inside the church – how can you work if you are spending the days in there?
So that’s why Pentecostalism is spreading, he says. The Americans are trying to take over the world with their Amreican Christianity. Making people dependent. He tells of people who refused to go to the doctor with their malaria, but died in church instead. Yesterday, whilst walking along the river interviewing farmers for the Swedish researcher’s milk project, he asked a woman whose stock had dwindled where she took her cows for (free) veterinary service. She didn’t, she said: she just prayed instead. ‘Somehow these areas which have our European Christianity, they are doing ok – but where these new American churches come in – people don’t manage so well.’

The voice from the church showed no signs of abating so we walked back onto the road where we met some people and explained our situation. No point waiting if he’s in the church, they said, but we’ll send this kid with you to show the way to the chairman’s house. We took the car (a well-worn Peugeot belonging to JK’s relative) and this dusty, raggedy-clothed 7-year old had clearly never been in a car before – his eyes lit up and he smiled all the way there. That, and the weight of the mission he’d been entrusted with, made it difficult even to tell me his name when I asked. Solomon.

Anyway. We managed to make all the arrangements in the end. Then on the way back, a Danish woman I met at a ‘julefrokost’ party at a friend’s last week called and asked if she could interview me tomorrow. She’s a journalist with one of the big paper in Denmark. The interview is not about me, but about feminism – but still, I REALLY hope I don’t say anything stupid!

Mt Meru from the road in to Arusha

2007-10-08T10:25:00.000-07:00

Fieldwork in Tanzania...

2007-10-08T06:59:00.000-07:00

...seems to conjure up images of some self-sacrificing batik-clad shiny-faced me slaving away amidst the dirt and endless suffering that is Africa. All for the sake of this whitey tradition of helping the natives and saving one's own soul / karma / sense of perspective whilst at it.

Whilst I'm here in Tanzania doing my PhD fieldwork, I won't be trying to live up to that idea. Or down to it, for that matter.

Partly that's due to my current iconoclastic mood on the topic, but also the happy fact that I'm an incredibly spoiled researcher. For example: the trip from Nairobi to Arusha is usually made with the Impala Shuttle Service - an optimistic name for a ramshackle collection of secondhand Korean minibuses that cram passengers into the aisles for a half-day drive with no toilets. Me? I take Mom's Shuttle Service. When she had the car and she had the T-shirt, why should her daughter have to take anthing but Mom's personal Shuttle Service to her research site? Of course on the way she also picked up her other daughter from HER research site, so she could go home to the US and write up her thesis.

Israeli highways....

2007-08-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

.... make me think of Namibia, with all the wide open spaces. With so little natural greenery obstructing the view, it's the best place to get a licence. (Namibia, that is. For me.) And like the apartheid-ruled Namibia, they're very keen BOTH on checkpoints and security, AND on highways where you can go superfast. So if you're in the strongmen's good books, you can zip around more carefree than most places. And if not, well you can end up like my friend J. who was doing fieldwork in the Palestinian territories, and spend an entire day at checkpoints trying to get from places as far apart as South and North London. She's also the one who told me that the colour of the sticker that airport security puts on your passport is a signal to all checkpoint staff what level of a risk you are. The friend I was travelling with had the colour of 'Grade II terrorist' since he works in Gaza. So we decided not even to try to enter Jericho, which is walled in as 'Palestinian territory'.

Caesarea

2007-08-19T11:42:00.000-07:00

Caesarea is a place I only knew from brief mentions in early church history - I had no idea what magnificence it stood for at the time, or how beautiful even the ruins of it are. I feel no words or pictures I put here will do it justice, so click on the link for that.

Anyway, what I found interesting was the casual way Israelis seem to treat these historically significant artefacts . Luxembourg is an extreme in the other end, where they seem to spend a fortune on trying to renovate the insignificant into significance, but Norway isn't too far from that either: more money than sites (i.m.h.o.). Then there are other places that just have more sites than money, so they can't afford to maintain them all, like Turkey or Egypt. But at Caeasarea it seemed there'd been a decision to make Caesarea into a facility people use, even if it does chip away at the irreplaceable. So they'd made a picnic area / eating complex where kids played ball on parts of the ruins. Lively, at least.

More photos in the Caesarea photo album.

Michmoret Beach

2007-08-19T11:09:00.000-07:00

Frolog and I always seem to gravitate to beaches when we're travelling. Given his Francophone difficulty in differentiating between 'beach' and ''b%#&ch', this is never boring. So this time we decided to go to a place on the Mediterranean coast, more low-key than the crowded resort towns. Kind of cute. Seemed very popular among middle-class Israeli families. At first we had some trouble ordering food, since nobody spoke English at the first 3 places we went. In fact they didn't speak any language at all other than Hebrew. Several places in Israel I found that quite puzzling: meeting young people who look outwardly very 'globalised' / 'modern', and who're reasonably well-educated, who've never learned any other language - not Arabic to speak with their neighbours within and outside the country, and not English to speak to anyone else either. What would they do if they ever wanted to go outside this little strip of land? Or just talk to someone from the neighbouring suburb? At the same time the Palestinians I met, who in outward appearance looked very different from 'us', all spoke English.

Anyway. When we finally found a place where we could communicate, I had the best Chicken Caesar salad I can remember eating. And I don't even like eating at beaches - that's Frolog's thing. I always feel the sand gets in my food - was overexposed to beach lunches as a child I guess.

So here I am, after 2 consecutive Chicken Caesar Salads al Michmoret, looking like that drawing in Le Petit Prince - you know, the one of the snake who'd just eaten an elephant:

Oops!

2007-08-19T10:44:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok, so they do have a few things to teach me, my friends the effortless travelbloggers. Like:

Rule # 1: When travel-blogging, blog whilst travelling.

Otherwise life catches up on you, and before you know it, you're 6 months behind on several countries' worth of travelling.

But what the heck- time is an abstract concept, and I have a lifetime of experience with dealing with post-procrastination damage. And Rule # 1 there? Deny, deny, deny. I'll just keep blogging like no time ever passed, and I just got back from Israel yesterday.

next up

2007-04-19T13:35:00.000-07:00

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre

2007-04-11T04:40:00.000-07:00

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is a kind of nutshell for several Christian denominations, as each has staked their claim to it over the centuries. The current standoff is a religiocircus: you can walk though the Greek Orthodox section to the Roman Catholic to the Russian one and so on until you get dizzy. From what I saw, the Greek Orthodox had the snazziest videocams.

Fundamentalisms

2007-03-25T22:25:00.000-07:00

It’s people and their lifestyles and mentalities that fascinate me the most when I travel. I have qualms about photographing them though, and often have to tell the story with no pictures to illustrate.

Usually I explain that I feel it’s disrespectful: to click at people like that is to relate to them like animals in a zoo. On closer self-scrutiny I realise it’s more, and not less, respect I need to feel comfortable clicking at them. After all, it’s after I’ve analysed and categorised them, that I want to take their picture, and my discomfort comes from my unacknowledged awareness that I’m not taking a picture of them: I’m just securing their image to illustrate the accuracy of my interpretation of them. Had my thoughts about the people I observe been more charitable, I wouldn’t feel such intense discomfort in taking photos of them. Respectful? Me? Hah.

Jerusalem is an eldorado for people-watchers. Fellow-people-watchers had told me this before I went: “a religious carnival” I was told. “Does that mean it’s like a San Francisco for fundamentalists?” a friend asked. I’ve never been to San Francisco, so I couldn’t say.

It didn’t come as a total surprise to me that Jerusalem is important to fundamentalists from several world religions. However, news on the Middle East conflict shows them all up against one another: seeing it all played out in people’s lives in Jerusalem made me think more about how much they all have in common. Starting form that very first drowsy morning in Holy City, after an all-nighter of cross-examinations, sleeping in sardine seats, more cross-examinations and a dreamy midnight drive from Tel Aviv. Sitting in the living room, I was drowsily nursing my still-sleepy soul back to life with a cup of coffee and some channel-surfing when I heard the familiar comfort of a morning sermon. The story of Jesus healing some guy by the Bethesda pool. Grace. Trust. Mercy. For me, definite soul-nursing...

VOOM!! Some schmarmy American voice comes on! Loud strutting claims fill the room. The People of Israel Are Seeing the Light. Unwarranted assumptions, covert political agendas and ignorance-dependent emotionalism are all mixed together with conveniently uninformed interpretations of biblical texts to form one big “Give Us Your Money”. Wow. I’m awake. Welcome to the Holy Land.

So the Evangelical branch of the Fundamentalist Family are here. We finish our coffees and get out to meet the rest.

Wearing all black doesn’t necessarily mean blending in with the crowd. It’s clear to me that Hasidic Jews are dressing to make a point, but this is the only point I get from their appearance at first. I guess male Hasidic Jews and female hijab-wearing-Muslims have that in common: excellent fashon lessons in How To Get Noticed in Black.

And also fascination from a religious perspective, ie how a sacred text is applied in daily life. I played a little bit of mental Spot the Verse whilst gawking at them, but the only verse that came to my mind was the one about God saying ‘tie these words of mine to you this and that part of your body’. Frolog, whom I'm visiting, however had a more straightforward take on this religious branch. Firstly, they’re annoying because if you drive through their area on a Saturday they throw stones at you (apparently driving a car is work but throwing a stone at you is sheer pleasure and therefore not a breach of Shabat). Secondly, as Frolog says, it’s so mych easier to dress like your great grandfather than to treat other people consistently with kindness and integrity. Your clothes are so much easier to control than your own behaviour towards others. A pretty good paraphrase of Jesus if you ask me.

I wonder if this focus on controlling things and people around you is the common element to religious extremists. Although I don’t at all buy into the ‘all paths lead to God’ spiel, ie that all religions are the same, it seems to me that people within each religion have certain human traits in common. And fundamentalism in particular is more a function of human flaws than divine inspiration, ie more of the human element in it than other strains, so I’m thinking fundamentalisms has more in common across religious divides than other strains of those religions. IMHO of course.

Although most fundamentalists I know of have an above-average interest in controlling outward appearance and controlling other people, in The Holy Land the thing seems to be more about territoriality. Searching for sites to see in the Holy City in particular was disappointing. The Mount of Olives? Sure, we can go see the place where Jesus wept. Which church do you want? Because of course there’s nothing left of it now, it’s covered with churches, each with a claim more ludicrous than the other. This one has Jesus’ toenail in it, that one Peter’s chopped-off ear. (Actually I’m making that up – I can’t remember the exact anatomical parts involved, but something incredibly holy and surprisingly tangible.) Same thing for all the holy sites, with the Church of the Holy Sepulchre forming an all-in-one plethora of relics, a microcosm of geopolitical rivalries as each of the self-proclaimed Cristian powers staked their claim to this particular holy site, each building an extra part to the church. And then of course, there are the ruins of the Jewish Temple, with the Al Aqsa Mosque now built so solidly on top.

In short, like peeing dogs, men have staked out their territorial claims all over the Holy Land (… that is, if something so soaked in urine can still be called ‘holy’…. can it?)

And these were the thoughts I was having when I was actually trying to be DEVOUT. Imagine. Anyway, when I tried to chase them away for the nth time, I was reminded of Jesus’ criticisms of the religious power-mongers of his own day. His words were even more vulgar, and a lot of it was about how hung up they were on outward appearances and control, as well as religious monuments. And then that repetitive anti-territoriality: "My kingdom is not of this world…"

Anyway it’d probably be unfair of me to brand Orthodox Judaism as territorial fundamentalism. Firstly because, beyond the haircurlers, I know nothing about them. Secondly because they’re not particularly Zionist from what I hear.

As usual, no-one does Fundamentalism as well as the Americans. Strolling through the Old City we meet two versions. The Christian type came in a herd that almost trampled us down as we turned a corner. I had to turn around and look back to make sure I'd really seen what I thought I'd seen. No, the surprise was no that they were Americans and that we still hadn’t heard them coming. They had guns with them. Bermuda shorts, white trainers, the whole casual look going on, and then - guns. Three body guards for a tourist group of 7. And no, they weren’t VIPs, they were regular tourists, there to walk in Jesus’ footsteps. True men and women of faith. Halleluyah.

The second version were the rich Jewish American housewives. The same voices, but with no denim and hardly any skin showing. But here, what speaks louder even than their them is their cover-that-sinful-skin clothes and hi-tech baby carriages: everything about them screams money, money money. Money spent righteously on me and mine. Something about their lifestyle, and even more their CHOICE of it, gives me the creeps. Literally. My arms were covered in goosebumps every time I passed by a group.

And I couldn't quite explain it. Nothing to do with Judaism, everything to do with a sense of their hardness towards people weaker than them, so beautifully coupled with an ostentatious subservience to their self-chosen authorities. A shock of recognition. That's what made my hair stand on end. I knew these people, I'd seen them before - my church in the UK, for example, belonged to them. And here it was again, following me all the way here : this drawing God down from the sky to ease one's own self-serving complacency. As effortlessly as you can draw down a blind. No wonder something inside me recoiled.

And all these insightful observations from someone who barely spoke with any of these people. Speaking of fundamentalism, what's the definition of 'prejudice' again ... ?

2007-03-20T14:55:00.000-07:00

Israeli security

2007-03-18T11:26:00.000-07:00

"WHY ARE YOU GOING TO ISRAEL??!!"
For a while I thought I'd never make it to Israel or Palestine. And I hadn't even worked out which one I was heading for. Already at Schiphol the cross-examinations started. Visiting a friend? What's his name? Where did you meet? What is your relationship? What were you doing when you met? Gosh. I was prepared to walk around with my mascara and eyeliner on constant display in a scant plastic bag, even to strip off my boots to the embarassment of my mismatched socks, but this??? Don't these control freaks ever get enough? It seems every little inch of intimate space they invade just leaves these security officers thirsting for more.

Stunned into honesty, I broke all dealing-with-nazis etiquette and told them the truth. My friend is working in Gaza helping The Enemy, we met in a muslim country, I have lived and worked in Muslim countries, yes I intend to visit Palestinian territories. After about an hour like this, the officer still hadn't told me the names of her friends, and she didn't look like she was about to share her curriculum vita with me. But she let me get on the plane.

So that's how the fun started. The Israeli Security officers, it seems, are one big happy family, and so once you get friendly with one of them, they all want to meet you. At the Tel Aviv Airport, at the motorway checkpoints, at the Wailing Wall - everywhere. However the x-ray machines at the wailing wall entrance are nothing to worry about. In fact they're totally kosher. Rabbi Rabbinowitz has deduced from Scripture that you will not harm your mojo by going through them on the Shabat - a reassurance the Security Family thoughtfully informed me of.

Ok, enough about the security. The first few days we spent wandering around in the old city. Fascinating. I hadn't read up on anything, so it was all new and interesting. Like , erm, that the wailing wall is actually the remains of the temple, and that the Al Aqsa mosque is built on top of it.... yeah... maybe I should stop here before my shameless ignorance so disgusts you that you read no further? I'll take a break to formulate the few thoughts I have before going on.

So Americans with guns, Shabat elevators, howling Nigerians, unexpected encounters in the Dead Sea, stunning Caesarea, Godsend beaches and the myth-spun Masada...... that will all have to come later!!!!

Watch this space and thanks for reading!

Travel blog

2007-03-05T05:05:00.000-08:00

Welcome!

I plan for this blog to be about my travels. Why? Well, in mourning the slow and painful death of previous well-intentioned blogs, and noticing friends who keep going with such enviable ease, I've decided that the secret of their success is just following this pretty simple recipe. When on holiday, eat good food. Before shovelling in, point the camera at your plate, click and post. Blog entries: 1. When on holiday, go look at something pretty or old or famous - or in my case, totally bizarre. Look at it through your camera. Click. Post. Blog entries: 2. And so on. Then you can get home and sit on your butt for 5 months, and from the look of your blog, nobody would ever guess.

Good plan, huh? So in two days' time I'm heading to Israel. Or is it Palestine? I'm flying in to Israel, but going to see Palestine. And Israel. Yesterday I offended someone by saying I was going to Palestine. I guess if you don't believe it exists as a state, it's offensive to be told that someone is going there, I mean by saying that they're going there, they're implying that it exists. On the other hand if I said I'm going to Israel, I know certain people would understand that as meaning I'm going on a pilgrimage. And I'm not. Wouldn't that be offensive, isn't misrepresentation offensive?

Ok! I'll be sticking to the food photos then! When a plateful of olive oil fills your screen, you'll know I'm there! Whatever it's called.