Culture

Surface Culture

Posted on by Laughingnomad

India’s spirituality is strong and is seemingly integrated with it�s culture. So this is the first country we have been in that has resisted becoming westernized…at least on the surface…no big time make-up, no dark glasses, no T shirts, no baseball caps, no blue jeans hanging off the pubic bone of young girls (however we have seen a new sari style that is off the hip with a ring in the naval) and no Bobby Marley, rap music, baggy pants, western food or drip coffee-just the obsequious Nescafe. Our hotel offered the Continental or American Breakfast. Grilled chicken, grilled potatoes, juice and tea or coffee. No American fast food outlets in all of Delhi except for one McDonalds that only serves vege and chicken burgers.

Hardly any bookstores. Closest thing to the west we encountered listening to a DJ in a red turban play 70�s American music at the El Rodeo Restaurant where all the waiters were dressed up as cowboys and serving bad Mexican food.

Indians usually prefer to eat only Indian food, Mrs. Singh said when we stayed at her hotel in Jaipur. She described an Indian owned tour company she and her sister-in-law traveled with throughout Europe last spring. She was disappointed to find that the tour company had it’s own cook and every meal was taken on the bus-all Indian food!

News Media
In the English language Delhi Times newspaper there are 14 serious pages of “Matrimonials-for the better half of your life.” Typical Example: “Alliance from (with) tall fair slim convent educated girl for US settled Bengali Brahmin boy Feb 1967 5’11” nonsmoker tetotaler visiting India in Sept Caste State no bar” (in other words being the proper caste is not necessary). Another: “Bride from elite business house for graduate, son of top industrialist.” And another: “Wanted bride from only very big business/Industrialist Family from Son of National Fame very big rich industrialist family.” This apparently the conduit for meeting a marriage prospect for non-religious middle and upper classes.

I get a big kick out of the newswriting style, usually concerning controversial political issues, that go like this lead paragraph: “Despite all-out diplomatic efforts, India�s plans to get piped gas from Bangladesh may turn out to be a pipedream.” And this: Quacks have found a way out if their hospitals are shut down; change the name and keep the racket going. And another: “The government will soon crack the whip on driving schools in the Capital for the poor skills they are teaching Delhiiters.� And this headline concerning Prime Minister Advani’s oversight in not inviting Tamil Nadu Chief Minister to a swearing-in ceremony of another minister: “Jaya pipes down after Advani says he’s sorry.”

And finally this… “US tries to stop (corporate) rot with new rules.”

Jaipur India

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July 22-26 2002
The next day we discover we are the only guests in the Hotel Meghniwas and we have breakfast in the quiet restaurant downstairs. The night before Bob had a few minutes of the sweats but no fever…this morning he complains about not
feeling well…bones ache…no energy…tired…. I am silent and surly…but thanks be to the gods we hole up in our comfortable room all day watching movies on the HBO channel aware that this is our first bout of good old culture shock.

Culture Shock
I am having my first bout of culture shock on this journey. (My other culture shock experience in reverse was upon return to the States from a summer hitchhiking in Europe in 1965). Lonely Planet says there are several stages to this phenomenon. The first is the honeymoon stage-euporia and excitement-but the novelty quickly wears off and then comes the disintegration stage where instead of being thrilled you find yourself really disliking this new culture-right now in India it is because of the malodorous air, heat and noise.

Then you hit the reintegration stage when you grit your teeth and just get on with it because your return ticket isn�t for another six months! You blame every little problem on your host culture and become snarlingly hostile-for example, daring the next person to approach you for money.

By the autonomous stage you begin to focus on revising your travel style that is based on a more realistic assessment of local conditions…like never deliberately putting yourself at the mercy of a lunatic taxi driver. And we are realizing that underneath the layers of cacaphony there is an implicit order to the culture..very poor people finding the most efficient way to live that works for them…the many are not just individually lost on the sidewalks but are part of the community of their nearest neighbors…trading support and solace…ensuring survival.

Finally the interdependence stage is supposed to arrive when you develop an emotional bond with the new culture. Lonely Planet says this will take some time and effort but it will happen. We are not there yet we feel it coming…maybe…

Supposedly the more you know about the new culture before travelling the easier it will be…but god help me I don�t think there is anything that can prepare a westerner for India. What this experience WILL definitely do for you is cure you of any sense of feeling privileged or of being a more valuable person than the locals, just because you are American or have money or position, that you ever had or ever thought of having. Everyone endures the same conditions in the same way. In the movie “The Mexican” Brad Pitt cockily tells the cop “I am American!” The cop just looks at him and says “I am Mexican!”

Hotel Meghniwas
We luck out with a hotel that is well off the noisy street with grass and trees all around and a swimming pool in the back. The proprietors are professional and the staff is very friendly and helpful. After a nice quiet solitary Indian buffet dinner in the hotel restaurant we are invited by the proprietors, Mr. & Mrs. Singh, to have a drink with them in their office. Their two sons were educated in the states and live there still-one has a software business in Seattle and the other lives in New York. Mr. Singh is an articulate retired military person who has a good knowledge of Indian and US history and for an hour we appreciate his reasoned analysis of Indian, US and Arab domestic and foreign policies.

He says that the US and India got off on the wrong foot with each other years ago when Nehru, an aristocratic man that was highly educated in England, visited President Truman in the US. On the return to India Nehru remarked what a buffoon (or some such word) Truman was and US intelligence picked up the comment which injudiciously got back to Truman. Mr. Singh goes on to say that he thinks that in the next 5-10 years India and the US will become very very good friends because they will be the two biggest democracies facing the threat of China. Bob says that he has seen some very expensive looking homes in Jaipur and wants to know who would be living there. Mr. Singh answers that there are three upper class groups of people in India-first business owners, then politicians and then bureaucrats. I think that some of my friends and I who have worked for the state for years have been living in the wrong country!

Then Bob asks Mr. Singh what he thinks about the Pakistani/Indian conflict. He says the hostilities are old and the two countries have been threatening each other for years but there is a balance of power because both countries have nuclear capability. Furthermore, he flatly stated that this conflict is historical, it is not a situation defined by war and that India is not going to release a bomb just because a few villagers and politicians were killed in a couple terrorist raids!

He went on to say that people here are living life normally and the State department warning has ruined tourism that was already bad because of 9/11 and the off-season. The media carried the news today that the warning has been lifted but the damage has been done, he says.

Later I read an article in the India Times Magazine that reported that local corporate executives never did send their American expat employees home and furthermore they think the warning was timed to coincide with an orchestrated international move to pressure India and Pakistan to talk peace. The article, entitled “The Triggered Exodus” ends by saying that “the wait is now only for the nuclear silly season to end.”

Mr. Singh has some interesting but very big questions for Bob: are intra-uterine cures possible yet…are we close to human cloning…Bob tells him in all seriousness that he thinks man is headed for extinction and then the proprietor spends 20 minutes telling him how it is already slowly happening in India. Global warming and the resulting drought will leave Jaipur without water within two years.

We excuse ourselves when his brother and his wife come to the door and after Bob had been bitten by their dog. Should have opted for the rabies shots as suggested before we left home!

Migrants & Beggars In India

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Continuing our taxi tour with Asane, he takes us to a part of Mumbai where we will see many migrants and beggars…and the red light district.

As is happening all over the third world, migrants from rural areas make their way to urban areas hoping to better their lives. It almost never happens. Instead they squat on any little piece of ground they can find, even the road medians, and throw up tiny little huts made of found pieces of burlap and plastic. Soon, in desperation, the red light district sadly appears and now the city doesn�t know what to do with the people. Many become beggars.-many prostitutes.

Beggars
There is no developed government-sponsored social service system in India, however, the various religions all have societies (at least in large urban areas) that regularly give out money (additional rupees for each child) food and clothing, according to Asane the driver who is giving us a tour of the city. Women can make even more money by having 8-10-15 children who can all work the tourists so they are not interested in birth control. They do not want food-they want money.

There is a shortage of coins circulating in India because of the beggars so banks will buy the coins from the women and give them 10 rupees extra. But when Bob went to the Bank of India to get coins because businesses usually want as near to exact change as possible, he was told they could not make change for him. It�s mostly pretty little tribal women-usually very small, fine-boned migrants from the country with very bright colored saris who have learned to give those pitiful looks that become �professional� beggars. A trained girl of about four will follow you for about a block and a half (her neighborhood giving you �that look� and if she doesn�t score then will give up and turn back to her mother.

The local “CityInfo” tourist guide says not to give money but food instead so I try to keep food in my backpack. Mike, my son Greg�s friend who spent 5 months in India says just to give them the old �flick-of-the-wrist (get away) routine.

But the excellent novel about four people in India I am reading called “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistry depicts a Beggarmaster who protects (owns) any pavement dweller who will pay him 100 rupees per week. For this the “beggar” gets protection from the police, freedom from the sweeps that will send them to the gravel pits and ditches, clothes, begging space, food and special things like bandages or crutches…” Lonely Planet says stories like this are common but many have no basis in fact. So who knows…probably every beggar has a different story.

When Bob asked Asane if he gives to beggars, he says he gives to real beggars like the old man with no legs or no arms who cannot work and has no other way to support himself. When asked what we should do about beggars, Asane said that when it comes down to it, it is a matter of each particular situation and what your heart says to do at that moment…probably wise counsel.

Asane’s Taxi Tour

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In Mumbai, we took a three-hour government sponsored tour in an Indian-made Ambassador car with “Indian A/C” which is a fan that sits on the dashboard. While we were waiting for Bob to run back to the hotel for the camera, Asane explained a bit about the Hindu ceremony (puja) that was taking place at a covered altar at the edge of the parking lot of the tour company a few feet away.

Asane is Catholic and he pays a fee for his children to go to school. His wife is a teacher but he says he forbids her to work because “who will stay home with the children?” Later he explained that his extended family (3 families) all live in housing joined together. I thought to myself that there was possibility here of shared child care but I did not ask.

I told Asane that I have practiced traditional meditation many years and then he wanted to know if I knew Rajneesh! Oh no, I said! But he was in my state, I said, and then asked him if the papers here made a big deal about the Rajneesh in India. Yes, he said, he was very rich and not a very good man and India ran him out of the country! Yes, I said, Oregon did too. Even though Rajneesh is dead, his ashes are kept at the Osho Commune International that is still doing a big business of running expensive meditation courses and New Age techniques about 4 hours away by train in Pone (Poona). Lonely Planet says that order to meditate at the commune you must fill out an application form, “prove HIV-negative by an on-the spot test and buy 3 swanky tunics…”

Open Air Laundry
Asane says we won’t see this anywhere else in the world! Mahalaxmi Dhobi Ghat is an open air laundry where some 5000 dhobi-wallahs use rows of troughs and giant concrete tubs of water that stretch as far as the eye can see to soak, scrub and beat the heck out of thousands of pieces of soiled clothes. The dhobi-wallahs pick up the clothes in the morning and at the end of the day deliver them on their handcarts to their owners. The laundry is over 100 years old and each dhobi-wallah owns his own business-renting his four foot by eight foot tub from the government that provides clean water every morning and that by evening is fllthy dirty.

Terrorism
We asked Asane whether he thought there would be war between Pakistan and Kashmir. He said “no, otherwise we are finish. After war we don’t have business!” Pakistan wants Kashmir, he says, because it is the most beautiful place in India and lots of tourists bring in a lot of money.

Then Bob asked him what he thought of America being in Afghanistan. He said that it was a good thing for America to be stopping terrorism everywhere-that small countries cannot defend themselves in the face of this kind of threat, although there was a scathing editorial against the “New Imperialism” and “Bellicose Bush” in the next day’s India Times newspaper. Asane asked Bob if people in America were afraid of more terrorism. Not surprisingly Bob and I gave opposite answers-he saying that everyone was very afraid and I said that people were going about their business as usual even though they knew there would be a good chance of another attack.

Jain Festival
Asane took us to a local festival at a Jain Temple. The Jains believe that only by achieving complete purity of the soul can one attain liberation and that fundamental to the right behavior is ahimsa (nonviolence) in thought and in deed. They are strict vegetarians; everyone in the temple wore a cloth mask when performing their pujas to avoid the risk of breathing in a bug or mosquito. I was particularly touched by a young boy of about 14 and his younger brother who was reverently bowing before the puja table wearing a Billabong T-shirt.

Hout Bay Township Tour

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Just outside Cape Town we visited a squatter’s camp where poor people including immigrants from Zimbabwe and Algeria, who were not allowed to live in Cape Town prior to apartheid, live on “no man’s land” and try to find fishing jobs on nearby Hout Bay.

The hillside facing the bay is covered with little tin and cardboard shacks that remind me of the worst of the migrant housing at home. We took a stroll up and down the narrow dirt lanes while Bob entertained the children with his digital camera-taking their pictures and then letting them see themselves on the video screen.

In one small shack some women were sewing some skirts and “aprons” (worn if you were married) so I bought an outfit and put it on. Idle people (unemployment is about 90%) gaped at the white woman with her cloddy athletic shoes and long black pants underneath their local African costume and laughed and shook their heads as I paraded past them. One woman in a “shabeen” (home where beer is made and sold) dipped some homemade beer out of an old keg into an empty gallon can from which we took turns drinking…

Swakopmund

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June 6-8, 2002
How are you today mommi? George and James do a pretty good job looking after me-making sure I’m happy so I don’t unglue on this trip and make a problem for everyone-maybe they think we don’t like roughing it even though we have spent 30 years backpacking and trekking. In spite of their best efforts, and in spite of my determination-I unglue anyway as we pull into Swakopmund on the coast…I had gotten little sleep the last three nights in my thin nylon and cotton sleeping bag that we bought in Nairobi because our camping gear had not arrived before the start of the trip. I spent the day in the truck crossing the ice-cold desert in a levi jacket and sleeping bag and I am frozen to the bone. I natter constantly to myself: no one wants to see out-the others were partying late the night before and are all asleep! So why can’t we pull down the clear plastic tarps over the open windows?!!

The bus station is only two blocks away and in a fury I threaten to catch a bus to Cape Town…the only thing that stops me is that the truck has pulled into the locked hotel compound which is such a patchwork of spaces (three other trucks are also inside the compound) and buildings that I can’t find the front door out of the place…I retreat to our assigned room and slam my luggage down on the floor-Bob looking on helplessly! I stood in the hot shower for half an hour in spite of the written warnings on the wall to use the desert water sparingly. I crawled into bed and had been meditating for awhile when I heard Bob ask whether I wanted to join the others to eat in the compound restaurant. By this time I had calmed down enough to grudgingly admit that I had to eat.

The dinner was wonderful. I had fried Atlantic fish with a lemon sauce and Bob had Leopard’s Belly-a stew of Warthog, mushrooms and vegetables wrapped up in a pastry like an Italian Calzone and by the end of dinner I was smiling and laughing again. Nikki had half a dozen fresh oysters and game liver and onions. Sarah and Heather had Ostrich kebabs.

James and George had beef steak. Rod came over and encouraged me to stay…”you are part of the group” he says…which just made me want to leave all the more…but he promised that I could sit up in the front half of the truck where there was no wind. This definitely was the low point of the trip for me-cold and no sleep was not a good mix! And no it didn’t help to think of all of poor Africa where a lot of people are not only cold but do not have enough food this winter because of the latest drought…

Swakopmund was like a time/place warp; the small resort town by the sea reminded me of San Diego-nice wide streets with palm trees up and down the medians except you saw “Right of Admission Reserved” signs above the doors of all the businesses. Retail shops have iron gates that are locked and when the retailer sees you standing at the gate he or she pushes a button that releases a lock so you can enter. Big time security…

Everything is immaculate and run efficiently-by the white Afrikaner owners…the Blacks are the waiters, sweepers, garbage collectors and car watchers…my first experience in an openly apartheid society feels very weird. One evening coming back from the latest Woody Allen movie (only six people in the theater and half of those left early). I scared the pee water out of one of the car watchers when I went up to him and ask if his job ever got boring. Apparently not used to being approached or acknowledged on the street by Whites, he gave me a terrified look that said “hey what’s coming down here,” while one of his buddies comes dashing over to help out his friend. Embarrassed to have put him in that position, I just laughed and slowly moved away as he, realizing I wasn’t setting him up for any bad thing, finally smiled.

We ate twice at a pub that served incredible German food with an Afrikaner bent. Rod had recommended the pig’s knuckle-huge-on a bed of sauerkraut. I delightedly peeled off the delicious crackling.

My hair was in desperate need of conditioning and I needed some pampering so I had my hair washed and colored while Bob bought an interesting African mask and a $40 Ostrich belt that he thought he was paying $4 for…that old decimal problem again!

The owner of the beauty shop was Afrikaner and my hairdresser was black. Afterward, when I walked to the back to tip the hairdresser the white women looked striken. Later in Cape Town Heather had her hair done and while the Black beautician was working on her she leaned down and asked if Heather could keep a secret. Then she requested that if Heather were going to leave a tip could she give it to her personally as the tips were never passed back to the Black beauticians. So now apartheid is just going to go underground like in the rest of the world.

While we are doing this, the other riders participated in some of the activities offered in the area-Nikki, Michelle, Adrian, Sarah, Heather and Fi went sky diving and Jimmie, George, Nikki, Michelle, Adrian, Michael and Sarah, Heather and Fi went riding quad bikes in the huge sand dunes; George took a tumble in his bike. Fi, Heather and Sarah and Adrian went both lay-down sand boarding and stand-up boarding on the dunes-they screamed down a sand dune, they said, on a board at 80mph! They spent the evening and early morning singing kareoke in the bar with no dinner.

Bob and I of course dropped into bed and the bar is far far away…

In the morning, George has coffee and cereal set up for us and we share the outdoor “kitchen” in the compound with the other truck riders. One of the other trucks has a couple in their 70’s on it-they looked like they were having the time of their lives. I wondered if their truck had a stereo.

Diamonds And Plastic

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On the way back to Maun Botswana in the Safari truck, Rod explains that the area around Maun is in the fastest growing area in the southern hemisphere because of the discovery of diamonds and with it comes the technology to make plastic-there is paper and plastic everywhere.

Gary says the safari owners have tried to start campaigns to clean up the plastic but the grocery store clerks, for example, will put individual chicken pies in plastic, several of these go into a plastic bag and that goes into another plastic bag at the check-out counter. So it hangs in trees like Christmas ornaments, gets caught in bushes and fences and clutches the sides of the roads. Actually it reminds me of Los Angeles freeways. We get to quickly check email before driving on to the Truck camp.

All over Africa we have seen references to preservation of culture, celebration of diversity and unity in diversity, themes familiar to us as westerners.

May 31 Sitatunga Camp
We hit the showers and camp again that night at Sitatunga. It feels like we are back in civilization again; I fall into George’s arms saying how happy I am to see him again! He loves it. The other riders party in the bar but Bob and I hit the sack as we will be up before daylight to hit the road again.

AIDS & The Ocavango Delta

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Wed May 29-30 , 2002
Can’t stop in Maun to check email because nothing opens until 10am. Gary takes us into the Delta on his Safari wagon with two long seats back to back down the middle of the truck bed.

As we drive through town he stops by the cemetery on the outskirts of the town to explain all the new graves covered in green awnings to keep the evil spirits away; 37% of the people in Botswana has the HIV Virus. The epidemic is exacerbated by the local belief system that you get AIDS from condoms…that the way to cleanse yourself from the disease is to sleep with a virgin-so there are a lot of rapes. Many of the locals, according to a South African newspaper think AIDS stands for something like “Americans Interfering…” I can’t find the exact quote now.

Thousands of graves-row upon rows-are all covered with new blue awnings “to keep away the evil spirits.” They won’t win this one Gary says. Don’t fraternize with the locals he warns as he gets back in the truck.

Later we read an article in the Botswana Guardian reporting on a recent AIDS Awareness campaign that said that superstitious beliefs are being blamed for a rise in ritual murders, trafficking in human body parts to obtain substances for potions they believe will strengthen them against misfortune, and false AIDS cures. Human sacrifice is needed, many Africans believe, for the purpose of obtaining a victim’s life force through a potion. The article went on to say that the Traditional Healers Association of South Africa has condemned healers who tell their patients suffering from AIDS that the disease can be cured through sex with a virgin.

In Mozambique, health officials are cataloguing traditional medical practices with anthropologists from the Maputo campus of the University of Mozambique with the aim of separating out good information from bad and legislating against promoting harmful practices, according to Dr. Manuel Ferriera. “You can’t use reason against superstition,” Musa Khumalo, a ministry official said. “Sometimes you just have to legislate against it.”

The Safari truck takes two hours and 11 minutes (Bob says) through Maun, down a side road to a dirt road that takes us through Mapani trees and thorn bushes that whip the truck and threaten us, and across the Buffalo fence to the edge of the Delta where the Mekuros and the polers are waiting for us.

On the way we stop twice to give Heather time to hang her head over the side (ethanol…alcohol…poisoning from the night before, Bob says) while Gary tells us about the local people. They make their mud huts out of Termite Mound mud because the saliva from the termites that is in the mud, when mixed with water, makes a kind of very hard cement-like mud. Even though the mounds stand peak-shaped anywhere from four to 15 feet above ground, 90% of the rest of the mound is underground and it is this soil that the people dig out for their huts.

Gary says he is the local bus system for the people in the mud hut villages along the way. When he comes through they ask to catch a ride on the way back to Maun…then they catch a ride with him on his next trip into the Delta in 2-3 days. They shop mainly for sugar, flour, tea, pop (sudsa) and meat, he says. Well, at least it keeps the brain functioning if not the rest of the body.

At the Buffalo Fence a woman appears who opens the gate and counts us to make sure the same number of people that go in come out again.

Maun & Sitatunga Camp

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Tues May 28,2002 To Sitatunga Camp near Maun Botswana
Up at 5:30 again. Had wieners, eggy bread (French Bread) with honey and canned spaghetti for breakfast. James is doing his usual antic-body stuff while eating his eggy bread-“fucking sweet honey!” he says out of the blue and everybody laughs-suddenly awake. James is usually very animated and pretty funny.

It’s 200 km to Maun (rhymes with down) where we will wonder around the town for a couple hours before we continue on to our camp for the night. On the way we see two Oryx and Rod explains how their unique breathing aparatus works although I can’t remember any of it. Later we saw Ostriches again. Rod says they are the largest birds in the world and they can kill a human by stamping them with their feet. When they run it looks as if they are running on a water bed.

We stop for toilet and suddenly a big army truck filled with army guys pulls in after us….oh, no we all yell…but they were just checking to see if we were alright and pulled back out on the road again. George hides the meat from the veterinary road checks that are looking for meat with lung disease before we take off again.

The truck slows down again and we look to see a dead cow by the side of the road with about a dozen or so vultures hovering around it. The truck stops so we view the whole grizzly process: One vulture gets on top of the cow and punctures a hole near the rear of the stomach. The entire head of the vulture disappears into the hole and then others take their turn. As the truck starts to pull out again everyone lets out a YUKKK…as one of the birds sticks his head up the bum! Rod says we should be grateful to the vulture and the hyena…keeps disease from spreading…The birds are even built for good hygiene, he says, hardly any feathers on the head and neck for smooth entering of the hole…so what’s so sick we remind ourselves…we eat dead meat too!

Many of the younger women walking along side the road are wearing their hair in plaits and the young guys have those tiny dreads with heads shaved around the sides. I was told later in Swakopmund Namibia by a young guy with the same hairstyle that they got it (hair shaved nearly to the top of the head) from an early American black rap star! When I teased him about naughty rap lyrics he just laughed but a couple older black Africans who overheard me nodded their heads up and down in assent-all the while making faces. Don’t think the older ones approve of the young black male African penchant for black American rap!

Some of the older women from the Herero tribe are wearing long Victorian-style dresses that flare way out at the bottom. The unusual dress, which is now a tribal trademark, was forced upon them by prudish German missionaries in the late 19th century. On their heads the women wear a huge “hat” that looks much like a very wide bow. What is very distinctive about these women, however, is the regal and proud way they carry themselves when dressed this way.

We will see some of these women later in Namibia. Actually, the whole outfit reminded me of the red and white dress and headbow that the stereotypical “mammy” wore in early American movies. Apparently when in traditional dress the men wore a variation of the Scottish tartan kilt but we don’t see any of those.

We stop for internet but the computers are down.

May 28 Sitatunga Camp
The WildLife Adventure.com truck is at the camp…Kumuka truck comes in and we look for Damian and Melissa who transfered to the Kumuka in Vic Falls so they could get down to Johannesberg…you’d think we were all long lost friends as our riders let out a squeal and run to hug them.

Rod has contracted with a Safari Tour company to take us into the Delta on Mekoros so Gary from the company stops by to give us details. Gary, originally from New Zealand, lives in Maun and the locals call him: “Geeza.” Mekoros are an ancient way of plying the delta; canoes carved out of tree trunks with a poler that stands in back pulling the canoe forward.

The other riders party in the bar which didn’t close until 2am and the music was so loud you couldn’t sleep…even with ear plugs…I stayed surly for two days. The Delta will offer respite…

Yellow Chicken Camp

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May 20, 2002
Then to Yellow Chicken Campsite and dinner in the dark. The charming camp, in the middle of a huge 40 year-old German farm, is run by a Brit and his wife who was 8 months pregnant. There is a law now that Whites cannot own land but this farmer’s land was grandfathered in because he had owned it for so long.

Soap and towel even…and so clean…and smells so good with candles burning everywhere…and hot water even…this is the nicest camp yet! The girls all have a shower the night we arrive so I decide to wait until morning. On my way I see how two black African guys have to bucket the water up out of the well…then into a barrel a few feet away…then pull it bucket by bucket up into an elevated water reservoir. Then a fire is built in an outside fire burner to heat the water. I stubbornly return to my tent without a shower.

Lessons from an African Bush Camp Operator
Janine and Sarah stayed up and listened to the camp operator who has lived in several countries in Africa over a period of 15 years talk about things he has seen and experienced. He said most people are Christian but most only convert because they are given a bag of maize or a pair of shoes and still continue their own spiritual traditions including witchcraft.

He also said that if a woman gets pregnant outside of wedlock that she has to marry the father of the child. So sometimes if a man sees a woman he wants he rapes her until she is pregnant and then she has to marry him. I don’t know which countries he was talking about here. About AIDS, the locals don�t understand the disease and don’t believe that condoms are of any use-hence the proliferation of the disease.

The operator was particularly adamant about stopping the food and other aid that people get…he believes it keeps them from becoming self sufficient…teaches them to always have a hand out…that it would be terrible in the beginning to withdraw the aid but in the long run it would be better for the people.

In fact an article appeared in the South African Cape Times a few weeks after this in which it was reported that dozens of nongovernmental organizations rejected the final declaration of the United Nations World Food Summit in Rome saying it was “more of the same failed medicine” and would not end hunger.

Distribution of resources is almost impossible due to bad roads, insufficient trucks and buses, a poor public transportation system.This results in 90% of the villages and towns living in isolation having no access to the market and no access to money. One hundred and fifty poorly developed countries are leaning on 25 developed ones. If one figures in the cost of transporting, servicing, warehousing and preserving food, then the cost of a single meal for a refugee in some camp is higher than the price of a dinner in the most expensive restaurant in Paris, one critic has said.

The answer, many are thinking, is a multidimensional approach to the develop-ment of healthy societies: develop regions especially through education; encourage local societies participation in public life including ability to dialogue; observe fundamental human rights; begin democratization and develop interdependence. This will not be easy. It will require new politicians who care about development-not warlords who sew contention in order to retain their own political power long enough so they can drain the country of money and resources.

The camp operator said that he feels sorry for African-Americans who come to Africa looking for their roots…they leave devastated when they discover they have absolutely nothing in common except color…and being black means nothing here because practically everyone is black…so no one is going to greet the black Americans with open arms-particularly well-fed affluent ones and the Africans assume the blacks who come here must be rich or they couldn’t get here in the first place…and we travelers without a doubt are all immeasurably rich compared to the locals.

In the morning as we were leaving I asked the camp operator what the best thing was about living in Africa…the beauty and wide open free space, he said waving his arm out toward the sun rising over ripe wheat..and being able to live the way you want to with no 9-5 job!