A Bend in the Bias

For all its inherent drama and uncompromising tragedy, Africa figures comparatively rarely in literature. Despite the continent’s mad kings, power brokering, tribal rivalries and wild frontiers, as fiction goes it remains one the great untapped resources available to storytellers. But writers beware of treading this path for good reason: the difficulty, particularly for foreigners, and thus non-Africans, of telling a story truthfully, without prejudice or simplification. The background in violence that bewitches some storytellers in the first place too easily becomes the point of it all, the overarching theme left standing in the smashed and scattered debris.

In A Bend in the River, the Trinidadian writer V. S. Naipul, has penned a novel indicative of the worst stereotypes. One need not go further than the first sentence to get to the heart of his ideology: “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.” Such vile, free market cold-blooded Darwinian absolutism sets the tone for a story short on human compassion, long on self-centered palaver.

It begins with Salim, a coastal Indian Muslim, escaping anti-foreigner violence at the end of colonialism, when much property of the former power structure was appropriated by revenge-minded nationalists. From a family friend, he buys a dry goods shop in an unnamed town in Africa’s interior, where later he is joined by one of his family’s slaves. There is a rebellion early on and a soldier who takes power in the capital becomes a megalomaniac dictator referred to by everyone as The Big Man. Early on, his powerful presence stabilizes the country. Violence and tribal rivalries fade and there’s an economic boom. Europeans arrive to advise and build infrastructure as well as chronicle this significant step in African history. The narrator’s shop business is thriving and he has a torrid love affair with a European woman married to someone close to the President (“The Big Man’s White Man”). Being close to the machinations of power, gives the main character a sense of identity and destiny, though it is illusory of course. The new boss is the same as the old boss: inevitably corruption and violence return, proving history to be cyclical, putting the narrator in a conundrum about whether to stay or flee.

A Bend in the River was shortlisted for the Booker Prize in 1979 and Naipul has won the Nobel Prize for literature. Such acclaim is difficult to comprehend considering the genuine failure of this, his most famous story. Like many writers, Naipul takes real-life historical events and frames them in a dramatic narrative, creating a mask disguising an author’s political philosophy, one of the great tricks of literary art. Yet it’s one thing for a writer to have appalling political viewpoints (i.e. Ayn Rand), so long as the writing itself works but having drearily sludged through several of his other books, I can spot a naked Emperor when I see one. V. S. Naipul is a very bad storyteller, on all the essential points.

Salim, for example, our narrator, is supposed to be a member of the Muslim diaspora, but he’s also a man who’s lost communion with his spiritual and cultural roots, practicing beliefs more out of habit than faith. But there is little to suggest the character is a real Muslim (Naipul is suspected of Hindu nationalist sympathies). In Salim, there is no piety, no loyalty, no moral compass. He needs an adulterous affair to feel better about himself. He constantly looks for the weaknesses in others, obviously to salve his own self-esteem issues. Naipul seems to suggest that the only way to survive in such dog-eat-dog circumstances, one must act selfishly as Salim behaves in all his interactions. He is a cold person, calculating, envious of the success of others, a thinking man but at the expense of real emotions.

Then Naipul’s storytelling instincts can feel distinctly out of step. Every time something vaguely dramatic occurs, his character withdraws from the action for analysis, an annoying habit of one step forward, three steps back. Stylistically, these digressions can be very long-winded—one hears not the narrator but Naipul’s presence, his pedantic blah. This is especially evident at a critical moment in the story, when Salim and Yvette commit adultery. Naipul elaborates in his typically sexless form:

“To write about the occasion in the manner of my pornographic magazines would be more than false. It would be like trying to take photographs of myself, to be the voyeur of my own actions, to reconvert the occasion into the brothel fantasy that, in the bedroom, it ceased to be.”

Does anyone, particularly a shopkeeper, bother with such pseudo-existential jabberwocky in the throes of an exciting, illicit affair? But this romance, an expendable subplot that has little to do with the big theme (which is what exactly…? Africans, they can’t do anything right?), is problematic. There is little to suggest why an educated and ambitious woman would fall for Salim. Naipul doesn’t bother to illustrate an attraction nor a courtship. It just happens, chemistry be damned. In fact, the affair, only serves to alienate us further from the narrator, as it climaxes in misogyny and unbelievably, masochistic submission, a ridiculous male fantasy concept which betrays Naipul’s complete incapacity to draw out and understand women.

Though Naipul has a Victorian tendency towards exasperating exactitude, he never directly mentions the town nor the country he is in by name, though it is obviously The Congo (formerly Zaire) and The Big Man (portrayed in leopard print hat and cane in ubiquitous reproduced photos) is clearly Mobuto Sese Seko. Why this conceit, unless Naipul believes that the violence and anarchy affecting the story’s region is not a Congo problem but an African one? It’s all but clear that Naipul has calculated for this disastrous state to represent the continent as a whole. The problem of violence and corruption then is not specific but general.

Mobuto Sese Soko, the Big Man

Though not as odious as ideology, tedium can be offensive in its own distasteful fashion. What is most incredible about Naipul’s effort is that it could take the Congo, Africa’s literary “heart of darkness” and all its attached sex, violence, wildness, history and promise and make it dull. That is what he does and it is because of his prose. Naipul writes like a neutered academic, a showoffy dinner companion one endures at a wedding due an ill-fated seating arrangement. One expects some kind of payoff from all this talk but after so many words, one learns the point is the words themselves and not the story and that it is for his benefit, not yours. I’m talking about the worst kind of storyteller— know-it-all, masturbatory, self-indulgent, offensive. Ugly. What’s just as remarkable is that for all the praise Naipul receives for his language, there is not a single beautiful sentence in the entire novel. Nothing amuses nor surprises. Nothing enchants.

There is little incentive then to read beyond the book’s opening lines, “The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it.” Africa and its Africans is a failure, and thus have no place at the world’s dinner table. One can, as Naipul does, ignore the complexities of tribalism, the holocaust of the slave trade and the exploitation of the colonial system and blame Africa’s problems on the Africans themselves. It’s easy, it’s clean, and it makes for a good, bloody yarn. For all its circular syntax and complicated contextualizing then, the purpose of the novel, under the cover of flashy, intellectual grandstanding, is simplification cynically celebrated: Those Africans… they deserve it.

More Than Just Bad News on Page 25

Of the considerable technological achievements of the twentieth century-- the automobile, the jet airliner, the Internet, DNA fingerprinting, the bomb-- none have had as profound an effect on everyday life in Africa as the invention of the plastic bucket. Consider that for centuries that women used heavy clay or stone vessels to fetch water for the day's cooking, drinking, and washing. Traditional tribes unfamiliar with wheeled vehicles required the village women to carry this heavy container on their heads over great distances. The advent of the everyday and ordinary plastic bucket-- cheap and light and to us from the West oh so sundry-- revolutionized life in Africa. Longtime resident, the Polish journalist, Ryszard Kapuscinski, in his collection of writings on the continent, "The Shadow of the Sun," writes appreciatively for small things, aware that in Africa if a plastic bucket be a miracle, then to be grateful for small miracles nonetheless.

Kapuscinski, who died three years ago, spent decades reporting from Africa. Famously, as written in his author's bio, he "witnessed 27 coups and revolutions" and "was sentenced to death four times." In the compilation of his reportage from Africa, he suffers cerebral malaria, tuberculosis, nearly drowns in an ill-planned attempt to escape a coup in Zanzibar when his boat gets caught in the monsoon, survives several mechanical breakdowns in the bush, and is nearly bitten by a mammoth cobra in an abandoned hut. Critics have accused Kapuscinski of fabricating his experiences in the interests of the narrative-- while these are serious allegations, these criticisms miss the point of his writing, which although is harrowing is not the real story for Kapuscinski for all his nine lives does not seem at all boastful as he does compassionate. This not his story but the people of Africa's. If anything "The Shadow of the Sun" is a journey of a foreigner between optimism and disenchantment, an arc mirroring that of the African, who had higher hopes for the equitable distribution of wealth once his brethren took power. As anyone who pays any attention to international news at all, this transfer of power did not pan out very well. At one time or another, nearly every African nation has suffered the ignominy of failed state status. Kapuscinski, a convivial, friendly writer who seems to put his subjects at ease, translates this heartbreaking process in a variety of places and people, shattered sometimes by malicious greed, other times by tribal pathologies.

When Kapuscinski first arrived in Africa, in Ghana, in 1956, during the early years of decolonization, he found people who had been humiliated for centuries by Europeans via the slave trade and exploitation of resources, ready to demonstrate to the world their capacity for autonomous rule. But from the beginning the transition failed. As the journalist explains:

"On the one hand lay the deeply encoded remembrance of the history of one's clan and people, of the allies one could turn to in times of need and of the enemies one had to despise, and on the other hand was the awareness that one was supposed to be entering the community of independent, modern societies, a precondition of which was the renunciation of all ethnic egoism and blindness."

Here Kapuscinski is discussing Uganda but he may as well be talking about nearly every single African nation. As Kapuscinski notes later in his writings, there are comparatively few international wars within the continent. Africa's fiercest fighting is internal, between clans whose history of harmony or discord predates even the earliest European meddling. Kapuscinski illustrates this with the meeting of two men in Somalia. They give their names, family lines, clans, lineage, roots:

"Their personal rapport, their mutual sympathy or antipathy, have no meaning; their relationship, be it friendly or hostile, depends on the current state of affairs between their two clans. The human being, the singular, distinct person, does not exist..."

This is not to let the Europeans (or for that matter the Americans) off the hook. African nations have been incredibly self-destructive in their penchant for civil wars and corruption, but it is the sorrow of slavery that is most emasculating (and here, yet again, is the complicity of the African himself). But slavery has been a most complex burden, not only physical but spiritual and psychological, one that has engendered an inferiority complex.

Nowhere is the legacy of slavery so apparent as in Liberia, which Kapuscinski goes into graphic detail. There is much to tell but in summation, Liberia's story is a lesson on the extent of man's capacity for ruthlessness. By the early mid-19th century the entire coast of West Africa had been colonized by European powers save a narrow strip of land west of the Ivory Coast, disregarded; because of dense jungle thicket it was deemed impenetrable. This is where Robert Stockton, an agent of the American Colonization Society, docked in 1821, with designs to resettle former slaves in their homeland. Within a generation, these former slaves had adopted the plantation habits of their former masters including the columned mansions, The Good Book, the big gowns and stiff collared suits, as well as the enslavement of local tribes, who were denied citizenship, deemed heathens.

In Liberia, slavery lasted well into the 20th century. 1980 and 1989 witnessed two major coup d'etats and the country has been in perennial unrest ever since. It's a fascinating tragedy but I bring it up as a detail illustrating the structure of troubled African states as well as the inadequacy of aid programs:

"International relief for the poor, starving population is an exhaustible source of profit to the warlords. From each transport they take as many sacks of wheat and as many liters of oil as they need. For the law in force here is this: whoever has weapons eats first. The hungry may take only that which remains. The dilemma faced by international organization? If the robbers aren't given their cut, they will not let the shipments of aid get through, and the starving will die. Therefore you give the chieftains what they want, in the hope that at least the leftovers will reach those suffering from hunger."

Damned if you, damned if you don't has real life-or-death repercussions here and usually for want of a better option, the warlords reap the treasures and Africa itself is regarded as a colossal failure that cannot take care of itself, still even after colonization, "the white man's burden."

There are some Africans who feel that the mess was pre-determined, that the European colonials intended that the African nation states should appear incompetent without the direction of foreign officials. These protesters (legitimately) cite the promotion of uneducated tribal partisans (Ida Amin in Uganda, for example) and the ill-advised cartographical drawing of borders (something for which the British Empire in Kashmir, Iraq, and Palestine has blood on its hands, blood still being spilled in the world's biggest hotspots). In Africa, their mapmaking error was the creation of The Sudan. The Sudan comprises 2.5 million square kilometers incorporating the Sahara and Sahel, vast desert and savannah space as well as a very green, tropical south. More importantly, the people of the north are Muslims, the people of the South, animists. The origins of the longest running war in African history began nearly forty years ago when large landholding Arabs with access to money and arms ousted numerous fellaheen from the fertile Nile Valley, converting small subsistent farms into export crop estates producing cotton and rubber. The dispossessed Arabs were prodded south towards lands inhabited by what was defined to them as pagans and savages. When the war evolved it was no longer between armies but between roving bandits, armed and hungry. They follow the women and children since this is where they can find international aid, which is taken at gunpoint. But who is killing who, so well catalogued in the West has so few reference points in places like the Sudan, where:

"... even the longest and greatest war is quickly forgotten, falls into oblivion. Its traces vanish by the day after: the dead must be buried immediately, new huts erected on the site of burned ones."

The media constantly portrays Africa as a wasteland ravaged by war, AIDS, malaria, famine, poverty and crime. It is true of course that there is little of Africa that has not been touched by apocalyptic conditions but with such reportage concentrated on the horrible, it can render a place as large and significant as Africa a place useless and vile, easily regarded in a niche of hopelessness so despairing as to beyond realistic sympathies. The media does little to focus on the resilience of the average African. That they can live an entire life uncomplaining in conditions Europeans and Americans would find intolerable within 24 hours:

"Everything is eaten, down to the last crumb. No one has any supplies, for even if someone did have extra food, he wouldn't have anywhere to keep it, no place to shut it. You live in the immediate, current moment; each day is an obstacle difficult to surmount , and the imagination does not reach beyond the present, does not concoct dreams, does not dream."

The African can never take anything for granted, as Kapuscinski explains:

"Life here is a constant struggle, an endlessly repeated effort to tilt in one's favor the fragile, flimsy and shaky balance between survival and extinction."

Shade and water and the securing of these two fluid, inconstant things is what constitutes the average African's quest. Kapuscinski does not fetishize these simple desires nor does he feel sorry for them. What comes through in the telling of his time in Africa is that the continent's failings is not an African problem but a human one. There is no pie-in-the-sky solution offered by Kapuscinski as he is not a theorist but a journalist. If there is anything to be taken from his story is inspiration. Africa needs first person accounts, people who genuinely feel compelled to understand it via experience rather than judge it with headlines from the newspaper. That's your duty, then, yours and mine.

Two Sides of the Same Bridge

A highlight for travelers visiting Africa is white-water rafting the Nile just north of its principle source, the great Lake Victoria, near the town of Jinja, Uganda. There are five Grade 5 rapids, several points of Grades 3 and 4, and inevitably the inflatable rubber raft you ride capsizes, the violent current swallows you whole and tumbles you like a filthy sock, but because of your life jacket you are spit back up towards the surface. There are crocodiles lurking in the area, but the agency that sponsors these excursions has the rafts escorted by members of the Uganda Olympic squad, who kayak ahead chasing off carnivorous predators with good solid paddle whacks. As a preliminary, release forms are signed beforehand and when you are being helplessly tossed about the foamy currents, the thought crosses your mind that a crocodile bite would hurt, perhaps gravely. Much of the thirty kilometer journey, however, is a torpid, tranquil drift downriver, eating watermelon down to the rinds, gabbing about 'where you from?' and gazing with lazy, sunburnt eyes at the jungle-- a lush and flourishing wilderness crowding the river's edges. The boat courses through a quiet, undeveloped Africa, not quite tame yet not very mysterious either. Something, some unquantifiable emotion seems to be missing, or perhaps it has just been lost.

At the end of the journey, the rafts capsize for the last time. The tourists are thrust into the rapids where two strong currents collide to form a whirlpool nicknamed 'The Bad Place.' Afterwards, soaked adrenaline junkies tramp up the hillside (there are porters to take care of the rafts) where a large banquet has been prearranged in a large, grassy picnic area overlooking the river. Stacked on huge plates are piles of grilled pork, fried chicken, and salads. The coolers containing ice-cold Nile Specials, the local Ugandan beer, are completely raided within thirty minutes. Later that night at Bujagali campsite, amid conventional rock and roll anthems and the cash bar making a handsome take,  the rafters are called together to enjoy a DVD production edited to bam-bam go-go music from The White Stripes and Nelly. The video stars we rafters, being smashed and throttled and occasionally surmounting the brutish currents heroically. Much whooping and whistling punctuate the larger wipeouts.

Of course the DVD is available for purchase, $45, which sounded to me a bit of a kick in the stomach after the $95 price tag charged for the trip itself. Cash preferred but credit cards are accepted with a five percent surcharge added. "Sweet!" was the buyer's exclamation handing over his greenbacks. A prefabbed memory, now post-packaged.

This is the other side of Africa. Not all the continent is defined by civil wars, diamond mines, child soldiers and the smuggling of antiquities. A busy industry for outdoorsmen in particular thrives on the border of darkness from which Kurtz never returned. Enjoying Africa at its most picturesque or romantic is not for cheapskates. It takes a solid credit rating to go on safari ($65 to $200 a day), to climb Kilamanjaro (at least $800 to do it appropriately) or even visit an economically disadvantaged South African township ($50).

Many of the continent's prime visiting centers run a very sophisticated tourist infrastructure. These businesses are run with foreign capital catering to a clientele almost uniformly Euro-American (there were no African tourists getting dunked in the Nile when I was there). Perhaps that would be inevitable in a pattern that many Africans perceive as an outgrowth of neo-colonization. According to international trade laws operating ostensibly in the interests of debt-ridden Third World countries (encouraging foreign investors to do business in Africa requires a hefty lure), transnational companies build branch offices, use trademarks and most importantly, repatriate their earnings. Thus, lucrative profits cannot be taxed by the host country, denying revenue for improving basic infrastructure. There are many ugly words for this sort of parasitism, but the designation ballyhooed by boosters is the much more marketable term, 'globalization.'  

Perhaps nothing emblemizes this trend better than enormous 4WD utility vehicles preferred by young backpackers on overland journeys. Customized itineraries between Masai Mara and Cape Town provide the tourist with a desired experience without having to get one's hands dirty. These monster cars are designed with optimal window space: mobile isolation chambers perfect for gawking at perceived dangers, whether they be maneating lions or savvy street hustlers in Nairobi.

photo by ARIKO

About a thousand miles south of Jinja, on the southern tip of Zambia lies a town called Livingstone.  The square concrete one- and two-story units and bubble-gum advertising remind me of an ordinary town in the California suburbs. It is a rather unremarkable place, colorless for an African city. However, the ubiquity of billboard signs, upmarket hotels, and big family restaurants suggest prosperity. There is money to be made in Livingstone, a boom town in the vicinity of Victoria Falls, arguably the greatest waterfall in the world.

Victoria Falls (another colonial sticker) is known among locals as Mosi-oa-Tunya in the indigenous Kololo language: 'The Smoke that Thunders' (a much more appropriate appellation). At 1708 meters wide and falling between 90 and 108 meters it is the largest waterfall on earth, so large in fact, that it straddles two nations, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In 1855 its Anglican name was christened in honor of the Queen of England by the Scottish explorer and missionary, Dr. David Livingstone, who was exploring the interior of Africa by means of the Zambezi River. Today, most backpackers have given it the shorthand epithet 'Vic Falls.'

Because of its runaway inflation and resulting crime waves, I had no intention of visiting Zimbabwe, content to view the cataract on the Zambian side. The lip of the falls is accessed along a pedestrian walkway. The morning I was there was bright and beautiful, the park crowded, mostly with African tourists. Engaged couples come here for wedding photographs, as cascades (think Niagara Falls) for some reason have always figured prominently in the romantic psyche. An ebullient atmosphere pervades the occasion and the rising mist from the surging torrents feels cool on this warm, winter day.

The falls of Mosi-oa-Tunya are a phenomenon to itself, but for some it's just another waterfall. For those with greater expectations, numerous activities abound. Livinstone and its sister city on the Zimbabwe side, Vic Falls, are competitively self-aggrandizing, both boasting credentials to be Africa's adrenaline capital.  From either side of the falls extreme sports enthusiasts can arrange skydiving, bungee jumping, microlighting, abesailing, white-water rafting and canoeing on the Zambezi, gorge-swinging, river-boarding, horseback riding, elephant-back safaris, tandem kayaking, jetboating, and sunset booze cruises. 

It's all there. All you need is the cash.

I didn't have the cash or at least I didn't have money allocated for bungee jumping but I did want to check it out before I left. The jumping point was not at the falls themselves but a fifteen minute walk outside the national park to a bridge that represents in both physical and psychological terms the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe. To access the bridge immigration officials issue you a sightseeing pass allowing entrance into this 'no-man's land.'

The jump is into a huge ravine carved by the Zambezi and extraordinary geological forces. It is the second-highest jump in the world and when I arrived at the site it was a hullabaloo. I did not see any alcohol but a fiesta temperament prevailed. I could not believe the Top 40 teenybopper punk shrieking from tinny speakers (wouldn't you think the thunder emanating from the world's greatest waterfall had already enhanced the drama of the moment?). Those yet to take the fall paced the railing in the anticipatory adrenaline rush while the just-initiated, flushed and effusive, were frothing with excited, hurried talk. Jumpers on the platform sported huge 'can't-blame-me-for-trying' grins. You could see their chests rising with great gulps of air, the survival instinct manifesting itself-- a contact high that makes your own heart begin to rush when the countdown is cried by the gleeful participants.

"Five. Four. Three. Two. One!"

The jumpers plummeted into the gorge, popping back up with the 'hang loose' sign, A-oking their dopamine high before bouncing away again like ham dangling loosely from a tethered meat hook.

What is particularly surreal about the experience and sums up the two conditions of this continent with alarming eloquence is the stream of Africans on the other side of the bridge shuffling along. They look exhausted, weak, and some of them from the condition of their clothes, nearly indigent. Why were they crossing this bridge? For family? work? a new beginning? And what did they think of the sport of wealthy white men hurling themselves into oblivion for a hundred dollars a pop when there was a famine of maize crop in Zimbabwe and 50% unemployment in Zambia? They passed on the other side of the bridge inconspicuous to the jumpers because they did not get in the way and hardly made a sound.

I watched three guys find their rush, a future cocktail boast, and returned to the falls. On my way at the Zambian checkpoint a large clunker of a bus coughed to a halt in front of the fenced gates. The roof of the bus was loaded with suitcases, garbage bags, even furniture, perhaps the total belongings of some of the passengers. One of the park's many baboons, a curious and mischievous rabblerouser leaped onto the roof and moseyed through the chattel, scavenging for edibles. An apoplectic driver hopped out of the bus and shook his fist at the primate, who reacted to the man's curses indifferently. Travelers, slouched and exhausted, filed past the driver expressionlessly to present their passports and paperwork to immigration officials so that they could cross the bridge, where they would rejoin the bus and continue onwards towards wherever they were headed, to Zimbabwe, or beyond.
Edited from an earlier draft dated 2005

A View From the Train

photo by ARIKO

Something is amiss on the express train from Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, to Kapira Mposhi, Zambia. As I awaken I want to urinate but struggle to dismiss this urge, as the train is stopped and one is only supposed to use the commode when the train is in motion, as to better disseminate waste. It is just after eight in the morning and everything is very still and soundless. Lying there for several minutes wishing a return to deep sleep, I overhear a passenger talking to one of the conductors; his english isn't good and the duration of the dilemma is not clear. He may have said it was a six-hour delay or six hours to our destination. The locomotive is broken down and they are waiting for someone to arrive and fix it.

The Tazara line between Dar es Salaam and Kapira Mposhi is one of Africa's most famous railways. It's nearly 2000 kilometers long but not long enough. It finishes in Kapira Mposhi, a depot for copper transport but rather inconvenient for most travelers as a terminus goes. Kapiri is the hub of the region's copper belt but commuters and wayfarers must take a three-hour bus ride to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, for all ongoing transportation options. Thus the railway feels uncompleted, as if the money just ran out.

No matter, the Tazara line is the technological pride of Zambia, as the country, fetal-shaped and perhaps its potential unborn, is large but landlocked and without the rail system could not conduct its commerce with nearly as much efficiency. Zambia is poor in comparison to its southern Africa neighbors, especially Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa, who have benefitted from lucrative amounts of diamonds and uranium under their terrain. Zambia is at the mercy of the copper market which fluctuates more often towards depression than boom and the country often collapses into famine. Unlike other African nations it has a crisis of resources and lacks its neighbors' potential for growth.

Built as a socialist project co-sponsored by the Chinese, the Tazara line has fallen into disrepair. Millions of dollars are required to rehabilitate tracks and the locomotives themselves. Workers' paychecks are overdue. Of course, the financial crisis has affected the price of copper and volume of traffic, underperforming at all levels. Ironically, the service will betray its people's power intentions and be privatized, most likely sold to foreign capitalists from... China.

The train has been stopped for nearly three hours when I rise from my couchette to investigate. Outside my window on the adjoining rails, children wiggle in discarded secondhand rags in an attempt to stay warm. It is quite cold in the winter morning-- the train had traveled a great distance from Dar es Salaam and we were probably close to a thousand kilometers south of the equator and well into the region's Southern Highlands-- but the kids giggle and hop. They are twirling. That was the thing about Africa that struck the visitor, the streams of joyful children, dressed in scuzzy hand-me-downs, bereft of baubles, doohickeys and knickknacks who had but their own bodies to bid play, a joy of movement, of jumping and leaping and laughing. It's not at all easy to romanticize-- too many are pushed into labor at a young age. Education is something they will never have. Instead, they carry baskets of bananas, oranges, potato chips; the stronger ones wield buckets of bottled juice and soda. They hustle for trade wherever the train slows to dislodge passengers. Many have a habit of standing still, trying to look you in the eye long after you have turned their offers down. There is a vast range of emotions to draw from the window of the train and the casual observer can be confused as to whether his hopefulness can be substantiated or is just plain wishful thinking.

photo by ARIKO

There is nothing to look at beyond the depot where we are broken down and so the children don't intend to leave in spite of the windy winter chill. It is unlikely they see many foreigners and they cast playful glances at the window. It is an eventful day when the locomotive breaks down near their village, a spectacle to be appreciated. This is backwater country and mostly the train charges past imperviously, not disclosing its myth or mystery.

The train begins chugging again but we're several hours late. You take arrival times in Africa as optimistic conjecture-- an arrival time is a great variable.

The train's compartments are somewhat cushy and travel in first class isn't crowded as each room contains four beds. My girlfriend and I are sharing quarters with an elder Englishman and his African paramour, a young Tanzanian with beautiful plaited hair and jackpot eyes. Bearded, portly, and a gentleman rough around the edges, Raymond the Englishman, conveys his opinions with a frank earnestness and upon complicated questions elaborates for Judy, his beloved, so that she can follow in on his talk. He is patronizing at times, offhandedly acknowledging socioeconomic discrepancies and her coming up in the world with his numerous references to Judy's matriculation in a computer course. He's old enough to be her dad and probably big enough to crush her but there is something honest and intimate in their relationship nonetheless.

Raymond often refers to a detailed topographical map. You could almost picture him as a lieutenant for Mr. Cecil Rhodes, the great imperialist and diamond magnate, who once envisioned a transcontinental Cape-Cairo railway that had it been realized, would have been a fairly profitable crown jewel in the British empire.  Raymond's giddiness peaks as we zoom past some godforsaken station so that he can correspondingly zero in on the map. Only do the curmudgeonly aspects of his personality come out when dealing with moneychangers, bureaucrats and dangerous traveling logistics. "Thieves," he snarls at me, under his breath when stray African eyes linger as they pass our compartment: "Will you please shut the door?"

There are few Western travelers. Some Australians have a problem with two intoxicated customs authorities who board the train and demand $25 for a Zambian visa when it is clearly not required. These officials are very drunk and stubborn and only become more angry when the afflicted Australians point out the absence of any documentation to prove their point. There is a middle-aged American academic traveling onwards to Botswana; she is performing a comparative study between HIV/AIDS in that country and Tanzania ("Do you want me to go into this disaster...?"). Otherwise, the other passengers are Africans, many of whom crowd the dining car: inebriated commuters hollering to be heard over the thundering din of the locomotive. They yell for more beer from exasperated waiters, suffering these humiliations in kitschy uniforms of slacks, bowties, and leopard-print vests. The beer is flowing but otherwise the kitchen suffers issues of privation. There was no coffee loaded onboard in Dar es Salam. And culinary selections run the gamut from fried chicken to fried beef to fried fish. Being that the chicken is woefully undernourished and the fish terrifying, I subsist on beef, requiring serious mastication for its leathery toughness.

Upon awakening, I had originally surmised that our train's delay had not been due to an engineering malfunction but that the police had mandated our delay in order to investigate. For the night before the breakdown a passenger had been caught stealing from the cupboard. Thrashed by an angry mob, the offender was marched down through the train to the caboose and involuntarily expelled to the abyssal night. This was not uncommon in Africa, where vigilante justice compensates for inadequate investments in security.

This uproar is a brief spark of frenzy. Mostly I sit back and watch the countryside. The railway runs through the Selous Game Reserve but despite my best efforts for the thrill of a herd of giraffes or elephants viewed from a rushing train there are no lucky sightings. But after so much looking, it hits me: there is so much space in Africa! All one hears on the other side of the ocean is the common refrain of a population spiralling out of control. But the revelation gathered from the train window is that there is space, so much space and Africa is big, so big, you can't write the continent off. Violent dictators, misuse of agricultural land, and the AIDS crisis have done damage but none of it irreprable. There is potential here. Its mark is the untouched land, which reminds me of a 19th century America on the verge of breakthhroughs.

 

For the moment, however, wintertime grips the land in signature despair: yellow grass, weeds, skeletal, half-dressed trees-- and land not yet touched, farmed, irrigated. So much of it. Occasionally the train zips by the occassional village composed of mud and straw, whizzing past the farmer leaning on his shovel to observe the noisy serpentine machine careen past, creating for a brief moment in his day a gust of exuberant pandemonium.

photo by ARIKO

Edited from an earlier draft dated 2005

Does God Leave Footprints in the Sand?

There's a great desert in Namibia, in Africa's southwest, where two German geologists went AWOL during the Second World War. They didn't believe in Thousand Year Reichs, Jewish pogroms or master races; they were scientists and primarily curious about what lay under of the surface of the world's upheavals. I mean this literally. Namibia is a region rich in reserves of quartz, jasper, amethyst, among hundreds of other minerals. While rock could transcend eras, the war was a pocket in time, a manmade catastrophe that they did not believe in and were determined to survive so that they might continue their studies. They escaped to the desert where they hid out among the dunes and ridges, canvassed for water and hunted antelope and other animals, much as man must have lived in this region for centuries. Amazingly, they survived for two and a half years before they exhausted themselves of game, water and the gambit of living in the harshest of climates, finally surrendering themselves to the authorities.

Bordering South Africa, Angola and Botswana, Namibia does not figure prominently on most people's minds when they think of Africa, as its recent history is not so pathetic or violent as many others on the continent. In the 19th century, during the gluttonous appropriation of lands, rivers, and mountains it was ignored by the the European colonial powers in the initial rush for conquest. The British had put a flag down in the deep harbor of Walvis Bay but otherwise the coast was not advantageous and the land beyond it, inhospitable. The Germans eventually claimed it for the Kaiser but as with every area of land in Africa, there had been someone settled there beforehand. The Germans fought a vicious battle with the indigenous San Bushmen, forcing thousands to migrate east to the Kalahari Desert where they starved to death or perished from dehydration.

Namibia was pretty much ignored afterwards as a frontier post until diamonds were discovered in 1908. Of course, this raised its profile considerably and became a source of contention among the great powers. It was forfeited by the Germans along with their entire colonial holdings following their defeat in the First World War. A treaty put Namibia under a mandate to be administered by South Africa, back then still a member of the Queen's empire but more or less autonomous. When South Africa achieved nationhood, the rigid and racist social structure known infamously as apartheid was firmly entrenched in its society as well as within its colony in Namibia. Great diplomatic pressure from the UN could not sway South Africa to release its grip until an internal guerrilla movement called SWAPO made things untenable for South Africa to effective govern. Independence was finally granted in 1990.

A lucrative industry, there are very few unemployed geologists in Namibia. For underneath the barren plateaus and mountains of sands are rich reserves of diamonds, copper, gold, lead, tin, lithium, and zinc. Namibia is the world's fifth largest exporter of uranium. Because of the wealth generated from the mining industry, the country feels wealthy by African standards. When I crossed the border from Zambia the landscape was just as forlorn on the Namibian side but the bus stopped at the OK Market, a generic supermarket outfit with America-sized food packages and correspondingly high prices. I was surprised to find three dollar magic shell syrup for ice cream amid the merchandise.

This wealth, is of course, quite deceptive. Like South Africa, there are two worlds in Namibia, black and white, and the distribution is very uneven. The major industries are still controlled by old Afrikaans and English families and wages do not correspond to rising prices. 35% of Namibians are unemployed and 50% live below the poverty line (nearly one-third of Namibians have annual incomes of less than $1400). The desert climate is as inhospitable now as it was a century before. Less than one percent of the land is arable and during prolonged droughts starvation is rampant. And the economic success itself is precarious, dependent on the availability of underground minerals. When they will eventually be irreprably exploited the country's infrastructure has few economic alternatives.

Regardless of technology, irrespective of the minerals, the desert remains formidable, dangerous, unforgiving. It is also a source of tourism. There are canyons, plateaus, vleis (dry river beds), and dunes that give the desert its geographical character. The dunes of Sossuvlei are particularly special--they rise nearly 300 meters from the earth, unnatural mountains undulating into the horizon, a great sand sea. When the wind picks up, sand scurries across the desert's face, giving the land its voice--lingering and soulful-- between the long, stoic silence it invariably defaults on.

How the sand dunes are formed is a bit of magic that takes millions of years to develop. Sediment of iron oxide is carried down the Orange River into the Atlantic where it meets a strong surface current called the Benguola. The Benguola spins the minerals in a cyclical direction against the coastline grinding it up into a fine red sand that is then blown across the land by a southwesternly wind that eventually meets a southeasterly wind, that has picked up along the way sediment from the Orange River upstream. The two winds clash and the fallout is deposited so that the dunes are balanced and colored on both sides, a finely carved ridge forming the dunes' backbone. Erosion from the nearby mountains is the source of quartz and dolorite blown in from more desert winds creating a delicate, sparkling sheen. When the sun rises over the dunes, its ascent to the sky douses the landscape with shifting light like a great finespun Arabian carpet washed over in fresh dye.

Namibia is a geologist's playground, an inspiration, a neverending story of development, formation, erosion. But for most of the country's inhabitants the dunes have very different origins. Like many countries in Africa, almost ninety percent of Namibians are Christians and they believe in the Old Testament, biblical creationism, Intelligent Design. Thousands of miles to the north, the men of the Sahara explain, 'God created the desert for man to find his soul.' Is this because the desert, like any embittered environment can bring out mans' great virtues and extreme depravity? When you think of life and the desert, survival comes to mind because if water is the source of life, surely the absence of it is the proximity of death?

Life manages to persist. Amid the rugged terrain outlining the desert's frontier, trees are sparse but they do grow and some of them are home to giant nests of birds calles sociable weavers. Dozens of these birds live in the same nest, building upon the shelters to accommodate growing populations. Creating a complex apartment aviary, the nests can grow so large they uproot trees. 

On the road between the urban sprawl of Windhoek and the desert are birds-of-prey gliding in slow, deliberate circles, wild horses grazing on yellow grass, fat cattle slouching on the long march, and the occasional baboon seemingly shiftless and bored on a rocky outcropping. Indeed, in Nambia, one gets the impression that biblical creationists would lose the great evolutionary debate. Even to the casual, amateur eye, the formations and the adaptive qualities of the wildlife indicate the earth is a very old place.

Yet one can't help but feel that God does exist, because the desert and the surrounding landscape feels much more intricate than the aftermath of a climate pattern. This is divine and inspired beauty and while I don't think it necessarily demonstrates a Biblical Jehovah at work one is inclined to believe in some mysterious force present.

At a distance the sand dunes are conspicuously empty of life. But when one puts his or her foot in the sand, a little black-rounded bug, with a curved thrusting blade in front emerges from the depths. If one touches your shoe they squeeze into a little ball or dig themselves under the grain. The 'bulldozer' beetles have managed to stay alive in the desert for millions of years, through unbelivable summer temperatures and great desert storms. These robust creatures persist in a climate not made for life at all.

There is something both frightening and wonderful in that.

Edited from an earlier draft dated 2005

Mickey Mouse, A Mentor Named Don Quixote, a Cameleer Called Abdul, A Beast Monikered Bob Marley, A Man Without a Past

A Spot in the Western Sahara

"The less she bore man’s imprint, the more room she offered for the expansion of his heart.”

Marcel Proust on Nature

Sunrise in the desert is a true delight. With the stars slowly fading out, a purple haze becomes the western horizon. Light diffuses across your vision in rainbow patches, a hue of Venetian wild yonder gathered wishfully from Bradbury stories. And to be alone on the sands is to give in to imagination, to the magic of fairy tales and serialized adventure musings. It is desolate and cold yet romantic and rejuvenating. In central Morocco, I was wandering the Sahara dunes, alone, just after the sun had risen and a sky being blued. From the distance there was a lone figure coming towards me. My hotel, where I was the only guest, was on the outskirts of the village of Merzouga, a good six kilometers away from any dwellings or fashionable auberges. The person seemed to arrive with the dawn, a man born of the light. As he approached, I discerned his navy tunic and matching turquoise turban-- ‘le hommes bleu’ the tourist literature calls the Bedouin of the Western Sahara. Amid the wide expanse of sand, he approached my vantage point, called out a 'Bonjour,' and kneeled before me. From a satchel, he unrolled some newspaper and produced specimens of fossilized rock. "Good price," he said in English once he had successfully discriminated my American accent.

The first nick in the relevance of the Western Sahara caravan route came in the 16th century when the Portuguese opened the Atlantic coast with coastal shipping. Nevertheless, men, camels, and goods continued to cross the Sahara for hundreds of years, from Marrakech to Timbuktu, trading in salt, spices, ivory, slaves. In the 20th century the French established a Protectorate. Under their colonial supervision a modern highway infrastructure was constructed. Later than that, airplanes made transport quicker and more efficient. Thus, the legendary caravan routes have largely disappeared and very few hardy men still make this difficult journey. Still the desert grows, it effuses, beckons, and challenges. In this era of mass tourism and virtual experience, it is this market that is the only lucrative one left in this arid, foreboding land.

All along my travels I’d been warned against the hustlers of Merzouga, a small village on the edge of Erg Cherebi, where the largest sand dunes in the country were accessible via a good, paved road. Supposedly busloads of tourists made the stop, posed with camels for five minutes and took off on the long trip back to Ourezazate or even Marrakech, a good six hours drive away in grueling heat. This stretch of the desert has also become something of a Land Rover’s amusement grounds with manic cavalcades of sports utility monsters roaring through the gentle ambience, bellowing  berserk macho energy. The camel tracks were covered by their 4x4 ruts and the quietude compromised beyond pity.

I was on the local long-distance bus from Tinehir to Erfoud, where I would have to change buses to get to Rissani. There, a taxi would take me to Merzouga. It was a convoluted route and I expected some trouble. Still almost a hundred kilometers from my destination two slick young cads took two seats across from me. Our conversation was typical of two hustlers making the peripatetic strike. They praised my coming to Morocco, for taking local buses, for meeting real Moroccans; these people on the tour buses, they said, missed out on the whole experience. "You are like Berber,” they announced, intending it as a compliment, a comparison to the indigenous population, the original Moroccans. 

Following the obligatory round of sickly, sweet praise they turned their talk to camel treks. “I’m a musician,” the thin, peppy one informed me. “I will perform a party tonight. You must come.” I told them that I hardly had a party in mind for the desert and that I actually wanted someplace very quiet, remote, soundless… I told them I had chosen my hotel, the Nomad Palace, precisely because it was far away from all the other hotels in the area.

Ah, but the dunes weren’t as high, they said. Undeterred by my steadfastness, they remarked the place was dangerous, too close to the Algerian border and that sometimes Americans were kidnapped or even shot by snipers. I politely smiled, acknowledging their desperate spinning with a skeptical eyebrow furrow. The younger one, the musician, slipped into a pouting silence. His friend persisted, lamely, recommending a compromise: if I went on their desert excursion, they would be happy to drop me off at the Nomad Hotel in the morning. Nope. A series of unrelated personal questions followed--to save face or win me over I could not decide but answered them succinctly. When it was discovered that I lived in Japan, the melancholy musician sprang to life in simple, but perfectly pronounced Japanese: "Honto ni? O-genki desu ka? Sabaku ni ikitai?"  Really? How are you, my good man? So you want to go to the desert?

The bus had reached Erfoud and was nearing its terminus. They reminded me that they were my ‘friends,’ and that I would be hounded by “faux” guides as soon as I stepped off the bus.

“Those people outside, they’re going to make couscous in your head.”

“Yeah,” I asked. “Then what are you making?”

“An egg.”

“Oh, so you’re frying an egg in my head?”

“Yes. With a Moroccan salad.”

“Abunai,” he said in Japanese, cocking his head to the faces outside the parked bus. Dangerous.

They weren't lying about that. I was hounded as soon as I disembarked. At a teleboutique, I called up the Nomad Palace: Ali, the proprietor, was in Erfoud picking up fresh produce from the weekly souk. A lucky break. He would be over in a few minutes to pick me up. I waited on the curb while some woebegone tout, stubbornly hovered over me, promising a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

I had visited various African deserts and witnessed their commercialization. I knew it by the sound of a flipped silver coin hitting the plastic table. But I couldn’t help myself: I clung to my expectations, I had visions of romance, adventure, and mysticism, but so tenuously held on.

Perhaps the desert loses its enchantment when it's turned into a postcard. Can a tourist really claim he’s been to the desert and the ascetic hardships the journey implies? Or has he merely seen it? If you walk far enough there’s the silence and the wind envelops, the sand gets in your eyes and mouth and scratches your skin. But the danger of its indifference to life, of its potential ruthlessness has been sanitized. The French Foreign Legion outposts have been replaced with ‘auberge avec piscine.’ Men who may have once raised camels mop the floors of honeymoon suites. The old ways are gone or put on as ‘authentic’ cultural experiences.  It's not enough that the ways of the infidels had to contaminate the national governments, the cities, the youth... even in the desert, archetype of the middle-of-nowhere, the infidels had it right: money makes the world go round.

Perhaps I'm naive.  You can’t blame the local 'men in blue' for wanting to make a little bit of profit out of us. For those  who were born and will die there, the desert will always be a rough place, real rather than romantic. It's my fault, rather, for wanting to believe in Mickey Mouse although he’s just a cartoon character.

One can interpret a child’s innocence as having no real illusions. Fantasy and reality can be one thing: whole.  At Disneyland there are no costumes. It is not a fabrication; there is no man sweating underneath cursing his lot in life, craving a cold beer. To adults, fairy tales imply whimsical make-believe, but for a child it is the way the world works. When the wizard of Oz turns out to be just a man behind a curtain, you know Paradise has been irrevocably lost.

I arrived in the desert as the reluctant cynic: I had my vision of the Sahara, its tranquil beauty, its dangerous history, and its savage light, and I expected disappointment. The only way I could come out unscathed was to adapt a special attitude, that of a fabulist, or a young child, an innocent. Perhaps channeling Don Quixote was the only worthwhile solution. All or nothing.

My cameleer, Abdul, didn’t speak English, mumbling his French incoherently, as if he had been to the dentist and injected with large doses of Novocain. Ah, but he had no tongue; it had been chopped off as punishment for a lascivious comment regarding the Sultan’s harem.

The camel, single-humped and technically a dromedary, was named  Bob Marley. The resemblance to the Rastafarian legend was a stretch though the beast did have a friendly smile. The animal would be my carriage into the great sand sea.

And who was I but a Man Without a Past. Why had I come to the desert? Why was I intent on being here? Abdul inquired with his mangled tongue the origins of my history and my quest but I accepted the questions in silence, letting his enquiries echo into the void.

Leaving the village of Merzouga behind we entered the dunes. There on a small ridge of sand: a woman of Latin heritage in a tight white suit chaperoned by a heavyset man riding down the dunes on a piece of board. Surely, with her dark, agile beauty she was a foreign princess sold to the chief of a local tribe and he a carpenter and inventor showing off an ingenious device of transport. But where was her palanquin and her porters?

Along and over the dunes we trudged. Abdul faithfully inquired after my state of being: I was absorbed by the light playing upon the dunes, how it made ever so delicate shapes, shadows slipping away like a receding tide or its creeping arrival delivering coolness, all motions at the mercy of solar angles. Contentment did not describe my feelings. I was dazzled.

I thought I would have the dunes to myself but a group of eight camels came trawling from the opposite direction—their riders looked droopy and ill-begotten— perhaps they had made the 1000-mile journey from Timbuktu? Their gaudy social attire was terribly inappropriate for the desert… Did they run out of water and have to barter their raiments? I wanted to ask them about the oasis, as the desert was vast and harsh and what if we were to be lost should we fall under the spell of landscapes? But chagrined jowls set forward—I was out of their peripheral vision. I did not exist.

Going my way were a young couple from Switzerland. Abdul was friendly with the other cameleer and he tied my reins to the rear dromedary. I took them to be speculative merchants. They didn’t talk about their purpose here. They spoke of home. The desert has that effect.

The sun set. And the sky was cast with a mulberry glow, like a plum ripening through four seasons. The moon was nearly full, just a sliver bit off and the way was lit by lunar shine. We continued, our small camel train, cresting a high sand dune where we looked down upon an oasis, small, verdant, a cluster of palms, spilled figs, small shacks of wood covered in tarp, a well containing spring water, a fire and a cooking pot.

Abdul spoke to my dromedary and the beast collapsed onto itself in a sitting position. I dismounted and entered the camp. There was food and music and in the songs a local lore which seemed culturally impenetrable, yet exquisitely beautiful. The hand drums were spanked, an oriental flute was blown, lyrics lapping the night in a harmony barked as well as sung. I lay back, looking towards distant crowns and let the sound envelop me. The tumescent moon subdued the incandescence of the constellation but no matter.  I could see the bushy bedhead outline of the palm grove poised before the great sand dune and the miracle of the oasis came to me— how water, the source of life, could be discovered in the most unlikely of places and because of these marvelous springs the desert could be crossed on foot or by beast. It has been crossed and will be crossed again. For a brief, ecstatic moment I fancied I could be one of those men, if only I wanted to. And then a shooting star defied the lunar light. It sparkled in the sky in a moment’s burst, just long enough to pause for wishes and dreams.

Edited from an earlier draft dated 2005

Hanging With the Maasai

Fixing for dinner?

Likely, you were first introduced to them in your father's National Geographic and you never forgot. In fact, had the illustrious magazine required the service of a mascot to gimmick the longing for adventure in the anthropologist in all of us, who else would define the exotica of tribal life to suburbanites as well as they, with their fire-engine red cloaks, their stony-point spears, their beaded jewelry and elongated ears, their propensity to leap in the air.... In spite of massive industrialization entering the developing world, thousands of tribes continue to practice rural, animistic, shamanic customs. Yet, among these multitudes, it the Maasai of southwestern Kenya who continue to define the pastoral image of the ultimate Luddite.

Much of the technological progress that has characterized the past century has not made it to Africa. There are many reasons for this, primarily the corruption of dozens of governments on the continent, embezzling state revenues, aid packages, and IMF loans. What that means is that a number of rural areas are without drinking water, education, arable land, and adequate health care. Most of these people desire to acquire the benefits of technology and science. What makes the Masaai unique then is that, collectively, they are committed to a culture that is hundreds, if not thousands of years in practice and does not seek to be absorbed into a greater economy. The Kenyan government, however, in need of dollars, euros, pounds, and yen have done what they could to advertise the Masaai as any entrepreneurial city slicker might. And the Masaai lands being enclosed within the Masai Mara park, one of the richest and most famous wildlife reserves in Africa, are already inundated with tourists and their silver. Thus the inevitability of something you saw in National Geographic can be shrink-wrapped, packaged, and presented with a little red ribbon.

Children of the Plains

My own introduction to the customs of the Masaai was through a handsome, young man named Tendy. I'd met him at a campfire, where he and four others performed a series of dances on several traditional narrative themes: the story of a "lion's glorious assassination," an exposition on circumcision, and a wedding dance. The dances-- requiring a bit of agility-- involved much leaping and some low, muffled grunting punctuated by buzzing screeching.

Following the show, Tendy explained the meaning of the dances. When a boy of the tribe reaches a pivotal adolescent year (around 16, when we in the USA are enjoying the initiation of a driver's license), he must venture into the wild and slay a lion. Once this not-so-simple task has been achieved, the kill's mane must be brought back to the village as proof of the deed (where it is eventually tailored into a hat piece for one of the chief's sons). I suppose when you are born and raised in a valley where the nocturnal roar of lions is a way of life, their existence is not something to be feared so much as venerated.

A few days afterwards, Tendy took me to visit his village, where I was introduced to George, one of the Chief's sons. The village-- a collection of mud huts and thatched roofs, thorny fences built from acacia branches and no electricity-- was noticeably absent of men. As it turned out there was an important convention of elders and the younger men were preoccupied with grazing their cattle. George, one of ten siblings of various maternal lines, explained that nomadism being a traditional way of life, the Masaai had grudgingly accepted some modern practices, notably agriculture and the harvesting of maize, but otherwise continue to profess a lifestyle unique to much of the world.

For being a remote people who have balked at entering a world of Internet and antibiotics, George's English is surprisingly good. I pepper him with questions regarding Masaai social custom and personal enquiries. Turns out George is a true blue Christian. Ancestral spirits have got nothing on Jesus, who "died for my sins." I figured being a warrior he would at least be interested in Old Testament battles and intrigues but George did not seem to be aware of the stories outside Christianity's defining raison d'etre. It seemed between George's adeptness at English and one-size-fits-all spiritual convictions, some had come before me, selective about what and how to modernize the Masaai.

However, George would fit in better with old-fashioned Brigham Young Mormons than modern day Southern Baptists, since of his key ambitions in life were not chiefdom, but multiple spouses. A Masaai can have four wives, which would of course indicate a made man. I asked him if jealousy among the wives would be a running problem. He explained that disruptive element is taken care of when the village shamans perform clitoridectomies. Paraphrasing George, removing the clitoris removes the hotheaded lusts that are the cause of so many headaches. I didn't know how to explain to George how wonderful the clitoris was in the act of passion without transgressing the delicate line on cultural values. George, a bachelor still, told me about his girlfriend. She's from another village and they rendezvous in the tall elephant grass when they want to get acquainted (where he might have to kill a lion I suppose if one showed up uninvited). The safer option is a neutral pub where they can drink indigenous beer, conspiring over their glasses I suppose, the delightful maneuvers of forbidden romance.

In general, it seems the Masaai men have it good since not only do they benefit from the obvious advantages of polygamy, they are also exempt from the more mundane village tasks. The women carry fresh water from the river and wash the laundry. They also build the huts, crudely put together with thick clay mud, cow dung, and thatched straw (simple dwellings befitting a nomadic people occupied with moving). Inside it’s cool and dark, simple. If a man has four wives he hangs his spear over the hut where he is interested in his supper and where he shall lay his head in rest.

I wanted to know from George what it was like to kill a lion. He never has since young men don't have to perform this initiation rite anymore. Strict national park regulations have made lions a protected species. For now, a group of young warriors must defeat the common and not very intelligent buffalo, who if separated from his herd, is not so dire an opponent (and perhaps whose horns don't translate into as glamorous headgear as the lion's). The young men, like those in suburbia who read stories of ballplayers and pirates, have their share of myths, lore and what it used to be like in the good, old days.

Talking Shop?

In spite of their aversion to alien technology and the fact the Masaai continue to live without telephones, electricity, television, running water, and sundry conveniences, they are aware of machines that when pointed at them, record frozen life-like images of real moments. Recognizing the value wealthy tourists put on the act of phototaking, the Masaai have instituted a price. In the village you can shoot as you like but there's a fifteen-dollar fee. But buyer, beware, because should you shoot young, smug men unsolicited, they are liable to wave an elephant jawbone in a threatening manner.

Of course, I tried to take as many photos as I could without getting bludgeoned. George toured me through the village, where there was dancing, singing, and a bit of jumping. Many children, most of them naked, ran circles around me, laughing hysterically when they fell flat on their bellies from exhaustion. I tried begging off when George insisted I don his lion hair. This sort of hat doesn't look so noble or glorious on white guys. He escorted me through the market where I was urged to shop for homemade beads, carved jewelry, wooden knickknacks, fabrics bursting with color and a blacksmith's greatest hits of weapons you could not successfully move through customs. Mostly though it was women shouting at me "Buy! Buy!" as I sauntered past feeling very put upon. Something is not right, I thought. Something has been lost. Was it the Nikons, the Rolexes, the Armani sunglasses of wealthy visitors revealing glimpses of a coveted world that might be better than the one you were born into? I thought of a German tourist showing a group of Masaai kids the skyline of NYC on his digital video recorder. With enough exposure to sounds and lights shows, to Ipods and laptops, perhaps the vivid landscape that was home would no longer be enough to satisfy curiosities corrupted by fancy toys. You can remove the clitoris to take away a woman's passion but excising the envy and greed caused by brief encounters with the outside world would not be so simple.

Edited from an earlier draft dated 2005

A Blossom for a Bonbon

I found it while lying in the grass: a petrified shoe. It had a fossilized sheen, abandoned, forlorn. The stitches had been worn to nothing. Caked with weather—rain, mud, and strong mountain light had bleached it of color.  Had it been there for some time? What struck me most was that it had not been entirely discarded, as if it might be worth something to somebody someday.

I was in the mountains of Lesotho, a small landlocked country entirely within the borders of South Africa. These were austere hills, quiet, bare, and vast, a complete departure from the cosmopolitan air of Cape Town and Johannesburg.   And while the land may have seemed unspoiled at a casual glance, very little of it was actually arable, the soil ruined by subsistence farming. But the poverty of agricultural abundance was not the humanitarian crisis that Lesotho was developing an infamous reputation for.

Before my arrival in the country,  I had stumbled upon a well-thumbed World Atlas. I could find no publishing date but the geographical designations of Rhodesia, Zaire, and the USSR seemed to indicate that it could not have been edited beyond the late 1970s. The back contents had demographics charts including a breakdown on population density. Most interesting were the projected figures for global population for the year 2000: nine billion! Clearly, these experts had no idea that a severe epidemic could play such an attenuating factor in their analysis.

You cannot find a country in Sub-Saharan Africa that does not have an AIDS problem. Though Lesotho is geographically isolated by the Drakensberg Mountains, it nevertheless has one of the world's worst infection rates, an estimated thirty percent of the population. The source of the scourge is neither novel nor particularly unique.  One third of Lesotho’s male work force contracts with mining agencies operating in South Africa, most notably around Johannesburg. Needless to say, the work can be both backbreaking and humiliating.  Deprived of filial laughter, the family hearth and familiar friendships, driven by loneliness and perhaps melancholy or even desperation for some moment of hot vitality, many migrants engage with prostitutes. Taking the disease back home, they infect their wives as well as future offspring born with the disease and no chance for a healthy life.  Things are so bad in Lesotho, the life expectancy is just over 36 years of age.

As I said, the terrain is mountainous and the farmers that are able to produce crops often lose them to frequent drought. When I was walking through the countryside I passed a village that had just received a large shipment of foreign aid. Large sacks of maize were being distributed to hundreds who had lined up. Villagers that had come from over the horizon attached their rations to gaunt donkeys. It was wintertime, a crystal blue sky, and though the day was a little warm, most were bundled in large, colorful shawls and second-hand ski caps.

It is sad that this country has come to depend on foreign aid for its survival. The people of Lesotho have a proud history, especially when you consider that other than Swaziland, all the major tribes of the region had been incorporated into the European vision that was South Africa. During a critical point of land-grabbing, Lesotho had a wise and capable leader, Moshoeshoe the Great, who survived the onslaught of Shaka Zulu and his famous armies and then manipulated the local colonial powers, the British and Boers, into warring with each other. Lesotho managed to survive on its own, keeping its language and its culture intact, avoiding the devastation of apartheid, and though nominally attached to the Queen’s empire it was formally recognized as a sovereign nation in 1966.

Unfortunately, things never took off for Lesotho in modern times. It has had four decades of bad government, factional fighting, corruption, human rights abuse, riots, famines, a terribly undeveloped infrastructure and the AIDS plague: all dire symptoms of a failed state. Things are temporarily peaceful but it will take time, investment and perhaps some luck for the people to provide for themselves. 

There is a small, developing niche for tourism. In the village of Malealea, one can organize hikes, pony treks, and horse riding. The day I arrived I had gone on a walk to see some bushman paintings in a nearby cave. My guide, Ra, pointed out crude hunting sketches of men and beasts. He showed me a place where the rock formation curled out like a wave break. Here our exclamations could thus echo across the landscape, bursts of sound rippling across the air. 

Ra sang in the local choir. One could hear the poetry of the landscape in his humming as he hopped between the boulders and skipped under the trees. Ra was 26 years old. Both his parents were dead, casualties of AIDS. He lived in a small, tumbledown shack with his sister. However, Ra planned to leave for Maseru soon. Maseru was Lesotho’s capital; like most big cities in Africa it had been overwhelmed by crime and poverty. But his brother lived there and promised him a job working in a factory that produced Levi's Jeans. He hoped to earn enough to return in six months, in which he would purchase for himself four cattle. Four cattle would give him some status in the village. Cattle are big here, not for slaughter or even milk, but as a status symbol. Acquire enough cattle and the village might make you a chief.

What could happen to the man with a song in his heart who leaves these golden, but infertile fields for factories? At best, Ra spoke like a dreamer; at worst, a man suffering delusions. Optimistically, he had the future mapped out in his head.  But the city could defile individuals, either in a physical manifestation like AIDS or a spiritual one like desperation and despair--it could rob you of your hope, which is all many people here really had that had not been ruined. The city could destroy a beautiful man and I didn't know if Ra could leave and come back, still singing in the soft, simple innocence he did that golden afternoon.

The overnight pony trek I embarked on the following day would take me through the valley and over the hills, about forty kilometers in distance. The landscape was lovely yet rugged and not a little bit surrealistic. There was plenty of typical highland shrubbery but also cactus plants: needled flapjacks stacked atop each other’s heads. There were aloe family bushes, green strips flaming out, sharp and thorny.  They looked carnivorous, as if they might devour unsuspecting birds alighting for a brief moment in appreciation. Aloe trees spurted from some of these plants, growing ten meters in height, great green stalks interspersed with thin, weedy branches like a psychedelic coat hanger in Dr. Seuss's foyer. Particularly gorgeous were the peach tree blossoms in full bloom. This was late winter and these flowers were the harbinger of spring. Along with the shaggy-haired weeping willows,  they had been brought over in the nineteenth century by Swiss and French missionaries: Jesus with a bouquet of feminine winsomeness. What sweeter lure to the Hereafter than the gorgeous pink of the blossoms, their delicate, ethereal intricacy.

Travel through the valley goes across highlands, along steep cliffs and down ravines into dried-up river beds, back up rocky hillsides and then into meadows of tall, yellowing grass and tiny, slumberous villages of mud brick walls and conical roofs held together with matted straw. Along the streams women washed their laundry, dousing the colors, scrubbing. Later in the afternoon I spotted farmers' wives carrying home baskets of food balanced effortlessly above their heads. There were some men in the fields. The farming was indeed small-scale: the crops plowed by oxen cart.

However, most villages seemed to belong to the children. Upon seeing me ride in, they broke from the lethargy to come scurrying up in greeting, some saying ‘Hello’ but most crying out ‘Give me sweets! Give me bonbon!’ So desperate for a piece of Cadbury they risked dismemberment hurrying barefoot dangerously along the pony's stride, following a very great distance behind me sometimes, vain hopes that a day’s monotony could be broken by a bonbon. 

Eventually, I realized that there was more to this than a hankering for chocolate. For what could the beauty of landscapes really truly mean in comparison to the rumblings of empty bellies?

Who Lesotho's Future Belongs to...

Edited from an earlier draft dated 2005