Kigelia africana

Bokkom Laan and the West Coast

2012-02-03T22:44:00.000+02:00

Hopefield was founded by five Portuguese shipwreck survivors who married local women but, this afternoon as we look out across the rather barren landscape, instead of church bells we hear the imam’s call to prayer. Something about the air and the colours of the sky here remind me of West Caprivi - a rough beauty. We drive to the coastal fishing town of Velddrif along a somewhat pitted and bumpy tar road – badly constructed or perhaps tar simply deteriortates fast on these sandy soils.

Behind the counter at the curiosity shop on Bokkam Laan at the mouth of the Berg River, Dawie has already had several drinks by the time we arrive. I buy a jar of honey (labelled, ‘This jar took about 6 months to make since we only have 2 bees in town’), my friend J. buys some vintage cake tins, and we admire Dawie’s direct lines to President Zuma and Julius Malema. In the spirit of the moment, I ask Dawie if I can also have some Klippies (cheap brandy) and coke – and there on the shop counter he readily pours me a glass that has almost more alcohol than mixer.

Afterwards we drive to the local hotel, where one walks down a long orange corridor of bedrooms in order to reach the bar and restaurant. The grass in front rolls down to the harbour’s edge and a few dilapidated piers, as the evening draws in. We have another Klippies-and-coke and a plate of oily chips to keep the feeling going, and within a few minutes Dawie and colleagues have arrived too. After all, it’s a small town.

Not long afterwards, we witness an extraordinary conversation between the drunken Dawie and a black waiter at a neighbouring table. Or, rather, more of a monologue. Dawie grasps the waiter’s hand firmly, for no short period of time, and tells him loudly in Afrikaans: “Don’t let anyone call you a k****ir! You black bastard…I love you. Call me white boy. Don’t let anyone call you a k****ir!” And all the while the black man shocked into a frozen fake smile and a nervous laugh, to try and show that he too finds this frightening interaction to be one of camaraderie. Welcome to post-apartheid South Africa. Parked in front of the bar inside, meanwhile, sits a row of about six Afrikaaners, one or two tattoos peeking out, and above them in the corner, a modest TV screen airs the SABC, the public broadcaster. As they sit there drinking and talking, irony crystallizes in slow motion. Historical footage scrolls across the screen, showing the faces of banned black activists during the struggle. The ticker on the screen says ‘BANNED’. The volume has been turned down to quiet, maybe silent, and the whole scenario is a parallel mimicry of what is happening outside with Dawie and the waiter. The un-banning of apartheid, the coming of democracy, is in many ways a silenced backdrop to those whites living in the backwaters of this country.

Two nights later, we eat at Die Vishuis on Bokkom Laan by the Berg River. Having been under the impression that booking was imperative, it turns out that we are the only customers and, during the course of the evening, at least 4 other people in addition the waitress ask us if we're alright. One of the new partners who comes over to check on our table is a former SADF colonel - he says he should have been a two-star general but wasn't promoted thanks to black empowerment policies. He has moved to Velddrif from the government’s seat of power in Pretoria, to start a new life after his son nearly died in a motorbike accident.

Over generous portions of fish and calamari, which was followed by dessert on the house, we talk about the coloured community in the Western Cape: the minstrels at New Year, the atmosphere of family inclusion, the men pushing prams and carrying babies along with the parade. And yet this apparently joyous ritual and family festivity is juxtaposed by the harsh reality that the Western Cape is marked by systemic and structural violence, the most peculiarly extreme individual acts of violence, and the highest rates of child sexual abuse on the whole continent.

For the next few days we drive from place to place. The turquoise warm-watered Langebaan. Jacobsbaai with all its rock pools perfect for curious children. Trendy Paternoster and its properties in the 3 -7 million rand range. And Darling, bohemian gay village which is home to "grandma and grandpa Wendies", retired academics and artists (local lingo from J.). It's also home to the superb museum of political satirist and cross-dressing comedian Pieter Dirk Uys.

Uncharacteristically I nearly miss my flight back to Johannesburg. Luckily my taxi driver - a Zimbabwean probably far too educated for his current occupation - arrives 10 minutes early, at which point I realize that I am already an hour late. Norman puts his foot down and speeds to the airport at 130 km/hr. I barge through queues and make it just in time. I text Norman afterwards to apologise for asking him to break the speed limit. His response: “It’s okay…I was enjoying it…lol…kuonana [see each other] very soon!”

To Otambura, hill of marble and myrhh

2011-10-30T22:38:00.000+02:00

So the journey continued, with 2 four-wheel drives, 2 dogs, and 4 unusual and remarkable women whom I greatly value. It was completely the right combination. We were a spectrum of ages and backgrounds; and we were collaborative in the easy way that women often are. Carol assumed the role of chief tea-maker. We had a small teapot which served 3.5 cups, too small for tea for all of us at one sitting, so a compulsive tea-maker like Carol was a requisite for the journey. I was chief packer, at least for one of the vehicles, which was a good challenge for my rather poor spatial awareness skills, not to mention an ode to my expert-packer parents.

I caught up on sleep and began to wake up early with first light. We saw both sunrise and sunset most days, and we forgot what day of the week it was. I had neither a watch nor a phone to look at, so I never knew what time it was either. It was a relief to let go of scheduling altogether.

We drove for another day through dusty Sesfontein to the ochre sand plains of Puros, through kilometres of mysterious fairy circles that none of the experts can explain. In Puros, herds of oryx graze together with cattle, the lifeblood of the Himba people.

Our camp was frequented by pearl-spotted owls and gurgling crimson-breasted shrikes. The landscape is arid, striking, and older than the human mind can begin to imagine. The Himba are as exotic as the reputation that precedes them -- and for the most part seemed disinterested in us and the outside world, including the women whose 'traditional homestead' we visited.

From there, on to Orupembe on an unmapped 'back route’, which only allowed a speed of 20-30km/hr, and much of it up a dry river bed. After about 3 hours of driving, and having not seen any sign of human life for all that time besides one other tourist group and a handful of unused Himba kraals, we came across a lone Himba man standing in the river bed, selling some crafts, probably one of the most remote hawkers in the world. We had no common language with him, though he spoke a little Afrikaans: apartheid’s legacy found its way here, even to the remote northwest.

Not far from Orupembe was Otambura lodge, our taste of luxury for the week, with its infinity decks and views forever, blending into the dry hills. Groves of commiphora – the myrhh of biblical fame – are the defining characteristic of Otambura.

They are a litany of curious trees, thriving on a bedrock of none other than marble. Threads of lava and ancient metamorphoses wind this way and that amongst the boulders. The metamorphic rocks of the Kunene date to over 1800 million years old, so perhaps no surprise that these commiphora trees are like a foreign language from a different epoch. Their papery peeling bark rustles, clicks, whispers in the air currents; they sport flowers and pods like I’ve never seen before. Nowadays, the myrrh is harvested by ochre-clad Himba women and sold to L’Oreal as part of community conservation projects.

Our Otambura guide was a man called Onuva. Alice and I visited his seasonal homestead on the plain, and met his sisters and wife, who were dressed in the traditional way, as most Himba women seem to be. They were friendly, relaxed, proffered jewels - to which I succumbed – and a taste of woodsmoked maize porridge from the communal cooking pot.

Beyond the biblical trees, my enduring impression of Otambura is an all-encompassing night-time silence that makes me hunger for more. One late night, I stepped out under the sky, looked up, even though I hadn’t planned to, and stood paralysed in complete wonder. It sounds cliched, but I was bowled over by my own insignificance under its vastness. Not much time for philosophising though....from there, the journey back south began and our final nights were spent in the happy crook of boulders near Sesfontein and Twyvelfontein respectively.

The Awaited Journey: Namibia’s Far North West

2011-10-30T22:14:00.001+02:00

August brought with it Namibia and a journey I’d long been waiting for: to travel through Erongo and into the far north west to Kunene region. The stylish Alice joined me from London, and we met at Jozi airport before boarding for Walvis Bay, where Angela collected us from the next-slowest immigrations queue after Heathrow Terminal 1-3.

We began in Swakopmund on an uncharacteristically sunny day, and took Angela’s dogs for a customary walk along the beach. The next morning we were off and away with streamlined luggage and camping gear. We edged our way up the Skeleton Coast for 4 hours and then down an unmarked gravel track to Wereldsend, an oasis set amidst the lilacs and ochres of ancient hills and plains.

We arrived in time for a sunset walk with Namibia’s premier conservation doyennes. The space of Wereldsend and its surrounds is pure exhilaration. Space, openness, and the curious feel of being with people that one has a history with. There is grass, white grass, as far as the eye can see, uncharacteristic thanks to the heavy rains this past season, and the one before that.

Across the plains, ostrich, zebra, springbok, and the incredibly regal oryx feed in abundance. I saw my first desert elephant, and the fake-dead Weltwitschia plants which can live to be more than 1500 years old. As Carol says, “So when Jesus was kicking around, these were here…”

Our next day in Wereldsend brought the first clouds in 3 months, graffiti-sweeps across a monumental sky. The sunset was fluorescent, its pinks almost artificial, before we headed back to camp to imbibe the aroma of woodsmoke. Poor Alice, fresh from London, was dealt endless lion stories around the campfire by the bush old-timers, including the one about MJ and GOS’ first night together, when GOS had his foot mauled. Uber-romantic to the extent that it no doubt created the first of their lifelong bonds. No wonder Alice nearly had a heart attack when I stepped out of the tent to pee during the night, having just heard a hyena. I had to reassure her the next morning that it was probably about 3km away.

A Room of One's Own

2011-07-24T14:59:00.000+02:00

Who would have thought that one day I'd have a a place of my own in a big bad city like Johannesburg. Putting down some roots here is not a homecoming, but rather an aspiration of sorts. An aspiration of belonging. My search was long and thorough, and friends shake their heads in disbelief when they hear my property-viewing statistics. The building dates to the early 1970s and the second-floor corridor grants a view across the green blanket of the north-central suburbs towards Northcliff. The flat itself overlooks a horseshoe garden with trees, tall ones, scantily clad in winter attire, but promising impenetrable leaves in the rains. And there are birds: urban-escapee parrots, grey louries with chicks, tinker barbets and, some mornings, even guinea fowl.

The space is big enough for my spirit, yet small enough to belong. It gives me a sense of delight. There is light enough to inspire and capture the best of southern Africa’s sun, distilled for the highveld of the mining pioneers, the gold magnates and the wretched of the earth. The blinds on the tall windows hold and transform and shift and ebb and flow the light, so that it can be everything and nothing.

As for the residents, there hasn’t been much time for analysis yet -- a handful of younger owners and artsy tenants among a collection of Jewish sixty-pluses, with widely-varying degrees of friendliness. Other wildlife sightings include a plump white rabbit hopping along my road late one night, no doubt also returning from a social event. Another escapee? Might I stumble into its rabbit hole one day. There are yoga studios (my version of watering holes), no less than four, all close by, as well as all the other amenities that one might need.

I’ve been here nearly two years already. The anger, opportunism and inequality of Johannesburg has started to feel normal. The pages of violent crime relegated to the latter sections of the newspapers, or simply omitted. The ongoing labour strikes with demands for pay increases at double the rate of inflation. The way that white South Africans talk about ‘going to Africa’, as if it’s a different continent. The vigilante justice meted out to a petty thief that I witnessed the other night in Hillbrow whilst with some charity workers who do weekly rounds distributing food to the multiplicity of homeless. Despite the mixed reviews of The Bang Bang Club, which I saw on its opening night last week, it was an eye-opener about the nature of the horrific violence that presided during the last four years of apartheid, and a reminder of just how damaged this nation’s psyche must be.

So this is the unspoken backdrop against which a more mundane life of urban exploration unfolds: more visits to the farm stall in Kyalami; more south Indian dosas and uttapam at the Bryanston market; Gujurati delicacies in Mayfair; photography exhibits at the Goethe, Stevenson and Market Photo Workshop; the bourgeois taste of soya hot chocolate, still rare to South Africa; and the hamster wheel of career. All of it sewn together and mulled over here in this room of one’s own - indeed now attainable for the second sex, some eighty years after Woolf addressed the women of Newnham and Girton.

Comedians and High Heels in Lagos

2011-05-09T20:00:00.009+02:00

If the average Nigerian church service takes 3 hours, it's no surprise that the entertainment show that I attended last night in Lagos started at 6pm and still wasn't anywhere near finished by 11.30. Nor did I realize that I was signing up to watch this production alongside no less than 5000 other people. Literally.

People streamed in for the first hour of the show…and continued to stream in for the second. More chairs were brought in. Staircases were filled. Health and Safety in Britain certainly wouldn’t have approved, but that is of little relevance because the comedians had the thousands-strong audience virtually comatose with laughter. Chairs shaking and thumping. Howling with mirth. Twas a huge pity my Pidgin wasn’t up to it. The general topics were, of course, the familiar friends of people across the continent: police violence; corruption; incompetent politicians; and a fair amount of demeaning commentary about women. All this was interspersed with dancing, lip syncing, more dancing, hotpants…and the 8-year old Nigerian version of Justin Bieber.

Other observations: there is no rhyme or reason to Nigerian fashion. The dresses and styles amongst the audience were allsorts. The take away messages from the Lagosian women were, rather: don’t be shy about your curves…and wear 5-inch heels as often as possible. And if you need to hop on the back of a motorbike in a miniskirt, just get on with it. I can safely say that I haven’t been to any other African country where such extensive exposure of skin appears to be considered pretty normal among the middle classes.

On attempting to leave, and having passed the Rolls Royce, the Hummer and the guy with the automatic rifle at the front door, we found that we’d been parked in. My initial suggestion to drive through the hotel flower bed was shunned, but not for long, once seven versions of an eight-point turn had failed. The flowers turned out more or less fine.

Back at the fancy hotel, I enjoy air-conditioning, running water and satellite television. My window is all steamed up on the outside with the Lagos humidity that I can’t feel on the inside because I’m so privileged, but two hundred metres away is a small shanty settlement. Motorbikes, dust, dirt, open fires, certainly no sanitation. A whole different world.

The average private property in this part of town apparently costs $3 million dollars. That’s Lagos square-metres for you. It must be virtually impossible for a young person, even a very well paid one, to get onto the property ladder. As for rental, you have to pay at least a year’s rent up front in advance, if not two. You’re likely to still have to commute 2 hours to work. One of my colleagues has to leave home at 5.15am if he wants to spend 20 - rather than 120 - minutes on the road.

Departure Day: Thankfully this time I didn’t travel Mugabe-style to the airport. We spent two and a quarter hours with broken air-con in heavy traffic and fumes. And once at the airport, we all queued for a single X-ray scanner, so that was another 90 minutes.

One of the security officials made an announcement to address the line’s quiet frustration:

Security official: “Someone died on Friday. …”.

Random passenger: “Bin Laden!”

Security official: “Ehee. Some people are happy! Some people are not happy! So just be patient while we do our jobs”.

And all were reasonably content and on we queued.

I did make it to the X-ray machine, eventually. I had tasty lentils-and-rice in my hand luggage, cooked, ready to eat and perfectly suited for an arduous journey. I suspected that the stern security woman was going to grill and detain me for carrying food, but instead she gave me a knowing look and an approving grunt, as if to say: yes, any sensible woman would naturally carry her own provisions with her. And that was the end of Lagos, at least for now.

Boats, Prisons and More of Accra

2011-02-22T18:12:00.008+02:00

[No excuse for not having posted this earlier. It dates back to December.] Ghana’s apparent lack of heritage management in hot and humid Jamestown is kind of sad, but the by-product is that you get to construct your own tour, with the help (or lack of help) from whichever self-appointed tour guides who happen to cross your path. We started at the 19th century lighthouse where, for some obscure reason, photography from the outside is prohibited. I climbed up the now-rickety hardwood spiral steps for the view of the dilapidated sprawl below.

We spent the next hour weaving between muscular fishermen and their boats on the much-more-vibrant shoreline. The boats are extraordinary: the hulls are single pieces carved from entire tree trunks. The biggest was perhaps 15 metres long and over a metre in diameter. I repeatedly marveled at the size that these trees must have been, but I was informed that ‘in the village’ there were many such specimens. The boats are lovingly carved and painted on the outside: ‘There is Hope’ ‘Feed Your Self’ ‘God is Good’ ‘God is Able’ ‘God is Love’ ‘Thanks to God’ And others less godly: ‘Chelsea’, ‘Obama’, and more.

We continued to the Jamestown Fort Prison – a former slave house, and then prison until apparently just a decade ago. It is now empty and virtually none of its history captured for visitors. We found a lone 'guard' sleeping on a table near the entrance, which is about as much security as is needed nowadays, it seems. Said guard insisted that I part with about 7 dollars in exchange for temporarily interrupting his siesta, after which he resumed his pressing REM duties.

Notable prisoners include Nkrumah, and his cell is clearly marked. There are improvised hand-crafted hangers bound to the high-window bars and draping down the walls in a macabre fashion, on which the prisoners used to hang their food and other items, given space constraints and hygiene in the cells. The men’s and women’s sections were divided, and the women afforded better conditions, it seems.

Next on the cards was Makola Market which in this pre-Christmas period on a Saturday, was just completely crazy. We sat for ages in the traffic. Densely packed with people, goods, traders, and cars, it was quite something to behold. I bought fabric, some Ghanaian music (Daddy Lumba) recommended by my driver, and a fabulous collection of glass-bead bracelets and necklaces.

The penultimate stop of the day was the National Museum, another example of apparently no heritage management in years. Nevertheless, I enjoyed what it had to offer. Ghana’s material culture is incredibly rich: beautiful handwoven and printed fabrics each carrying a message and a name; carved wooden ceremonial masks and stools…not to mention a necklace made of some one hundred human teeth (molars, no less) from Congo which won my prize for the most eye-catching jewellery. We rounded my sightseeing with a quick stop on Osu ‘Oxford’ Street, before finally tucking into a much-needed meal of fried plantain, chicken, rice and fish stew at a suitably local joint.

Ghana's Cape Coast

2011-01-06T21:33:00.000+02:00

What I really liked about Ghana and Senegal is that no one gave a toss that I was white – it is an entirely different experience from southern Africa. At the end of a busy work week in Accra, I arranged to travel to Cape Coast with a South African friend who happened to be conferencing in Ghana. We were to meet at Kaneshi station, Accra’s biggest transport hub and the ‘spare parts capital’ of west Africa, where it’s totally normal to eg. carry a car door down the road on one’s head.

We didn’t have a meeting landmark in advance, and given other experiences of third-world transport hubs, I had a feeling this was going to be an issue. We settled on meeting at ‘the’ bus stop for Cape Coast. Tom was held up in traffic and I waited in the sweltering lunchtime heat for about an hour, trying to squeeze under vendor umbrellas where possible, before being gently shooed away for obstructing trade. What I loved about this particularly hot hour is that no one cared that I was the only whitey around. Nor did anyone care that I was a tourist. Everyone just got on with their own business and left me to my own devices. Marvellous.

Needless to say, Tom and I both found ourselves at stops for Cape Coast…they just happened to be different ones. We eventually located each other among a sea of traders, stalls, produce, taxis, minivans etc, and boarded a relatively luxurious bus which was fully equipped with plastic seat covers (to save the seats from sweaty passengers), a video screen, and a preacher. As the driver revved the engine, the preacher shared with us a loud prayer, which I thought was quite a good idea, until it became obvious that he, like the bus, was just warming up. And, he announced, he would preach not only in Fanti but also in English (‘for the benefit of the whites’). The passengers joined in, increasingly heartily, with regular ‘amens’ and ‘thanks be’s, and I resigned myself to the fact to the three-and-a-half hour journey ahead.

Thankfully the preacher disembarked after about thirty minutes, not before taking a collection. We arrived in Cape Coast in the dark, and were met by the scent of slum, and a generous stranger who was an acquaintance of acquaintances of Tom’s. I’m not sure if ‘guesthouse’ would be quite the word to describe the first electricity-less accommodation stop we made - clearly getting bourgeois in my old age - but I was more inclined towards the rustic-backpacker-beach-cottage that we ended up in instead.

Our tour of the Cape Coast Castle, a slave-trading fortress built by the Swedish and later captured by the Danes and the English, was overwhelming. Visitors still lay wreaths in memory of the 2 million people who left the shores of Africa from this particular set of dungeons where, with 200 people packed into each 40 sq. metre cell, they were kept in the most inhumane circumstances imaginable. Meanwhile, a few metres above their heads, administrators worshipped in the fortress chapel, and the governor enjoyed an airy high-ceiling set of rooms overlooking the harbour. It is an extraordinary and shocking piece of history to witness. Obama visited here, and in addition to the more serious plaque at the castle, his face and name is inscribed on all things ranging from Tshirts to biscuit packaging to fishing boats.

On a lighter note, having felt race-less at Kaneshi, it was a bit different at the backpackers' lodge. My favourite ‘white’ moment in Cape Coast went as follows:

Bartender: So, where are you from?
Me: Zimbabwe.
Bartender: No!…you’re African?...no!
Me: Well, my mother’s family went to South Africa in 1820.
Bartender: And you’re STILL white?!

Dakar: Where First Ladies are Catholic and Baobabs grow by the Sea

2010-12-15T21:37:00.014+02:00

Senegal's population is 96% Muslim but all the presidents' wives have been Catholic. More women vote than men, there are some 150 political parties, and in early December there were Christmas trees being erected in the streets of Dakar. In other words, Senegal is just full of quirky material for my blog.

I landed in Dakar at about 2.30am, having flown from Accra on Air Nigeria via the Gambia - my most adventurous flight combination yet. The landings were rough around the edges, including some hard application of the brakes, but hey, we arrived, and so did our luggage. I caught a few hours sleep before catching the popular Sunday ferry to Goree Island to join some colleagues. Les Senegalaise are smart and chic (in fact I felt rather underdressed) in particular the charming saleswomen peddling jewellery and other wares en route.

Goree is enchanting despite its dark history of slavery and the ‘door of no return’ which opens onto the waves of the Atlantic. The island is scattered with baobabs which grow at breakneck speed compared to their southern African relatives, and narrow sandy lanes with French names trace their way among quiet pastel houses. Like other visitors, we spent the day exploring, eating fish and rice (many varieties in west Africa), and swimming.

Dakar, meanwhile, is not an aesthetic gem like Goree, but has its own sort of dusty sprawling Francophone charm. The roads are marked with well-worn but brightly painted minibuses, fuel-guzzling SUVs, ancient Peugeots and a fair bit of pollution. On the edge of the city lies the gargantuan and controversial African Renaissance monument, Stalinist in feel but only recently finished. It was built by the North Koreans, and apparently paid for by wealthy local businessmen whom the President repaid with pockets of prime land around Dakar. Nice.

In between meetings editors-in-chief, trying to resurrect my French-in-mothballs, having a dress tailored in the backstreets of the city, and drinking the fabulous green juice of ditakh fruit, I was astounded to hear not only that there was a Zimbabwean Embassy in Dakar but that the ambassador was a *white woman*. I couldn't believe my ears. Next, we heard that there was a sculpture exhibit at the Embassy so we decided to stop by. The ambassador is none other that MDC politician and activist Trudy Stevenson. I surprised the receptionist by greeting her in Shona, and it wasn’t long before both the ambassador and councilor came downstairs to meet us. I don’t think they get many visitors, let alone Zimbabwean ones, so we received a warm welcome.

As it happened, my Dakar colleague used to work as a presidential aide, and accompanied Senegal’s President Wade to Zimbabwe in 2005, where he took part in discussions about land reform with Bob. The Zanu PF entourage apparently took a rather horrified step back when President Wade appeared for the gala dinner with his white wife on his arm. Someone actually asked, 'So did people know that Wade was married to a white woman before they voted for him?'.  

Anyway, I do think it was a crafty move of Bob's to send dear Trudy quite so far away whilst simultaneously fulfilling his ‘unity government’ obligations – and of course ostensibly demonstrating his non-racism to the secular and multicultural Senegalaise and their white First Lady.  I am already looking forward to my next visit to Dakar, and perhaps dinner with les Zimbabweannes…

Notes from Home

2010-10-27T12:12:00.013+02:00

Late September in Harare. The traffic lights don’t work, but the drivers figure it out. The roads near the airport are dark and busy, crammed with commuter taxis, and a smog of vehicle fumes hangs on the early evening air. Harare is like any other third world city, apart from the fact that this scene would not have existed 18 months ago. Zimbabwe’s economy is starting to work again; it is retreating from the precipice of uncertainty that has gripped it for a decade.

We return home, where my mother has been doing some dramatic re-landscaping of the back garden. The flat-topped acacia that they planted over 15 years ago looms enormous and statuesque, with a full orange September moon rising softly behind it. There too the Lonchocarpus capassa that I planted from seed when I left for India. I believed that it could grow in completely the wrong geo-ecological zone, and somehow it did. And my dad’s Erythrina, with its heart-shaped leaves and red-bead pods. My parents joke about the garden’s resident birds being totally disoriented by the changes. The next day I simply sit on the verandah to be.

My time was short but we managed to squeeze in some wilderness. We drove five hours to Kariba, and then another two down unmarked dirt roads to the unsignposted Gache Gache Lodge. Needless to say we were among the rare visitors who arrive by road rather than by boat and, given the signposting situation, ‘twas a surprise we arrived at all.

En route, the country’s agricultural heartland – Chinhoyi, Karoi, Banket and surrounds – lies empty and full of weeds. Of thousands of hectares of land that we pass, at the start of the farming season, only one field was being prepared for planting. Now that the party has figured out how to get-rich-quick through the country’s diamond wealth, it seems there is much less impetus to bother about agriculture. What lies beneath the soil is currently what beckons. On the positive side, fibre-optic cable is being laid down the Chinhoyi road. Yes, that’s right – fibre-optic cable – as in, the internet. This can only be a sign of an economy starting to tick again, like other small indications of confidence: shopping centres in Harare repainting their shopfronts and our local municipality collecting waste for the first time in years.

We laze at the slightly run-down lodge on dusty furniture to take in the warm expanse of Lake Kariba and the start of the dry season. A group of black Zimbabweans is having an extended visit because, having stopped off for lunch, it seems that their houseboat has forgotten about them. Every sandbank markets a 12-foot-plus crocodile, and there is a pod of hippos yawning in the water not far away. Parked at the jetty is a houseboat that used to belong to the Rhodesian government -- named Janet after the wife of Ian Smith, former white minority prime minister. I sunbathe on its deck, marvel at the ironies of history, and earmark the moment for my postcolonial travelogue.

The following day we take a late afternoon drive through the surrounding bush and its groves of baobabs, some sedentary, some dancing, each ancient. There is not much game about but we have drinks on a cliff overlooking the Gache Gache river and its distant curves. Only if you care to look, in the dust beside and all around us are shards of broken pottery: all that is left from the forced relocation of tens of thousands of Tonga people in the early 1960s to make way for Africa’s then-largest hydroelectric dam and an accompanying string of national parks. No surprise that some lions – the creatures in which powerful ancestral spirits reside – take this opportunity to start calling from several kilometers away, making themselves known to us.

A few days later I return to London for the first time in nearly ten months. It is a little more foreign than last time, but the sensation soon passes. I savour the chance to walk long and freely through familiar streets and parks. Wearing a coat is an enjoyable novelty. The damp gathers round the bases of trees just like it always did; London is as it should be.

Many Different Worlds in Jozi

2010-09-07T18:49:00.016+02:00

In the midst of a strike being carried out by 1.3 million people across South Africa, including nurses and teachers, I find it extraordinary that my day-to-day existence is not at all affected. Such is the reality of a divided society where those in the private sector economy of northern Johannesburg lead a sheltered existence. Meanwhile over 50 premature babies have been abandoned by nurses; several mothers have lost their babies in childbirth, or simply been turned away from hospitals; and funeral businesses have brought work to a halt because Home Affairs workers are simply not around to issue death certificates.

Photo credit: News24

Meanwhile regular South African pastimes such as rugby matches continue. Thousands of free tickets to last weekend’s match against New Zealand were given away in high-density historically-black areas such as Soweto, in the hope of drawing more blacks to the matches. But apparently many of the recipients simply sold the tickets instead. At the same time, parts of Soweto defy outsider assumptions. A colleague who watched the game on Vilakazi St in Orlando West was a bit disappointed that he hadn’t really felt the ‘township vibe’, commenting that he could have been anywhere in Sandton.

Not so for a recent Saturday that I spent in Soweto, not forgetting that Soweto is basically a city in itself, with significant socio-economic stratification. A friend of mine is writing a doctorate on the political economy of waste dumps; her research assistant is from Mofolo, and between them they know a lot about the wider area. Along with a visiting architecture academic, we travelled to the far south-western corner of Soweto, to the informal settlement of Protea South. To give you a sense of the scale of greater Johannesburg, Protea South is 50 kilometres from where I live on the northern border of the city. There is some running water in Protea South, but no sanitation. Some of the porter toilets are communal, but many households have their own which they clean themselves. Hand-shaped charcoal bricks lie in the sun to bake – it’s the first time I’ve seen this kind of fuel. In Protea South, one can buy a shack for 1500 rand (200 dollars). Consider the extraordinary contrast with parts of Sandton (Sandhurst, for example), where one can buy a mansion for upwards of 20 million rand (2.75m dollars). I’ve even seen some advertised for 50 million.

Yes, Johannesburg is many different worlds. I am regularly humbled by people that I meet, or stories that I hear, for example, about the Zimbabweans who are putting themselves through university on waitressing wages. Leaving Sandton at about 11pm the other evening, I stopped to give a woman a lift. There was something about her that seemed quite desperate. She was trying to get to the northern township Diepsloot. In the absence of a decent public transport system, travelling by minibus taxi costs to and from Sandton for work are 50 rand (7 dollars) a day. Even on my salary I would consider that a high transport spend – and it is no doubt a ridiculously high proportion of her monthly wage. The possibility of her ever accumulating enough funds for basic economic security is virtually non-existent. She will continue to live hand-to-mouth.

So my day-to-day life is full of contrast, wherever I choose to be open to it. This evening I sit in Cape Town with a Czech colleague and his Sri Lankan friends. We have such different life stories. I listen to how he grew up under communism in an 800-year old Czech town that was razed to the ground in the interest of coal mining, and how the snow used to turn grey within a day. And I tell him about growing up in a national park in Zimbabwe with pythons and lions in the back garden. Meanwhile, our Sri Lankan dinner partner tells us about arriving as a migrant worker in Hillbrow, Johannesburg: he was robbed 8 times in his first month, and early one morning came across a half-headless body in the street on his way to work ….at which point he decided to move to Sandton.

Culinary Delights

2010-09-07T18:32:00.004+02:00

At first I dismissed the Bryanston Organic Market for being too all-sorts-of-things for me. I looked down my anthropological-exotica nose and thought: too middle class, too orderly, too controlled, too…boring. But that was before I was converted to eating dosa and uttapam every Saturday lunchtime – possibly my favourite Indian food - cooked by a guy from Bangalore who works for an ayurvedic medicine company during the week, and is a chef on Saturdays. So nowadays I show up at the market almost religiously.

Last weekend the dosa chef invited me to the India Day celebrations in Randburg, patronized almost entirely by the Indian expatriate community. Apparently there's a big divide between the Indian expats and the South African Indians. The crowd was substantial, even late in the day, and there was much singing, dancing and freshly cooked cuisine. The white faces in the crowed were few, though needless to say I met more random internationals, this time an Italian and a Korean who both work for the UN. Social life continues to be varied and interesting, and good food seems to be at the heart of it. I recently attended my first vegan-rawfood dinner party in Oaklands, catered by an American (who also pursues her culinary passions part-time) whom I met at a talk by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka. The food was outstanding and you would never have guessed it was all raw.

I’ve been back to Narina Trogon restaurant in downtown Braamfontein for a birthday-cum-salsa party, for which I caught a lift with a Japanese man and a Guyanan woman who live round the corner from me. Who would have guessed Wisteria Lane housed such diversity? I’ve also been downtown to Arts on Main a number of times now, where the canteen offers a tasty well-priced brunch in close proximity to William Kentridge originals. More importantly I’ve discovered that the nearby Malva Café has the best brownies in Jo’burg, followed closely by those at Moema’s in Parktown North. Perfect for break-up blues.

Nor should I forget the dinners that I’ve been treated to by Piers of Daisy Street, who is a straight-talking general rockstar with the ability to throw together a wonderful meal at short notice. He’s a particular fan of organic ostrich, and has persuaded me to step out from underneath my mostly-vegetarian umbrella on one or two occasions. In fact he even managed to entice me to eat slow-baked lamb at a dinner party hosted in old-money Dunkeld with a lawyer-artist couple in a spectacular dining room decked out in black-and-white tiles, stripes and mirrors. Twas delicious.

One last culinary mention: I went walking and basking by waterfalls in the Mountain Sanctuary Park in Magaliesburg, for which Mel provided trail mix. Mel is Canadian, so obviously she was responsible for the trail mix, but this mix had a magic ingredient which southern African trail-mixers have thus far overlooked: M&Ms. Those who’ve known me a while know that nothing featuring M&Ms will be overlooked by this particular foodie.

Namibian Roads are Good to Think With

2010-08-03T22:15:00.012+02:00

Uncharacteristically I nearly missed my flight but, thanks to my trusty taxi driver jumping a few red lights (only feasible very early on a Sunday morning), I made it to the boarding gate just in time. Friends in Windhoek laid on a wonderful relaxed brunch, tucked against the hillside in Eros, and the next morning I caught a bus to Swakopmund.

Swakopmund is a little difficult to put one's finger on. Its postcolonial essence is perhaps captured in a shop sign painted on the entrance of an old German building that caught my attention when I first visited a few years ago. It proclaims: “Where N$1 is still worth R1”. I always found this a little bizarre, given that the Namibian dollar is pegged to the South African rand…so surely there would never be any doubt about this particular equation. My anthro-historical interpretation of the sign is something about colonialism's continuity, I suppose, and a hankering after certain (non-monetary) values. Anyway, one of Swakopmund’s selling points is its quietness. Not a lot happens there. Walking the beach was liberating, and my friend Angela has two fabulous golden labradors which kept me company most times.

We enjoyed sundowners in the Swakop river dunes one evening – a quite extraordinary moonscape of scenery. Namibia is home to a strong circle of women friends who are all leading unconventional lives and doing interesting things. It was really good to be away from the city, not to have to care about my appearance, or whether my clothes matched.

Where else in the world can you hire a car for $45 a day with unlimited mileage? Clearly I was so impressed by this little nugget that I was already half-way from Swakopmund to Henties Bay on the Skeleton Coast when I realised that I didn’t have my driver’s licence. Oh well. It clearly wasn’t that important to the rental company either! And at the turn off to Uis, where the road is barely differentiated from the surrounding desert, flanked by miles of flatness, I figured I was unlikely to encounter any roadblocks. Uis is a really a dorp. I think it only has about 20 buildings. Nevertheless, I’m lucky enough to have friends in most dorps, regardless of country, so had a guided tour of the area with my friend Victor that afternoon. Namibian roads are good to think with – they are long, wide and empty.

I received some curious look from other travellers, surprised to see a blonde gal with shades driving alone around dusty Damaraland in a Walvis-Bay-registered 2x4 sedan car. My wheels may have been modest, if not amusing, but nonetheless it was exhilarating being on the road again. There are long stretches with no mobile network – not that common an occurrence nowadays -- so that too was somewhat liberating. I spent two days in the Brandberg, Namibia’s highest mountains, under an incredibly bright moon, the night-times big and still, and traversed by my old friends, the Scops and Pearlspotted Owls. I had forgotten what it’s like to witness that endless blanket of stars overhead, to be enveloped in that big silence. The landscape is rugged and striking, full of granite and ancient lava flows, and the colours of the mountains change by the minute. The Damara homesteads are dispersed and desolate, and I wondered where they get water.

Food poisoning prevented me from making it to the White Lady rock paintings – sadly I had to turn back when I was already over halfway -- but the guides at the site were wonderful and, seeing that I was on my own, offered to drive me and my car back to the campsite, and walk the 7km back to work. The nearest doctor was only 100km away, they reassured me.

At the next-door lodge, where I had a luxury ready-made tent, the menu was heavy with oryx and not much else: oryx schnitzel (obviously), oryx bolognese, and so on. I passed on those and managed to procure some yoghurt and maize meal porridge. Next to the bar was an empty fishtank, and the conversation went something like this:

Victor: Where’s the snake?
Barman: Oh, it’s gone. It escaped. We think someone helped it.
Me: Oh? What kind of snake?
Barman: A python.
Victor: What happened?
Barman: Yeah, well, we took it out during the Germany-Spain game to show some guests, and we’re not quite sure what happened after that…

From Brandberg I took a long slow gravel-road drive through Khorixas to Twyfelfontein (“doubtful fountain” – altogether an appropriate destination given my love circumstances) to see the ancient rock engravings which are Namibia’s first World Heritage Site. Having the freedom to stop whenever and wherever one pleases is such a privilege. I clambered up rocks and hillsides to see the views, ponder over a never-ending miscellany of curious rocks and stone formations, and breathe in those wide open spaces.

Near Twyfelfontein I camped on the Aba Huab river, neighbouring with a horse safari group and some overlanders. I exchanged some Nam dollars for US dollars with a Belgian traveller who, poor soul, hadn’t realised that there aren’t exactly ATMs at every corner once you get out of Windhoek. En route to Omaruru via Outjo I stopped at the remarkable Vingerklip for more striking landscape.

My trip was rounded off with a visit to another friend who is raising eyebrows in Omaruru by bringing yoga, Ayurvedic medicine, and contemporary sculpture to this conservative marginally-bigger-than-Uis dorp. Altogether very inspiring and refreshing. From there, a short stop in Windhoek to enjoy the culinary delights of the Craft Centre cafe, and now back to life in Jozi ...I'm already into my eleventh month back in southern Africa. Unbelievable.

The World Cup Comes and Goes

2010-08-03T21:20:00.019+02:00

I'm not ashamed to say that I let myself get caught up in some of the World Cup fever. It was almost impossible not to! The build-up to the opening game was indeed quite something. Vuvuzelas could be heard from early in the morning for at least a week beforehand, starting from 6am, no less. And on the 11th of June, it seemed that the entire city left work at lunchtime and took to the roads to make their way to see the opening game. The streets were overflowing with yellow-and-green tshirts and South African flags, and everyone was terribly excited. The traffic was so congested going down to Melville that I had plenty of time to practise blowing my vuvuzela out of my car window, which is actually something of an art. The first week of the Cup was blue-skies-but-bitterly-cold. The sun shines, but the average winter morning is about 6 degrees, and we had a few days of 2 degrees as well, which certainly shocked all the European visitors. There's not really anything by way of indoor heating, so it requires something of a different wardrobe approach.

It seems there's nothing like a big sports tournament to distract a nation from its chronic problems. It was certainly a unifying experience for South Africans, even if temporary and surface-deep. There were some issues, of course, especially on the transport front but, contrary to all the Afro-pessimist predictions in the European and American press, the stadiums *were* ready, and so was the fabulous new high-speed Gautrain.

I watched my first ever soccer game at Ellis Park (Slovenia-USA) with visiting Croatian friends, preceded by Portuguese lunch at the legendary Troyeville Hotel. The whole experience was really surprisingly enjoyable. Everything was well-organised and professional, and all the facilities operated totally smoothly. Go South Africa! I also went to the Ghana-Uruguay quarter-final which was devastating for Ghana, and for all of us African supporters, but experiencing Soccer City at night with 85 000 spectators was quite something. I did have to wear earplugs, fyi. My favourite game, however, was South Africa-France, which I saw in the Newtown fan park: really an amazing atmosphere. I had plenty of visitors, some of them friends, some sub-letters: Mexicans, Germans, Americans, Croatians, Swazis, and Lesothans, so that also made for quite a lot of fun and quite a lot of linen laundry.

My explorations of downtown Jozi continue. On a public holiday during the tournament, I had a lazy brunch at Narina Trogon in Braamfontein with a collection of internationals and one or two locals. Yeoville was next on the cards, to visit the Hotel Yeoville exhibition at the new public library. Sadly it was closed due to the holiday, but I persuaded the group to acompany me to visit the Congolese artist whom I commissioned to paint a hair dressing sign. I've been wanting one for ages. I think Yeoville's residents were a bit surprised by this group of apparent tourists wandering around their neighbourhood, but we felt no hostility or threat. Needless to say I'm thrilled with my new sign.

After Yeoville we went to Arts on Main, after checking out a regenerated block of apartments next door -- all of the spaces are very modern and minimalist, with some fab cityscape views. They are selling for next to nothing, given the relatively 'undesirable' location, but difficult to know what will happen in this area in the long run. Jo'burg has a number of these experimental projects, which is good to see. Main Road is verging on being Brick Lane-ish, albeit on a much smaller scale. There's also a small new independent cinema downstairs, and funky coffee-come-fashion shop. Other recent cultural visits include a Cuban exhibition at the Johannesburg Art Gallery, and sitting in the winter afternoon sun for open-air Senegalese kora music at the Alliance Francaise.

There is no shortage of things to do here. So, the World Cup came and went, after many months of preambular hype and speculation. Many of us started to fade about halfway through, once Bafana was knocked out, and we realised that we'd been burning the candle at both ends for a few too many weeks. But all in all, it was great to be around for it. And although there are now lots of vacant stadiums littered about the place, we do have some nice new roads and some progress on the public transport front!

Fordsburg, Mayfair and a Taste of India

2010-04-28T08:51:00.006+02:00

It was Freedom Day yesterday, commemorating the first-ever non-racial democratic elections in South Africa in 1994. So it was fitting that I finally made it to the Apartheid Museum, which was excellent and definitely deserves a second visit. I went via Melville and Observatory first to pick up friends, and after the museum we went to a fabulous and buzzing Gujurati restaurant in Mayfair. So I drove many new streets today, which I’m rather proud of.

The museum helps me to make sense of the many bits of jigsaw that I am collating about South Africa, including a recent visit to the ‘Indian quarter’ of Fordsburg. We were a curious group two Saturdays ago: a Senegalese author; a Botswanan of British-Philipino descent, an Indian South African, an Ethiopian-American, and a white Zimbabwean.

We started on 14th Street, where the ‘oriental’ Fietas market used to be (before it was forcibly closed and moved under the apartheid government Group Areas Act) and where our friend-and-guide used to stand on the corner selling combs as a boy. He showed us where his family’s house once stood, before it was knocked down – although the homes of certain professionals such as lawyers were left alone, as well as religious buildings such as mosques. The stand remains vacant, with only a small plaque recalling what passed there in the 1950s.

Growing up, N. attended to no less than 9 different schools because his family were forcibly relocated so many times. And during the times when they lived in ‘grey’ areas (areas that were being made white, or which were being protected from non-white settlement), he used to wait in the school library until it got dark, because otherwise he would be beaten up on the way home.

From 14th Street we went to Akhalwaya’s Fish and Chips, on the corner of Mint Road, where N. has been a customer for about 20 years. Akhalwaya’s specialises in a unique type of toasted-curry-and-fries sandwich. Strange sounding, yes, but original, suitably fattening, utterly delicious, and enough of a meal to last you most of the day. We then sauntered into at least two Indian sweet shops: they always make me a little weak at the knees until I actually eat the sweets and am reminded of how utterly overpoweringly sweet they really are.

The ‘new’ Oriental Plaza is one of Joburg’s most racially mixed shopping malls, offering a huge array of food and wares ranging from a samosa bar with a permanently long queue and stainless steel kitchenware stalls, to West African print fabrics, Chinese shoes and wedding shops.

Wandering along Main Road and its tributaries, we drank fresh coconut juice on the sidewalk, perused Bollywood DVDs, made banter with the stall owners, stared jealously into restaurant windows where masala dosas were being dished out, and I bought some spices and paneer for a Pakistani dish that I’ve been wanting to make for months.

We then swung by Wemmer Pan for some reason only known to S., where there’s a bizarre children’s park with miniature replicas of Johannesburg’s best-known buildings. At the entrance there’s an enormous statue of someone who looks like Jan van Riebeeck and inside…wait for it…there’s a truly enormous statue of Michael Jackson. Yes, in a children’s park. Oh the irony. And oh, the photo opportunities.

Leaving Mayfair yesterday with a very full stomach, I went into a store opposite Shayona’s to buy basmati rice. The Asian managers may have been a bit surprised by our racially mixed trio, but sold their basmati with sincerity and gusto. On hearing that I was a Zimbabwean, they pointed to the black assistants at the back of the shop, saying ‘Ah yes, they ran away from Zimbabwe too…’. At which all of us - assistants included - dissolved into the kind of genuine and binding laughter that only stems from incongruous interactions in unexpected places, mixed in with a measure of southern African humour and an undertone of sadness. One of my favourite kinds...

Harare, Tinotenda

2010-04-06T20:20:00.008+02:00

For the first time in years I feel a stillness in me about this tumultuous place. I drive out past Ngomo Kurira with my brother and his friends to another smaller gomo [hill]. Out through the increasingly rural settlements, where things are dusty and poor and organic and potholed and haphazard, where people walk long distances, and the Apostolics are enrobed in white for Easter. The grass is still tall from the rains. The path up the gomo starts at a woman's two-roomed homestead. She wears a shabby Zanu-PF tshirt. My brother speaks politely to her in Shona to ask that we may pass through, and to check where the path begins; she is fine with it. Most of the others in our group walk through with barely a glance, as if they don't notice that anyone lives there.

We push our way up through foliage onto the sprawling orange-earth boulder beyond, and then it is just us and the cascading rock and the sky. I fork away from the group. Dropping below are endless valleys of greens and blues and greys, the tinkle of Mashona cattle bells, and whispers of late-rain streams: this beloved and stunningly beautiful country.

I pass a broken clay pot in one of the clearings. Maybe something from the Apostolics. It is perfectly shaped, smooth, enticing to touch. It nestles the imprint of a cross at its base. (Tutu says: 'When the colonisers arrived, we had the land and they had the Bible. We closed our eyes to pray, and when we opened them, they had the land and we had the Bible'). My first impulse is to take a piece of this exotica, and then I stop myself and ask why. Why do we want to take pieces of things that have nothing to do with us? And so I photograph the broken pot and leave it be. There between the earth and the sky, wind on its back, as it was on mine.

Water is a scarce resource. Our neighbours had their borehole pump stolen, so now my parents feed their hosepipe through a crumbling section of the dividing wall to help them out, despite the fact that for years we've suspected them of running a brothel. My parents laugh about it, and about the firewood business that their gardener has been running ever since they chopped down some huge Jacaranda trees that were threatening to fall on the house.

I see Mugabe’s siren-less motorcade driving down Borrowdale Road in the late afternoon. South Africa's young and highly controversial Julius Malema has been visiting, and the state newspaper says: "Malema Hails Zim's Empowerment Drive". Meanwhile, Gallery Delta has been raided by police for exhibiting photographs of human rights abuses during 2008, and a Bulawayo artist has been arrested for 'inciting violence' with his critical paintings. Veterinarian friends come over for drinks, during which one of them is called away to attend to a poisoned dog.

On Easter Sunday I go for an early morning run. The roads of Highlands are quiet and neglected. The weather is pristine. I savour the silence, so different from Johannesburg. An impeccably shiny, red Morris Minor passes me, carrying a full load of white-robed Apostolics to meet with God: men in the front, women in the back. I smile. At home I lay a competitive Easter egg hunt for my family and some friends.

Afterwards dad and I drive our domestic worker back to Mabvuku township, past Chikurubi maximum human-rights-abuse Prison and the cement factory. We visit the cemetery so that I can pay respects to Mishek, who died just before I returned to southern Africa - there was no chance to say goodbye. He is buried in a poor man's grave, thirty one rows down and seven across, marked by a small painted piece of aluminium, already overgrown by a flurry of weeds. The graves are many. We proceed to his wife’s house and greet her all-women family in their two-roomed structure on a tiny plot an the edge of the township. Her seventeen-year old daughter has just given birth to a boy, Tinotenda ('we thank'). Gratefulness and thanks even in these times of hardship. Nine months ago was before Mishek died. I wonder if he knew he was due to be a grandfather. We return home and I resume reading Antjie Krog's Country of my Skull, about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa. It’s hard to stomach but I grit my teeth and push on. I'm lying next to a swimming pool, after all.

I buy fifteen kilos of beautiful stone sculpture the next morning on the way to the airport, for next to nothing, and somehow manage to fit it into my hand luggage... along with an avocado, and sprigs of lemongrass and rosemary from the garden. Zim lives on. All the contradictions rest more easily nowadays, for some reason. It’s been a good visit.

The Tap that Waters a Thousand

2010-04-06T18:30:00.008+02:00

There's been lots going on. About two weeks ago I went on a Soweto ‘tour’. I thought I had opted for the touristic minibus version, but it turned out to be a bit more personalized, and in a Mercedes no less. Our guide was an hour and a half late collecting me, thanks to major roadworks that he hadn’t anticipated. After we got over the hurdle of his stress and my irritation, all was well. We eventually negotiated our way through the worst of the traffic to pick up the two Germans who were visiting my office.

We started in Kliptown at the Walter Sisulu Square, the site where the freedom charter was adopted in 1955 as a guiding document for the ANC. The Freedom Charter Monument, a tad reminiscent of Great Zimbabwe's architecture, is frequented by a man with a penny whistle playing Nkosi Sikelel'i. I quite like the monument but I'm not the biggest fan of the penny whistle guy.

A guide from the Kliptown Youth Foundation walked us around the dusty informal settlement adjacent to the square which is home to over 45000 people. He works at a soup kitchen and hostel for local children. There is no running water or sanitation here -- instead, a tap that waters a thousand, and the occasional porter-loo that each service a dozen families, if not more. The Germans were quite taken aback at this point. It reminds me of parts of West Caprivi, only on a grand and much more urbanised scale. I bought onions and avocado to take back to Wisteria Lane.

We visited the Regina Mundi church, the largest Catholic church in Soweto, by a smooth-talking guide with an acutely dry sense of humour. The church was a key site in the Soweto student uprisings of 1976. It still bears bullet holes in the ceiling, and the permanent photography exhibition upstairs is quite moving. Time was not really on our side (a 'Soweto tour' would surely be incomplete without some participants having to catch a plane), but we spun by Orlando West, including the houses of Tutu, Mandela and Winnie, before driving back past the freshly finished calabash-inspired Soccer City Stadium. It's looking good.

The next weekend was busy and explorative too. My Ethiopian-American former-war-correspondent friend took me to the Ethiopian quarter of the bustling CBD in downtown Jo’burg...in his car that was stolen and miraculously recovered a year later, with a bullet hole in the back. There are some fifty thousand Ethiopians in this city, apparently. We idled in a few stores before heading into the unnamed restaurant on the third floor of what used to be a key medical practitioners’ building in the city. There at a plastic table in a cosy, clean, wood-panelled room probably once used by an expensive medical consultant, we indulged in fabulous Ethiopian food for the princely sum of R25.

I bought Ethiopian coffee on the way out, and then we tussled with the traffic and the taxis before heading to Sandton for the annual Joburg Art Fair. What a juxtaposition it was after Little Ethiopia: I could have been in London. The young, the artsy and the metrosexuals were all out and about, and the quality of the art was high. I bought a hot chocolate halfway for the same price as my entire Ethiopian lunch, and people-watched from the comfort of a large black sofa, as if I were at Tate Modern...

Groot Marico and Afrikaaner Alternatives

2010-03-13T18:51:00.007+02:00

Last weekend Janice and I decided on something of a whim to drive Groot Marico in North West Province (former Western Transvaal) for a ‘Biekie Bosman’ weekend – Bosman being the celebrated South African writer and poet, Herman Charles Bosman. And what a weekend it was. Groot Marico is essentially a two-street town, and allegedly one of only two towns in the entire country that still has a phone operator.

The weekend was organized by the local Literary Society, and took place on white-owned farms that run along the beautiful Marico river. This LitSoc group seems to represent a sort of alternative, hippified Afrikaanerdom that I hadn’t experienced before. One of our hosts, inappropriately named Egbert, looks like a character from Lord of the Rings: a long sinewy man, all arms and legs, with Gandalf-like grey beard and hair. He was perched mostly next to a collection of sizeable soot-coated kettles from which he produced honeybush tea and smoky coffee.

We went walking the first morning with one Koos Olivier to absorb the trees and plants of the riverine belt and the hills beyond. Afrikaaner/English divides were a running theme for the weekend, with Koos describing the enkeldoorn (ankle-thorn) acacia tree as ‘engelsdoorn’ (English-thorn), that is, good for nothing. We nibbled on the cardamom flavours of Berchemia discolor berries (tcindjere in West Caprivi) and saw one of the tallest Shepherd’s trees possible. Brunch was served later on the fire back at the farm – roughly ground locally-grown pap/sadza, onion and tomato relish, a mountain of scrambled eggs, cabbage with feta, and various other tasty delights.

Janice and I napped before taking a furtive skinny dip in the river, and then rushed to catch the afternoon convoy to a local mampoer farm, a few kilometers out of town. Made from fermented fruit, mampoer is a particularly strong home-brewed moonshine, also known as witblits in the Cape. Just in case we were looking for a stereotype, the farm owner was an imposing sjambok-wielding (yes) Afrikaaner with frighteningly blue eyes called Johann. After making a slightly uncomfortable scene around the prettiest girl in the group, he led us past a large barrel of fermenting marula fruit into his distillery barn, stressing that he only spoke English in self-defence. Between lecturing us on the distillation process and the much-debated origins of the term ‘mampoer’, he casually beat his dogs away from a Cape cobra that appeared amidst machinery a few metres away. Some of the more urban guests were suitably alarmed.

Thereafter we sat on the farmhouse veranda and sampled a variety of mampoers and liqueurs, served by the farmer’s somewhat XXY wife, with some of the dogs in the background (‘PH’ (Professional Hunter) and ‘PS’ (Pavement Special). One shot of mampoer was enough to get the entire group chattering rather excitedly, and we wondered what was to become of us after a few more. We were actually surprisingly fine. We equipped ourselves with bottles to take away, as well as homemade rusks and jams (the staples of any half-decent Afrikaaner pantry), and returned to the fireside for Bosman story-readings and stargazing. Our cottage was tucked away in the riverine forest and impeccably dark at night. I did try to convince Janice that we could make it back without a torch, but she was probably right in persuading me otherwise.

The crowd was a slightly indeterminate white middle-aged mix but one of our more bizarre conversations was with a woman whose home doubles up as a sort of animal shelter. We heard all about her tortoise that eats mangoes, and about her albino duck with a malformed beak which nevertheless gets shagged by the boy ducks. On hearing we didn’t have pets of our own, she extended an invitation to come babysit. Why thank you.

Janice and I caused a bit of a stir, we suspect, Janice being the only non-whitey present and a PhD botanist at that… and the two of us generally not fitting any mould that was familiar to these folk. One man asked us whether we were friends. (Janice and I laughed privately afterwards about who should be whose maid.) We later helped him to change the flat tyre on his Toyota, which really flummoxed anyone who had thought we were city gals from Jo’burg.

On Sunday morning we went to the Bosman cultural centre where we heard poetry readings and some history, whilst hymns and organ music emanated from the NG Kerk (Dutch Reformed Church) next door. But at midday I had to rub my ears because, sure enough, drifting up from somewhere in the middle of Marico Afrikaanerdom was the Muslim call to prayer. It turns out that Janice and I weren’t the only ones to disrupt assumptions that weekend.

From Lagos to Doornfontein

2010-03-09T19:48:00.013+02:00

My welcome to humid Lagos included spending 40 mins sans passport at 0430 in the morning -- an immigrations official disappeared with a stack of them for 'processing' of some kind, which involved him actually walking out of the main terminal with all the docs in his hand. In my various third world travels, this was a special and unsettling first. The official, clearly enjoying his regular power kick, refused to give us any information whatsoever, and patronisingly chided us to stay where we were rather than follow him outside, which is what I did.

So there I was, outside the airport, in Lagos, of all places, without a passport, watching this guy saunter off… After being refused re-entry to the immigration section, I realised that the entire planeload of passengers had been similarly deprived. They were all sitting on the luggage conveyor belt, waiting with the sort of acceptance that you only generally see in Africa, no matter what one’s background. We got the passports back in the end. Friends have warned me to look out for my double.

It was a heavy week on the work front, and I didn’t have much time to explore, sadly. That said, Lagos reminds me of Indian cities, actually: sprawling, vibrant with women dressed exquisite print fabrics, and one crazy traffic scene. My visit was for work, so I was sadly confined to sanitised air-conditioned spaces much more than I would have liked…though I have to say that the air-con wasn’t all bad. I enjoyed the Nigerians; they were friendly, welcoming and confident. We sampled local delicacies, including even giant snails cooked with tomato [impressive achievement for my mostly vegetarian self]. Rubbery comes to mind.

I had a surreal evening visit to a bar called Pat’s, much to the horror of a South African journalist friend who knows Lagos well. Pat’s is frequented solely by foreign men and pretty long-legged Nigerian women in 4-inch heels and very miniskirts. This little excursion was followed by an armed escort back to the hotel...I did try to get a photo with the two gunmen in their unbuttoned shirts but they sadly declined.

My return to the airport was also memorable – in the most embarrassing of fashions. Since I was travelling in the early evening, the company security coordinator arranged an armed police escort again. I presumed that, like the night before, this second vehicle would simply follow behind. But no. They drove ahead of us, aggressively hooting, gesturing out the windows and, intermittently, using flashing lights to push the Lagos rush-hour traffic out the way. It was like being in a high-speed car chase, African dictator style. Instead of taking 2.5 hours to get to the airport, we took only one. This was the closest I’ll ever get to being Idi Amin or Robert Mugabe. I was absolutely mortified and hugely grateful for the tinted windows. My driver was sympathetic to my embarrassment, but reassured me, “Don’t worry, this is how they do it in Lagos. Everyone will be wondering who you are.” Oh what comfort.

Anyway, I made it to the sweltering airport in time to queue and be searched multiple times over a 3 hour period. The flight routes to Jo’burg all depart at midnight and arrive in the early morning, and there were no other passengers of my age-race-gender. Not that that’s anything new in my travels. I have to say I was somewhat relieved to step out into the fresh sunrise air of the rand again.

This past Saturday afternoon I went on a historic tour of Doornfontein in downtown Jo’burg, run by the Westcliff Heritage group, in a large and cumbersome bus. The whole thing was bordered on surreal, in a sort of amusing fashion. My friend and I were basically the youngest on the bus by quite a long way, he was the only black guy, and my java print skirt looked positively loud next to all the floral cottons.

The tour was four hours long, believe it or not, with only one disembarkation at an old curtain rail factory, still functioning, and which still has the defunct apartheid racially-segregated signs above the toilets: “Bantu Males”, “European Males”, “European Females”, and so on. Quite extraordinary. We saw all sorts – synagogues, factories, transport depots, a crumbling mayor’s house, the ridge behind the Ponte tower, theatres, mosques, old wells, and more. Really quite fascinating, though best done when tired or hungover, I’d say. We ate delicious pizza at Ant’s in Melville afterwards and watched the full moon rise.

It’s a hundred days till the World Cup, the newspapers shout out. I’ve been on radio a few times talking about search trends and the new stadiums -- oh the random things I've ended up doing. The evenings are warm and borderline sultry, and the mornings are starting to cool a little. I’m determined to start Zulu lessons soon. It’s already been way too long. Oh, and the worms have survived, by the way, so the wormery lives on after all.

Southern Africa Love Child

2010-02-21T17:42:00.028+02:00

It’s February and love is in the air – at least for the ANC and the South African media. The coverage of Zuma’s love child(ren) and those of other politicians is extensive. I spent the past week working in Cape Town, enjoying the odd juxtaposition of the ‘baby showers’ scandal with the commemoration of Mandela’s epic release from prison twenty years ago. The fair Cape was a welcome change from corporate Jozi. Everything there is more relaxed and a bit more hippie.

Work started off quite slowly this year but it’s predictably started to escalate. Despite the deluge of emails, I had the chance to catch up with good friends which was great. Chris took me on a suitably strenuous two hour run up and around Silvermine from Muizenberg, followed by a swim and laze on the beach. We went for dinner in Stellenbosch another evening. Not to mention outdoor Antony and Cleopatra in Wynberg with my cousin (I really didn’t follow most of the plot, admittedly), an early morning solo beach walk in secluded Kommetjie, and a visit to a huge protea export warehouse with a superb view over the docklands.

I keep on telling people that I’ve only been here four months, but it’s actually been five. Coming back from Cape Town, I even found myself using the phrase ‘going home’. It feels kind of good, actually. Jozi is growing on me. I’m trying to convince myself to do less, or at least do it more slowly. Two weekends ago, I went on this awesome public art trail, a first time ‘tour’ by the owner of the Spaza Gallery in Troyeville who specialises in community mosaic projects. It was just fabulous. I saw downtown Jo’burg up close for the first time: the grit, the urban energy. Afterwards we had lunch back at Spaza – an enormous quiche, salad and roast vegetables in their quirky little courtyard under dappled tree shade. I have to add that I am just loving leading an outdoor life again. The skies here remain tall and each evening sky is different.

What else? I’ve started ignoring my surrounds – a sure sign of settling in, political disengagement and general apathy. I try to avoid the Lonehill shopping centre apart from the gym, though I have to say that coming across a kitsch restaurant called Byzance, run by Aristotle and Ludmila (displaced former Balkans perhaps?), was quite special. I have applied for World Cup tickets (Germany-Ghana), in the spirit of everything happening here…but no word yet from the FNB bank whether I’ve got mine. Lastly, I also have to announce, with some sadness, that I think my worm farm has failed. I think worm farming and me are just gonna have to try reconnect at a later stage in life. The next trial is going to be the Bokashi Composter. My flat is filled with a lot of germinating plants – mostly herbs and a few vegetables. I enjoy coming back to them in the evening. My own kind of baby shower…

Back to the Borderlands

2010-01-13T18:31:00.006+02:00

I've already granted my “global best customer service award” for this year to the Zambians. What an amazingly welcoming, polite, courteous, helpful bunch of people they are. I love arriving at airports which are small enough for one to walk across the tarmac to immigrations…including Livingstone. I was greeted by a beaming official with Handel’s Messiah playing in the background. [Note that in the departure lounge, there’s a man who sells colourful Zambian postage stamps, including a recent set to commemorate Queen Elizabeth’s birthday (!), whilst at the Sesheke border post, the vehicle tax officials sit in the shade playing chess. Oh the postcolony.]

Through some strange coincidence – especially given Livingstone’s prolific herd of blue taxis – I ended up meeting one of the same drivers that I’d met previously. He took me to a café to wait for my Namibian NGO friend Friedrich. On that sweltering afternoon, the Inter Tropical Convergence Zone, well, converged, as my friend Carol puts it. Amidst the rain showers we explored Livingstone’s huge Maramba market, hopping between muddy puddles and amused looks to buy sumptuous mangoes and bananas, and beans from Tanzania. Although dinner at the lodge bordered on disappointing, the fact that we were sitting right on the banks of the mighty Zambezi certainly made up for it. It rained hard much of the night; twinned with some particularly raucous frogs in all directions, my tent was quite the auditorium.

From Livingstone we drove 2 hours to

Namibia

, first to Katima and then on to West Caprivi. One of the first friends I made in West Cap, and one of the most dynamic women in her community, is dying of HIV/AIDS. Her illness was one of the main reasons for my visit. It’s easy to forget just how small a human skeleton is, until you see someone rendered unrecognisable in the advanced stages of this awful disease. Her limbs are the width of my wrists. Some of my feelings have been those of frustration and anger: why didn’t she take her ARVs properly? Why isn’t the hospital doing more, and why is there no doctor in sight? As another friend noted, it is impossible for the likes of us to know what it is like to be HIV positive and poor.

Overall, returning to West Cap for the first time in some twenty months, and for the first rainy season since ’06, was really special. I crossed paths with lots of old colleagues and friends. Life there goes on with the same old politics as ever. Friedrich’s garden in Buffalo is overflowing with herbs and his rather larger ‘back yard’ is frequented by two hippo, two bushbuck and an unusually tame francolin called Paul. There is a profound sense of earth, space and sky. It’s curious to find peace in a place which is a centuries-old trading route, a former military base, the site of land contestations, and currently a diamond prospecting zone. Something about it has drawn people from all walks of life, it seems!

Back on the Katima Fish Farm, which has expanded its quota of horses and goats, I shared a drink on the Zambezi with some of the new set and their plus ones – including an Afrikaans optometrist. A few years ago in Katima there was only one supermarket and one pharmacy, let alone an optometrist. I spent the night at Carol’s place in her absence. It can safely be described as its own ecosystem, an insect specialist’s paradise, in fact. Fortunately the American WWF lodger seems to have adapted very well. She drove me across the Namibia/Zambia border early the next morning. Her discussions with the border gate guards were hilariously minimal (“I’m just taking this lady across and then coming back, ok?”), met with a slightly bored laissez faire nod. No passport, no vehicle papers, no nothing. I love it.

The Mazhandu Family Bus from Sesheke back to Livingstone, as always, provided entertainment. In contrast to my earlier ‘African time’ departures, the Mazhandu Family Bus left promptly on this occasion at 7.07am. I was allocated a seat in the front row which, I later realised, appeared to be reserved for “special” passengers: an Indian doctor; a tall gent with a very bling necklace; my white self; and the two very stylish and made-up girlfriends of the bus driver and his trusty ticket collector. The girlfriends definitely didn’t look they hung out in dusty Sesheke too often and, having rapidly transitioned back to NGO-worker-with-grubby-sandals mode, I felt positively underdressed in their company.

Back in Jozi, the city is deep green from the rain, my potplants have just survived my absence, and the Hillbrow Tower seems to have unsurprisingly acquired some kind of giant football attachment. Life continues in Lonehill, surrounded as I am by complexes with names like ‘Plaisance’ and ‘Manhattan’, though my rather loud Shona-speaking and Nigerian neighbours regularly remind me that at least I’m in the African version of Wisteria Lane. Roll on 2010.

A Southern African Christmas: Zimbabwe & Mozambique

2010-01-13T18:19:00.009+02:00

How pleasant to fly only 1.5 hours home instead of ten and, for the first time in a decade, not to be heading back into the frosty urban wilds of England. Needless to say, I bumped into old friends on the flight. We went straight from the airport for tea with friends on one of the few remaining white-owned farms, about 20km out of town. The road beyond Westgate is horribly pitted and potholed; another rainy season and many of the roads will look like Beira’s did at the end of the civil war. On the positive side, Harare is green and full of beautiful trees, fragrant blossoms, and the occasional road-crossing tortoise who, like other Zimbabweans, enjoys living life on the edge.

My parents hadn’t had any electricity for a few days. At first we thought it was ZESA trying to extort a Christmas-time bribe, but it turned out to be our uncooperative neighbours whose trees overhang the electricity lines, and which they refuse to cut. Anyway, it was back to the no-power routine which, because we can’t run the borehole pump using the generator at the same time as using any electrical appliances, means that the toilet cisterns have to be filled with buckets from the swimming pool. And/or if water needs to be pumped at night, the house mains need to be turned off. The family have it down to a fine art now…I just sit and watch, torch in hand.

The local economy is now fully converted to US Dollars and things are expensive – apparently it’s the only country in the world without its own currency. We didn’t spend much time mulling over politics. There are still lots of problems, and Mugabe lives on. I heard two first-hand accounts about him this trip, one hilarious and one shocking. That’s always the mix in Zim.

Anecdote 1: A white friend of my brother’s constructs carports. He received a call-out one day to take measurements for a carport in the Crowhill area. The woman on the other end told him to look for the blue gate on xyz road. Off he went, and drove up and down the road, but couldn’t find the place. He phoned the woman, saying, ‘I’ve driven up and down, but the only place with a blue gate is Bob’s [Mugabe’s] place’. She said casually, ‘Oh yes, that’s the one’. So off he went to Bob’s place, removing his shoes as instructed by the front door guards, only for Grace to enquire why he was barefoot.

Anecdote 2: Much less savoury. A black friend of mine who studies in the UK was driving in the same area a year ago, and failed to hear the president’s motorcade approaching a T-junction. The golden rule is that all plebs have to move completely off the road. The outriders had already driven past when she pulled into the road. The armed soldiers at the back of the entourage stopped, forced her out of her car and beat her before letting her go. She was due at a wedding two hours later as a bridesmaid.

Our departure for Mozambique turned out to be rather dramatic: we left at 4 in the morning, only to hit a huge rock on Harare Drive. Given the unlikelihood of a rock that size coincidentally appearing right in the middle of the road, and given that a car pulled out of a nearby road as soon as we stopped, we suspect it was some kind of near-hijack, but that they were discouraged by the fact that four of us then stepped out our vehicle. After a rocky start (no pun intended) we were able to borrow another vehicle and left a few hours later to navigate the Christmas kumusha traffic, with everyone returning to their rural homes for the holiday.

My brother smoothly negotiated our way across the Mutare borders with a good mix of Shona and Portuguese. We had expected a lot more bribe-seeking, but a friendly sandwich here and a packet of smokes there seemed to be the extent of it. In general all the officials were incredibly pleasant to deal with. The last time I crossed that border was in the opposite direction in 2002. There was no food in Zim and I was bringing in a big sack of maize meal for people at home, convinced that it was going to be confiscated. In those days the border searches were quite intense, but I just lay (literally) tight on my sack and grinned and it was all fine.

Mozambique’s roads now make Zimbabwe’s look run down…what a fast switching of circumstances. It was extremely hot. The bush there is lush and thick, with villagers on the roadsides selling cashews and pineapples in their multitude, plus a few trussed-up live chickens to add variety to the mix. And of course there are a few enormous lorries carrying loads of valuable indigenous hardwood – a pattern that is sadly now well established.

Our road journey to the tiny coastal town of Inhassoro took ten hours, and we arrived just in time for sunset. The coast is beautiful: mile after mile of blue water against terracotta cliffs, and then the Bazaruto Archipelago not far offshore, featuring brightly painted starfish, glittery reef fish and giant turtles. The next ten days were spent with some of the large number of white Zimbabweans who all flocked to Inhassoro for the holidays. [Apparently the Rhodesians used to do the same before Mozambique’s war]. All of them drive 4x4s of the nicest kind; in fact, too many Christmasses in Inhassoro and you would come to assume that a Toyota Landcruiser GX is a basic essential of daily life. I have to say the wealth-poverty mix (or, lack of mix) was all rather bizarre, though nothing new in Africa, and I doubt that tourism has established a good name there. That said, the local market was quite popular with visitors, and I indulged there in print fabrics and bagfulls of fresh coconut and pineapple.

We spent lazy hours in the 30+ degree heat sitting by the ocean with drinks in hand, children running and shrieking in the sand and tea-temperature waves. It was all so idyllic and yet from time to time I’d overhear disquieting words from the other end of the table: “Eight weeks in the intensive care unit”… “wounds to the head”… “brain damage”… “arm with wire”. There amidst the drinks and sound of the surf,

Zimbabwe

’s violent crisis continues for, amongst others, the Chegutu farmers who in my opinion have been foolhardy enough to stay on their land. It has now been ten years – whoever would have thought.

New Year’s Eve was also spent on the beach in the sultry night time air under a full moon and with a rising tide. How glorious it is to lead an outdoors life again. As for the white Zimbos, they were there en masse with more cooler boxes than ever before witnessed, some of which were inevitably acquired by the incoming tide whilst their distracted owners socialised. On leaving at 3am, our bakkie got stuck in beach sand, at which point those who were still standing all disembarked and, in true Zim fashion as if it were the most normal thing in the world, pushed the vehicle a hundred metres to the next exit road. In our inebriated state we failed to notice one of our crew fall flat on her face in the sand during this little endeavour. It was much funnier during the re-telling over breakfast the next morning. Finally, there was a fair bit of spilled vodka and coke sloshing around in the back of the bakkie which I unsuspectingly wallowed in all the way home -- in my white beach dress, naturally. A pre-dawn solo moonlight swim avec dress sorted out that little problem in no time.

Reading back through this post feels strange– the themes being decay, violence, inequality and alcohol, combined with exquisite natural beauty. Nevertheless, a window into the motherland and, in some ways, into the dying and insular gasps of white Zimbabwe…although history seems to show that they won’t ever actually disappear.

Month Three Begins: Unpacking, Exploring

2009-11-29T20:17:00.011+02:00

Things have been pretty busy. A few weekends ago I went to the famous Drakensberg for the first time, with a group of Afro-Indo-internationals featuring a good smattering of McKinsey, De Beers and small children thrown in. Possibly the most vociferous group of people I've ever been on a trip with, in fact. We were stopped by a large-bellied policeman on the way for speeding. For some reason he decided to let us off. We consumed large amounts of good food and wine and debated (well, they debated; I wasn't loud enough to get a word in edgeways) everything under the sun.

The Wisteria Lane Frontier is fine. The dense Johannesburg forest has greened with the rain and my balcony is slowly being populated with plants. I've done quite a bit, now that I think about it, including an open air electro-jazz concert at Emmarentia dam, a concert by the Joburg Philharmonic, a Christmas Carols in one of the Fourways shopping centre theatres (yeah, it's early for that, that was my thought too) , and a party with some the city's urban black chic in a completely amazing refurbished refinery warehouse downtown. I've done work-related radio interviews for SABC Durban, a Jewish community station (random) and visited the SABC headquarters.

I've been to an art exhibit by a Nigerian collector in Parkhurst, hosted by a very elegant Zambian woman. And I've been beekeeping with the crazy French-Portuguese man and one of my botanist friends in a sprawling grove of blue gums in the grounds of a nuclear research station in Westonaria (yeah, I know, how bizarre does it get). We picnicked with white wine and quiche and argued considerably about gender relations, marriage, and nature versus nurture. I've experimented with a few yoga classes, sadly none of which I like. I've started one-to-one sessions with a trainer at the gym, and could barely walk this past week, needless to say. This morning I met this Polish immigrant woman with a great sense of humour who runs a ramshackle organic farm in Kyalami. I brought preserves and gem squash for eight rand a kilo. You can't really go wrong on that. Last but not least, I hired domestic labour for the first time two weeks ago -- not sure how I feel about it. The lady took some of my cardboard boxes back to Diepsloot - to board up her broken windows, she said.

My crate arrived, finally. They sent it on the back of a ridiculously oversize truck completely disproportionate to the crate - the kind of truck that's used to carry several tonnes of black granite across the Zimbabwean countryside. Anyway, this truck was so big that the complex guards wouldn't let it in. Fair enough, it probably wouldn't have rounded all the corners of the maze. So the truck had to park outside, and then we ferried boxes in my little car backwards and forwards. It was quite amusing. More amusing because whilst all this was going on, a small and shabby white van was parked downstairs from my flat with two cat-catchers in it. I kid you not. These guys go around catching cats which appear to be homeless, and sterilising them in a humane fashion.

I have been a firm supporter of Gumtree since arriving in South Africa: one washing machine, one fridge, one coffee table, one futon, two lamps, one disaster of a SatNav device, crockery...and one dining table with benches. The latter was quite a mission. I called up the man at the brickyard who sold me the dodgy SatNav to get a recommendation for a truck, praying that this time the truck would be smaller than the one which delivered the crate. Truck, driver and two accomplices duly followed me to the table owner's house. Loading and travel went fine; getting it up my stairs and inside the front door was a whole other story. It took all four of us to carry it, and I had to remind them that they couldn't just dump it on the bricks whenever they felt tired. Then it wouldn't fit through the door, so we had to take the coasters off (sixteen screws later). Anyway, it all worked out in the end and I am delighted to now have a nice big wooden table to eat and work on.

My flat is finally looking vaguely under control and virtually all my boxes are unpacked. It feels pretty good, I have to say. I had a little birthday-come-housewarming gathering last night to celebrate. And my wormery arrived - yes, in the post! Despite my concerns, the worms did not go to worm heaven en route and are now speedily fattening themselves on my veggie peelings. Bring on the compost...

The Wisteria Lane Frontier

2009-10-26T19:42:00.004+02:00

At the intersection of Sandton Drive and William Nicol last night was a man displaying a handwritten cardboard sign, not an unusual mode of begging here, except that this one said something along the lines of: ‘My donkey ate Robert Mugabe’s chicken soup and now I’m in trouble so please help me out’. If he’d been anywhere near my car, he certainly would have won a donation for creativity, though I’m ever so curious to know about the inspiration for the sign. There are plenty of Zimbabweans about, and many of them very bitter about what’s happened…but I won’t go into that just yet.

I forget that it’s October and that October means hot in southern Africa. It’s been pretty hot during the daytimes, with enormous cloud formations building up in the late afternoon. The mauve jacarandas are coming out in full bloom, and the mornings and evenings on the Wisteria Lane Frontier are filled with the raucous cries of a bird whose name I can’t remember… but basically they sound like something out of the Jurassic period.

The Wisteria Lane Frontier is what I’ve renamed my little part of Lonehill. It is affluent, artificial, high-walled, and filled with mostly whites and young professionals of all races. There is nothing organic or unplanned about its geography or architecture at all. The only redeeming factor, as I’ve mentioned before, is the view over the undulating landscape of the northern frontier of the city. The Lonehill kopje reminds me a lot of Zim. The colours in the early mornings and late afternoons are just beautiful, and as long as I don’t look too close to where I stand (!), then I have a strong sense of being in an African landscape, which you wouldn’t find in other parts of the city. There’s also loads of space in my apartment, which feels like heaven after London. It’s theoretically one of the safest parts of Jo’burg, but even so, on Friday night I heard my first gunshots in the distance, closely followed by a barrage of police sirens. Anyway, I’ll be on the Wisteria Lane Frontier for a few months and then re-assess the situation. It's not all bad...just takes some getting used to!

I am now the not-so-proud owner of a car. I slightly resent having to spend my hard- earned savings on a car which, to the frustration of some of my male friends, I see as nothing more than functional. I also feel like a sell-out on the environmental front. I have been commuting across town quite a bit for social stuff. Excluding the time taken when I get lost, which is often, it’s about thirty minutes for me to travel to the older part of the city (Parkhurst/Melrose/Rosebank/Saxonwold). I cannot believe that the government here has not been more interventionist or top-down in terms of vehicle usage and traffic congestion. In the mornings the highways are crammed with 1-person-per-car. Maybe someone can explain to me how it got this bad. In order for my journey to work to take seven minutes, I either have to leave at 6.15am or 8.45am…otherwise it can easily take 45 minutes. Can’t wait to get a bicycle. In the meanwhile I seriously need to work on my parking skills.

I went to the Bryanston Organic Market on Saturday morning. Like other parts of this part of Jo’burg, very little about the market felt spontaneous. With the well-heeled clientele, it felt a bit like Kings Road in Chelsea, minus the high street brand names. Nevertheless, there were a few interesting characters around, including a seventy-something French-speaking Portuguese beekeeper and honey purveyor who read my palm and flirted outrageously. And a South African potter t who told me about the floods of Zimbabweans trying to get a job at his studio. And then there was the gluten-and-lactose-free stall (*obviously*, it’s the Joburg equivalent of Chelsea) with the man who proudly told me he also sold bottled water imported from Italy. I didn’t hold back on giving him a piece of my mind about that.

Saturday also included a visit to some second-hand furniture shops on Bram Fischer in Randburg. That was much more real and much more interesting. People were bemused by a white girl wearing an African-java-print skirt (as they probably were at the organic market) and did a few double-takes. I didn’t have much luck on the furniture front, but I did come away with contact details for a dressmaker, some hilarious LP covers from the ‘70s, and a plan to buy an antique milk pail.

I think I have a navigation curse on me, which is unfortunate, given that even to start with, I seem to be missing the DNA for geographic orientation. My TomTom GPS thingy keeps seizing up on me at the wrong times. And I still haven’t bought myself a map book which is silly. The biggest drama was on Wednesday morning when I ended up having to take friends to the airport for their London flight because the taxi didn’t arrive on time. We got stuck in hideous traffic, but we made it in good time in the end. Then on leaving the airport I managed to take a wrong turning and ended up going into Bedfordview and then all the way south, via Yeoville and Houghton on my way back to Bryanston. For those who don’t know Jo’burg, that would be like going from Canary Wharf to Marble Arch via Kew Gardens. Except that the Kew Gardens wouldn’t be Kew Gardens, it would be more like a dodgy part of Brixton. Yeah, so I was in the car for FOUR HOURS that morning, and not a happy bunny.

What else? I finally have some crockery and cutlery, two folding chairs and, as of today, a coffee table bought on Gumtree. The sellers delivered it to me, and extended an invitation to be my surrogate parents if I ever needed any support. So cute – and only in southern Africa! It feels like it’s going to take forever to furnish my place but I guess I just need to stop being so impatient, and instead be grateful (and sometimes amused) to be in a place where people are so open, friendly, and casual-familiar. Did I mention the mattress man, who I’ve only spoken to once or twice over the phone? “Oh yah hi Jules…oh yes your mattress. You know what, Jules, it won’t be delivered today. No yah, sorry Jules. Nothing I can do, my angel, nothing I can do. Ok angel….Take care.”

Oh Egoli: First Week in Johannesburg

2009-10-01T20:40:00.006+02:00

It’s the end of my first week in Jo’burg, and I am struck by this contented sense of relief to be back in southern Africa. The size of the city and all its highways are a tad intimidating, but my relocation agent has been drumming the geography into me consistently since day one, so I pretty much know where most suburbs are now. Everyone has been incredibly helpful and welcoming here, ranging from the kitchen lady at the office (who gave me an enormous bear hug the day I arrived) to relatives and friends of friends, and, less surprisingly, the car salesman. I’m staying with an ex-Oxford friend in Sandton in a modest complex with a lovely big garden. It’s sunny, the air is filled with blossom scent, and there are lots of birds – shrikes, parrots, robins, babblers, barbets, wood hoopoes, and more.

I’ve seen loads of accommodation options, and think I probably perplexed the Google-assigned property agent with my non-corporate leanings. Despite my wannabe-Bohemian tendencies, in the end it came down to the convenience and proximity of Lonehill up in the north near the office, albeit with its artificial ‘Wisteria Lane kitsch’ feel versus the older and more atmospheric Parkhurst with its streetside restaurants and cafes, which are quite unusual for Jo’burg and its shopping mall culture. I’ve opted for Lonehill in the short term, for the loft space and the upstairs terrace view, which will be awesome after the claustrophobia of London. Let’s see how it goes. My neighbours probably wouldn’t appreciate chickens and a beehive, but I should be able to do veggies and a solar oven on the terrace at least! I am looking forward to my crate arriving so that I can start decorating.

There’s been a lot of admin alongside just staying on top of the day job, but I have been out and about one or twice. Last weekend I spent Sunday afternoon on Freedom Square in Soweto, with a political analyst friend, listening to new candidates for the Constitutional Court being interviewed by the Judicial Services Committee. It was fascinating, and all the 'heavies' were there, including the Chief Justice, the Justice Minister, MP Patricia de Lille, and more. Although it was open to the public, there were surprisingly few people watching (40-50) and apparently virtually no security at all. I was struck by the relative informality of it. I was also struck by how the questioning was still weighed down by race -- I would have expected that ten years ago, but curious to find it still so prevalent.

This weekend I went out with friends in mixed and cosmopolitan Melville. It turned out to be a really entertaining evening, including a brief bar encounter with a group who only spoke sign language. The evening concluded with driving to a club up north with some buff Nigerians, with the Jai Ho soundtrack blaring loud and on repeat. Unexpected yet fun. The latest good news is that I'm finally going solo to and from work, in a hired car. I only know two routes... but, as I like to say, a girl's gotta grow up sooner or later.

Departing the Metropole

2009-10-01T20:33:00.004+02:00

After almost exactly a decade based in England, I have decided to return to southern Africa. Packing up is a pretty momentous time, and a chance to reflect on what has passed, or at least some of it. I sift through papers, find fragments of notes taken during my Zimbabwe travels -- fragments of chaos and desperation. I find photographs of my other world in Namibia, a Khwe woman weaving in the late afternoon shade of Mashambo, and satellite images of Caprivi and the ever-stretching sandveld. I find frantic to-do lists from the office -- yet again an other world, one of ambition and self-betterment and money. Cards from my mother on the southern oceans. A ribbon from Liz, 10 years ago in India just before we left, now fallen behind a bookshelf and retrieved, covered in dust. I have been using it to tie one of my scrapbooks. This time I tuck it into my hand luggage, because I can't bring myself to let it go. The "Cash Caviar and Champagne" dress is dug up from underneath the bed, no doubt ready for its Jozi debut.

I paste things rather frantically into my scrapbooks. It's hard to slow down. I vacuum, and again. I gather all my fieldnotes, those special and wordy rite-de-passage collections, and add them to the 'special box' pile, which includes photographs, my childhood stamp collection (yup, don’t laugh), my diaries. All my files from university are going too, including my first year anthro lecture notes, carefully dictated in green and purple ink. It’s debatable whether I should really be taking those, admittedly. My cello is de-bridged and de-sound-posted. We pack him up carefully and then into a coffin-like crate which is loaded into a cavernous van during an uncharacteristically heavy downpour. It’s really happening, this move.

I retrace the steps of my last day or two in London. Alice helps me clean the flat, vacuuming in her pencil skirt and heels. Even that she manages to do stylishly. I finally meet the proprietor of the coffee shop downstairs. I think he's Jamaican. I ask him for a bin bag, as I've run out. He gives me two, saying I might need more. I go to the gym on my final morning, and sit on the bike listening to Kaleen’s old playlists. God, I will be relieved not to go back to those gyms in the winter. I go to the British Library to renew my card. I’m not sure why. I suppose I have a small hope that I’ll want to come and absorb and reflect on knowledge again sometime. I remind some girl that she can’t go into the reading rooms carrying a cup of coffee, which she seems to find surprising, and then I go for bhel puri at the Indian restaurant on Drummond St where Ed and I used to eat.

Mary comes to pick me up. I heave those heavy cumbersome bags into her car and off we go to Heathrow. I tell her about Mishek's death last week, and how I had hoped one day we would sit together round the fire in Murehwa -- where I've never been because of my skin colour -- free of fear and the dark shadows of the past, him an old man, and me still listening. She tells me about one of her African clients who has been beaten in detention in the UK. I dispatch several copies of Chikwava’s ‘Harare North’ to friends. At the airport I am ever so tired. There is endless possibility now, and I don't know where to begin.

Passage to India, July 2009

2009-09-26T19:43:00.012+02:00

In July I returned to India for the first time in five years, and spent a week travelling before our much-awaited college reunion. I left London in a frazzled but expectant state and flew into Delhi, where we spent a surreal and humid day exploring the Red Fort, the million winding alleys of Chandi Chowk market, the sparkling new metro, and reacquainting our senses with India. We caught a night train that evening, with the Delhi station bringing back so many memories.

The Kalka Mail train which starts in Calcutta/Kolkata laid on an easy, hassle-free journey in 2nd class AC to Kalka, where we arrived at about 4.30am and drank steaming sweet chai in clay cups on the station platform. Then onto the ‘toy train’ up into the hills of Shimla, on the old British narrow gauge railway that was built in 1903. It was the loveliest of journeys, with stops at tiny and beautifully maintained stations along the way. Shimla was definitely worth the visit -- forested and full of colonial administrative buildings, most of which are delapidated and decaying, but rich with history and character.

We took a room at Hotel Classic, with a view overlooking the former Annandale racecourse and polo field. It's now used as a helipad by the army. The next few days were spent exploring Shimla by foot, eating dosas and pao bhaji, and admiring the unexpected gardening and potplanting skills of the locals. The highlight was undoubtedly the Viceroy Lodge, an extraordinary Oxbridgesque mansion decked out in teak and walnut, which used to have 800 staff, and where some of the penultimate decisions about India’s tumultuous Partition with Pakistan were made.

From Shimla we hired a jeep and driver to travel up to McLeod Ganj via Mandi, Palampur and Chamunda Devi. With several monsoon downpours along the way, winding mountain roads with heavy traffic, and a few stops for food and temples, the journey of about 250km took us 11 hours. India amazes me with how productive everyone is. People are always busy doing something: worshipping, travelling to worship, building roads, building bridges, trading food, working the rice paddies, carrying wood. Just everywhere you look from the road, people are busy with activities. It always just strikes me as a lot busier than Africa somehow! Though maybe it's just to do with population density.

Our arrival in steamy McLeod Ganj, which has one of the highest monsoon rainfalls in the country, coincided with an enormous traffic jam in the tiny central crossroads. Eventually we found our way to the Tibetan-run Pema Thang Guest House, which was full of foreigners. Dharamsala and McLeod Ganj are the seat of the Dalai Lama in exile. McCleod Ganj proved to be a fascinating if not bizarre community of Tibetan refugees, pilgrims of all religions including Buddhism, do-good Westerners, Indians cashing in on the economic opportunities, and all sorts of alternative hangouts. For the most part, the town was submerged in cloud and monsoon haze but one early morning after a restless and mosquito-filled night, a little sun opened up new parts of the valley, lighting up some distant cliffs and mountains that I hadn't noticed before. The views must be wonderful on clear days.

We pottered in and around McCleod Ganj for a few days, exploring the temples, the nearby monasteries, the museum with its very firm Tibetan versions of history, the hippy cafes, and feasting on the most delicious malai kofta on the rooftop restaurant of Hotel Kareri. I learned my first about Buddhism and the Free Tibet cause, now somewhat passé in the west, I think, and also found a great Japanese masseuse who lived in a building for the political prisoners' association. The stairwell was full of framed, very graphic depictions of Chinese torture of Tibetans. Pretty horrific stuff.

We flew out of Dharamsala on a 30-seater plane which had been grounded overnight for repairs (!), so we took a deep breath and crossed our fingers. It was amazing to see monsoon India underwing - vast rivers and settlement and cultivation as far as the eye can see. From Delhi we took a taxi to the traveler section, Paharganj, and whilst on the main highway into town, in the rush hour traffic, someone that we'd met on the Kalka-Shimla train pulled up next to us. To re-meet a random acqutaintance in a country of over a billion people felt pretty surreal, it has to be said! And then into the guts of Paharganj - possibly one of the most intense traffic experiences I've had in India. Narrow streets with a huge amount of activity - motorbikes, cyclists, load-pulling wallahs, rickshaws, cars, taxis, pedestrians, all going in different directions. And everyone trying to make it work, squeezing through the gaps, with horns and noise and cows and dirt and everything else. We were kind of lost and our driver tried to do a u-turn to find the hotel, and knocked over a motorcyclist in the process, who then came round and slapped him across the face. Despite my fears about a big fight breaking out, in the thick of this crowded craziness, their conflict resolution was swift. So unlike the completely unnecessary road rage that one sees regularly in Britain. And what was also interesting was that afterwards, at least 2 people helped our driver reverse out the muddle. Again, everyone seemed willing to make the chaos functional. India works. We finally found the comically-named Major's Den before heading out for some market shopping and food at a particularly grubby traveller cafe.

From there we went down to Mumbai, this time on the Rajdhani Express. India’s trains never fails to impress, and my admiration for the railways is endless. The service was excellent and the food was better than British Airways. We took ourselves on the local train to Bhandra to find Anokhi's new apartment, where Maura had also just arrived. After I had a facial in a men’s-only salon by mistake, and after stuffing ourselves on dosa at the corner restaurant, we sandwiched the ourselves and our luggage into a car and headed for the monsoon hills of Pune and the college.

Being back on the hill was like going home, surrounded by people who care and count, and by the warbling-gurgling birds. We talked and danced the nights away, and absorbed the lush greenness during the day. It’s so easy to forget the oppression of the hot months during the rains. We walked up to the high ridge overlooking Mulshi. It was splendid: emerald-wet, dotted with ancient shrines, and valleys dipping and dropping in all directions. It was India as I recall it from my very first days there in '97. The mists rolling in and out, the camaraderie of the group, and a sense of space that makes me feel whole. Before I left I also climbed the other hill, the one on the Paud side, to look across those valleys in some wonder, my eyes falling on new detail every minute, the light rising and subsiding, pushing its way through monsoon clouds, falling on the hamlets, and the temples with their triangular rooves that have sprung up all over. It's a view I have missed.

There’s not much else to say besides that it was a very special few days, and for the first time in ages I felt my restlessness subside. Afterwards a good number of us went to Pune for a few days. Pune is as busy as I recall, but its new geographies pass me by somewhat. I realise now with some surprise that I never looked at a map of Pune whilst I lived in India. We never had that much time to explore, I guess. I am still somewhat blind to the layout of the city. There are new developments, expansion and roads.

We stayed just down the street from the German Bakery, that old hippie-international haunt, ate enormous paper dosas at Madhubahn and bhel puri outside some new cinema complex somewhere, and drank cold coffee with the dwarf proprietor at Coffee House. Pune is changing, but in many ways it was all as it should be. Thank you India.

When Nowhere is a Country, or, Ten Years in the Postcolony

2009-05-06T00:20:00.007+02:00

Over eighteen months in London and more than ten years away from Zimbabwe, and I've been wanting to write for some time now on identity and the postcolony. Is Britain a postcolony - in the sense that it is a melting pot for dilemmas and debates around history and identity in the wake of colonialism? Google doesn’t help on that particular search query. Yes and no. I guess I've always felt very postcolonial being here, even before displacement started permeating the lives of so many Zimbabweans. I recall my anger during my first few years in England, about the ignorance that I experienced among many Britons about colonialism's legacy. This reinforced the sense of a nation which had unravelled and re-made other people's histories and then conveniently erased that from its collective memory. There's this disjuncture between Britain being such a reflective and dialogical society (what with its vibrant media scene, all those institutionalised radio programmes, all its debates) and its own sense of being at the centre of the universe where, as a friend put it recently, things are simply "what they seem". This has always bugged me, alongside the damp predictability*, tidy little hedged fields and 'myriad small cramped lives'**. It’s simply all too orderly - and that orderliness is an unsettling reminder of how the past has been tidied over.

This of course resonates with the society in which I grew up. Maybe that’s why it makes me so mad. Every place has its own illusions and silences. I grew up without history; I didn't learn any Zimbabwean history until I left the country, aged sixteen. The scars were still too fresh, I suppose, and I think children just knew somehow that one shouldn't linger on the topic. And so instead the teachers at my private school fed us ancient Egypt and the World Wars instead. Earlier this year I watched the Gaza demonstrators walking down Edgware Road, and was struck by this image (not an original one, by any means) of London as many nations, many exiles, many postcolonials. Negotiating our identities and our relationship with capitalism. I'm reminded of the patchwork of exiles I've met here - like the Indian Ugandan woman who I met at a school community fair that I stumbled across in Marylebone. She was expelled under Idi Amin, and made these delicious samosas, incidentally. And of another in-between friend whose academic parents were banned by the Apartheid government. And of the Zimbabweans anxiously waiting for their destinies to be determined in the bureaucratic bowels of the Home Office.

Meanwhile back on the ranch, each time a new British historical drama is released with generous doses of all the usual staples - class tensions, a nostalgic romance with the countryside, homoeroticism, and preferably Keira Knightley [Atonement; The Empress; The Young Victoria; and by the way, just how many times will they remake Pride and Prejudice?] - I wonder if it's some kind of backlash against the contemporary 'multiculturalism' that Britain prides itself on. Indeed, back to London and all its oddities: the Moroccans downstairs who I barely know, but who gave me a bottle of vintage Veuve Clicquot for my birthday; the women in full burqas wandering around Hyde Park; the anorexic girl who waits at the gym door ahead of opening time on weekend mornings; the pair of working class artists in Greenwich market who paint about how they detest New Labour...and all these strange yellow spring flowers and accompanying birdsong which reminds me for the most part of undergraduate exams and how this remains a foreign land.

*Luhrmann
**Lessing, The Golden Notebook

Zimbabwe February 2009

2009-02-27T00:13:00.023+02:00

It's late evening in the Jo'burg guesthouse grandiosely named Silverwood Manor, but which is actually more of a Fawlty Towers variety ("Oh, did I really omit to mention when you booked that we're undergoing construction for another 60 beds? And that that our entire staff will sit with you around the 6-seater dining room table at breakfast in the morning, simply because there isn't any other space for them to be and, in fact, given that we don't have any guests there's actually not a lot of work for them to do?").

But this post is supposed to be about the country to the north. One wonders what more can be written about Zimbabwe that hasn't already been said, yet each time home as an insider-outsider is a new experience. Harare is shabby and dilapidated but beautiful with its tall skies, lush green streets, potholes, and the engulfing downpours that I call proper rain. The atmosphere felt considerably lighter than when I was last back during the post-election period in July 2008. Certain sectors of the informal economy have mushroomed and become visible again, though others remain firmly behind closed doors. The craft market in Newlands has re-emerged for the first time since Operation Murambatsvina in 2005, all its prolific creativity now squeezed onto a verge between the shopping centre and one of Harare's only new roads.

With the latest agreements around the new 'unity' government, it felt like there was a glimmer of hope in the air, though personally I think there's a lot more of the same old stuff still to come. The reduced tension is partly because foreign currency has been legalized, and food is readily available again, although things have become incredibly expensive. The Zim dollar seems to be officially dead, and I am returning to London with a collection of obsolete multi-billion banknotes. The Reserve Bank appears desperate for cash, and is trying to coerce shop owners and street vendors alike to pay hefty licence fees in order to operate in foreign currency. For a street vendor who earns maybe $50 a month, $20 would be sucked up by a licence. For a shop owner in the northern suburbs, a licence would be more along the lines of $1000 a month, also beyond the means of many. Whether people will comply is yet to be seen. Phone invoices and other utility bills have suddenly arrived in US dollars, with no advance warning. My parents' landline bill shouted out a grand $265 for January (!) - compared to something more along the lines of $15-20 in previous months. Again, most people are doing a typically Zimbabwean 'wait and see' before taking any action, as they know that it's all likely to change again before long.

To give you an idea of just how expensive things have become, here's a sample list:

Bunch of spinach (side of the road): $0.50

Commuter taxi fare: $1.00

Tin of chopped tomatoes (TM supermarket, Kamfinsa): $1.50

Newspaper $2.00

Block of basic cheese (Green Park supermarket): $3.60

Gym class (Rolf Valley): $4.00

2kg rice (Import depot, Msasa, see photo below): $5.10

Doctor's appointment: $30

Termly fee at a top private senior school: $1200

Caesarian baby delivery (Avenues Clinic, no water available): $4000

Garden flat/apartment in Avondale complex: $250 000 cash.

The only thing which is cheap is alcohol: a can of beer works out at $0.60. Prior to the US dollar being legalized, fuel coupons were being used as a currency, meaning that there is now a significant surplus of coupons on the market. Large numbers of unemployed young men loiter around the entrance of the Redan fuel depot in Msasa, avoiding the police where necessary, in the hope of selling these off at a discount. For those who are able to do this at scale, there is money to be made.

There is considerable wealth around, as ever. Niche-filling entrepeneurs are reported to be raking in profits of, for example, $10 000 a month in the goods transport business. One of my ever-informative Joburg taxi drivers told me all about a regular Zimbabwean client of his who owns a construction company amongst others, re-sells South African liquor at a 300% profit in Harare...and owns 2 Hummers. Given that loans, bonds and mortgages don't really seem to exist, houses are paid for in cash. I met an estate agent who'd had a client show up with $400 000 in a bag.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of children haven't been back to school this year, except at a handful of private schools which have mobilised enough foreign currency to pay their teachers. Even my parents' domestic worker now has his eldest child enrolled at a private school - having already paid for fees, uniforms and books at her government school, where the teachers understandably have simply not returned to work this year. At the National Archives, the shelving for vast quantities of valuable documentation is collapsing because people have been stealing the screws which hold them together. Crimes of all kinds seem to be a necessity for survival in Zimbabwe, but if we exclude politically-motivated violence, it's a far cry from Joburg and Cape Town. My brother's housemate takes both back wheels off his vehicle to deter thieves when storing it at home, which I have to say caused me more hilarity than concern, especially when combined with a propped-open bonnet to prevent rats nesting in the cosy engine.

The most striking thing for me is people's cynicism and complete lack of trust in all systems and institutions, particularly government-related, but also on the individual level. It seems to cut across class, race and other lines of affiliation, and I wonder if and how this can be overcome. Many people are so tired of injustice and exploitation at all levels - but at the same time have probably become exploitative themselves in order to make ends meet. Foreign currency accounts are now apparently easy to open, as channels for funds from abroad, but there are so many stories of money transfers going 'missing', that few people seem willing to take the risk. Their take on it is simply that the Reserve Bank is either stealing their money altogether, or borrowing it for a few weeks to pilfer the interest.

Civil servants have found innovative ways to supplement their incomes. A good example is a local police inspector who uses his government vehicle for all sorts of odd jobs, ranging from a taxi service to assisting wealthier residents in the northern suburbs with services like removing household garbage (which the municipality has not done for years now). Normality and the threat of violence continue to co-exist in bizarre synchrony. Like the one evening we sipped our South African red wine (purchased for $5 a bottle from a large stockpile in someone's home garage in Glen Lorne), while two water cannon tanks provided by the Israelis zoomed past in the direction of Chikurubi Prison. Another afternoon we even crossed paths with Uncle Bob himself and have to pull over on Borrowdale Rd for the Presidential motorcade to pass. It is still made up of about 12 vehicles, including 10 heavily armed men on an open truck, but this time the wailing sirens were considerably muted. I couldn't help but get the impression that he is now slinking about his business with unease, and perhaps starting to keep a lower profile.

I end with a typically incongruous Zimbabwean encounter that my mother and I had with the police at a roadblock on the Domboshawa road. A sort of considerate and genteel corruption, if you like.

Policeman: Can I see your driver's licence.

Mum [left it at home]: Umm, sorry, I don't have it...we're going up Domboshawa and umm, I didn't want it to fall out of my pocket whilst walking.

Policeman [pedantic]: Do you know that before you even pick up your car keys, you should pick up your drivers licence?

Mum: Nodding

Me: Yes, I always tell her she needs to remember her licence.

Mum: Nodding

Policeman: [more pedantic] And how are we going to identify you if you have an accident?

Mum: Nodding

Policeman: Goes on with a long and apparently sincere lecture about the importance of the drivers licence.

Policeman: So, in order to help you not to forget your licence, we are going to have to fine you.

Mum: Umm, Ok. How much?

Policeman: $20 [fines used to be about $0.50, so this is quite something].

Me: Hmm, the problem is, we don't even have $20 on us [truthful].

Mum: I will have to drive all the way home and then return here...and....

Me: You see, we're going to Domboshawa and we need some of our money for the entrance fee...

Policeman: [contemplates the situation] Ok, so how much can you pay?

Me: Umm, ok, so we need about $4 for Domboshawa and we have about $14, and...[tries to do calculations and weighs up situation]..I think we can pay you $4.

Policeman: Ok, you can fill out the book.

Me: using the old fuel drum on the side of the road as a table, filling out the 'Admission of Guilt' form with my details, even though Mum is the driver.

Policeman: pockets the mixture of dollars and rands.

Policeman: So how old are you?

Me: I'm 28.

Policeman: And why are you still unmarried?

Me: [measure of feminist sarcasm] Well, I'm just waiting for the right man to come along.

Policeman [assuredly]: You are being too selective.

Me: Yes, you're probably right...

And with that classic piece of relationship advice, off we went to Domboshawa. Just another afternoon in the postcolony.

Zimbabwe August 2008

2009-01-03T14:59:00.010+02:00

4th August 2008

It's a Sunday afternoon back in London, where I landed this morning, and I wanted to jot down a few more reflections on Zim before the big city sweeps me up.

My first incongruous tale regards chocolate. Did you know that Cadbury's

Zimbabwe

still *exports* chocolate? I kid you not. It exports to

Namibia

, Democractic Republic of Congo…and…wait for it…

Switzerland

. Yes, Cadbury's

Zimbabwe

is the only Cadbury in the world that makes Crunchettes – mini versions of Crunchies. It's also the only Cadbury's where Flakes are still hand-made.

My three weeks in Zim, as ever, provided so many insights. Overheard conversations and glimpses of daily life in Harare were windows into socio-political change, trauma, resilience and humour. People there live in a wartime economy even though the conflicts and violence are not described as war. Since my last email, I visited TM supermarkets in Newlands and Kamfinsa; I was properly shocked by row after row of bare shelves which stocked only a handful of longlife products like soap powder, Dettol and Doom. But in true Zimbabwean fashion, as a Joburg friend pointed out on seeing the photos that I furtively took with my phone, the shelves and floors are spotlessly clean – gleaming, even - and the staff neatly dressed and all standing behind their counters as usual. Just afterwards, I went into a nearby art shop, where an artist was telling the proprietor how she was now exchanging paintings for fuel coupons. Another woman was complaining bitterly about her friend's experience of immigrations officials at Heathrow: 'They asked her why she'd lived in Cape Town for 2 years. None of their bloody business! What's she going to say? Because the weather's better?!' I mentioned that I'd just been into TM supermarket, and they retorted, 'Oh, didn't you know, it's not called TM anymore…it's called MT (emp-ty).'

People's economic strategies are innovative and rich in their diversity. I listened to urban housewives co-arranging the butchering of a mombe (cow) they'd managed to procure through someone who knows someone; the butcher was identified in a similar fashion. These days it's all about having a wide network of contacts who fill gaps and seize opportunities in the informal market. A friend of my brother's, formerly a world-class triathlete, currently trades diesel from Harare for kapenta fish in Binga, which he then brings back to the city. This trip, for the first time, I saw wealthy white women stopping on corners in their 4x4s to buy a handful of vegetables from the street vendors whom they've overlooked for years. They also look further afield, of course, and there are a number of traders who now bring in goods from

South Africa

and re-sell them at anything between a 10% and 90% mark-up.

In the midst of economic collapse, my second top incongruous tale involves postcolonial etiquette. The Royal Harare Golf Club, neighbouring the presidential residence, was opened in 1898 and remains an elite hang-out, including for the political chefs. It maintains a stringent dress code. A family friend visited the club for lunch recently in business-casual attire. Having already ordered his meal in the Club's restaurant, he and his partner were asked to leave because he wasn't wearing socks under his long trousers. Indeed, the dress code, in some bizarre colonial fashion, trumped all else – including the need to retain customers in one of the most desperate economies in the
world.

People still pay taxes in Harare, but are now often subsidizing state services, sometimes dramatically. In a neighbouring northern suburb, the residents were so fed up with the chronic electricity problems that they approached ZESA to ask what could be done. In the end, this same group gathered together USD 4000 to pay for spare parts that ZESA could not afford. Similar stories are heard from the high density suburbs, though I imagine the amounts of money involved would have been significantly less. In the same vein, last week a friend of our domestic worker was admitted to Parirenyatwa hospital, in the last stages of terminal breast cancer. She was in hospital for 4 days before her death, during which time she was not given even a single painkiller. Her relatives had to pool together to buy her a drip, in a last effort to ease her suffering.

Last weekend we traveled to Rukomechi, in the Mana Pools National Park area, a journey of about 7 hours. Leaving the city early in the morning, I was struck by the image of 3 women in Apostolic robes, praying in the direction of the rising sun as they knelt in the white winter grass near some crossroads. Between Harare and the Dyke, every village or homestead sported a Zanu PF poster visible from the road, tied high onto tree trunks, almost as if charms to fend off bad luck. Driving the road through Chinhoyi and Karoi, formerly some of the most productive agricultural land in the country, we saw hundreds of acres of waist-high weeds. Zanu PF T-shirts and headscarves were also quite a common sight in this area (in contrast to the Domboshawa side of town, where I saw not a single poster or handout). Near Banket, ironically the only form of livelihood activity seen from the road were craftsmen selling wooden toy replicas of John Deere tractors. Watching ZTV the same week, discussion panels informed viewers that agricultural failure was the outcome of Western sanctions (coincidentally, I nearly
fell of my chair laughing when I came across a white news presenter on ZTV – yet another one of Zimbabwe's many little incongruities).

Rukomechi, our destination on the banks of the Zambezi, with the Zambian escarpment as a backdrop, was absolutely stunning. We and the elephants had the entire river to ourselves, minus a little noise pollution one afternoon from Rautenbach (one of Mugabe's business partners for his DRC dealings) in his black helicopter. Bee-eaters and water birds, hippo s galore, enormous crocodiles lazing in the afternoon sun, waterbuck on the plains...and the most sublime African colours. Elsewhere in the country, illegal poaching is rife, but this part of Mana seems to have retained its character as a safe wildlife haven.

The weekend's close brought my third most incongruous tale. This one concerns tsetse fly control. Some institutions never die - and it seems that the tsetse doesn't either. The poor old tsetse fly, the carrier of sleeping sickness, has been subject to state interventions for decades and decades. I was impressed by the tsetse fly control man who appeared to inspect our vehicle as we passed out of the National Park vicinity, equipped with a small net and a virtually-empty spray can, with which he carefully eliminated 1 of the 3 tsetse flies inside our car. The lives of the other 2 were spared, it seems, due to unspoken spray rationing. Like the Royal Harare club, only much more remote, I thought this little incident spoke volumes about how certain institutions survive despite massive upheavals, and how people still carry out their jobs as best they can under adverse conditions.

On our return to Harare, we heard that Zanu PF was distributing free food to its supporters, a few blocks away from home. My dad and I went for a drive to check it out – and yes, there it was: a rally taking place in the grounds of a nearby primary school, a few hundred metres from the party's local 'headquarters' where people were taken to be beaten in the run-up to the elections.

Before I departed, I treated myself to a copy of the government mouthpiece, The Herald. There are advertisements for generators and water pumps. The second page proclaims, 'Victoria Falls opens multi-quadrillion dollar truck-inn'. Last but not least, there is a quarter-page colour ad placed by the National Social Security Authority, featuring and congratulating (I quote) "His Excellency Cde Robert Gabriel Mugabe on being elected as the President of Zimbabwe". This week our dollar is losing 10 zeros. Many of us didn't even get a chance to see the 100 billion dollar notes that are being sold on Ebay for as much as USD 100. Like many other banknotes, the 100 billions came and went rather fast.

That's it folks - Thanks for reading.

Zimbabwe July 2008

2009-01-03T13:55:00.020+02:00

July 2008

This is a quick recap without much editing for those keen to hear what returning to Zimbabwe has been like…Before getting onto the depressing stuff, some light entertainment anecdotes from my pre-Zim trip:

Zambian taxi driver at the one-room Sesheke border post: Do you speak Norwegian?
Me: Er, no…(Do I look like I speak Norwegian? Well, maybe). Why, do you?
Zambian taxi driver: Oh yes. I have 3 siblings in Norway.

Zambian teacher through a bus window: Hello, er, I'm wondering if you can help me?
Me through a bus window: Uh, maybe…what is it you need help with?
Zambian teacher: I need a metal detector.
Me: Uh, I'm not sure I can help with that.

Me, watching beer being smuggled onto Zambian bus (beyond the gaze of customs officials): So, did this beer come across the Zambezi river on a boat?
Zambian passenger: No no, that would be illegal.

Zimbabwean airport security official, scanning my hand luggage: Do you have any metal items in this bag?
Me: Yes, I have a lot of metal items in that bag…(including razor blades, cables, adaptor plugs, camera, etc etc)
Airport official, looking at images: Oh, ok. Proceed.

--------------------

I crossed the border into Zimbabwe at Victoria Falls very early last Friday morning, having taken a beer-smuggling bus the previous day through Zambia from Namibia. I paid my Zambian taxi driver in a combination of kwacha, rand and US dollars, and set off across the potholes with all my bags. Hard to know what to expect, but it was a relief to be home. I went straight to the Falls for an extraordinary sunrise through the mist.

The sense of disillusionment in the air was palpable, and my taxi driver unusually quiet. He didn't have enough fuel to get to the Vic Falls airport (a journey of 20 mins), and there is no such thing as going to a service station nowadays, so we had to drive around the
backstreets of town, haul some guy out of bed, and then wait for 5 litres of petrol in a plastic bottle to appear. I had to give the driver an advance in US dollars to pay the fuel dealer. On the way to the airport he told me that civil servants were now earning 100
billion Z$ a month – and that a loaf of bread that day cost 80 billion. There was a power cut at the airport, but somehow I managed to get a boarding pass, and passed the time with a golf caddy-turned-teak dealer who was taking a heavy boxful of groceries
from Zambia back to his family in Harare.

The Chinese plane miraculously arrived on time and landed successfully at Harare airport, where we caught a glimpse of Phillip Chiyangwa zooming off in his black Mercedes. So, I am back in Harare where things have quietened down quite considerably since our leader reinstated himself. In fact we've even heard reports of police arresting those responsible for some of the horrific recent violence. There are also other reports of retributive violence by communities themselves against youth who terrorised people in their home areas.

We have electricity today at home but it's only the second day we've had power this week. We usually get a few hours in the evening, but during daylight the northern suburbs of Harare are humming with the sound of generators – for those who can afford them. Our generator at home is strong enough to power lights and computers, but not the
kettle, stove or the borehole pump. So we use water in buckets drawn from the

swimming pool as necessary. (We always knew our swimming pools would come in handy one day). And during the power cuts we cook using a combination of the solar cooker and a wood fire in the garden. Gas is difficult to come by. When the power comes on, then we go wild with the washing machine ;)

All the lampposts in our area are smothered in Zanu-PF posters, proclaiming 'This is the Final Battle for Total Control'. My personal favourite, however, is the slogan 'Behind the Fist'. Unbelievably apt. I wonder which information ministry guru came up with it – it will make a brilliant book title one day. Apparently putting up posters was a post-assault duty of those rounded up and beaten by the youth militia in the nearby Lewisham vlei during the second elections.

I have been phoning various family friends to catch up. The phone networks are completely overloaded, so sometimes it can take 20-30 attempts to get through. Nowadays when I ask how people are, they tend to pause and say, 'well, we're…ok'. Amidst the fear and the trauma that most people are trying to shield themselves from, daily life here is incredibly time-consuming. Our dollar devalues every hour (about 60% per week) and paying for things is always complicated. Last
weekend I had lunch with 4 friends and it cost us about 1.4 trillion Zim dollars. Yes, people here are adept at doing calculations in billions and trillions. I don't even bother to try and keep up with them. We settled the bill in rands – by far the easiest method. US
dollars and rands are common currency now in shops and restaurants – but still officially illegal.

My family can only draw the Z$ equivalent of USD 1.50 each per day from the bank. Cash is in extremely short supply and hence expensive to obtain, even in exchange for foreign currency on the parallel/black market. Quite a lot of grocery shops only take cash or cheques – but our bank, for example, will only allow the use of 1-2 cheques per dayvalued at USD 5-10 each. Keeping track of exchange rates is a full time job, given the dynamism of devaluation, and subsequently most people are happy to round off numbers or approximate their dealings in ways which you'd never see in other parts of the world.

The city is full of harrowing stories, but most people try to avoid talking too much about politics – it's simply too depressing. My parents' domestic worker has been badly affected over the past few months. After the February elections, a gang visited his elderly mother's rural homestead in Murehwa. They assaulted her and other elderly women, demanding to know why Mugabe had lost in that area, and what their children were doing in the cities. The family's homestead was set on fire – even their grain store was destroyed. Their radio and television – supposed sources of opposition propaganda – were hacked to pieces with axes. Their oxen cart was also hacked to pieces. These items were pretty much their sum possessions. His mother has been staying with a relative since the incident and has not yet returned home. Meanwhile, in one of the townships in Harare, he had to move his 18 year old daughter to yet another relative during the second elections to safeguard her from rape.

Food staples are in very short supply and very expensive. Most in the townshipws are living on potatoes and cabbage. Meat is now an incredible luxury that very few can afford. On the other end of the spectrum, there are quite a few popular restaurants in the city which charge USD20-30 per person, and they are certainly not short of
clientele. (For an ordinary person, in London terms this would equate to something like spending several hundred, if not thousand, pounds on a meal). The discrepancies and inequalities here are massive and growing. There is an increased police presence everywhere (and friends report frequent extortion for petty or made-up offences), but
I have been driving around and even walking around the neighbourhood virtually as normal, albeit having to see Bob on every lamppost.

The shops are bare, though, and usually ensconced in darkness. Our local pharmacy spreads its products out along the shelves at a distance of about 30 cm in between each shampoo bottle. The informal economy has flourished – we buy vegetables regularly from the back of a truck which parks at the end of our road; and if I want to have a
hair cut, a massage (that's right, available even here) or attend a yoga class, I go to people's homes for the service and pay them in foreign currency.

Amidst all this, last weekend I went to a craft fair. The sun shone, music blared from loudspeakers, meat was barbequed, and lots of white people wandered around stalls as if everything was completely normal. t was surreal. In the fields next door, Apostolic church services continued, perhaps even more fervently. Meanwhile, Ben Freeth still
could not see, one week after his brutal attack in the Chegutu area which left him with a skull so badly fractured that surgeons had to drill into it to release the pressure around his brain. Such are the juxtapositions of life here. At least among those with any economic
security, people seem to take the view that life has to go on, and are determined to live the best that they can under the circumstances.

School sports fixtures run as normal, and I've watched hockey and rugby matches this past week, as well as attended a (rather dire) karaoke night in Borrowdale Village. As my brother says, staying at home and reading/watching the news everyday is a one-way road to depression. And so people block stuff out as part of their coping strategies.

Those are a few of my observations from the past week – admittedly among a sub-section of the population with better buffer capacity than most, but at the same time, nor are these people among the super-elite who mark their status with incredibly expensive cars and the like.

Many of my friends think I'm crazy to be here, but it comes to me almost as a relief. Watching the news from a distance is far more distressing .

Ngamiland to Algiers Sept-Dec 2006

2009-01-03T13:51:00.013+02:00

31 December 2006

Happy Christmas and all that jazz. I am back in Harare after a really interesting trip to Algeria. The weather is glorious, the main roads along which our dear President travels have been re-tarred, and lots of the diaspora, including black Zimbabweans with Australian accents, are home for Christmas. Amidst the crisis, cars and cell phones are the status symbols par excellence, and rest assured that posh cars here would be just as posh in London or New York. My brother informs me that there are no less than 5 Hummers in Harare now, each in a different colour. Yes, that's right, the type that 50 Cent and John Travolta drive. The black elite are reaching new heights of opulence. Yesterday morning a man known only as a 'fuel baron' paid 5,7 million US Dollars for a prime 5-year hunting concession in the north. Meanwhile, lecturers who have worked at the University for more than 30 years receive the equivalent of 40 US Dollars per month. Farm workers at a small farm down the road get some free produce, but their monthly salary is enough to buy 11 loaves of bread. Racial divides appear to be operating as normal, with continued white insularity, and well-educated black parents who forbid their children from marrying the white partners that they find overseas. Oh, and I was offered diamonds this afternoon in the parking lot of my local gym. Illegal diamond and gold trading is the latest fashion.

Anyway, the main purpose of this email was to describe Algiers, not Harare, where I recently enjoyed a few days on my own ahead of the conference I was working at. Algeria is an ENORMOUS country, five times the size of France. Its capital Algiers is a fabulous hybrid of Nice and Hyderabad: blue-and-white French colonial architecture, a busy industrial port, Byzantine churches, stunning ocean views, liberation struggle memorials, and the regular calls of the muezzin echoing across the city. Photographs to follow! Unbeknown to me, Algeria also has hundreds of amazing Roman ruins…so if you don't fancy fighting off the hordes of tourists in Europe, that's the place for you.

I was forced to resurrect my rather dire French, and was amazed at how friendly, welcoming and tolerant the Algerians were. The reception I received was no doubt influenced by the repeated astonishment that my Zimbabwean passport induced ("mais vous etes blanc!"). It was my first time sightseeing alone in a Muslim country, and was a very gendered and non-touristy experience. Public space is incredibly masculine. Although there are no restrictions on female tourists, being out in the city on the holy day, Friday, was very strange, given that there were only about 5 other women on the streets. I also felt like I must be the only woman in the entire country with short hair. Likewise, restaurants, hotels, and the airport produced only a sprinkling of females. Women's employment is apparently at about 13% and they are not supposed to leave the house without a male relative after 5pm.

My first hotel was an enormous and mostly empty affair overlooking the seafront and port, with corridors big enough to drive a Landrover down. Algiers sees virtually no tourists thanks to its conflict (crudely characterised as govt vs. Islamic fundamentalist group) which started in 1993 and saw 20 000 people die in its first year. The situation seems to be much improved (Lufthansa recently opened a new flight route there), but people are still very wary of travelling long-distance by car. Quite a few tourists do trips into the Sahara in the south though, and having seen a few photos of this area, I have been unexpectedly smitten by the romance of the desert and am thinking of planning a trip. Any takers?

The conference (appropriately on Desertification) was very hard work, but the Algerian government made life easier by spoiling the delegates and reporters with an all-expenses-paid stay at the best 5-star hotel in the city, which is entertainingly located between the Che Guevara and Franz Fanon Boulevards. The government also takes the security of its visitors quite seriously, as evidenced by the fact that all the delegates had a police escort when driving to the venue and, on occasion, a private chaffeur/security guy.

Besides acquiring some random business cards (eg 'traditional desert well rehabilitation service provider in eastern Algeria') the highlight of the conference was an incredibly surreal show of indigenous 'desert peoples'. It was a bizarre moment when I realised that all these 'traditionally-clad' performers were not just Algerians dressed up. No, no. They had been shipped in for a Deserts Festival and they included aboriginal groups from Australia (cowboy hats, beards and boomerangs) and Latin America (facepaint and absolutely flamboyant feathers) and numerous others. Somehow the Arab Emirates found their way into this combo, together with their bagpipe players. My personal favourite, however, which admittedly is purely based on my anthropological fascination with the Exotic Other ;) was a Tuareg group from some 2000km away in southern Algeria. They're the society where the men wear the veils, showing only their eyes, and I have to say they are a rather mesmerising sight in their black and indigo robes (Halloqueen 2007?). Nevertheless they had been shunted to the back of the performance queue, so I snuck backstage to find them slouched on the floor of the hotel lobby, bored out of their minds, and with barely enough enthusiasm to cover their faces for my much-lusted-after photograph. Before long these 'desert nomads' and I were exchanging email addresses. So I now have contacts in Tamanrasset: roll on my Sahara safari!

Leaving the country was more stressful than being inside it – there were numerous security checks at the airport, and on arrival in Frankfurt every single passenger was hand-searched, which took forever. I finally made it back to Zimbabwe amidst the Heathrow weather chaos and after 3 days of being awake. The only entertainment was a completely psychotic cat which careered at top speed around the Algiers departure lounge, repeatedly launching itself onto the only potted tree in the building. Too many times through the X-ray machine perhaps?

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Botswana September 2006

23 September 2006

My time in Botswana is nearing an end: I have interview fatigue and am happy to be wrapping things up, though I will miss the cabin on the river's edge, along with the hippos, donkeys and crocodile researchers.

Being highly mobile for research purposes is draining – last week I spent nights in 5 different places. This included a short visit to Maun– a dusty little town with the busiest airport in southern Africa. Unsurprisingly, it is filled with khaki-clad tourists en route to the Delta, and with bush pilots wearing Ray Bans. From my perspective, it's 2 supermarkets were the main attraction, given that Shakawe is basically a village that stocks only long-life goods. Oh, and swimming. I went swimming, which was a real treat.

This week I made a trip to interview some of Botswana's 'Remote Area Dwellers' – a term akin to India's 'Other Backward Castes'. All I have to say is that 'remote' is a highly appropriate term. On Wednesday we took nearly 5 hours to drive less than 190km, to conduct one group interview. The roads are bad, and there are sections of the thickest Kalahari sand that I've ever seen, which launched me completely in the deep-end (no pun intended) in terms of my 4x4 driving qualifications. The idea of getting stuck and having to wait 3 days for someone to pull us out was enough to inspire a good degree of terror. Anyway, as it happened, we did get stuck, but in someone's yard, luckily. Even with heaps of people to help it still took us 40 minutes to free the vehicle. I think I'm done with thick sand for the meanwhile.

One of the young women who travelled with us is HIV positive and, because she is registered in remote Gudigwa, she has to travel all the way there every month if she wants to collect the 3 tins of baby formula that the government distributes to mothers with HIV. So basically she spent 2 days on very rough roads, with the baby, to get less than 2 weeks' supply of formula for her child. Pretty unbelievable.

What else? The combinations of things that I take to the NGO office some mornings becomes more and more peculiar. Yesterday's collection included: laptop, large mouse trap, solar oven, unbaked banana bread, and 20 litres of diesel. And yes, the banana bread baked perfectly.

Today I am going camping at Tsodilo Hills. Tsodilo is a world heritage site, comprising 3 amazing hills which rise out of hundreds of miles of flat scrubland. It is a sacred place for many local people, central to many origin myths, and is home to some 4000 ancient rock paintings. Very exciting.

I'll end there. I head back to the UK on the 13th of October – looking forward to seeing at least some of you!

5th Sept 2006

Dedicated readers:

Last week was stressful, to put it mildly. Sunday night saw my name on national radio – I still haven't heard the full transcript, but it was something to do with me promoting tribalism and tribal divisions in West Caprivi. Indeed, a suitable crime for an anthropologist. As you can imagine, I was pretty furious. Being misrepresented to the public is just not fun at all, especially given that I've spent months and months trying to build relations of trust with people. I have yet to call up the NBC reporter who was involved – but believe me it's on my to-do list. (Ironically, however, he turned out to be the older brother of my translator – small world at the worst of times). There is still no explanation for what happened last weekend, nor for why my NGO is being targeted yet again by the intelligence. The only thing I know is that the plot is so incredibly thick, it's probably way beyond anything that we've imagined.

Anyway, after a multiplicity of phonecalls between Namibia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, and after considering 900 different ways of crossing the border into Botswana, given my fear of driving through West Cap in the highly-conspicuous yellow bakkie, a solution was found. A colleague who is a saviour, including of anthropologists in trouble, drove with me in convoy the 400km from Katima. And for those who have enquired, no, he's not single.

I spent a day at Buffalo in his new clay house, powering my laptop off a solar panel, which was a rather unique experience, while he attended a community meeting. We left the next morning for Botswana, and not a moment too soon, since an hour or two after we left the police came asking questions about the meeting that had taken place the day before. Besides nearly hitting a kudu on the road, and being struck with paranoia about the Namibian Defence Force following us, the border crossing went just fine. Most amusing was trying to get a signal on my phone at the border office, and being assisted by 3 officials to find exactly the right spot to stand in the flower bed…

I am now safely ensconsed in the quiet country village of Shakawe, northern Botswana. I am renting THE most lovely canvas-and-reed house on stilts, on the banks of the Okavango Delta, surrounded by riverine forest, and with an enormous ancient Jackalberry tree dropping fruit at my feet every morning. There is an outdoor bathroom with twin-showers. There are hippos and drums at night and fishing boats by day. It is absolutely the most perfect spot to be a researcher – and such a relief to have my own space for the first time in 2 months.

The owners of the property are Afrikaaner missionaries-turned-development-workers. I am allowed to pick freely from the vegetable garden and, if I like, to attend their church service, at which both God and brownies feature. The Batswana (no tribal divisions allowed here, note) are confident and friendly, and the road to Shakawe is lined with braying donkeys. And no one recognises the yellow bakkie and its 3700 km of mileage since July. Not yet.

Today I used my solar oven for the first time to cook lentils and sweet potato – and it worked! So, life is looking up, though there is still much work to be done, sadly.

I have a new mobile phone number – as always, texts are welcomed. I have to go to the field behind the veggie garden to receive them ;)

Well, I hope you are all being both naughty and nice.

Write soon...

Caprivi August 2006 -- Part II

2009-01-03T13:49:00.008+02:00

27 August 2006

Dear friends

There is much to report. The top news items are as follows:

I am in trouble with the intelligence, again. Maybe I really am a spy.

I had a 'Number 2' haircut. Maybe that was why they came after me.

M&Ms have arrived in Katima – manufactured in Singapore, I think.

The last 10 days have been the toughest part of the fieldwork thus far. Yesterday I was once again hounded out of West Caprivi by a combination of intimidation by intelligence officers, being stopped by the police, being caught on film (without my permission) by a so-called broadcasting crew, and being shouted at for 40 minutes by an influential headman, accusing me of taking sides, ignoring his ethnic group, bypassing local leaders, dividing people and so on. I decided enough was enough, packed up my camp in 20 minutes and drove back to Katima in the shortest time yet recorded. It's a long story, but basically my attempts to interview the 'other' ethnic group in the West Caprivi was met with huge amounts of suspicion and distrust.

In addition to all this, the separatist Muyongo, who lead the secession attempt in 1999, is allegedly due to return to Namibia after fleeing for several years to Denmark. The government is taking this all very seriously, it seems. There is no official news, but West Caprivi is crawling with police, military, and unlicenced vehicles. As if all those things weren't enough, the President was in Katima this weekend for Heroes Day, so 99 additional security measures were added to what was already in place. And of course, all the other local politics going on in the area about leadership, chieftaincies, safari hunting revenues and NGOs just contribute to poor old me being misconstrued yet again. Or whatever. Maybe I'm just an easy target.

The good news is that they only cut short my work by a day or two (given that I'm due to leave this week for Botswana), and robbed me of only about 3 interviews. I may have had to run away, which pisses me off entirely, but I got done 99% of what I needed to.

So that's the serious news. Currently lying low, gathering intelligence of my own, and wanting to spray paint my car and change its number plate! And hoping my supervisor doesn't have a heart attack when she reads the email I just sent her.

On the positive side, I've learnt heaps, AND I know that I could be a better intelligence officer than any of those numbskulls who didn't even have a decent alias when I asked them who they were, and apparently were surprised when I didn't immediately hand over my phone number to them. Dddduuuuuuuhhhh.

What else? I've met lots of nice people in between the irritants, shared an outdoor bathroom with a nesting chicken, had my car stuck in the sand at least twice, woken up to hyenas and elephants at night, and learnt how to use my gas stove 'indoors' without igniting my entire tent. I went to an amazing Khwe healing ceremony about 2 weeks ago, which was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. It included drumming and singing for 10 hours non-stop throughout the night and into the early morning.

I've also learned how to thresh millet like the rural women which, just to remind me what I don't miss about rowing, induced raw skin patches and blisters. As for the haircut, it's great for camping, and I've wanted to do it for years. It does however emphasise my pixie ears and chicken neck. As for the M&Ms, I haven't had chocolate for about 11 days, and I'm on my way to the supermarket shortly. The hot weather has arrived, but being August there's still a great breeze.

Well, dearies, enough entertainment from me. On the intelligence issue, you can either a) feel sorry for me and lavish me accordingly with emails, gifts, etc OR b) treat me like a film star – which I may soon be once I appear on Namibian national television.

Caprivi lovin'

Caprivi August 2006

2009-01-03T13:48:00.006+02:00

10th August 2006

Dear all

I've been in Namibia for a month already and haven't been able to keep up the joint emails as well as last time…I hope you are all doing well, wherever you are. I miss your lovely company.

Things here are going well – it's good to be back, and nice to no longer have to worry about camping in daily thunderstorms etc. In exchange, however, it's freezing cold, and even when I'm not camping, all the houses are half-open-air, which means they're like, about 5 degrees inside in the evenings and mornings. That said, daytime temperatures are wonderful. Research stuff is going fine, though there is still a lot to do, and sometimes it feels like the more I know, the less I know, as I try to complete my enormous socio-political-historical jigsaw puzzle.

In between rural village life, my second home the Fish Farm is as usual – actually more of a farm these days, since they're actually producing stuff now, and I feast off home-grown vegetables, salad and eggs. Domestic animals of all varieties still abound, including the dog which got shot in the head at point-blank range and survived. The proprietors have a family of barn owls living inside their roof which make incredible noises, somewhere between deep breathing and hissing. I have one or two yoga companions here, which is always good. And when I come home up to my eyeballs in interviews, I make my education more rounded by watching 6 Feet Under, Desperate Housewives, and Sex and the City.

Last week I made the long trek of 1300km to Windhoek, and had a good week catching up with a friend there, going to restaurants, having interviews and going to the archives. The archives proved to be a lot more interesting than I would have guessed, but I was quite pressed for time. My supervisor probably wouldn't have been impressed at the speed I went through all those files! The colonial reports were hilarious: the topics covered in one report range from Locusts to Witchcraft to Tribal Chiefs to Child Prostitution.

I am now the proud owner of a solar oven, thanks to inspiration from my enviro-friend F. There won't be much point in bringing it back to England, given the lack of sunshine, as well as its size (!), but my parents will no doubt make good use of it in Harare.

Well, gotta run kids!

You better send me some text messages or emails – it gets a bit lonely sometimes ;)

Caprivi January-April 2006

2009-01-03T13:42:00.012+02:00

2nd April 2006

I am finally back in Harare after doing the 1100km journey from Katima with my parents, which builds on the 4000+km I have driven since January . I have a sandal tan which is beyond repair, and I'm watching TV (and the news) for the first time in 3 months. It is kind of strange to be out of the grasp of mosquitoes and no longer having to dig holes in the bush to go to the toilet – but of course great to be at home, despite the usual 'transit' feel that most of my visits have. This week will be the first time in over a month that I'll spend more than 4 consecutive nights in one place.

Five days after I was visited by the Namibian intelligence, one of my NGO colleagues - coincidentally the only other white person working regularly in West Caprivi – was visited by the same 3 men, plus about 10 armed Field Forces and police. After failing to find his camp late at night the previous day, they arrived early in the morning and conducted a full search of his house (without a search warrant), asking for 'firearms and marijuana'. I was already on the road back to West Cap when I heard about it, which made for a rather uneasy final 10 days of fieldwork. I now have to 'check in' at the nearest police station whenever I arrive in a village, which feels ridiculous. But the main thing is to be ahead of them in their own game.

Despite follow-up meetings with the intel guys, we still do not know what we or the NGO stands accused of. The rumours, however, are lavish: for exmple, that the NGO has set up a military training camp on the Angolan border and is helping the Khwe to rid the area of Hambukushu people. Our hunch is that the impetus behind the investigations comes from a Hambukushu chief who feels threatened by recent developments in the area which are empowering the Khwe. He has a reputation for being anti-Khwe, anti-white and anti-NGOs. It makes for fascinating research material – and it is certainly an interesting experience to now be part of local politics as opposed to being an observer. Less nice is the fact that all sorts of incredibly random people seem to know everything about me and my movements, and it is difficult knowing whom to trust with certain information.

Besides all that 'excitement', the last bits of fieldwork contain the usual kind of anecdotes, for example, getting stuck in the yellow bakkie on the Fish Farm in about 3 feet of thick mud and having to be towed out, whilst the English PhD student who I was showing around looked on in horror as I waded around up to my knees. Namibian Independence Day brought the biggest and best-organised event I've ever seen in West Cap – a 2-day inter-village soccer tournament. This proved to be a considerable distraction to both my interpreter and my interviewees but I managed to wangle at least a short interview with everyone I needed to see, including an old man who has an amazing tattoo of a lion on his chest, inscribed when he worked on the Johannesburg mines decades ago.

I met my parents at the (one-room) border-post last weekend, and took them out for a night's camping at Susuwe with eco-friendly F, where we sat under an extraordinary skyful of stars and ate solar-cooked beans and fresh greens all the way from Harare. Back in Katima we did a cleaning blitz on all the camping equipment, and took my parents to the supermarket to buy stuff that isn't available in Harare. I also persuaded my dad to buy an ENORMOUS pumpkin in the local market which made for some hilarious photographs.

So, these emails have come to an end, at least for a few months. Thanks for reading them! I am now officially back on email, so you can even look forward to PERSONALISED messages – wow. I fly back on the 5th and am looking forward to much socialising and gossip.

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14 March 2006

It feels like ages since I last wrote. My latest claim to fame is being tracked down by the Namibian Intelligence whilst camping in Chetto village. I surmise that my presence in West Caprivi has touched some political nerve-ends that are sensitive to any apparent investigation into relations between the two different ethnic groups in the area. During two meetings with the officers, they made out that their interest in me was for my own safety and security, which is nonsense…Anyway, it's been a little unnerving, but all my official documents are in order, so there is nothing that they can 'get me' on. I will return to West Cap later this week.

Besides that little turn of events, life remains as interesting and adventurous as ever. For those with enough land and cattle, the rains have brought good harvests, and the villages are full of people munching on fresh maize and sugarcane. In other poorer areas, and where people have struggled to plough without cattle, they are complaining bitterly about crop-raiding elephants, and the nights in Chetto were filled with the sound of men beating metal in futile efforts to keep these giants away. Some people have already lost this year's harvest entirely. Back on the Fish Farm, no elephants of course, but passion fruit and lemons are dropping off the trees like nobody's business – home-made sorbet may become a staple…

At the beginning of the month I spent a surreal evening at the German-run Catholic Mission in Omega with a British NGO guy and two French-speakers. The Germans ate rye bread and spoke very loudly in German at one end of the table, whilst we ate spaghetti at the other end, talking in French about San development issues and Indonesian rituals. Well, they spoke French and I followed about half of it. The two middle-aged German ladies who volunteer at the mission continue to completely ignore me, which has been the case ever since I appeared with the hedgehog hairstyle a few weeks back!

From there I went on to a Hambukushu village called Shamakwi, a place which is wealthier than most of the Khwe settlements. The women and girls work from dawn till after dark, and even at sunrise the ground is already vibrating with the rhythms of millet being pounded by hand in wooden pestles. Meanwhile, the men sit playing the equivalent of card games with stones in the sand… Overall I had a really enjoyable time there – the people were easy to get along and joke with, despite language barriers, and I was treated to fresh mielies (maize), pumpkin leaves and green squash straight from the fields. On the Saturday night they invited me to their late-night church service, which was fascinating. Drums, singing and spinning-dancing which went on for hours by the light of a single candle. The church space is divided into male and female –I was amusingly instructed to sit on the boundary line…

From there I went on to Chetto where I camped for 5 nights at the homestead of a woman whom I know from previous trips. In the evenings we exchanged stories over the fire – they wanted to hear about The Phantom of the Opera (a favourite from 2003!) but instead I read Hindu tales about the tumultuous birth and escape of Krishna (ok, so Anokhi is really laughing now). In return they treated me to Khwe parables about how Hyena and Lion tried to trick each other into killing their own mothers and eating them. Great stuff – JM Coetzee would love it!

I spent two days out in the Park with the community game rangers, locating and recording water pans with a GPS for the West Caprivi maps. As before, I was bowled over by the speed at which these men can move through the bush, and at their outstanding orientation skills. The one morning, in addition to about 2-3 hours of driving on no roads through the bush, we marched 15km to find 2 pans. I might as well have jogged to keep up with these guys. In the absence of any significant landmarks, and even in the absence of #o-daos (animal paths), they were able to lead us to the pans and back to the vehicle without a moment's hesitation about direction.

Other entertainment in Chetto (besides my interviews and nosey police) included a lot of walking, visiting people's fields and helping to pick and process maize, listening to ndingo (finger piano) music, and paying visits to various village residents. We also drove up to Bwabwata, a temporary settlement on the Angolan border, which used to be a major village, where people migrate to for short periods in order to collect bushfoods. I had wanted to walk there (it's about 20km one way), as the villagers do, much to everyone's disbelief. However, the weekend brought so much rain amongst other things, that we decided to drive instead. After the intelligence investigation, Sunday night saw me back on the Fish Farm attending a "Middle Eastern evening" where a hookah was created on site from scratch, with the help of mechanical Dick of course.

I'll leave it there. Only 2 more weeks left here, and then back to Zim for a few days before flying to the UK – I can't believe the time has gone so quickly. I shall be a bit sad to leave, I think!
Hugs and Stay wells...

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20 January 2006

Friday afternoon and I'm back in my pre-fab 'trailer' on the Fish Farm after a really busy two weeks.  It is great to be back in Namibia, and it makes such a difference already having a network in place from previous research trips.  It's hot, but there's been a lot of rain, and the bush is full of the scents and sounds of my childhood.  It is delicious-mango season (they cost about 8 pence each), and I have 3 baby chameleons living on my verandah.

The Fish Farm, like before, is adorned with variety of expatriate environmentalist mostly-singles, several horses, numerous dogs, domestic guinea fowl, and a goat.  There is also a vet who lives on a floating raft on the Zambezi river at the edge of the farm.   All these residents are into wildlife, and they even go on 'frogging' expeditions by night in the local puddles and pools. It's not just about wildlife: they also produce their own version of Britain's 'Heat' magazine, called 'Sweat'.  I hope to feature in the next issue ;)

As for DPhil research, things have been busy, and I haven't had a day off yet. I've already attended numerous meetings, and done a week's worth of camping/interviewing in West Caprivi in the rain.  I remain the only lone-woman-driver that I've seen on the long trans-Caprivi drives -  though I'm usually happy to give people lifts in exchange for Khwedam vocabulary.    Currently I'm hiring a bright yellow 'bakkie' from the Fish Farm proprietor and notorious handyman whose expertise includes fridges, landrovers, boreholes and killing the spitting cobras which frequent the farm.  It only has 2-wheel drive, so I got stuck in sand/mud twice last week, but nothing serious, and both times there were people around to help push me out…

The NGO person I'll be working closest with is a German Namibian whose mother was a traditional herbalist and who spent 5 years tracking rhinos in Tanzania. He follows a vegetarian Ayurvedic diet, buys only local produce, boycotts the Katima supermarket, uses solar ovens, and knows the location of virtually every papaya tree in Caprivi. Last but not least, he has a picture of Sai Baba in his car. So all of that makes for some entertainment.

It's been good to catch up with Khwe friends in West Caprivi. Food security is still a serious problem, and many families rely on government rice handouts and pensions. Eating can be complicated and some days it's a long time between meals – but no different from being a lightweight rower, really! There are significant debates currently about land, local leadership, and illegal settlement by an Angolan timber-man, which is all good for my research. The land mapping workshops are soon to begin, so I'm looking forward to that. In the meanwhile, more camping, interviews, mosquitoes and just being the anthropologist. And of course practising my Khwedam clicks. There are days when I think that development is not for me, but for the moment things are interesting and enjoyable…

I miss all of your delightful company, and hope you're doing well in the nasty British winter. Network coverage is temperamental, but would love to get your texts or emails.

Please attend some costume parties with vigour on my behalf...

Zimbabwe February 2003

2009-01-03T13:26:00.005+02:00

February 2003

Dear friends

Some of you have asked for an update on Zim. For the rest, I'm including you because it's hard for Zimbabwean politics to get a word in edgeways with the whole Iraq thing going on. Things are pretty dire on most fronts. Even our weather reports are now monitored by government officials, so that they can manipulate information about the drought.

Mugabe continues, as successfully as ever, to 'divide and rule'. The groups affected by his strategy range from white farming communities to the EU. He arrived in France last week much to the disgust of many – for him it's a win-win situation, and yet again he has made international sanction policies fall flat on their face. Tom Spicer, a 19 year old white MDC youth activist, has made headlines with the Paris protests that he arranged. I met Tom on a plane to the UK about 2 years ago. This was before he himself had been tortured, and I remember being stunned at how casually he spoke about how his friends had been tortured. Now he is just on the same footing as the rest of them.

We've had the World Cup Cricket on recently, alongside Morgan Tsvangirai's treason trial. The army helicopters have been out and about, as have the riot police. The American and German ambassadors were manhandled by police after arriving to watch the first day of the trial at court – as you can imagine, this did not go down well.

The food crisis continues. There is no bread or milk in supermarkets at all, although luxury bakeries still have produce at much higher prices. If one wants basic commodities, one has to use 'the network'. Then if you're lucky, your 'contact' might call you once a week, and in whispers over the phone tell you that there is something for you to pick up. This week at home we are eating butter imported from Australia (!), at an horrendous price. So much for those of us who can afford butter – driving out of town, there are children picking up single grains of maize off the road. At the railway station, street kids are killing sparrows to eat.

Fuel shortages and 50-car queues continue, although the situation has eased up somewhat because of the World Cup and the government's well-timed 'hide-it-from-the-journalists' strategy. Apparently there has been a fuel loan made to the government by Anglo American, which is enough to buy about a month's worth of petrol and diesel.

Economically, things are pretty bizarre. Our dollar has devalued so much (at the black market rates) that everyone walks around carrying huge quantities of cash notes. Even some of the banks are using the black market rates. Yesterday my parents paid for the car service with a plastic-bag full of money. It's quite common nowadays to see people in the bank with suitcases and cardboard boxes! Our hairdresser has put up her prices by 100% in a month. Numerous retailers are just taking advantage of inflation (said to be at 500% by the end of this year) and putting on another 20% to goods every fortnight because people won't know that they're being conned, and will pay all the same, because no one can keep track. There is no foreign currency to be found except illegally. This means that even if someone had the necessary financial means to leave the country, they cannot convert it into US dollars, simply because there aren't any. The government has imposed numerous measures in the last few months to monitor the movement of forex in minute detail. They have also imposed all sorts of new rules in order to acquire as much of it as they can. For example, all tourists have to pay for all tourist services (including hotel accommodation) in US dollars, sterling or rands. In November, British tourists had to pay 30 USD to enter the country. By December, this had increased to 50.

This week I have been entering data on a computer at work. It concerns people suffering from HIV and AIDS. About 60 times over, I've typed in stats about widowed women who are supporting 5 children and 2 other dependents on a salary of £2 a month, and whose relatives have taken away from them their only property, including children's clothes. Government nurses are only earning about £15 a month. It's depressing to say the least.

Reading about all this stuff the past two years has been one thing. More recently, the ongoing trauma that this society is experiencing has made itself known to some of my immediate friends. Last month a (white) friend of mine was arrested unlawfully after a property deal went wrong, and after he discovered too late that the man he was dealing with had all sorts of ZANU-PF connections. He spent 36 hours in jail, whilst the officer who had locked him up conveniently disappeared with the key. There was no evidence whatsoever that he was being held, or that he had ever been arrested. The rest of police officers at the station maintained that what had happened was completely illegal, but that there was not much they could do about it.

A week ago, a (black) friend of mine was seriously verbally harassed at a bar for sitting with a group of white friends. He thinks that his harasser may have mistaken him for the cricketer Henry Olonga who, alongside Andy Flower, made a courageous speech about 'the death of democracy' at the opening of the Harare World Cup cricket. Flower has since then received telephone threats at all times of the day and night, and may have to leave the country for a while.

The clamp-down is extending itself more now than ever. Even people at church meetings have been arrested. In general, it is starting to sound like Stalin's Russia, as I was reminded the other day when I taught a few O-level history classes at a nearby school!

So, all in all, we are fearful most of the time, especially being white. But life still remains the same in many ways, and we continue to live well (at least in material terms) amid crisis. What is going on in the emotional sphere is of course another question. I have no doubt that the troubles of the last few years are responsible for the ongoing illness and (non-political) death that seems to be prevalent here, especially from cancer.

So that gives you a flavour of how things are – I think the negative side of things is really starting to become apparent now that my initial 3-month excitement at being home is over. But there are still things, people and places that we love here, and always will. And so, for now, we stay and do our best to stay positive.