Caprivi January-April 2006

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...