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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?
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?
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!
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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-
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...
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