that's the slogan of one of the major bus companies around zambia - germin's. i'm not sure if that inspires confidence or fear. most of the time i ride the buses around zambia i, somewhat surprisingly, feel safe. we pass many a flipped over semi where the drivers were either drunk or asleep on their long drives from Dar Es Salaam to various places mostly in South Africa. needless to say, i do not take that bus line.
i've just arrived in lusaka on the night bus (thank you juldan bus company for arriving safely!)and around 5:45 as we were pulling into the edges of Lusaka the sky started to light up with one of the most beautiful sunrises i've ever seen. usually i like sunsets more, probably partly because i don't have to wake up early, but also because they are usually much more colorful, with much more pink and orange in their clouds. this sunrise though made me sit there thinking about Africa - i'm in africa! watching the sun rise!
part of that thought made me think about these repeated thoughts i have about being in africa - "i'm on a bush path in africa! on my bike! by myself!" or "i'm watching an african sunrise!" or smiling at the beautiful "african" patterns on the women's chitenges (skirts/shirts/colorful material). is it just some kind of neo-colonialist romanticism? i don't think so exactly. as much as the thoughts hark back to a kind of "africa house" feeling of the 19th century adventures in Africa, i think (i hope?) that mine is different... is it a different motivation? is it a different kind of appreciation? a knowledge that i'm leaving and am not trying to ignore the people on some level?
i think these feelings probably conincide with definite frustration that PC isn't really the way to do development. increasingly i find myself wanting to work on projects that are looking at systems level change - and my latest is how to finance ideas here. development increasingly doesn't work, i think, because it's outsiders coming in and thinking through the problems and approving (or not) finances. when will zambians be able to start their own projects and try to make them work and let kids learn from them to think similarly? when will the idea of venture capitalists come here? where someone can say "i believe in your idea, try it!"
hmmm, what else? have had some interesting conversations in the last two days about evolution vs. creationism. it's scary to me that kids here are hardly even given the information about evolution. how can they ever consider it if they aren't even taught the history that IS there? fossils, discoveries of ancient peoples etc?
also, had a beautiful moment when earlier this week i heard some women singing and dancing outside my house. they were actually next door and had come bearing song to welcome the baby my neighbor just had. so beautiful.
ok, have to go and do lusaka office stuff.
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5 comments:
I'm glad the sunsets are beautiful.
Here, we have white snow falling from a white sky onto a white earth, and it's beautiful in it's own way. I like it when the snow flutters down so slowly that you can watch it float from the second story to the ground.
Interesting thoughts on the "I'm in Africa!" syndrome. Did you get that at all in Egypt? Maybe it's variation of the "What am I doing here?!" syndrome. I have the "I'm in prison!" syndrome all the time, even though (a) I'm no longer a stranger to this prison and (b) I know (on an intellectual level) that there are many kinds of prisons, like there are many Africas perhaps, and yet I still think of the yard, the cellblocks, the gates as quintessentially prison, or better yet, Prison.
Apparently I've been choosing unlucky times to call. So, let's do the arrange-a-time thing. Maybe tomorrow morning (my time, adjusted for daylight savings last night), if not today?
i love reading your stories, hannah. i hope you are still breathing easily and singing in your sleep. love,
leora
Raymond Bonner's 1992 text, At the Hand of Man, on elephant/ivory policy, specifically in Kenya, examines some of the same difficulties surrounding the relationship between the big, Western agencies (in this case, the World Wildlife Fund) and the interests and sovereignty issues of locally based wildlife protection/management agencies.
It's clear to Bonner that the big international agencies view the local ones as being "in the way," having compromised interests, and being unable to see the Big Picture, whatever that is. The Amazon entry at http://www.amazon.com/At-Hand-Man-Africas-Wildlife/dp/0679733426/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1206209589&sr=8-1 contains a pro and con "customer review" that neatly encapsulize the debate, which seems to be related to the dispute you are having with yourself about the extent to which international aid organizations are close enough to the on-the-ground issues to overcome the stigma of cultural imperialism that naturally attaches itself to them.
I have, without much resistance, come completely over to Bonner's side. If local populations cannot identify a local value for elephants, they cannot very well be expected to support the international community's mandate for protecting an animal they only know as a crop destroyer and physical hazard. (One of Bonner's points is that trophy hunters bring in more revenue, more steadily and consistently, than do eco-tourists.)
The same argument--as Bonner points out--can be made on behalf of all wildlife or wildland protection campaigns, although intriguingly he declines to extend this reasoning to "protecting" old-growth forests in the Pacific Northwest.
Neil
Hannah, I can totally relate to your "I'm in Africa!" syndrome. I had it too, especially at moments that seemed so quintessentially African. What I've been thinking is that I have trouble establishing myself in the present. I'm so used to the running meta-narrative in my mind, constantly analyzing and processing.
I did it a lot in Africa, especially in Zimbabwe. I kept saying to myself, "holy shit! I'm in downtown Harare." My actual thoughts, though, were "don't get shot; don't get mugged; don't die." I think by focusing on the facts, in this case, my present physical circumstances, I was trying to establish a healthy sense of presence.
And sometimes I simply imagine myself in a movie, as the protagonist, who's watching an African sunset.
Love reading the blog. Good luck with the safe buses.
When I first moved to the States, I would catch myself thinking, "I'm in America...crazy!" I did the same in my first days in Victoria...talk about reverse Orientalism.
All 'foreign' nations are so far away in our minds, and remote from us that a certain romanticism about being there coupled with an unreal feeling about the whole experience is inevitable I think.
I know exactly the awe you felt at sunsets, I feel it every time I see the sea and the mountains in the distance.
Much Love,
Fato
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