MUMBAI MADNESS

Fortunately it’s winter and the temperature was only in the mid-twenties as we disembarked at Mumbai International Airport. A ten minute bus ride to the terminal and a few fast-moving but long queues later and we exited the airport terminal in a gas-powered taxi with a manically manual hooter on the wheel and behind the wheel…

Traffic is nothing short of organised chaos. Lanes are just there for show and everyone seems to have an insatiable desire to regularly and often randomly hoot so that there is an accompanying cacophony of honks and horns as drivers weave in and out and across without causing too many jams. I have been in this kind of traffic before in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, but not with this much anti-musical accompaniment.

A forty minute drive and we entered the famed Colaba where much of the story of Shantaram was set. In a side street just passed the Regal Cinema we found the Abode Hotel in a building aptly named Lansdowne House. On street level there is an unassuming and even somewhat dingy doorway with a lift ‘manned’ by a woman who took us up one flight to the hotel lobby. To say that the foyer is a contradiction is to reveal my own preconceptions that were informed by the air of grandiose decay that is prevalent throughout the old suburb.

An afternoon stroll for a smoke along the shore-front and a much needed nap later and we headed off in search of what was to prove to be an inspired introduction to the Bombay Blues…

Natural Resources...

The near distant roar

Falling water

Epupa

Across

The narrowed river

Angola

Beneath

Manicured thatch

Omarunga

Water

And wind without

Nationality

Without

A continental identity

African

Elemental

Eternally explored

Enslaved

Oppressed

Yet mostly un-mastered

Martyred

Soil

Sons and daughters natural

Resources.

Pornography or prostitution?

It is a combination of cultural pornography and touristic prostitution that further entrenches ideas of being the lesser ‘other’ that is required to afford the perceived superior and foreign other to enter into spaces as if visitors in a zoo where entire countries and histories are on display to be gawked at or prodded and poked.

Throughout Africa, tourism is a big money-spinner and every incident whether the recent mainstream coverage of the outbreak of Ebola or news of yet another Boko Haram attack, has major impacts on an industry that for the main part generates huge profits for private businesses as opposed to what trickles into national coffers through visa fees. And yet tourism is touted as the lifeblood of many impoverished areas where lodge owners engage with surrounding communities through necessity rather than any noble altruistic inclinations. Often these relationships are anything but successful as rows of craft and curio stalls try to attract a tiny trickle of visitors who venture beyond the security gates and then only to have to haggle with well-healed tourists over the value of the trinket. These same tourists think nothing of spending six dollars for a cold beer at the bar and never walk out of a supermarket without whatever it is they wanted, but come to crafters and they get some imperialist joy out of bargaining and trying to impose a price that is based on an underestimated value of what it takes to produce whatever it is they want to fit into their hand luggage for so-and-so a friend or for the corner of the mantle that is standing bare.

Then there are the village tours and township tours where they want to point their cameras at the faces of poverty and desperation that have been coerced into allowing such an invasion through a lack of viable alternatives. The proud people of Africa reduced once again to nothing more than a curiosity. And not everyone, but those who have been sold and have bought the mistruth that there is a living to be made from such behaviour. Despite my reservations though, I have seen the levels of poverty and understand the willingness to be made a subject of scrutiny for a fee, but what I cannot fathom is the type of human being that would get some kind of kick out of visiting the zoo. What kind of latent voyeuristic tendencies must be lurking behind the social veneer of propriety that is more than often presented as the image of western culture and civilization? How easily that façade is cracked when given the opportunity to photograph the naked breasts of an African mother or child?

So whether it is a matter of cultural pornography or touristic prostitution is quite irrelevant! What it is, is fucking wacked!

Morsigge Varke!

Manners maketh man! It is said…

However when travelling through Africa such considerations are not important. What is important are notions of privilege, entitlement, arrogance and the simpleton’s confirmation that sanctions centuries-old preconceptions and confirms opinions gathered from the propagandized mainstream-media.

Suddenly to greet is not necessary and a simple ‘thank-you’ is more than most deserve. Rubbish can be left for someone else to pick up and it is quite okay to leave dirty dishes because someone else will surely clean it: and not to mention when the dishes are done and there are cups and plates and bowls that still have visible streaks and blobs of food. Die varke is kak morsig!

It makes me wonder whether any of these people actually wipe their asses or whether they have a cleaner to take care of personal hygiene as well!

And yet, mention is regularly made of how ‘civilized’ it is to have ice in their gin and tonic after a long, hot day on the road. Or how someone will ‘die for a cup of tea’ and I think to myself “Yes! Please do the world a favour!”

The low-down on the high ground...

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe has certainly managed to get things working in the tiny little town of Victoria Falls situated just beneath the falls and close to the border with Zambia. The streets are clean and lined with slick coffee shops, African-themed restaurants and an endless assortment of curio and craft shops catering exclusively to the tourist market.

Over the past few weeks I have had to deal with six different currencies and I had to brush up on my algebra to make sense of the value of these currencies. For instance, in Tanzania where 10000 Tanzanian Shillings is equivalent to about 60 South African Rands, a loaf of bread works out to about R6. At the local OK supermarket in Vic Falls, prices are quoted in US Dollars and a loaf of bread is $1.85. In Dar es Sallam I bought some shorts which cost me around R40, but at the Jet clothing store in Zim, a shorts costs $25.

My dilemma here is twofold. Firstly, how does the average unemployed Zimbabwean survive? And secondly, what’s up with using the American currency while making headlines for a hard core stance on colonial interests and imperialism?

At the massive outdoor craft markets there are hundreds of stall owners who are for the most part trying to earn a buck selling variations of the same carved animals and masks. There are always one or two real artists at these markets whose work makes one stop and take notice; but it saddens me to think that someone like Baino Nyamhondoro has to haggle with dumb-ass foreigners to earn a fraction of what his work is worth. When I visited him he even offered to trade me something for old clothes or food.

And as I said, Victoria Falls is one of the success stories of the current Zimbabwean reality.

The future of the past...

Tanzania gained its independence from British colonial rule in 1961 and two years later in 1963, Kenya and Malawi followed suit.  In 1964 it was Zambia’s turn and finally in 1980 Zimbabwe also became an independent state. Travelling through these countries one is struck by a similar socio-economic reality that is defined by a general infra-structural under-development and widespread poverty.

As a rule, British travellers speak of the brutish colonial past with barely muted pride and refer fondly to historical anecdotes as if oppression then was an act of benevolence. They are largely unaffected by the plight of the people and if possible would prefer to remain at a safe distance from crafters and traders who often feel obliged to harass tourists in an attempt to make just one overpriced sale.

In a sense tour groups are like visitors to a zoo, but in this case entire countries are on display in their cages of poverty and desperation. Towns which have some kind of natural attraction have lost their identity and could be any tourist trap anywhere with quaint and mostly expensive coffee shops, African themed restaurants and of course endless craft markets with sometimes hundreds of stall owners trying to scrape by.

Governments on the other hand are cosying up to the USA through USAID and China for trade deals in which most locals are overlooked or underpaid. Progressive social ideals have been discarded to make way for free markets that ensure international loans and cooperation and the continued outflow of profits to these economic partners. The British are for the most part uninvolved and yet the ‘ordinary’ British citizens who can afford to travel still feel entitled and arrogantly superior with lopsided, propagandized opinions borrowed directly from the international media and Wikipedia.

Having said all of that though, I saw a painting in the Tinga Tinga Gallery in Meserani just outside of Arusha by one of the local painters whose name I forget. It was a village scene with a protest theme and in the centre of the image was a stern looking face staring directly at the viewer with a placard held aloft that read: “African Presidents kill 100 000 people.”

And I sit and wonder what notions of responsibility for freedom and independence mean after all is said and done…

Click...

“Africa is black!”

He shouted angrily

As I walked away

Thinking

“Fuck you!”

Africa is battered

And bruised

Africa is blue

And purple and brown.

All because I wanted to reflect

I wanted to embrace

The whispering lake

And the clouds

And the sunset

And the moment,

But beach-boy couldn’t imagine

That I could be immune

To his golliwog song-and-dance.

Africa still bleeds

The wounds still raw

Festering minds colonized

With carved hands

Grasping for tourist dollars

Passing through

The half-smiling zoo

With bags of medication

And preconceptions intact.

No-one utters a word

The civilized brutality

And prejudice intact

Overlooking the bloodied white hand

Nurturing murderous despots

Pointing manicured fingers

Ignoring the abject desperation

Of a mother drenched and begging

From a passing vehicle with cameras drawn.

The other side of the Tanzanian Shilling...

It’s the rainy season and everything is lush. The most prominent feature of the landscape however is the lack of fencing. Closer to clusters of homes – mostly mud huts with the structural sticks showing through the walls – the land is tilled and planted or being prepared to receive a combination of the various subsistence crops. Larger plantations are worked by co-operatives of local farmers who in some instances are exporting their tea or coffee, but all are able to varying degrees to sustain themselves from the land. Their land and their birth right.

Again, along the streets the crafters and traders are busy: mostly selling Tanzanian products including T-shirts that are being manufactured and printed locally and not made in China… like the road network. The ugly face of poverty is prevalent but there is an industriousness – a wilful and determined drive to survive and beat the odds. And ‘well-off’ implies having the means to simply generate an income without the ugliness of excess. That doesn’t mean that consumerism hasn’t left its mark as the streets are lined with litter and plastic that seems to have become a permanent part of both the urban and rural landscape.

We slept over in a place called Same but pronounced Sami. Sometimes the joy of a comfortable bed is redundant when work finishes late and starts early; last to bed and first to rise and all of that shit… no birds, no worms. Another early morning and another treacherous road through beautiful scenery; with overloaded trucks and the passing smell of brakes or clutch burning and the inevitable avoidable accidents. Jack-knifes, over-turns, head-ons and drivers seemingly falling asleep on sharp bends resulting in trucks and loads hanging precariously from trees above lush and welcoming ravines.

But then there are also the stories about Chogela who cycled from Arusha to Ruaha to negotiate with the chief for land to establish a camp just outside the national park from where he runs tours; and Simba who studied medicine in Germany to return to Iringa where he is planting a medicinal garden just alongside the Isimila stone-age site on land given him by the municipality. As he proudly showed me around the property, he spoke optimistically of the formation of the East African Union and his own plans to open a lodge and develop a cultural tour of the region.

The roads may be fucked but the people are not deterred…

Crumbling Facades...

I for one was keen to leave the teeming humidity of Dar es Salaam. The two hour drive from the camp site through the city was not without incident though as we were stopped by a two-man road block and while G went through his usual routine with the white-clad police, some of the travellers on-board took photographs of the bustle. One of the locals complained to the police who were only too happy to be given a reason to exert pressure in the hopes of exacting another bribe. Apparently, it is against the law to photograph a policeman or soldier executing their duty and the threat of imprisonment was bruskly made while one of the pair climbed into the cab and the other joined the rest of us at the back of the truck. I smile at the irony as I think of Eric Cartman’s ‘authority’ refrain. There is nothing as maddening as a stupid fucker in uniform and I had to bight my tongue as the surly tirade continued for the few minutes it took for us to reach the local police station where a more senior officer took his turn to go through the same uniformed song-and-dance routine of threats and hints that this ‘problem’ could be made to disappear. And disappear it did after a ‘fine’ of 60000 Shillings. This set the tone for my reflections… And the notion of how the façade of democracy quickly crumbles when dealing with career bureaucrats

The sprawling urban slum that comprises most of the city is populated by poor people eking out an existence in un-serviced squalor. Rules of the road are virtually non-existent and prostitution and crime are rife. Yet, most women are covered with burkas and an almost missionary, conservative and ‘traditional’ mind-set prevails. The usual counterfeit brands are worn and the sheer extent of the commerce would imply a definite Western aspiration of the mostly mindless middle-class. Gender roles and social status is for the most part set and unchallenged. There is not much progressive discourse and everyone seems to be either hustling or on the make. But I suppose that the most telling indication of the malaise was the signs along the road through one of the unfenced National Parks that were written in Swahili with a price quoted in US Dollars alongside the names of animals. I am not sure whether these figures are fines for harming the animals or prices for hunting them.

Suddenly I am not surprised that the AU is what it is. A gathering of governments that seem to be playing at being in power while in fact advancing the agendas of the Chinese or the Indians or more traditionally the West and most likely a combination of essentially foreign interests. Corporate securities and capitalist dictates have superseded notions of equality and justice and corruption seems to be the order of the day, while ordinary people go about their lives scratching in the dirt to survive with their heads bowed in prayer and supplication. The scarred and scuffed façade of liberation has crumbled. In Kenya talk of terrorism is front page news and in the City of Dar es Salaam, there is a Barrack Obama Road. Black Africans are still poorly paid labourers who defer to their bosses who in turn – and irrespective of the colour of their skin – are not in business to develop the skills of their workforce but instead – as elsewhere – to make as much profit as possible.

For me it is not enough to be a proud African or for that matter, to mistake arrogance for pride. It is not enough to speak of liberation and democracy or any other noble ideal while your mind has successfully been colonized. Happy to be accepted or even just acknowledged by the oppressor for your ability to unquestioningly assume the values and characteristics of what was once the moral and physical enemy. At the end of the day, it does not matter how bright or shiny the uniform if wearing it allows you to continue to be stupid.

Ripping the night fantastic...

We were stuck in traffic en route to the camp site situated along the coast to the south of the city of Dar es Salaam when suddenly the driver of a light delivery truck jumped from the cab and charged between the cars. After a few minutes he returned despondently and walked around the passenger side of his vehicle before climbing into the cab with his air filter. Someone had stolen the cover.

Later that evening I was returning to my tent after a shower when frantic screaming from the beach drew my attention. One of the guests was charging her phone just outside her tent when one of the locals walked by and casually unplugged the phone and charged down the beach. Needless to say, she was in a state.

Welcome to Dar es Salaam.

Crime was just another part of growing up on the Cape Flats and although I was cautious, I was not too concerned. Shit happens after all: no matter where you are. A few nights later I was asleep when I heard a ripping noise and upon waking I discovered that someone was cutting through the mosquito mesh of my tent. “Jas naai!” was all it took for the fucker to run off into the predawn darkness and by the time I stood naked outside my tent the would-be thief was nowhere to be seen. Pretty much like the security who came ambling up wiping the sleep from their eyes. After a brief investigation, they confirmed that they suspected the guy in the tent next to mine. He was a local who had spent a romantic night with his wife and even though I knew that it could not have been him, they badgered him for more than fifteen minutes and all because he did not get up to investigate when his wife told him earlier that she had heard someone sneaking about outside. Talk about racial profiling. At least I was up in time to watch the sunrise and listen to the boom of the local fishermen using explosives to collect the morning’s catch.

The Sunrise Beach Resort is one of more than a dozen such concessions scattered along the coast and with legislation preventing the fencing off of the beach, the lukewarm water was filled locals enjoying the ocean. This was a welcome sight when compared with South Africa where so many beaches have been privatised and where access is controlled by private security companies. To the right of the fancy resort where day visitors pay 5000 Shillings to enter, was a tiny ramshackle Rasta bar where the inferior strain of local ganja was readily available and where a couple of beach boys and girls hang out every day waiting to be picked up by tourists who come here especially to purchase the endless array of sexual indulgences on offer.

But the flesh trade paled in comparison to the amount of micro enterprises lining every major thoroughfare and side road. Tiny hovels selling every conceivable kind of goods and service. Some with just fresh fruit or a single vegetable while others stocked a wide variety of clothing or foodstuffs with restaurants and pubs and repair shops in between. And every one making some sort of living.

And having shared my blood with the mosquitoes, and sweated through the steaming nights, we prepare once again to depart this sub-tropical paradise where the wind and the waves and the humidity will remain to fan the insatiable desires of foreigners and locals alike.

Magnificently sad...

Bad roads, speed bumps, detours, traffic and a border crossing. It took us close to eight hours to cover just under three hundred kilometres from Nairobi to Arusha on the first leg of the journey. At the Kenyan border G discovered that there was an oil leak and when he tilted the cab to check what was wrong, he discovered that the repair done in Nairobi was shoddy and one of the plugs on the diesel pump was missing – probably because it had not been tightened – but with the help of a piece of broom stick and a couple of screwdrivers, the immediate problem was quickly solved even though G had to (casually) walk across the border into Tanzania with some locals to buy twenty litres of oil.

From the outskirts of Arusha, the bustle slowly intensified with over-laden trucks labouring at the lead of an unruly assortment of cars and buses and motorbikes weaving in between. Ramshackle wooden structures lined the sidewalks with interspersed buildings of a more ‘conventional’ design and every single one conducting some sort of business. Blackened young men selling large bags of coal piled high and held in place with woven string. Down the side roads people were busy living profusely!

We camped at a site just outside of the city where a week before there was a serious flood leaving one of the overland trucks bogged down in more than a meter of mud. Mop up operations were underway and while the group went off to the Serengeti, I stayed behind to breathe. The owners of the Snake Park Camp site are a beautiful elderly South African couple who moved to Tanzania twenty years ago to establish a sanctuary for snakes. Deon helps to manage the facility and is a friend of one of their sons and the few nights I spent chatting to them at the bar reminded me of similarly pleasant times spent with good friends in the Karoo.

On Tuesday morning I walked along the highway to the weekly vegetable market for potatoes and hundreds of traders with bags and boxes of goods were arriving by the busload. As I took it all in, I wondered what the streets of South Africa would have been like if bylaws and policy had not killed informal trade.

Before we eventually left Arusha, we stopped at the Cultural Heritage Museum which has curated the most magnificent collection of African painting and sculpture that I had ever seen – a collection of such scope that it alone could one of ensure the City’s title of being the Capitol of African Art. Intricate sculptures from massive ebony logs, of entire families over the generations, others of folk tales or mythical characters and all with such exquisite craftsmanship and exact detail with one of the larger pieces reputed to have taken eighteen years to complete. And then, housing this mind-blowing overload is the museum itself. Designed by a local architect and artist who created a spiral of continuous wall-and-floor space to accommodate what could comfortably be called a home for the artwork on display. And yet, once again reflecting on my moment of awe, I think about the state of the South African National Gallery in Cape Town with its mostly insipid colonial paintings and marked lack of support of local contemporary artists – let alone the privately owned galleries (such as this) that follow every mindless commercial trend to ensure that great South African art is deemed a foolish cousin to the purely decorative clichés that get scooped up by a piddle of buyers.

Over Land

it is all over land
over stolen land
land stolen over
and over and over again
stolen from the ancestors
the ancestral guardians
over their dead bodies
buried beneath the land
soaked in blood
barely discernible
hardly remembered
the cracking veneer
stolen land fissures
over and over