Thoughts re: Africa

I am reading from Granta, an English publication of new writers, of ideas. By coincidence, the last issue focuses on Africa. I want to write from the back cover of this journal:

Africa is too large and diverse fore generalizations. It has fifty-four nations, five time zones, at least seven climates, more than 800 million people and, according to the latest diligent research, maybe 14 million proverbs. South Africa and Burkino Faso have as much in common as Spain and Uzbekistan. And yet people do generalize; Africa has become the continent of moral concern.

So, I have read about the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, those who will not hear will have their ears chopped off. This is not imaginary, but part of many people’s lives. I read a bit about a man whose mother was British, his father a Nigerian physician, and how so much of his teen-age years were similar, I think, to what our grand-boys are experiencing, and yet how very different.

But, what I really want to write about is fences:
I first encountered compounds in India back in 1965. I like the idea of a compound. A high fence that keeps out the noise, and the fence allows children to run freely around the compound.

My favorite compound was always Piraji Sagara’s…Piraji is an artist that I first met in 1965, and with whom we visited again in 1994. As Piraji’s art sold for higher prices, he was able to move his family outside the city…although eventually, the city, Ahmedabad, overtook his compound. As each son married, Piraji built another bedroom, kitchen, etc. so that his entire family lived within the compound. To me, it always represented love, caring and togetherness that I didn’t experience growing up being the only Skotvolds in Lake Andes, SD.

Now, I am looking at fences differently. Let me again quote from Granta, [I]Joberg[/I], by Ivan Vladislavic, South Africa:

When a house has been alarmed, it becomes explosive. It must be armed and disarmed several times a day. When it is armed, by touching keys upon a pad, it emits a whine that sends the occupants rushing out, banging the door behind them. There are no leisurely departures; there is not time for second thoughts, for taking a scarf from the hook behind the door, for checking that the answering machine is on, for afinal look in the mirror on the way through the hall. There are no savored homecomings either: you do not unwind into such a house, kicking off your shoes, breathing in the familiar air. Every departure is a precipitate, every arrival is a scraping-in.

In an alarmed house, you wake in the small hours oto find the room unnaturally light. The keys on the touch pad are aglow with a luminous, clinical green, like a night light for a child who’s afraid of the dark.

Isn’t that an interesting term? An alarmed house? When we travel in this truly third world country, we must constantly alarm ourselves. Can we leave the laptop in the hotel room, should we check it at the front desk, or should we just carry it in the back pack. And money, how shall we carry the money? Bill has had his pockets picked in India, so he now carries his money in a pouch around his neck and stuffed inside a true money belt that clearly holds up his pants. (This belt has a side benefit, no metal, so he does not have to remove it when going through a metal detector at the airport.)

I vacillate: in 1994, I ALWAYS carried our airline tickets and our money around my waist. Now it seems as if my waist line no longer wishes to be encumbered by this money pouch. So, when I carry it in my purse, I hold onto my purse for dear life, obviously letting the world know that this is important!

We are currently in Moshi, Tanzania, at the foot of Mt. Kilamanjaro…which we will not even attempt to climb because of the expenses involved: $60 per person just to enter the park, and then we have to have a guide, and tips, and possibly even a porter. Plus, we checked into the first hotel we found and now realize that we could have been in a better place with more compatible companions for HALF the price. Ah, well, we will be served an English breakfast in the morning, as we leave this place.

Moshi is fearful. All of the shops quickly shuttered up about 5 p.m. so I didn’t really get to see anything, or spend any money on fabrics! I tried to finish a Dearborn project, but the electricity was turned off, and my laptop battery was dead.

Eventually, we found the Coffee Shop with an even cheaper Internet connection, but I didn’t have the work finished. THEN, we got to talking with a sweet young couple from London…their company gave them a six-month sabbatical, which they spent mostly trekking in Nepal, Skikkim and northern India, before coming to Tanzania. They DID splurge on a safari to Ngorongo Crater (about $300 each!) but they also told us about a pleasant place about five hours from here where we can wander around some quaint little villages.

So, Bill went off to buy bus tickets, seats 23 and 24, and we leave about 9 a.m. on Tuesday.

The poor placement of new dams (side by side out of Lake Victoria, instead of one after another, thus using the same water twice) has taken nearly six feet of water from the second largest inland lake in the world. The next dam to relive this problem will not be completed until 2010. So, we experienced rolling “load sharing” (i.e., blackouts) and we are now encountering nearly the same thing here in Tanzania.

What kind of hope is there for countries with no water, no power, just when they are expecting to enjoy some of the comforts of the western world. Of course, there are always those who have the money to buy generators, a most wasteful method of providing electricity for oneself.

Here in Moshi even the small kiosks have as many bars on their windows and many prisons in the United States or like banks in inner cities. We know that we do NOT walk anywhere after dark!

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