Please allow me to retreat from much of that last post.
Thanks to a few days of visiting a friend in the hospital, she and the retinue of women who help her and chat with her have given me an Arabic body vocabulary that surpasses my knowledge in every other language but English. My favorite: rushrush (eyelash).
Monday, February 15, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Arabic and Sango
Speaking Arabic and Sango together, I notice that the set of words I know in the former are different from the set of words I know in the latter. Often, I'll start a sentence in one language and then want to plug the holes with words from the other. The main difference in the Arabic and Sango vocabularies I've accumulated concerns the body.
In Arabic, I studied for two semesters and have to wrack my brain to think of any body parts besides “heart,” which I only know because it appears in so many Arabic pop songs. In Sango, it sometimes seems like every sentence contains a word that also refers to a body part: “inside” is “in the stomach of,” “after” is “on the back of,” “center” is “heart,” and it goes on from there.
If, as I suspect, the copious body references in Sango and their lack in Arabic is a broader phenomenon than the limited knowledge within my head, I wonder whether that difference has an effect on how a native speaker of one or the other perceives the world. Perhaps it's just a marker of broader cultural traits. (Of course, in English the body part back and the directional marker back are the same, and I don't usually think of my spine when I tell someone “It's back there.” But a native speaker probably wouldn't be the one to notice these things.)
Mostly I just try not to let it all get too jumbled. Considering that in any given day I might write in English and Norwegian and speak in French, Sango, and Arabic I figure a bit of confusion is understandable. Getting to use all these languages is one of the things I really enjoy about my work.
Checking Checks
In this almost wholly unbanked part of the world, I overheard an interesting bank rant this morning.
When one attempts to cash a check in Bangui (there are less than a handful of bank branches outside the capital), the teller examines it minutely. Very often, she will declare that the signature is “non-conforme” and reject it. This happened to one man's wife with the last six checks she wrote. He “was forced to tell her to change her signature.” This, however, will set you back 11,000 CFA (about $25; it used to be free, he said). Even just to examine the signature they have on file for your account you must pay some 5,000 CFA. The man, a government employee as a guard for the Ministry of Water and Forests, declared these practices a “politique commerciale” - the bank is just out to get money by charging more fees. (Levying fees, both official and unofficial, is of course how the government functions as well, and they contribute to the payment the man receives.)
But leaving aside the issue of whether this is “commercial politics” or not, I was struck by the extreme lack of trust that it belies. I thought of my own signature: thanks to all those electronic signature pads, it has devolved into a scrawl that could be mistaken for a toddler's doodles, different each time. When was the last time the cashier examined what you entered there? More often he tells you to just go ahead and push the green button, because the signature pad is worn out.
I've heard countless stories of Central Africans getting defrauded. You give a friend money to buy you a computer in Europe; he tells you it costs 1000 Euros, and you pay, but when encouraged to look up the model online you find it actually cost less than 400 Euros. Meanwhile I buy books online from some random person trying to clean up his shelves and have every expectation that I'll get what I ordered on time and of the advertized quality. I had a conversation with a humanitarian worker recently in which he said he'd never do development work in Africa because there's no solidarity. He feels useful working, as he put it, as “a band-aid.”
Would the technology of bank cards erase the mistrust in Central African economic transactions? (As of very recently, there are a few ATMs in Bangui, but they work only with local EcoBank cards.) Or would the mistrust simply take a new form? In Nairobi and Mexico City, private security guards continually patrol ATMs, but that doesn't stop thugs in the latter locale from carrying out “express kidnappings”/“millionaires' tours” during which they cart their captives from ATM to ATM until they've withdrawn their day's limit.
I've heard of economic studies that trace the lack of large-scale trust in much of Africa to the legacy of slave trading. I'm not sure if any economists have tried to look at the ways that trust has been affected by the fact that until colonization, with all of its violent distortions of social life, many people lived in “stateless” societies – that is to say, decentralized, with no leader assembling each community into a larger-scale whole. I look forward to someday teaching Thomas Beidelman's article “Beer Drinking and Cattle Theft in Ukavuru” (I might be butchering the place name; internet is too slow to look it up to verify) because I think it shows, simply and yet elegantly, the ways that the colonial introduction of force created inequalities and mistrust that persisted with independence.
From the burgeoning literature on African cities, it seems like there are places – Rem Koolhaas' Lagos and Marie-Francoise Plissart and Filip De Boeck's Kinshasa come to mind – where whatever mistrust exists becomes a catalyst to all sorts of improvisations, sometimes predatory but also productive, such as 419 schemes. In CAR, though, which is landlocked in so many ways, it seems only like a brake. People here in rural CAR describe themselves as moving backward.
Derrida fans would no doubt have their own take on this problem of the signature.
When one attempts to cash a check in Bangui (there are less than a handful of bank branches outside the capital), the teller examines it minutely. Very often, she will declare that the signature is “non-conforme” and reject it. This happened to one man's wife with the last six checks she wrote. He “was forced to tell her to change her signature.” This, however, will set you back 11,000 CFA (about $25; it used to be free, he said). Even just to examine the signature they have on file for your account you must pay some 5,000 CFA. The man, a government employee as a guard for the Ministry of Water and Forests, declared these practices a “politique commerciale” - the bank is just out to get money by charging more fees. (Levying fees, both official and unofficial, is of course how the government functions as well, and they contribute to the payment the man receives.)
But leaving aside the issue of whether this is “commercial politics” or not, I was struck by the extreme lack of trust that it belies. I thought of my own signature: thanks to all those electronic signature pads, it has devolved into a scrawl that could be mistaken for a toddler's doodles, different each time. When was the last time the cashier examined what you entered there? More often he tells you to just go ahead and push the green button, because the signature pad is worn out.
I've heard countless stories of Central Africans getting defrauded. You give a friend money to buy you a computer in Europe; he tells you it costs 1000 Euros, and you pay, but when encouraged to look up the model online you find it actually cost less than 400 Euros. Meanwhile I buy books online from some random person trying to clean up his shelves and have every expectation that I'll get what I ordered on time and of the advertized quality. I had a conversation with a humanitarian worker recently in which he said he'd never do development work in Africa because there's no solidarity. He feels useful working, as he put it, as “a band-aid.”
Would the technology of bank cards erase the mistrust in Central African economic transactions? (As of very recently, there are a few ATMs in Bangui, but they work only with local EcoBank cards.) Or would the mistrust simply take a new form? In Nairobi and Mexico City, private security guards continually patrol ATMs, but that doesn't stop thugs in the latter locale from carrying out “express kidnappings”/“millionaires' tours” during which they cart their captives from ATM to ATM until they've withdrawn their day's limit.
I've heard of economic studies that trace the lack of large-scale trust in much of Africa to the legacy of slave trading. I'm not sure if any economists have tried to look at the ways that trust has been affected by the fact that until colonization, with all of its violent distortions of social life, many people lived in “stateless” societies – that is to say, decentralized, with no leader assembling each community into a larger-scale whole. I look forward to someday teaching Thomas Beidelman's article “Beer Drinking and Cattle Theft in Ukavuru” (I might be butchering the place name; internet is too slow to look it up to verify) because I think it shows, simply and yet elegantly, the ways that the colonial introduction of force created inequalities and mistrust that persisted with independence.
From the burgeoning literature on African cities, it seems like there are places – Rem Koolhaas' Lagos and Marie-Francoise Plissart and Filip De Boeck's Kinshasa come to mind – where whatever mistrust exists becomes a catalyst to all sorts of improvisations, sometimes predatory but also productive, such as 419 schemes. In CAR, though, which is landlocked in so many ways, it seems only like a brake. People here in rural CAR describe themselves as moving backward.
Derrida fans would no doubt have their own take on this problem of the signature.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Sultan Senoussi's City on a Hill
After obtaining permission from the First Adjunct Mayor (the Sultan-Mayor's replacement when he is not around), the General Secretary of the Mayor's office, the Zone Commander of the army, and the Unit Chief of the gendarmerie, and finding a guide, this morning I was finally able to climb up the hill to see Sultan Senoussi's old city. (Once there, I discovered that it is in fact an oft-traversed plateau, where people come to collect firewood, to cultivate small, terraced gardens, or just en route to more-distant villages. But for a foreigner, it's different. There would be rumors if I just went up there poking around.)
Senoussi settled on the hilltop in 1891 and Ndele life centered on that well-defended plateau until the Sultan's assassination by the French twenty years later. At that point everyone fled and the city on the hill has been abandoned ever since. The town now spreads out from the southern base of the hill. If I could choose, though, I'd much rather re-site the town up onto that plateau. It is full of dramatic rock formations that provide hollows for afternoon resting spots with lovely views over the surrounding countryside. In a few places, paths shaded by tall trees that almost, just a tiny bit, reminded me of the trails I grew up with in New Hampshire, slope down toward verdant streams.
Of the old city, only crumbling half-walls of the more important buildings remain. The current Sultan-Mayor has put up little signs identifying some of the spots in an effort to make this a tourist site. For the time being it's not a very friendly place to visit, though, both for the red tape required and for the sharp, reedy grasses that remain in the aftermath of the dry season burn and copious other thorny plants through which one must bushwhack. I sliced open my ankle and one of my companion ripped his trousers straight across the knee. On the other hand the guide, Chef de Quartier Yaro, was in his 58, at least a foot shorter than me, wore flip-flops, and even so I kept having to call after him to slow down.
It must have been a vibrant and surprising place, set in such ranging topography and making such use of the rock formations and other natural features. I was struck by how many of the structures of which traces remain are guardhouses, soldier's barracks, or other military fortifications. The guardhouses ringed the perimeter at the access paths. The soldiers and close guards lived nearer to the sultan. (Insert reference to the Presidential Guard, army, and gendarmerie currently inhabiting Ndele, and their, ahem, variable comportment. Deleted for fear of being “too sensitive.”)
Today, when the sultan is in Ndele he lives in a tall house set within a large compound graced by mango trees. During the rebel attack on November 26, a rocket – not clear who launched it – landed in the foyer and burned a living room set that President Bozize had given for World Food Day Ndele 2008 as well as many old photographs of sultans and their families over the years. I ask people when the sultan will return from Bangui, and they cite the state of his house as a reason why he has stayed away: “Where would he live, with his house in that state?” But when I ask who will repair the house, they say that the sultan must return for it to be repaired. No one here has any money for that. If the sultan were here, they would gladly approach him and present in tribute their few francs. But only if he's here. All of which makes me doubt I'll see him in Ndele during my stay here.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Sooner or Later
It was bound to happen. Someone has found my blog, and deemed it to contain vast amounts of information that is “très sensible” (highly sensitive). I knew it would, and yet pretended it wouldn't. I so enjoyed having a forum to think through some of the issues or questions that troubled me and even, when lucky, getting some helpful feedback. It made me feel less isolated than I otherwise did, here in this remotest corner of the world. And it calmed me, made me feel more in control of my fieldwork, to organize observations in a presentable format on the page.
And I even brought the discovery on myself, I think, when, in desperation, I challenged someone who accused me of being a spy to Google me. I figured he'd find some innocuous Duke page with outdated information about my dissertation and maybe the couple of pieces I've written for Making Sense of Sudan. Hopefully my pontificating convinced him that I am indeed but a lowly grad student, but innocuous it was not. As countless others have observed before me, blogging is an odd forum in that it feels strangely private, making it easy to forget or ignore that it is, of course, fully accessible.
In the process of being found out, I have realized something about how politics works here. Much of the game has to do with pretending not to know, and certainly not ever stating, the things that everyone knows. (I mean seriously, as a newly-arrived expat I'm the last to know anything.) That a certain official drinks a lot, for instance, or even that a certain road is closed to humanitarians. Always better to feign ignorance, since you don't know who might betray you (“So-and-so said such-and-such about so-and-so...” can take on a life of its own in a place that in many ways functions on rumors). This can make research difficult. It also makes it hard to change endemic corruption or other malfeasance, because any whistler blower could quickly face allegations herself. Many if not most of the bylines in Bangui's 8-page newspapers are sobriquets.
So I will have to be more circumspect about the things I write here.
If the internet connection permitted, I'd upload some photos from the party I attended yesterday. It was a ceremony thrown by a Chadian man living here in Ndele who had been captured by the rebels when he went to visit his wife and kids in Chad. He was so thankful to Allah to have been released that he bought a cow for the neighborhood to enjoy. We women sat on mats spread across two courtyards and inside the house of a relative of the man, a recent divorcee who had followed her husband here from Ndjamena. They had prepared platter upon platter of delicious food, including things I didn't even know it was possible to obtain in Ndele. (I think the man probably brought some goods back with him from Chad, where more products are available.)
When a foreigner like me shows up at such a gathering, there is usually one outgoing woman among the group who takes it upon herself to try to communicate with the stranger, while the others sit and listen. The hostess, a beautiful woman with movie star teeth (most people here have broken, brown teeth) that she flashed when she smiled, was such a woman, and I struggled to align my Koranic Arabic with her Chadic Arabic. Some words are the same – “lahm” for meat – others are similar - “tayarah” instead of “ta-ira” for airplane – and others are quite different – “kwayyis” instead of “jayyid” for good. As frustrating as it can be, I find such intense efforts to communicate exhilarating too. I departed the gathering bathing in thankfulness: thankful for people like her, who welcome a stranger with friendly laughter, and thankful for those exciting moments when I squeezed some Arabic out of my receding memory.
That night I couldn't sleep, hepped up on the afternoon's glasses of sweet-sweet tea (Southern sweet tea tastes bitter compared to this stuff). And the wind, a whistling, insistent wind like Marseille's mistral, returned, flapping the curtains noisily and sending the neighborhood dogs into barking, whining frenzies.
And I even brought the discovery on myself, I think, when, in desperation, I challenged someone who accused me of being a spy to Google me. I figured he'd find some innocuous Duke page with outdated information about my dissertation and maybe the couple of pieces I've written for Making Sense of Sudan. Hopefully my pontificating convinced him that I am indeed but a lowly grad student, but innocuous it was not. As countless others have observed before me, blogging is an odd forum in that it feels strangely private, making it easy to forget or ignore that it is, of course, fully accessible.
In the process of being found out, I have realized something about how politics works here. Much of the game has to do with pretending not to know, and certainly not ever stating, the things that everyone knows. (I mean seriously, as a newly-arrived expat I'm the last to know anything.) That a certain official drinks a lot, for instance, or even that a certain road is closed to humanitarians. Always better to feign ignorance, since you don't know who might betray you (“So-and-so said such-and-such about so-and-so...” can take on a life of its own in a place that in many ways functions on rumors). This can make research difficult. It also makes it hard to change endemic corruption or other malfeasance, because any whistler blower could quickly face allegations herself. Many if not most of the bylines in Bangui's 8-page newspapers are sobriquets.
So I will have to be more circumspect about the things I write here.
If the internet connection permitted, I'd upload some photos from the party I attended yesterday. It was a ceremony thrown by a Chadian man living here in Ndele who had been captured by the rebels when he went to visit his wife and kids in Chad. He was so thankful to Allah to have been released that he bought a cow for the neighborhood to enjoy. We women sat on mats spread across two courtyards and inside the house of a relative of the man, a recent divorcee who had followed her husband here from Ndjamena. They had prepared platter upon platter of delicious food, including things I didn't even know it was possible to obtain in Ndele. (I think the man probably brought some goods back with him from Chad, where more products are available.)
When a foreigner like me shows up at such a gathering, there is usually one outgoing woman among the group who takes it upon herself to try to communicate with the stranger, while the others sit and listen. The hostess, a beautiful woman with movie star teeth (most people here have broken, brown teeth) that she flashed when she smiled, was such a woman, and I struggled to align my Koranic Arabic with her Chadic Arabic. Some words are the same – “lahm” for meat – others are similar - “tayarah” instead of “ta-ira” for airplane – and others are quite different – “kwayyis” instead of “jayyid” for good. As frustrating as it can be, I find such intense efforts to communicate exhilarating too. I departed the gathering bathing in thankfulness: thankful for people like her, who welcome a stranger with friendly laughter, and thankful for those exciting moments when I squeezed some Arabic out of my receding memory.
That night I couldn't sleep, hepped up on the afternoon's glasses of sweet-sweet tea (Southern sweet tea tastes bitter compared to this stuff). And the wind, a whistling, insistent wind like Marseille's mistral, returned, flapping the curtains noisily and sending the neighborhood dogs into barking, whining frenzies.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
RIP Bokassa
Bokassa, the ludicrously voluble volleyball player (how many times did he yell at me for missing the ball or pinging it off the pitch? I lost count) and alleged son of the ex-emperor, was the first Central African soldier to die when the rebels attacked Ndele two months ago. He drove the rocket launcher-mounted truck, which the rebels hoped to capture. I can't help but wonder if his bad temper contributed in some way to his demise.
Missionaries
(The abysmally slow connection here has kept me from posting in a few days.)
Father Yves extended a place mat-sized black-and-white photo toward me and said, “Find me.” The photo showed a young, not-yet-emperor, Bokassa standing next to a silky-haired, large-nosed woman in a wedding dress and veil. The stood indoors inside Bangui's main cathedral. Father Yves pointed to part of a book, visible at the left-hand side: “That's me – I was holding that book!” The next photo showed Bokassa's coronation. Father Yves gestured just to the left of the scene captured in the frame: “I was sitting there!”
Father Yves, a missionary with the Spiritin order of the Catholic church, left France for Oubangui-Chari in 1952 and has lived here ever since. In contrast to the aid workers and diplomats and Lebanese businesspeople (and me, more often than I'd care to admit) who bemoan this country's crushing torpor and imperceptible progress, Yves emphasized with wonder how quickly, how unimaginably, the place has changed in the 58 years he has been here.
When he arrived, no Central African held any position of authority. A few years later, a Central African was named to a responsible position with the postal service and “Everyone thought it was a mistake! No one would have guessed that in 1958 they would have more autonomy and in 1960 independence!” At that point, if you went to PK5 (5km from the center of town), the people would be dressed in nothing but a small piece of hide.
Father Yves was also a friend of CAR's only founding father, Barthelemy Boganda. Boganda was a priest like Yves but was defrocked for failure to maintain his vow of celibacy. Yves went to Boganda's house for a reconciliatory coffee with Boganda and his wife and kids, and then a short time later (1958) he was part of the team that went out to the site of Boganda's crashed plane and recuperated his remains.
For someone no doubt expecting the quiet life of a missionary, Father Yves has somehow had a front seat at all of CAR's most famous – or infamous – moments.
He took a trip to the United States once, and he stayed with his fellow Spiritin at their mission in what he described as a “quartier populaire” in New York City. He rode the subway – “under the ground! All by myself!” He was living in a quartier populaire in CAR then, a neighborhood so packed that if you stretched out your arm inside your house you'd hit your neighbor's. He lived simply. In New York, what struck him about the missionaries' life was that they too lived simply, but that made them have about the same socioeconomic level as those around them, or perhaps a bit below. In CAR, even living as simply as they did, they were still the whites – they were still the rich ones. And so the expectations they have for each other are entirely different, as are the dynamics of their relationships. In CAR, missionaries are important personalities, on a local and sometimes a national scale. In New York, I'm guessing they're known only to their congregants. Same title, but how different the job.
Father Yves seemed happy he had ended up in Central Africa.
Father Yves extended a place mat-sized black-and-white photo toward me and said, “Find me.” The photo showed a young, not-yet-emperor, Bokassa standing next to a silky-haired, large-nosed woman in a wedding dress and veil. The stood indoors inside Bangui's main cathedral. Father Yves pointed to part of a book, visible at the left-hand side: “That's me – I was holding that book!” The next photo showed Bokassa's coronation. Father Yves gestured just to the left of the scene captured in the frame: “I was sitting there!”
Father Yves, a missionary with the Spiritin order of the Catholic church, left France for Oubangui-Chari in 1952 and has lived here ever since. In contrast to the aid workers and diplomats and Lebanese businesspeople (and me, more often than I'd care to admit) who bemoan this country's crushing torpor and imperceptible progress, Yves emphasized with wonder how quickly, how unimaginably, the place has changed in the 58 years he has been here.
When he arrived, no Central African held any position of authority. A few years later, a Central African was named to a responsible position with the postal service and “Everyone thought it was a mistake! No one would have guessed that in 1958 they would have more autonomy and in 1960 independence!” At that point, if you went to PK5 (5km from the center of town), the people would be dressed in nothing but a small piece of hide.
Father Yves was also a friend of CAR's only founding father, Barthelemy Boganda. Boganda was a priest like Yves but was defrocked for failure to maintain his vow of celibacy. Yves went to Boganda's house for a reconciliatory coffee with Boganda and his wife and kids, and then a short time later (1958) he was part of the team that went out to the site of Boganda's crashed plane and recuperated his remains.
For someone no doubt expecting the quiet life of a missionary, Father Yves has somehow had a front seat at all of CAR's most famous – or infamous – moments.
He took a trip to the United States once, and he stayed with his fellow Spiritin at their mission in what he described as a “quartier populaire” in New York City. He rode the subway – “under the ground! All by myself!” He was living in a quartier populaire in CAR then, a neighborhood so packed that if you stretched out your arm inside your house you'd hit your neighbor's. He lived simply. In New York, what struck him about the missionaries' life was that they too lived simply, but that made them have about the same socioeconomic level as those around them, or perhaps a bit below. In CAR, even living as simply as they did, they were still the whites – they were still the rich ones. And so the expectations they have for each other are entirely different, as are the dynamics of their relationships. In CAR, missionaries are important personalities, on a local and sometimes a national scale. In New York, I'm guessing they're known only to their congregants. Same title, but how different the job.
Father Yves seemed happy he had ended up in Central Africa.
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