Displaced
I had to go to a work function last night (dah-ling), which involved standing around eating Cheetos and drinking red wine out of a box. You can’t say charities don’t have class.
Anyway, I got chatting to some tourists who had rocked up at our film screening. The first thing one of them said to me was ‘You know, when I crossed the border from Botswana, I thought, ‘this isn’t Africa’’.
Now, you know how I hate to rant*, but really, it pisses me off when people say this stuff about Namibia. I hear it all the time. Namibia is ‘Africa for beginners’, ‘Africa 101’, ‘Not the real Africa’. What does it mean? It makes me want to smack my forehead and say ‘Oh, gosh darn it, no wonder I haven’t been receiving any post – I should be asking people to address it to Antarctica.â€
People talk about ‘Africa’ as if it is one big amorphous, mythical place, and not a vast landmass made up of very different countries. A friend of mine, recently arrived here on an internship, told me that when she was coming out here, people told her all kind of terrible tales, one example being ‘My friend went to Africa, and she got run over and killed by a bus.’ The horror! That would never happen in Europe.
I grant that at first impressions, Windhoek is a bit like a European city – there aren’t any of the expected street markets, blaring traffic, dirty, litter, shouting and bustle, although there is a vast shanty town north of the city, that is hidden away from foreign eyes desperate to feast on the sight of poor people filling plastic containers from a communal stand pipe. However, it does seem enormously blinkered to assume that the shopping centre of Windhoek is representative of the whole country. Or because your first glance of Namibia doesn’t necessarily answer your expectations of what Africa is all about, to dismiss it as ‘not really Africa’. What is it that people need to see to be convinced that this is just as much Africa as Senegal, Mali or Ghana?
Why isn’t a map enough?
*but I am in the mood today, because our receptionist once more reveling in a Whitney Houston fest and it’s turning my brain to cheese.
June 29th, 2006 at 1:04 pm
Perhaps because relatively few people from Europe or the Americas have direct or even second-hand experience of Africa. Quite a few of my friends and family have travelled in Europe, to India, Japan, China. Very few to anyplace at all in Africa. I doubt that we spent more than a week studying Africa in seventh-grade Geography, and that was probably the last time it was mentioned in school. We get our knowledge, then, from news reports and travel brochures which focus on just a few places. I suppose a few people might recall that the Sudan is in Africa, but be unable to place it on a map. It’s not good. I should know more. I am very grateful to you for helping me see an Africa of which I would otherwise have never known. It’s not part of your job, but it’s another very good thing you do.
June 30th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
Bill, my African geography is fairly sketchy. I didn’t know where Namibia was when I heard I was coming here. I never assumed, however, that it was all one big country, just as people who go to Europe (I assume) don’t think that Europe is all the same country either. I completely understand how people don’t know, because we didn’t learn much about the continent in school either (or any other continent, to be honest) but to say that a country isn’t really African because things are expensive, there are alot of white people, and you have to shop in the supermarket seems a bit strange. It’s Africa, just not the same as other bits of Africa!
June 30th, 2006 at 3:17 pm
I remember making that mistake once, I said to a Nigerian friend that I was going to Africa and he said no darling, you’re off to WEST Africa. Its one of those mistakes you make and learn very fast never to do it again. My experience across a small stretch of West Africa was one of great diversity so I would never presume that Africa was a group with a single characteristic.
June 30th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Sorry, but most dumb Americans know nothing about Africa. Our schools don’t even teach geography any more, and kids leaving high school have a hard time just naming the US states.
But get to know somebody almost anywhere, and they can point out the poor area in almost every city. (no standpipes for water here, but sometimes pretty bad)
June 30th, 2006 at 3:51 pm
Katharine – I know what you mean! This is definitely ‘Southern Africa’.
Joe – I know – that’s exactly it. There are people in the UK who live on one meal a day, if that, too. It sometimes bugs me, although I know I go on about it too, that poverty is seen as an essentially ‘third world’ phenomenon, and people assume that if its not directly before them then it doesn’t exist, ergo Namibia is not Africa.
However, I’m not entirely sure it’s just that – I think because Namibia is so empty, it’s a surprise for people coming from other more populous places. It’s a knee jerk reaction to finding themselves in a place that isn’t cheap, and doesn’t have many people in it, and of which they had such different expectations. Namibia wasn’t what I expected either, but I’d never say that it’s not Africa.
Also, I didn’t mention it, but the guy in question was Swedish, not American…
Also, shamefully, off the top of my head I can only name 29 US States. That’s a bit crappy. And I did geography!
July 1st, 2006 at 5:17 am
Well I was born in Africa and spent the first 16 years of my life there. But still, I have found that there is often a sort of rush, among folks within academia, to make sure my views on Africa are politically correct. Generally, this comes down to keeping the race and class distinctions, so that I don’t think that I am less priveleged than any black folk who were born there, but learn my rightful place as supplicant to the Greater Liberal Order, because of colonialist errors. So I am told not to make generalities about Africa, and to treat everybody with respect, and not to joke around with any black person, make threatening gestures, or treat them anything like I would treat an equal to me. After all, “They’ve had a hard time.”
July 1st, 2006 at 5:31 am
Also I find that whenever I tell someone that I am from Zimbabwe, they immediately assume I am from South Africa. There is NO sense of political differentiation between the politics, cultures or economics of the two countries. Neither has anyone EVER engaged with me to ask me about these issues. They must merely assume that because I came from the third world, and they were born in the West, they already know more than I do. So, I find a lot of people tend to relate to me on the basis of their stereotypes and really rather extreme ignorance.
July 1st, 2006 at 11:07 am
I hate it when people who’ve been in a poorer part of a country, continent, or region, insist that other people who have not been there have not really seen said country, continent, or region.
You haven’t seen Africa until you’ve seen the shopping malls, AND the poverty, AND the lions, AND the mountains, AND the snow, AND the beaches, AND the white people, AND the black people…
We used to hate it when people would say that Western Russia wasn’t Russia. Well, where the f*** is it, then? Sweden? Sorry, the stamp on my passport does not say “Finland” or “Argentina”… everyone is speaking Russian… technically, we are in Russia…
Oh, did you mean, you think your experience of this country is more important than mine, because the people you met had suffered more, and suffering is more important than normal life? Come out and say it, then.
I so sympathise with you.
July 3rd, 2006 at 4:01 pm
Agh – Jennifer, tell me about it. It’s like the whole southern most part of the country is lumped into one.
Also, what you say about being overly pc I find not at all surprising. Mind you, I’m constantly surprised at how open people are here about things, and how frank everyone is when talking about Namibia’s history, people’s skin colour, how many spots you have or how fat you are getting. I don’t feel I have to censor my opinions though – I just assume that people are big enough and ugly enough to handle it if I unintentionally offend, or to correct me if I get something wrong, or misunderstand.
Elizabeth – god, it’s annoying isnt’ it?