Well it’s been an interesting day of stress dealing with someone in authority who reminds me of Denzel Washington’s character in ‘Training Day’ and reminds my wife of Al Capone from ‘The Untouchables’....jeepers.
Anyway, yes, here we at the halfway mark of the assignment. We’ve gotten praise at a ½ way point meeting between our line manager and our NZ volunteer contact so we seem to be tracking okay. Small wins, big wins, small losses, big setbacks. People who matter have acknowledged that HIV/AIDS work isn’t the easiest of assignments, especially when sustainable outcomes are compressed into a year.
There were times I wasn’t sure if we were going to make 1 month let alone 6 months. Africa can be exhilarating but it can also be tiring, frustrating and alienating. I’ve made human connections with the very poor and the very sick. I have bashed my head against a brick-wall dealing with the apathetic, the stupid and the corrupt. I’ve gotten sick of dust, mozzies and tripping on uneven dirt road surfaces. I’ve stood in awe in the long grass watching lions and sat on white sand watching dhows plying the Indian Ocean. Mostly, I’ve shared a lot of laughs with all the different peoples I have met here.
A guy from Swaziland asked me recently ‘Why Africa? Why not go to India or Asia or other places you can do this work.’ I mumbled something into my beer about ‘I like the vastness of Africa, the people, the animals’. What I meant to say was I love the strangeness of this place. This continent seems to draw certain types of people to it-‘mercenaries, misfits and missionaries’ as one person put it. (I think I am a mix of all three of those...plus a product of too many comic books).
Perhaps, a simpler answer is that Africa feels more real to me in some ways than life back home. Back home, I watch films, surf the net, eat well. A comfortable, mediated existence. Here there is dirt and sweat, crazy drivers, lots of exercise and a real sense of community. I like how animals (from chickens, goats to hawks and snakes) all uneasily co-exist with people here. I like how lots of people recognise my wife and I on the streets from all our madcap cycling about.
However, every dream has a dark side. In my view, you cannot have the ‘authentic’ African experience without having a regard for both good, the bad and the ugly of the place. Most tourists (myself in South Africa included) don’t really get the time to really soak up what it is like to live in this context. For every martini you sip watching the sun go down over Mt Kilimanjaro, there is a woman sitting despairing on her dirt floor, wondering how she will feed her malnourished child. For every moment zipping along the plains on safari, with the wind in your hair, there is a warehouse full of medical supplies trapped in a cycle of petty politics. Heaven and Hell co-exist here. It is the madness, tedium and inhumanity of Africa that makes the beautiful parts more tragic and thus poignant.
Of course, the final answer from me is that I like Africa because it is all so much bigger than little ol me. The mountains, the endless rhythm of life on the plains; you realise just how transient our existence really is. That elephant ‘the very image of immense liberty’ staring at me from a few feet away in Ngorongoro was totally indifferent to me. It was getting on with what his species had been doing for thousands of years...so should he be. A lot of things we think are vitally important, really are not.
It’s hard. You cry, you sweat, you despair. But you know, not all life experience that is good for you necessarily is instantly pleasurable. I have gained a wealth of knowledge both self (I am more addicted to comfort than I realised) of wife (she constantly surprises me with her mix of sweetness and toughness) and of course, of living in the developing world. I’m under no illusions that I am rugged or self-sufficient enough to eke out a permanent living in Africa. But it’s nice to spend a time there.. It’s like a party that is tiring to be at but a lot of fun but one you cannot stay at forever, that you need to go home to your own bed.
It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
What progress requires inexorably of human beings and of continents is that they should renounce their strangeness, that they should break with mystery; and somewhere along that road is inscribed the end of the last elephant. The cultivated lands must encroach upon the forests, and the roads will bite more and more deeply into the quietude of the great herds. There will be less and less room for natural splendour.
Romain Gary “The Roots of Heaven” 1958
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