We have now been in Southern Africa for just over two weeks. This post is not about a specific attempt at a better world per se, it is more about getting settled in a place that I have often pictured when learning and acting on global justice issues in Canada. I hope my experience here will lead to me being a more truly global citizen. The first step though is to try to soak in as much as possible and test some of my assumptions and expectations.
Our itinerary to date: We landed in Lusaka, Zambia spent two days there with a friend of Heather’s. We then took a day-long bus ride to Lilongwe, Malawi via Chipata. In Malawi we met up with a bunch of the Engineers Without Borders long term volunteers and overseas staff. We had the privilege of joining our friend Graham on his trip to his former home village to say farewell to his host family and see where he had lived. We spent a couple days in a little resort in Cape McLear (sp?) right on Lake Malawi with our friend Thulasy (and Graham and Ka-Hay in the evenings), and a few days bumming around Lilongwe with Garret and Alynn and their host family – Mr and Mrs Adams who were very hospitable and understanding when Blake and I were both sick. For more detail travel journal type posts check out my brother Blake’s Blog at: http://blakeandcompany.blogspot.com/
Culture Shock?:
I guess the term for this rollercoaster of observations, thoughts and feelings and changing my mind daily on what it all means could be called culture shock – except it is not a shock. It is only when I look back that I realize that my thoughts or feelings have completely flipped. In each moment I just think and feel the way I do and forget I ever thought or felt any other way. It takes a lot of conscious effort to try to figure out how it all compares to what I expected or what it means for my perspectives on human development and how my fractured and incomplete world view has evolved.
I think I was bracing myself for a shock of climate and culture and people staring at me and shouting “Muzungu” (“Westerner/White person”) and trying to help or asking for things or trying to sell me things and getting crammed into buses and cabs in dangerously uncomfortable situations. This al happened a little bit, but more commonly what I found was calmness and friendliness or an almost indifference to my presence and very few shocks to the senses at all. We strolled off the plane onto the tarmac at the small, old and slightly dilapidated yet charming airport. There were some people smiling and waiting on the tarmac for other passengers but we walked by unnoticed. Everyone was incredibly relaxed and nonchalant. Kind of a fizzling transition from what I thought was a pretty epic two day journey (half way around the world 12 km in the sky at 1000 km/h looking down on vast and intriguing landscapes below, with people at home fretting or intrigued by the originality of it). This was not a disappointment or a shock either though, more of a pleasant difference from the expectation, maybe because we were just a little tired.
Even writing has been hard to sit down to do because I expected to be brimming with thoughts and feelings to try to articulate and share my experiences with people at home, but life just flows here and I am reminded that life is also flowing at home. I am assuming people are curious and will read what I write as long as it is not too long, frequent, or boring.
I think one of the buffers that have made the culture transition less shocking is the amazing variety here. For every piece of clothing that jumps out as being uniquely ‘African’ like a brightly patterned Obama “yes we can” shirt or a Chitenge skirt or a short fat neck tie, there are a hundred people in business wear, casual wear, and trendy fashions that you might see anywhere –amazingly beautiful and confident people. There are people trying to sell everything from taxi rides to flip flops but there are also way more people buying or passing by completely indifferent. There are people with loads balanced on their heads and babies on their backs, but many without, driving in cars, riding bikes strolling purposefully, briefcase in hand, etc. For every potential shock, a huge variety of counter ‘un-shocks’ allowing my sense of normal to shift unconsciously, smoothly and imperceptibly.
There is also a huge variety of industries and occupations – markets, farmers, brickmakers and masons, carpenters, furniture makers, people building toll bridges for shortcuts across the river in Malawi, hotel workers, store workers, banks, office buildings, cell phone repairs, shoe repairs, tailors and seamstresses, barbers, lumber mills, food processing, metal workers, miners, electricians, educators, health care workers, bartenders – as much or more variety than home. On our trip into the copperbelt – named for its primary industry of copper mining we drove through a huge area of what was clearly a softwood lumber industry complete with towering pine trees, cut blocks and an old school saw mill. There are universities and technical colleges. There are many dilapidated buildings – shadows of the good old days, just like you see in many small towns across Canada- but there are also exciting and not so exciting new things like shopping malls, clinics. Everything on the surface seems just as busy, efficient and productive but why is there no garbage collection, sewage treatment, enough teachers or schools or health care facilities and workers? People are speaking two or three or four languages, kids are making elaborate toys from wire and other random ‘garbage’, students work full time and go to school and spend at least a couple hours more per day on the food, water and household chores than the average Canadian. Why are there the poverty statistics that make my soul cry like the number of people with HIV AIDS, childhood mortality rates, or life expectancies half of Canada’s? We have seen very little indication of these challenges in the external world – it all happens behind closed doors and is not acceptable to talk about to new acquaintances other then in passing veiled references.
How can anyone pretend to come up with theories of development and economics that could encompass all this variety and complexity and lead to solutions that work for these people? Maybe that has been the problem – any explanations and theories simple enough for a development worker or leader to comprehend and act upon are too simple to actually deal with the variety and complexity of reality and as a result they don’t work. I am reminded of the first year physics experiment trying to test something basic like the rate of acceleration on an object due to the earth’s gravity. Any textbook will tell you the rate, but try to ‘prove’ it and the complexities of the experiment make it very challenging to get any useful information at all. Unlike the physical sciences, in development every component is also a living person with their own thought patterns, culture, instincts, etc. There is probably no explanation, no master plan that will work that can fit in one person’s, or even a whole profession’s or culture’s mind. I don’t know what this means for me and my world view yet. I still believe we have to challenge injustice when we see it and work to make incremental improvements within our spheres of influence, but I have to remember to still challenge my own assumptions and theories- to learn continuously but never expect to know exactly. What a discouraging yet exciting prospect – depending on your mood.
P.S. In other exciting news I will try to “tweet” about some updates on our adventures on twitter.com from my phone. Follow me at jwhel or just check back here for a summary of haiku microblogs (if I can get it working) :P
P.P.S. My wife Heather has accepted a dare to Bungee Jump at victoria falls from Blake in the Stephen Lewis Foundation "Dare to Care" campaign. Her fundraising goal is $10000!! Check it out here: Heather's Dare
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