In the spring of 2011, in a foundational
Peace and Justice course, my Human
Rights professor included a reading in our syllabus titled, How to Write
About Africa. The short essay, which
first appeared in the journal Granta in the winter of 2005, was written by a
Kenyan-born novelist and short-story writer, Binyavanga Wainaina. The following is a short excerpt from that original
essay:
“In your text, treat Africa as if it were one
country. It is hot and dusty with rolling grasslands and huge herds of animals
and tall, thin people who are starving. Or it is hot and steamy with very short
people who eat primates. Don’t get bogged down with precise descriptions.
Africa is big: fifty-four countries, 900 million people who are too busy starving
and dying and warring and emigrating to read your book. The continent is full
of deserts, jungles, highlands, savannahs and many other things, but your
reader doesn’t care about all that, so keep your descriptions romantic and
evocative and unparticular.”
Many times since I first set foot on African soil last February, I
have thought of this satirical essay. Now,
as I reflect on my recent vacation experiences that in many ways dealt with the
very issues Binyavanga satirizes, his criticisms are even more pungent.
I recently had the pleasure of breaking from my work as a gap year
program leader for a week-long vacation in a region of South Africa known as
the Transkei, or alternatively, the Wild Coast (I much prefer this term, as it
allows me to tack this descriptor onto the list of exotic ‘coasts’ I’ve visited
the likes of which range from the ‘Lost Coast’ to the ‘Slow Coast’ of northern
California). I chose this part of South
Africa to explore based on the recommendation of Blue, the owner of the local
Surf Café here in Plettenberg Bay. Having
spent the entirety of my six weeks last February and March wading through the
stark socio-economic disparity between the comfortable resort town of
Plettenberg Bay and the seeming disease-ridden townships surrounding it, I’d
convinced myself that there had to be something more to South Africa.
Blue’s tip that the Transkei ‘is a
piece of Africa as it used to be’ found a home in my subconscious and struck a
chord with my naïve images and expectations of an Africa the likes of which
Binyavanga satirically warns one from writing about. Even though I’ve been informed, through
studies and conversations with native Africans, that Africa is a huge continent
filled with numerous races, ethnicities, ecosystems and cultures, with
conflicts, stories and people too numerous to generalize about, it would be
dishonest of me not to admit that there is also an image in my head, bred into
me since I first began hearing about Africa, of a place where black people live
in the savannah alongside rhinos and lions, shepherding oxen and sheep with
long sticks, covered by simple pieces of colored cloth, by night dancing in
trance-like states around a fire to the rhythm of djembe drums. I call this Africa my children’s book Africa. Despite
the knowledge I have gained of a mixed and varied Africa, and despite my most
recent experiences in Plett seeing an ‘Africa’ very different than my internal
storybook image, I must admit that a part of me still yearns to see this Africa
of my youth. Here in South Africa now
for the second time, I went to the Transkei in search of this ‘Africa’.
I spent the majority of the last
week hiking southwest along the Wild Coast, from one lonely backpackers lodge
to the next, passing through rural !Khosa settlements represented by pin pricks
of colorful round huts scattered on endless green hilltops. The wind ripped strongly off the ocean and
over the hills, varying daily from my back to my front as I made my way,
sometimes on a single-trek dirt path, sometimes on the sandy and rocky beaches
below. Humpback whales made dazzling
displays consistently throughout each day, sometimes spouting, sometimes
breaching with a huge corkscrew jump and splash. The sunrises over the Southern Indian Ocean
never failed to wake me from my sleep and lull me in a dream state to the
cliffs to witness that celestial art display.
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| Sunrise in Coffee Bay |
Of the indigenous forest that used
to cover these hills, adapted to the dry summers and wet winters of the Eastern
Cape with succulent leaves and amazingly sharp thorns, all but the hardest to
fetch in the steep ravines has been cut down for firewood and building material
by the !Khosa people. These traditional shepherds,
who migrated south from the Great Lakes region of the Central-Eastern African continent,
displaced the indigenous Khoisan hunter-gatherers and had firmly established
settlements by the mid 17th century when the Dutch
arrived in the area. Confronted by white
colonists to their west and the Zulu people behind them, and without more land south
to continue their migration, the !Khosa’s traditionally temporary settlements turned
into permanent settlements and the result has been of an extinctive kind for
the original forest. The cattle, sheep,
goats, horses, and donkeys that graze freely on the hills keep the tall bunch
grasses which have replaced the trees and shrubs the length of a well kept
soccer field, giving the hills a well-manicured look. Each village now consists of a vast landscape
of these rolling hills, bounded on either end by a river that eventually snakes
its way to the ocean.
Sometimes these rivers were
passable on foot; other times I waited at the river mouth for someone in a
rowboat to eventually ferry me across.
On one occasion, with a river mouth unusually swollen, I had to
backtrack to the nearest village and find some locals to help me find my way
across. Upstream, the river divided into
more manageable creeks, and I was able to hop across on some rocks. I spent most days wandering down the coast by
myself, the ocean on my left as my guide, passing the occasional villager and
futilely trying to make conversation. Kids
would run up to me asking for sweets or small change, two of the few words I
was able to make out during these exchanges.
The nights were spent at backpackers along scattered along the coast – I
was usually too tired to make much out of the night with the few other tourists
that managed to find their way to these oases of white comfort along the Wild
Coast.
Much to my satisfaction, on my last
day’s hike, I was invited to sit alongside a group of women and children
gathered outside their huts. Curious to
know what was in my awkward black traveling case, they were thrilled to hear me
play some songs on the guitar that came out of it. Although the older women didn’t recognize it,
the younger girls definitely knew some of the choruses to Bob Marley songs. In the 45 minutes or so that I sat with them
sharing music, I was reminded of the universal language that music is, its
strong ability to break down language and other cultural barriers and to share
a common human experience in what otherwise might look like a meeting of two
very different worlds.
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| Kumbaya my Lord |
As I made my way down the coast, I
reflected back often on the images of Africa that I came in search of,
comparing my current sights and experiences with those of the preconceived
images formed in my head. Not that my
quick passing through these villages would give me a fair taste of what life is
like there, but from outward appearances, my ideas were being challenged. The only people I saw doing any kind of work
were those few men constructing or refurbishing mud huts, women and children
gathering mussels and clams, men fishing off the rocks that jutted out into the
ocean, and the occasional farmer tending his or her home’s small garden. I was happy to create my own visual scenery
to the imagery I’d been reading about in the book Sizwe’s Test, set in
the same area of this country. Conversations
I had at the lodges at night added depth and understanding to my visual journey
through this land. The government pays a
small pension to women who have children.
Most families now live off of this payment, and instead of surviving on
subsistence farming as they used to, many families survive on mealie (corn) that they buy at a local
shop, supplemented with any seafood they can harvest. Even the cows that graze on the hills and
rest on the beach are seen for their value as a lobola, or dowry from the groom to the bride’s family. In this way, the cow’s worth lies in its
ability to provide a wife, mother, and caretaker rather than as potential food,
or even just an animal companion. With
each new tidbit of information, my visions of hunter-gatherers in the bush and
drums around late night fires were slowly vanishing, being replaced with the seemingly
slow, sedated life of the !Khosa people.
My arrival at my final destination,
Bulungula Lodge, was marked by the crossing of the Bulungula River. Being the end of my trek down the coast from
Mdumbi, my shoulders heavy with the weight of my backpack and guitar, I was
ready to rest my body. Although it was
still early in the afternoon, the nearly full moon was creating especially high
tides that flooded what would otherwise have been an easily crossable, knee
high river mouth. I dropped my stuff on
the sandy spit, stripped down to my boxers, and without second thought began
walking into the river. I managed to get
to the other side without my feet ever leaving the sandy bottom, although at
times the rising water came up to my shoulders.
Happy enough with the crossing, I swam back across to retrieve my
things. I took my backpack, held high
above my head on the first go, finding a higher ridge along the bottom to
follow to the other side. On the second
go, I carried my guitar, again high above my head, this time having to wait out
an incoming wave mid-river that almost picked me up off my feet. I was not to get dragged into the surf this
time around - I made it safely across, my things safe and dry on the other
side, excited for the next two and a half days to explore the coastline and
community surrounding the small lodge that sits atop the bluff overlooking the
Bulungula River mouth, growing much fainter but still beating in my heart the
pursuit of my children’s book Africa.
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| Bulungula Lodge on the hillside. I stayed in the second pink hut from the right. |
I spent three days and nights at
Bulungula. My time was mostly relaxing
and uneventful: much of it was spent walking the shoreline, picking up shells,
laying in the warm sand where the forest meets the dunes, and watching the
whales play in the near distance. I
laughed at myself, recognizing my privilege of time spent picking up empty
shells when those I passed by were carrying loads of mussels and clams on their
head after a long morning of foraging the tidal reef.
On my last night in Bulungula, I
found myself watching the sun go down below the clouds that had gathered,
casting it’s late afternoon glow on the huts that adorned the hillsides. At the fire pit just outside the main lodge
area, there was a group of maybe five to ten youth of varying ages that had
gathered on the benches surrounding the pit, some drumming, some just
watching. I got my hands on a drum and
began to join in. One younger teen with
his cap pulled low and a cocky air about him was setting the rhythm. He was one of the most talented djembe players
around it seemed, and the respect others gave him easily showed. With three or four of us matching the rhythm
behind him, he showcased his talent, soloing on top of all of us. I felt ecstatic. Closing my eyes, I let the sound of the
drums, all in harmonious beat, fill my soul, lift me out of my head and into a
place, somewhere in the moment, somewhere in the clouds. As the sun continued to set, various kids
took their turn on the drums, all in one way or another amazing drummers in
their own right. I was impressed by
almost every single one of them, thinking about another speculation of mine
that Africans in general have great rhythm.
As the sun eventually went down, the fire was lit. A small crowd of backpackers gathered at the
picnic table just outside the lodge door, looking on and enjoying the music
from a short distance away. I was the
only one staying at the lodge that had included myself in the drum circle. As darkness descended, some girls made their
way to the circle and began to sing. I couldn’t recognize the song, or the
words, but it was beautiful. At one
point I picked up my guitar and added what I could of some melody to the
rhythm. We sat like this around the
smoky fire for four hours that night, drumming, singing, and enjoying what we
could share together.
It wasn’t until the next morning as
the sun rose behind me and I made my way toward the dirt road where I’d catch a
ride back to the closest city some three hours away that I made the
realization: in many ways the night
before I’d found what I’d been looking for.
Although it wasn’t on the savannah but rather on a hill next to a
backpackers overlooking the ocean, and although it wasn’t on the earth but
rather on a large concrete circular slab with a metal fire pit in the middle,
my vision of black Africans gathered around a fire beating methodically on
djembe drums while women sang repetitious melodies had come true. I had found my storybook Africa.
I can't say for certain why I felt the need to satisfy my
preconceived notions, undoubtedly as stereotypical as they are, of Africa as I'd grown up imagining it. Reflecting on the concept of nature being a mirror for the soul - that we notice the things we do while outdoors because our soul calls us to those particular things - I can't help but think that my internal landscape
shaped what I'd seen and the experiences that I'd had while on my vacation. I wonder how often we do this as humans on a day to day basis: to what extent do we let our preconceived notions guide our experiences, looking for signs and clues in the people we interact with and the settings we're in that allow us to defend the judgments we'd already made.
Now, back in Plett, I understand a little bit more about these people that I visit in the townships. Images of the Transkei enter my head as I sit with a patient in her 8' x 8' cardboard shack, the caretaker cleaning out a wound in her behind. My experience has filled me with more sights and experiences to which I can add to the story of South Africa. I understand more than ever how complex this place is, how rich its history, how varied the story of so many different people. I understand more than ever that Africa is not a place that I can write or talk about with such grand generalizations; and yet, my night of djembe playing around the fire on the Wild Coast will no doubt live on, imprinted on my soul forever.
