Beyond the Vapour Trail Read online

  ‘He–llo?’

  ‘Hello. Hröom service.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Ay’d layke to awda some brreakfust pliz!’ (OK, I admit I don’t really know how to alliterate a South African accent, but that doesn’t matter since my terrible Seth Efrican eccent is not much better. Part Tony Greig. Part Afrikaans. But it worked.)

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  ‘Ay’d layke some SCRREMbled eggs.’

  ‘Yes, sir!’

  It worked a charm. I started to use the same accent with our local staff, too. There’s a rule of three when people don’t understand your accent, according to comedian Michael McIntyre. You can ask someone to repeat themselves thrice, but after that you both have to pretend. You both go through the pantomime of ‘Oh! I see’ looks, with smiles and nods, as if you understood and they don’t know you are faking. You both know, but, hang it, just play the game. This rule of three seems to be universal. So to avoid this and make myself understood in Lesotho, I spent two weeks with this ridiculously comical imitation of the South African accent. What can I say? It worked.

  The evaluation was in a rural area. Leaving the capital we drove for several hours, into the Maloti Mountains. This was my first evaluation, and I hadn’t yet completed my development studies. I wasn’t confident. I felt like one of those paper dolls my sister used to make that had cut-out clothing to dress them with. I was sure if I turned my back people would see the paper tabs.

  As we left the city towards Nazareth – yes, we were still in Lesotho, we weren’t lost – the landscape changed. It felt like we were travelling back in history, with fewer Western inputs. Gradually the square houses made of concrete blocks started to be replaced with the more beautiful traditional round huts, some grass, but many of intricate stonework, where no two rocks were the same but all beautifully fitted together. And my clichés about Africa came in for serious challenge. There were many people on horseback. Well, on small, almost horse-like ponies or pony-like horses, I couldn’t tell which. And it was cold. There was snow around on the high ground, so people wore blankets, poncho-style. Yes, something like Mexicans wear. Oddest of all, some wore straw conical hats, like a little piece of Vietnam, mirroring the shape of their grass roofs, but with a strange twisted shape at the top. This country was the platypus of Africa.

  From: Brett Pierce

  Sent: 22/05/02

  To: Kathleen Pierce

  Subject: From the dark continent …

  Hello kindred spirit.

  Sometimes you have these experiences, and don’t know who to share it with. I hope it isn’t like the cry of a bird in flight to a bird caged. So I’m hoping it’s nice to read about, and not like some irrelevant travel guide.

  I was out at the villages today. This means presenting yourself to the chief’s house first to state who you are and your intentions. There is a quiet rhythm to their traditions. This village is the most photogenic place – right at the foot of Lesotho’s tallest mountain. The land is undulating, barren yet colourful, sun poking thru onto rugged mountainsides that surround everything. The soils are rich red brown. Fields of dry maize stalks after harvest left to stand dishevelled, like leftovers after a meal. Rocks and dry grass fill the gaps. Occasional cows. And tossed at random the huts.

  The round huts are poetry – some are smooth earthy orange mud-rendered, some are grey & brown stone, but colourful stone in every shape masterfully fitted together like an intricate puzzle – every wall an abstract delight; a few of traditional grass! Rounded, overhanging, flowing thatched roofs point vaguely upwards. They have crooked doors with wide crooked eaves and little crooked windows. A family might have one, two or three huts – some even join. Outside them the dirt is swept immaculately clean, and chickens peck around. Inside is dark, quiet and sheltered, with dung floors, maybe a bed for the lucky ones, and possessions stacked neatly around the inner walls – a saddle, cast-iron cooking pots, some enamel plates and glasses, some potatoes, some seed … Some have a table, some even have chairs or maybe just logs cut into low comfortable seats.

  It is cold outside, and everyone is rugged up in typical dress, which is trousers/shirts for men, skirts/blouses/hessian/towel/ whatever for women but all wrapped in a colourful blanket over the shoulders or around the waist – which drapes to below the knee. Usually a woollen or other cap. The bright-eyed children are tiny, friendly and wrapped snug in their own miniature-version blankets. Children have high, sing-song voices. Everywhere I look is a classic photo opportunity (sometimes lost by having to ask through a long polite process – so they stiffen and pose. Sigh!) Took a lovely photo of a young woman proudly holding her 4-week old baby. Sometimes they ride past on donkeys or skinny brown horses no bigger than the donkeys.

  There are many hungry. HIV is rife – 30% – but they don’t admit to it, so few believe it is real. Stigma, politeness (our HIV education has to say ‘share a blanket with a woman’ to refer to sex – even that is considered borderline) and disbelief. Some young people said: ‘We don’t know anyone who has died from this AIDS. So we cannot believe it is as bad as you say.’ At funerals they attribute the death to something else because of shame. And doctors aren’t allowed to tell a spouse without permission. One woman’s husband returned from the mines and said, ‘The mine hospital told me I got there just in time, or I would have AIDS.’ Only after her husband died, her new baby died, and the family were sick did she discover the truth. No-one told her until the project staff found out the story. She’s gone. There are many AIDS orphans we support. There are capped wells that are improving health, schools built, a clinic etc. Food security and agricultural reform are big on the agenda.

  The household survey is going well – part of our evaluation process. The people are polite and thoughtful. But they have few options. The country has been declared a state of emergency due to food shortages. It’s a mess.

  But the people are beautiful. Dignified. Ready to smile and laugh and take you into their hearts. They like me cos I’m attempting their language – which is lyrical and musical. One of the villages is Ha Nqosa - but the q is a loud ‘tock’ sound with your tongue. So it’s Han(tock)osa. There are different types of clicks – seems to depend on the following vowel. A Mosotho person belongs to the Basotho group, they speak Sesotho and live in Lesotho. What a wonderful piece of doggerel that makes. A group sang for us. Only six of them – one old woman with a scratchy voice sang a phrase and they broke into 6-part harmony. It sounded like 12 people!!!!

  Sorry for this long email. I hope it at least says that someone cares about you. There’s only one Kathie, and she’s worth many keystrokes …

  Brett

  I began to notice the men. I learnt that for generations they had gone away to work the mines in South Africa, but this door was closing. They could no longer find work. Everywhere now they were sitting around on streets, nothing to do, wearing their hard hat and white boots as if to say, ‘We once belonged. We were once proud.’

  During these years, the rural families had begun to use mining cash to buy the more productive commercial seed and fertilisers, as they do on big South African farms. But this meant they were now dependent on purchasing seed, because these commercial hybrid varieties were sterile and couldn’t be stored for next year’s planting. They had lost their self-sufficiency. So as the mining work fell away, they now had to borrow money just to plant. And the phosphate fertilisers were too harsh and were burning the delicate veldt topsoil. The countryside was becoming denuded and ravaged, with less than 9% arable land remaining. My colleague Tony had been working with them here to encourage mixed organic farming, but this requires more labour and 70% of farmers were now women. The men had somehow lost their role in their long absence. So I began to realise during that visit that gender is not just about women – in every healthy society men need to understand their role, and here men had lost their way.

  From: Brett Pierce

  Sent: 30/05/02

  To: Kathleen Pierce

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nbsp; Subject; Are u ok?

  Hi.

  The lady is quiet. Everything OK? Hope your week was OK - that you swam to the other side without sinking. I do rescues if you need one.

  Rain. Rain. Rain. Mud. Mud. Mud. Four-wheel driving through muddy Ahfrica. Vehicle slides sideways, backwards, roundabout, and sometimes grips forwards. Vehicle and road in mud-wrestling match. Road wins. Nearly down ravine. Nearly in creek. Ahfrican voices in vehicle. Fields of wet maize. People walking in the rain, rugged in blankets and woolly hats with umbrellas. Round huts, grass roofs – windows and doors set a foot deep in the thick walls. Smoothly rendered, warm inside – hot coals in buckets … Hard maize porridge, spicy chicken – don’t know what the vegetables are …

  Evaluations often involve collecting data using a household survey, and this was no exception. There were few roads in these hills – we simply had to walk from village to village. We passed boys who were out minding cattle. That seemed so appealing, the solace of the elements in this other world still hidden behind the curtain, unspoilt by modernity, the pace of life measured by the gentle meandering of cattle. I had been battling depression for many years, and I looked at these boys and wondered at the world as they saw it, free of stress.

  ‘No, no, no. Tedious, tedious work, following the cattle,’ one of our local staff assured me as we walked on through the hills. ‘You would be quickly bored.’

  I’m sure he was correct, but just for the moment it had a quiet appeal. I wanted to stay and join the lads in the rolling hills, escape a world of urgency for the gentle pace of cattle.

  As we walked from hamlet to hamlet, people would approach from the opposite direction, so in my desire to connect I learnt the greeting in the local language.

  From: Brett Pierce

  Sent: 01/06/02

  To: Kathleen Pierce

  Subject: Last day

  … Today was such a mix. When you’re a child, your joys are complete and taste so sweet. As an adult your joys are brushed with sorrow and bittersweet. Like you & I.

  Today was walking through the hills to villages where dark-eyed children stare until you look back, then giggle at the novelty of a white man. Walking across rocky creeks, through the rain … People walking, pass and greet, pass and greet … Into villages … Into the thatched round huts, where the ritual of welcome is passed back and forth like verse and chorus, verse and chorus. Dumela (Greetings) – Dumela; Haelale (Peace to you) – Haelale; Likhomo tseo (And how are your cattle) – Le manemane a tsona (With many calves) … It’s singsong and beautiful. I learnt it.

  Through the narrow crooked doorways into the dark huts, with thick-set narrow crooked windows, glass often completely yellowed from smoke. Smoky, smoky inside, so you sit low. Above is the thatched roof reaching to a point, with crooked branch framework crafted together holding up the thatch. Fire inside a large tin … children – tiny, tiny children with big eyes of wonderment around the walls snuggled together, some gnawing on maize, as a tiny kitten explores. A dignified African woman and sometimes a man sitting. All ragged. The African women are so, so beautiful, even when old, and often hide their smiles.

  I make two children paper aeroplanes – a boy shows me the car he has made out of wire. A beautiful little girl called Puleng says she loves dolls, so I fold some paper and tear, tear, and make her three dolls joining hands. I give her a pen and she draws faces, and writes her name and two friends on them.

  It has been such a joy. I felt so alive. When we finish our survey with a grandmother, I say, ‘Mama, we have asked you many questions. Do you have any questions of me?’ ‘Yes,’ she says with clear eyes. ‘We are hungry. (She grabs her stomach). What are you going to do?’ In another house, ‘The program is very slow and we are hungry. What can you do to help us now?’ The famine of southern Africa is hitting. What do you say? How do you walk away and wait for long-term development in the face of immediate need? How do you go back to Australia with all our ludicrous abundance and self-satisfaction? You know what I did? I couldn’t do a bloody thing, and now I’m sitting in a hotel feeling like … I know the theory, that handouts don’t solve long-term problems, but I feel like a complete loser. We have a food security proposal in to the Australian government that could turn this place upside down if it gets through …

  But don’t get me wrong. I love it. I love the people. I love the countryside. Africa is beauty. My last night, and then back to business processes. Still have to write up the evaluation – unearthed some issues … We need to make some big changes. It’s been worthwhile.

  Thanks for listening,

  Brett

  On the last day in the Nazareth community I put a speech together in the local language. You always have to be ready to speak to the group in traditional settings around the world – formal greetings are part of so many cultures. My farewell was mostly a collection of Sesotho phrases I had heard or seen. One particularly catchy line I read on a bread truck one morning – a slogan to sell bread, but I made it fit. I just strung all the phrases together like a puzzle made of cut-outs and still managed to express my feelings. People love that you dignify their language with such a little bit of effort.

  Our program was very strong, but it was clear that a local famine had now overtaken our work and we needed to quickly shift footing to provide relief. In some ways the evaluation was timely, because it gave us first-hand evidence that the effects had already reached this region. So as a result we put quite significant funding into this area to address the famine I had begun to observe. We did listen and respond to that immediate hunger, so it never reached crisis point. You probably never heard about it. That’s a success.

  OK, between paragraphs I flew to Johannesburg. Pretty quick, huh!!

  I crossed this biiig motorway in Johannesburg and went into this biiig supermarket – huge – and bought some deodorant. There was a couple there sniffing them, so I said excuse me I have no sense of smell – which one should I get. He said, not this one, it smells like insect repellent. So on their recommendation I bought Playboy Classic Spice. You can guess what the receipt says that I have to hand in to finance, can’t you. No mention of classic spice.

  The driver said something really interesting about South Africa as we drove past Johannesburg cemetery: ‘Apartheid finished? Have a look there – white section, Chinese section, Indian section, coloured section and black section. Everyone still gets buried separately.’ I think it says a lot about what’s underneath the rhetoric. It’s like they can’t be at rest beside the wrong people …

  CHAPTER 5

  The Curse and the Quest

  In a small lake in Madang, Papua New Guinea, there lived an old, and rather large, saltwater crocodile. One day I was with local colleagues heading out to a community. As we drove past this lake I spotted a sign I hadn’t noticed before: ‘Beware of crocodile’. It made me laugh.

  ‘You see that sign there? They only have a sign on this side of the lake. So if a tourist comes from the other side and goes swimming, they will get eaten.’

  My colleagues laughed. Then they added, ‘Yes, but the crocodile won’t eat you. Crocodiles aren’t really dangerous.’

  That didn’t make any sense.

  ‘Umm … Yes. Crocodiles are dangerous.’ This didn’t provoke any response from the others in the vehicle. ‘We have the same crocs in Australia. People get killed all the time. Mostly German tourists …’

  ‘Crocodiles will only attack you if you’ve been cursed.’

  Well, that was interesting. If it was true, this is precisely what you need to know before you decide whether or not to swim.

  ‘OK, so then how do you know if you’ve been cursed?’

  One of my colleagues responded as if the answer was obvious and uninteresting. ‘You get eaten by the crocodile.’

  Of course. How could I have missed it? So I pointed out that if you don’t know whether you’ve been cursed until a crocodile eats you, then you might as well consider crocodiles dangerous. They laughed.
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  I thought about the logic.

  Assumption: You only get eaten by a crocodile if you are cursed.

  Observation: The German tourist was eaten by a crocodile.

  Conclusion: Therefore the German tourist must have been cursed.

  It’s logical, but it begs the question. So as we drove on I threw it back to them.

  ‘You know, your conclusion that crocodile attacks are caused by curses is based on your assumption that crocodile attacks are caused by curses.’

  They understood what I was saying, and laughed, but their position remained unchanged. Because their world view works. The problem is that for some people in PNG the next logical steps are: Conclusion 2: Therefore someone from the other tribe must have cursed him; ergo, Conclusion 3: We need to kill someone from their tribe for payback.

  We continued to drive for hours through the dense rainforest of Papua, vehicle sliding through the mud, with roads and bridges sometimes completely washed away. I was overwhelmed by the raw power of nature, by places that didn’t ‘wear man’s smudge and share man’s smell.’ I wasn’t feeling as though my world view was superior because we don’t believe in curses. The people here had lived in harmony with crocodiles and their environment. My culture, without blinking, was bulldozing everything flat to cover the earth in asphalt and concrete, leaving crocodiles, other creatures and remnants of forests in little enclosures for posterity. And our world view continues to bulldoze and pour concrete as if it would cover the entire world. For the natural world, our culture has been the curse.

  I was living in Papua New Guinea in the year 2000 as part of my first overseas assignment in international development. My friend Keith had gone to Sudan and Kosovo and other hotspots to bring vital relief to desperate people. And my role? I had been sent here to close down all our sponsorship-funded programs. Great. What a contribution! It’s not that the projects weren’t making a difference. In Erima, part of the larger settlement area from where much of the Port Moresby violence emerges, a teacher wanted to talk to me after one of the meetings. She was maybe in her late thirties, working for very little pay in simple classrooms. She looked at me and began to cry.