Obama in Botswana II

I tried to listen to the inauguration live on my radio – the cheap-plastic, $5 thing that only receives one station and then only when it's tilted at a very precise angle. I tried. Unfortunately, despite the inauguration coverage, there was an incredibly loud broadcast of dance music that drowned it out, no matter where I moved the antenna, no matter how carefully I adjusted the tuning. Defeated, I went to bed. The next morning I had the bright idea to try streaming video over the internet (god bless that wireless tower) and lo and behold, CNN managed to stumble through. With 100% success on the thrilling audio, and about 50% on the equally thrilling video, I stared at the frozen but jubilant crowd, imagining friends and relatives out there, some having come all the way from the west coast to be there. Yes, I cried.

I'm going to take this opportunity to actually BLOG a couple of things for once:

1.Change Has Come to the White House. The three headings on this page: Communication, Transparency, Participation. Reading the little blurb on this page, I felt like – even if I had nothing to do with the United States, even if I didn't have family and friends living there, even if I hadn't lived there myself – I would want to follow the workings of this government. I would be fascinated, excited, madly curious to see what happens when a government puts everything out there, constantly asks its citizens for advice, and lets people know what their government is doing, and why. Of course, who knows if they'll really be as transparent and as responsive as they promise – and yes, we do elect a government to make decisions for us, we trust them to do what's best when we can't make those decisions ourselves. I don't look for miracles. But it's a tremendously hopeful time! And, to swipe a quote from the article I'm about to recommend, the contrast between this and the Bush administration is marked: “There’s this West Texas thing in him [Bush], which is the—you know: Bad people are comin’ to town. Everybody go back to their house. I’ll take the burden on. Which, you know, may work in a Western town, but doesn’t work for a country that wants to be part of that conversation.” Let's be part of the conversation....

2.Which brings me to An Oral History of the Bush White House, a collection of interview snippets from various important people from the entire run of the Bush presidency. It's a fascinating trip back through the past eight years. Just in case you DON'T click that link, here are some choice bits:

David Kuo, deputy director of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives: I went to a communications meeting the day after Jeffords switched. I remember feeling like I was looking at people who had won a reality-game ticket to head up the White House. There was this remarkable combination of hubris, excitement, and staggering ignorance.

[Note from me: I found the ubiquity of celebrities during all stages of the inauguration to be, frankly, weird. One of the speakers at my graduation from Princeton was Bradley Whitford – his was a speech fraught with problems, but that's another story – and one of the things he said was, “the reason Kerry didn't win was that he didn't look good on television. To succeed in American politics today, the secret is that you must look good on television.” Whatever else he may have done, Obama has certainly mastered the fine art of looking good on television. The seemingly endless parade of celebrities that graced the coverage of the inaugural week looked pretty damn good, too. I mean, I agree it was a wonderful thing to see Denzel Washington up there speaking, but to me it says that the American people have developed a dependence on entertainment. There were any number of people that are probably better-qualified to make that speech, but they're not recognizable, they're not Hollywood. They don't look good on television. The American president is the most fantastic celebrity, the most obsessively-followed personality, the best fodder for tabloids, television, newspapers, magazines. Politics is entertainment, and entertainment politics... And I'm not going to turn this into an essay, but I'm not particularly happy about that.]

Richard Clarke, chief White House counterterrorism adviser: “The contrast with having briefed his father and Clinton and Gore was so marked. And to be told, frankly, early in the administration, by Condi Rice and [her deputy] Steve Hadley, you know, Don’t give the president a lot of long memos, he’s not a big reader—well, shit. I mean, the president of the United States is not a big reader?”

September 27, 2001 At O’Hare International Airport, Bush advises Americans on what they can do to respond to the trauma of September 11: “Get on board. Do your business around the country. Fly and enjoy America’s great destination spots. Get down to Disney World in Florida. Take your families and enjoy life, the way we want it to be enjoyed.”

Matthew Dowd: “He was given a great, great window of opportunity where everybody wanted to be called to some shared sense of purpose and sacrifice and all that, and Bush never did it. And not for lack of people suggesting various things from bonds to, you know, some sort of national service. Bush decided to say that the best thing is: Everybody go about their life, and I’ll handle it.
There’s this West Texas thing in him, which is the—you know: Bad people are comin’ to town. Everybody go back to their house. I’ll take the burden on. Which, you know, may work in a Western town, but doesn’t work for a country that wants to be part of that conversation. “
Richard Clarke, chief White House counterterrorism adviser: : That night, on 9/11, Rumsfeld came over and the others, and the president finally got back, and we had a meeting. And Rumsfeld said, You know, we’ve got to do Iraq, and everyone looked at him—at least I looked at him and Powell looked at him—like, What the hell are you talking about? And he said—I’ll never forget this—There just aren’t enough targets in Afghanistan. We need to bomb something else to prove that we’re, you know, big and strong and not going to be pushed around by these kind of attacks.
And I made the point certainly that night, and I think Powell acknowledged it, that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. That didn’t seem to faze Rumsfeld in the least.
It shouldn’t have come as a surprise. It really didn’t, because from the first weeks of the administration they were talking about Iraq. I just found it a little disgusting that they were talking about it while the bodies were still burning in the Pentagon and at the World Trade Center.

Camping With The Afrikaaners

A departure from our scheduled Deep Discussion of Africa in general, to describe my weekend camping trip with a bunch of the Ghanzi district Afrikaaner crowd. [Some word-use clarifications at the end.] I'm going to warn you, (1) please don't judge, and (2) if you're extremely horrified by the very thought of hunting, please don't carry on.

I had planned on spending the weekend with F, possibly going horseback riding, then having a go at the Ghanzi nightlife (ha), when some friends of hers invited her to go camping for the night at one of their farms. Interested, I agreed to come as well. We loaded up her little car and drove to Ghanzi, then transferred our things to W's bakkie and drove off into the bush – in the end, 17 people showed up, but of those only two were willing to speak in English. Afrikaaners are a stubborn lot. F translated for me, but it felt aggravating and superfluous; every one of them could speak fluent or near-fluent English, but when they're all together you have to drag it out of them. I mean, far be it from me to demand that someone speak to me in English, but when F is spending time translating things that they could just as easily say to me in English, it makes fools of us all.

Anyhow. We turned off of the tar road just north of Ghanzi and trundled along the bumpy bush roads, passing through several gates before reaching the farm. I will never tire of charging through the bush in the back of a truck, metal bars scorching beneath my hands, wind whipping away the baking heat of the sun as I keep a sharp eye out for low-hanging acacias. Flipping my sunglasses on and off to look at things better. Catching the quick glimpses of hartebeest, kudu, springbok, duiker, as they dart away through the bushes. We drove through a thundershower and got soaked to the skin, and then turned down a narrower track where we disturbed a herd of about 40-50 wildebeest, lurching and awkward with their seasick lolloping gait, babies hurrying along beside their mothers. The few steinbok that had been grazing with them sprang off into the bush much more gracefully.

The campsite was at the edge of a big pan – empty but for the pump-fed pool in the middle, though sometimes it spans an area of about 2500 square meters. We threw down our mattresses and sleeping bags and started a fire. No tents, no bear-bags, no “leave-no-trace,” no silent contemplation of nature – just a big meaty braai and a bunch of farmers with guns. There was a remarkable variety of meat – from steak to ribs to boerewors (South African-style sausage... I suppose it means “Boer sausage”), to these strange little tidbits skewered on toothpicks, which I devoured before knowing what they were. Goat/sheep kidneys, wrapped in a strip of fat, as it turned out. They were, I must admit, delicious – although before they're cooked, they look incredibly disgusting. Possibly after they're cooked as well, but it was too dark to see. I'm concerned that I'm going to develop a taste for organ meats – unless you're desperate for vitamins, which I am not, I think they're quite bad for you. Oh well.

After dinner, someone hollered that we should go chasing spring-hares. (Click the link – it's not actually a hare, and it looks really strange.) A few of the guys had already planned on going off to hunt jackals, so in the end about half of the party eagerly piled into the back of a vehicle and roared off into the bush. “What do they mean, chasing spring hares?” I hissed to F, holding onto the side of the truck.

F, who is likely the only vegetarian in all of Ghanzi District, grimaced and replied, “Well, you'll see. We chase it down in the truck, and then someone jumps out and runs after it... Sometimes they kill it by beating it against the ground, but sometimes they let it go. I hope they let them go.” I hoped so too, especially since we'd just eaten the most enormous meal in the world, but let's face it – the wealthy Afrikaaners of Ghanzi District are not exactly subsistence hunters.

Soon enough we found one, bounding frantically along in front of the truck. Spring hares look like a sort of elongated, rat-like hare with a huge tail like a possum (they are often described as a cross between a kangaroo and a rabbit, but I think they're much more awkward-looking than either animal), and they can make good time on their huge, springy back legs – but they're not fast enough to beat a car. The first one was smart: when we stopped, it bounded away into the bush, and the young man who leapt out to chase it quickly turned back in defeat.

The second one was stupid. Panicked by the headlights, it ran into a little acacia bush and hid there, perhaps thinking it was invisible, but in fact pinned by the inexorable beam of a hand-held spotlight. Someone jumped out and snatched it out of the bush by its ears, then struggled for a moment or two to secure the legs. I was staring over the side, waiting with horrified fascination for the triumphant captor to beat the animal to death against the ground, but he just brought it over to the bakkie so that we could all look at it – eyes wide, legs kicking fruitlessly, bizarre tail thrashing in the air. One guy, sporting a moustache that would probably be illegal in America, and an equally illegal pair of short-shorts, bent over the side of the truck and bit a chunk off of the top of the spring hare's ear. He spat it out with great satisfaction. Laughing, the spring hare's captor tossed the poor creature back into the bush, climbed on the back of the truck, and we were off again.

Next stop: jackal hunting. I wasn't sure how we were going to find them – a jackal, after all, is a good bit smarter than a spring hare, and not as likely to be just running along the road. And it was very dark – no moon and a light cloud cover, so not even the stars provided any light. The night felt muffled, slightly humid. We drove to the middle of the empty pan, and stopped the truck. Everyone quieted down immediately, and I could hear the click of a tape deck starting up in the front. Then the most eerie moaning and wailing poured out of the cab, a piteous mewling and haunted cry of distress and longing. It was a jackal's distress call. First just one voice, then two and more blending together in an urgent disharmony that streamed out into the night air and across the pan, held in by the clouds, catching in the trees. I huddled against the side of the truck, everything dark, the two guys in front of me adjusting their hold on the guns they carried. A couple of girls in the back lit cigarettes and the cherries danced back and forth, occasionally illuminating dim glimpses of their faces. The smell of smoke billowed and dissipated, blending with the human smells in the back of the truck, the moist decaying odor of the pan, the scratchy dust-dry perfume of the bush with its lean acacias.

A moment of silence, and then a new sound began – less musical, less haunting. Grating to the ear, a high staccato of shrieks and bleats. Sheep dying or in pain, I was later informed. After the sheep noises there was another section of jackal calls, and then after about 15 minutes of this bizarre soundtrack, the tape cut off. The hunters stirred, quietly, and then someone in the front snapped on a spotlight and began carefully shining it in a slow circle around the bakkie, training it on the line of trees around the edge of the pan. One circuit, then another, with all eyes seeking the tell-tale green pinpricks of eyes, ethereal but unmistakable among the grey bush. Nothing. The spotlight clicked off and we all giggled a little, edgy.

The tape was rewound. Played again. Spotlight back on. This time they caught sight of a jackal, loping suspiciously along the edge of the trees. Perhaps it smelled us – perhaps it recognized the blocky unnatural shape of the bakkie waiting in the centre of the pan – but the call of the tape pulled it in, and it circled nervously, threading in and out of the trees. The hunters jumped down lightly and levelled their guns at its glowing green eyes, cocking their heads to peer through the scope and pin that sinister cross on the jackal's head. BANG! The report echoed across the pan, smoke puffed angrily and then blew away. The jackal trotted on. BANG! The second gun fired, but the jackal just looked at us, then turned and ran off into the bush. In the hollow, shocking silence left after the gunshot, I settled back into my seat on the truck bed and looked up at the hazy stars. The muffled whirring of the tapedeck started up, and soon after that, the agonized cries of the jackal.

We scanned with the spotlight about three more times, and spotted another jackal, but thankfully didn't manage to hit it. Some of the girls had already walked back to the campsite, so we stowed away the guns and trundled back over the uneven surface of the pan, back to the fire and the remaining coils of boerewors. A contrast indeed to the tracking and trapping skills of the bushmen (see entry “Hunting and Gathering”) - and a contrast indeed to my camping trips back at home in Canada! But all in all, good fun. Though too much Afrikaans.

...

Clarifications: a “bakkie” is basically any vehicle that has a front cab and a back section, roughly pick-up truck sized, or a bit bigger. A pick-up truck would qualify as a bakkie, but so would something with a completely enclosed back section, or a larger contraption with big metal bars built up around the back. Smaller than a lorry.

By “farm,” I do not mean agriculture. “Farm” usually refers to a property used for cattle and other livestock (but primarily cattle) – in Ghanzi district, farms are large, with artificial pans or water troughs, tangled bushveldt that the cows meander through alongside whatever wild game is living there. The farmers control the predators, and leave the herbivores. “Game farms” look essentially the same, except no cattle, lots of game. Occasionally a bit landscaped, for the fancier ones (areas of bush cleared for better viewing, more attractive pans, etc.)

I prefer not to go into lengthy and potentially embarrassing detail about my own and others' use of alcohol – but let's face it, a bunch of kids camping in the bush? Clearly there was alcohol involved.

Back From South Africa

So, I'm back in the office, having returned from a lovely time in South Africa. I'm told it's unusual to have a relaxing holiday there, but that's precisely what mine was... Good food, all the plans made by other people, beautiful surroundings, and no pressure to do anything at all. Sometimes you want the new-town-every-night, ultra-tourist expedition... And sometimes you just want to swim lazily in the river, drink too much wine, and spend hours cooking dinner.

South Africa is an interesting contrast to Botswana. Actually, South Africa is an interesting contrast to everywhere. It's unique. “If you could figure out the South African psyche,” a friend said wryly, as we sat on the porch looking out at the gorgeous cape mountains, “if you could untangle these fucked-up South African problems, you could figure out the rest of the world. Easy.” There's a part of me that's inclined to agree. I don't mean that in a wholly negative sense – South Africa was fascinating, and there's no arguing with the level of development it's achieved compared to the rest of Africa; there's no arguing with the election of Nelson Mandela; there's no arguing with the wine! But it's a tense, violent, deeply divided country. Another person I met, a documentary film-maker who just released a highly acclaimed film about an important South African humanitarian, said of visiting Botswana that it was, “Amazing. Familiar. So familiar, but without all of that underlying tension, the hatred. It was like South Africa if apartheid had never happened. Peaceful.”

Something people often say when you ask them about crime in Botswana is, “Oh, yes, there is crime. But it's not, like, you know – South African crime.” Meaning car hijacks, armed robbery, knifing, rape... Violence. Of course, I didn't see any of that. I stayed in a beautiful seaside mansion, went to beaches that reminded me of Southern California, enjoyed the luxuries of such things as malls, restaurants, and movie theaters, went wine-tasting... Etcetera. And that bleaker side of South Africa was completely hidden from view. The majority of the country was hidden from view, actually – visible only as ragged strips of slums along the highway, the kind of rough shacks that look healthy and friendly here in D'Kar, each on their own little dirt plot, attended by a few goats or chickens. Strung along the side of the highway in South Africa, though, crowded together so that the corrugated roofs touch each other and the thin sidings lean up against the thick wall separating that world from the world of smooth asphalt, fancy cars, airports – there, it looks worrying. Dangerous. It brings to mind the frequent riots, when people from those very slums would surge out of the walls and bracelet the highways with burning tyres, protesting against the sleek Mercedes and BMWs, the Jaguars and Porsches, as they gunned their way towards the airport. Peek through the cracks of picture-perfect white South Africa, and it seems like perhaps things are balancing on the edge of control.

That's a paranoid thought, perhaps. But at the moment, with the spectre of Zimbabwe, of Mugabe, hovering over all of Southern Africa – all of Africa, all of the world, I suppose – South Africans are hyper-conscious of how quickly their country could crumble away. I don't think it will. But there's something slightly disturbing about that thin veneer of the white kingdom that hovers over the country, a bubble it's so easy to stay in, to see your own face mirrored in the walls and ignore everything outside of it.

We stayed in a beautiful house in Hermanus, owned by a wealthy South African family – the father, a staunch patriarch, farmer, wine enthusiast, had turned out three sons exactly in his image, and then one daughter that broke the mold. Not only did she choose to become an artist, but – horror of horrors – she married a black man. They've been together over 10 years and have two lovely children, but her father is still not comfortable with their relationship, a fact that was hilariously evident during the holiday. Luckily they weren't forced to be near each other the whole time – the daughter had commandeered the house for herself and her friends, including the family I arrived with, and everyone was working in the arts in some way or another. Her parents only popped in a couple of times, for Christmas and for a leisurely boat trip on the river.

I spent hours and hours having conversations about Africa during the holiday, and I hope to organize some of those thoughts and write them down here over the next month or so. For now, however, I'm back in the office, embracing the unofficial extended holiday that is January. Hope you're doing well, and the updates should be flowing regularly again!