3 kitten photos / but is it moral to post them??

I'm not sure if the excessive posting of kitten photos reveals some kind of frantic desire for control on my part? Rather than photographing the world outside, I photograph my own little microcosm?

I suppose it is an issue of control in at least one sense; the control of an individual person over photographs of themselves. I mentioned in my dance festival post that it's a very touchy point just to photograph locals, much less use those photos in a public arena. Kittens, at least, don't mind if their photo is on the internet. Other people... well, that's a different story. I've only started to think seriously about this in the past year, as a result of being here in D'kar and learning just how big an issue it is to the people. There's a huge amount of suspicion and resentment towards tourists who show up, snap a bunch of photos, and leave without giving anything in return. There's an unreasonable paranoia that the tourists will use the photos for profit, which isn't usually the case, but sometimes true; and also a highly justifiable anger about being objectified as Traditional Tribal Zoo Animals. In a more general sense, however - do we have the right to own images of ourselves?

Back at home, people are running around TRYING to get strangers to photograph them - mugging for party photographers, street style bloggers, and so on - it seems that everyone wants a bite of reality TV fame. But those photos are (for the most part) taken and used with consent. In a foreign country, tourists often photograph the people around them, never asking for permission. Why? Awkwardness, timidity, fear of the foreign language, but also thoughtlessness and just plain old arrogance. Though the people photographed may never know what happens to their images afterwards, and it may never in a material sense affect them, do we have some abstract moral right over images of ourselves?

What if that image will be taken out of context? A man with a job at Komku, for example, who uses his email address to keep in touch with a friend in London, and likes reading the newspaper, may have his photo presented in a family slideshow or a church get-together back in America as a tribal savage of some kind. Look at the tiny ears! And those shoes, held together with duct tape... and the funny hair? Yeah, they were all like that... Or perhaps the photo will be used for profit, on a brochure to advertise tours of the area or as part of a photographer's portfolio. Should the individual be compensated? At the very least, should they be informed of the uses their photograph may go towards - should their permission be asked?

If we do have a moral right to control images of ourselves, is that right a modern, legal right - a product of this new age of information-obsession and copyright laws, in which an image may easily be reproduced a million times onto a million screens and make its owner rich? - or is it a product of a more age-old instinct, that to take someone's photo is to take their soul, to gain power over a part of them?

I don't really have an answer for this, and I have to get back to banging out spreadsheets for the Huiku study tour, but that question is part of the reason (along with my own neurotic craving for control over some part of my life, I'm sure) that I post photos of kittens rather than photos of other people. Kittens don't care, nor do they - as far as my reasoning and ethics go, anyhow - have any moral right over images of themselves.

... or do they? Just kidding ...

squeak squeak

There are bats living in the air vent in the ceiling, and I can hear them squeaking all day long. I thought that bats slept during the day, but apparently not... Either that, or they're having one hell of a recurring nightmare, because they are echo-locating like crazy up there in the ceiling. It doesn't sound so much like a bird's twitter as it does like a very high-pitched version of the sound of a squeegee being pulled across a wet car window. Almost like the high-pitched bleep/chrrr of a modem dialing. (I guess most of you haven't heard that in awhile...) More artificial than organic, anyhow.

Funny creatures. I love bats. I wonder how many of them are living up there, and what species they are - few people suspect how many different bat species there are . They're one of the most diversified and successful orders of mammal around, second only to rodents. Order Rodentia has about 2000 species; Order Chiroptera, the bats, has 1000. Third place is Insectivora at about 450.

walking

It's more than likely that some of you are getting sick of these kitten updates... In which case, skip!

They're beginning to make their shaky way out of the closet; they haven't quite figured out how to walk yet, which results in this funny giant-stepping gait, wherein they put their front paws forward as far as they can and then shakily stretch forward, pull one back leg up in a elastic lunge, leaving the last leg stretched so far behind them that their bellies are almost on the floor. Then, still shaking from side to side, they pull the back leg up to meet the rest. Rinse, repeat.

They're rapidly improving, however, and soon they'll be rampaging all over the house, hiding in the cupboard and sleeping on top of the spaghetti like the last litter did.

I've worked the last two weekends and it looks like I'm going to be working the next four. Argh. It never rains but it pours. (Speaking of, I think it's going to pour tonight... hurrah!)

The Police Station

Sometimes, I think about a VISA commercial I once saw. In it, a bumbling and helpless white foreigner in safari gear is lost in the jungle. He runs into some half-naked Real African Tribespeople who dance around him speaking gibberish, and drag him off to a dingy office with peeling paint, vegetation creeping in the window, and some grim-looking fellows sitting at the desk. Everyone looks hostile or crazy; the hapless foreigner looks worried. Then he tentatively says, "Visa?" and everyone erupts into a joyful dance of welcome and recognition.

My first problem with this commercial is that it doesn't work like that; my experience has been that, mostly, if you wind up lost in a foreign country and try to use your credit card, it will be turned down because the extra-sensitive security checkers think that your card has been stolen. This happens even if you called the company ahead of time and let them know where you'd be; somehow, remote African countries make them nervous. Use of your card in a suspicious location results in a hold on the card, which isn't removed until you speak to the company on the phone, which is of course extremely difficult when you're in the proverbial dingy office surrounded by half-naked Real African Tribespeople. (In case you couldn't guess from the sarcastic name, my other problem with the commercial is demeaning racial stereotypes...)

My other problem, which isn't really a problem, is that I've come to realize that scenes like the dingy police office exist in my life all the time, and I simply don't notice how strange they must seem to foreign eyes. I went to the police station in Ghanzi recently, to have some papers certified for my residence permit renewal. If you were to see it in a movie, there would be a slight sepia tint to it, either dry silence or cheesy Western music playing - everything bleached a bit by the harsh sunlight coming in. The paint is peeling, the faded blue-and-white Botswana colours covering everything but flaking away to reveal plywood, plaster, older layers of paint. Cracked linoleum covers the floor, so ancient that I mistook it for raw cement in some places. There are some stained, ancient cabinets, and an equally ancient counter that has been burnished deep shiny brown from use, deeply pitted and scarred on every square inch of it. An air-con unit which doesn't work is crammed into a gutted windowframe, and a dusty assortment of wires and cables spill from the same hole, tangling as they fall to the floor. Some haphazard clips attach a few wires to the wall - some of them end in bare split ends, no connection. There is a clock on the wall, still ticking but so faded that you can barely read the numbers on the warped paper backing. A black bobby cap hangs on a wooden hook next to a paint-peeling blue door.

Yet it all seems normal to me. The inhabitants of this office are all familiar players, though they too are strange: the short, stubby policeman in his strangely old-fashioned uniform, worn but impeccably clean, sitting in his chair. The younger assistant, wearing a strange assortment of presumably fashionable clothes, shirt untucked, smooth handsome face lighting up when he sees the white girl enter the office. The female police officer who was wearing the black bobby cap can be glimpsed through the half-open door - I recognize her, I think she is the Grootlaagte police officer - her hair is about an inch long, a perfectly regular combed-out Afro, and she stands in an assertive stance with her legs braced as far apart as her knee-length uniform skirt will allow. I wonder if she's arguing with someone. Sitting against the wall with me are an assortment of civilians seeking various services: a short, fat, drunk woman with filthy clothing and no shoes, gazing rebelliously at everyone through bloodshot eyes; a stick-thin and grizzled old man with a tattered blue coverall on, who sits so straight and looks out so calmly that he carries an air of perfect elegance, despite the holes in his canvas hat and shoes; a blustery middle-aged Afrikaaner with the requisite short-shorts and hiking boots, waving his papers in somebody's face. They all seem very ordinary to me. I have seen these characters each one hundred times.

It must seem like an outpost, I suppose - not just to people from the West, but also to the city slickers from Gaborone. Every time I go to Gaborone and tell someone I live in Ghanzi, they draw back with mingled disgust and disbelief. Can a somewhat well-dressed white American girl really be living in Ghanzi? It's true, and it's the city that seems strange to me now, that makes me uncomfortable. The shiny immigration office in Gabs, in its many-storied office building with air-con that works and a reception office with a huge modern desk was nerve-wracking. I bluffed with bush bravado.

I adjust quickly, of course. A few weeks in the city and I'm sure I'd be back in the swing of it. But for now, the outpost is my ordinary.

Halloween in the southern hemisphere

Just a quick Halloween post. Despite being in 35 degree heat, and a country that has never heard of Halloween, we managed to cobble together a very respectable Halloween party. Costumes! Trick-or-treating candy! A seance! Two jack'o lanterns, carved by yours truly! If Kimchi were still around, we would have had a black cat as well.


I remember that when I was about seven years old, and my family was living in Australia (another country that doesn't celebrate Halloween), I convinced my neighbourhood friends that we should go trick-or-treating. "What are your Halloween costumes?" I asked them. "Huh? Halloween?" was their innocent response.

I promptly decided that these foolish children simply had uncool parents and had spent years being deprived of the free candy that was waiting for them . The idea that there was no Halloween in Australia never occurred to me. "It's simple," I explained. "You dress up in a funny costume, and go door-to-door saying 'trick or treat.' Then people will give you candy." My friends couldn't believe they'd been missing out on the gravy train all this time, and threw on whatever assortment of sheets, masks, etc, that they had lying around. We set out down the street.

Needless to say, we were met by a series of extremely confused neighbours, and I lost a lot of credibility with the other kids. Now I'm somewhat more grown-up, and therefore I can buy my own candy and pumpkins, and materialize my very own Halloween, no matter what the country.

Costume: Frida Kahlo, in case you couldn't tell. Should've had a paintbrush. I did have a bottle of tequila, which is unfortunately not pictured. (All for the sake of the costume, folks. All for the sake of the costume.)