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.
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.
posted by Jenn at
12:41 PM
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