After our little fiasco with Ethiopian Airlines, we were very happy to actually arrive in South Africa, and spent our first afternoon enjoying the beautiful air of Cape Town (and the 20 degree F difference between the temperature there and in Accra). Before dinner, we were picked up by our SERVAS hosts, Penny (human) and Cadeau (dog). As it's turned out, this has been a jack-pot, so to speak, of SERVAS experiences: Penny is warm, generous, thoughtful, interesting, and fun. From the two nights we were planning to stay with her, she opened her house up for five, which among other advantages allowed us to rest up, do some reading, and get some of the musty smell out of our clothes, which have finally been taken out of our backpacks. She cooked lovely dinners served with lovely wine, facilitated our touristing, and included us in her outings. And on top of that, Cadeau is ridiculously cute.
We've gotten to do a few hikes in our days here on the Cape. Penny has two hiking groups, one on Sundays and one on Tuesdays, which we've joined for loping walks through a rich forest and a sea-view scrub-covered hill. On both hikes, it was a pleasure to talk to her hiking companions, one of whom in particular stood out for having been the personal chaplain to Desmond Tutu for 20 years. In between the two group hikes, we went up Table Mountain on our own. It was a steep climb, so much so that at times it was dizzying to look out to the city and bay below; more strikingly, though, the climb was breathtakingly beautiful. There was a certain kind of unapologetically pink wildflower growing all over the lower 3/4 of the mountain, which was so exuberant in its pinkness-- here a sea of it, there a few defiant survivors growing out of rock-- that it made me giggle and gasp with every blink of my eyes. The trail up was somewhat crowded, as trails go, with twentysomethings by far the dominant demographic. The top of the mountain, though, where the cable car lets out, was a different story. There was a church group there of at least 300 people-- it seemed to be a convention of churches from all over southern Africa. Everyone was exquisitely dressed, the men in full suits and hats, the women in billowing, daisy-bright skirts and blouses, with matching hats and high heels. Although there were non-church tourists up there too, they were completely subsumed by the wave of church ladies. They were really a sight equal to the views of Cape Town spreading to the sea below.
We got another immersion in the flora of the Cape (a unique biome, called the fynbos, which is 80% endemic species) at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens, a sprawling, sloping park with winding paths and open lawns, all replete with plants. There were also some goofy looking guinea fowl walking around, posing for photographs just like the squirrels in Harvard Yard; we saw a couple mongoose, too, playing a spastic hide-and-seek in the brush. The most prevalent species, though, was the Cape Town Hipster, a distinctive form of Homo sapien that came oozing into the park for a free concert as we, in our rather un-hip hiking clothes (see photo of Erik entitled "Cool Cat") were heading out.
Our most exciting species-spotting, although it certainly did not require any wilderness skills, was of the penguins that live just outside of Cape Town. They are African penguins, about 18 inches tall and pleasantly round; when they want to lie down, they simply tip forward and land on their stomachs, looking like one of those toys with the round base that will lean from side to side but never fall. We saw the penguins at the beginning of their molting period, during which they don't eat, so they were not playing in the water, but standing on the rocks or sand, their heads angled up toward the sun. Some were digging nests, which involved lying on their bellies in the sand and using their feet like rotorooters to gouge out a hole, sand flying out behind them. We've seen too many ads for "Happy Feet" lately, and were slightly expecting the penguins to jump into a song and dance routine, but even without that, they were pretty wonderful to watch.
On our last night in Cape Town, we went out with Penny to an African restaurant on a touristy street downtown. It felt a bit strange, especially after eating African food without much pomp regularly in Ghana, to be at a place claiming some kind of authenticity and attracting, of course, only non-Africans (more on that theme in the next entry). But despite that, it was a fun atmosphere, and the game meats that are their specialty were very tasty. We felt sad to be saying goodbye to Penny, who has made us feel nothing but at home for all the time we've invaded her house, but also happy to have had such a warm start to South Africa.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Monday, November 27, 2006
Bookends: Leaving Ghana
As we left the beach at Kokrobite to spend our final days in Accra, little did we expect that the end of our time in Ghana would prove similar to the beginning (or at least the coming and going parts). Our first afternoon in Accra we checked into the Date hotel, recommended by the travel guide as the best budget hotel option in the city. While it wasn't too unpleasant, all we can say for Lonely Planet's sake is that we hope the competition in this category is extremely weak. At lunch we tried pepper soup, checking off another traditional dish (one that we'd been reading about in Ben Okri's The Famished Road) from our list, and then checked internet at Busy Internet, a huge, slick internet cafe that I think claimed to be the largest in Africa.
That evening we had our first Servas (the world peace hosting organization that we signed up but had so far been unsuccessful in contacting people) interaction, meeting up with Lionel and Dolly, an early-30s middle class couple. They picked us up at our hotel and bought us dinner at Papaye, a popular chicken restaurant in the Osu neighborhood (Accra's high end neighborhood, but which still has a lot of elements, like street vendors, which make the claim that it's just like London's Oxford Street seem a little exaggerated). It was great to talk with them, and we were the first Servas people they had interacted with as well, and we hope that it was a good start in Servas for both parties!
The next day we went to the museum, which had a variety of traditional cultural artifacts (including a necklace of human teeth from the Congo) on display. The most interesting parts for us were the exhibits on the slave trade. One followed the slave trading ship Fredensborg on its triangular route from Denmark to Ghana to the Carribbean and back towards Denmark, where it sank and was discovered in the 1970s. The evidence of the ship's records and daily life that was retrieved from the ocean floor made for a compelling and harrowing story. While Denmark was first nation to outlaw slavery (in 1792?), they had transported tens of thousands in the years leading up to then.
That afternoon, we met Henrietta, our first actual host with Servas, who picked us up at our hotel and took us to a business networking event at the British High Commission (Embassy, in American-speak) where she works. We drank a beer in the social room at the junior officers' residence area, and listened to an update from the High Commissioner (ambassador) on Ghana's upcoming 5oth anniversary, China's involvement in Africa, and the events in Cote D'Ivoire (which he asked the audience not to view as a positive long-term development, despite the fact that so many businesses are currently relocating from Cote D'Ivoire to Ghana). We then listened to speakers from the Ghana Stock Exchange and someone from the Commission on corporate social responsibility, while the audience reacted in a stereotypically boorish and rude manner. Afterwards we learned about some of the extreme and blatant discrimination that occurs in the High Commission office itself, some of the examples being that Ghanaian employees are payed something like 1/6 of British employees, and Ghanaians are not guaranteed parking spaces. After the event we drove to Henrietta and her husband Kojo's home over unpaved roads with huge craters.
The next day was Thanksgiving. Kojo, who works in marketing for billboards, took us with him to a meeting with the Jaguar car dealership, and then for a quick tour of the Coca-Cola bottling plant where his cousin works before we meet up with John from Sogakope and went to collect the dress and shirt we'd had made with local fabric. Our lunchtime meal on Thanksgiving consisted of pizza and beer at a gas station rest stop area. When we returned to Kojo and Henrietta's home, a friend of theirs took us to an internet cafe, where we used the Skype program (calling through the computer) for the first time. It seemed like it took a long time for us to find the internet cafe, and shortly after we did, the power went out. We perservered, and although the power went out again we were happy to hear our family's voices (and sad we couldn't be sharing the holiday with them!). When we returned home late, Henrietta made us banku and tilapia, the same as our very first meal in Ghana.
The banku was the first thing that made us think of a bookend, since we assumed it was our last meal in Ghana. Unfortunately, the more significant bookend was our trouble leaving Ghana, just as we'd had difficulty obtaining the visa to arrive. When we went to the airport the next morning, they told us that they don't do electronic tickets. We're unsure where our paper tickets are and what happened on the travel agency's end, but long story short we were able to rebook, should get a refund on the unused tickets, and actually ended up getting to Cape Town both earlier and with less time waiting around in the airport. So, like with the visa, what was at first a very frustrating experience worked out ok, and taught us a little more patience and flexibility. The rest of that afternoon we ate lunch with John, who was nice enough to stay with us while we rebooked, then went to an internet cafe and hung out in the same chain restaurant we'd eaten lunch at yesterday, and actually finished a crossword puzzle together. Returning to the airport that night, 12 hours after we were first there, we were glad to finally be getting on the plane but also very glad for the time we did spend in Ghana.
That evening we had our first Servas (the world peace hosting organization that we signed up but had so far been unsuccessful in contacting people) interaction, meeting up with Lionel and Dolly, an early-30s middle class couple. They picked us up at our hotel and bought us dinner at Papaye, a popular chicken restaurant in the Osu neighborhood (Accra's high end neighborhood, but which still has a lot of elements, like street vendors, which make the claim that it's just like London's Oxford Street seem a little exaggerated). It was great to talk with them, and we were the first Servas people they had interacted with as well, and we hope that it was a good start in Servas for both parties!
The next day we went to the museum, which had a variety of traditional cultural artifacts (including a necklace of human teeth from the Congo) on display. The most interesting parts for us were the exhibits on the slave trade. One followed the slave trading ship Fredensborg on its triangular route from Denmark to Ghana to the Carribbean and back towards Denmark, where it sank and was discovered in the 1970s. The evidence of the ship's records and daily life that was retrieved from the ocean floor made for a compelling and harrowing story. While Denmark was first nation to outlaw slavery (in 1792?), they had transported tens of thousands in the years leading up to then.
That afternoon, we met Henrietta, our first actual host with Servas, who picked us up at our hotel and took us to a business networking event at the British High Commission (Embassy, in American-speak) where she works. We drank a beer in the social room at the junior officers' residence area, and listened to an update from the High Commissioner (ambassador) on Ghana's upcoming 5oth anniversary, China's involvement in Africa, and the events in Cote D'Ivoire (which he asked the audience not to view as a positive long-term development, despite the fact that so many businesses are currently relocating from Cote D'Ivoire to Ghana). We then listened to speakers from the Ghana Stock Exchange and someone from the Commission on corporate social responsibility, while the audience reacted in a stereotypically boorish and rude manner. Afterwards we learned about some of the extreme and blatant discrimination that occurs in the High Commission office itself, some of the examples being that Ghanaian employees are payed something like 1/6 of British employees, and Ghanaians are not guaranteed parking spaces. After the event we drove to Henrietta and her husband Kojo's home over unpaved roads with huge craters.
The next day was Thanksgiving. Kojo, who works in marketing for billboards, took us with him to a meeting with the Jaguar car dealership, and then for a quick tour of the Coca-Cola bottling plant where his cousin works before we meet up with John from Sogakope and went to collect the dress and shirt we'd had made with local fabric. Our lunchtime meal on Thanksgiving consisted of pizza and beer at a gas station rest stop area. When we returned to Kojo and Henrietta's home, a friend of theirs took us to an internet cafe, where we used the Skype program (calling through the computer) for the first time. It seemed like it took a long time for us to find the internet cafe, and shortly after we did, the power went out. We perservered, and although the power went out again we were happy to hear our family's voices (and sad we couldn't be sharing the holiday with them!). When we returned home late, Henrietta made us banku and tilapia, the same as our very first meal in Ghana.
The banku was the first thing that made us think of a bookend, since we assumed it was our last meal in Ghana. Unfortunately, the more significant bookend was our trouble leaving Ghana, just as we'd had difficulty obtaining the visa to arrive. When we went to the airport the next morning, they told us that they don't do electronic tickets. We're unsure where our paper tickets are and what happened on the travel agency's end, but long story short we were able to rebook, should get a refund on the unused tickets, and actually ended up getting to Cape Town both earlier and with less time waiting around in the airport. So, like with the visa, what was at first a very frustrating experience worked out ok, and taught us a little more patience and flexibility. The rest of that afternoon we ate lunch with John, who was nice enough to stay with us while we rebooked, then went to an internet cafe and hung out in the same chain restaurant we'd eaten lunch at yesterday, and actually finished a crossword puzzle together. Returning to the airport that night, 12 hours after we were first there, we were glad to finally be getting on the plane but also very glad for the time we did spend in Ghana.
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Touring Along Ghana's Coast
One of our constant companions in the time spent in the Ghanaian Embassy in Cairo was a large, techincolor-quality poster of Elmina Castle, advertizing it as the oldest European building in Sub-Saharan Africa. Built by the Portuguese in 1482, it was taken over by the Dutch 150 years later, and used by them until the British got it in the late 1800s. But of course, like other castles along the West African coastline, this served only secondarily as a domain for European royalty. Primarily, it was a fortress for holding captured people until they could be loaded onto ships as slaves.
From the first sight of the fort from the road, it was overwhelming, disturbing, and nauseatingly spooky to think that, in a physical sense, the Middle Passage started here. Following a guide through the rooms as he spoke about their uses only increased that feeling. There were the male and female dungeons, and the deeper dungeon that he called "the room of no return," from which the loading of the captives into the underbellies of the ships actually took place. (The ocean no longer reaches up to the door, but it used to; indeed, the dungeons were designed to increase the terror of the captives, most of whom were from the interior and had never seen or heard of the ocean before, by surrounding them with the thunderous sound of the waves crashing against the outer walls). He also showed us the cell where drunken or disorderly Dutch soldiers would be locked for the night, complete with two windows to circulate air. By contrast, the cell next door, for Africans who challenged the slave traders, was airless. Men and women were locked in there to starve to death for their crime of resistance, and the bodies were only removed after the last one had died. One of the sicker elements of the castle was that the governor's rooms, a series of spacious chambers on the upper floor, had courtyard balconies and windows looking directly down over the entrances to the dungeons. You could almost imagine him sipping Medeira and smoking a pipe, looking with satisfaction over the cargo that would bring in his next payload.
The town of Elmina itself was a bustling sensory experience. Although the castle is one of the biggest attractions in Ghana, the tourist industry has scarcely registered on the consciousness of the town as a whole (not a bad thing, to be sure), and it still has the feeling of a vibrant small fishing and trade town. Brightly-painted wooden boats moved regularly between beach and ocean, sometimes passing the narrow inlet that divides one side of town from the other to deliver their catch to the market area. The market itself looked from above like a bed of zinnias-- a densely packed, stunningly colorful mass of what turned out to be people, energetically engaged in buying and selling small silver fish. Elsewhere, women carried aluminum basins, 3 feet in diameter and brimming with fish, on top of their heads, never registering any disturbance to their balance in the busy streets. The scene heading away from the castle and market, along a beach lined with fishing shacks and dominated by laughing children playing in the water, looked idyllic viewed from the castle. As we actually walked it, though, it was a bit depressing: trash and animal (and human?) waste lined the area where the children played, and was home to several nasty vultures digging through the fish corpses; sewage water tricked steadily to the ocean from the clustered tin-roofed shacks; and larger groups of men sat around by the boats, chatting while the women minded children and food stands.
The next day we had quite a different activity, taking a tro tro (public transportation van) out to a small patch of tropical rainforest 30 kilometers inland, Kakum National Park. The main attraction of the park is a canopy walkway, a series of seven bridges with metal ladders covered with plywood as their base and thick netting as their sides, suspended 90 feet above the ground between viewing platforms attached to massive trees. The hundreds of Ghanaian school children visiting the park the same time we were prevented it from being a meditative nature experience, and we didn't see any of the monkeys, elephants, or 600 species of butterfly that live in the park, but walking through the canopy between the trees was an awesome feeling all on its own. As I'm usually afraid of heights, I was careful to follow the rule about not looking down at first, but as I went on I got bolder, and more curious-- the coolness of the view down and across the canopy was worthwhile, but in the end I couldn't try it more than once. After the canopies, we took a short guided walk through the rainforest to learn about trees and other plants. It was cool, except for two unfortunate occasions of stepping into groups of hyper-aggressive biting ants, who managed to get themselves into our shoes before we'd even seen them on the ground. Some also made their way into my pants (I think my first time actually ever experiencing ants in the pants), where they showed their intention to bite all over, so I had to pull them down and have Erik pick the ants off my legs. Luckily, the hundreds of school children were not on the walk to see that.
Throughout this time, since Kumasi, we'd been traveling and hanging out with a great guy we met there, Marcus, an English free-lance journalist who had been in the Niger Delta working on a story about the conflicts there. He had spent three years in Mexico City previously, so it was very easy to form an initial connection over travel and beer, and as the three of us continued to take meals and visit tourist places (and eternally not-working internet cafes) together for close to a week, we logged a great variety of conversation-hours. We were all hankering for the beach, so the day after visiting Kakum we headed to Kokrobite, a fishing village/rastafarian enclave/ex-pat hang out just outside Accra.
We arrived just in time for Saturday night, a raucous, young-white-kid filled, music-pounding evening that might have been fun, had we not been exhausted. As there were no rooms left, we were staying in the loft, an open (but mosquito-netted) area directly behind the band and next to the bar-- which for that night meant that though we could go to bed early, we certainly couldn't fall asleep until late. In addition, though, the whole scene of the evening felt strange and sort of icky-- my impression of the crowd was that they saw Ghana as a cool backdrop for a party, and Ghanaians as interesting props within that, and that was about it. I have no doubt that my judgement was overbroad and unfair, but at the same time, there was something that just didn't feel right about it all. Happily, though, the big groups that had been there for the weekend took off Sunday afternoon, and Big Milly's turned into a relaxed beachside hangout. The only non-beach or food related activity we did in Kokrobite was go to a drumming, dance, and acrobatics show at the Academy of African Music and , a three-hour immersion in sound and movement that was tiring to watch, nevermind to actually perform. One of the astounding things to witness was the way the percussionists communicated as they played, engineering major changes in rhythm through subtle individual shifts. Otherwise, in addition to Marcus, we really enjoyed talking with an American couple who were traveling a bit in Ghana from Mali, where they have been living and starting a public health NGO. (The woman, who was one of the founders, was still in college-- we were very impressed). We also had conversations with some young people who are in Ghana as volunteers in orphanages. Talking with all of these smart, observant people-- like our earlier conversations with John in Sogakope-- was both heartening and disheartening, the former because of their energy and insights, but the latter because of all the destructive or unhopeful aspects of government and society that they face as obstacles to the change they are trying to bring around.
In this special week, we've had our share of longings for turkey with all the fixings and copious amounts of pie. But more than anything, we've been feeling great thanks for both this opportunity to travel and, especially, for the friends and family we are surrounded by, even so far away. We'll be thinking of you Thursday-- and hope you'll eat an extra piece of pie for us. Happy Thanksgiving.
From the first sight of the fort from the road, it was overwhelming, disturbing, and nauseatingly spooky to think that, in a physical sense, the Middle Passage started here. Following a guide through the rooms as he spoke about their uses only increased that feeling. There were the male and female dungeons, and the deeper dungeon that he called "the room of no return," from which the loading of the captives into the underbellies of the ships actually took place. (The ocean no longer reaches up to the door, but it used to; indeed, the dungeons were designed to increase the terror of the captives, most of whom were from the interior and had never seen or heard of the ocean before, by surrounding them with the thunderous sound of the waves crashing against the outer walls). He also showed us the cell where drunken or disorderly Dutch soldiers would be locked for the night, complete with two windows to circulate air. By contrast, the cell next door, for Africans who challenged the slave traders, was airless. Men and women were locked in there to starve to death for their crime of resistance, and the bodies were only removed after the last one had died. One of the sicker elements of the castle was that the governor's rooms, a series of spacious chambers on the upper floor, had courtyard balconies and windows looking directly down over the entrances to the dungeons. You could almost imagine him sipping Medeira and smoking a pipe, looking with satisfaction over the cargo that would bring in his next payload.
The town of Elmina itself was a bustling sensory experience. Although the castle is one of the biggest attractions in Ghana, the tourist industry has scarcely registered on the consciousness of the town as a whole (not a bad thing, to be sure), and it still has the feeling of a vibrant small fishing and trade town. Brightly-painted wooden boats moved regularly between beach and ocean, sometimes passing the narrow inlet that divides one side of town from the other to deliver their catch to the market area. The market itself looked from above like a bed of zinnias-- a densely packed, stunningly colorful mass of what turned out to be people, energetically engaged in buying and selling small silver fish. Elsewhere, women carried aluminum basins, 3 feet in diameter and brimming with fish, on top of their heads, never registering any disturbance to their balance in the busy streets. The scene heading away from the castle and market, along a beach lined with fishing shacks and dominated by laughing children playing in the water, looked idyllic viewed from the castle. As we actually walked it, though, it was a bit depressing: trash and animal (and human?) waste lined the area where the children played, and was home to several nasty vultures digging through the fish corpses; sewage water tricked steadily to the ocean from the clustered tin-roofed shacks; and larger groups of men sat around by the boats, chatting while the women minded children and food stands.
The next day we had quite a different activity, taking a tro tro (public transportation van) out to a small patch of tropical rainforest 30 kilometers inland, Kakum National Park. The main attraction of the park is a canopy walkway, a series of seven bridges with metal ladders covered with plywood as their base and thick netting as their sides, suspended 90 feet above the ground between viewing platforms attached to massive trees. The hundreds of Ghanaian school children visiting the park the same time we were prevented it from being a meditative nature experience, and we didn't see any of the monkeys, elephants, or 600 species of butterfly that live in the park, but walking through the canopy between the trees was an awesome feeling all on its own. As I'm usually afraid of heights, I was careful to follow the rule about not looking down at first, but as I went on I got bolder, and more curious-- the coolness of the view down and across the canopy was worthwhile, but in the end I couldn't try it more than once. After the canopies, we took a short guided walk through the rainforest to learn about trees and other plants. It was cool, except for two unfortunate occasions of stepping into groups of hyper-aggressive biting ants, who managed to get themselves into our shoes before we'd even seen them on the ground. Some also made their way into my pants (I think my first time actually ever experiencing ants in the pants), where they showed their intention to bite all over, so I had to pull them down and have Erik pick the ants off my legs. Luckily, the hundreds of school children were not on the walk to see that.
Throughout this time, since Kumasi, we'd been traveling and hanging out with a great guy we met there, Marcus, an English free-lance journalist who had been in the Niger Delta working on a story about the conflicts there. He had spent three years in Mexico City previously, so it was very easy to form an initial connection over travel and beer, and as the three of us continued to take meals and visit tourist places (and eternally not-working internet cafes) together for close to a week, we logged a great variety of conversation-hours. We were all hankering for the beach, so the day after visiting Kakum we headed to Kokrobite, a fishing village/rastafarian enclave/ex-pat hang out just outside Accra.
We arrived just in time for Saturday night, a raucous, young-white-kid filled, music-pounding evening that might have been fun, had we not been exhausted. As there were no rooms left, we were staying in the loft, an open (but mosquito-netted) area directly behind the band and next to the bar-- which for that night meant that though we could go to bed early, we certainly couldn't fall asleep until late. In addition, though, the whole scene of the evening felt strange and sort of icky-- my impression of the crowd was that they saw Ghana as a cool backdrop for a party, and Ghanaians as interesting props within that, and that was about it. I have no doubt that my judgement was overbroad and unfair, but at the same time, there was something that just didn't feel right about it all. Happily, though, the big groups that had been there for the weekend took off Sunday afternoon, and Big Milly's turned into a relaxed beachside hangout. The only non-beach or food related activity we did in Kokrobite was go to a drumming, dance, and acrobatics show at the Academy of African Music and , a three-hour immersion in sound and movement that was tiring to watch, nevermind to actually perform. One of the astounding things to witness was the way the percussionists communicated as they played, engineering major changes in rhythm through subtle individual shifts. Otherwise, in addition to Marcus, we really enjoyed talking with an American couple who were traveling a bit in Ghana from Mali, where they have been living and starting a public health NGO. (The woman, who was one of the founders, was still in college-- we were very impressed). We also had conversations with some young people who are in Ghana as volunteers in orphanages. Talking with all of these smart, observant people-- like our earlier conversations with John in Sogakope-- was both heartening and disheartening, the former because of their energy and insights, but the latter because of all the destructive or unhopeful aspects of government and society that they face as obstacles to the change they are trying to bring around.
In this special week, we've had our share of longings for turkey with all the fixings and copious amounts of pie. But more than anything, we've been feeling great thanks for both this opportunity to travel and, especially, for the friends and family we are surrounded by, even so far away. We'll be thinking of you Thursday-- and hope you'll eat an extra piece of pie for us. Happy Thanksgiving.
Ashanti Culture in Kumasi
After John accompanied us to the chaotic bus station in Accra, we were "on our own" for the first time in Ghana, en route to Kumasi, Ghana's cultural capital and second-largest city. On the bus ride, we half-watched a couple of low quality, soap opera-like Nigerian movies. The basic storyline was the the woman being unfaithful/evil and being verbally and physically abused by the man. We talked with the person sitting next to us during the ride, who then before he got off asked other people on the bus to help us find a cab at our stop. Many people in Ghana have been really friendly and helpful in situations like this or even just asking directions, and unlike other places there's mostly not the undercurrent that some sort of "tip" is expected for such help.
In Kumasi we stayed at the Presbyterian Church guest house, a big, rambling building with a large grassy courtyard and balcolny. Feeling too tired to venture out, we settled for a meal of Guiness Malta, a non-alcoholic drink advertised as a health drink and tasting like Raisin Brain. The next morning, after an egg, bread and tea breakfast at a street stand we headed to the Ashanti Cultural Center. The Ashanti were one of the dominant groups in Ghana before being defeated by the British at the end of the 19th century (more on that later). The main attraction of the Cultural Center was seeing artisans at work making batiks, weaving kente cloth (the ceremonial, incredibly beautiful garment of the Ashantis, the pattern is often a patchwork), and wood carving, among others. Next we toured Manhyia Palace, which was built as the dwelling for the Ashanti king by the British in an attempted apology after they burned and looted the previous palace in 1896. At that time, they sent the Ashanti king Prempeh I into exile, first at Elmina Castle in Ghana and then in Sierra Leone, but his followers continued to make the trip on foot to visit the king so he was then sent to the Seychelles Islands (near Mauritius). The palace itself was an interesting collection of objects blending traditional and modern culture: Prempeh I was the first literate Ashanti king so his small bookshelf (containing multiple books on golf) is displayed, as well as Prempeh II's 1950s television, the first set in Ghana.
The Ashantis have a very different take on women than the Egyptians. The Ashanti king is chosen by the Queen mother, who is either the mother or sister of the current king. When the British were threating the Ashantis, it was the Queen mother who led the resistance. Interestingly, our tour guide repeated the phrase we'd heard earlier in the Nigerian movie from the bus as one of the reasons for the king being: "only a mother knows her child," meaning that lineage can only be certain from the mother, not the father.
We also quickly burrowed our way through the gigantic market in the middle of Kumasi, West Africa's largest. Rachel compared it to the chaos of Cairo traffic with the maze-like subterranean passages of Harvard's Widener Library. There was a Ghana-Australia soccer game televised, which the tourist office had mistakenly told us started at 2pm, so instead of watching the game we spent 4 hours at an incredibly slow internet cafe located on above a Shell station convenience mart. When we did go to an Indian restaurant to watch the game that night, we ended up talking with our new friend Marcus, who we've been traveling with since then.
In Kumasi we stayed at the Presbyterian Church guest house, a big, rambling building with a large grassy courtyard and balcolny. Feeling too tired to venture out, we settled for a meal of Guiness Malta, a non-alcoholic drink advertised as a health drink and tasting like Raisin Brain. The next morning, after an egg, bread and tea breakfast at a street stand we headed to the Ashanti Cultural Center. The Ashanti were one of the dominant groups in Ghana before being defeated by the British at the end of the 19th century (more on that later). The main attraction of the Cultural Center was seeing artisans at work making batiks, weaving kente cloth (the ceremonial, incredibly beautiful garment of the Ashantis, the pattern is often a patchwork), and wood carving, among others. Next we toured Manhyia Palace, which was built as the dwelling for the Ashanti king by the British in an attempted apology after they burned and looted the previous palace in 1896. At that time, they sent the Ashanti king Prempeh I into exile, first at Elmina Castle in Ghana and then in Sierra Leone, but his followers continued to make the trip on foot to visit the king so he was then sent to the Seychelles Islands (near Mauritius). The palace itself was an interesting collection of objects blending traditional and modern culture: Prempeh I was the first literate Ashanti king so his small bookshelf (containing multiple books on golf) is displayed, as well as Prempeh II's 1950s television, the first set in Ghana.
The Ashantis have a very different take on women than the Egyptians. The Ashanti king is chosen by the Queen mother, who is either the mother or sister of the current king. When the British were threating the Ashantis, it was the Queen mother who led the resistance. Interestingly, our tour guide repeated the phrase we'd heard earlier in the Nigerian movie from the bus as one of the reasons for the king being: "only a mother knows her child," meaning that lineage can only be certain from the mother, not the father.
We also quickly burrowed our way through the gigantic market in the middle of Kumasi, West Africa's largest. Rachel compared it to the chaos of Cairo traffic with the maze-like subterranean passages of Harvard's Widener Library. There was a Ghana-Australia soccer game televised, which the tourist office had mistakenly told us started at 2pm, so instead of watching the game we spent 4 hours at an incredibly slow internet cafe located on above a Shell station convenience mart. When we did go to an Indian restaurant to watch the game that night, we ended up talking with our new friend Marcus, who we've been traveling with since then.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Pop Quiz! Dubai: Cairo as…
a) French wine: Mexican, Turkish, or Egyptian wine
b) Jennifer Aniston hair: a mullet
c) Martha Stewart’s attic: Crazy Great Aunt Betsy’s attic
d) George Steinbrenner: Yogi Berra
e) One scoop of lemon sorbet: 3 scoops of gooey Ben and Jerry’s
f) All of the above
The answer to this quiz is F. How did you do? Dubai is, without question, more refined (a), stylish (b), and immeasurably neater (c) than Cairo. Like George Steinbrenner to Yogi Berra, in some coldly rational way it also makes a lot more sense (d)—but in the end, svelte and moderate as it may be, it’s decidedly more boring (e).
After the whole Ghanaian visa debacle, we were left with 36 hours in Dubai, an amount that turned out to be about all we could handle from both the budgetary and self-image perspectives. We are glad we got to see it, though. The post-Cairo shock of Dubai began immediately upon settling into our Emirates Air seats. The morning at the Cairo airport, like so much else in Cairo, had been chaotic—a taxi that failed to show, a couple hours in a cafeteria waiting for the check-in to open, a little visit with the Egyptian visa authorities to argue our right to leave the country without paying a fee (successful, but not without some palm-sweating moments), and a broken security device that meant switching gates a couple times. But on the plane it was another world. Flight attendants buzzed about catering to our every need, the seats were roomy and had fun rolling foot rests, and—coolest of all to us technology bumkins—there were hundreds of movies, new and old, and full music albums on demand, keeping us plugged in happily throughout the flight. The pattern continued on arrival in Dubai, where we were awed to walk without hassle through the impeccably organized airport, into a taxi with a meter, with a driver who followed lane lines and stop lights. Arriving at the youth hostel, though, we had our introduction to the other side of the Dubai coin—the cheapest place in town, one night at the hostel still ate up our budget for an entire day, and there was certainly no backpacker type feeling in the air.
On the upside, there was a television in the room, and waking up the next morning, 9 hours ahead of East Coast time, we had the joy of sitting in bed watching the election results coming in on CNN—no better way to start a day than with a long-awaited beating on the powers that be. After a little bit of gloating, we headed into town. (Another Cairo difference: We could take a city bus in Dubai, which actually carried the number of people that it had seats; in Cairo people were literally hanging out of the doors and windows of the buses, and tourists, expats, or anyone who could afford a taxi would not think of taking one of them.) We did our first round of imaginary shopping (or, accurately, I did some imaginary shopping while Erik pretended to pay attention to what I was pretending to buy) at the Gold Suq, a series of hundreds of stores selling gold jewelry in a dizzying array of extravagant, shimmering styles. To go along with the countless bangle bracelets (which I imaginarily bought for all of you, ladies, so I hope you like them), there were necklaces that could have weighed down an elephant, arm cuffs, tiaras, and even a sexy shirt of solid gold.
Leaving the suq with our credit cards unscathed, we walked along the wide creek that runs through downtown Dubai to the Dubai Museum, located in an old fort. The museum was a combination of a history of the development of Dubai, and a series of life-scale models showing examples of traditional crafts and lifestyles in the area, including both town-dwellers and Bedouin nomads in the desert. The story of Dubai’s astronomical growth over the last 50 years was striking—the population went from around 60,000 in the 1950s to 500,000 in the early 1990s, and is larger today, and physically the city grew from little more than a small, dusty port into an amalgamation of superlatives: tallest towers, most exclusive condominiums, biggest mall, and so on. Even more interesting, though, was the way the city presented itself through the exhibits. There was a subtext in the models of artisans’ workshops and Koran schools that felt familiar from visits to American natural history museums: there is room for these lifestyles in this museum, but out there in the real city, there is no place for them anymore.
As we sat at a creekside café, Erik smoking one last sheesha (water pipe with flavored tobacco) before saying goodbye to the Middle East, we continued to notice how diverse the people walking by were. In Egypt, we had never quite gotten used to the homogeneity of the population; there were foreigners, like our Danish friends, but they really stood out as foreigners; otherwise, besides small pockets of Sudanese refugees, it seemed that everyone was, by birth and ethnicity, Egyptian. By contrast, Dubai seemed to have as many Filipino, Chinese, and Indian people as it did Arabs. It felt markedly different to be in a multicultural setting again (and we enjoyed getting to eat Indian and Thai food!)
Sufficiently rested, we next tackled our biggest Dubai challenge: the Mall of the Emirates, the world’s largest mall. At first, what was overwhelming was the size; it took a good hour just to get our bearings and have some sense of the lay-out of the place. There were several soaring, metal-and-glass courtyard areas, with long rows of shops within and between them. At one end, next to one of several food courts (but not the one with women in cocktail dresses and stilettos waiting to get into the Armani café), was a viewing area overlooking the atrocious wonder of Ski Dubai—the indoor ski hill. Complete with a fire roaring in a stone fireplace, Ski Dubai had everything one could want for a winter getaway-- pine trees, sledding slope, chairlift, snow pants, and hip ski instructors to boot. Everything, that is, except for, say, the great outdoors, or any hint of authenticity. But maybe that’s the snobby New Englander in me speaking; the people playing inside their glass winter palace seemed to be enjoying themselves. Once we had adjusted to the scale of the mall, what became overwhelming was the fanciness of all of it, and, by sharp contrast, our own scruffiness. (For the sake of accuracy, again, I should admit that this didn’t faze Erik at all—only I felt like a pariah in my beat up travel clothes.) Everyone, it appeared, was dripping with money or, at the very least, on top of the most current fashions. This went for the observant black-robed women and white-robed men as well—the robes themselves were of fine fabrics, and their shoes, bags, and jewelry exhibited wealth as clearly as designer clothes did on other people. The shopping-and-showing mania continued at the Dubai Airport (voted the world’s best duty free!), where we spent the night. Attractive as some aspects of this materialist paradise were, and as ready as I’d be to spend another day there if I had nothing to do but spend money, by the time our flight to Ghana boarded in the wee hours Wednesday morning, we were quite ready to leave.
b) Jennifer Aniston hair: a mullet
c) Martha Stewart’s attic: Crazy Great Aunt Betsy’s attic
d) George Steinbrenner: Yogi Berra
e) One scoop of lemon sorbet: 3 scoops of gooey Ben and Jerry’s
f) All of the above
The answer to this quiz is F. How did you do? Dubai is, without question, more refined (a), stylish (b), and immeasurably neater (c) than Cairo. Like George Steinbrenner to Yogi Berra, in some coldly rational way it also makes a lot more sense (d)—but in the end, svelte and moderate as it may be, it’s decidedly more boring (e).
After the whole Ghanaian visa debacle, we were left with 36 hours in Dubai, an amount that turned out to be about all we could handle from both the budgetary and self-image perspectives. We are glad we got to see it, though. The post-Cairo shock of Dubai began immediately upon settling into our Emirates Air seats. The morning at the Cairo airport, like so much else in Cairo, had been chaotic—a taxi that failed to show, a couple hours in a cafeteria waiting for the check-in to open, a little visit with the Egyptian visa authorities to argue our right to leave the country without paying a fee (successful, but not without some palm-sweating moments), and a broken security device that meant switching gates a couple times. But on the plane it was another world. Flight attendants buzzed about catering to our every need, the seats were roomy and had fun rolling foot rests, and—coolest of all to us technology bumkins—there were hundreds of movies, new and old, and full music albums on demand, keeping us plugged in happily throughout the flight. The pattern continued on arrival in Dubai, where we were awed to walk without hassle through the impeccably organized airport, into a taxi with a meter, with a driver who followed lane lines and stop lights. Arriving at the youth hostel, though, we had our introduction to the other side of the Dubai coin—the cheapest place in town, one night at the hostel still ate up our budget for an entire day, and there was certainly no backpacker type feeling in the air.
On the upside, there was a television in the room, and waking up the next morning, 9 hours ahead of East Coast time, we had the joy of sitting in bed watching the election results coming in on CNN—no better way to start a day than with a long-awaited beating on the powers that be. After a little bit of gloating, we headed into town. (Another Cairo difference: We could take a city bus in Dubai, which actually carried the number of people that it had seats; in Cairo people were literally hanging out of the doors and windows of the buses, and tourists, expats, or anyone who could afford a taxi would not think of taking one of them.) We did our first round of imaginary shopping (or, accurately, I did some imaginary shopping while Erik pretended to pay attention to what I was pretending to buy) at the Gold Suq, a series of hundreds of stores selling gold jewelry in a dizzying array of extravagant, shimmering styles. To go along with the countless bangle bracelets (which I imaginarily bought for all of you, ladies, so I hope you like them), there were necklaces that could have weighed down an elephant, arm cuffs, tiaras, and even a sexy shirt of solid gold.
Leaving the suq with our credit cards unscathed, we walked along the wide creek that runs through downtown Dubai to the Dubai Museum, located in an old fort. The museum was a combination of a history of the development of Dubai, and a series of life-scale models showing examples of traditional crafts and lifestyles in the area, including both town-dwellers and Bedouin nomads in the desert. The story of Dubai’s astronomical growth over the last 50 years was striking—the population went from around 60,000 in the 1950s to 500,000 in the early 1990s, and is larger today, and physically the city grew from little more than a small, dusty port into an amalgamation of superlatives: tallest towers, most exclusive condominiums, biggest mall, and so on. Even more interesting, though, was the way the city presented itself through the exhibits. There was a subtext in the models of artisans’ workshops and Koran schools that felt familiar from visits to American natural history museums: there is room for these lifestyles in this museum, but out there in the real city, there is no place for them anymore.
As we sat at a creekside café, Erik smoking one last sheesha (water pipe with flavored tobacco) before saying goodbye to the Middle East, we continued to notice how diverse the people walking by were. In Egypt, we had never quite gotten used to the homogeneity of the population; there were foreigners, like our Danish friends, but they really stood out as foreigners; otherwise, besides small pockets of Sudanese refugees, it seemed that everyone was, by birth and ethnicity, Egyptian. By contrast, Dubai seemed to have as many Filipino, Chinese, and Indian people as it did Arabs. It felt markedly different to be in a multicultural setting again (and we enjoyed getting to eat Indian and Thai food!)
Sufficiently rested, we next tackled our biggest Dubai challenge: the Mall of the Emirates, the world’s largest mall. At first, what was overwhelming was the size; it took a good hour just to get our bearings and have some sense of the lay-out of the place. There were several soaring, metal-and-glass courtyard areas, with long rows of shops within and between them. At one end, next to one of several food courts (but not the one with women in cocktail dresses and stilettos waiting to get into the Armani café), was a viewing area overlooking the atrocious wonder of Ski Dubai—the indoor ski hill. Complete with a fire roaring in a stone fireplace, Ski Dubai had everything one could want for a winter getaway-- pine trees, sledding slope, chairlift, snow pants, and hip ski instructors to boot. Everything, that is, except for, say, the great outdoors, or any hint of authenticity. But maybe that’s the snobby New Englander in me speaking; the people playing inside their glass winter palace seemed to be enjoying themselves. Once we had adjusted to the scale of the mall, what became overwhelming was the fanciness of all of it, and, by sharp contrast, our own scruffiness. (For the sake of accuracy, again, I should admit that this didn’t faze Erik at all—only I felt like a pariah in my beat up travel clothes.) Everyone, it appeared, was dripping with money or, at the very least, on top of the most current fashions. This went for the observant black-robed women and white-robed men as well—the robes themselves were of fine fabrics, and their shoes, bags, and jewelry exhibited wealth as clearly as designer clothes did on other people. The shopping-and-showing mania continued at the Dubai Airport (voted the world’s best duty free!), where we spent the night. Attractive as some aspects of this materialist paradise were, and as ready as I’d be to spend another day there if I had nothing to do but spend money, by the time our flight to Ghana boarded in the wee hours Wednesday morning, we were quite ready to leave.
You Are Welcome
Hotel Cairo/Chez Henrik: The Anti-blog
[delay in posting because of blog site/connection problems]
This is a different sort of blog entry: instead of describing fascinating
new horizons and unusual sights, it describes a return to a place
(Henrik’s apartment) that has felt like a slice of home away from home,
about finding local fun with new friends, bureaucratic snarls and a time
for repose and taking a vacation from our vacation. Instead of in an
internet café, this blog entry is being typed in our friend Henrik’s
apartment. Because his phone line hasn’t been working for approximately
the past month, this entry is being posted at one of two neighborhood
branches of the western, English-oriented café Cilantro (where we first
went to meet a friend because it was one of the few available options open
during the day during Ramadan, and now go on almost a daily basis to spend
time online). In addition to their fondness for Mariah Carey (the album
Butterfly was on continuous loop for the over 3 hours we spent there one
day), the song “Hotel California” is also appears frequently on their
playlist, and expresses something about how feel unable to check out of
Cairo.
The first period of our time back in Cairo was expected: we arrived from
our trip to the Siwa Oasis the evening of October 23, hoping to be able to
get our Ghana visa (which we’d mistakenly assumed we could get at the
airport) in time to fly to Dubai on October 28, and then on to Ghana on
November 1. To keep the visa debacle story as concise as possible, here’s
the summary of 4 trips to the Ghana embassy (during which our taxi stopped
to ask directions from the same corner policeman, who would greet us with
a smile, 3 of those times):
1) Oct 24, the first day of Eid, the feast after Ramadan. The embassy is
closed until Oct 29.
2) Oct 29: we go and unsuccessfully argue to allow us to apply for the
visa, which they say is only possible on Tuesdays and Thursday.
3) Oct 31: we apply for the visa and unsuccessfully ask them to give it to
us that day. 4) Nov 2: we pick up our visas.
Between getting the visa, making the necessary flight changes, and buying
our second round of plane tickets for the trip, we are ready to stop
dealing with travel logistics for awhile. Needless to say, we will be
making advance inquiries for all remaining visas.
In those first days back in Cairo, we spent a lot of time with Henrik and
his Danish friends, at more upscale places mostly in the wealthier
neighborhood of Zamalek. We went to the open air restaurant Sequoia,
situated on the Nile across the river from the World Trade Center, which
also has a two-tower design (although they’re currently constructing a
third building in the middle—I don’t know if 9-11 had any influence on
changing the appearance). From there we went to a concert at the El Sawy
Cultural Center, a very cool use of space with a stage area constructed
underneath a Nile bridge, accommodating several hundred people. The band
was Wust El Balad, apparently a popular Egyptian rock/pop band, which
someone told us differs from most other pop groups in that their lyrics
are not religious. During the show, someone told us the songs were about
“Che Guevara, the war in Iraq, and marijuana”; the music was a little
reminiscent of Manu Chao, with an eclectic world-beat sound. To cap off
the evening, we followed the group to the dance club Latex, located
underneath the Hilton, which proved to be a typically snobbish and sterile
club environment playing poorly remixed hip-hop. Another evening we went
out with the same group to the bar at La Bodega, a trendy place that we
returned to another night for dinner with an American friend where the
food was good and there was even a decent bottle of Egyptian wine (the
maker imports the grapes from France). We felt more comfortable in Cairo,
more familiar with the city. With Ramadan being over, most people seemed
happier as well, and although it’s still warm during the day, the weather
is much cooler now than when we first arrived (although the air pollution,
at levels up to 100 times what’s considered safe by the World Health
Organization, unfortunately hasn’t changed).
Aside from one tour of Coptic Cairo that a friend of Henrik’s invited us
on, we haven’t really done any sight-seeing since we’ve been back in
Cairo. Instead, we’ve been doing some of the things we haven’t done for
several months: listening to music, cooking, watching movies, and reading
Henrik’s books. In addition to a Danish cartoon movie called Terkel in
Trouble, we’ve watched 3 Danish movies: Adam’s Apples, a dark comedy about
a neo-nazi’s time after release from prison with a priest who refuses see
anything disproving the goodness of God; and the first two movies in Lars
von Trier’s American trilogy set during the Depression: Dogville, where a
woman on the run seeks shelter in a small town in the Rockies, and
Manderlay, where the same woman attempts to set right life on an Alabama
plantation where slavery still exists. In these two movies, the picture of
America is very bleak indeed.
Currently, Henrik is attending a conference at Alexandria, so we’re all
alone in his apartment. We joked that when he gets back, he should change
the locks so that we can’t stay any longer, and he replied that maybe we
would change them by the time he returns. Henrik, showing his sense of
humor, also suggested that we just stay with him for the rest of the year,
and write fictional blog entries based on information we find online.
While respectfully declining his offer, in addition to planning a future
trip to Denmark, we have made Henrik and others promise to visit us in New
York so that we can repay some of the wonderful hospitality. It’s been
great to stay here, but when November 7 comes, we’ll be ready to not just
check out but to finally leave and get back in the pace of traveling.
Friday, November 03, 2006
Some Thoughts on Women
There's one subject I've been avoiding because I've been so confused about it, which is the subject of gender in the Muslim world, and how I feel, as a woman, being here. We've written about it a little in specific situations, like in the two Turkish villages we went to, where we could be more detached and factual—women sat here, men sat here, etc. The part that has been more difficult for me is the things I've been feeling. One of them is much angrier and less open-minded than maybe I wanted to believe about myself; when I saw, in Istanbul, on a 95 degree day, a man in short sleeves with a few buttons unbuttoned, while his wife was shrouded completely in a heavy black robe, I felt true hatred for him. Same in the airport in Cairo: this man was in short sleeves, again, and his wife was not only in the black robe, but also had a solid black veil over her head covering her face—it didn’t have even the eye holes that a burka has. She was holding a baby. She looked like a ghost, like she should have been wearing a sign that said "there is not a person here." I almost threw up.
Those are pretty extreme examples, and I think my disdain for them is justified from a human rights perspective. But I also find myself feeling it about the focus on "chastity" and "modesty" of women as a whole. From a western feminist perspective those ideas are used entirely oppressively. However, it's also a problem projecting my theoretical ideas onto everything and everyone—I feel both constantly judged (the basic precept in Egypt particularly but the region more generally being that western women are all prostitutes) and constantly judging, looking at most men here as if they are misogynistic oppressive assholes and most women as if they are weak tools of the oppressors. This clearly is not a way I want to be approaching people, and goes against my own values by stripping people of individuality and agency. This has been weighing on me a lot. One of our first nights in Egypt I dreamed that I was with a woman covered in black and I was supposed to ask her questions about women in Islam—but when I asked, I could never hear anything she said. (My worry that I'm not open to other people's beliefs). And then the next scene in the dream was me at a burka rental store, and I was being put in a burka, and the dream panned out on me screaming. (My fear and hatred of the practice). I haven't fully come to terms with any of this, but it has certainly been an important aspect of my experience here.
One positive outcome of our unsought extra week in Cairo, though, has been that I’ve had the opportunity to read an excellent anthropology of poor women in this city, called Between Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo, by Homa Hoodfar. The most important lesson from this book, for me, is that to assume it’s possible to know what’s really going on in a society based on certain external appearances is ridiculously arrogant and simple-minded. As an abstract idea, this is something I knew already; what’s been really valuable has been to have felt myself making such judgements, almost against my own will, and then to have Hoodfar’s deeply interesting research shake me back into reality.
The guiding questions in Hoodfar’s book are, what choices do poor Cairene women make in planning for and within marriage, and why do they make them? The key idea is that the women are, indeed, actively making choices, and that these choices are rational in the context of their lives. One example of this is why women who did not grow up wearing the veil took it on. (This was a big trend, called “reveiling”, in the 1980s and 90s, when Hoodfar was doing her research; now, almost all lower and middle class women here are veiled.) Hoodfar found that women in her study often veiled in order to defend their right to work—whereas an unveiled woman going out in the morning or evening alone, or speaking as an equal to men, would garner accusations of “seduction”, a veiled woman would not, and therefore women would veil in order not to bring dishonor to their husbands while still being able to continue doing what they wanted to do (i.e., go to work). Relatedly, Hoodfar found that women would support the traditional gender hierarchy, validated and widely venerated by Islam, in large part because they were able to manipulate their lives within that hierarchy, and feared loss of control if the hierarchy were to change. For instance, the Quran states that a man is the breadwinner for the family, and with this position of responsibility he has various privileges as the family’s head. Hoodfar found that the women at least nominally upheld the “man as leader” idea, in part because they would use it to demand that the man meet his responsibilities of providing for the family’s basic needs; with high rates of illiteracy and extremely low wages in their own jobs, the women could not risk food for their family on demanding to be seen as equals within the marriage. Further, the women in the neighborhood most admired by other women were those who were able to keep up their husbands’ egos and reputations as household heads, while actually controlling most or all aspects of running the household themselves. In effect these women were often undermining the hierarchy, but in word, and when it suited their purposes, they were supporting it. A third example was that of family planning. Hoodfar found that, overall, choices about contraception were made by the women, and that many of them tried to have many children early in the marriage because they considered it a way to “secure” the marriage (which is borne out statistically, in terms of divorce rates) as well as to protect them in old age, as religiously sons are supposed to care for elderly parents, and there is no state social security. Thus, three things that could be seen only as forces of subjugation acting on women are, at the very least, complexified; the women are active, not passive, players.
The other crucial point from Hoodfar’s book is that we must recognize that words and concepts mean very different things in different contexts, and it is not only futile but actively harmful to push one’s own understanding onto other people and situations. (Our friend Henrik is doing his dissertation on a similar topic in regard to dialogue between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, using the theoretical framework of “language games”—meaning, basically, all the unstated social meanings and understandings that words carry, and without which they cannot be truly understood. That is, language never has a pure and simple meaning—it always has a context.) For example, when the women in Hoodfar’s study talk about a “love” or “western” marriage, they mean a marriage based primarily on physical attraction, which they rightly recognize as a tenuous basis for a long-term relationship—but of course when we talk about a marriage of love, physical attraction is only one of many elements we have in mind. The concept of honor as a person’s most fundamental defining characteristic—as the thing most to be protected in one’s life—has little currency in mainstream western cultures. However, it is of the utmost importance to both women and men in Hoodfar’s neighborhood. Similarly, when the women in Hoodfar’s study considered the western possibilities of being single or childless by choice, they found them absolutely incomprehensible, representing utter loneliness and failure as a woman. And their understanding of western society is that men have very little respect for women—we might say the same of theirs. Neither perception can be called true; but, based on the different ways we understand “respect”, both perceptions contain some truth.
To be able to talk about what should happen, you have to really understand what is happening. I am certainly not at that point yet on this topic, and never will be. But after reading, I can no longer look at the women here and see just victims of or participators in oppression. I cannot look at veils, or even fully covering robes, and say they are just tools of oppression. What I can say is that to be pushed into veiling, supporting the gender hierarchy, or having more children than desired, by economic and social circumstances, is wrong. The women act and make choices within the parameters of their lives, but the narrowness of these parameters indicates real failure on the part of the state. I don’t know what the answers are, but I think that a better education system, a decent minimum wage, and a social security program are places to start. It seems that maybe the state doesn’t know what’s really going on in the neighborhoods either. If it weren’t so serious, it could be laughable—the state wants to curtail population growth, which is among the fastest in the world, yet it doesn’t do anything to move toward a social security program, which could prevent poor women from feeling compelled to have many children! Both poor women and poor men (who face many challenges as well, although they aren’t what I’ve been focusing on) deserve a horizon of rational choices, of real possibilities, far greater than what they currently face. Ignorant criticism of their current choices, though, will do nothing to help foster that reality—on the contrary, it will only push it farther away.
Those are pretty extreme examples, and I think my disdain for them is justified from a human rights perspective. But I also find myself feeling it about the focus on "chastity" and "modesty" of women as a whole. From a western feminist perspective those ideas are used entirely oppressively. However, it's also a problem projecting my theoretical ideas onto everything and everyone—I feel both constantly judged (the basic precept in Egypt particularly but the region more generally being that western women are all prostitutes) and constantly judging, looking at most men here as if they are misogynistic oppressive assholes and most women as if they are weak tools of the oppressors. This clearly is not a way I want to be approaching people, and goes against my own values by stripping people of individuality and agency. This has been weighing on me a lot. One of our first nights in Egypt I dreamed that I was with a woman covered in black and I was supposed to ask her questions about women in Islam—but when I asked, I could never hear anything she said. (My worry that I'm not open to other people's beliefs). And then the next scene in the dream was me at a burka rental store, and I was being put in a burka, and the dream panned out on me screaming. (My fear and hatred of the practice). I haven't fully come to terms with any of this, but it has certainly been an important aspect of my experience here.
One positive outcome of our unsought extra week in Cairo, though, has been that I’ve had the opportunity to read an excellent anthropology of poor women in this city, called Between Marriage and the Market: Intimate Politics and Survival in Cairo, by Homa Hoodfar. The most important lesson from this book, for me, is that to assume it’s possible to know what’s really going on in a society based on certain external appearances is ridiculously arrogant and simple-minded. As an abstract idea, this is something I knew already; what’s been really valuable has been to have felt myself making such judgements, almost against my own will, and then to have Hoodfar’s deeply interesting research shake me back into reality.
The guiding questions in Hoodfar’s book are, what choices do poor Cairene women make in planning for and within marriage, and why do they make them? The key idea is that the women are, indeed, actively making choices, and that these choices are rational in the context of their lives. One example of this is why women who did not grow up wearing the veil took it on. (This was a big trend, called “reveiling”, in the 1980s and 90s, when Hoodfar was doing her research; now, almost all lower and middle class women here are veiled.) Hoodfar found that women in her study often veiled in order to defend their right to work—whereas an unveiled woman going out in the morning or evening alone, or speaking as an equal to men, would garner accusations of “seduction”, a veiled woman would not, and therefore women would veil in order not to bring dishonor to their husbands while still being able to continue doing what they wanted to do (i.e., go to work). Relatedly, Hoodfar found that women would support the traditional gender hierarchy, validated and widely venerated by Islam, in large part because they were able to manipulate their lives within that hierarchy, and feared loss of control if the hierarchy were to change. For instance, the Quran states that a man is the breadwinner for the family, and with this position of responsibility he has various privileges as the family’s head. Hoodfar found that the women at least nominally upheld the “man as leader” idea, in part because they would use it to demand that the man meet his responsibilities of providing for the family’s basic needs; with high rates of illiteracy and extremely low wages in their own jobs, the women could not risk food for their family on demanding to be seen as equals within the marriage. Further, the women in the neighborhood most admired by other women were those who were able to keep up their husbands’ egos and reputations as household heads, while actually controlling most or all aspects of running the household themselves. In effect these women were often undermining the hierarchy, but in word, and when it suited their purposes, they were supporting it. A third example was that of family planning. Hoodfar found that, overall, choices about contraception were made by the women, and that many of them tried to have many children early in the marriage because they considered it a way to “secure” the marriage (which is borne out statistically, in terms of divorce rates) as well as to protect them in old age, as religiously sons are supposed to care for elderly parents, and there is no state social security. Thus, three things that could be seen only as forces of subjugation acting on women are, at the very least, complexified; the women are active, not passive, players.
The other crucial point from Hoodfar’s book is that we must recognize that words and concepts mean very different things in different contexts, and it is not only futile but actively harmful to push one’s own understanding onto other people and situations. (Our friend Henrik is doing his dissertation on a similar topic in regard to dialogue between Christians and Muslims in Egypt, using the theoretical framework of “language games”—meaning, basically, all the unstated social meanings and understandings that words carry, and without which they cannot be truly understood. That is, language never has a pure and simple meaning—it always has a context.) For example, when the women in Hoodfar’s study talk about a “love” or “western” marriage, they mean a marriage based primarily on physical attraction, which they rightly recognize as a tenuous basis for a long-term relationship—but of course when we talk about a marriage of love, physical attraction is only one of many elements we have in mind. The concept of honor as a person’s most fundamental defining characteristic—as the thing most to be protected in one’s life—has little currency in mainstream western cultures. However, it is of the utmost importance to both women and men in Hoodfar’s neighborhood. Similarly, when the women in Hoodfar’s study considered the western possibilities of being single or childless by choice, they found them absolutely incomprehensible, representing utter loneliness and failure as a woman. And their understanding of western society is that men have very little respect for women—we might say the same of theirs. Neither perception can be called true; but, based on the different ways we understand “respect”, both perceptions contain some truth.
To be able to talk about what should happen, you have to really understand what is happening. I am certainly not at that point yet on this topic, and never will be. But after reading, I can no longer look at the women here and see just victims of or participators in oppression. I cannot look at veils, or even fully covering robes, and say they are just tools of oppression. What I can say is that to be pushed into veiling, supporting the gender hierarchy, or having more children than desired, by economic and social circumstances, is wrong. The women act and make choices within the parameters of their lives, but the narrowness of these parameters indicates real failure on the part of the state. I don’t know what the answers are, but I think that a better education system, a decent minimum wage, and a social security program are places to start. It seems that maybe the state doesn’t know what’s really going on in the neighborhoods either. If it weren’t so serious, it could be laughable—the state wants to curtail population growth, which is among the fastest in the world, yet it doesn’t do anything to move toward a social security program, which could prevent poor women from feeling compelled to have many children! Both poor women and poor men (who face many challenges as well, although they aren’t what I’ve been focusing on) deserve a horizon of rational choices, of real possibilities, far greater than what they currently face. Ignorant criticism of their current choices, though, will do nothing to help foster that reality—on the contrary, it will only push it farther away.
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