The Uncaring, Intricate World: A Field Diary, Zambezi Valley, 1984-1985
208
The Uncaring, Intricate World: A Field Diary, Zambezi Valley, 1984-1985
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Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781478005520 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Duke University Press |
| Publication date: | 08/16/2019 |
| Series: | Critical Global Health: Evidence, Efficacy, Ethnography |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 208 |
| File size: | 15 MB |
| Note: | This product may take a few minutes to download. |
About the Author
Todd Meyers is Associate Professor of Anthropology at New York University, Shanghai.
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CHAPTER 1
A FIELD DIARY
Chitenge, Mola
SEPTEMBER 1, 1984
5:45 P.M.
It is, I suppose, one of anthropology's funny scenes. The sun setting, and I in a house that consists only of poles widely spaced, roofless, doorless, so that all I do is exposed to the eyes of twelve children. That which I do amuses them greatly: I am sitting in a director's chair at a folding table drinking tea, with a weird assortment of goods scattered around on the bare soil.
Anderson and I arrived at 3:30 p.m., having driven 440 kilometers from Harare and having been on the road since 6:00 a.m. with half an hour in Karoi. The journey was fine — rather like being massaged by those machines that are supposed to tone your muscles and slim you down. The road varies from corrugations to potholes to deep sand with combinations of the three. Over the last 200 kilometers we met only two busses, one van, two trucks, three warthogs, and many kudu.
On arrival and the discovery of only the bare frames of a kitchen and sleeping platform, I expressed some displeasure to Samuel, the builder, who is racing the setting sun to build a ladder to the platform of the busanza (my house on stilts) so that I can climb up there to sleep. I was a little scornful of his progress on my house after six weeks. A small audience of children listened in fascination. Samuel has since enjoyed getting his own back making the children roar with laughter at my expense. It is a fine scene, with Samuel and his mate, Shadrick, working hard yet entertaining the children. One boy has a fearfully distended belly; another eats cold sadza and relish beside my doorpost; yet another plays with a little girl who is in his charge.
Now fourteen children stand and watch me. The sun goes down; there is a little light, and the scruffy ends of twine that tie the steps of the ladder are being trimmed. Who won? Not me. Return to laughter!
6:05 P.M.
I made a grand gesture of climbing the finished ladder and allowed more opportunity for laughter. I gave Samuel and his mate an orange each in admiration of their effort. It had ended amicably, and I said a firm "Goodnight," at which everyone miraculously disappeared. I shall now have a whiskey on the platform and read Virginia Woolf (ought to be Shakespeare).
I need a candle guard. I have bathed in the moonlight. A tub of warm water has been placed for me in a newly made bathing shelter of matting reed set around a plastered floor. Odd how many new skills one must learn — how to take a little water in a mug, how to balance a watch on a pole, how to dress while keeping feet and clothes dry and clean.
I have my whiskey and candle and book and have watched the final sun's light go and listened to the new night noises: crickets, a child's cry, men talking, pots banging, little children's chatter, and my first mosquito's whine. Difficult to keep the candle alight on my bare platform. Frogs, crickets, do I hear something more threatening? The night is mysterious beyond the circle of my flame. The bus from Harare is passing, almost empty. Anderson comes and chats for a while. What joy is the peace after the last two frenetic weeks. I have forgotten methylated spirits, pillows, a stretcher, and copies of photographs taken on the last trip to hand out. No doubt much else. Oh well.
Anderson's uncle (father's brother) was arrested on the 21st of last month. The National Parks game guards caught him in the bush and accused him of poaching. He denied it, but after some interrogation he admitted to having been seen with wire. He is the head of Anderson's section of Chitenge. He is awaiting trial in Kariba, and as fines have been stopped, he is likely to spend six months in jail.
Anderson told me that the young man with the wonderful crafted basket of fish that he was carrying from Musamba to a market in Harare, to whom we gave a lift from Musamba to Bumi in July, has been killed. An ex-girlfriend who was living at Groebler's crocodile farm knifed him. She, too, had been a fish trader but had recently been living with a worker at the camp. She now awaits trial in Kariba and leaves behind three young children.
Anderson's eldest son fetched me for supper of meat that I had brought from Karoi and sadza. I joined a delightful domestic scene with Anderson chatting animatedly with his wives and little Cosimos being small, vociferous, and tired. He would only eat meat and went off to bed saying, "I will not sleep on the mat as a rat will eat me. I shall sleep in your bed" (to his mother and father). The adults laughed.
As we finished eating, a Land Rover approached with one light. I thought, "Ah, that is Bernard" (for I knew that he was passing through Chitenge that day), and I went out to the road. And sure enough it was Bernard Whaley, a friend from my school days. He was with the people undertaking a canoe safari being filmed by a French crew. They were passing en route to Bumi, having canoed some distance down the Zambezi River from Victoria Falls. I appeared to be an apparition as I stepped into their headlights as they approached the end of a long journey through the bush.
Now to sleep to the sound of drums. My house does look peculiar. A pristine white net hangs from a pole across the roofless top; my clothes are carefully arranged on hangers from the same pole; a white bag full of tape recorders, etc., hangs beside my black handbag from a branch of the pole. My large straw hat sits like a moth against the curve. The wind plays with the mosquito net and extinguishes my candle.
SEPTEMBER 2, 1984
8:00 P.M.
The night beneath my net was a delight: wake to see the half-moon caught in my tree, wake to chart the path of the stars, wake to listen to the drums, wake to watch the dawn. The drums played all night (8:00 to 8:30) in a homestead half a kilometer away. Someone's ngozi (by which the Tonga mean muzimu — very muddling) was being called out. The muzimu, I am told, came and did not speak out; it was given a black cloth and a knobkerrie. During the night, four buffalo broke through three fences, although they had recently been reinforced with strong, closely set poles held together by grass tied in tight bundles, and consumed Feriza's vegetable garden beside the Masawu Stream. They ate all the cabbages and rape leaving the onions and tomatoes.
By 6:00 a.m. I was climbing the hill behind my busanza. I saw buffalo droppings and heard heavy rustling in a small valley of long grass but did not investigate. I almost walked on birds still asleep in the grass. Very peaceful and seductive. A drongo (the storytelling bird) chased a goshawk. Gray loeries chattered furiously. On return I found Samuel and Shadrick at work. By lunch the thatch is up, thick and shaggy like Abigail's hair when she rises tousled in the morning. The poles on the platform have been bound in place with tree thongs (it took Samuel from 6:30 to 8:30), and they have begun to lay thick clay for a floor on the platform. I have just made them tea, and Anderson's wife has given them sadza. Anderson and I were working in the shade of the groundsheet slung over my roofless kitchen when he was called to kill a snake that had entered Feriza's house. It was long and lemon green. One woman called it a cobra. The Shona name is mhakure, and the Tonga, kombora. I was sorry watching it die: at least it was not my fault.
We visited Chief Mola, who sat like a wilted flower in the shade of the veranda of his combined granary and chicken coop. A young woman, one of Chief Mola's wives, was pounding millet and singing with her sister's child (aged about ten). So rhythmically, so prettily, so unconsciously they sang:
I was born for everyone Not to marry just one person.
(Anderson translated the song for me.) The chief referred me to a man called Jam on his people's history. He proffered the information that "long ago, if a man took the chief's wife, his ear was cut off and he was made to eat it." Apropos of what, I am uncertain. However, it is on record.
Out before sunrise, home after sunset. Twice I walked today up and down three small hills that line the uninhabited valley upstream from my home. Again I disturbed birds at my feet, a whole flock. They wait until one is almost upon them. The drongo laughed. It is fun to order my house in five minutes, to take down the groundsheet that played roof all day and lie it on the sand to play floor all night. Some drums played listlessly at sunset, and now all is quiet.
What have I learned today? A fair amount going through the census forms of some ninety-three households in Chitenge village that Anderson has completed. That divorce is fairly frequent, that tracing parentage is facilitated if reference is made to each family member's mutupo (clan name), but as with most rules of thumb, it does not quite work, as a man may decide on a child's birth to assign her or him the mutupo of an ancestor and not his own, which is usual. Children may live with kin other than their parents in order to attend school. Children are sometimes taken to live with kin other than their parents simply because one or other party (the adult or the child) wants to do that or because a child is wanted to fulfill some role. For example, in our forms we have a child who was taken to care for an older kin's goats and has lived with him for all of his childhood. Some girls marry at a very young age but stay at home until they are considered to be old enough to join the husband. Some families refuse to allow a girl, married already, to go and actually live with her husband, even though she has children by him, until he is considered to have paid sufficient lobola. The lobola for a child who has lived in a household different from the one in which her father lived still goes to her father.
The children happily called "Chipo" (my name here, though it was given to me by Zezuru people; it means gift) as I approached Anderson's homestead. Children are not afraid of me, which is a change, no doubt because there are no white nurses to inject them. The children and Anderson's young brothers were dancing to the scratchy sounds of Shona music played on 45 rpm records. I enjoyed their laughter as I bathed and did not mind the seamy noises of civilization creeping in.
Back to what I learned today. Wait. A brandy. I learned that capturing the work of children is difficult. For example, Stanley and Moses helped Cecilia in her vegetable garden for between one and two hours. They proffered their help. It was useful. Yet it would in all likelihood go unrecorded even on a day's observation of labor focused on each boy's family. Stanley is Anderson's mother's brother's child and, therefore, has a special tie to Anderson and his wife. Moses is Anderson's mother's sister's child and is called "younger brother" by Anderson.
The builder's children worked fitfully through the day; they were too busy watching me. (So hard to eat while being stared at; I welcome night as my cloak, though goodness knows I am exposed with my candle aflame as I have no windows and no dagga on my pole hut.) Yet their effort was valued when it was made; for example, they carried cakes of mud to the platform, where Samuel smoothed it to make the floor. A fine action he made, hand bent so that thumb and forefinger scooped the mud flat.
Called for supper. Anderson is away; I think that he has gone to see his father. The children behave perfectly at meals. They sit quietly and share food from a single pot. The women are shy with me there yet accepting. Odd the choices: Should I eat my platters clean (sadza, meat, relish of cabbage) as taught or leave some knowing it will go to the children or the dog (who is called Kariba)? Should I wear a bra and suffer molten rubber around my ribs or risk being nastily bounced in the Land Rover? Should I wear takkies and sweat or sandals and risk thorns and snakebites? Very nice to reduce choice to such levels occasionally.
How are my beautiful daughters? As I left home to come here, each eloquently said how she would miss me.
This morning Anderson and I passed a group of teenage boys drinking mahewu (sweet, nonalcoholic beer) for breakfast (10:30 a.m.). Another fine scene; perhaps I ought to be a photographer, but perhaps it is enough to record moments. I am very aware of children's noises. A group is playing on the hill just south of us. They call in unison, and the sound crosses the night air. They seem to laugh a lot, play a lot, sing a lot. The mother's breast is always available to little ones. I do not mean to romanticize, for there are hugely distended bellies, there is orange hair, and there are running eyes and much else to cure me of that.
What else? One of Chief Mola's homesteads, the one in Chitenge, has fierce dogs. One must beware on approach. There are two traditional healers in Chitenge. There is a wood-carver in the village, the one who made my stool of mungonwa wood. The best carver in the area went mad recently, and the best historian died. There is a male village health worker in the village. Cecilia is one, too. There seem to be numerous women household heads, some of whom are divorcees and others widows.
What is it like (in families where there are two or more wives or where children from former wives live with their father) to grow up with children exactly one's own age in the same household complex, that is, of the same father yet different mothers? Jealousy? Companionship? Competition? What techniques are used to handle relationships? How does the inheritance pattern play out? I am terrified that I shall pursue such questions to the exclusion of measuring fields or yields and so not serve my masters, the agriculturalists, fairly.
There is less wind tonight, and the candle stands still enough to enable me to write or read in its light. I left last night's candle in the sun, and it now forms a comical question mark.
Twenty-eight of the ninety-three households in the census have no children born between 1969 and 1974 — that is, they do not have children of the right age for the sample (children aged ten to sixteen now) — almost a quarter of the total. Not that ages mean much. Anderson took them from their registration books. Apparently teachers arbitrarily give birth dates to children, and clerks estimate age on the basis of a glance at faces. Our census forms throw up some funny results — a nine-year-old woman gave birth to a child, and a child in grade one is much older than his sister in grade six. How much does exact age matter to me? A fair amount for the sample children if I am to compare height and weight with other groups. If I insist on exact dates of birth, am I then selecting a superior sample? This sample business dogs me — it seems of so little import to my real concern: the quality of the children's lives.
There are tender negotiations going on between the local health assistant and me over my proposed toilet. He insists, in order to set a good example, that I have a toilet modeled on the Blair VIP. Fair enough, but I forgot to bring cement. He has cement and wants to negotiate on my behalf with the health fellow in charge at Kariba to give me two bags of cement in the interests of promoting right living. I do not wish to be given anything and suggest I borrow the bags and send replacements by bus. This too must be negotiated through Kariba, he says. I reply that the toilet is to be dug on Wednesday and I shall build with whatever is available. All I need is a little privacy. The hills are rather far to reach for a pee, and as I leave my home for that purpose I am seldom without an audience of fourteen or so children to watch me go. The assistant kindly pegged the pit. In the wrong place.
I met Peter Mackay, Kudo Fanwell Muyambi (the district administrator), and Mr. Cheguri Hove (an officer in the Bumi administrative post) in Karoi. Each was headed in a different direction away from Mola. Dr. Sam Makanza and his wife are on leave, and so is the nurse at Siakobvu. It is not reassuring knowing that they are all out of the district should one need to seek medical attention in a hurry.
On a path near my house I saw a round stone placed on a flat stone. Looking more closely, I saw nutshells around it — clearly the remains of a snack. A child's? Again, can one capture that on records?
Women, all related to Anderson, helped clear grass around my home last evening. I promised them tea today, which we had. They were disappointed in having received no bread, but in Karoi we were allowed but one loaf each as there are rations in the country due to a shortage of flour. The older women have beauty scars on their faces and holes in their lips into which buttons had once been pressed. Anderson says that these habits stopped in 1976, "when civilization began to arrive." Some younger women have one scar between their eyebrows. Anderson says that women in this area never placed plugs in their noses or knocked out their front teeth, as did the Tonga upriver.
(Continues…)
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ixForeword. The Unsubstantial Territory / Todd Meyers xi
Introduction 1
A Field Diary 31
Afterword. Noticing Life, Matters Arising / Jane I. Guyer 173
Afterword. Sitting Quietly, Traveling in Time / Julie Livingston 175
Glossary 179
Bibliography 185
Index 189
What People are Saying About This
“The dated entries in The Uncaring, Intricate World bring into view not what is hidden and occult but what is before our eyes. Pamela Reynolds's writings are renowned for showing us that children haunt anthropological texts even as they go unacknowledged—yet this book adds an entirely new dimension to Reynolds's work by revealing the child who hides in the anthropologist.”
“Pamela Reynolds's ethnography-diary The Uncaring, Intricate World elegantly captures the vicissitudes of life in a setting of breathtaking sunsets, stunning moon rises, brutal gusts of night wind, and the ceaselessly annoying high pitch of the mosquito's whine. In the pages of this wonderful book she presents a complex cast of memorable characters whose life challenges underscore both the fragility and resilience of the human condition as well as the small pleasures of sipping brandy after a long day of being-in-the-world.”