Beef!

This post is dedicated to one of my favorite charms of Krio: the usage of the word beef.

All four legged meat is called bif. I asked my friend once which beef he liked best and he proceeded to list them for me, "You get your cow beef, goat beef, sheep beef, hog beef..." And when he got going on bushmeat the beefs were never ending - and mostly in his local language, so I really had no idea what animal he was referring to. I think five minutes later we were halfway through the monkeys. (My favorite beef name is chuk chuk bif, which means 'stab stab meat/animal'...also known as Porcupine.)

While on Road Trip 3.0, I experienced beef up close and personal. What follows is, a) the funniest thing ever, which translates poorly to story form, but still makes me laugh, and b) exciting news.

Setting:

I was fortunate to spend three days in the second to last village before you reach Liberia, just a few kilometers from the Gola Forest Reserve. The Gola Forest is a rainforest with various endangered animals (and even more endangered timber) dwelling amid its dense, protective undergrowth. I didn't make it there. I went to where they were cutting down the trees instead, which was the same idea, but without the big trees that make rainforests legendary and without the protected species (so much), or so I gather. Now, the person I was traveling with to the village was aware that I am an ovo-pesco vegetarian - not in so many words, but he got the idea that I eat fish and not fohl (fowl/chicken) or bif. He was worried, because fish is not available in the village during the rainy season because the water is too high in the streams for the women to spend the day winnowing their woven nets through the eddies.

The small red outline is Gola Forest area:









"Eh, bo," he told me sympathetically, "So so bif de de ya." Which translates roughly as, "Aw man, we have so much meat here." We had already brought salt, onions, maggi cubes (MSG) - the ingredient par excellence here, groundnut, tomato paste and other provisions to give our hosts, since goods are not readily available in the village due to the lack of road, poverty, remote location, and general marginalisation. I was not worried about a lack of fish. Several pounds of starch and oil at every meal does not a hungry person make.

A) The funniest thing ever:

So, the first night, my host's younger brother's infant son was sick and had been for several days. There's no cell phone coverage in the village, but if you walk out to a nearby field, stand on a threadbare spot of dirt, and hold your phone at the right angle while peering up at your extended arm into the inky night sky, you can get a winking bar or two of coverage. I was performing this ritual, neck craned, arm stretched,while trying desperately to sound patient shouting questions about antibiotic dosages into the speakerphone to a doctor back home. An audience of five young men helpfully watched as I talked to America from a moonshadowy patch of dew grass in "the interior". (Yes, they actually call it that here, still, in a weird neo/post-colonial time-warp.) When the call kept dropping and the coverage seemed interminably skittish, I passed the phone off to a local who was more adept at scavenging for reception. While I stood watching the darkness change color and the flylights (fireflies) dance, I saw a low shape come trotting toward us from the far end of the small field. I tried to make out if it was a dog, and in the murky dusk pondered its gait and tail, before deciding it was too small and was something like a fox...not looking that dissimilar from the ones that used to dash across the college grounds at Oxford, lighting up the motion detectors in the night...As my mind connected languidly from one thought to the next, one of the young guys shouted: "BEEF!!!" making a mad dash after the critter to grab it barehanded.

When the 'fox' or whatever it was made it into the bush unscathed and the 'hunter' made it back to our party, I felt obliged to tell them that I'd watched said beef walk across the field for almost a minute and didn't think to mention it because I didn't know they would want to 1) eat it, much less 2) chase it on foot and catch it with their hands. Add it to the list of things that would never occur to me to do, but might be common here. (Similarly, it would not occur to me to use the fuse on a petrol-powered saw to light cigarettes because I forgot my matches...but the three-man logging team did just that, after carting the five-gallon jug of fuel a good three miles into the road-less, trail-less forest. I of course, watched their desperate display of nicotine addiction from several metres off, worrying they would accidentally blow up said forest.)

BEEF! They shouted at the sight of a small fox and then took off in the night, running after some type of mammal = Amazing.

The kid is okay now, too, but the health challenges the community faces are formiddable: over seven miles by foot to the nearest community health post; people too sick to walk have to be carried by hammock; the only medicine available is that brought by travelling 'pharmacy' merchants a few times per week, who offer their own inexpert, conflict-of-interest laden assessment of which medicine people should take. Need I mention the drinking water comes from the swamp?

Okay, so as a story, it falls a little short of funny, but it was actually hilarious in a context where things are seldom uproarious.

B) Now for the exciting news, which also happens to be a bit morally ambiguous. As mentioned above, in the "interior" so so bif de de. And the area is Mende-speaking, which means translation of local plants, animals, and food items is next to impossible. Asking for the Krio word for local forest animals is futile.

Now, before I go further, I should say this news is brought to you by a few habits I have that really shine when I travel:

1) I like to adapt to and fully absorb local systems - be it putting milk in my tea in England or, well, we're getting to that in Sierra Leone... (The way I see it, if I wanted to live like an American, I would just stay in America; see previous post on code switching.)

2) I like to think I am unfazed/hardcore/a 'jungler'. (This mostly stems from previous item (#1) + overly optimistic self-confidence + stubbornness. It manifests in me driving on ridiculously bad roads, hiking through dense underbrush, refusing to let other people strain on my behalf, etc.)

2b.) As my research assistant describes it in Kringlish: "Yu know us (which) language I really like? Always yu se yu de manage." He nicknamed me 'Manager' because I so often said, "I can manage," or "we'll just have to manage."

3) I like to avoid missing out on once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

I think you see where this is going?

Eager to please and learn the local system, I quickly decided eating whatever was served to us was central to experiencing the village's way of life. This involved a heavy dose of blind trust. After 15+ years of vegetarianism, I found myself putting unidentifiable pieces of fat, skin, and flesh in my mouth whose source was unknown and whose preparation I was not always witness to. Once I decided to myself that I would be okay with eating bush rat and that my hosts would be able to communicate if monkey was being served, it was smooth sailing. (Incidentally, I didn't get to eat bush rat this go 'round and never had to avoid monkey meat.)

The first night was 'freetombo' in groundnut soup with cassava. Freetombo appears to be something like a tiny duiker, though I'm basing this off an image on a poster highlighting Gola Forest animals.

The second night was the tastiest, bush cat in groundnut soup with cassava. The bush cat I ate was something like a caracal or African Golden Cat, again 'I think'.

The third night was the big event in terms of gustatory adventures, *something* in groundnut soup with cassava. Wow. At the time, all I could discern was that they had caught something that has a long nose and eats ants. 'Sweet!' I thought to myself (un-sarcastically, I was actually looking forward to the meal), 'I get to eat anteater. Or maybe tapir? Do they have that here? Maybe just southeast Asia?' When we were sitting around the bowl of soup and starch, however, the dim light of a mobile phone flashlight revealed that something entirely un-anteater-like was what was being touted enthusiastically as one of the most delicious bushmeats: A thick, tough skin marked with ridges like it had scales confounded both my powers of recognition and my eating abilities. I was limited to fishing out the small bits of flesh and wondered, 'Armadillo?...in the rainforest?'

Nope! It wasn't until I got back to Freetown and the internet that I discovered the source of our meal: tree pangolin. It looks like something that would be so cute! if it wasn't so creepy! Kind of like a thick-tailed bone-plated rat squirrel that wishes it was a potato bug and thus spends its days rolling and un-rolling itself around tree branches. Yum.

The fourth and final bushmeat I ate during this trip to the village arrived the night before we were leaving. My host's brother (the one whose infant son we tried to treat by phone that night in the field) came back exuberant and exhausted from a three hour walk from the Liberian border carrying not only the 50 kilo bag of rice he went to go fetch at dawn, but a duiker he found in one of his traps on his return. This was the only beef I saw in its original form and thus could identify relatively easily. My host's brother was a bit disappointed he wasn't able to bring it back alive for me (because he couldn't carry a struggling duiker plus 50 kilos of rice, and thus had to kill it where he collected it). He thought it would be nice if I could've taken it on the road the next morning. I told him not to worry, next time he can give me the live one. I sat in the dark cooking area and watched by the light of the cooking fire and a few flashlights, as my host's young wife began the lengthy and very thorough processing of the bushmeat.

First, the duiker was quartered; the entrails pulled out and meticulously cleaned and washed for consumption; meanwhile the quarters of beef were held over the fire to burn off the fur; then, each quarter was scrubbed clean; once cleaned it was seasoned and boiled/steamed; and finally, fried in boiling palm oil. I think I left the cooking party around the seasoning and boiling stage and went off to bed. The next morning, we were given a black plastic bag full of duiker chunks, which served as sustenance on the 2-hour drive back to Kenema, the main town. After 15 years of not eating meat, I don't really know whether what I ate that day, and the three days preceding, was particularly tasty. I think 'game-y' generally applies to undomesticated animals, so I assume that was the prevailing taste, and certainly seemed to apply to the very lean fried deer flesh I snacked on while at the wheel. The duiker had the most meat and was hence the most easily manageable for a beef neophyte like myself; the bush cat was the most tender and flavoursome (sorry cat-lovers!); the freetombo tasty but obviously small; and the tree pangolin, well, a delicacy I am glad to push aside for those who really appreciate it.

I managed to not eat any endangered species, for which I am especially grateful. And I relatively easily assuaged my vegetarian guilt by reminding myself that I am not a vegetarian for the sake of being a vegetarian, but because of the environmental degradation and deforestation caused by the meat industry and the deplorable and cruel conditions under which animals are reared to be killed in the West. And also because I don't generally need to eat animals to be nutrified. In a village where it's soup, starch and beef, the consumption of meat is both a sign of politeness and appreciation to one's host, and a means of nutritional satisfaction despite the conspicuous absence of fruits and vegetables. Finally, the moral coup de grace, in my opinion, is that the young men who hunt for bushmeat do so in the 'un-protected' forests owned and managed by the community, using handmade traps that catch but don't kill the animals. There are serious problems with the bushmeat trade across the continent and to the US, UK, and Europe, but self-sufficient minimalism prevails in this village.

As far as 'organic', 'free range', 'happy' beef goes, you can't do much better than eating an un-endangered forest critter that lived its whole life in God-given bliss until it walked into a trap made of sticks and rope (a fair match, unlike super-powered long-range rifles fired from helicopters) and was killed by the hand of the hunter whose family will eat it with a swift cut to the throat. The original locavore-ism in action.

Africa without Africans

A people-free photo of my research

A household concept in any progressive African Studies circle (and hopefully in regressive ones too), the imagining of or representation of an "Africa without Africans" refers to the Western world's persistent and often subconscious romanticization of Africa as a foil to the West's industrialized society. This Africa is a small step removed from Conrad's dark continent, where the human inhabitants are a footnote, merely bystanders to history, and the savanna grasslands or lush tropical jungles define the place and its worth.

The pop culture paradigm of this phenomenon (tradition?) is Disney's The Lion King - a glorious movie if ever there was one, one of the two dvds I own in this world, and the soundtrack to which I know all the words... in case you were bracing for a diatribe on neo-colonial racism in corporate America. A geopolitical embodiment of the problems embedded in valuing or imagining Africa without Africans is the charged universe of environmental conservation across sub-Saharan Africa. Periodically stories crop up of shoot-to-kill antipoaching policies (usually tacit), wherein African poachers are killed to save the lives of animals. (These stories grab more headlines than the battles between farming communities and nature reserves, over both land and the control of wild animals, that know not where the reserve ends and community property begins. While I adore Kruger Park, wish Sierra Leone still had a robust population of forest elephants, and support the chimpanzee protection organisation here, this post does not feature me weighing in factually nor editorially on the environment-people/conservation-development/etc.-etc. morass.)

Coming to the point. My cynical eye has watched my idealistic self enthusiastically, if sporadically, write about various triumphs and travails here in Sierra Leone with next to no mention of all the people who help, hinder, and otherwise constitute my life in this country. 'Aha,' cynical eye intones knowingly. 'You see your Africa without Africans? Just like all the other misguided, self-styled do-gooders on this continent.'

Now, it's possible that's not what my much more generous friends and family are thinking when you read my periodic postings, but maybe it should have crossed your mind. And I am here to explain the situation, which you may or may not have identified - an admittedly preemptive defense. My research is sensitive. And the people I spend almost all of my time with are intimately connected to my research. The people I travel with, whose homes I stay in, with whom I cook and share meals, and who have taught me much of what I know about Sierra Leonean ways and means are often former political prisoners, former members of armed groups, or former captives. Even those who have no obviously volatile history or infamous identity attached to their person remain out of the sights of this blog. Because, quite frankly, I am afraid of the internet and its completely opaque security machinations.

So, please excuse my Africa without Africans. Hopefully the culture and flavour of life here, the hopes and challenges of this heavily populated (with people) nation come through despite my reticence to introduce the many characters who have welcomed me, with open arms and sometimes with trial by fire. There is so much more I would love to share but don't to firstly, protect people here and the precarious lives they are living, and secondly, to protect myself.


'Oh, cynical eye,' says idealistic self with patience and gratitude, 'Did you forget naivete can crumble? And blind faith in humanity mature? You see, cynical eye, every action has its reason.'

Code switching and (mis)communication

I have always excelled at code switching, sometimes much to my dismay. I'm not a linguist, so I use the term "code switching" loosely, to describe the ability to transfer between multiple languages, accents or dialects depending on one's social surroundings and context. In high school, I discovered my adept and subconscious tendency to code switch when I began noticing that I spoke differently with my friends at school, in the classroom, and at home. I was afraid it was a sign of inauthenticity or a multiplicity of identities, I was worried I was a poseur and I didn't even know it. (These fears were underscored when my sister once told me she could tell who I was talking to on the phone by how I spoke!) My college friends allayed these concerns by introducing to me the concept of code switching and so, with less aversion, I have watched myself from afar navigate through wildly different communities and contexts and seen my speech change shape -subconsciously- as I go. Code switching causes (or enables) me to shift vocabulary, intonation, and some grammatical structures when I call my bank in the UK for example. As I put off the line, my code switches back to align with my family. An even more striking switch occurs when I visit a diverse urban school or basketball court... Here in Sierra Leone, my propensity to code switch facilitated a rapid adoption of Krio pronunciation, making me tohk Krio clear, but as you will see, this enviable research skill has some drawbacks, such as...

The secret to my lack of communication? Instead of posting messages and stories to make a dent in the backlog, I have spent my time pondering why I fail to communicate said messages and stories. I have come up with two winning theories.

1. The backlog of un-relayed and often-inexpressible experiences is intimidating, and I don't know where to start, especially now that chronologically went out the window.

2. I have realized that here I not only code switch, which for me is a painless and subconscious application of relevant speech patterns, I now think in Krio. ("Krio" is Krio for Creole, and is the lingua franca of Sierra Leone.) To type emails or blog posts, or what have you, I have to pull myself out of my brain and reinsert my thoughts into my dormant English-speaking mind. Yu see di problem?? People been tell me seh, if ah de tohk Krio, ah fo poil mi Engrish. An now look watin don pas. Ah no mean for tohk seh, na pohfect Krio ah de tohk no moh, buh mos time ah no jus tohk pan Krio, ah de tink pan am back. Dis na di problem!

(You see the problem? -this is a favorite Krio phrase and one I use often- People told me that, if I speak Krio, I'll mess up my English. And now look what happened. I don't mean to say that I speak perfect Krio -hah! as if. but so people like to tell me, and I admit, I let it go to my head sometimes- but most times, I don't just speak in Krio, I also think in Krio. This is the problem!) Also a problem, no one really reads or writes in Krio. Obviously no one in my limited audience of friends and family reads Krio, but Krio -speaking, -reading and -writing people moreover generally apply their literacy skills to English. The richness of the lingua franca is as an oral language, in my inexpert opinion.

And as I try to mitigate the Kringlish that wants to spill onto the page, my loss of vocab and inadvertent inversion of grammatical structure distracts me back to the here and now (i.e. Sierra Leone research mission). And as a result, I don't email, or post, or otherwise extract my thoughts from the present context. Which isn't to say I don't want to - Lord knows what fate awaits me when I have two weeks to prepare a conference paper in English in (where else?) England - it just goes to show that lack of electricity, poor internet connection, and litany of other more pressing responsibilities are not primarily responsible for my communication failures. What to express and how is far more daunting.

Now, I'm going to poil (spoil - ruin) my sister's positive assessment that my blog was getting funnier (just read the bold to preserve a semblance of lightheartedness):

Communication Accommodation Theory
The Communication Accommodation Theory (CAT), developed by Howard Giles, professor of communication, at UCSB, seeks to explain the cognitive reasons for code-switching, and other changes in speech, as a person seeks either to emphasize or to minimize the social differences between him- or herself and the other person(s) in conversation. Prof. Giles posits that when speakers seek approval in a social situation they are likely to converge their speech with that of the other person speaking. This can include, but is not limited to, the language of choice, accent, dialect, and para-linguistic features used in the conversation. In contrast to convergence, speakers might also engage in divergent speech, with which an individual person emphasizes the social distance between him- or herself and other speakers by using speech with linguistic features characteristic of his or her own group.

Okay, I know it's a little dense, but I think Prof. Giles is on point, and I don't think it is a calculated or rational choice (at least not for me), but rather a natural byproduct of sincere social interaction. My research certainly requires a readiness to minimize the social differences (which are eyewateringly vast) between myself and my informants, and engender social approval not just for access and information, but also for safety and enjoyment. So, with that, ah tell God tenki ("I thank God" - the Krio phrase par excellence, applicable as response to any question) for my code switching skills and promise to not only reflect on my experiences, but code switch them back to you in English...eventually.

Re: Departure

After five trips to the immigration office, I secured a visa extension into September. I'll leave the commentary on government bureaucracies for later, when my diplomatic assessment can benefit from the dispassionate distance of remember-y. The outcome is what matters now, which is that instead of flying out this weekend, I am now planning to leave Freetown by the 1st - a supervisor instated deadline with conference panel to boot, so that I don't stay in the country indefinitely, pursuing obtuse questions with multiple answers.

The semi-relevant photo is from Freetown, where public transport consists of poda-podas (like this minibus taxi), okadas (motorbikes - currently being banned from the city center), shared motorcar taxis, and a few stray government buses that (under)serve the suburbs. This photo features a few charms of the roads in Freetown:
1. Pimp my ride: What poda poda drivers lack in resources (and common sense), they more than make up for with enthusiasm. Get excited!
Note the exciting use of license plate holders to accent the back door! (I've often sat in traffic and pondered who imports license plate holders that don't fit the license plates here - I'm no MBA, but it seems like a niche business model.)
Note the exciting use of non-functional, bolted down fire extinguishers to look hype! (The more the better, and symmetry is preferred.)
Note the exciting font and unironic pro-football(soccer)/Bob Marley reference - two guaranteed crowd pleasers throughout Africa! (Other popular themes are God, Jesus, Allah, Mother - mine, yours?, Enemies, Money and Uncle - again, mine, yours? A whole post could and should be dedicated to awesome sayings painted on poda podas.)
Note the exciting attachment of ski racks and other non-sequiters to the top of the vehicle! (For four months, I didn't realize that the racks on taxis and poda podas: A) were not ever used (I naively assumed they were necessary for strapping down goats, produce, charcoal, etc.) and purely decorative; and B) were attached after import (again, naively, I assumed that the used car market in the US, UK, Netherlands, etc. was flooded with be-racked vehicles that made their way to West African ownership). C.f. license plate holders, the business model of importing ski racks to Sierra Leone is fascinating.) (Apologies for the excessive use of parentheses.)
Finally, note the exciting attachment of radio anttenae atop the vehicle! (Although poda podas regularly bump loud music - Akon reigns supreme here - they rarely play the radio. I was smart enough to know that four or six anttenae wobbling out of the rear of a reconstructed van were probably not fully functional.)
2. Far less exciting than the poda podas that transport 15-20 people, are the means of transporting goods. Just below the left-hand fire extinguisher, you'll see a push cart. Unlike in Ethiopia, where donkeys provide the majority of hard labour, in Sierra Leone manual labour relies on people. Women and children fetch water with 5-gallon jerrycans at public taps ("pumps") throughout the city; and young and old men for hire ferry all manner of goods (rubbish, huge bags of rice, beds) up and down the streets. In the East End where the streets get smaller, wheelbarrows join the parade, as the flatbed pushcarts maneuver - and block traffic - far more slowly.
3. For big loads, there are big trucks. These tend to go to the provinces (destroying the fragile patchwork of stones and dirt that communities and contractors are repeatedly attempting to grade into functional roads) and as far as Guinea and Liberia. On the far left you can see an "Own Goods" truck that might be transporting produce (this means cocoa, coffee, palm oil, rice - not lettuce and carrots), timber, fire wood, or people. These trucks are inevitably smoke-billowing bullies with no regard for other vehicles or pedestrians. They move at dangerously high speeds when coming toward you, and slower than molasses when you are behind them breathing in fumes.

Road Trip 3.0

Or, End Radio Silence.

Last week I returned to Freetown after three weeks in Eastern Province and what was sadly my last major road trip before returning to the UK/S. The map above charts my movements, as I realise the names will mean little.

The roads were bad, but could have been worse. The rainy season gods were smiling on me (most of the time) - they must have been impressed with my driving through a torrential downpour the first day - and didn't wash away too many critical sections. The only weather-related glitch was getting stuck an extra day in the village because the swamps/road filled with water the first day and took three days to drain. We traveled out of there in high style: with manpower, shovels and a pickaxe to build the road as we went (plus, serious agricultural booty including 2 roosters, about 50 pounds of papayas, an entire bag of ginger and lime for making gingerbeer, some 30 pounds of cassava, and a bag of rice for someone's mother).

Highlights included:

-walking into Liberia (twice!)

-seeing Guinea across the river

-learning to ride a motor bike (finally!)

-getting three country chickens (cock fohl - boys) and other nice gifts

-meeting bohku (plenty) wonderful people

-spending time in the village cooking, climbing into the forest, and learning Mende words (plus a surprise highlight t.b.a.)

-exhausting myself before I exhausted my potential sources for research material

-listening to my research assistant's endless supply of "Krio man say..." and "Mende man say..." proverbs.

Not-lights included:

-driving on abominations of a road (however, no breakdowns or flat tires and got stuck only twice = victory)

-being turned away from one of the Sierra Leone/Guinea waterside villages because of tensions surrounding a border conflict (difficult to solve with a country that has no president)

-getting innumerable and unidentfiable bites, some of which are not looking so good

-fuel shortage in Kenema on day two (road trip in the Eastern province is a carry-what-you'll-need endeavour, including fuel and water, which incidentally started to taste a bit like fuel)

Current mission: obtain two-week visa extension and sell car. Will also add posting backdated road stories to the humble blog.