Early Musings about Namibia

First impressions on a few issues to which I will undoubtedly return once I have thought about them a bit more:

“Bureaucracy”:  Let’s just say we did not get the warmest welcome to the country.  I won’t bore you with the story of our visas/permits, but the end result is that we should have been all set to enter Namibia.  Apparently we were not.  The reason why we were not is essentially because the rules are so vague that it is anyone’s guess what is sufficient for the border guards on a given day.  The vagueness provides rich soil for bribery, nepotism and other wonderful things to flourish.  We were in the end ok, but to a large extent thanks to our boss being able to pull some strings.  As great as that was for us, it is obviously not how it should be.  Immigration and home affairs is the hotbed of corruption in many countries, even though much of it could be reduced, with fairly simple methods.  When we entered Egypt a few years ago, there were big signs at the border, in English, telling all entrants what was required for a visa and how much it would cost.  Rules such as this need to be clear, they need to specify what is required, on what basis can an application be denied, how much will it all cost and what is the timeframe within which the decision will be taken.  This all then needs to be publicly and visibly explained wherever necessary, with a number to call if a person has any complaints.  But there may have been a silver lining as our adventures were the last straw for her: our boss is now preparing a memo on necessary reforms to the Minister of Home Affairs.  Watch this space for future developments -- hopefully positive ones.

“Demography”: We naively thought that since the whole country had gone through oppression and the independence struggle, it would not be suffering from the problematic aspects of race relations that its former colonial master and neighbour South Africa is still experiencing.  We were wrong.  I am fascinated by how totally segregated the society is.  There is black / coloured Namibia, then there is Afrikaner Namibia, and at the top of the hierarchy (at least in their own opinion) is German Namibia.  Whites own everything and outside of the context of work, where they must interact with their black employees, the races do not mix.  It has so far been weird, sad and fascinating in equal measures.  On Saturday we were at the Windhoek Country Club for a wine tasting event.  It will surprise nobody that there were no more than a handful of black people among the several hundred guests.  To balance things out, on Sunday we went to an Africa Day exhibition football game between Sundowns (from South Africa) and the local African Stars.  In the stadium of several thousand spectators we spotted three other white faces.  When another traveller we met asked a local white teenager whether he had any black friends, apparently the response was that he didn’t, but this was “not because they were black, but because they had not gone to similar schools or had a similar life, so they just had nothing in common”.  As I said, weird, sad and fascinating.

“Muggings”:  When it comes to safety, we’ve heard some pretty wild stories.  We’ve been told time and again that we are prime targets as not only whites, but as foreigners.  We’ve been advised that carrying bags is stupid, walking is stupid, taking local taxis is stupid … basically everything apart from staying indoors and clutching our money to our chests is stupid.  By contrast, we’ve also been told by a foreigner who has lived here for close to 30 years that she has been mugged once and that was in New York.  Apparently there are many possible reactions.  We’ve met an American couple who rented a house in the leafy suburb, bought a car and basically lived their life here as much as possible as if they were still in the United States, avoiding all contact with the “local” environment to the extent they could.  We’ve also met a backpacker who clearly relished the story of how he was robbed at machetepoint and how he was now on his way to the border region with Angola, because that was the true wild west where it was all happening.  As for us, we’ve decided that we can’t waste our time here being scared.  We walk, we take taxis (there is no other public transport) and we attend “local” places and events.  We already had a taste of the more creative side of business at the football match, where there just happened to be an “altercation” at the narrow exit gate when we were leaving, and during all the jostling the people on both sides of F “accidentally” placed their hands in F’s pockets, as opposed to their own.  We cannot guarantee that we will not be mugged, the best we can aim for is that we will not be carrying anything that we will have trouble parting with if that happens.

Rant about Gypsies

Here are three recent stories from real life:

Story A: Two colleagues are watching a newscast.  The newsreader is talking about the plans of the Italian government to evict (mostly Romanian) Roma from their illegal settlements.  The younger one wonders out loud how this can happen.  The older colleague mentions casually that it is the only way to do policing in Europe.  He knows because his wife works in law enforcement.  “Gypsies” are sought out and targeted, because they just are much more likely to be criminals.

Story B: A mixed bunch of hockey players, from young teens to 42-year olds, are getting off their bus outside a rink.  The coach tells them not to leave anything valuable on the bus.  When one player asks “why not”, the answer, given with a smirk, is “because there is a Roma convention taking place in the building next door”.  A few players giggle a little, and all file out of the bus and head for the rink to prepare for their match.

Story C: A team of football players is out on the town after a victorious tournament.  Loud, boisterous behaviour and drunken antics are accompanied by approving laughter and backslapping.  At one point the teasing is directed at one player, M, and a well known football chant which translates as something along the lines of “M is a gypsy” gets on the way.

This sort of casual racism against the Roma (or Romani*) happens all the time, everywhere, on our presumably modern, civilised continent.  While we mostly understand and abstain from overt racism or other forms of crass discrimination against other minorities, the same rules don’t seem to apply when it comes to the Roma.  I was channel surfing the other day and was pretty shocked to come across a reality TV show on English TV that was called “My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding”.  Apart from the fact that the TV company had thought it OK to use the derogatory term “gypsy” in an attempt to draw a humorous parallel with the hit play and later movie “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”, the content continued with the racist theme.  I watched it for about 20 minutes out of some kind of morbid fascination to discover that the bride-to-be looked and acted like a pretty standard English “bridezilla” who has lost a few marbles in the planning of the impending nuptials, but somehow this was all made to sound like it was due to the fact that she was Roma.  And this was all happening on national TV!  The mind boggles.

Casual racism is not rocket science, so if we wanted to stop it, we would.  There is a very simple test to find out whether a stereotype about the Roma is acceptable or not:  Just replace the word “Roma” or “gypsy” with “jewish” or “black”.  If this makes you squirm with discomfort, well then what is being said is racist, whether it is intended as such or not.

But the problem is not just that we casually make such remarks.  It is made much worse because we tolerate them.

Which one is the odd one out of my three stories above?  Story C. 

Stories A and B happened to me.  I was listening to the racist remark in A and the racist joke in B, and said nothing.  In story A I should have told my boss that finding out that this sort of racial profiling is conducted openly by the Swiss police sends shivers down my spine, and not least because it is against the European Convention on Human Rights.  In story B I should have told my coach that I find making racist jokes, especially in front of impressionable teenagers as young as 13, entirely inappropriate.  Instead I shut up.

Story C happened to my other half F.  He challenged his loudmouth drunken football buddies, telling them that this sort of casual racism was just not ok.  Some protestations ensued, a few players defending their actions by saying that it was harmless football banter.  F was having none of it, telling them that racism was never harmless and football should move away from using such chants.  To their credit his buddies listened and took note.  Several constructive conversations about casual racism directed at the Roma have taken place among the team members since.

I just hope that when these situations occur in the future, and they will occur, since the Roma will continue to be the most discriminated minority in Europe for a long time, I will have the courage to act more like F and less like me.  I can’t stop the Italian (or Finnish, for that matter,) police from evicting the Roma from their makeshift camps, nor can I ensure that Romania (or other countries) do not discriminate against Roma children in isolating them from “normal” children and giving them substandard teaching in separate classes.  But what I can do is point out these small, casual, acts of racism, and make these very smart and nice people see what they’re doing, and thus make them perhaps think twice next time.  I will report back on the first occasion I manage to put my own advice into action.

*Romani is the more technically accurate term, since Roma are a sub-group of Romani, but I've stuck with Roma, as it is widely used to denote all of the Romani.

Rant about a Particularly Hot Piece of Ass

My cousins A and P told me that they were watching the 2013 Eurovision Song Contest held a few months ago in Malmö, Sweden. (Hooray to great cultural traditions!)  Apparently in the Finnish broadcast one could send text messages to the production company and these would scroll along the bottom of the screen as the finalists were performing.  A and P noted that many of the comments were lewd and openly sexual, saying nothing about the songs, but focusing solely on the physical attributes of the artists.  Once they noticed this, they began following the comments and discovered that they related solely to the men – without exception.  Nobody made comments about the looks of the female artists (or at least none were published), many of whom were trying just as hard as the men (if not harder) to look sexy.

This is of course what I did at the end of my last post on football.  I made a very thinly veiled crass remark about the looks of professional male football players.  Had I been a man, and making a similar kind of a comment about, say, a female swimmer or gymnast, it would probably have come across as stupid and more than a little sexist.  But I will hazard a guess that that is not how it came across when I made it about men.

Why is that?  Is it not a double standard?  Why do women feel the need to make sexist remarks about men’s bodies, and why are these tolerated?

I gave this idea some thought, and while I don’t have any definite answers, my guess is that it is some kind of a reclaiming exercise.  “Reclaiming” is what black people have done in appropriating the previously used derogatory term “nigger” for their own use, just like women have done with “bitch”, handicapped people with “cripple” and gay men with “fruit” or “queen” – just to give a few obvious examples.  So what I think has happened with the whole objectification thing is that women have taken a practice formerly reserved for men and appropriated it for their own use.  While men are no longer permitted to do that with impunity (remember what recently happened to BBC’s John Inverdale and his blooper about Wimbledon champion Marion Bartoli?), women are cheekily turning the tables and giving men a taste of their own medicine.  What we are in effect saying is “I don’t give a damn whether you have talent / brains / sense of humour – I just see you as a hot piece of ass and it is my right to objectify you in this way”.  

The fad will undoubtedly die down, but for now, I may just take advantage of it a few times before it is gone.  So all overpaid famous men beware: I couldn't care less about you, your skills, opinions or personality.  What I want to know is whether I am getting some eye candy or not.  

I'm sure all Wayne Rooneys of this world are quietly crying into their beers having learnt this harsh truth about my wishes and intentions. 

Rant about FIFA Law 12

As a light summer rant, I want to talk about football.

My own interest has mostly revolved around other sports, but football is relatively hard to avoid, especially when living in England, like I was from the late 1990s onwards.  So I tried to fit in.  I went to the pub to watch Premier League games, I read up on it, I picked a team I pretended to support (Liverpool, in case anyone’s interested).

Then came the 2002 World Cup.  I remember the game very well, although I can’t even recall who England was playing, which says something about how interesting it was.  But as I was confessing to my housemate that the action looked a bit boring and I couldn’t understand why they kept insisting bringing the ball up the left side every time, the commentator mentioned casually that it was a very hot day and the left side of the field was the only one in the shade. 

That was it for me. 

You see, I could just about put up with the fact that it was all fundamentally dull and not much was ever happening.  I could also put up with the annoying filming where these supposedly tough athletes went down screaming like a bunch of babies in situations where you could see they were hardly touched.*  I could even put up with the inevitable penalty shootouts where the goalie always went in the opposite direction to the shot and the only way not to get it in was to be so incompetent as to actually miss the 7.3m x 2.4m goal.  But I couldn’t put up with the fact that in the most important tournament in the world the English players’ primary interest was to stay in the shade.  Nope, couldn’t put up with that, even if it was a REALLY HOT DAY.

So for a long time I gave up on football.  Then I moved to France, and the French know how to watch sports, so I ended up being swept away by the exciting 2006 World Cup.  I haven’t looked back since.  The sport had taken a turn for the better and the Spanish domination that has installed itself in the last few years has been nothing but good.  The game nowadays is fast, the passes short and skilled, there are goals and penalties, fast runs and hard tackles.  There is still some cry-babying, but much less so, presumably because modern TV technology will swiftly reveal you for the idiot that you are if you do that. 

So it is all for the better.

Well ... ALMOST all.

What I would like to know is this:  Who on earth got the idea to ban the players from ripping off their shirt when they scored a goal???  There are so many more goals being scored now than there were 10-15 years ago.  This would mean so many more opportunities to see all that ... toned, ... ripped, ... jubilation.  *sigh* They were SO CLOSE to creating a truly crowd-friendly sport.

Being a true believer in democracy I suggest starting a petition on change.org for reversing the 2004 amendment to FIFA Law 12.  Who’s with me?

*I dare anyone to try THAT in an ice hockey game ...