In and Out Africa
I’ve visited Africa twice: Morrocco in 2013 and South Africa/Nambia in 2014, and though I probably didn’t understand what was going on below the obvious surface, I quickly made up my mind about every place I went. It is just not in my nature to do otherwise, though I am always willing to amend my first impressions. Many of my immediate judgments of Africa were created by my distaste for shallow pleasantries. Such friendly, polite banter was rarely evident in Morrocco, and I liked this state of affairs. I felt it grounded me in the truth. No one was interested in chatting with me unless I looked like I wanted to buy something. Of course, they cared nothing about me or my opinions beyond feigning a temporary interest that might result in a future commercial transaction. Why should they care otherwise? I admired this basic honesty and felt comfortable that I always knew where I stood with them. I was a forgettable stranger who might buy something but made no impression at all if I didn’t. I ceased to exist, perhaps never existed for them as I walked away.
South Africa was very different. Everyone, white, black, or East Indian, wanted to know what I thought about South Africa and wanted me to understand that everybody was happy with everyone else and that any bad feelings and injustice that might have existed in the past had faded away with the years. “Nothing to see here. Move along.” was the mantra of the day in South Africa. None of this was true. The body language of the people telling me this story revealed a great deal of emotional inner turbulence caused by the discrepancy between what they were feeling and what they were telling me. Other, more objective evidence of ongoing division was also visible. I walked into the Cape Town business district around 9:00 one morning. Everything appeared to be the same as in any other business district’s rush hour. Men in suits and women in heels and business attire were rushing into their high-rise offices. On closer observation, I saw that most of the white office workers were stepping off new buses that displayed no signs of their origin or destination. They turned out to be chartered buses that brought affluent workers (mostly white) from wealthy suburbs. There was other evidence of separate white and black transportation systems. Later that week, I took a train out to Stellenbosch, the second oldest city in South Africa, which was established by the Dutch and settled partially by French immigrants who turned the surrounding countryside into a wine-growing region. Today it hosts the University of Stellenbosch, and 50% of its residents speak Africans while only 8% speak English.
After spending the day exploring the town, I went back to the train station to take the next train to Capetown. Approximately 800 people were on the platform waiting for the train. This group contained only one other white person. There are plenty of white South Africans who live in Stellenbosch. Over 18,000 of the 29,000 students at Stellenbosch University are white, but none took the train that evening. If any were heading out of town then, they were using some other form of transportation. Later in the week, I took the special Shosholoza Meyl night train from Cape Town to Johannesburg. Before we left the station, all the passengers were gathered together and introduced to the 5 security guards who would be traveling with us. While I listened to the head conductor tell us how safe and pleasant the trip would be, I was thinking, “Why the hell do we need 5 security guards?” I believe the train only made one stop on its way to Johannesburg, so why the security? Was there some African Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid waiting out in the darkness to stop and hold up the train? When we got to Johannesburg, the conductor warned us not to go out into the street outside the station to hail a cab. Apparently, people could be mugged when they were struggling to load their luggage into the cab, and the driver would be too frightened to help them. If this was an example of everyone getting along, I was glad I wasn’t here when there was tension in the air.
When I was in Stellenbosch, I visited a touristy general store that resembled one from the Afrikaner pioneer era. I climbed up onto the front porch and looked through the screen door. Two black ladies were working behind the counter. I tried the door, but it was locked. One of the ladies looked up and buzzed me in. I asked, “Why do you keep the door locked?” She replied in halting English, “Ve hef to kep the kafirs out or they steal.” If you don’t already know, “kefir” is an insulting term for a black African. These ladies clearly did not consider themselves to be black Africans. They defined themselves as black Afrikaners. Yes, they exist in South Africa, along with other “ethnic” groups who distinguish themselves from their neighbors in ways that would be considered fanciful elsewhere in the world.
No, South Africa wasn’t one big, happy Brady Bunch family. On the one hand, there were no Jans openly complaining that the Marshas were getting all the support and attention, while on the other, no one in the “family” thought it was safe enough to leave their bedroom doors unlocked at night. It’s too bad this disjointed way of life made me so uncomfortable as I traveled around South Africa. It really is a beautiful place to photograph, but I doubt I will ever return.
Cape Town is a modern city with plenty to see and do if you have the money. I can see how many whites have carved out very comfortable lives for themselves amidst a lot of poverty.
After spending a night in a Johannesburg suburb, I flew the next day to Walvis Bay on the Atlantic coast of Nambia. Namibia is mostly empty and truly feels like the outer limits of civilization. It consists mostly of a desert that extends across the southern three-quarters of the country to the frigid,
Antarctic currents that race up its Atlantic coast. I had a bit of a problem when I landed in Walvis Bay. Both South Africa and Namibia require, for some reason, that you have two completely blank pages in your passport when you arrive. I only had one blank page. The immigration officer at the Walvis Bay airport wouldn’t let me enter the country. No flights were returning to South Africa that day, and it appeared I would have a similar problem trying to reenter South Africa. I could neither move forward nor backward. I did the only thing I could do. I dropped my backpack on the floor and sat down on it in front of the immigration officer’s kiosk. It looked like I would be spending the rest of my life in no man’s land. There were two businessmen in suits waiting behind me. They looked at me impatiently, and the immigration officer looked at me with some alarm. He soon figured out that I had no place to go, and he waved me up from the ground and stamped my passport. He mumbled something about my going to the US consulate in Windhoek to get a new passport. (I later went there, but it was always closed).
I eventually made my way to Windhoek, Namibia’s capital and Namibia’s only true city. I rented a car there to travel to the area I came to Nambia to photograph, the Namib Naukluft Park. Namibians drive on the left-hand side of the road like the British, and navigating some of Windhoek’s four-lane streets left me a little unsure of myself. Left-hand turns are no problem in such a situation, but you had better look around carefully before attempting a right-hand turn and make sure you are in the correct lane after making it. The next day, I felt a lot better when I got out onto two-lane country roads where all I had to remember was “stay left.” I was smart enough to fill up my gas tank before heading off the paved road into the desert. As it was, I took a wrong turn and almost ran out of gas before reaching my destination. I stayed at the Sossusvlei Lodge, a rather posh oasis of comfort in the middle of the desert.
The next morning I ate breakfast with the other guests and was shocked to view the amount and variety of the food the Lodge offered. Everything I saw had to be driven 360 kilometers across the desert (a 5-hour drive) from Windhoek. The lodge also had a swimming pool. Where the hell did the water come from? I didn’t think the lodge was terribly expensive, but clearly, staying there was a decadent, wasteful extravagance.
I soon forgot the shame of participating in the lavish and profligate experience of the Soussosvlei Lodge as I lined up with other trucks and cars outside the gate to the Namib Naukluft Park. (There is a spartan hostel inside the gates, but you have to book a bed there months in advance if you want to get in). The gates opened, and everyone rushed into the park. Some people were determined to be the first to climb the best-known dunes or walk on the famous Dead Vlei. Vehicles rushed past me, sometimes taking to the shoulder of the road to do so.
The Dead Vlei is created where the fast evaporating Tsauchub river finally disappears into the sands of the Namib desert. During recent times water has rarely survived this far into the desert, though I have read that this year heavy rains in central Africa have temporarily flooded the vlei again.
I asked my guide, a local Hereo tribesman if I could walk out on the vlei to take pictures. The floor of the vlei consists of a brittle mosaic of dried clay. He said, “ever since the Germans came, you can walk anywhere you want.”
The next morning I filled up my gas tank and began the 10-hour drive to Swakopmund, which is located a few miles north of Walvis Bay. The road was a rough dirt track most of the way. I hit one of the road’s numerous stones the wrong way and had a flat tire. The temperature outside the car was over 100 degrees, and since I hadn’t seen another human being for the previous four hours, I was stressed out and forgot to wear my hat when I left the car to change the tire. Although I couldn’t have been outside for more than 20 minutes, I severely burned the top of my head and suffered mightily for it during the rest of the trip.
Swakopmund might be a decent place to hole up in if Interpol is trying to find you. It has a good seafood restaurant, an aquarium, and several places where you can buy an expresso, but there is little else to do there, and I suspect the town has generated its share of alcoholics over the years.
My impression of Morrocco was very different. It was lively, cultured, and honest about its indifference to your well-being.
Ilsa Lund and Victor Laszlo may have had some difficulty leaving Casablanca, but today, it is rather easy to fly in and move on to the city. After you leave immigration and customs, you only have to cross a broad airport lobby, descend some steps, and enter a train that takes you directly into Casablanca. I only spent a night there, but that was long enough to see that it was crowded, busy, a little scruffy, and probably little changed in the past 80 years.
I learned that a restaurant called “Ricks Place” did exist in Casablanca and decided to have dinner there. It was, of course, nothing like its movie version. It was a gourmet restaurant serving expensive Moroccan cuisine to wealthy tourists. The only similarities I saw between it and the movie version were that it was located only a block from the port, and it was foggy outside when I visited. I’m not going to complain further because the food was excellent.
The next morning I boarded a train for my final destination, Marrakesh. The train was old but well maintained. It puttered through a countryside made up of a stoney desert punctuated with dried-out brush. I was certainly not on the Marrakesh Express.
The Marrakesh train station sat in the newer French-influenced portion of the city. A broad 4 lane avenue passed in front of my hotel, and the Morrocan king had built a huge opera house at the avenue’s far end. (At the time of my visit, it had never opened).
I began my exploration of Marrakech outside the central area of the Medina. The staff at my hotel recommended the Jardin Marjorelle as an experience that shouldn’t be missed. They were correct. In the 1920’s French artist Jacques Majorelle began constructing a magnificent garden that combined fountains, pools, and tropical plants with adobe buildings and walls that were often painted with a deep blue pigment that he developed and copyrighted. This deep blue pigment has become an emblem of Marrakesh that pops up throughout the city, including the hotel where I stayed.
After working 40 years developing the garden, Marjarelle sold it after a divorce. It laid vacant for several years until Yves St. Laurant bought it in the 1980s and restored it to its present condition.
The French-influenced half of Marrakesh outside the walls of the Medina hosts most of the city’s art galleries, casinos, discos, bars, and gourmet restaurants. I really didn’t spend much time photographing this aspect of Marrakesh because it wasn’t the Marrakesh I imagined when I chose to travel here. After visiting the Jardin Majorelle, I immediately walked over to the walled Medina and passed through its gate. Here the residents retained traditional Arab values. No alcohol was served here, except at one dive bar reserved for tourists desperate for a drink. Several madrassas operated within the walls as well as the city’s most important mosques. Leather was processed, and yarn died using traditional methods here, and, of course, the souk with its winding alleys filled with commercial goods operated as it always has for centuries.
Over the centuries, Jews have played an important role in the development of Marrakesh and its economy. A large Jewish cemetery lies just outside the Medina’s walls. Jews have been buried there since the 12th century, and it continues today to be the largest Jewish cemetery in Morrocco. During World War II, the Morrocan king gave safe passage to Jews fleeing to Marrakesh. At the time, he was staging a revolt from the Vichy French. Unfortunately, Marrakesh’s attitude toward Jews changed after the war, and today no more than 200 Jews continue to live here. However, a section of the city is still identified as the Jewish quarter, and a few Jewish-owned shops remain.
While I spent most of my time in Marrakesh, I took a day trip into the Atlas mountains to visit a Berber village. My guide was an Arab, and he seemed to find Berber culture just as exotic as I did. As we crossed a bridge, my guide stopped the car and pointed to two boys in the stream below. They were washing a cow’s hoof in the stream. My guide shook his head and said, “They will skin off the hide and cook it.” He then made a face. He was a bit more impressed when we stopped outside Richard Branson’s resort. Since we clearly were not guests, we could not enter the gates to look around, but the wall surrounding it was very impressive. 🙂
The one Berber with whom I had a conversation was not rude or primitive at all. He was a young man selling geodes who spoke English better than my guide and was very knowledgeable about the different types of geodes and fossils he had for sale. I saw many Berbers wearing modern nylon puffy jackets and several shops offering guided tours further into the Atlas mountains in the town. Despite the cow’s hoof, these Berbers seemed very comfortable living in the 21st century.
I spent the next two weeks wandering around Marrakesh, recording its oddities, savoring its food, and absorbing as much of its culture as I could. It was a unique place that I will never be able to forget. Unlike South Africa, I would like to return there, though I am a little afraid that a second view of it would dilute the magic I experienced during this visit.
