I lived in a traditional house in Lamu for a bit and also did a home-stay with a Muslim man’s “second wife” and I think gettleman is romanticising this ‘culturally pristine’ site where socially sanctioned (informal) slavery still exists, Muslim women hardly even step outside of their homes (homes have been altered to created bridges for women to walk from from to home without stepping outside), children just don’t go to non-religious school because tourists give out candy and pens, and did I mention the largest tourist interest there is in the sex industry? The place smells horrible because there is no sewage system.The natural landscape definitely beautiful (and the islands in the Indian Ocean surrounding Lamu are the most pristine I’ve ever seen)–but development brings social change which may liberate some from religious and patriarchal shackles.

Also on Blue-Eyed Devil, you’ll find:

“What 1 Pen and 2 Power Cords Cost Us”

and

“My first week in Caracas“

The Built Environment

Caracas’ built environment reminds me of Warsaw-a drab socialist landscape of cement, block buildings with old cars (new cars are no longer sold in Venezuela, so unless one has connections, all cars on the market are used cars) driving on the bumpy autopistas. Climbing up the mountains and looming over Caracas are slums, or barrios, where Chavez’s 30% approval rating holds. Barrios have become a site of disgust for the now-struggling middle class citizens (mostly composed of professionals) who have lost their jobs due to Chavez’s nationalisation drives of oil, cement, steel, rice for the betterment of the poor.

barrios

Official propaganda posters of Chavez holding a baby, medical accomplishments and “unofficial” spray-painted, red slogans falsely purporting a people’s initiative in favour of the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV). The disconnect seems to be that the successes are only on propaganda posters and Chavez’s weekly 6-8 hour television program, while the everyday failures of the government are much more defined.

I should mention that I am learning a lot about Venezuela (and very fast) because I am in the company and under the care of anti-chavistas. These hosts in particular partook in the major 2002 oil strike in Venezuela against the nationalisation of the industry, were sued by the government, and have been blacklisted from many higher-paying jobs in Caracas. Many fled to Canada, but this family established residency there just in case of future asylum. This family is living in perpetual transition and uncertainty about the future.

Nationalised 12 Cent/Gallon Gas at Petroleos de Venezuela (PDV)

So while driving down the autopista, the anti-chavistas point out many aspects of the built environment which fuels their frustration against Chavez. For example, red-ification of the Caracas landscape. As banks and industry become engulfed by the government, banners and advertisements become marked by the colour red. Red is a physical marker of the government becoming evermore successful in its unchecked nationalisation drive. There is a mundaneness to this advertisement as the landscape of Caracas (even Nescafe advertises an enormous, red mug on top of one of the buildings linking coffee with citizenship) becomes a sea of red.

I made the mistake of wearing a pretty red shirt one day, and was embarrassed to hear that the anti-chavistas were against wearing the colour red. When I admitted my ignorance, they replied that red is a pretty colour and the important way is “how” you wear red. The chavista way of wearing red is with a red cap on which the slogan “si” -which means that the person voted in favour of the referendum in February 2009 that granted Chavez unlimited presidential term limits. If you wear the cap “no”-that means one voted against the referendum. While standing in traffic to go to a Venezuelan beisbol game (we of course rooted against the Magallanes, Chavez’s favorite team) in Caracas, the family pointed out two chavistas wearing “si” caps, red tees, and walking hand-in-hand in an uppity and proud manner. The reaction in our car was one of disgust. I asked whether or not the girls had any chavista friends and they of course said absolutely not because they attend a pro-capitalist, Catholic school where a chavista would have a difficult time fitting in. They did mention, however, that the way that they sniff out closet chavistas is when his/her family gets rich fast, moves to a nice house in a short period of time, and the chavista becomes more introverted.

About the shirt–I think they were trying to be nice to me, for I remember a day earlier they claimed that they “hated” the color red. I am deciding whether or not to take off my red nail polish, throw out my red lipstick, and my red pieces of clothing in order to make my political affiliation loud and clear.

Driving up to any house, one will be confronted with cage-like gates (not nice fences or gates)-one after another accessible by special keys. One house had 3 locks on the door after one had to enter through a gate between the elevator and the door. There is a lack of trust rampant throughout the city. Dangerous driving, kidnappings, and thieves keep people from jogging, strolling or bicycling down the streets. There is an emptiness of human contact that really makes Caracas look desolate. People flood to the mall or to the movies where there is some sort of a safe haven for human interaction outside of the household. At the mall, the host family would not enter a specific store because they knew the chavista who owned it–so even at the mall, political affiliation is expressed. From what I understand, the family also purchases a certain type of pre-paid internet because another company is jointly owned with the government which monitors internet interaction for its users.

But the mall is also becoming a constrained space in itself. For every purchase, the buyer will be asked to present her identification card and in some cases asked why she is making the purchase, for whom, which will be logged into the computer. I found it incredibly odd that the Venezuelan with whom I was purchasing my cheap Casio watch (with cash) had to present her card as if she was responsible for the purchase. In the United States, this would spark a public outrage!

For the past two days, our plans have been affected by the government. First, we could not see Avatar after 6PM because the government issued a law (!!) which ordered movie theaters, restaurants, clubs, malls, and any other public place to shut down by 9PM (Avatar would take us over the 9PM mark). The reason for this is due to an electricity shortage. What frustrates people is that the government won’t fix the electrical problem. For them, this is not temporary-but might be an exercise of power which will affect their nightlife for a long time. Chavez has found a new way to control the population, with posters hanging around the entire mall informing the masses that a law has been passed which fines businesses which operate outside of the hours of 11AM-9PM.

11AM-6PM Law

This morning, we stood in a line (very Communist style) outside of the digital store because Chavez ordered a fine for stores that opened on their usual time (10AM). We waited until 11PM until the mall lit up and the grumpy customers entered the store. Military men and women made their presence known around the mall to enforce the new law. “This is the military” the girl pointed out and added “I hate them”. She explained that while a portion of the military was in support of the anti-nationalisation oil protesters, there was not enough military will to end Chavez’s tyranny. She added that the only hope to check Chavez’s corruption of power is a military coup, but at the moment, the military is on Chavez’s side and the anti-chavistas feel powerless in their protest.

Just like with the electricity shortages, Chavez ordered a similar solution with water shortages earlier in the year (still in effect). Water is available only on certain days in certain parts of Caracas. This week, we did not have water (at all!) for several, non-consecutive days. The problems which allow the government to control the population (and tire it out!) are not being solved, but exploited.

This Sunday, I will watch a bit of Chavez’s famous 6-8 hour television program on which he blasts the United States, drones about new projects and the benefits of socialism. Locals here complain that on his campaign trail, Chavez never mentioned anything about socialism, and now, they have to conform to the everyday realities of conforming changes in their schedules and lifestyles. Many have had enough of the brotherhood between Chavez and Castro and would encourage outsiders in support of the regimes to come to Venezuela to try life out for a while.

I will try to post more photos up as they come.

Garbarnia: A Fallen Communist Tannery, Pomerania (October 2009)

This is in response to Slate article: Anne Applebaum: 1989 And All That (special thanks to Dr. Frank Popper at Rutgers and Princeton universities for pointing it out to me).

Applebaum is correct: Communism still matters in Eastern Europe (and in the West) but I disagree that there really ought to be a controversy taking place as to whether or not the transition is over for EE countries. This is where ethnography trumps journalism or armchair scholarship because it assumes change and focuses revisionist history on how the people are changing rather than whether the people are changing in the first place. I am always baffled by the articles who talk about how Poland has embraced the capitalist mindset and how it is an exception to the transition phases of the other Eastern European countries. I ask myself if the author has even been to Warsaw (where sky-skrapers built in the early 1990s stand almost empty) let alone to a Polish village. In 2009, Communism is very real in Poland.

Without a doubt, the transition is still very much behind, not only in privatization (in Poland a government agency called the Agencja Rynku Rolnego still owns most of the physical property and structures of what used to be state farms and there are Communist workers of those old state farms who still have Communist production circles or kolkhozy and pay rent to the state) but also the mentality of the people in understanding how to use the capitalist system. The best selling book for little children is still Elementarz which establishes the Communist foundations of citizenship (which includes a “who are our friends” section of the book depicting children carrying Cuban, Chinese, Russian flags and the worker ideal in the factory, etc) .

Throughout the 4 months of research in Poland, I met people who recall the fall of Communism in 1995-1996 because that is when the local tannery industry (in photograph) which employed over 60% of the village, fell to privatization. The fall for the West was of course in 1989 but as of late in Poland (given Nobel Prize Winner Lech Walesa’s tarnished image and also now the anti-Americanism due to the U.S. Missile Defense Shield in Redzikowo), the symbols of 1989 have been demonized in the ugly politics on the national level. Additionally, the new historical order has led to the legitimisation of victimhood politics of Jews, Ukrainian, Gypsy, Bielorussian, Lithuanian and other Eastern European minorities which previously were hidden under the post-1945 polonisation campaign. For ethnic Poles, such a perception of the political order fuels Nostalgia for Communism. Pomerania is in fact in the voting polls the most Communist-leaning still in the country (given that the Communist project was most established there) and not one person I interviewed admitted to taking part in any Solidarity Movement because the SM is now associated with the colonisation of Poland by the European Union.

When thinking of anti-Communism in Poland, it is important to understand that Communists and non-Communists lived together in villages and most were neighbors. There were families who had a daughter signed up to the Communist party (to acquire resources for the family) while the son remained “anti-Communist” (to have access to local resources such as tomatoes from the other anti-Communists’ garden). So to “get” bread, families were both Communist and Anti-Communist at the same time. Those who carried out the Communist orders in the village were often “excused” by the anti-Communists because the two neighbors both knew that this was all a theater. of actors and people needed to work to put bread on the table. So I think instead of thinking of opposition in the form of “political” opposition, it is important to think more of it in terms of economic exploitation: that for example the Communist brigadier on the state farm turned a blind eye on his non-Communist neighbors to steal potatoes from the state-farm to feed their families. It was this system of “permissions” between neighbors on both sides to exploit the system which led to its indirect opposition, but I would not even call it a “niche” or “civil society” that was entirely anti-Communist or pro-Communist. It was a set of social-economic relations dealing with Communist and non-Communist resources which developed on the local levels. I would say that any resistance against the church was also a form of acting out Communism because many such Communists went to church in another village on Sunday where no one would recognize their faces.

The city of Gdansk this year was celebrating its “historical” place in Polish history (the site of Westerplatte where World War II began) and the site of the Gdansk shipyards. To the locals outside of Gdansk, the city has always represented a piece of the West (from German influence) which  in 1989 did not act in accordance to the wishes of the locals. The Solidarity Movement is typified as a very Gdansk contained uprising based on the unique experiences of the shipyard workers with the shipyard authorities. The way that the locals around Gdansk (in Pomerania) knew about the Solidarity Movement was when a group of Solidarity Movement came to the local tannery and (supposedly) bullied people into protest and signing petitions they did not really want to sign. It was another method of control. In order for the transition to be complete, there needs to be a reassessment of the Polish rural mindset. For people to begin to take responsibility for their own construction of their realities and their histories. To understand what is and is not their responsibility as Polish and European Union citizens. Until then, they will disagree with any political or economic order which disrupts their ignorance.

Thanks for reading,

E (Pomerania, Nov. 2009)

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Fez, Morocco (March 2009)

A beehive-like, pungent, sheep and lamb skin tannery (with poor working conditions) in the centre of the windy streets of Old Town Fez. The entire production process was basically laid out on worker homes’ rooftops.

Mr. W. and Basia in Pomerania, Poland (October 2009)

During the course of my ethnographic fieldwork in northwest Poland, I had the opportunity to meet Mr. W. (and Basia the pregnant horse who) happens to be the last gospodarsz (or self-sufficient small-scale farmer) who still performs free services for the families who gave away their inventories and land back to the Communist government  in the early 1980s in return for retirement money. For a video of Mr. W and Basia ploughing, click here.

Pomerania, Poland (October 2009)

While embarking on a fieldwork-related errand one day, I asked Mrs. S., a local mushroom-picking expert, if she knew what that head scarf represented. She quite frankly admitted that she had no idea but that it was a remittance hand-me-down from her family of migrant workers who worked on large private farms in the Norwegian countryside. I told her that it was an American flag (which came as a shock to her because the U.S. Missile Base talks were still going on in Redzikowo-only several kilometers down the road-and anti-Americanism against President Obama was quite strong). To my surprise, Mrs. S. took the American flag off the next day, but soon-after, I was happy to see that the unveiling was temporary and that Mrs. S. was happily biking into the forest to pick mushrooms in her favorite American flag head scarf. On an unrelated note, I love the wildly disfigured red fencing behind her.

Post-PGR Farm, Pomerania, Poland (October 2009)

This is a field which prior to 1989 was a 100+ hectare PGR (a state farm). These PGRs had their workers living on the state property. After 1989, the PGRs became privatised but the PGR workers stayed on the property (some purchased their PGR homes, while others are still paying “rent” to the government Agencja Rynku Rolnego which seized state properties and has yet to “privatise” them in 2009). These post-PGR workers (but locally, they go by the name of “homoPGRicus” because they represent a specific mindset) are visibly poaching potatoes from the post-PGR properties because that was a regular activity during the Communist era (it was socially sanctioned to poach from the government and incorporate it into the subsistence level). It is not a case of them thinking that the potatoes are “theirs” as a result of their (past) labour (since the PGR workers were least attached from ownership of anything) but because they feel that the potatoes are public resources in the first place.

]]> http://edytamaterka.com/footnotes/?feed=rss2&p=242 0 http://edytamaterka.com/footnotes/?p=151 http://edytamaterka.com/footnotes/?p=151#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:44:32 +0000 Edyta http://edytamaterka.com/footnotes/?p=151

Illeret, Kenya (July 2006)

It feels great to have been part of a group who partook in excavating the oldest human footprints in modern anatomy (see National Geographic article here) under Dr. Harris. During the course of the paleo-anthropological dig in Illeret, Kenya with the Koobi Fora Field School (with the support of the National Museums of Kenya), we were lucky to be in the vicinity of the Dassanech people. After excavating in 40C arid and sandy weather (against the evil Leakeys nearby) with the typical acacia thorns being broken off inside some part of the body, the group would jump onto the lorry and Land Rovers and drive to Lake Turkana where we took our baths. Sometimes we would stop by Illeret and pick up a couple of children. One day, the Land Rover broke on our way to Lake Turkana. My two Dassanech friends (who wanted to become sprinters one day) and I decided to race to Lake Turkana. It was beautiful (and of course, I had no chance against their speed). At the end of the race, one of the girl stopped me, put a silver bracelet around my wrist and said, “Edyta, you are my friend.”