Sweeping Dust

In Ngoma the women sweep dust, they sweep dust on a ground made up of packed dust, packed red dust. Throughout the day, they sweep, tidying, cleaning their homes and yards. But really they are just moving dust from one place to another, sending swirling clouds of it into the air only to have it re-settle in a nearby location.

What are they accomplishing? What is the point? It clearly gives them a sense of accomplishment, but is it deserved, is it even real? There is value in believing you are achieving something, a motivating factor in it, creating this sense of fulfillment is paramount in any organizational structure, human resources. However, a false sense of accomplishment can also be dangerous, leading to inefficiency and lack of progress. Side-affects that hinder development.

These themes are commonly found throughout the developing world. Between the three of us we have traversed Zambia, South Africa, Mozambique, Malawi, Botswana and Tanzania observing the same “sweeping dust” phenomenon. There are local customs and ways tasks are done in these countries that begs the question: is this really necessary? This question becomes glaringly clear when you see men standing in a street collecting money rather than installing parking meters. You pay the man to watch your car for security reasons while simultaneously acting as a human meter. This is only one of the many examples of job creation that you see throughout Africa being catalyzed by inefficiency.

The Sweat

• One morning, filling-up a tank of diesel turned into a tour of Itezhi Tezhi. We had to personally pick-up five people from their homes – one who ran the office, two who could sign the forms, one who had keys to the pump, and another who could pump the fuel. It took us four hours to get a tank of fuel.

• As we tried each day to accomplish what we would consider a reasonable amount we had to succumb to the inevitable defeat of the waiting game. A commonly used term throughout Africa is “just then, just now”. For instance if we were waiting for an office to open or a meeting to take place it was generally noted that it would happen “just now.” We came to know this to mean anywhere from 1-2 hours of wait time, during which we could do nothing else because we weren’t able to schedule meetings in the meantime.

• Scheduling meetings…a whole other issue. Generally speaking most decisions and conversations are made in person. Instead of calling to make an appointment, Zambians will stop by someone’s place of business in order to make an appointment to then come back and discuss the actual matters at hand. The discussion could be as simple as waiting for a “yes” or a “no” but it must be conveyed in person and while you are seated in a person’s office. Phones and email are not even a fleeting thought.

• When driving through Zambia, and in particular the National Park areas, we came across many ZAWA (Zambian Wildlife Authority) gates. The drill for this is to stop your car, make small talk with the local guard, answer the question, “no, we do not have any guns with us”, and sign a log book with our names, number of people in the car, where we are from, and where our final destination is. To truly appreciate this story you must envision a completely isolated area where there are no modes of communication and where huge sun battered and wilted logbooks exist. One can only wonder what someone in the middle of the bush actually does with the information.

The Sweet:

• We were staying at Eureka Backpackers in Lusaka after a long day of errands and unwinding with a beer and talking to the wife of a local Zambian, Molly. Molly is American and so can appreciate some of the frustrations we have incurred thus far. But she brought it back to something beautiful and true. She said, “but yes, if all that changed it just wouldn’t be Africa anymore.” After awhile you really find that simple statement to be true.

• One extremely hot afternoon we were stuck on the side of the road in the bush with a flat tire. One thing still stands to amaze me in Africa, you think you are in the middle of nowhere and then, out of nowhere, entire villages will start to appear to help. Firstly, how did they know? And secondly, why do they care? There were a series of at least eight people who cycled through our broken down area trying to offer a lending hand and didn’t leave until a solution was met.

• We have countless examples, too many to list in a blog post, of locals going out of their way to help, people who have much less to their name than we do, but who give what they have so completely and without expectation at times that it all you can think is this is humanity, this is what its all about.

There is a charm to Africa and way of doing things that is all their own. Attitudes such as “hakuna matata” (yes it is a real phrase spoken often in Tanzania),“you are welcome”, “feel free” and “we are together now” are felt throughout the continent in unexpected moments and amidst all the chaos. If it were to be altered or westernized, would they lose what is so soulfully theirs? Would an efficient market or culture take away the lending hand mentality? So the question remains, does inefficiency breed helpful people?