Trust

Allow me to make a little detour and some sweeping generalizations. Cooperation pays off; this is true for different levels of complexity. Regarding the most basic unit of social interaction, there is the well-known example of the two farmers that help each other harvest their goods at different times of the year. On more aggregate levels, division of labor – that is the twin processes of specialization and cooperation – dramatically increases effectiveness.

Cooperation, in turn, requires trust – trust that the parties to the work-sharing agreement each do their part. Even more so if there is no third party that helps to enforce the – implicit or explicit – contract such as a tight-knit community or police forces. Moreover, as Axelrod has shown with his famous computer simulations (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_cooperation), if you are generally trusting, that is, if you are ready to cooperate rather than defect when you first encounter a new potential cooperation partner, in the long run, you will maximize the benefits from these interactions – even though you will sometimes be taken advantage of by others. So far the social science bit of this blog entry.

Now, we all know examples of these small village stories where people do not lock the doors of their houses or where children are left to play in the streets unattended, because, you know, the last time there was a murder or rape or whatever in the community they still used horse-drawn carriages instead of cars. From telling these stories, most people go on quickly to condemn the anonymity of our modern city life, where you barely know your neighbors, you always have to take care to lock your car lest it will be stolen, where you feel uncomfortable to walk home alone through dark parks and so on, because you simply can't trust others. 

Now to my point: Having lived in Berlin and Bucharest for some time and having now gained some first impressions of life in Lusaka, I must say that regarding trust in strangers, there are huge differences between these capitals. Probably not smaller than those between the tiny villages in the feel-good stories and those anonymous mega cities we are used to compare them with.

Honestly, I find it shocking to what extent there seems to be generalized mistrust around me in Lusaka. I remember I had the same impression while I was living in Bucharest in Romania. (There are huge differences between these two cities, but I would say that they are in that matter both more different from Berlin than they differ from each other. And please note: I am not saying that I didn't or don't trust anybody there or that I have felt or feel I shouldn't.) How often have I been told in Bucharest to trust no one – the least if people appear friendly. And in Lusaka, in the few days that I have been staying here, I have already seen a couple of written advices to that effect (one sticker, for example, in a minibus reading “I know you look trustworthy, but I also know I can’t trust you”) and have been told countless times to be very careful with strangers. In short, nobody seems to trust anybody else, if they don't happen to have a shared history.

Now, I can’t say “this is why”, but it is astonishing how little seemingly easy cooperation is possible among people with similar interests in Lusaka. Taxi drivers, for example, seem incapable to jointly finance a person taking calls and then coordinating the drivers, although it would be tremendously more efficient to do that than always have to drive a triangle (from where the taxi driver is based to the place he is picking you up and on to the place you want to get to and then back again where the taxi driver is stationed) with only one third of it being paid by the customer - all because they each have only a couple of customers that call them. If you ask them why there is no call center, they seem puzzled as to how this should be organized – couldn’t it then be that the call center agent is giving all the customers to one single driver (and getting some extra money from that driver in return)? The same happens if you want to make a deal with a taxi driver - "give me a good price and I will keep calling you" - doesn't happen. Who knows whether you gonna call again? (Why this is all about taxi drivers? It's basically the only people here I have to cooperate with and I am not at the same time embedded in a common network with.)

I know this is no convincing evidence for my train of thought, but this is a blog and not a PhD thesis. Stay tuned :)

Newspapers

Zambian journalists have a very peculiar way of writing. If this blog entry would be a newspaper article in a Zambian daily, it would probably look like this:

There are allegedly four main newspapers in Zambia - the Post, the Times, the Daily Nation and the Daily Mail. According to the minister of information, the best ones are the governmentally owned newspapers. They are bound to telling the truth as the government takes every care to protect the freedom of expression. The minister of information said that this is evident.

"The best newspapers are the governmentally owned newspapers. They are bound to telling the truth as the government takes every care to protect the freedom of expression. This is self-evident," he stated.

If you read a Zambian newspaper you have the feeling their journalists write for dummies: Better repeat everything all over again several times. Probably somebody didn't get it the first, second or third time you have made your point. Plus oral sources of information seem to be the only ones that are accessed by journalists. Cross-checking statements? Pah, who would doubt that a senior government official knows what he is saying? Maybe that's the oral culture mixed with a huge respect for the elderly? I don't know. But it is hugely funny at times.

Well, I love reading newspapers. And it is great that the main official language in Zambia is English. Also, these newspapers are beautiful, especially the Daily Nation: Colours of pictures overlap strangely to create impressionistic pictures that are most of the time totally unrelated to the articles around them. And the paper of the Daily Nation almost has the feel of that strong brown packaging paper for parcels. Finally, they are sold on the street by street vendors that go along waiting cars with their stash of papers in hand (and start running along the minibus, if you have given them a large bill and they are struggling to find enough change whule the lights have already turned green again).

I have posted the links to the four main newspapers in Zambia in the list of links to the right. Check what's going on in Zambia! And cross-check my statements on the writing style - I am only thirty, you know, and I am not a government official. Maybe I am lying.

The Post has long been THE oppositional newspaper, highly critical of the government. But in 2011, when the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD) lost their first national election after 20 years in power and the Patriotic Front took over, the Post has clearly lost its "independent" viewpoint - that was probably never really independent and neutral to begin with, but rather influenced by Patriotic Front politicians. Daily Mail and the Times are government owned. Allegedly, when the Patriotic Front took over, senior journalists from the Post took over senior positions in the government newspapers. Strangely enough, many people seem to read them on a daily basis. That leaves you with the Daily Nation, if you want to read anything critical of the government's policies. The Daily Nation, however, is openly partisan (or maybe they think they're quite subtle in doing this), i.e. definitely very inclined to very favourably report on the mischievous ways of the United Party for National Development (UPND) and the United National Independence Party (UNIP) in the opposition. Happy reading!

Muzungu Allstars

A football pitch in the middle of nowhere. Around it only red, dusty sand, the occassional tree and lots of bushes. Yet the Muzungu Allstars (muzungu = white guy) managed to draw a crowd of ca. 300 villagers that must live somewhere around here. The game of the muzungus against a local selection of soccer players has been announced on the local radio and it is the radio which is the most important source of information out here. After 90 mins under the scorching sun, it's 4 to 1 for the expats' team. But the local crowd is partying anyway.

The Muzungu Allstars and local fans

The local team attacking

The local crowd partying after the game
(For some strange reason, the kids really loved our empty plastic bottles.)

On my first night in Lusaka, I have met some of the players for the Muzungu Allstars. It's a group of consultants, development workers and volunteers from ten different nations that meet regularly in Lusaka to play soccer together. Some time ago they started to play local teams throughout Zambia. That weekend's opponents came from somewhere near Lake Kariba. So for me it was a good chance to have a first look at the Zambian countryside, spend the weekend camping at a lake and to watch a really unique soccer game. Sandy Beach, the camping site we stayed at, is owned by "Herman the German", a guy from Germany that has been living in Zambia for something like 40 years - that is, since relatively short after Zambia became independent (that was 1964 - on Wednesday this week 48 years to the day) and relatively short after the man-made Lake Kariba (one of the biggest man-made lakes in the world) came into being. But that's a different story.

View of Lake Kariba from the camping site

Minibusses

To get around Lusaka, if you do not own a car, you are basically left with two choices: Either the minibus network or taxis. Minibusses suck (after you had your share of intercultural experiences), but they are cheap. Taxis are easy to find (basically every man driving a vehicle is a taxi driver - they'll honk at you, wave at you, stop right in your way) and very convenient, but expensive. For an 8 km ride you pay around 40.000 Kwacha at a rate of 6650 Kwacha to the Euro - that's about 6 Euros for a ride from my home to my office. So, minibusses then.
Minibusses seem to serve only two "lines" that connect the residental East to the businesses and offices in the Western part of town. Here is one of these Minibusses:

When the ride starts at Woodlands Stadium, around the corner from my home, it's usually only a couple of passengers in there. There are 11 passenger seats, including the one next to the driver, the windows are open, the ride is pleasant. But every bus has a "call boy" working together with the bus driver as a team with one big aim: Cramming as many passengers as possible into the bus. It's usually 18 of us, excluding the driver and the call boy (...yes, I also asked twice, but that's how they call themselves), when we pass the president's compound a couple of kilometers down Independence Avenue (or Burma Road). And to do that, that is to get the bus full to the max, the driver honks at every single pedestrian on the way, the call boy shouts and waves. At the semi-official bus stops he is usually gone for a couple of minutes to find additional customers. It's this whole procedure (including the bus driver honking and honking and stepping on the gas again and again till the call boy finally comes back to the bus with the latest customer, followed by a seat reshuffling involving half of the bus) that makes a bus ride of 7 km last around 45min. Yes, there is also the traffic jams, but these the bus drivers circumvent artistically by using the ditches to the left and right of the streets.
I am most of the time (actually, with so far only one exception) the only white guy on the bus. And I am (at first at least) getting the white man prices, sure enough. So every morning I have this little conversation: "To the mosque, please." "Four pin [that is, thousand]." "Three." "Ok, let's go." From somewhere in the area around the mosque I am then walking to the office for about 20 min. And this is what everybody does a lot in Lusaka: Walking. Our office aid, for example, Mr. Biggs (don't know whether you write it like that - that's how I imagine his name is spelled) walks 90min every morning to the office, leaving his house at 5.30 to be here in time when the first of my colleagues arrive. So walking then is actually the third option, for seemingly any distance.

Lusaka

In the background of the blog you are seeing - at least for as long as I am staying in Zambia's capital - a map of Lusaka. The little blue line indicates my way to work. I have rented a room in a small house in Woodlands to the right of the map, close to Woodlands "Stadium". My office is in the FODEP building in Rhodes Park, Omelo Road, to the left, closer to "the center" that is actually just a street with shops, Cairo Road. The office is an hour's minibus ride away from my home (more on the minibusses later on).

Lusaka as captured from google maps

In the somewhat richer parts of town (that is, anywhere besides the "center" and the "compounds" (later more on these, too)), people live inside the walls of their properties. On their property, they have a simple house (the black middle class) or a large house, a pool and sometimes even an extra "house" for the maid (the richer black people, white people and most of the expats). At the gate, there are dogs (the black middle class) or a guard and dogs (the richer black people, white people and expats). A gardener is taking care of the often large amounts of flowers and trees on the properties (again, not for the black middle class).
Living in Lusaka is, for those that can afford it, like a redneck's dream: You drive your 4x4 (80% of the cars in the streets) from your farm-like property to the mall, where everything from supermarkets to restaurants and bars and clubs is concentrated, or to your air-conditioned work place and back.
For those without cars, it's a hassle: You have to walk long dusty roads along walls after walls, with in some areas guards being the only people to greet on your way, until you reach a minibus station and drive to some other place in the city from which you most likely have to walk again 20 min to your final destination - as the minibus network basically has two routes connecting the residential East of the city to the office area in the West. Doesn't sound like big fun? That's right. But I am getting used to it. And once I am at the office, there is interesting work to do. (Finally, no more diversion.)

Welcome

So, here we go: My first blog. It's about my impressions, insights and adventures in Zambia and Uganda. I am here to do the field work for my PhD project on the role of civil society in democratization processes in Sub-Saharan Africa. From the beginning of October 2012 until Christmas I will mainly stay in Lusaka/Zambia and be working for the Foundation for Democratic Process (FODEP - see link on the right side). With them I have made a deal - I am going to volunteer for them for a couple of hours per week (now working on a report on the Zambian NGO Act) and in exchange I get a desk, a computer, internet and contacts to my interview partners. From January to March 2013, I will stay in Kampala/Uganda. (More on that stay later - when I actually am able to say a little more about it.)

It's my first time in Africa. In describing my experiences here, I will quite certainly do frequent and inappropriate comparisons with Eastern Europe. This is because I have mainly worked on civil society development in Eastern, especially South Eastern Europe, before "switching continents" for my PhD research (see link to my academia profile on the right for some of my past research).

Why "30°C in November"? Well, that's the one thing the two places I am staying at in Africa certainly have in common. It's hot in November. And it's the most obvious difference to the places I call home, that is Mainz and Berlin in Germany. About the rest of the commonalities and differences between these three countries I am yet not sure. But I am here to find out. (Yeah, alright, I also hope the title makes people at home a little envious.)

There will be some anecdotes to tell (hopefully), but this is not going to be a travel blog that focuses on the funny moments of my stay. I'm probably generally not the guy for this. When I am putting something in writing, it's more likely to turn into an essay than a joke. But even more important, I am here to work and do research and this is certainly influencing the way I am looking at things here in general. And the style is most probably a little less personal than a travel blog. All in all: less "haha" and hopefully more "aha". That being said, I still hope you enjoy reading it, even if you are not interested in my research. So long.

Wolf