Do We Need Walls to Celebrate Development?
Sahaya G. Selvam, sdb
(2 July 2014)
It used to be said that the Great Wall of China is the only human artefact seen from the moon. Even if this legend has been debunked by astronauts, the wall is indeed great. It stretches an extensive distance of 7,200 kilometres. The Chinese have something to be proud of marking how developed they were even in the pre-Christian era.
These days I am on an academic writing break in Moshi, a cosy little down at the foothills of Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. I am not staying at the town though, which is crowded these days with the wazungu visitors, who pretend to be enthusiastic Kilimanjaro climbers. Some parade it in their T-shirts: “I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.” Of course, these T-shirts are not sold at the Kibo peak nor does it need any ID of sorts to buy it off the desperate wamachinga (street vendors), who are, of course, in galore.
I stay at the Shirimatunda village. I am not too sure if it can be referred to as a village anymore. That actually is the subject of my present blog – yes, what you are reading is a ‘blog’ – I have taken to fancy the word after my relentless reading of Adichie’s Americanah.
By the way, twenty years ago when I stayed at Shirimatunda for the first time, it was indeed a village. Now I might begin to sound like Marco Polo! Or I might sound very nostalgic showing wrinkles of ageing.
But what does a village mean to me, anyway: huts, homes amidst farm lands, no cars or pikipiki’s (that is Swahili for motorcyles), and most of all, no walls and gates. Those old days, when I was younger in the green Shirimatunda – green it still is, most houses were just mud put around dry sticks, and you saw those huts, there was nothing even to hide them. No walls, I mean. Yes, there would be some stray marks of boundaries of shambas with some thornyless plants of the euphorbia family, including the ‘Isale.’ I must hurry to add that the Chagga people have a sentimental attachment (the emotion evoked by a cultural symbol – that is what I mean!) to the Isale, it not only marked boundaries but also lineage.
These days I take some long walks along the dusty pathways, between my tight writing schedule: just to exercise my otherwise numbed hands at the laptop, to stretch my swollen feet, to feed my eyes with some green, and to get some fresh air – I am allergic to open windows while within my room! What wounds my eyes when I am out of the hurting screen of the laptop are WALLS. Yes, traditional boundary markers are replaced by walls, these days.
There are walls and walls. Some are still growing up. Others are a mix of bricks and grills, you could still have a peek through to admire the new mansions. Most of them have a gate, some of which have large arches over them – Greek, Romanesque, Baroque, Neo-gothic, Chinese, Persian, you name it. Still other walls are high and tight – they can almost compete with the Great Modern Wall of Israel put up by the wounded Israelis (I am afraid to use the ‘J’ word, lest I would be blamed for anti-Semitism) on the property of their helpless neighbours. All in the name of sovereignty and security! They have forgotten the story of the Berlin Wall. I keep praying every day that this wall too should come down – I am damn serious! It makes me angry. I swear, it will come down. I only pray that it will happen in my own life-time. All that it will take to bring that heartless wall will be one new ‘Joshua’ – by the way, that is Hebrew for ‘Jesus’.
That aside, coming back to the bourgeoning walls of Shirimatunda, they say, this is maendeleo (Swahili for progress or development)! After all, I work for holistic development, I am not against maendeleo: education, access to health-care, water, electricity, means of communication and transport. Don’t you misunderstand me: I am not really a crazy, romantic ‘ruralist’ living up in the clouds, nor am I hypocritical GreenPeace member, not even an animal rights activist who concerns more about orphaned cats and dogs than the man dying on the roadside. I do care about quality of life! My agonising question is: do we need walls and gates to celebrate maendeleo – advancement, that is a better translation?
Now I understand why the Nollywood movies are full of high walls and tall dark gates! In the Nigerian productions, there would be that large lipped lady with a flashy red lipstick or the XXXL sized gentleman, steering their Mercedes Benz with one hand and pretend to be attending to an important call holding the mobile phone with the other hand, would hoot at a tall black gate that breaks the monotony of an equally soaring high wall, and there would be that house-boy who would leave his snaky watering hose aside and run to drag that heavy gate open. And mind you, this would be the umpteenth time that you have a similar scene in the same movie. Someone once said if you cut the walls and the gates out of the Nollywood movies, their humdrum plots wouldn’t fill the time for a feature film. Besides, how else will the Nigerians show off their affluence and extravagance?
To me the decision is simple, if walls mean maendeleo, I then prefer an underdeveloped world with no walls at all.