|
|
|
|
The purpose of this site is to try and get the world to start dealing with the interaction between culture and success in a mature and intelligent manner. Poll: Do you believe culture influences success? Yes 67.5% No 17.3% Uncertain 15.1% - Newest Articles - Per capita income figures for the countries and regions of the world. While rarely read this is Gandhi's most important written work. The traditional explanation for the noticeable differences in income across cultures was to say that they differed in their level of civilization. - Categories - - All Articles - Per capita income figures for the countries and regions of the world. While rarely read this is Gandhi's most important written work. The traditional explanation for the noticeable differences in income across cultures was to say that they differed in their level of civilization. This 1920 work by Roger Babson is a classic with in its genre. It promotes the traditional, pre-1960s explanation for the connection between success and culture. Current events in Zimbabwe are giving us an unprecedented opportunity to measure and judge the effect of white settlement and colonization in Africa. Average US Incomes by Race, Ethnicity and Religion. Max Weber's claim that Protestantism is more conducive to success than Catholicism and that Calvinism is in particular more successful is widely repeated and rarely examined. We need to recognize that culture is the personality of a group or race and we must see culture and having seen it, make it a work of art. The moral justification for welfare is supposed to be that we are temporarily helping out our fellow man through a rough stretch of road or helping the disabled permanently. If it is to become a system for continually transferring wealth from one group to another the people behind this change owe us an explanation. The great taboo of our age is not speaking about race, but speaking about culture. Bourgeoisie is more than just a term of abuse used by the Left, it refers to a real people who led real lives. Selections from the Federal Outlook Selections from a 1960's Rhodesian newspaper. How Africa Underdeveloped Africa Africa is the poorest place in the world. Why? Will Famine Come to Zimbabwe? The end of commercial farming in Zimbabwe could plunge the country into famine. The Tragedy of the Zimbabwe Commons Communally owned property always has and always will suffer from the 'tragedy of the commons' problem. Band Aid Africa recieves $15 billion a year in aid. Is it helping? |
By BUNDU.
Smallpox outbreaks are not uncommon, and prompt and efficient methods to prevent the spread of the disease are a matter of course, but perhaps the experiences met with by an official during a campaign for its suppression in a district of Southern Rhodesia have a tang all their own.
Cases of suspected smallpox had been reported first from one quarter and then another. Steps for the isolation of the patients were taken immediately, and the Government Medical Officer, travelling some 80 miles, on examination of the patients confirmed the suspicions; the disease was smallpox.
Further reports of the disease from various centres were made, and it was recognised that the outbreak was general, and measures to check its spreading would have to be taken in hand at once. This meant the vaccinating of 16,000 natives over an area of 7,000 square miles.
Arrangements for a weekly supply of fresh lymph were made, a schedule compiled of vaccinating centres throughout the district convenient for the natives and myself, native messengers despatched to carry out the orders, and a few days later, packing the camping kit into the car, and accompanied by messengers, the campaign started.
The first day, stopping at various centres on the road, 900odd men, women and children were vaccinated. The men carried out the simple routine without bother, but the women were stupid and gave endless trouble, being quite incapable of forming a line or standing in a getatable position. The majority certainly were hampered by infants in arms, or young children who clung stubbornly to their mothers crying desperately in fear of some unknown terror. Contact with these children was most unpleasant; they invariably suffered from some ophthalmic or skin complaint and had running noses. Only a few cases of smallpox were seen.
We camped the first night 43 miles from the station. About 400 natives awaited our arrival, but could not be attended to that evening, and while I sat at the camp fire roaring furiously at being disrespectfully torn to tatters by a fresh breeze, chatted to the headmen over a pot of Native beer. Camp fires sprung up around us till we were encircled by an uneven ring of dotted lights, and as the night settled, the brightening flames leapt cheerfully.
After supper the crowd gathered round dancing and singing Native folk songs to the accompaniment of tomtoms, wooden clappers and the swishing hiss of pumpkin seeds confined in small calabashes attached to sticks by which they were swung in rhythm.
I fell asleep watching the star blossoms blooming brightly on the boughs of the tree under which I had camped, while the earth throbbed to the regimented beats of dancing feet.
In the early dawn, vaccinating the 400 natives, we continued on our journey.
It commenced to rain, and in the slippery tracks we followed were a number of treacherous treestumps, some dangerously hidden in recent growths. These required careful negotiating and prevented our reaching our intended camp before nightfall, forcing a decision to make the best of it at the next kraal. This we reached long after dark.
Our arrival brought several Natives to their doors, in which they stood dimly blurred against the glows that leaked from their dying hut fires.
Soon the village was astir with busy members eager to pr'pare a camp; and after greetings, the men disappeared into the inky night with flaming torches of grass and returned with great logs of wood for the camp fire and bundles of grass for bedding, and while the bedding was dried over the fires if it caught alight the flames were smothered with the utmost unconcern by hoary handsgossip was exchanged between the messengers and the inhabitants.
I retired as soon as the bedding was down, to be awakened later by a messenger who suggested that I occupy a hut, as the clouds were gathering thick and fast. I did not dispute the point. The night was big with blackness.
At the arranged camps shelters, if they were required, were in readiness, but here there was no such thing, and I found myself in an old disused hut. It was a dreadful hut. It smelt offensively of stale, unwashed Native slightly smoked, while from the roof hung what turned out to be enormous ropes of sootladen cobwebs.
I had noticed these on entering the hut, and quite unsuspectingly suggested that my mosquitonet might be conveniently suspended from one deceptive monster that hung down like a massive cable. and clutching it, my hand closed on a spongy substance which broke off, clinging to my fingers verminously. One had always associated cobwebs with gossamer unrealities, and not such substantial depravities.
After deciding that this chamber of horrors was perhaps better than a drenching with, what was worse, drenched bedding for the rest of the trip, I fell into a troubled sleep, from which I was awakened by a howling hurricane. Its fury lashed the trees in the night and creeked the rafters of the old hut. The wind whistled through the open doorway to heave and toss about a demented mosquitonet, and I pictured the dance micabre of the awful cobwebs. Lightning and thunder flashed and crashed until the rain beat down with tropical earnestness, and I was glad of my stuffy hut once I had found a spot dry from leaks.
Next morning I found the kraal indescribably dirty, and the explanation for the unusually filthy state was not far to seek, for a little way off a new kraal was being built. From the rich brown of the thatched roofs, which reminded one of newlybaked bread smoke filtered undecidedly into the still morning air.
Here a woman stood against her hut stamping maize in a great roughhewn wooden mortar. Tied on her back was her baby, whose head bobbed about disjointedly in his sleep with the motion of the pounding pestle. Fowls had gathered round for scraps, and if sufficient were not shot out by the pestle, daringly hopped on to the lip of the mortar, where they fluttered noisily, to be unconcernedly swept off by the women.
There a woman on her knees was busy grinding the day's corn between two stones worn smooth with the backward and forward motions of many grindings.
A group of children had congregated to watch the mysterious business of a white man shaving, and got a lot of amusement out of it.
Here a hen clucked a brood of chickens to a morsel, only to be pounced on by a cock, who sent her cackling with ruffled feathers and scattering the bewildered chickens. A starved mongrel pup with unnaturally lightcoloured, cringing eyes, rushed the cock and was enjoying the scrap when he was sent yelping by a larger dog. A pig waddled by, and swivelling his nose, sniffingly grunted his disgust at arriving too late.
Goats were at play everywhere, softly butting one another and neatly standing on their hind legs, falling with pleasing delayedaction on to the foe, a villainous glare in the playful eye. Two scratched themselves by walking round and round a hut, pressing their flanks against the rough mud walls, pausing occasionally to rub on a nobble, to be pushed on impatiently. There was a collision when the second goat without warning turned to rub his other side, but he won the argument which followed, for the disputant suddenly realised the sanity of the action.
An ardent young billy screamed strangulated passion at an unresponsive female who unheedingly continued nibbling the luscious grass of the first rains.
After vaccinating the members of the kraal, we continued on our way. The countryside was massed with bloom; trees laden
with scented mauve, shrubs indelible smudges, the earth scattered with mauve lilies packed in pious posies or fluttering up absurdly dried looking stalks everywhere, and here and there the bold mauves and purples of ground orchids proud and aloof, the aristocrats of this imperial garden. Purple was the dominating note, with the rare exception of a white lily that hid its insipidity beneath a cascade of lush foliage.
This predominance of a colour is most noticeable in the district. After the period of royal purples comes a period of strident yellows and glaring reds, followed by a period of soft blues; one, the blue of the remotifolia, so misty that even in proximity it has an allusion of remoteness at which one gazes breathlessly for fear of creating a disturbance, when all its gauzy petals will take to flight.
Professor Huxley, I think it is, after a visit to Kenya Colony, where he noticed a predominance of red blossoms, suggested nature's choice of colour, if I remember rightly, was possibly due to its ready detection for natural propagation by birds and insects. Without wishing to detract from the Professor's theory, here the sovereign colour varies at times and places, and all appear equally blatant.
After following a track that twisted and wound over hilly country, we arrived at our next camp on the banks of a sandy river bed, and, vaccinating some 200 Natives waiting, walked along the riverbed in the hope of seeing something for the pot. We had seen no game, as our first days had been on frequented paths, and now we were in the tsetse fly country where the game, on which the fly is said to live, was being destroyed, and what was left was extremely shy.
In the riverbed were holes scooped into the sand into which water filtered. From these the Natives drew their water supplies during the dry months. And across the riverbed at intervals were low fences of sticks, reinforced with heaped stones and earth, which the tenacity of a local grass hound closely and securely together, even against flood waters. Wedged into gaps in the fences were some of last season's fish traps, not unlike lobster pots, unit, incredible as the presence of fish in the sandy stretch appeared, the Natives do have catches when the river conies down. Some fish which have spent the winter hibernating in mud are once again active and others swim upriver from the great Zambesi, of which the river is a tributary.
That night was hot and sultry, a great contrast to the previous night. We must have dropped hundreds of feet through the hills and were now near Zambesi Valley level. It was a relief to welcome the cool early dawn. During the day we made several stops to vaccinate groups of waiting Natives. At one stop a tall tree was pointed out, and it was explained that long ago adults were buried at the foot of such trees to assure their souls easy access to heaven.
We arrived late at our next camp to find that the natives, whom we had expected, had returned to their kraals, and for some time after I had settled for the night, the tomtoms beat, calling the people hack, I was told. There was a decided rhythm of beats which I was endeavouring to memorise, repeated at short regular intervals, when a confusion of throbs followed, which completely confounded me. Perhaps the calls had been given and the rest was confusion; whatever the explanation, the Natives were there in the morning.
From here we had a long trek to the Zambesi River, and it was a relief to reach the becalmed level of the valley, after a cautious trip through the hills of the escarpment by a tortuous track which, clinging to the mountain sides, swooped down to riverbeds, to bound up the other side with switchback contortions and suddenness.
The heat was intense, and one was soon in a bath of perspiration. Even the acclimatised Natives were unconsciously affected. Their black bodies glistened with moisture and women lifted pendulous breasts to rid themselves of the discomfort of accumulated sweat, which trickled down their wrinkled stomachs. Vaccinating under these conditions was an unpleasant task. It was the end of November, and a storm which had misfired earlier was making constipated efforts to break.
Soon it was found that the road was not the relief expected, for it plunged into a nervous track hacked through jungle. It had been made good use of by the elephants, who had pitted it with great mud holes, or across which they had heaved trees that had to be cut through or around, whichever looked the easier.
Later the country opened, and we passed through mopani forests, in which we saw herds of impala, and bagged one.
It was good to arrive at our camp and hear the roar of the Zambesi as it raced through the confines of a narrow gorge, and, finding a spot safe from crocodiles to strip and splash in the warm water, while baboons looked on amazed at the curious and unusual spectaclea queer human, white all over, rubbing itself with what looked like foam scudded from the river, heaving water over itself and making the craziest noises at the top of its voice. "Ng ng," muttered Boviaan, "such goings on I never did see; ng ng," and led the gang with sedate precision and many cautious glances over a shoulder to the security of their rocky refuge.
And it was good to lay on the warm sunsoaked sands, with the rays of a sinking sun aslant, and slowly trail sand through idle fingers or listlessly poke taut toes into the sand, remembering that somewhere here lives Nyaminyami, the immense river serpent who fertilises the lands and has the welfare of his people at heart, but could shake the earth to its very foundations if he were moved to wrath, and then to gaze at the cloud pictures in the sky.
There was the Laughing Cavalier, arrogant, haughty, debonair. But what was happening to the fellow? See, the daredevil smile was changing into a scowl of pain, the challenging eyes held a look of fear, the hat cocked tipsily while the swaggering feather trailed to an insignificant whisp, and there was left the diseased torso of a leprous old man. It was better to look at Little BoPeep, who was flirting so prettily with a shy little Boy Blue, while their woolly sheep roamed all over the blue fields of heaven. Hurry, Bo Peep, for Boy Blue is being spirited away and you yourself have such a little day! One is drugged with the warm air, perhaps this is the end of all things, and one will fade and fade into nothingness, too, and forever become a oneness with the smothering solitude.
And the supper of impala liver and bacon was good, the coffee was good and the grass bed was good.
The morning was spent vaccinating and the afternoon fishing, and I had more sport than luck with the tiger fish. I had a number of strikes, and whether from lack of experience, of which, let me confess now before I am found out, I have little, or failure to understand the exacting technique of a cunning gadget I was using for the first time, or that gadget's inefficiencyI like to think it was thisI only landed two unpretentious tiger, and both foul hooked.
The gadget was said to be an improvement on the spoon, and I, poor mutt, had swallowed it at any rate. He was a queer fish made of a transparent composition flecked with pain. for deceptive scales and resembled a wellfed sardine. Hooks suspended from his invitingly sleek tummy and from his bogus tail, and fitted in front was a translucent splash board, which, battling against the resistance of the water, made him wriggle most realistically while being reeled in. I think it was his size which was against him, for he would never honestly land any but the exaggerated fish which haunt a fisherman's dreams.
It was with regret that I watched the sun sink and the shadows deepen as I listened to the gathering stillness emphasised by the rumble of the turbulent waters. It was such a satisfying stillness, such a perfect peacefulnessand Europe had run amok and was blowing itself to bits.
As some of the Natives had met a lion not far from the camp, fires were lit all round that night, and in their cheerful blaze the women danced and sung to the throb of the torntom and swishing hiss of calabashes of pebbles tied to their legs. And through it all the river purred its hymn of haste. But Africa did not hear It.
During the night I was awakened by a terrific rending, and, startled, sat up to investigate, to discover that a tree had crashed to earth. It was then that I noticed that all the scarefires were at the bases of trees, and sadly reflected that there would be other crashes before the night was over. The trees, which were mopani, usually have a dry rotted wound near the ground, and the Native, if he wants an allnight fire, builds a blaze at the base of the tree, which soon ignites the rotted scar, dessicating the immense portions, which blaze in turn to continue the process, always eating further and further into the heart, when the tree crashes.
I watched the fires roaring and ever climbing higher and higher, in a column of flame above which gleamed red nodules of burning bark like gems in a jewelled mitre fading to glows, while over all, the proud mosaics of twigs and boughs, and canopies of leaves ever changing in the flickering lights. And as I watched there came a creak, a crack, a rending, a roar, and with a swishing rush of racing winds through its branches, a great mopani crashed its way through its neighbours to earth, where it lay quivering, enveloped in clouds of dust. A fountain of sparks flew up from the splintered stump, anxious to consume the escaping spirit of the fallen monarch.
Next morning we started to retrace our tracks, and had only gone 10 miles when I heard a messenger exclaim in a hoarse whisper: "Lions, lions!" And there, behind some bushes at the end of a clearing, lay a lion and lioness. I snatched my rifle and camera and jumped from the car, not quite sure which I was going to use. The lion grunted, and the pair rose. With incredible speed the lioness disappeared into the surrounding thicket. The lion, a sleek, tawny youngster, proud in his strength, and, possibly, the conquest of his first mate, with cautious arrogance and superb dignity stalked for the bush. As he glanced over his shoulder with absurd nonchalance, I snapped the camera, which I dropped to its sling, and lifted my rifle. The thicket was nearing, and as I took the pressure on the trigger and fired, it was not surprising to see Leo leap for its security. I had missed. But reloading for a final snapshot, it was surprising to see him buckle up at the apex of his leap and hear the thud of his body as it hit the ground. The bullet was embedded in his spine; Leo had leapt to his death. The photograph was a mystery picture in which I never found the lion, and the camera was a very good one.
We reached the escarpment at midday, and paused to view the scene which never fails to appeal. Whereas the track had wound through hills for miles to our last camp, here it took one plunge to the valley belowand a new world. A primitive, unconquerable, defiant world.
Below, 40 miles across to the bold bastions of the Northern Rhodesia escarpment, and stretching for hundreds of miles east and west, lay the vast, silent valley, dotted with spare ant hilllike kopjes, rising above the dense subtropical vegetation teaming with elephant, buffalo, lion, antelope and tsetse fly.
Here the baobab, the elephant of the vegetable kingdom, with his hydra trunks, appears everready to snatch and grab for his body, which is all belly; massive creepers, vegetable pythons, strangle with sinuous swirls the hosts on which they spiral; smoothbarked trees, the lepers of this jungle world, for ever pealing an unwholesome skin, for ever diseased, for, later, when the baobabs' naked boughs are heavy with fruit, and last season's young feeling venturesome, this sickly tree breaks out in jaundice bespotting the valley with his biliousness. And if you look you will see the spotted leopard trees and the mangy hyena shrubs.
And taking the plunge, we entered this untamed kingdom, and passing through riotous profusion and through the silent strength of mopani forests, we arrived at the realm of palms and miasmic vleis, where, hurrying the vaccinations, we escaped to more healthy ground.
And that night while the people sang and danced, the chief told me the tribe's strange history, and I heard retold with startling accuracy the story of the flood, the tower of Babel and Jael and Sisra. Were these stories related by the old Jesuit Fathers of Portugal or Livingstone to dim ancestors, and since handed down as tribal history?
And here I paid my respects to the tribal god, an iron image not unlike a huge praying mantis, which is said to he the only known incarnate god of the Bantu. He is an intensely interesting study, kept in a miniature hut in which are stored the gifts of ivory presented to him as tokens of loyalty, devotion and petition. And the aged patriarch, his high priest, guards the secrets of his god zealously. One felt that they would never be told.
And once again the Zambesi, not hurried and roaring its impatience at obstacles, but calm and placid.
I took a dugout and slipped silently and smoothly, like a bead of water slithering down a window pane, passed banks from which crocodiles insinuated themselves into the water, passed schools of hippopotami that rippled the waters as they slowly submerged, on, on, while the wood pigeons cooed the lost chord like heavenly fingers lingering on the strings of a celestial harp, on, onperhaps Nirvana lay beyond the mountains so coolly peaked ahead. Turning, I watched the sun slip down a leaning sky into the restful mountains of the west, to which the broad river wound in a glistening highway to disappear smothered in jungle. And once again one's thoughts turned to that England whose fair fields madmen ploughed with bombs for a harvest of dragons' teeth; and yet there was so much peace!
And that cool night of stars hung with the diaphanous draperies of moonlight, stirred by elfish breath, I lay on the warm sand and listened to the African noises; the distant throb of the tomtom, the whirr of the cicadas, the chirp of crickets, the rustle of dried leaves, the bark of a jackal, the croak of a bullfrog. It was good, and God saw and rested somewhere near.
Early next morningit was our last daywhile the messengers packed, I watched the river pageant hastening downstream to some secret Valhalla of which they only knew.
A ghostly Monamatapa towering at the prow of his phantom barge manned by spectral warriors raced the deadly shafts of an awakening sun, followed by his shadowy hosts. And here swiftly overtaking the nebulous Monamatapa sped a vaprous barge with the misty figure of a royal ladywas it the shade of She ha?impatiently urging the souls of her armies to greater speed. And as the royal barges rounded a bend, the sun struck terror in the scudding rearguard, and confused and blinded, they fell on one another, their cloudy boats capsized and all faded into nothingness.
And on the way back we visited a fossilised forest, a dead world of petrified fallen trees and tree stumps, of rocks and boulders all starkly rigid and earnestly real, a story of some organic accident imprisoned for ever in these stiff tomb stones. Not a bird fluttered, not a lizard scuttled in this defeated kingdom of the valley, and with a hushed reverence one almost tiptoed down the nave of destruction.
In spite of stopping to vaccinate stragglers on the way, we had made good way by midday when we halted for luncheon.
Here I finished the last of my store of simple remedies always carried on patrols, on a Native who had his right calf pierced through by a sharp stick on to which he had run while escaping from an elephant, and on a small boy who was losing a finger, he said, from snakebite, while I secretly suspected the evillooking concoction applied to the wound by a native doctor. I also settled some civil cases, one of which was damages for adultery. The defendant, from whose shoulder a blue cloth hung loosely, showing his magnificent proportions to advantage, was mediumistic. His hair shaved back from his forehead for a few inches where it shot up alarmingly, made his expression one of a mild question mark which expected never to be answered. He admitted his guilt, and damages were awarded, and in spite of his having a good practicein a trance he would discover what angered spirit manifested its wrath in persistent stomach aches, and what was required for its appeasement, he would devise a device whereby unrequited love could remove the cause of frustration, and many other troublesome matters, for all of which there were feeshe asked me to find work for him to earn the money for the damages. This I did with a farmer, who made him a herd. The farmer has since said that the mystic Juan is a marvel with cattle, over which he seems to have some uncanny influence; the Natives explain that he has been heard talking to the cattle in a strange language and the cattle understand.
And so on the last lap. We had only travelled 10 miles when there was fresh evidence of elephants, and I had just been cautioned by the sergeant messenger when, rounding a sudden curve in the track, there was the most terrifying confusion. The earth heaved and trembled and disintegrated into what turned out to be elephantselephants everywhere, stampeding into the jungle undergrowth, shrieking and trumpeting.
It was a magnificent experience, but I would have preferred it stripped of its element of surprise. The startling discovery, the bewildering tumult, realisation of its dangerous and exciting identity, uncertainty of its behaviour, relief at its decision and thrill of experience are too devastating to he crammed into the minute space of what must have been a matter of seconds.
But it was a grand finale to a wonderful trip, and we arrived back at the station with the evening sun, having travelled 480 miles of jungle tracks and vaccinated 15,000 Natives.