On My Way to the Church I Passed a Mosque

INCEF’s offices, and the residence where I am staying, are located in a neighborhood at the top of a hill in Brazzaville. There is a spot just down the road where one can have an unbroken view all the way down to the Congo River and across to Kinshasa. (Bit of trivia: Brazzaville and Kinshasa are the only two national capitals that are within eyesight of one another. Or at least, this is what I have been told.)

Yesterday I decided to go for a walk. My destination was an enormous church, the Basilica of St. Anne, which was visible in the distance at the bottom of the hill. The basilica stands out because of its beautiful green roof. It is a color like malachite, and shines with a similar polish. My route also took me through the neighborhood of Poto Poto, where I had not walked before. I took my camera, although I am still very shy about asking people if I may take their picture. Architecture is easier for me to capture, as long as it is not a government building (forbidden by law, which is tough since every other building I pass seems to be a government building).

At the very beginning I was reminded of an interesting phenomenon here in Brazzaville, and perhaps elsewhere: foreigners (non-Africans) are sometimes generically classified as “chinois” or “Chinese.” As I walked along with my camera, a little boy with his mother pointed at me and said, “chinois.” In my head, I could not help thinking, with a chuckle, “I guess foreigners do all look alike.” It is not unusual for a non-African to be called “chinois” here, especially by children, whatever one’s ethnic background. To be fair to the small child, we were on a street just behind the Chinese embassy. Having my own ethnic identity become a matter for questioning and explaining is, in fact, part of this experience. Blonde hair and blue eyes just make me “foreign” in some cases, “French” in others, and “Chinese” for most small children.

Heading down the hill towards the green-roofed church, I found myself walking through a neighborhood of small shops and restaurants, thinking, why haven’t I been here before? Looking down a side street, I saw another large building, green and white with four tall narrow towers, that I had also seen from the top of the hill. I detoured down the side street, and found Brazzaville’s mosque under construction. According to some gentlemen I spoke with outside, the Muslim community in Congo is made up of immigrants from other African countries such as Senegal, as well as some local converts. They were planning to celebrate the 100^th anniversary of the Muslim community in Brazzaville in 2014. They had raised funds to construct the new mosque, and it would be complete in time for the celebrations.

Back on the main road, I could still see the green roof of the basilica ahead of me, so I continued along the street, hopping over the drainage canals that cut through the sidewalk (where there is a sidewalk). The rain gutters on the side of the road are all two or three feet deep, and there are uncovered side channels that cross the sidewalks everywhere, ready to catch unwary or less-than-nimble pedestrians.

Finally, I reached the basilica, which looks like a gigantic space ship that somehow landed in the middle of the city, but is poised to lift off again at any moment. The doors are particularly beautiful, with their hammered copper friezes, as are the green tiles that give it an almost reptilian look, like a gorgeous salamander. I am not sure my photos do it justice, but it is spectacular. Stained glass does not feature prominently – in fact, most of the windows have no glass. Air flow is more important than decorative glass, I think.

That’s Not How We Do Things

Just as a visual image without texture can be somewhat flat and uninteresting, communication without friction can be difficult to see. What I mean by this is that often, the cultural and deeply coded aspects of people’s communicative behavior only become visible to the observer when there is a problem. For a scholar of communication doing an ethnographic study, it can be difficult at first to distinguish individual idiosyncrasies from cultural codes, especially when you have not yet met a very wide range of people from a given place or community. You can’t tell whether an observed behavior is a personal quirk – someone who just happens to enjoy verbal sparring or argument, for example – or a behavior that is expected and valued in a particular speech community.

When there is conflict, however, and speakers explicitly call upon the communicative norms of their own speech community (“American,” or “Congolese,” for example), to challenge or explain their own or others’ communicative conduct, an observer can be fairly certain that there is something cultural going on. This observation is not my own, of course, but comes from the literature on ethnography of communication and from many, many published case studies on the role of culture in communication. It is, however, always rather satisfying to see it proven yet again. It is also a bit of a relief, as it does provide a good place to start one’s data collection. When you hear someone say, “that’s not how we do things,” you can be fairly certain that you should listen more closely to the explanation. A lesson in “how we do things” can be valuable data.

There is another interesting phenomenon that occurs when you tell a new acquaintance that you are a communication researcher: people will either tell you what they think that means (“to me, that means ‘language’”), or they will roll their eyes, clutch their heads and bemoan the near-total absence of “communication” in their workplace or the world at large. Either way, these reactions also provide a good starting point for data collection.

Talking about intercultural communication also frequently reveals just how persistent are beliefs and premises about the “essential” characteristics of groups of people – “Americans” are this way, “Congolese” are like that – and how such an understanding of the role of “culture” shapes speakers’ behaviors and attitudes when they find themselves involved in communication that they recognize as “intercultural.” This phenomenon also presents the scholar of intercultural communication with a real challenge: how to write about and analyze culture in communication without duplicating your subjects’ own understanding of “culture” as something static and determinative.

These are just a few reflections on the task at hand, as I continue to grapple with the basic question, “what is going on here?” and as I try to begin to understand what is going on here from the participants’ own viewpoints.  

Thanksgiving in Brazzaville

As a former French colony, which only became fully independent in 1960, the Republic of Congo still has very close ties to France. There are, however, Americans here aside from the embassy staff. Not many, but a few. A fairly large cross-section of these Americans gathered at the residence of US Ambassador Chris Murray to celebrate Thanksgiving. Americans make their way to Congo for a number of reasons: to work on environmental conservation, to work on public health, and to work in development and education. (I’m sure there are business people, too, but I didn’t meet any last night.) The first American School, a private institution offering instruction in English, opened this year, and the first group of teachers is quite extraordinary. They appear to combine a sense of adventure with great dedication to, and passion for their teaching.

Some longer-term American expats, individuals who have worked abroad for various international NGOs and other organizations, and who have been in Brazzaville for years, constitute a different group from the newly arrived and still (possibly) jet-lagged group. Conversations with this group tend to focus less on the excitement of new experiences and anxiety about resources, and more on comparison of this year’s events to last year’s, or to the sharing of new strategies for coping with the wildly inadequate infrastructure in Brazzaville and the sheer physical difficulty of getting around the country. One important signifier of short-term versus long-term status appears to be the moment when one switches from being amazed at how inexpensive most things (except food) are in Congo, to being appalled at how expensive they are.

As a developing country in great need of a wide variety of things – better roads, more reliable electricity production and distribution, better basic health care, more jobs and opportunity for citizens – Congo, like other countries in a similar situation, attracts the usual array of international organizations, each here to carry out its mission and achieve its own specific goals. Americans work with all of these institutions, and were present at Thanksgiving. The usual alphabet soup of large international groups – WHO, WCS, UNICEF, UNDP, etc. – is also accompanied by smaller organizations and even individual efforts, dedicated to service and often faith-based missions. If ever there was a time to heed the general advice for Thanksgiving dinner survival, “avoid religion and politics,” this was such a time. It was, instead, a good time to marvel at and appreciate the choices so many people have made to leave the comfort and security of their home country, their native language, and (often) their families to do work that they believe is important. From foreign service officers to volunteers on development projects, this is an interesting and deeply engaged group of people.

*One important caveat, which has been studied by both scholars and practitioners of international aid and development, is the extent to which NGOs and other large international organizations can take over and basically replace the normal functions of the state in a developing country. Where state institutions are weak, NGOs often flow in to fill the perceived vacuum. This process, over time, can undermine the incentives for the state to fulfill its obligations to its citizens, whether in public health, or education, or basic infrastructure. There is also a risk that the state’s own capacity to fulfill these functions may be undermined, if the work is instead being done by the foreign employees of a variety of NGOs. A short walk through the Centreville section of Brazzaville will demonstrate just how prevalent NGOs are in Congo, as you walk past one sign after another indicating the office of yet another NGO, or company funded by the UN, with yet another mission. They are almost as numerous as the various government ministries. Just another aspect of the context here in Congo, and something else to keep in mind as I move forward with my research. 

      

Adequate Description

It doesn’t sound that hard, right? Describe what is going on, in a given situation or setting. You could ask the people involved to tell you what is going on. But then, you need to consider that what they tell you may be edited in some way, perhaps to reflect better on the speaker, or on the social group. The usual ‘observer’s paradox.’ You change the thing (or process) you are observing by your observation.

Beginning to have conversations with INCEF’s staff about their work is a little like asking the participants in a game of cricket to tell you what they are doing while they are doing it. I have read about their work on their web site, watched all of the films they have produced, and read journal articles describing their work (much as I would need to read about cricket before ever trying to watch a game). But now I am here, asking them directly, “what do you do?” I stand a little to one side, in order to avoid getting smacked with a cricket ball, and try to figure out what is going on and how to describe it. To the participants, the answers to my questions may seem completely obvious: I am trying to hit the ball/catch the ball/throw the ball. On one level, the answers are obvious. But what does it mean to try to hit the ball? What does it mean to create educational documentary films about Ebola? I know if I ask the question that way, I will get nothing but puzzled looks and perhaps a shrug. I know, because I have tried it.

Why bother with description? Why not just dive straight into analysis? This temptation to produce on-the-spot analysis is a powerful one, and hard to resist. I must remind myself continually that I am here, doing this work, precisely because I don’t yet know “what is going on” here, and I need to establish that (as best I can) before I can do anything else. Most importantly, I don’t yet know what is going on here for the participants –for the INCEF staffers themselves. I have some preliminary hints and ideas, but I must not mistake those hints for adequate description. Ten days is nothing in this process. I am just getting to the beginning.

The Cats

Taking a little break from thinking deep thoughts about research, just to post some photos of the cats who live here at INCEF's headquarters. I am not really a cat person, but these guys are very appealing.

This is Millie, who likes to sleep in an alcove high up on the wall outside the kitchen. She's a talker, always crying for attention (or food). She seems to have an opinion about everything.

This is a photo of the two little ones who play together in the garden. As far as I can tell, they don't have names. Here, they are taking shelter from the down-pouring rain on the screened-in porch. They appear to be siblings.

These two are quite shy, and haven't yet let me get very close. That may take a while longer.

Donnez-moi francs

It does not happen very often here, but sometimes when I am walking around the city someone passing me will say, “donnez-moi francs.” Give me francs (currency). More often, when sitting outside at a restaurant someone will walk up to the tables, open a bag and try to sell small trinkets or souvenirs. It makes sense. Here is a wealthy (by any local standard) foreigner, spending money just to be here in Brazzaville, why not ask for some? If you have goods to sell, sell them where the people with money are sitting.

As a researcher on a limited budget, here for a limited time, my own sense of my lack of wealth confronts the reality that here, at this time and in this place, I have an amazing amount of money on hand for someone who is not rich. The fact that it is already budgeted and accounted for – so much for transportation, so much for food, etc. – does not change the fact that at any given moment in my pocket is more money than in the pocket of the person asking for money. It does not change the fact that in this country almost everyone is struggling. There are few jobs, and even fewer that pay well. Or, as my taxi driver put it, “The country is rich but the people are poor.”

Congo has what are often called “abundant natural resources”: oil, minerals, land that can grow just about anything. None of that natural wealth, or the money that comes from extracting it, however, seems to reach the people. The reasons for this are not complicated or unique to Congo: the few at the top of the governmental pyramid profit, they provide a certain amount of patronage to the next level down, and then…the money is gone.

Foreigners who arrive with their research plans, or their advocacy plans, or their business plans are just another resource. This fact prompts me to reflect on the ethics of doing research under such conditions. The situation appears at both the micro-level of individual interactions, “donnez-moi francs,” and at the macro-level of interactions with government bureaucracy, where the request is essentially the same, if phrased somewhat differently.

The impulse to give is strong. I am very conscious that I am the bearer of enormous privilege, and that just being here, walking around, marks me as such. On the other hand, I have a research budget to maintain, and uses for the money already planned. It is not, in that sense, “my” money. Should this project develop, and receive grant funding for the long term, I will undoubtedly also have to confront the other end of the spectrum of giving at the bureaucratic level. And I cannot, on any level, support any one individual, or provide enough to solve anything but the immediate problem of today’s hunger. So, I give sometimes, and I weigh the balance, and I wonder if I am doing the right thing. 

Starting at the Periphery

Sometimes things happen more slowly than I would like. Ok, I should re-phrase that: things almost always happen more slowly than I would like. This includes my research. No matter how many times I go through this process of beginning over again on a new project, I have the same experience of irrational frustration with the pace of both my own learning, and the unfolding of the project. I call this frustration “irrational” because anyone who has ever tried to study human beings knows that they simply do not ever do what you would wish them to do, when you wish them to do it, or how you would wish them to do it. Research subjects forget appointments. They get sick. They change their plans, change their minds, and generally don’t give a hoot about your problems as a researcher. Which is fine, I tell myself over and over again.

Doing research is not like unwrapping a present. It is not tidy, and the results do not show up neatly packaged and ready to go. And researchers do not always feel completely in control of the situation. For someone who has a tendency towards control issues, this can be a challenge. This is what I tell myself, as I realize that in this project I will necessarily be starting at the periphery and working my way slowly towards the center. And this is fine.

As a newcomer to Congo, and to the languages spoken here, and to the culture and history of the place, I am beginning the process of learning about this place by learning about others like me who have been here longer. I am listening to them talk about the difficulties of working and living here, of their own frustrations when confronted with a culture they experience as very different from their own. I am watching how they interact with each other, and with local Congolese people. And most of all I am listening to them talk about how difficult it is to communicate in Congo. I listen to the different explanations that these expats – Americans, Europeans, and others – come up with to explain what they see as the source of the difficulty. These explanations vary from the political (the residues of state socialism) to the cultural (people here just don’t “get it”). Meetings do not follow the same pattern as they do in the US. Partners and colleagues do not “follow up” or “share ideas” in the same way they do in Europe. Sometimes the reasons for the difficulties are explained as problems of corruption and patronage, structural issues that impede progress on a variety of fronts.   

My task, as a communication researcher, is not to verify or corroborate the truth or falsehood of any of these analyses offered by my initial contacts. For often, when people speak about the communicative conduct of others, they are really making statements about their own beliefs and values, their own premises about communication, and about proper communication in particular. By listening to these, and learning what other people like me have found difficult about communication in this place, I can begin to learn a bit more about the norms of communication within the community of expats, mostly workers with large international non-profit groups, and about the points where those norms come into conflict with local Congolese communicative practices. As someone newly arrived in Congo, this approach from the periphery seems like a useful one. And, no, it will not be quick.

That is Not a Pumpkin

It is November, and no matter where in the world they are, Americans manage to celebrate Thanksgiving. The embassy commissary in the most far-flung outposts will be stocked with frozen turkeys, standard issue. But the side dishes can get a little bit creative, allowing for local tastes and ingredients. One iconic dessert, however, has become a bit of an obsession of mine: pumpkin pie. This is a dish with a fair amount of flexibility, since it can be made with virtually any squash or gourd-like vegetable. In my ignorance, I thought a pumpkin surrogate would exist somewhere in the vast array of fruits and vegetables for sale here in Brazzaville. I may have been wrong about that.

Armed with the French word for pumpkin, “potiron,” and also the backup “courge” or squash, and the good will of a number of folks I have met at INCEF’s offices, I set out to find a pumpkin. My first destination was an open-air vegetable market in the downtown area, which several different people had recommended to me. Inquiries about a pumpkin led to several other suggestions: no, I did not want an eggplant. Or a zucchini. Or a papaya. Finally, a round, green candidate was presented: was this it? I inquired about the color inside. Yes, is was orange-ish. They didn’t have a cut open example, so I took the seller’s word, and triumphantly carried home my “pumpkin.”

By then, it had reached the point in the heat of the day where the thought of turning on the oven to bake a pumpkin just made me want to weep, so I put the gourd aside until the evening brought slightly cooler temperatures. Once it was dark, I found a cleaver, and cut into the pumpkin. The sound of the first cut was the first clue: that was not a pumpkin. I had purchased a lovely, round, watermelon. I will be headed back to the market tomorrow, keeping in mind the fact that sometimes the desire to please the questioner can distort your findings, as can the desire to find what you are looking for.

City Without a Map

Added to the list of things I should have done before I arrived in Brazzaville: print out a map of the city from Google Maps. Although I do have internet access at INCEF’s office, the connection is usually so slow that loading large graphics is nearly impossible. So, Google Maps are no good to me now. Nor can I just fire up the map app on my smartphone (I don’t have one here). I am going to have to do this the old-fashioned way.

It quickly became obvious that I was not going to be able to acquire a map after I arrived. The general response most people gave to any question about a map was a short chuckle, followed by a shake of the head. One immediate consequence of this fact is that no one navigates by street name, or any sort of specific address. One’s destination is just “next to” or “near” a well-known landmark or building. It’s very much like getting directions in rural areas of the US: “Just go down the road until the big barn on your left, then take your first right and go until you see a big hill. Then turn left at the blue mailbox.” So, the key question to ask anyone helping you to get around is, “what do I say to the taxi driver in order to get where I am going?” Also, “how do I get back here?” is another good thing to learn.

My usual approach to learning new cities has always been to walk around, get a little bit lost, and find my way back. I got an interesting response from one American expat when I asked about where it would be good to go for a walk: “We don’t usually walk around here.” The “we” in this answer clearly referred to “foreigners,” who don’t usually “walk around” in Brazzaville. A couple of days taking taxi rides around the city to accomplish my first chores provided ample evidence of this fact: lots of people walking, almost no foreigners on foot. Foreigners are not hard to spot, since they are almost always wearing an SUV.

Taking taxis everywhere, however, is both expensive and annoying once it becomes clear that the places I want to go are not really far away. So, yesterday I decided to walk around and have a look at the neighborhood immediately around INCEF’s building. I took my camera, but immediately realized this would be a little bit problematic since the vast majority of buildings in this area are government ministries and foreign embassies – not a good idea (or allowed) to take photos of these structures. The other buildings are homes of wealthy people, whether foreign or Congolese it is impossible to tell. Every building is surrounded by a high wall, which is often topped with broken glass or spikes. Each wall has a gate, and each gate has a gate-keeper or two, sitting on plastic chairs on the sidewalk. Some of these gate-keepers wear uniforms indicating their role as security guards.

For a pedestrian, the net effect of all these walls is to create streets like small canyons, bordered on both sides by virtually unbroken walls. Beautiful, tall trees are visible over the tops of the walls. Sometimes a roof, with its array of satellite dishes, is also visible. People are walking everywhere, although the taxis never fail to remind us pedestrians that they are available to hire by giving a short “bip” on their horn whenever they see someone walking and looking around, which is what I am doing. So, lots of taxi horns are provoked by my slightly aimless wandering.

First Impressions

First impressions are always tricky, and seem so often to be subject to one’s physical state of being – are you cold or hot? Are you hungry? When was the last time you slept? But I will try this risky venture, to paint a picture of my first two days in Brazzaville. 

I arrived at night, and was driven to INCEF’s building, where I will be staying while in town. The city was dark, with much less light than in other large cities at night. When we turned off the main road, it felt as though we had suddenly turned onto a country road without street lights.

Here is a photo of the front garden, in daylight:

Since I had not slept at all on the two flights over, falling asleep the first night was not problem in spite of the time difference. I climbed into the mosquito-netted bed and fell straight to sleep. After about seven hours, I woke up and realized it was light and I might as well get up. Days near the equator do not vary in length very much throughout the year, so I am enjoying the early morning sunshine very much.

The first tasks on my first day: to change some money, get a local cell phone and SIM card, and get some food. Here, the network of American expats living and working in Brazzaville came to my aid, and connected me with a taxi driver who could help me accomplish all these tasks. I also got a short tour of part of the city, down by the Congo River, and around other neighborhoods. It seems as though the earth is trying constantly to reclaim the roads here, and often succeeds. Pavement will simply disappear, replaced by earth, boulders, potholes the size of a VW, and sometimes shrubs. Sometimes this requires a U-turn, but most often just a careful easing of the taxi around the obstacle.

Here is a photo of the rapids on the Congo River, a little bit north of the city center:

One communicative norm I have noticed is the tooting of taxi horns. Since traffic signals and traffic flow are almost completely arbitrary, drivers use their horns to signal different things to each other. A short toot, “bip!” seems to indicate, “I am here, look out.” It is used when other cars are entering the roadway, or when going around a blind turn, or when making an unusual maneuver such as going up on the sidewalk to get around stalled traffic (in which case the intended audience for the horn blast is the pedestrian in the greatest peril). A longer toot of the horn, “biiiiip!” indicates a driver’s intention to keep going on his course no matter what. “I’m coming through!” Truly irate horn blasts, with the hand laid heavily on the horn and sometimes pumped a few times, are actually quite rare and seem to be reserved for truly egregious violations of the expected norm of traffic flow, usually someone who has caused complete blockage of the road and is not responding nimbly enough to get out of the way.

INCEF’s executive director arrives on Saturday, and my observations of their work will begin at that point. Until then, I am finding my feet in Brazza and learning fast. The sounds outside my window during the day vary from noises I would, in other circumstances, have described as a riot to the sounds of a street party complete with dance tracks. In the evenings is gets quiet. There are new bird sounds in the morning (although I have yet to identify the birds), and a constant heat and humidity that may be my biggest challenge. Eight years in Seattle have weakened my ability to endure temperature extremes, or humidity of any kind. As I said, these notes on first impressions may be seriously affected by the fact that I feel as though I might simply melt at any moment.