Africa: Distorted Narratives
Africa is
A land with many expectations
Africa is
A land forged in the consciousness of those who know it least
Africa is
A land of many peoples, of complex histories, and distorted narratives.
Africa is
Wandering sand dunes as far as the eye can see,
Rolling plains full of slender antelope
Africa is
Winding rivers releasing their floods,
Expansive desserts full of life and culture, not death
Africa is
The rhythm of ancient drums
And the beat of exploding bombs
Africa is
Not what you think.
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Deconstructing Africa: A Namibian Photographic Journey
By: Alexander Cotnoir
Prompt: Go through photos from your travels abroad. Pick two photos that, when juxtaposed, represent some form of contrast and write about them.
Photo 1- Open Plains
Take a moment and examine the photo above. Yes, take at least 30 seconds…perhaps five minutes if you’d like. Take your time. When you examine the photograph, think about the colors, the subject, the emotion(s) that it may or may not elicit within you, what it reminds you of, and where you think I might have taken it. Don’t worry, I’ll wait for you to finish.
Did you make it past 30 seconds of gazing at the photo? I hope that this exercise wasn’t too mind-numbing for you. After all, the only subject in the photo is a tree standing in what might appear to be the center of a very large, very empty plain (if my photo caption didn’t give it away already!). But I also recognize that despite its ‘simplicity’, this photo may have still intrigued some of you, or at least imbued a sense of peacefulness, as the scene originally did for me. When I look back on this picture, on the acacia tree standing watch over its grassy kingdom, I often try to place exactly what motivated me to snap a photograph in the first place. Why did this particular image, among the three thousand others I took on my journey through Africa, make its way onto the home screen of my laptop computer when I returned to the U.S.?
Before I describe the physical context within which I took this photograph, let me first reiterate one of the questions I had asked you to ponder above. What reaction does this photo elicit within you, and what does it remind you of? For me, I came to realize after the fact that I had found this landscape appealing for two main reasons. First, I simply love photos of landscapes that have large skies, mountains, or in this case, wide open spaces. There is something about the concept of vastness, or at least in an uncritical sense, the ‘emptiness’ of a space that draws me into a landscape photo. But, I also now realize that I find this photo appealing because it adheres to and reified the stereotypical romantic view of ‘Africa’ that I had held since the time I was a young boy. It essentially stands as an epitome of the ‘wilds’ of Africa.
Long before I was presented with the once in a lifetime opportunity to study abroad, I was fed what I’ve now come to recognize as the “westernized” view of the African continent; a view of wonderfully open spaces, from vast savannahs to thick Congolese jungles; a primeval place of wilderness, untouched by the human hand. I vividly remember the opening sequence to the BBC’s highly-acclaimed Planet Earth documentary series narrated by my childhood hero, Sir David Attenborough. Featured prominently amid the opening credits was a herd of my favorite animals in the entire world, African elephants, wading across an expansive flooded field as white cattle egrets billowed into an endless sky. I will never forget the excitement I felt as my mother read my first African Mammals book to me as she tucked me into bed. I’d make her pause and show me a stop-motion photograph of a herd of wildebeest, careening and plunging in chaotic frenzy into a swollen African river, as crocodiles lunged at the stragglers. These visions of wild places excited me.
I was finally able to photograph one of the animals I’d always wanted to see in the wild while in Africa. Here, three elegant giraffes stand dappled in the afternoon sunlight.
Beyond the wildlife documentaries and books, I was also bombarded with the westernized view of a wild and vast, primeval Africa through my love of Disney’s The Lion King. My mother had made a CD of Lion King songs that my sisters and I would put into the CD player after my father came home from work. Whenever our favorite song, The Circle of Life, came on, we’d immediately hop up onto my father’s back, as if we were peering from the top of Pride Rock, looking out beyond the vastness of the African plains. These ‘real’ and fantastical scenes both enthralled me, and I began to fall into the trap that most Americans fall into, often unconsciously, regarding how we portray Africa. The lure of Africa became its “remoteness”, its “wildness” … the vast lands that had been seemingly ‘untouched’ by humans.
Smoke from a large controlled burn billows into the African sky. Prescribed burns- which have been found to enhance the soil’s nutrient content and prevent inedible plant varieties from taking over amid grazing pressure- have been a common practice in these areas for generations, providing a very visible example of how even Africa’s most vast landscapes are often shaped by human presence.
I admit that this grossly unrealistic vision of Africa grew, even until I was a college undergraduate as it manifested itself in a love for the wildlife of Africa. As an Environmental Studies and Biology major, I considered myself to be passionate about wildlife conservation and the sustainable use and enjoyment of the Earth’s ‘wild’ lands; a passion which, when combined with the romanticized views I had grown up with as a young child, made me view environmental problems in Africa in a bias manner. “How could they kill an innocent rhino?” I often asked myself incredulously when we discussed poaching among rural communities in South Africa during class. I looked at the poachers targeting Africa’s megafauna as many Americans who consider themselves pro-conservation due today; they were outsiders, infringing upon the “wildness” of the African continent, bringing about the fall of the beautiful vast African landscapes and the impressive fauna that I longed to see so badly. I did not see the reality in the situation; how the economic impoverishment, physical separation of local communities from Africa’s wildlife, globalization, and political corruption intertwined with the destructive history of colonialism are more at fault for the current issues surrounding poaching. Rural communities had lived alongside these animals for thousands and thousands of years… it wasn’t that they were encroaching on Africa’s ‘wild’ lands for the first time. Rather, the seed for this new destructive relationship with Africa’s megafauna had been planted long ago by outsiders who viewed Africa in a romanticized light – the colonial regimes of westerners who swept across the continent. Today, the legacy of colonialism- stunted economic development, widespread inequality, and increased global trade- create the perfect storm of conditions conducive for poaching. I am lucky to know now how wrong I was in my conceptualization of Africa; how wrong I was to separate the African people from their land in my construction, my understanding of what the continent was.
I captured this photograph of Temba, a local wildlife tracker and safari guide, during a drive through Timbavati Game Reserve. After interviewing Temba for a Dartmouth project which included perceptions of local wildlife, I recognized how local communities who were historically intertwined with Africa’s wildlife have become alienated to a certain extent with the implementation of ‘protected’ wildlife zones. I found it interesting to think that Temba’s current position depends upon leading tourists who have fallen for the Western narrative of a ‘wild’ African experience through the same lands where his ancestors once lived.
I do not wish to give the impression that Africa does not have vast, open landscapes, or that it is not indeed full of landscapes teeming with animals, sweeping vistas, and natural wonders. In fact, there were many instances during our travels through South Africa and Namibia when I felt sheer awe as I looked out upon what appeared to be the most uninterrupted landscapes I had seen. Looking out across the rolling sands of the Namib Desert in Namibia, or the blindingly- white flats of the Etosha Salt Pans, I couldn’t help from thinking that these landscapes were impressive, or at least shocking, in their apparent lack of human activity. Although there is something unique about Africa’s landscapes, it is not that Africa’s landscapes are somehow “wilder” or “less inhabited” than any other. I did not recognize this fact until I had nearly completed my journey through Africa. The critical moment occurred one day when I found myself waiting anxiously for a local villager to walk out of the frame as a giraffe came to feed at the edge of the village. I was thinking to myself “Can’t he walk a bit faster? I don’t want the giraffe to turn away by the time he has finally passed!” I put down my camera after these words struck me. Why did it matter if there was a person in the photograph? Doesn’t it seem that the giraffe and this villager are accustomed with one another, signifying that they normally interact? I realized that my frustration could be traced to a legacy of colonialism, whereby the idea that Africa’s beauty lying in fictionalized lands devoid of human settlements had endured through the images I was fed as a child.
In contrast to the photo I captured above of the giraffes among their ‘natural’ habitat, I also encountered many ‘wild’ animals that seemed perfectly at home among human settlements. For example, this giraffe would come to the center of campus in the town of Bushbuckridge and nobody would bat an eye. Although I waited for one of the community members to leave the frame, I couldn’t find an angle to photograph the massive animals without a building in the background, yet alas I think this photograph does an adequate job deconstructing the completely ‘wild’ and ‘untouched’ Africa narrative.
Walking along the steep crest of one of the Namib Desert’s mighty dunes. The landscapes I encountered in Africa were often impressive due to how vast they appeared. Interestingly, the 200-foot tall dune I’m walking across in this photo is only estimated to be about 1,000 years old. For comparison, the local desert Topnaar communities have lived along the desert’s borders for about the same amount of time, suggesting that human presence is as much a part of this landscape as anything else.
When I think back to the ‘wild spaces’ that intrigued me most (just like the photo of the acacia) I recognize now that many of these lands have been inhabited by local peoples far longer than any lands in the western hemisphere. In many cases, these were lands where wars and systematic oppression had forced people to relocate or permanently settle within concentrated towns and villages. During one of our final nights in Namibia, we climbed atop a large red rock outcropping- a lone monolith that was a 45 minute drive from the nearest research station (also the location where the opening scenes to 2001: A Space Odyssey were filmed)- to enjoy the sunset. At the time, I had easily fooled my common sense by looking out far toward the horizon in all directions, taking note of the lack of buildings. “Wow, we are in such a secluded place!” I had whispered to myself. It was as if I were attributing the beauty I saw in the landscape to a lack of human presence. Today, this leaves me a bit unsettled, for only fifteen minutes earlier we’d passed herds of the local Topnaar peoples’ cattle. The Topnaar were historically desert nomads, moving about the gravel and sandy plains of Namibia for thousands of years. Although they’ve been forcibly settled into villages along the Kuiseb oasis nearby, they still maintain a degree of subsistence on the land. There cattle continue to roam as their ancestors did. In reality, the local Topnaar people were as much a defining feature of this beautiful landscape as the mighty oryx antelope with its long elegant horns, or the giant red rock we were now standing upon… they had been here even longer than many of the dunes I could see quietly mounded on the horizon.
Standing atop the red rocks overlooking the plains of Gobabeb, Namibia was a breathtaking experience. Upon first glance, no human settlements can be seen along the horizon line in all directions. Upon closer investigation however, the human impacts on this landscape can be seen in the ancient rock art that has been found etched into similar rock outcroppings in the area, as well as the presence of wandering livestock from local communities.
An additional example of the rugged Namibian landscapes we encountered that easily invoked a feeling of secludedness and lack of human ‘interference’. Take note of the road that carves its way between the rock outcroppings to the far right of the photograph. This route has connected two local communities that manage tours of local historic sites (i.e.- ancient rock art at the Twyfelfontein World Heritage Site) and desert-adapted wildlife.
At the time when I took the acacia photo, I was leaning from the jeep window as we rolled down a single dusty road that carves its way toward the salt pans of Etosha National Park. I was seated in the back of our safari vehicle, which was full of eleven other Dartmouth undergraduates, our two professors, and a retired Afrikaans park ranger who had worked in the area for 40 years. We were headed from the fenced tenting area of Kaujakua, which is situated a 30 minutes’ drive into the vast park. (Here, I use the term “vast” intentionally…Etosha National Park is truly immense, comprising 8,600 square miles). As the dawn light illuminated the sky in the distance, it gave the appearance of a fall watercolor painting among the clouds and gave the dry grasses a golden-brown hue. Far in the distance, although not visible in the photograph, a herd of zebra and antelope had run away in a cloud of dust. This landscape is deceiving; it appears empty to the viewer, and yet the trained ecologist will point out that 145 species of mammals, over 350 species of birds, and approximately 110 species of reptiles call Etosha home. It is unfathomable to think that over 3,000 African elephants (each weighing in at over 10,000 pounds), 20,000 zebra, and an estimated 30,000 antelope thrive in this terrain. Even after a course on savannah ecology, it seemed unfathomable to picture so many large herbivores living in a sea of browning grass. It is no wonder that, only by living a highly nomadic lifestyle – wandering over large distances- that these animals could live in Etosha.
A family of massive African elephants drink together as the sun sets in Etosha National Park. Large herbivores such as these elephants I photographed must travel extensive distances each day to find sources of water and vegetation to consume. Etosha and many other national parks and wildlife refuges across Africa have pursued a conservation model that increasingly separates large animals from surrounding communities via fences and other barriers. This has led to a myriad of problems including the killing of large herbivores when they do come into contact with the communities they historically coexisted with.
In the photo of the acacia and the plains, I can positively say that no local peoples live on or utilize the land. In this sense, the photo isn’t misrepresenting a human presence on the landscape, but it does speak to the fact that humans have been effectively separated from this parcel of land (a 10-foot tall fence separates neighboring communities from the park). To those with untrained eyes, such as family members and friends back home who view photos of African travels, these types of photographs continue to uphold the false narrative of the beauty of “undeveloped” tracks of Africa. The African landscapes most frequently photographed by tourists today are not truly representative of their historical states, just like my photo of the Etosha plains. Most of the local peoples (in the case of Etosha, indigenous tribes such as the Hadza) were forcibly removed from their homelands. Such displacement was common among colonial regimes who viewed the local peoples as threatening ‘their’ game and ‘their’ natural vistas. As local people were physically removed from the landscapes and wildlife they had once lived alongside, it is then in my opinion, that the separation between African peoples and the “natural” African landscape grew like a weed in the mind of foreigners. The extent to which this view has taken root is evident from a simple Google search of “quotes about Africa”, which yielded the following results from famous authors, conservations, and even long-term residents of African countries:
“…few can sojourn long within the unspoilt wilderness of a game sanctuary, surrounded on all sides by its confiding animals, without absorbing its atmosphere; the Spirit of the Wild is quick to assert her supremacy, and no man of any sensibility can resist her” – James Stevenson-Hamilton (first warden of South Africa’s Sabi Nature Reserve)
“Africa is mystic; it is wild; it is a sweltering inferno; it is a photographer’s paradise, a hunter’s Valhalla, an escapist’s Utopia” – Beryl Markham (British-born Kenyan aviator, adventurer, racehorse trainer and author; extract from “West with the Night”)
“(In Africa) witnessing the calm rhythm of life revives our worn souls and recaptures a feeling of belonging to the natural world. No one can return from the Serengeti unchanged, for tawny lions will forever prowl our memory and great herds throng our imagination” – George Schaller (American conservationist and author)
“There is something about safari life that makes you forget all your sorrows and feel as if you had drunk half a bottle of champagne” – Karen Blixen (Danish author of “Out of Africa”)
“In Africa you have space… there is a profound sense of space here, space and sky” – Thabo Mbeki (former South African president)
Today, when I look back at the photo of the lone acacia sitting among the sea of grass on my desktop, I view it more critically. I now understand why the photo appeals to me; it feeds the romantic view of a land devoid of human activity, a land comprised of only skies, trees, earth, and wildlife. It upholds a fictional narrative that can be extremely hard to break… a narrative, that once shattered and questioned however, enables the viewer, the tourist, and/or the photographer to begin digging deeper into other aspects of Africa that make it so beautiful. By going to Africa with professors who challenged us to consider the current threats of colonialism while simultaneously partaking in stereotypically “touristy” activities (i.e.- going on safari through the Etosha plains), I was first able to recognize how this powerful narrative plays out in the West’s perception of Africa.
During our visit to the Twyfelfontein UNESCO World Heritage site above Gobabeb, Namibia, we learned that over five thousand individual carvings- depicting everything from lions to even penguins- have been discovered in this outcropping of rocks. The carvings are believed to have been created over 2,000-6,000 years ago, pointing to the longstanding human presence in what is often viewed by outsiders as an “uninhabited/ inhospitable” landscape.
Now, since I’ve returned home and have had time to re-examine all the photographs I captured in Africa, I’m beginning to use this awareness to deconstruct why certain landscapes and situations captured my attention. I’m also using this new awareness to examine how these snapshots do or don’t uphold certain narratives about the continent, and to determine when it is or isn’t the right time to adhere to the mantra “a picture is worth a thousand words”. Sometimes I realize, you can’t let the picture do all the talking…
Photo 2- Bombs & Bullets
Again, take a moment to examine my second photograph above, but keep in mind the thoughts I’ve shared in my story of the lone acacia on the Etosha plains. What emotions does this new photo elicit within you? What is the “feel” of this photo?
This photograph was also taken in Namibia, in the capital city of Windhoek during a rare afternoon when we had no scheduled readings or class discussions. I wandered down to the city center with three fellow classmates. We had been told by our professor that we should view the Independence Memorial Museum, which in all honesty resembles a giant Keurig coffee maker machine. As we walked under the blistering hot sun, I couldn’t help but notice how new and empty the city looked. My friends agreed that it gave the appearance of a Hollywood movie set. We made our way to the only hill in the area, upon which sat a large German orange-tiled church across the street from the museum. Indeed, the museum building lived up to its reputation. The massive structure- constructed of steel, glass, and stone- stood elevated above the ground by three support columns. The building, I later learned, was constructed by North Koreans, like most government building projects in Namibia. The two countries apparently still have a close relationship, although international pressures to sever ties with the militaristic dictatorship are beginning to break down this relationship.
Namibia’s Independence Museum does bring to mind both the architecture of North Korea and the general shape of a Keurig Coffee Maker, yet inside it is full of a plethora of beautiful oil paintings depicting many of the human struggles Namibians have faced from the first arrival of colonists to eventual independence from South Africa’s apartheid government.
After we entered into the museum, which involved riding a strange glass elevator to the elevated portion of the building, we came face to face with depictions of Namibia’s very human history. Gracing wall after wall in room after room, oversized oil paintings (such as the one in the photo) depicted the oppression Namibians had felt under German colonialism, followed by atrocities endured under Apartheid rule and the eventual casualties felt during the South African Border Wars which began in the 1960s.
We walked through room after room of meticulously-detailed oil paintings; some of mothers carrying their starving children and communities fighting back against German artillery, others painted from the perspective of the aggressors dropping bombs as the painting shown above. Upon entering the third and final floor of the museum, my friend captured this photo when I looked up at an immense painting depicting the bombing raids of the South African Border Wars. It was in this moment that I felt as though all the human stories that had been largely absent from many of the landscapes we’d visited hit me face on. That’s why I particularly like this photo. To me, it’s symbolic of the fact that the immense suffering, struggle, and resilience surrounding Namibia’s people was finally about to strike me, just as the bomb looks as though its headed straight toward my heart. This painting is also striking in its stark contrast to the panoramic landscape shots I often captured in northern Namibia, which gave the impression of an undisturbed land. The paintings in the Independence museum were unapologetic in this respect, showing the true extent to which human conflicts have historically molded the landscape. I thought that the human impressions on Namibian lands are also symbolically depicted in the stream of bombs raining down from the planes in the painting, along with the fires and smoke over the villages below. Namibia not only has a long human history, but a particularly destructive one.
One of the many thought-provoking oil paintings dedicated toward honoring the Namibian men and women who fought for independence. It was startling to see all of the violence and bloodshed depicted in the Independence Museum contrast with the calm and quiet city of Windhoek outside just outside the museum’s doors.
As I sat in front of the larger than life murals, I tried to imagine all of the chaos they portrayed happening in the many Namibian landscapes we’d visited. To the modern tourist, the Etosha Plains, the Namibian deserts, and the Skeleton Coast all seem so quiet, so peaceful. These are landscapes that tourist pamphlets say are “hundreds of thousands of years old”. The feeling I had described after visiting northern Namibia in my journal reads “It feels as though this place has laid unchanged for millennium… I get the feeling that if I come back when I am 100 years old, it will be exactly the same as when I left it.” Examining the artist interpretations, reading casualty statistics, and touching the war artifacts in the museum however, I was hit with a sense that this land has changed tremendously, at least in terms of its human inhabitants.
Having long left Namibia and its Independence Museum, I still find myself struggling to comprehend the human side of Namibia. Yes, the fact that thousands of large herbivores could survive on the Etosha Plains seemed unfathomable at first, but after our ecology lessons this strange phenomenon became understandable. These animals were merely well-adapted to travelling long distances, which allowed them to shift grazing pressure. In contrast, the human suffering and destruction caused by four major wars and foreign regimes still seems difficult to wrap my head around however. Especially because the stories of the museum contrasted so starkly with the sense of calm I gathered from the country’s cities and landscapes. How is it that we never learned in high school about the 10,000 Namibian men, women, and children who were rounded up into German camps and worked to death? How is it that we aren’t taught about the atrocities that took place in Namibia that paved the way for methods later used in concentration camps by Nazi Germany? Today, I am eternally grateful for my time spent in Namibia. Yes, I was able to see the rhinos and elephants in the wild that I had always dreamt of viewing, but much more importantly, I also gained a new set of tools to help me criticize the western world view of the African continent, as well as an appreciation for the transitions these landscapes had endured.
Looking down from atop the Independence Museum over the Namibian capital. Note the red-tiled church- a symbol of the legacy of German rule- as well as the European-style layout of the park to the far right of the photograph. Windhoek had a very modern and calm atmosphere.