Chimanimani is the story of how I got here and the connections made along the way. Chapter 1: Angola stole my heart /Part 2: Stranded in a room full of marijuana
Welcome to the solar age - thoughts on sustainable development
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The competition between the industrialised nations evolved from simple trade to a global imperial contest for resources and influence that eventially collapsed into global warfare. From the ashes of mutual destruction came about an evolution to consumer capitalism, whoever can produce the biggest throughflow of goods would be the winner, after all WW2 was as much an industrial competion to produce ships, tanks and planes as it was hand to hand combat. As peace approached the broad agreement was to be that rather than compete through warfare, so terribly messy and destructive, the world will compete through trade. And global trade would be mediated by USA, and paid for by a US dollar pegged to the value of gold. Looking back now, this was the establishment of western hegemony and the unleashing of what rapidly evolved into throw away consumerism.
The 1944 Bretton woods agreement was a coming together of the 44 allied nations who began to plan the economic framework for the post conflict world. The treaty of Versailles at the end of the Great War had sown the seeds of a great recession in the 1930’s and many assets held by banks were actually unpayable war debts and reparations specified by the treaty. Something more reasonable and flexible was required and this is what they were working on, long before WW2 had ended.
For a successful consumer capitalist system there has to be an endless supply of services and products, therefore of course you need a constant through flow of energy and material resources. And those resources mostly came from the majority or third world, so to control access to those resources western national must control the countries via colonialism, neo colonialism and other systems that allow us to control their governments via the development banks and institutions. Debt, Aid, arms sales is how the Western nations set up to run the world by proxy. The people participating at Bretton woods were after all the imperial nations who saw them selves as the beneficiaries of this system, with the majority world there to supply the raw materials.
The conveyor belt of an extractive economy, funneling the timber and mineral resources of Africa , Asia and beyond to the factories of Europe and America, on their way to the garbage dumps and landfills of the world once their fleeting utility had been enjoyed. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but really we sowed the seeds here of our own downfall. This was a short sighted, predominantly racist, elitist system, but maybe we are ahead of ourselves at this point. It created a much more stable world, of currencies pegged the value of gold and the US dollar and at least for a while a peace had descended across the land. Interesting to note that the Soviet Union although in attendence did not sign the agreement as the gobal financial institutions were centred on America, the US Dollar and Wall street. They saw the seeds of US hegemony even then.
A world of fossil fuel extraction leads to scarcity and division, ultimately the economy becomes a conflict for scarce resources, competition for access to markets and an externalisation of the costs of production, by dumping wastes into the environment and using every strategy available to drive down the cost of labour. Produce or die, this variant of consumer capitalism gave us a certain kind of peace, however it also became a ceaseless war on the environment and the labour force.
The solar age offers a completely different set of possibilities and a new reality. An extractive economy, producing huge amounts of waste that needs constantly feeding to drive it forward has set us on track to be at war with the natural world, ultimately with each other as we scrabble and compete for the scare resources that we must keep flowing at all costs.
Once you study peak oil theory one quickly realises that the oil age will end rather abruptly. Just when we set up ourselves to be totally dependent on this resouce for heating, cooling, smelting, food processing, transport, farming, irrigation, chemicals, pesticides, plastics, fertilizers (these are all derived from oil and gas) to realise their production is in danger of a rapid decline. Here is the rub, and its a big one, the world will never run out of gas and oil, as there is loads of it, all over, but it takes energy to extract and refine it. Also we use this energy to power things like cars which are really inefficient in themselves, wasting much of what we put in the tank.
Commentator, author and podcaster Nate Hagens calls this era we are in, the ‘carbon pulse’, this one time surge in fossil fuels that we are currently in the middle of.
The cost of producing energy is measured in energy, not money. Once it takes a barrel of oil to extract and refine a barrel of oil, you clearly have not produced anything. You might find a clever way to subsidise that finanically, but you are simply fooling yourself, you have still produced nothing. There is no fix for this, the maths is cruel, we can’t have endless GDP growth when it is predicated upon a finite and physical resource to be extracted from the ground for ever, with this way of thinking we are headed for collapse.
Key realisation is that the only new energy entering the sytem is sunlight, and we will be required to build our future economy to run on sunlight only. Sunlight drives plants to assemble inorganic molecules into complex lving things, which once their lives are over, are disassembled back into their constituant parts by fungi and bacteria, before being reassembled in to a new living thing by the next generation of plants. Natural systems cycle resources endlessly, without waste and without toxic build up. This has been going on for billions of years, a rather better system than the one we build the post war ecomy on, in my view.
Permaculture must embrace the realisation that we are building systems that can run on sunlight.
“We have been throwing a fossilized sunlight party for the last 150 years”
Nate Hagens
So back to the desert, and I am holding out for a lift. If nothing happens soon then the whole day will be wash out.
Finally there is a vehicle approaching. And it is slowing down.
Oh it’s the road police we saw in the café earlier. The 2 members of the aryan master race step out of their air-conditioned car and into the blinkingly bright morning light. The desert sun glints off their tufted blonde regulation cut hair, refracting in a rainbow of sparkles off their perfect teeth. Spotting that my travelling companion is of the female persuasion they radio for back-up, they approach me with an accusatory look in their beautiful blue, perfect eyes.
‘Are you having any Dagga?’
He says this looking down on me with pure dislike, he comes right out with the accusation, not even a good morning. I try to look innocent, not sure how, but I shrug as nonchalantly as I could manage under the circumstances, giving off a negative body movement, however it quickly becomes apparent that they are not intending to take my word for it and they seem more than keen to unpack my carefully packed rucksack in order to check for themselves.
Passports are inspected and routine questions asked, until a support vehicle arrives with a lady police officer on board who escorts Sue-Ellen back to the service area for a full search. Meanwhile the brothers grim set to work on my pack, they are methodical and thorough, I knew instantly I had no chance of eluding their search and stand there resigned to my fate. My little half ounce stash of African buds is rolled up in my sleeping mat, at very the bottom of the pack, they start at the top… so it is agonizing watching them slowly work their way down to my inevitable, impending doom.
As strangers in town we had found it quite hard to score weed in Namibia. The whites we had encountered were generally straight in that respect, and it’s the coloureds, in their segregated townships who seemed to have their finger on the weed supply. Guess it mainly came up from South Africa, Namib is not a weed growing area. This was of course long before cannabis became regarded as a medicine and way before its legal status was shifting, so although very much embedded within certain sectors of African soicety, it was still illicit in the extreme. We had a much more cavalier attitude to its legal status as it had been ubiquitoes in the circles I had moved in my experience.
… although let’s face it, criminalizing a natural wild plant is pretty stupid. It is everywhere in Africa we had always found bits on offer, never more than a twist or two, it was often available at shoe-shine stands, where they would pop a nice bud wrapped In brown paper in your sock as they buffed your shoes, or at taxi ranks, easy enough to score something for the evening. It had been much harder to find here in Namibia and I had really liked the idea of heading off into the desert fully equipped for an adventure, camped out under an infinity of stars contemplating the eternal and puffing away on some of Mother Africa’s finest ganja.
All of that was just about to not happen, as the two road cops worked their down my rucksack. I also knew, because I had been warned...
“don’t get caught with dagga in Namibia, the South Africans hate it, they also hate hippies and the English’.
As essentially an occupied and oppressed country the Namibians were used to being second class citizens in their own country and the enforcement of the ganja prohibition was another way to ensure the boot of oppression is kept firmly on the throat. Always a reason to stop and search. A few nights incarceration is pretty much to be expected, plus a court visit plus a whopping big fine. Plus, I am a tourist here on a short visa, so maybe they ask me leave and the chance of getting visa extension to allow further exploration of this strange country suddenly felt really remote. Funny how your mind jumps around at moments of stress.
They finally get down to the bedroll. They unroll it. They find my little bag of weed and I hear them laugh.
“Ha-ha, we got you...”
You horrible little tourist hippie scum… it is a specific tone in their laughter that communicates the total disdain they feel for me and my travelling companion, who returns chatting with WPO who had searched her with no result. We are both bundled into the car and whisked away back into town and out into the suburbs somewhere to be delivered at the door of a sprawling one-story house. Ironically, it has ganja leaves painted on the while exterior wall, and it is home to special drug unit for Namibia. We are booked in, the ‘evidence’ is weighed, details taken, signed and sealed, we are fingerprinted and then escorted into an office where we wait for a duty officer to come and interview us. It is feeling like we are in a lot of trouble. I am annoyed, it is such a stupid charade, probably going to cost a lot of money that will eat into our travel money horribly. A waste of time. Now it’s my turn to feel indignant. We wait.
The duty officer finally arrives with an assistant and bundles of papers. The one guy is black and the other coloured, (to use the South African terminology, which they certainly used) and road cops having checked us in for processing have gone back off to protect their new nation from more people like me. We need to talk about this black/ coloured thing because I did not understand it. Had not taken on board the true implications of an apartheid nation. Like every good student in the 80’s I got caught up in the Free Mandela calls, the boycotts against South Africa and refusing to play sport with them, drink their wine and all the rest of it. So naturally I had not been there... my intention would have been to go there only when it was finally free. Hence, I had only entered Namibia on its day of independence from the racist republic. So in the mind of a White South African, of the apartheid view is that those of Bantu African origin are essentially different from those of Malay or mixed race or Asians. In Namibia in its first moments of independence these cultural divisions were stark and self-apparent. It becomes self-evident that if you treat sections of society differently, allow them different levels of economic opportunity, force them to live together then over the decades and centuries your stereotypes become ingrained in how you see things, and the groups largely conform to the stereotypes they are driven into. The whole thing feeds off itself.
The racist dogma seems to assume that coloureds are perceived to be cleverer, more ready to learn and more trustworthy than your full on African. Again, these colonial legacies are so ingrained in the society and manifest in a coloured middle class of accountants and functionaries that help run the economy that whites are natural heads of. I did not really get all of that, and of course did not want to be pushed in an apartheid mindset... but race and racism is a complex thing in Africa, and you can’t exactly ignore its realness. I use these terms in this narrative in the sense that they are created by the society that sees things in those terms.
The desk sergeant is coloured... to set the scene, and the atmosphere is suddenly different the moment the white officers have left. Suddenly we are among a sea of black faces, uniformed officers busying about their day, there is a bustle and hum in the office, more of a work a day atmosphere than the terror and alianation we were feeling as we first were brought inside.
More forms to fill… I start giving slightly tetchy impatient answers. I am getting a bit tired of being polite and anxious to know what is going to happen next. Then comes the next pigeon-holing questions…
“name, place of birth, where are you heading etc.”
then comes the apartheid question
“what is your race?”
‘human, why what are you?’ I hear myself say, whilst getting kicked under the table by Sue Ellen. Beyond all this paper shuffling the elephant in the room question is what is to become of us?
“So what will happen to us?” she asks
“It might take a few days but you will have to go to court and most likely get a fine, i would expect” comes the reply.
“We can’t wait around, we have got places to be, we are going to hitch hike across the desert, we don’t even have anywhere to stay here” exclaims Sue Ellen.
“We will have to hold you here until you can get into court, because you are no fixed abode.”
“No way…?”
“Oh just a few days I would think… “
“Few days?!” my heart sinks as my mind tries to visualize the potential horrors that might await us
“Do we at least get to share a cell?" asks Sue Ellen, trying to process the crushing news that we were to be thrown in the holding tank.
(Stifling a chuckle) “we don’t do cells for couples….”
“Oh, this is not right!” exclaims Sue Ellen “we are practically the first visitors to your new country and you are arresting us? For some weed, that’s rediculous, you can’t do that!”
“I have never met an English” before he explains…
“what’s it like in England. You people are all rich I heard.”
Questionaires completed, the mood lightening up a little, as does the assistant, and after some minutes we are chatting and comparing notes on things in an almost enjoyable conversation, were it not for the rather heavy unknown hanging over us as to our fate with the Namibian legal system. They want to know about life in the UK, to know just how rich we all are, and how well we know the Queen etc.
Steering the conversation back to more immediate concerns,
“Can’t you get us into court today?” Sue Ellen asks, with a deeply persuasive tone to her voice.
I must hand it to my travel companion, she has the knack of be able to push directly for the things she wants. I find this so much harder. I cringe with embarrassment sometimes when she just stops the first stranger in the street to ask directions. I must find the right person, someone I feel comfortable asking, I hate revealing to anyone that I have no idea where I am or where I am going, anyway… so she is pushing the cop to try and sort us out a court appearance as soon as possible, actively haranging him and making him feel invested in our predicament.
The duty office is warming to us and is now feeling like his country has let itself down by harassing two of its first visitors. The more we chat the more we uncover mutual interests and concerns, the mood is definitely changing.
Eventually the arresting officer offers to go down to the courthouse himself and see if he can arrange something, he leaves with a confident gait, our fate rests in his hands.
Meanwhile the conversation in the drugs unit is relaxed and the staff are finding excuses to come in and chat to the foreigners, admitting that they have not had any tourists in the unit before. The other officer who had been interviewing us and was warming to our company feels like he should show us around a bit, entertain the visitors seeing as we were tourists and everything, so we start to get a guided tour of the station. No word of a lie here… when just a couple of hours earlier it had all been so scary, suddenly we are being made to feel welcome, being offered drinks and biscuits before our companion officer offers, as the conversation dries up a bit
“Whould you like to see around the station?”
With not much else to entertain us, and feeling impolite to decline we agree to an imprompto tour of the facility. A series of drab offices and corridors later, he offers up.
“would you like to see the room where we keep all the confiscated drugs?”
It would have been an impossible opportunity turn to turn down, where I not also filled with an incredulity, was this a wind up? We enter a large office type room with a series of trestle tables around its perifory each piled with bricks, arms, bags of ganja in every form, $1 deals, KG blocks, I have never seen so much pot in my life.
Not only that but vials of heroin, opium, cocaine are also scattered across the tables, lumps of hashish, pills as well as all sort of confiscated items, all stuffed with drugs, shoes, bags etc. Nothing is sealed in evidence bags or documented, just piled up in a random and spectacular fashion.
In a world flooded with horrible cooked up street drugs, coma inducing fentanyl laced poisons it is easy to forget somewhat simpler times of LSD and magic mushrooms, sticky African weed or fresh Moroccan hash. In my 20’s and beyond I had some dangerously fun times with all of that, but my first choice was always some nice hash, steering clear of the nasties and sticking to the natural products.
I can tell you my heart was racing to see a room full of temptation like that. I rummaged around on the tables, picking up things, sniffing them, pretending I did not know much about any of it… so what is that I ask waiving a 2-ounce block of hash under the nose of our tour guide,
“I am not actually sure myself” he replies.
Suddenly there is a commotion out in the front of the station and the officer’s presence is required to help deal with it,
“Wait here, I will just be a few minutes” he instructs us
and just like that we find ourselves stood alone in this room loaded to the gunnels with confiscated drugs.
Suddenly a mischievous thought springs in my mind... I am going to take it…. I still have the 2 oz block of hashish my hand, now I love African weed and had been spoiled with some wonderful strains on the way down across the continent, but the one thing I had not had at all since I let home was some nice Moroccan hashish. I was so tempted, first for the sheer hutzpah of it… then for the indignation of having our stash confiscated and the beautiful irony of getting busted for a half ounce of bush weed and coming out with a couple of ounces of Morocco’s finest.
Oh the dilemma, that really would have made a good chapter is the memoirs but with the prospect of some nights and days in the cells hanging over us and the certainty of a search I knew it was really a lot more than cheeky but fool hardy. I second guessed that this was a prank that could be easily misunderstood by the forces of justice.
“Is this a test, a trap or a late birthday present?” I ask myself out loud
My inner voice kicks in, speaking to me rather sternly, “step away from the table Steve, put the drugs down, right now, step away!”
I drop it back on the table with a thud and we hang around for another full 10 minutes, poking and exploring the incredible stash before our host and tour guide returns apologizing for having interrupted our tour.
The day drags on… we have explored every immediate avenue of conversation we could think of with the officers, we have swapped addresses with a couple of them who insist that we should come and visit their respective families and one of them is even offering us a lift halfway across the country when we do eventually come round to leaving, travelling back through Botswana to Zimbabwe.
‘Oh I go to Gobabis every week,” he explains “and I have air con in my car, you must come with me’. This is starting to feel more and more absurd.
Finally, in comes the original desk officer who had booked us in, he is returning from the courts jubilant. It had taken him most of the day, but he had managed to locate and meet with the only English-speaking judge on the circuit who has agreed to squeeze in a hearing for us the end of the day’s proceeding, to hopefully avoid the necessitation of us having to be incarcerated overnight. This is great news, suddenly we are loading all our bags into the awaiting squad car and saying good-byes and exchanging hearty handshakes with our newfound friends.
Off we go with the desk officer and the woman who had strip-searched Sue, as our little support team, moments later we are being shuffled into a crowded court room with a deeply solemn air about it. We are standing in the dock, the accused, the first and hopeful only time I have ever found myself in this position.
The first judicial announcement is that charges against Sue-Ellen have been dropped as she was not found in the possession of any dagga.
Hugely relieved she withdraws to the back of the court… so I now stand alone to meet my fate.
A court appearance
“Mr Jones, are you aware the dagga is illegal in our country?”
“er…. Yes Sir,”
“Mr Jones could agree to abide by the laws of our country for the rest of your stay here.”
“I suppose so…”
“Case dismissed.”
……. Total inward elation, I am trying hard not to cheer, in one instant all the possible unpleasant scenarios of retribution fade away and I am walking out of the court room feeling about 10 feet tall and bullet proof. I suppose so… I suppose so! I really do not know what I was thinking... or where that had come from... Maybe I was being honest and admitting that I did not really want to spend the whole of the rest of this trip without weed ... but ha-ha... anyway, I was free, and had kept my dignity and my money, didnt even have to pay a fine, now was I actually regretting that I hadn’t kept a hold of that lump of hash?!
It is all hugs and hoorays outside the court room, and the strip search woman stops to pick Sue Ellen a bunch of flowers from the police station garden, as they whisk us away again and deliver us back the spot where we had been stood, hitching south some 12 hours earlier. And with a cloud of dust the car screeches off and we are stood looking at each other, silently saying via shocked facial expression...
“did that just happen?”
This week we are running a small fundraiser for a Ugandan student who needs help with his school fees. He has been chatting with me over several months and is an honest and hard working young man, we wish him will. Any support is gratefully received.