I recently found a photograph from a few years ago. I got chatting to my 17 yr old lass and my 13 yr old lad about it and said that I loved the photo, but that perhaps some folk would see it and think that “maybe it gives off a whiff of… ‘white saviour.’ You know… colonialisation, ‘voluntourism in Africa’ etcetera.”
Both of them looked at me – in that way that they have – and responded with; “but we lived there with the bushmen. It wasn’t just some holiday!” And “who cares what people who’ve never done nowt in Africa think.” Then my son added; “Anyway, what were you doing in that photo with the San?”
ME: Oh, it was for a book – it was basically validation using their words. So, I was talking about the importance of oral testimony and curation of heritage. About how we could ensure the validity of their cultural experiences … of apartheid whilst addressing tribal differentials.
SON: Well, I don’t think it looks like you’re being all patronising to the San.
ME: (feeling cheerier on hearing this) No?
SON: No. It just looks like they’re bored off their tits listening to you. And I can totally relate to that.
ME: Charming. Anyway … speaking of boredom… some of the academics that used to demand access to the villages … quite often, the bushmen used to get so sick of the endless questions. The anthropological studies that they were faced with … That they decided to make up their stories.
SON: What do you mean?
ME: They just made stuff up. You know… maybe about what Gods they believed in, rituals they carried out, amazing and magical things they’d seen.
DAUGHTER: Seriously?
ME: Yeah. It didn’t half muck up the academics’ findings. But back in France or Germany or the USA or wherever they were writing up their PhD, no-one would ever know.
DAUGHTER: That’s so funny!
SON: I don’t get it. Why did the San do that?
ME: Entertainment value, I guess. Sick of wealthy white people coming to study them, gathering information and then them never getting anything in return.
DAUGHTER: I’d probably do the same.
ME: Yup. People who are disempowered, feeling hopeless and hungry… often grab what bit of power still available. Can’t really blame them.
DAUGHTER: Yeah…
SON: So… now do you understand when I kept telling you that we definitely had a ‘poltergeist’ when you noticed that the 12 pack bags of crisps kept going missing?
ME: (Sighing) I think that your brother is going to end up studying Sociology.
DAUGHTER: More like Criminology.
Bored? Or about to to have some fun with me.