Looking is not seeing
The differences are much deeper than the semantics and have to do with the state of mind, they have to do with the state of the body: the level of satisfaction of basic needs.
Reading is not the same as understanding, and going down does not necessarily mean falling.
I am connecting this thought with an innocuous little event a few days ago. It was about a sunset. My phone told me that on that day the sunset would happen at 5:42 pm. Wanting to prove my phone right, I stood by the roadside from 5:21 pm until 5:40 pm to watch the sun go down. Sure enough, several things tend to happen at the same time. And so it was that while I was contemplating the sun, I found it very beautiful. It so happened that some lady was passing by on the other side of the road, carrying a 20-liter bucket of water on the head. Then I said to myself: Maybe I could exercise my mind with some philosophical thought about this beautiful sunset, but not just that; let me, beyond that, imagine the different perspectives between me, who alighted from a car to better capture this simply beautiful moment, and the barefoot lady who looked at me, looked at the same sun that I was photographing, looked back at me and stoically continued on her way. As if saying to me silently: what do you see that I didn't see all these days? I pass here every day!
In fact, as a retiree, I tend to have more time for imagination and I prolonged her imaginary line of questioning as another soliloquy that read like this (all my imagination, let me repeat):
while I am carrying 20 liters of water on my head, how would you dare to stop your car for a mere photo of a hot sun in this smell of coal and gunpowder of Moatize? Where do species like you come from? You are not from here surely! A black tourist right here in Tete?If I put it that way in my mind, I can begin to understand her perspective when she looks at the same sunset, particularly seeing her house nearby she is returning to. She is a neighbour.
To look and to see,
To eat and to savour,
To speak and to dialogue,
To read and to understand,
To walk and to go,
To pass the exam and to know, (and while we are at it, permit me to extend)
A nation and a country,
The state and the government,
The chief and the leader.
and so many other expressions that sound similar but convey very different realities and even deeply and contradictory relationships, even if they may belong to the same bracket of concepts.
I returned home and my mind told me: why wouldn’t you write what you thought in that inconsequential and anonymous encounter?
As far as I am concerned, there was nothing innocent about that encounter, which represented two classes and two material situations: from the barefoot mother who crossed the road to bring water from the public well, and as she crossed, she almost dropped her water to escape an Indian-made vehicle (Mahindra) that was coming fast, we don't really know where to, in this Tete where roads are not good for such speeds. Anyway, I came back home.
While imagining their version of the evening scene at the end of a day at home: a husband back from the mines with his dirty clothes and boots, who needs a shower and to leave the dirty clothes to be washed every day. And perhaps two children who also return from school with dirty clothes, making it a family of at least five people, all needing water. Water to prepare food. Water to wash clothes, water for everyone to take a bath.
When does this lady have time to contemplate the beauty of a sun that burns her? She has to fetch water at least three times a day some 1.2Km away. She has no shoes, and therefore her feet must burn on the tarmac and the sand she has to step on. Day in, day out. From so much burning, the plant of her feet have certainly turned resistant, at least more than mine.
On a related matter, Tete has very many pick-up vans fitted with water tanks for delivery on request, but this family may not have five thousand meticais to buy a water load, and even if they did, they don't have anywhere to store that much water. The lack of water has turned out to be a business. The poverty of some is the business and the profit of others. I am not blaming those profiting of being responsible for the situation, neither could I dare condemn those who offer alternatives, but then is there not a state that should see this situation (and many others) as an urgent challenge? Water piping? We’ve long stopped thinking, let alone even talk about it, because the government doesn't mention any network expansion program. When was the last time the municipality expanded the water network?
Be it as it may, as for me, because of my work, I had the opportunity to build a nice house, to fit air conditioning, I can pay my 3,000 meticais of electricity for the month. Mind you, this is the monthly salary of many people in this city! Anyway, coming outside to contemplate the sun blow its last kiss of the day to the dry, thorny trees and baobab trees of Tete is a luxury for which I can endure twenty minutes of heat, knowing that I will soon return to my air-conditioned van and rush to my air-conditioned house, I am guaranteed my piped water that I pay for, and it runs fairly well.
Still, we are looking at the same fading sun, but from different perspectives and with quite disparate states of mind. Looking is not the same as seeing: we are seeing different things in the same object. While one is appreciating nature’s beauty, the other is regretting the heavy daily fate that life has handed her. I am happy for having managed to set for myself a comfortable life, and she is resigned to a misery that will only end when death comes calling. The added irony is that with my comfortable life, I wish I live long, although I know that most likely, due to a weak body accustomed to an easy life of comfort, I may precede her. As to her, she may wish to end her misery with an early death, but actually her body may resist better to most diseases coming her way more than I, due to the tough life that made her more resistant. She may even live twenty years longer than I, Insh Allah.
She is not the only one resigned to a life of misery in a famously very rich country. Neither does the street vendor selling roasted groundnut under the hot Tete sun know whether one of these days there will be an end to his/her misery.
As I look at it properly, in the end this groundnut street seller is a reflection of my being. His skin, deeply darkened by the exposure to an unforgiving sun, is just as dark as mine. He is my brother. And that pains me because he is not getting the opportunities this country could give him, forty-nine years after independence. Walking the streets peddling his little goods represents a lost opportunity of being at school and learning. Do you see how the cycle of poverty is self-reinforcing? The groundnuts will certainly not allow him/her to put his/her children in school when s/he becomes an adult. In fact, this groundnut peddling cannot even help make any savings. Any more than it could pretend to put food on the table for the brothers and parents!
In a recognizably rich country that mine is, this level of poverty is an indictment, forty-nine years after Independence. Some would argue that sixteen of these were years of civil war. Meanwhile we (we?) have been exporting wealth from the Cahora Bassa Dam and the Moatize coal mines. All the street vendor collects from that riches is dust and gunpowder smell from the Moatize open pit mines. Because of so much exposure over the years, he now hardly registers that smell. It is only people like me who feel that and close themselves in air-conditioned homes watching expensive DSTV stale programmes that we can still afford to pay.
In my mind, it reconfirms that what looks beautiful to me is horrible and tough for others. What looks aesthetical to me is corporal punishment to the other.
Which brings me to the conclusion that philosophizing and sophistry under these conditions is not futile, not misplaced, just anachronical. But then, when will the time come for us to admire the beauty created by some God up above[1]? Certainly after we resolve the issues of poverty. After we go beyond the state of want and satisfy food, health and other basic human needs. It is only by understanding this logic that we can in turn easily understand the demographic composition of those who practice tourism on our beautiful lands: those who have overcome the stage of want. Poverty is no more their issue. Is that not the reason why we actually promote tourism for foreigners more than for ourselves? And, "ain’t that a pity?"
Sorry lady of the street, of course you will never read me, I cannot help you because I am also at the sunset of my life, which I hope will be long, but sunset it is, nonetheless.
May I close with an apt latin saying: primum manducare, deinde philosophari which in English translates as: Let us solve the problem of food first, before we start philosophizing (hoping there still will be time, humour, imagination and enthusiasm to philosophize after!).
Jose
Tete, September 2024
[1] According to legend in my Ngoni culture, in the beginning, God lived among the people and all the things he had created, but because of some fire on the mountain, he decided to leave us and stay at a safe distance waiting for us to join one day.
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