A couple of memorable moments during my research in Northeast Central African Republic (CAR), up in the corner between Chad and Sudan, this summer: observing a deaf man talk on his cell phone (still haven’t figured that one out – the man can’t speak, nor can he write); meeting the Shaq-sized former rebel leader/diamond dealer/hunter/merchant who controls the territory; getting the Sudanese consul to crack a smile as I fitfully tried to express a few thoughts about the war in Iraq in Arabic.
Add to that many, many small glasses of ultra-sweet tea, whether regular shai, karkadé (hibiscus), or hilba (an infusion of a yellow flower that I never came to know by any European name), as I got to know the town’s elders. (One man took me aside on my last day to make a special request: when you come back, could you bring toothpaste? A dentist who had once visited the town had brought some American toothpaste, and it made a lasting impression.) The climate here is so brutally hot that men of standing spend much of their day sprawled in plastic chairs under trees or at the big café by the market, sipping tea, sometimes talking, sometimes enjoying a silence interrupted only by someone fiddling with the various ringtones on his cell phone, a technological innovation of only a few months’ duration here. All of this apparent lolling can be convenient for an anthropologist. But it also draws out one of the central challenges of ethnographic research: the difficulty of parsing out the different layers of meaning with which one is presented, and why. Toward that challenge, the only solution is what Bronislaw Malinowski referred to as “the ethnographer’s magic”: time and hard work. Thanks to DUCIS funding I was able to undertake summer research that taught me about the tricks that comprise that kind of magic.
The central theme of my research is governance: in the apparent “no man’s land” that is the borderlands of this deliquescent state, how are relationships of governance negotiated? Far from being unregulated, I found that the area is home to a number of overlapping claimants to governance, from the non-governmental organizations (NGOs) of the international system, to the erstwhile armed group, to the anti-poaching militias, to the skeletal CAR state, embodied primarily in the person of the sous-préfet. This only becomes apparent through careful discussions, listening more than one speaks; even then, how the various entities negotiate occupation and regulation of this space remains complicated.
For instance, when I was asking about the workings of governance, and particularly the role of the state, the answers I received tended not to reflect the proliferation of governors I saw and seemed instead to rest on a different layer of meaning. Under a tree one afternoon, I asked an elder what happens here when someone commits a crime – a murder, say, or a robbery? Oh, then that person is arrested and put in prison. There must be a trial, and he must be made to recognize the wrong he has done. Then he will serve a sentence – maybe three or five years in jail, came the reply. Intrigued, as I had neither seen nor heard of a jail here, I asked him where in town it was located. Oh, well, you know, with the problem of funds…the jail hasn’t been open for about fifteen years, he acknowledged. Others told me that justice here is more often compensatory, with reparations extended to the injured party and/or his family.
Thus in the act of communicating and explaining, too, I recognized a proliferation – a proliferation of ways of speaking about how things work, depending, for one thing, on the audience and the imagined stereotypes it holds, and, for another, on the other listeners to the discussion. The state’s withering and the demands of the contemporary global political economy in such an out-of-the-way place mean that access to global networks (whether those of illicit goods or those of the humanitarians and development workers of the international system) has become both highly globalized and highly localized. Within such a minefield, the skillful negotiation of relationships at the micro-political level assumes an utmost importance. This is as true for a sometimes-bumbling anthropologist as for the mobile residents of these borderland spaces. The art, or the “magic,” lies in learning the questions to ask, and listening with a critical awareness.
At times I experienced frustration at what felt like the difficulty of getting people to open up. But I suppose if there is one virtue associated with a life of research, it would be imposed patience. Which in turn can guard against hubris. I returned from my research sobered by the challenges of working in the CAR – the stifling heat, the communication issues, the distance from family and other loved ones. And yet at the same time, I am all the more eager to return.
