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Lilly Loveless sat staring at her Gmail inbox, on a cold winter morning in Muzunguland. Unlike other days, she had come in earliest of all the postgraduate students at the Muzunguland African Studies Institute at Bruhlville, because she was expecting an urgent email. Her co-supervisor in Livingstonetown had promised her the contact details of an African colleague at the University of Mimbo where she was seeking affiliation to do fieldwork for her PhD on ‘Sex, Power and Consumerism in Africa.’ She was excited and relieved, now that her research proposal had been successfully defended and the way cleared for her to undertake her second African visit. The Ethics Committee had given her a tough time and asked grilling questions about the dangers of voyeurism posed by her proposed study, but she eventually sailed through reassuringly.
Funding had been secured from the Ministry of Cooperation, the Royal Aids Foundation and the Michel Foucault Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Power. Riding high on her accomplishments and bubbling with prospects, Lilly Loveless was set to go.
All she needed was a letter of affiliation: these famous letters without which, so she had been told, Muzungulanders find it impossible to penetrate the bureaucracies of African ministries of research. ‘No permit, no research’, that’s the maxim. Without a letter of affiliation she couldn’t even aspire to get a visa from the Embassy of Mimboland, the country tied to the grants she had received. She had tried persuading the consular officer. This might have worked, had she not, most regrettably, boasted that she was after all injecting millions of Mim dollars into the struggling Mimbo economy, so “Why all the fuss?” Her attitude seemed to have toughened the resolve of the consular officer, who came short of screaming: “Forget your bloody money, arrogant…!” Now she knew only a letter of affiliation from Dustbin’s collaborator at the University of Mimbo, bearing all the stamps and seals of approval, could deliver her visa.
She recalled reading, in Nigel Barley’s Innocent Anthropologist, of similar experiences the author had had with the embassy of another African country, not too dissimilar to Mimboland. She stood up and looked through her bookshelf for the book, opened the relevant page, which she had dogeared from her undergraduate Anthropology years and read.
How similar in their indifference to progress African countries are! And how insensitive to the need to protect even their own self-interest! To discourage potential visitors with such attitudes of callous indifference was worse than shooting oneself in the foot. Little had changed for the better, much for the worse.
Her experience of Africa was limited though, very limited. Apart from the masses of books she had read, books written mostly by Muzungulanders and by Africans whose knowledge of their continent was like a river humbled by the dry season, Lilly Loveless had had only a short two-week holiday experience of the lovely beaches of Sunsandland, one of the most exotic, exciting wonders of the tropics, dreams of which have kept many a Muzungulander going.
The email eventually came through. Lilly Loveless clicked and read:
Dear Lilly, the contact details of my Mimboland colleague whom I insist you meet as he has similar research interest to yours are:
Dr Wiseman Lovemore
Department of Social Work
University of Mimbo, Mimboland
Email: [email protected]
Dr Wiseman Lovemore is a fascinating and accommodating fellow whom I am sure you will like. He isn’t exactly international in terms of Google, but he is an intelligent man with solid convictions. I cannot locate his cell number, but his email address should suffice. Just email him your travel details, and if you are lucky and he checks his mail, which unfortunately he doesn’t do often, he would most certainly go to fetch you at the airport. If you miss him for whatever reason, simply make your way to the university campus upon arrival – some 40 to 50 minutes away by taxi, in Puttkamerstown. Ask the first person you meet, and you should be taken to the Department of Social Work where Lovemore is as solid as an oak and the easiest person to find.
Safe trip and enjoy your fieldwork.
Best
Dustbin
Lilly Loveless started typing immediately.
Dear Dr Wiseman Lovemore,
My name is Lilly Loveless. I am a student reading Social Geography at the Muzunguland African Studies Institute, Bruhlville. I am writing to you about the research I’d like to carry out for my PhD over the next six months in Mimboland. I am writing courtesy of Professor Dustbin Olala, who has pressed me to contact you. Given your expertise on the subject I’d like to work on, I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts now and once I am on the ground. In a nutshell, I shall be investigating changing sexuality and power relations occasioned by growing obsession with material possessions and the desire to consume Muzungu products in a context of screaming poverty.
I am very interested in your work, which, I must admit, I haven’t read but which your friend, my co-supervisor Professor Dustbin, thinks very highly of. The most recent thing by an African that I have read on this theme is the paper: ‘Fishing in Troubled Waters: Disquettes and Thiofs in Dakar’. I would like to know what you think of this paper, which fascinated me, although the author writes as if African women are irredeemably consumerist and helplessly easy to manipulate by men of wealth and power. I can’t say whether or not the situation he paints is real and widespread, but I could bring a copy of the paper along for you, if your library does not subscribe to Africa, the journal in which it was published. Indeed, it would be a huge honour if we could meet up to discuss the topic as soon as I arrive…
She was full of questions. First, she urged and pleaded with him to send her an urgent letter of affiliation, duly signed by the Vice Chancellor of the university. Failure of which, the letter must be signed by the Dean. She also had questions about where to stay.
“Sorry to bombard you with all these questions,” she wrote, “but as I am sure you can understand, I would like to do as much groundwork as possible before I get out there. Finding accommodation is a critical part of this. I would really appreciate it if you could be so kind to make necessary arrangements for me in this regard as soon as possible because I am very worried about having adequate accommodation.”
She equally wanted to know if Dr Wiseman Lovemore knew of any NGOs “that have sexuality, consumerism, empowerment and gender transformation as particular goals,” that she could contact. “I would ideally like to present case studies on two or more such organizations, in order to gain a critical understanding of the relative success and influence of non-state actors with the phenomenon.”
She concluded her email with, “I cannot thank you enough. I look forward to hearing from you soon,” signed it off,