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The traffic suddenly bunched on the motorway with empty road ahead and nothing behind the tight cluster of cars travelling at exactly 120kph. I was suddenly aware of a face looking at me from outside and turning to the left saw my reflection in the rayburns that covered the menacing face of the Guadia Civil motorcyclist. After an eternal three or four seconds, during which time I was not sure whether to burst into laughter or tears, he proceeded to the car in front to examine the contents and so on up the line. Then a second motorcyclist had a closer inspection of the van, all at a steady 120kph, before joining his colleague in what seemed the equivalent of a pack, or pair, of lions deciding who their prey was to be. The tension was extraordinary and then, out of nowhere, one of the drivers cracked and veered to the hardshoulder- the police bikes pounced, one in front and one behind and as the tension lifted from the spreading cars we could only wonder what was going on in the desperate scene receding in the wing mirror. Pulp Fiction had been playing in the van and the scene could have been from a Tarantino film except this was rural Tenerife and, perhaps more than any other incident, portrays a curios aspect of local culture, an absolute respect, no, an absolute fear of authority. All our work is in five or six languages and many of the English whale terms have no expression in Spanish. Our lopcal translators, unable to find words, worked with us to invent appropriate terms, (so 'logging' became in Spanish the word used for a drunk laying in the gutter). They were appalled, even scared, of assuming the responsibility which, to us, was great fun. Try getting a decision in the Canaries. We went to collect hire cars from the agency we use regularly in Candelaria. The volunteer went in and came out disappointed, ´They have not got any!´´. As they had been booked for the week-end and mid day was approaching this led to a manic chase around other local agencies and furious annoyance from the voluntreers whose weekend plans wee seemingly in tatters. In desperation I went back into the showroom first visited and found a young girl, perhaps 13/14 years old. She confirmed there were no cars and so I demanded to speak to the owner on his mobile. This lead to a conversation from which it transpired the girl was his daughter and had been left in charge and yes there were cars. The girl did not want the responsibility, or hassle, of actually doing the work. It was far easier to say that ther were no cars left. Ask anybody who has worked here and they will pass on other similar stories. On the other side, a favourite trait of the Canarians, when asked whether something is possible, is to say ´yes´with a smile and to walk away and not think anymore of it- nothing gets done. The difference between this and the above is timing. ´Can I have this now?´ gets the response ´no!whilst, ´ is this possible tomorrow´, gets the response ýes´ Either way nothing gets done. The Canarians refer to foreignors as Giri, an expression which tells of rape and pillage. (The Spanish are known as Godo, a far worse expression and one that is plastered all over ther Island -Godo Out). They have a history of foreignors coming and taking. On top of this they have just come out of a plantation culture, at least physically, in which all decisions were made for them and they were able to develop their rich cultural activities within a rigid if austere framework but all in the sun with a most pleasing climate- better say than Manchester in late nineteenth century England. More recently, they had Franco with the Islands forgotten and the islanders living off of grass soup. The Guadia Civil above are a legacy of this period. Now the Islanders have social democracy and can work in mass tourism, the new mono culture, owned by foreignors again mainly British. Needless to say, their roles are as cleaners, guards, maids etc. Nothing changes. Cultural difference goes deep. No-one has a filafax, life beats to a different rhyhm. One teacher took her group onto the slow bus to Guimar. The driver tried to explain that she had bought a ticket too few. She was adamant that this was not the case but had not counted herself and when realising this she was too embarrassed to admit it. She said it might have been lost on the ground outside the bus station now two miles back whereupon the bus driver, totally unperturbed and in no way cross and with his bus full of passengers reading their papers or gazing out of the window, stopped, did a three point turn on a ravineous mountain road and returned to Guimar. He looked around, couldn't find the ticket and got back on the bus. No one said a thing, no comment, no complaint. No one was bothered. If travelling by car through Arafo, the project base, cars in front frequently stop so the drivers can chat to people they have seen. People behind just get their papers out for a read or take a quick nap. The word ´manana´ doesn't actually mean tomorrow, it means sometime in the future, ´manana manana´ gets you a little better chance of something happening the next day. If the plumbing, or something goes wrong, there are no Yellow Pages. You have to ask around for someone who can do the work and then hope he needs the money. If he does, then at some point in the future the appropriae exchange can take place, maybe. When asking a local project worker for local activities that could be of interest to visitors, he mentioned fishing. Great, I thought of fishermen with their wicker baskets and tweed coats and asked if I could see his rod. He looked perplexed and I asked what he fished with. He left the room and came back, to my eternal laughter which to this day he cannot understand, with a twelve inch bowie knive, When he goes fishing he jumps in the ocean after the fish. Is it dangerous? No, except if you get into an underwater cave and a strong wave knocks you out on the cave roof!! A local girl is being trained to help run the induction programmes and keep an eye on the site. She returns daily to the office to complain that the giri are laughing at her. On her first day she was introduced to the new group and given a round of applause- this led to the first complaint that we were making fun and so it continues daily. This girl is from a culture where her father only lets her out of the house two hours a day, and only in the morning. The office manager, in exasperation told her to stop whinging and get on with it. But she has changed after two years on the project. She is starting not to understand her own people. Trying to get a family to do some cooking, she had to explain that they could generate some much needed income. She had to go over the cost of ingredients, mainly potatoes, and the money she would be paid so as to demonstarte a surplus. All the woman could say was, ´but why would I buy potatoes when I grow my own´. The expression of absolute confusion on the old lady´s face made it quite clear there was no point continuing the conversation unless one had a lifetime of patience and tolerance to spare. But, is this bad!? This is also a culture where everyone fits in. The local mad person goes around with a ghetto blaster attached to his head and decorated with tinsel during festivals, the old are respected members of the community and stay within their families, the crippled and ill are looked after within the extended families and many mariages are continued within the large extended families. People are self sufficient. they own land, build on it as they can afford to, grow their own potatoes and grapes, (they all make their own very strong wine), and- leastways the old, they do not have particular vices to spend money on although the younger generation have been captured by American consumerism churned out on the television networks with sad and worsening consequences for the culture. Decisions are communal, as with many traditional societies. This means that meetings, particularly strategy meetings, are impossibly frustrating as everybody has to ensure all possible angles are considered before any form of decision can be reached and this involves a continuous string of seemingly tangental conversations which wind on into the night. No filofaxes, no focus, time has no meaning but, things get done- eventually. Their calendar year is a rich tapestry of family and communal activities. At Christmas, or rather at Three Kings, the Three Kings arrive in the villages bearing gifts and all the village children, including visitors, receive presents. Christmas eve is an especial time of year for the families. Before Easter, there is a month of carnival during which this highly conservative society lets it all hang out, literally- behind the façade of a mask!! Santa Cruz boasts the second biggest carnival in the world and if you want to see a bank manager in drag, this is the time. The costumes are outragious. This doesn't mean sex! Here, the local girls´ dress code in the evenings is provocative in the extreme, they are female and proud and not ashamed to display their feminity but, and it's a big but, when it comes to sex, they will have one partner and they will marry him- not for these the promiscuity of easy sex, they play a totally different game when they dress to kill. After Carnival comes Lent and a period of reflecion and sacrifice, usually the quietest time of year in the villages unless the last years wine becomes available and they decide on a village celebration, or it seems opportune to celebrate local music, art, heroes or something…and they have a celebration, (most week-ends this is the case). Easter is religion and ritual on a grand scale. Probably the most moving of all the many events is the midnight walk, behind the Madonna, of all the village women, all dressed in black and with lace veils and all sharing in the suffering for the Madonna and the loss of her child. There is a solidarity, a sisterhood, in the villages through which grief is shared and eased. Spring brings with it lots of excuses for festivities and these role over into summer when all stop work. This is the time of fiesta that go through the night, extraordinary firwork displays, picking the village queen and, nowadays, the village king and princess. Fiesta is a family thing, all generations salsa through the night and the young seem to have it in their blood, swaying with the music as they walk through the balmy heat of summer. It is a celebration of village life with music and dance recitals, with art and craft exhibitions, photographic exhibitions of past life, neighbouring dance groups invited to perform and the, at the end of summer, there is the Romeria, an event where horses and oxen pull wagons of traditionally clad villagers who play music and hand out free drink and food. In the evening the households are thrown open for people to share food. If this was not giddy enough, summer is also the time of pilgrimage. The Islanders are not so much catholic as idolotorers of the Black Maddona. She is revered above all else and on August 14th each year tens of thousands of villagers walk from their villages from all over the Island over the mountains to Candelaria to pay homage. They go on foot, on horseback, with their children and singing and dancing. Old men with walking sticks, youngsters strong and proud, children excited and dancing. In Candelaria the old ladies will go on bended knee and crawl with bloodied legs in respect. The feeling of community is overwhelmingly lost in North European culture and this loss can only be appreciated when viewing tired but happy faces as they approach the cathedral square in Candelaria and plunge fully clothed into the pounding Atlantc flanked as it is by the statues of the Guanche warrior kings who resisted the Spanish for a hundred years, (but that is another story). Come September, and it is grape picking and wine making, a process that still involves treading the grape and a time of great excitement and expectation. The new wine will not be available until early in the new year but an interesting excuse for an early celebration at the end of September is what is known as babywine, water thrown over the husk of the grape after pressing and used to extract the last hint of alcohol. This takes a mere tens days to mature!! Activities within the communities are insular, the outside world has no place. There are spectators, occassionlly foreign particiapnts, but they are always on the outside, never even on the periphery. Foreignors are giri, they rape and pillage. If they want something it is always best to say ´yes´ and smile so as not to get into trouble or cause friction and then go on your separate business. What is it these people can learn from us!? Maybe it is we that need to learn we have no right to destroy communities for personal gain, inflict change for profit or preach to them about how they should ´organise´ themselves. We can only see the world through our own eyes, from our own historical and social context, they understand this and are tolerant,…. so why cannot we!? |