Les Savants Ne Sont Pas Mystérieux
∞
By Rui Tenreiro

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Newspaper / An Office
(Story)

The Public Office was located in what had once been a residential building. 'Second floor, turn left' instructed the security guard. I went up the stairs and entered the office. It had clearly been an apartment once. The entrance hall served as a pre-room to the office area. On the entrance there was a board with a sheet which showed the opening times. There were also instructions on how to fill forms and two I.D. cards which had been forgotten.

I took a few steps towards a long reception desk. Behind the desk there were metallic tables on which dossiers and piles of documents, folders and boxes stood. Two metallic cupboards, one on each side of the room, were closed. An old computer stood in a corner, unused. A man sat right behind the reception desk. I hadn't seen him at first, he was holding a newspaper in front of his face and it covered the whole of him. Behind him there were two other men. One of them spoke on the phone.  Sitting on his desk, he looked down at a paper where he corrected information of some sort. As he did so, he put his eyes very close to the sheet and wrote down the information that was being dictated  over the phone. He did this meticulously, as if drawing the information, slowly engraving it on the form. The other man was not a public office worker, I think, but I wasn't sure. He was trying to repair a printer but the cartridge seemed not to fit back in the machine. He kept on trying to put it back and, between each trial, he would analyse the cartridge as if looking for a fault he couldn't find, he would try again and again, different angles, but it just didn't seem to fit back. A woman sat on a wooden bench that faced the desk, a low bench. She seemed to be waiting for something and stood behind me.

The man standing next to the reception desk lowered the newspaper and I could see his face.
"Good morning!" - I said. No response.
His eyes continued running the lines. They'd read across and then start moving down. He hadn't heard me, maybe. I couldn't tell, he looked serious. His face was slim and, despite looking like a man in his late fifties, his face had barely any wrinkles. It was as though it hadn't been used. The skin hadn't had the need to stretch and it had been preserved that way. His shirt was ironed too. I noticed that the sleeves were ironed so that the crease ran along the middle of the fabric instead than being ironed at the seams. He looked clean and shaven. His black skin was healthy and young, I felt the smell of bar soap.
"Hello!" - I said. But still no response.
I noticed he closed his eyes for just a second. But perhaps he was just tired of reading. This time he placed the newspaper on the desk, leaning over it. Now I was sure he had seen me. He must have. But he continued reading the paper.
"I came to get these originals certified." - I began saying, but he didn't even move. He didn't seem to hear me.

What was this? What was the problem with these people? Shocked by being ignored by the worker I looked back at the woman. She seemed to be in a place very far away from here. Wherever it was, it didn't seem like a happy place, it was a place full of worries. The paper reader lifted the indicator and started digging into one nostril. He took out an invisible something and slowly began rolling it between the thumb and the indicator. He took his finger out to turn the page and put his hand shielding his eyes from my gaze.
I started again - "Listen, do you think it's possible that I could get these things..."
But he suddenly asked in a low voice "Josephine?" - At first I stood there just staring at him but after a few seconds I heard the woman from the bench letting out a sort of indifferent moan. Something told me I wasn't the first to go through this. I decided that the best I could do was to be patient, but I began getting annoyed. I felt I was being bullied by silence but since I was dependent on their stamp to certify my documents, there was nothing to do but endure this.
"Is Claudia back?" - he asked her. Again, after a few seconds she replied. No. She wasn't back, she was still at the archive. The devoted reader then closed the newspaper, he had gotten to the end of it, skipping the crosswords and comic strips. He ran his hand across the paper, flattening the creases. This was a man who was fond of his paper, I thought.
Outside I could hear life in the streets, people we going places, buses went by, there was laughter, walking salesmen, children. It had rained the night before, the city was still full of water. Cars dodged pot holes, people jumped over puddles, mosquitoes bred, and the homeless tried to keep dry. Inside the office the atmosphere was quite different. The walls were white but in parts where people went by, they'd gone brown with the years. Behind the desks, a portrait of the president hung high, smiling down at us all. He would probably never have to come here. Then I noticed that characteristic smell of such public offices, it was mostly the smell of freshly photocopied paper. But also the smell of graphite and pencils, not unlike a classroom. I was back in school and I needed those papers approved.

As all this went through my mind, the man opened a side drawer of his desk and started moving things around in it. He took out a blue BIC pen, took out the lid, and put it at the other extremity. He stretched out one hand over the desk, he still hadn't looked up at me but his hand was definitely asking something from me, finally.
"Can I see the stamps?" - He asked.
"Stamps?" - I replied "I thought you sold them!"
With the hand that held the pen he rubbed his forehead and eyes, which were half-open, beginning to wake up to my problem.
"We only glue them, we don't stock them" - He still had his hand stretched, he had forgotten about it. "And where can I get them?"
Still rubbing his forehead - "Downstairs, the Indian kiosk."

So I went down and got the stamps and went back up. He had taken out a stamp and the ink pad but was winding his wristwatch. I gave him the stamps and the forms.
Before looking at them he asked me "What was it you wanted?"
Sounding like I'd said it before - but somewhat demotivated this time - I repeated "I need  to get these originals certified."
"We don't do that here. We only deal with registrations."
I felt my rage taking over me, so I picked up all the papers and stamps and left without saying a word, not even asking where I could get my papers certified.  All the time the man hadn't even looked up at me. What were they doing in there?

On my way down I passed by the security guard. He was an old man who sat listening to an old, battery-operated radio. "These people!" - I said, venting out my anger on the first person I saw. He smiled amiably and lifted his hands up for a moment, joining them like a prayer and bowing his head slightly in a goodbye motion. I lifted my hand, corresponded with another bow and walked out the building door. I was out on the streets again.


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Mc Konde

When I went to Cabo Delgado I met up with a Maconde woman from whom I began learning ceramics. I felt truly previleged to being able to spend two days with a family who farmed for a living and who did ceramics to get some extra income. They recieved me very well, and we ate boiled pumpkin and drank local distilled spirits. I liked the drink so much, but I heard that you can go blind if you drink too much of it. If I should go blind, then I could do ceramics, because the pleasure of drawing would be lost.

When I learned from my Maconde tutor, I was letting myself become involved in one of the three schools which many African artists learn from, that is the second in a list of three. The first school belongs to self-taught artists, the second one - the one I took part in while in Cabo Delgado - in which an elder or family member passes the knowledge down to apprentices through workshops (Cooperatives served the same purpose). The third school is the formal western system. Artists learn from institutions like art schools and universities. They learn about Western aesthetics and about Western artists, they learn about Western attitudes towards creation of artworks. I have heard that this can lead to a crisis of identity in which the artist cannot conciliate such different ways of dealing with art: the Western and African ways are so completely different.

The Maconde, I have heard, remain stubborn and impenetrable to the requests to produce artworks as Western patrons want them. I once tried to work with a Maconde artist and it involved a lot of compromise for my final piece, so much, that it wouldn’t be a collaboration at all. It was the Maconde wood or no wood. The carver wouldn’t carve from anything else. Anyway, I should choose my collaborations according to my needs. I admire that Maconde have not let their culture be sold off. Not completely at least.

Unlike the Yoruba - whose pre-colonial artwork later became sold more widely - the Maconde arts took two different paths. One continued to be the traditional way of carving. Maconde didn’t polish their ebony carvings, I’m not sure how this habit was picked up. The second style is called nnandenga. This is more abstract, elongated, sometimes it’s hard to see what we are looking at. It’s hard to describe. Unfortunately for the artists, these sculptures have been perceived more as objects made to correspond to a Western taste. Maconde wouldn’t buy these sculptures since they depart from the traditional objects for which they have a use.

Left: nnandenga style of carving / Right: Mapiko mask.

Therefore, Maconde art is now in a great dilemma. The more traditional artworks have been accepted internationally as high quality carvings, often used as home decoration, but without much value as ‘art objects’. As for nnandenga, these are simply seen as something created for a non-Maconde market, and have less value.

I’m hoping that my Maconde pieces aren’t dismissed as ‘a higher grade of airport art’. I think they are fine pieces, but I am aware that, for now, they are destined to decorate my house instead of being expensive museum pieces. But I like them all the same and I will continue to ‘buy Maconde’.

At the end of my short stay with the Maconde family in Cabo Delgado, we burned the clay pots in a pit, which was filled with twigs and branches. We sat in the compound at dawn watching the pots burn up, drank the distilled spirits, ate the boiled pumpkin, and I parted with a warm clay pot in my hands.

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