"LA CLOTURE" Africana

One of the first things I learned while a student in Mexico was the need to build a "barda" or wall, as the first item on a home construction project. A barda is mainly put in place to keep people out and to protect possessions from petty thieves. A barda goes up even if the goods inside the walls consist of a small garden and a pile of bricks.

On my daily "commute" (walk) to my volunteer site, I see dozens of parcels that have started with a barda, or a "clôture," to use the local argot. African construction seems to follow the patterns observed in Mexico, but departs significantly in a way that reveals something of Africa's "fluidity of circumstance" and "complex and fundamentally ambivalent social conditions" as explained in an interesting little book titled, Invisible Governance. 

Mexican bardas are pretty severe, often hosting shards of broken glass set in concrete along the top ledge, an economical and ingenious sort of razor wire security system. Doors separating the interior from the street are typically fortified and outfitted with 3-4 deadbolts. The message of "keep out" is unmistakable.

In Africa, clôtures seem almost superflous. They are often times shoulder height, inviting passers by to look inside the walls and or to scale them in search of valuable merchandise. Gates and doors to the clôtures are often made of flimsy materials and are usually left ajar day and night.

One might think those irrational Africans just don't get the idea of a wall, but that would likely be a mistaken interpretation. The walls probably do function as security devices designed to slow if not completely stop a determined thief. But they also respond to the communal ethos and relaxed environment of coming and going that seems to typify both child and adult life. Locked gates and chunks of broken glass would seem to impede the back and forth, ebb and flow of people running in and out of walled compounds. 

Still, one wonders why go to all the trouble and expense of building a wall when its efficacy is so weak. Many of the everyday behaviors and conversations observed here result in that same sort of puzzlement as expressed in the exterior wall. This is one of the great things about Africa: the challenge it provides to simple analyses and explanations.