Here I sit, in my office, in Maun. I find myself wanting to post an update, but lacking the energy with which to write something intelligent. Perhaps I can instead just share some funny-ish-type thingys that have happened lately. Hopefully I am not so soaked in being here as to be the ONLY one who thinks they are (mostly) funny:
I have worn the same pants four out of five days this week.
I ordered something different at our usual restaurant the other night and the owner came over to confirm that I was serious.
I had a faculty meeting that lasted for a day and a half.
Someone in the US asked me if she could call my university here to help expedite receiving some documents.
My boss reviewed a paper for a journal in which he said the author was ignorant and arrogant, and that the analysis rested essentially on innuendo.
I was really excited to need a blanket at night.
Our booze fridge died. Ok, this is sad too, but the fact that we HAVE a booze fridge…
I had a moment in which I thought I understood what the cat said.
I watched a small cobra slide away from the door of the library and was unconcerned.
I bought baskets with goats on them.
Today, the ants in my office ate my leftover pizza before I could have it for lunch.
This list surely doesn’t say much about being here. But I did recently read an article that disparages the way people – read, white people – write about Africa. It was in itself a list of things to say and not say. Like, make SURE you talk about starving children and large mammals and vast landscapes. Be SURE to talk about the continent as a whole rather than its different countries and peoples and ecosystems. Sins of these kinds are many. Am I free of them? Of course not. Even white folks who grew up here tend to do these things. But I wonder, is it me – is this really the way I think about being here, or is it that I don’t give my audience enough credit for being able to engage with the subtleties that would do more justice to what I want to express?
