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?
3 comments:
Rachel,
What did the cat say? And was the goat in the basket or the basket on the goat?? L
I hope wherever you live, you always have a booze fridge.
I think you touched on the main reason I have never seriously tried to write about my own brief time in Africa - what could I say that would be honest and do justice to anyone?
1. The cat, with a look of disappointment, said something like, "Why do you persist in thinking that life is about more than the tuna you haven't yet fed me today?" And the little palm-leaf goats are woven into the pattern of the basket. Lots and lots of swirling geometric goats. Though I imagine that given the chance, actual goats would eat their likenesses. Goats really do eat anything. And everything.
2. Nakamua kukumbuka, Amina, that being honest and doing justice aren't the same thing. This, at least, is what I tell myself when I try to say something about my experience. I fall short every day. But I do a reasonably good job of picking up and trying again, hopeful that I'm learning something.
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