“Hellooooo,” I called, wondering if someone was in the house
just behind the netting.
“Hello!” came a voice from the other side. Snake, as I soon
found out was his name, was apparently more often called Rasta [in honor of his
hair] by the friends passing by in cars and on foot over the next hour and a
half. I asked if he was the one washing
cars and he said yes; we agreed on a price and I maneuvered my truck under the
shade into the spot he preferred. He brought out a camp chair for me and I sat
to wait, sweating and squinting in the afternoon sun.
I took the time to write notes from the morning’s farm
visits; since these were first encounters touching on a sensitive issue I did
not want to show up with a notebook and say hey, can I ask you about those dead
elephants? I thought it would be wiser to introduce myself and chat a little,
invite the farmers to the upcoming kgotla meeting, and leave it at that for a
first visit. I have been thinking a lot lately about the importance of the
‘coming back’ in my research, how repeat visits shift the feel and content of
conversations and interviews, and how a simple thing such as coming to ask
permission first and then returning for an interview later can tune the tenor
of a discussion.
At some point in my scribbling, in between looking up at
Snake’s meticulous scrubbing and rinsing and greeting those folks walking past
who greeted me, I realized that it was probably not every day that a white girl
sat at Snake’s place on the roadside to wait for her car to be washed. Most
white people here have someone working for them to do this at home. So I
grinned to myself at being a bit of a curiosity.
A shiny little white car slid to a stop at the roadside just
a few yards away. A young man got out and walked up to me in my chair; “I was
just driving by and I thought I should greet you!” he said.
“Ahhh, but it has been a loooong time!” I said with delight,
seeing Thata’s face beaming back at me. Thata was a student on the first field
school in which I was a faculty member, one of the few African students in the
group. We hugged and chatted; “I’m just around, helping my mom,” he replied
when I enquired what he was up to. I got his number, both of us excited by the
possibility of him helping me with translation and some work in the village. He
climbed back into his car and I sat back down in my chair.
Finishing my notes, I put away my pen and paper. Snake
asked, “I must vacuum also, no?”
“Yes, please, if you can,” I replied, not sure about the
equipment or the electricity. But Snake was prepared; I retrieved my Ipod from
inside the car to entertain myself.
A few minutes later, a little girl of perhaps three who had
been peeking at me from the side of the house wandered up beside me. She looked
at the Ipod; I shaded it with one hand so she could see the screen more easily.
The cards from my hand of Solitaire flipped quickly to their piles as I won the
game and she watched intently. I opened up my photos, bringing up a video of
wild dogs on the side of the road I’d shot on the way into Kasane. “Dijo,” I
said. “Dijo,” she said. She was transfixed, leaning in now, pressing her head
against my arm. Soon she aimed her first finger carefully at the screen,
mimicking the way I touched the pictures to make them move.
I played a video of my nephew feeding the giraffes at the
zoo in Colorado; every time he reached up with a lettuce leaf that got swiped
by a long purply tongue, he giggled. Then I giggled. Then the little girl
giggled. We watched the video three or four times as she worked her way closer
to me, up against my arm, then under it, then draping herself over my left
thigh and popping the screen with her index finger to make the images jump.
She looked up at me. I pointed into my chest and said slowly
and clearly, “Rachel. Rachel.” I pointed to her chest. “You?” I repeated my
name and looked a question at her.
She pointed to my chest. “Ratcha.” She did it again. “Ratcha.”
Then she pointed silently to herself.
“Ah, but is she not bothering you?” Snake asked me. I’d had
the feeling he was moving more and more slowly as we watched giraffes and wild
dogs and giggled, running his cloth over every crack and crevice two, three
times, cleaning the dashboard and the doors and the windows meticulously, but
with a lightness that showed he noted our playing and perhaps wanted to give us
more time.
“Not even a little,” I said. I proceeded to show her how we
could take a picture of the truck as he washed it, and of her, and of us
together when I switched to the front camera. She giggled wildly and crawled up
onto me like I was a tree.
When Snake finally finished, I stood and she skittered away.
“Stay a little, let it dry some more,” he urged. “That one from before, who was
here, he is my cousin,” he added proudly.
“Ohhh, good, I have known Thata for a long time,” I said,
both of us pleased at this connection. I asked him the little girl’s name. “She
is Thamelo, my daughter,” Snake said.
We chatted a bit about tourism, and his work, and my work,
and elephants. “They are trouble,” he said somberly. An old man who had just zoomed
in on a bike added, “They finish your garden in one night, just like that, you
sleep and you wake and it is finished.” I told them about the upcoming meeting
with the chief to talk about the problem and said I hoped they’d come.
I fished coins out of the side pocket of my bag to pay; I
was five pula short, or he had to break a 200 pula bill. He couldn’t. “No problem,
it’s enough,” he said easily, readily, taking five pula less than we agreed.
“You can pass by any time and I will clean for you, and if I am not here, then
there will be some boys here to do it for you, no problem.”
I thanked him several times. “Ah, I’m sorry, hey! I will
bring the other five when I pass by tomorrow,” I said, but he was unconcerned,
waving me off, smiling on the side of the road.
