Out of Africa
Northwestern professor chronicles sabbatical experiences on another continent
Culture shock
30 October
Predators
One advantage of not having screens is that where the bugs gather (my high-intensity desk lamp, the book the light falls on, the laptop screen), exotic creatures that catch bugs also gather. Watching a large insect that is alert and agile enough to catch small insects in flight is enough to distract me from the writing I’m supposed to be doing.
This was a praying mantis, about an inch and a half in length. His usual strategy was to stand very still, turning his head all about and waving his antenna, apparently using both to track just the right sort of prey. Then he’d leap into the air and do one or two quick loops and land somewhere else, usually with a tiny insect pinched within one of his front legs. He dispatched his catch with several nibbles of what must be a tiny but efficient mouth in such a small head.
Adding to my fascination, this predator appeared to be perfectly aware of my presence and even seemed to view me as one who should welcome his assistance, like a hunter wants a good dog—or perhaps falcon. I could turn the page when he was at the edge of the book and use the computer while he was sitting on the screen. He liked the upper right corner, a more imposing and dimensioned office assistant than Paper Clip Man. He’d move a little to get out of the way of what I was doing, but offered none of the signs of fight or flight.
8 November 2004
We had our first power outage a few days back. Alida just said, “That’s Africa.” They keep candles in most rooms and fresh batteries in their torches, which in some parts of the world are called flashlights.
3 December
Local churches take turns, at least during holidays, offering a periodic festive meal for the retired folk. We accepted an invitation to join them. Afterwards, I thanked the pastor and greeted him in the name of Reformed folk in the U.S.
“So, you’re a Calvinist then?” he asked. “That’s right,” I said. “So are we,” he said, and the elder who assisted him nodded. So, among Calvinists, not only is there no east or west but no north or south either.
I’ve been reading a bit about Afrikaans and picking up a few words. Many of them are cognates of English, of archaic English words, or of German, so in its written form I have several ways of guessing at what’s being said. Your “surname” in Afrikaans is your “Van.”
5 December
We’re living in Tzaneen, now, in the suburb called Aqua Park because it’s near the lake created by the dam. It’s the principal’s house, and his family is away on holidays until Jan 4.
The neighborhood is beautiful—like the tropical section of a botanical garden, except that this one is enclosed in blue sky rather than a glass roof. And it’s also enclosed, often above eye level, by walls and security gates. You can see paradise from here, but you can’t get in.
9 December
You live with ants. Most of the time, they are content to live and let live, but once something dies—or is soft and slow-moving like a maggot—the word goes forth (probably in pheromone language) and the tribe gathers. Little runways of them can be found in various places inside and outside the house. It’s no wonder I find one crawling on me a dozen or so times a day—probably just checking whether I’m dead yet. Occasionally the little terrorists send in a suicide biter just to see if I’m safe to eat, and I send back an unambiguous message, stamped in antomime.
11 December
Yesterday was Friday, and Friday afternoon, on the main street that funnels all the side streets of this middle- and upper-class neighborhood into the city and its large taxi rank, were sidewalks filled with the black domestic workers, handymen and gardeners that make possible the beautiful yards and comfortable life of this community.
It looked as if everyone was leaving, but only a little less than half were. They live here during the week, in a wing of a large house or in a cottage in the back yard, and travel home to friends and family for the weekend. They probably also go home to be greeted by a different name than the one they are called during the week.
They do good work, quietly and efficiently, and the jobs they have help to support a population that badly needs employment. Some families (and some stores and bed and breakfast establishments) employ more help than they need in order to give more people the pride and satisfaction of doing a good job, contributing something to others, caring—rather than begging or stealing to get what they need to survive.
25 January 2005
Now the snakes are getting into the house. It’s rainy season, so frogs and toads and suchlike are multiplying, and so are their predators. This snake was quite small, at the bottom of the stairs on the level where Alida and Cobus live. Cobus thumped it with the end of a broom handle, and then began the hunt for the snake book to identify it. Not a mamba, this one. I forget its name (their snake book is in Afrikaans), a red-lipped something or other, a frog-eater, they said, only a little venomous—just enough to kill a frog, I guess.
Afterwards, Alida and Louise argued about how many snakes they had also found upstairs in the house, Alida trying to reassure us and Louise, who enjoys danger and usually has injuries to prove it, remembering at least twice as many.
26 January
Sounds
Sleeping in a new place, a not-altogether-safe place, you listen to the sounds, trying to identify them. Thundershower last night. The first sign was the billowing draperies in the bedroom, signaling wind in the east, and with the wind, more of the little filbert-sized seeds on the tree at the front of the house were falling to the metal roof with a metallic tang! That wakes you up, and then you see the flashes of lightning, a little later hear distant thunder, and finally scattered drops of rain on the metal roof and then more and larger drops, and then the downpour, so loud that it’s difficult to carry on a conversation in the rooms beneath.
The bugs here grow big and tough, so it’s to be expected that the noisemakers among them would make louder noises. Crickets grow to about an inch and a half, wide-bodied models too, and when they chirp, don’t bother to try to sleep anywhere in the vicinity. You may as well just get up and hunt it down.
4 February
I helped out at a track meet for three hours, most of them cloudy, so I never got back to the car for my hat and suntan lotion. I got a pretty good sunburn. When I came into the classroom the next day with my red mask, I could also see the black kids sitting there in their beautiful ebony skins chuckling at these palefaces and how easily they turn pink under the African sun. That hole in the ozone layer must be right overhead.
|
About NWC
