Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Saints and Laborers

Put on the Gospel armor, each piece put on with prayer; where duty calls or danger, be never wanting there.

“Stand Up, Stand Up for Jesus”

The other day, after Wednesday’s worship service, I saw Tendai Tagwira. When I first met Tendai, back in ’93, she had just begun primary school. I saw her again in 1995 and 2000, during which years she was a quiet, polite, and highly articulate child. This year I met her as Dr. Tagwira, a most recent graduate of Zimbabwe’s medical school. Of course I asked about her internship, and she replied that she would be assigned to a public hospital in either Harare or Bulawayo. In either case she will be dealing with lots of HIV/AIDS cases—so I suppose she’ll need that Gospel armor, even if (as a thoroughly scientific physician) she calls it “surgical gloves.” And I guarantee you that “where duty calls or danger,” Tendai Tagwira will not be wanting! You see, Tendai comes from good stock. I know her folks.

Tendai’s mother is named Margaret. While working for her Masters degree in Public Health, Margaret Tagwira spent the better part of a year serving a village, out in “the communal areas.” The communal areas are territories that even the greediest white people did not bother to steal. Communal-area land is bare, rocky, dry—and in some cases, almost vertical. A village in the communal areas typically has only two latrines, segregated by gender; it may also have a single, reliable water-point, or it may not. If you make it to the communal areas in your 4X4, children will stare as if you had beamed in from a Star-Trek galaxy. In other words, the communal areas are parts of Zimbabwe that do not appear in the tourist brochures, and if they receive any medical care at all, it is through the heroism of Zimbabwe’s public-health workers, from the hands of people like Margaret Tagwira. Today Margaret works mostly at Africa University. Her major field is subsistence-nutrition, and she knows an awful lot about raising mushrooms.

Tendai’s father is probably my best friend in A.U. And he’s one of the real old-timers, having taught at the University since it opened its doors back in 1992. By graduate training, Professor Tagwira is a soil-scientist, earning his PhD in a unique program run jointly by the University of Zimbabwe and Michigan State University. Because of his academic reputation, Prof Tagwira has received plenty of high-dollar job offers from universities in South Africa and the USA. But he sticks with A.U., where he makes less money in a month than a beginning Wofford teacher makes in a day. (In case you think that living in Zimbabwe is super-cheap, I should tell you that a can of Coca-Cola costs about two bucks, and a gallon of black-market gasoline might run as much as $10. Bread, I admit, would be much less expensive than in the USA. But then, of course, there is no bread in Zimbabwe.)

Margaret and the Professor (uh, he’s my dean, and, friendship not withstanding, a lecturer in Zimbabwe never calls a dean by first-name; otherwise, the known universe would disappear) have four children of their own, and they have adopted two more. These good parents swear that, regardless of economic collapse, all six kids will receive full University educations. I hope that, like Tendai, the other Tagwira children will get lots of scholarship aid.

Anyhow, I was awfully glad to see Tendai. She still has her daddy’s great, big smile (“her sweet smile…”; that’s kind of a Wofford joke), and she’s a real doctor now, even if she does paint her toenails that gaudy purple. I’m glad for her, and I’m glad for Zimbabwe.

Now let me shift continents—because I don’t want you to assume that I consider sainthood a purely African virtue. For reasons I shan’t explain, I had to make an America-run last week. In logistical summary I can report that the world is big, that Delta Airlines gets an A for flying & a C- for cabin hospitality, that Spartanburg has great Chinese food, and that I missed seeing most of the people I really wanted to see. In psychological summary I’ll admit that a whirlwind visit to the States can engender culture-shock. I mean, from the politeness of southern Africa, I descended to the highways of Atlanta. In this concrete jungle I watched a dangerous predator in a black Toyota cut off a speeding ambulance, despite siren & flashing lights: thus I was caused to wonder (and not for the first time), “Where is Billy Sherman now that we really need him?”

Despite the perils of the road I made it to Wofford College, where, for all too long, I sat in my office, bemoaning my fate, cursing my loneliness, and generally enjoying my well-developed sense of white-boy guilt. Then I saw my first American saint, the good Dr. Hettes, who showed up with a Care Package of printer-cartridges and dry-erase markers from Wofford’s Biology Department. Then along came Terry Ferguson, who dragged me off, bodily, to get a flu shot (for which he offered to pay). When we’d returned to my office, Terry asked me, “Do you really need my help in Zimbabwe?” I admitted that, for various A.U. projects, I did very seriously need the assistance of a geologist. “Then let me use your computer,” Terry said. He sat down, pulled out a credit card, booked a ticket on the spot, and handed me his flight itinerary. (Terry had already bought three laptop computers for the A.U. Faculty of Agriculture. I hope we get paid back for ‘em. In any case, my gratitude to Terry knows no bounds.)

OK, folks, I have one more personal note. My work load here has escalated a bit, and I’m way behind from my America-trip. Therefore, for at least a little while, I need to be teaching and “wildlifing” real hard, and those activities probably won’t leave much time for blogging. I’ll certainly try to write more before November is too old, but in the meanwhile I hope you saints and laborers will forgive my neglect.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Walk on the Wild Side

The trip to Mana Pools National Park did not start auspiciously. To begin with, I did not want to go. This was true for three reasons: (1) Chronic pains led me to dread a rough truck-trip that would last longer than air-passage to America. (2) I was paranoid about safety factors; listed negatively, these included hyenas, Immigration officers, and (especially) vehicle accidents. (3) I had way too much work to do on campus. But A.U.’s Wildlife students were going to Mana Pools, and it was my duty to teach ‘em about the wonders of nature, right? And what could be more wonderful than a park of 2196km2, a gazetted World Heritage site along the mighty Zambezi? So, I went.

But back to start-up problems. I shall forebear from discussing the logistical headaches of arranging food, transport, and Park reservations. (These problems were largely addressed by Daniel Nzengy’a, A.U.’s full-time Wildlife instructor. And let me simply say that if Eisenhower had faced comparable difficulties when planning D-Day, only the Red Army could have saved the Jewish people from extinction.) Still, one start-up, uh, issue, must be described. On the Wednesday afternoon prior to our Thursday departure, one of my Wildlife students came to my office and announced, “Bad news, Prof, the boys are in jail.” An English explanation (mixed with what were probably Tswanan curses) revealed that two of my Botswanan students had caught a ride into Mutare. There, with my camera, they had attempted to photograph a particularly colorful male tree-agama. This lovely lizard had led the boys a merry chase down a dusty back alley before he came to rest on a jacaranda tree—behind the Ministry of Prisons Building. Unfortunately, the boys snapped the picture. And they got caught. And they were accused of being spies for the nation of Botswana. And the Embassy of that noble Republic refused to intervene.

So, the word was, “Prof, you got to go help us get the boys out.” I tried to swallow my disappointment: I’ve never seen a multiple spy-hanging, and I had a spare camera suitable for photographing the event. But, alas, duty called, so I stuck a U.S. $100 bill into my left sock and got into a typical Botswana-car. (This probably means nothing to you gentle readers, but any loyal Zimbabwean could tell you that if a Motswana has X dollars to spend on a car, he will allocate 0.9X dollars to the vehicle’s sound system—which will have its volume set at max, playing unmusical English lyrics in which some Americans accuse other Americans of doing unspeakable things with their mothers.) Anyhow, we headed towards Mutare, in a Botswana car, rapping all the way. Personally, I had little faith in my ability as advocate-professor: being an Undocumented Worker, I rather expected to join “the boys” in prison, and I fervently hoped that the jailors did not allow Motswana to bring their sound-systems into their cells. (Uh, and geesh, the camera had my name on it! Silently I rehearsed my gallows-speech: “I regret that I have but one life to give for, for freaking Botswana?”) Clearly, however, God loves fools, and before we actually reached the jailhouse, Mutare's Captain of Police had released “the boys”—probably because it is considered cruel & unusual punishment to imprison decent Zimbabwean axe-murders with loud-mouthed Botswanan lizard-photographers. Anyhow, we picked up “the boys”; they were whooping & hollering & explaining (occasionally in English) how much fun life was. In other words, the on-again, off-again trip to Mana Pools was back on.

Our departure from A.U. was a disappointing event. On Wednesday night we had been scheduled to take the Faculty 4X4 crew-cab pickup plus an equipment-trailer. I'd known that this would cramp us for space, so when the University minivan arrived at my door at 0430 Thursday AM, I was greatly relieved, assuming that we’d been given our requested second vehicle. Looking at the field-supplies and diesel-cans, I said, “I hope the other folks won’t be as crowded as we will.” But of course I had misunderstood: the Faculty 4X4 & trailer had been committed to a VIM team, so nine people went in one vehicle with scarcely enough space for our supplies alone. To compound my depression, I made the mistake of examining the minivan’s tires: three were basically bald, and the fourth had an embolism the size of a baby’s fist in its sidewall. But what the heck; I was committed, so I climbed in, sitting mostly atop a skinny Motswana who had been out of jail for < style=""> And we were on the road.

In my opinion, the story of the trip itself should be written by a Homer (or at least a Tennyson), because it certainly was an odyssey, and I certainly felt as if I had sailed beyond the Western Isles. We cruised out of Manicaland and into one of the Mashonaland provinces. In Harare we fixed our flat spare tire and stashed 40 liters of diesel for use on our return trip. When we reached Chinoyi, the Botswana boys broke out & shared the South African cookies they had managed somehow to acquire. At every police roadblock—and there were many—we were greeted by smiles and good wishes: “Africa University? Good, good! Safe journey!” And, after about 12 hours of extreme closeness on the road, we reached Mana Pools National Park.

Of all the National Parks in Zimbabwe, Mana Pools is unique, for only in Mana Pools is the visitor permitted—I am tempted to write “encouraged”—to commit suicide-by-large-vertebrate. At any time during daylight hours, visitors can walk anywhere in the Park. (Technically, this is not permitted after dark, but I cannot believe that anybody would know if you decided to violate this one regulation.) And ample opportunities for sudden death certainly exist. I saw an enormous Nile croc for which a skinny Motswana would have scarcely comprised a decent snack. Elephants wander through the camp-ground unimpeded. Lions are available to incorporate a tourist into the food-web. (This year, A.U.’s Wildlife majors joined a team that was radio-tracking lions. One lioness was well-hidden, and she broke cover only after the trackers had gotten pretty darn close. The armed safety-ranger took off like a scalded housecat, a maneuver that elicited mass hilarity among the four Botswanan students.) Hyenas, of course, will eat you too, and I’d been particularly worried about ‘em because I’d heard tales that vast numbers of the beasts frequented the campground where we pitched our flimsy tents. Reports of hyenas were by no means exaggerated—shortly after dusk, one sweep of my torch (= flashlight) disclosed a dozen pair of yellow eyes—but this proved to be a good thing since the hyenas finally scared off the two Cape buffalo that had been blocking our access to drinkable water. (You may be sure that a fair number of people are killed at Mana Pools every year. More than half of the deaths are caused by buffalo. The two old bulls that stared balefully at us for several hours were within < style=""> They blocked access to minivan & water-point; and, judging anthropomorphically, I’d say they looked meaner than Dick Cheney. So, anyhow, I recanted every bad thing I’d ever said about hyenas, and I was delighted when they slinked into the flight-zone of the buffalo.)



Overall, as you can guess, we had a tremendously good time, and in retrospect the buffalo just added sweetness to the experience. Mana Pools is a magic place, with a dry, rugged escarpment sloping abruptly to a wide floodplain inhabited by thousands of highly visible CMV’s (= “charismatic mega-vertebrates”; that’s what cynical wildlifers call big mammals). The Zambezi River, with its heartbreakingly lovely greens and blues, spreads half a click wide toward the parched, hazy mountains across on the Zambian side. At night one hears the “um-vum-vum-voo” calls of hippo, the chortle of hyenas, and the occasional cough of a lion. At daybreak, Egyptian geese and saddle-billed storks float the waters or stalk the river's banks. In the heat of the afternoon, an elephant or two will wander through camp, checking out the smells to determine whether you have brought any fresh fruit. (If you did, you’re screwed.) Oh, and one more thing: the Botswana boys will cook, cook, cook, cook! I have no idea where in the Zimbabwean economy these students found so much food, but give ‘em a couple of enamel pots plus half a cord of mopane split-wood, and they will flat feed you some serious grub. I ate so much that, by Saturday afternoon, I was lying on the bank of the Zambezi, probably resembling a croc that had just consumed a brace of unwary tourists.

And yes, Dean Wiseman (= Director of Wofford’s January "Interim" Term): Mana Pools will indeed be the locale I’ll suggest in my Interim ‘09 proposal. In order to register, students will have to meet two criteria: (1) they must be able to cook as well as the Botswana boys, and (2) they must not be able to outrun their instructor.

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Quick Note from Wendy

Dear Friends,

Ab asked me to preface the latest blog about bushpigs, sustainability, and Africa University with something light-hearted and affirming. I am a bit torn as to how to handle this request. I personally don't think there is need to add any preface to what Ab has written. I think his stories come directly from his honest and pure heart. But, I do want to honor any and all of Ab's request regarding this blog.

As I guess some of you know, I am posting Ab's blogs to this website partly because it may be easier to do here in the States and partly because of some well-founded hesitation on his part about posting them himself on public computers in Africa. Ab has called me the "editor" but in all honesty the only editing I do is tinkering a bit with the spacing and a little bit of uploading and downloading of the pictures.

In regards to his subsequent comments and observations about AU being perceived in his mind a "city on the hill" and the internal debates that occur when that city is torn between the critical need for sustainability and the harsh realities of life, I imagine we can all think to times in which something/someone we have held as ideal, in no fault of her/his own, cannot maintain those standards that we have built up in our minds. I think this speaks very clearly to how important it is for all of us, and especially those of us in academia, to not lose sight of the reality and immediateness of life when talking about the theory and knowledge on how life should be.

And, I also suppose Ab gives us all a good lesson of how important it is to stopy and notice the small beauties in life and how interconnected we are. My thoughts right now are both with Ab and the bushpig.

Warm Regards,
Wendy

Old Hog in a Strange Land



On Sunday the 7th of October I saw a bushpig (Potamochoerus larvatus) under the tree-Euphorbia at the old reservoir on A.U.’s near-mountain. He was an enormous, rangy boar, probably pushing 100kg, but for a moment he appeared confused, as if he did not know where he was or what he was supposed to be doing. Then, before the ancient hog disappeared into the tall grass, he turned back toward me with a look that was two parts fear & one part hunger.

Bushpigs are not supposed to live on the rocky hillsides. And, unlike the males of Sus scrofa, a boar Potamochoerus usually stays with the sow and her piglets. Of course I understand something of the old boy’s biography: I’ll reckon that his family was scattered or dead, and I know that his on-campus, lowland habitat has been subjected to unprecedented human degradation. Now I’m not going to plead the bushpigs’ case; most folks in Zimbabwe think the country has plenty of ‘em, and so would you if you’d ever tried to stand between a sounder of Potamochoerus and your maize-crop! On the other hand, the plight of Old Bushy is related to my vocational difficulties this semester—and has also forced me into some unfamiliar moral habitat.

Most people in the USA—even wildlife professionals—are unaware that the 20th Century’s most important & innovative game-management strategy (at least for Africa) was developed by a U.Meth missionary. This is Zimbabwe’s Campfire Program, a scheme by which the ForEx derived from high-dollar safari hunting is returned in large part to the local Zimbabweans who share habitat with the trophy animals. The basic principle is called “value-added conservation.” An elephant that’s merely a crop-raider is, economically, little different from a 4-tonne rat. On the other hand, an elephant whose death by Yankee gunfire generates a minimum of $20,000US—well, that elephant is a beast to be cherished. Of course the philosophy underlying “value-added conservation” is not new; it’s been preached as gospel in every US Wildl. Biol. Dept. for more than a generation, and user-pays concepts have been fundamental to American game management for almost a century. The brilliance of Campfire, I’d argue, comes from its U.Meth roots: this is the idea that most of the hunting-dollars should be returned to the people as a coherent community—and that the community-as-stakeholder should be involved at a grass-roots level in deciding how the money is to be made and spent.

I shall refrain from discussing Campfire further, but I must tell you that (although I’d not care to shoot a high-dollar trophy animal) it fits well with my personal, long-held views on conservation. As you must have gathered from reading these blog-entries, I am a Methodist. (I may not be a very good Methodist, and I may not believe everything that Methodists are supposed to believe, and I’m certainly not as decent a person as Methodists are supposed to be. But I am Methodist right to the core: cut me bad, and I’ll bleed Welch’s Grape Juice.) As such, I believe that every person has a fundamental vocation of loving and sharing; that is (ready, Bernie?) the quintessence of the Gospels. It seems to me, however, that the New Testament writers interpreted the life of Jesus for a world that was in its Last Days: with relatively few remaining tomorrows, we should split all of the world’s bounty generously among our brothers and sisters, today. On the other hand, I am 100% convinced that we are not living within the Last Days. (No offense to a legion of former and present students, but if I thought this was the End of Time, I would not be prepping statistics classes!) Therefore, in my opinion, to fulfill the Gospel’s mandate of sharing, we must consider not only persons-living; we must also think about the needs of generations yet unborn. (As a some-time mathematician, I visualize this geometrically: the sharing discussed by the Gospel writers occurs in horizontal dimensions, across space; the sharing discussed by many conservationists occurs in a vertical dimension, across time.) In other words, the gospel of conservation is the gospel of sustainability.

So, all that is vintage-Ab. I know it’s super-simple, but it has always seemed true to me, so I’ve written it & said it & preached it throughout my adult life. However, my comfortable orthodoxy of sustained-yield conservation is not working on the A.U. campus during the last semester of 2007. In the past 50+ days, I have tramped all over this wonderful landscape, spending practically every spare minute afield. And what have I seen? Let me list four activities that currently dominate the “undeveloped” parts of campus. The grasslands have been burned, in part to facilitate hunting. Subsistence gold-panning has increased radically so that the local bottoms of the Mutare River have become a moonscape of exploratory pits. Wildlife snares, targeting critters from twitbirds to bushpigs, have been set throughout the wildest places. And firewood—oh, my gosh, firewood—is being cut and dragged away, tonne upon tonne, every day of the week. I have not had the luxury of gathering quantitative data on these four exploitive practices, but I promise you that they are not sustainable at current levels.

All of this has affected me on personal and vocational levels. A few of you may know Jim Salley, another U.Meth, a South Carolinian from Orangeburg, a home-town graduate of S.C. State. Jim has made it big in life & now works in the U.Meth Nashville Vatican as Director of Development for Africa University. For several years Jim and I have discussed a book about A.U. that somebody needs to write. We’ve envisioned a nice, slick, coffee-table volume, illustrating photographically the natural wonders of the University campus. Ever since I first imagined this book-project, it has been something that I’ve dreamed of doing. In part, this is because I care deeply about the 600ha of Africa where I’m privileged to live. It is a wonderful place, and I’ll describe those wonders a bit more in future blogs. But I’ve also conceived of the campus, biblically, as a City on a Hill, as a potential model for how undeveloped plots of land could serve as refuge-islands in Africa’s increasingly agricultural landscape. I have wanted to create this book more than I’ve ever wanted to do anything else. I’d planned in this book to develop the island-model with pictures and words—and I’d planned to offer this model as a small gift to Africa.

Because I had worked at the University for three previous semesters, and because I’d already begun to chronicle the campus biodiversity, I planned to acquire the photographs for the book in a single semester. (No, I did not really believe that I could accomplish this feat alone. I’ve got some good help here. In December, I’m bringing over GR Davis—who’s already published a similar book—to take command, and I’m begging Terry Ferguson to join in the fun.) To this end, I committed all the personal financial resources that I could muster, and Jim Salley generously committed the resources of the U.Meth Church. But I tell you the truth, folks, this semester it’s been hard going! By luck or persistence I’ve already managed to get a few decent pictures, and things will get easier when the rains come, and I’m definitely thinking of GR as the rescue-cavalry, charging toward Old Mutare. But the campus itself, so generous in previous years, has been very stingy with its treasures in 2007. This, of course, is to be expected: “my” 600ha are just being exploited beyond their ability to be generous.

Please don’t get me wrong, folks; I’m not blaming the exploiters. They are not greedy people; they are not trying to get rich; in today’s hard times they are just trying to stay alive & to keep their families alive. Metaphorically put, while the ship of National Economy has foundered, our A.U. campus has become the local lifeboat! And I am thankful for every blessing the campus has given to the desperate communities of Manicaland—for every guinea-fowl, for every gram of gold, for every stick of Acacia-wood that has cooked a child’s supper. But the current level of exploitation cannot last, and thus it violates Ab’s gospel of sustainability.

I have lain awake some nights, thinking upon these things. I do not know any answers, and that’s a problem because (1) the Ag Dean & the Church will ask me for campus-management recommendations, and (2) GR & I need some philosophical underpinnings if we’re gonna finish the god-dang book. In some later blog entry, I may offer my initial thoughts about campus-management; if so, I’ll beg for your help in clarifying my tenuous ideas. But as I sit at my comfortable desk, high on aspirin and worry, I confess that I’m no longer qualified to preach the easy gospel of sustainability—because I have not followed the hard, hard Gospel of the New Testament.

To complete my confession, let me wrap some flesh around the lifeboat analogy. During the Second World War, the USAT Dorchester was struck by torpedoes in the icy waters off the coast of Greenland. Four U.S. Army chaplains—Dutch Reformed, Jewish, Methodist, and Catholic—were aboard the troopship, and they were tasked with loading the lifeboats, which were of insufficient supply. These four gentlemen were asked to make some tough decisions about who should ride the boats versus who should not. And indeed they did make those tough decisions—but only after they had joyously given up their own tickets to ride.

So anyhow, Mr. Bushpig, I too am confused about this new world. And like you, I’m turning to look back. For me, it's toward America, the Great Lifeboat which I must soon visit. My look is two parts fear & one part hunger.

Monday, October 8, 2007

Missionary Position

U.S. doctor to Ab, circa 2005.Sounds like that prolapsed mitral valve has a good bit of back-flow. Just keep taking antibiotics before you have any dental work. And be thankful—heh, heh—that the heart murmur kept you out of Vietnam.

Ab (silently). He can tell me about medicine, but there is nothing in this world he can tell me about life.

Present Days

I am acquainted with a lot of highly intelligent people (especially the readers of this blog), but my mother may be the smartest person I know. Weeks before I left the States, my mother suggested that I see a dentist and pick up some amoxicillin in case I needed emergency dental care in Zimbabwe. Of course my mother was smart enough to know that I’d pay her no attention on this detail, so she acquired the antibiotic herself and stuck it into my luggage. And I’ve started taking it.

On the morning of 4 October, while eating cold rice for breakfast, I chomped down upon a small stone and broke off the rear-lingual quadrant of right-upper M2. Now please note that I am not complaining about the rice! If it had not been a bit stony (& broken into small pieces), my rice would be in South Africa right now, feeding some engineer who’s designing a soccer stadium for World Cup 2010. No, over the past month I’ve developed enough Zimbabwe-smarts to value a big bag of rice more than 25% of a second molar. But I did want to get the tooth fixed: it attracted my tongue too much, and associated discomfort was interfering with my daydreams of sugary desserts.

So I decided to take off a bit of Friday and see a dentist in Mutare. Now I do not like visiting dentists. (A partial exception is Kathy Nicholson. Hearing her gossip about George Shiflet can be worth a week’s pay and a bit of dental pain.) But the Missionary Position on illness & injury is, “If it’s broke in the field, try to get it fixed in the field.” So, I walked into our Faculty secretary’s office and asked her where I might get my tooth repaired. The super-efficient Mrs. Ruwo dialed a phone number, spoke a few words in Shona, and then drew me a map to the office of Dr. E. Kuzomunhu.

Dr. Kuzomunhu’s office is in a multi-purpose building on Robert Mugabe Street. On one side is the Sanhanga Walk-In Surgery Clinic. (I assume that some folks also walk out, but this is not explicitly guaranteed.) On the other side is a street-front church that was holding choir-practice. Diagonally opposite the church is a shop selling used adventure novels, many with covers that feature scantily-clad white women. A former colleague of Vivian Fisher once wrote exactly such books, and in better humor I might have scanned the shelves for a vintage Lon Bean, but on Friday I had other things on my mind.

When I entered Dr. Kuzomunhu’s waiting room, I immediately noted a bright florescent light—which proved that Mutare’s electrical power was on for the afternoon and thereby relieved my anxiety about foot-pedal drills. Dr. K’s smiling receptionist gave me a hand-written medical-history form, and I made myself sound as healthy as possible. Then, well trained in the ways of health-care professionals, she asked, “Are you on National Health Insurance?” Well, I should be on NHI, but I still do not have a work permit. (Don’t breathe a word about that to Uncle Bobby!) So I had to admit that I was one of the uninsured. She frowned and said, “Then this will be a little bit expensive.” I swallowed hard but agreed to pay whatever.

The inner sanctum of Dr. Kuzomunhu’s office was separated from Reception by a head-high partition. The equipment available did not transmit me back to the ‘Fifties, but we didn’t quite make it to the ‘Eighties either. On the plus side, Dr. K had a super-cute assistant, but she didn’t assist very much, and I ended up holding some of the equipment. “Do you want an injection?” the doctor asked. “It will make the procedure even more expensive.” An injection? You bet! I am a total dental coward, and I didn’t care one whit what substance Dr. K would inject or which bank I’d rob in order to pay him.

I suppose that Dr. Kuzomunhu worked for about 45 minutes, lecturing me about how I should brush more and about how I should return to him soon for cleaning and routine maintenance. Nothing hurt; the rubber gloves tasted brand-new, and the choir next door was practicing “Immortal, Invisible God Only Wise.” What more could one ask from a visit to the dentist (uh, except Shiflet gossip)? The receptionist took a gosh-awful long time working up my bill, and then she said, “That will be five million three hundred thousand dollars.” It was a shocking total, perhaps approaching, at current exchange levels, eleven U.S. dollars.

Thus it seems that the Missionary Position about semi-routine dental care is correct. Indeed, if I get some free time later this semester, I’ll revisit Dr. K to have my teeth cleaned, and Friday’s dental experience—from reception to discharge—seems quite humorous to me. But, after all, it was just a tooth, and our U.Meth missionaries sometimes have real problems. “We try to make friends with an Ex-Pat doctor,” they say. And then they tell me about hard drives on moonless nights with blood all over the backseat of a third-hand Peugeot sedan. “Still,” they continue, “we’re so much luckier than the real people here in Zimbabwe.” That luck is very dear to anyone raised in the USA.

In January of ’08, I’ll help advise a Wofford Interim group that will make a very brief visit to southern Africa. Appropriately, a major Interim objective will be “to experience African culture.” Therefore the students will probably want to hear some music, see a dance, maybe catch a glimpse of family life on the world’s most child-friendly continent. And yet our students will not (I pray) experience a salient, defining characteristic of Africa’s current culture. In an African village, when you break a tooth, you live with it—because, even if you could find transport, “$5,000,000” sounds the same way in a Zimbabwean mud hut that it sounds in a South Carolina brick bungalow. Here or there, five million bucks sure as hell ain’t dentist-money. In Zimbabwe’s Communal Areas, if you are old and sick, perhaps you’ll see a missionary doctor, or perhaps somebody will take you, once, to a government clinic in a distant town. But in the night, when those coronary arteries fail, when the unbearable pain radiates like electricity down your left arm, well, the best you can hope for is that some old woman will wipe your forehead with cool water and sing “Immortal, invisible, God only wise….”

In high school I hated Greek mythology. I mean, I absolutely hated it. It seemed to me that the gods were always pussy-footing around the edge of life. They’d slide down from Mount Olympus to drink a little wine and indulge in a gluttonous feast or two. If the moon was right, perhaps they’d seduce some gullible Homo sap—or, if they were especially bored, the gods might stir up a small war & observe a bit of human evisceration for their divine amusement. The kicker, of course, was that the Greek gods were immune to death, and therefore they could not be real heroes. Sure, being gods, they knew a whole lot of neat stuff—uh, like if they’d been more generous, they could have taught us how to make fire. But what could they teach us about life, those worthless gods who could not die?

OK, folks, that’s as close to a confession of the Christian faith as you’re likely to get out of me. And having a tooth fixed locally is probably about as close to the Missionary Position as I’ll ever, dare I say, stand. In other words, there’s no way, no way that I want to experience the full reality of current African culture! But still, I work for the U.Meths, not the worthless-ass Zeus. And so, sometimes, I wonder what I am supposed to do. I really, really wonder.

Friday, October 5, 2007

A Celebration for the Rev. Prof. Lee O. Hagglund

A Celebration for the Rev. Prof. Lee O. Hagglund
Or, “Sweet are the uses of—diversity.”
Or, Does Baker Maultsby do chauvinist-pig songs?
Or, this can’t be from Ab; it doesn’t mention wrecks, fires, bread-lines, or diesel!

Yesterday I made the mistake of reading through a couple of my old blog entries, and they were just so, uh, heavy, that I had to remind myself that I work for the U.Meths, not freaking NPR! With that in mind, I resolved to write something really light—and to dedicate it to a hero of mine who knows that life is much too important to be taken too seriously.

Lee Hagglund is among the finest gentlemen I have ever met. He is a gifted mathematician, a completely dedicated family man, a colleague of absolute integrity, an incomparable sportsman, and a musician of incredible talent. All of my Wofford friends—and some of my Winthrop friends too—know those things. What is not generally known is that Dr. Hagglund has also worked in Africa, and that indeed he has sometimes contemplated a life of service on this beloved Continent. (May we all pray that it be so.)

Now I should like to communicate to Dr. Hagglund that, although his Lutheran roots might be directing him toward Tanzania, if he should wish to serve a bit further south, we could find him a place at A.U, where math teachers are always needed and the choir is reputed to be the best in the world. Furthermore, at A.U., Lee could observe some of the diversity that characterizes the peoples of Africa. Unfortunately, this is a characteristic that American tourists typically fail to notice. But Africa University currently has students from twenty nations; their cultures are beautifully different, and I want every reader of these blog-notes to remember that! Furthermore, I intend to preach diversity particularly hard in the direction of Lee Hagglund. Because Lee Hagglund is a child of the Sixties, and because Lee Hagglund is such a lover of music, and because Lee Hagglund is so into, well, observation, I decided to write Lee a Sixties-type song about human diversity at Africa University. (Vivvy, please note that I have not relinquished factual accuracy for meter or rhyme-scheme. And if this verse doesn’t offend somebody, then I might as well quit the Methodists and work for NPR.)


Oh, those Mozambican beauties, they can really shake their ass,
And Afrikaner girls, with the way they cook, they get their boyfriends fat real fast.
The girls from old Angola, they know how to tint their curls.
You smell that French perfume? You must be in the room, with some hot DRC girls.
Glad that they could come to Mutare—
Glad they didn’t stop in Harare
Glad that they could meet our Mutare girls….

Before the week’s over I’ll try to write about the Manicaland Agricultural Fair—uh, in case anybody is still reading this mess.

Monday, October 1, 2007

Tommy Atkins' Goats

Seen/heard on the A.U. campus last week:

Student A: Oh, my brother, how about lending me a pen or pencil?

Student B: [Reaches into pocket, pulls out five writing instruments.] Don’t ever go to war without your weapon! [Puts all pens and pencils back into pocket; walks away.]

Friday was my day to work the Manicaland Agricultural Fair. That was great for me since I was thereby forced to skip my statistics class, and I’d given a quite nasty test on Thursday afternoon. We piled an excess of students & staff into a pickup and headed to town. As the ranking faculty member I was put in charge of T-shirts plus the money for entrance and lunch. I was not, however, trusted with the plastic chicken (uh, Ellen Goldey has plastic people in anatomy lab; ag schools have plastic chickens), which remained in custody of a permanent staff member who could presumably be executed if the precious chicken were lost or damaged.

When we arrived at the Manicaland Fairgrounds, our crop-science teacher (a very bright man with the morals of the plastic chicken) demanded his lunch-money and T-shirt immediately. When I complied, he complained about the size of his T-shirt (it was an “L”; I’d issued the only “XL” to a pregnant woman); then he disappeared without working even ten minutes. Hope was expressed that he might have been kidnapped by terrorists, but since terrorists in Zimbabwe are as rare as T-bone steaks, such justice seems improbable.

In addition to guarding the plastic chicken with our lives, we were expected to explain poster exhibits and to entice any high-schooler of apparent aptitude into taking a University fact sheet. Also, since the fair was being officially opened by Zimbabwe’s Vice-President, we were supposed to suck up to her if she came into our shed. But Friday was “Fair Day” for elementary schools, so most of our clientele were a bit young for proselytizing—and mostly wanted to play with the plastic chicken. In the afternoon a tall clown (& face-painter) began a loud Shona chant just down the hill from our exhibit. This motivated the aggregation of perhaps 150 very small children, who followed the clown around the Fairgrounds as if they were rodents and he the Pied Piper. When he brought his procession by our shed, he “lined out” with his kids a special English chant, concluding with “At Africa University AT AFRICA UNIVERSITY always remember ALWAYS REMEMBER your parents still love you YOUR PARENTS STILL LOVE YOU!” I regretted our failure to procure, somehow, sufficient sweets to reward the clown and his happy throng.

The morning would have been a bit long except for our neighbors, the team from Marymount Teachers College (much less prestigious than A.U. because they give only diplomas while we grant Degrees), who had brought their marimba band. They played continuously for several hours—wonderful music; Dr. Fisher would have been in hog heaven—and even some of the soldiers danced.

In the afternoon the Vice President did show. She was an ample personage whom Terry Ferguson would have identified as Tutti Green’s big sister. She was welcomed by legions of majorettes, ranging in age from perhaps 2-15 years. The antics of the majorettes were accompanied by Zimbabwe’s Army Band, of which I shall write more shortly. The VP spoke in English (was she Ndebele? I should know things like that), but the loudspeaker system worked less than perfectly, and I heard little beyond “…blah, blah, blah, sustainable development, blah, blah, blah, agricultural production….” That particularly disappointed one of our students (a Mozambican born in Arizona) because he’d wanted his picture taken with her.

As some of you know, I’d attended the Manicaland Ag Fair during my last sojourn in Zimbabwe, and back in 2000, my favorite part was the livestock show. This year I must sadly report that live-animal exhibits had been cancelled—presumably because nobody would expose valuable animals to the hazards of transport (I mean, some folks looked as if they’d try to par-boil even our plastic chicken). This did not mean, however, that absolutely zero domestic artiodactyls were in attendance, for the Army band had brought its two goats. These are magnificent animals, capable of standing at Attention for extended periods, and (I promise that I am not making this up) they march with the Band in time to its music. Because I have an abiding curiosity for things military, I asked one grizzled old sergeant about the goats. He was extremely proud of the animals and said that one had actually earned a rank-stripe (promoted to the ZDF equivalent of our Army’s PFC) for exemplary behavior. Encouraged by the sergeant’s willingness to talk, I asked him about the significance of the goats. “Nobody knows,” he shook his head; “we inherited the tradition many years ago, from a British regiment that was stationed in this country.”

Thus, even in a country that is starving for meat, some things are just flat sacred. And Queen Victoria, wherever you are, the sun may now set on the flag of your Empire—but perhaps not on the traditions of your Army.