Africa University

Miracle in Old Mutare

2007-12-05T07:08:00.000-08:00

A Request for Your Thoughts

As most of you folks know, I’m trying to head up a small team that will produce a book that will illustrate the natural wonders of the Africa University campus. Because of my own training, I will focus largely on vertebrate wildlife, and in a previous essay I explained some of the difficulties in photographing local mammals these days. As I have also suggested, we’ll probably include lots of frog pictures. Thus far we’ve photographed 20 species; some of them are quite beautiful, and others are plenty cute to attract at lease a few admirers. We are also approaching 20 species on our reptile-list. Most of these will be lizards (though we have one turtle-species in the photo-files, and we hope to add another), but, thank goodness, we also have a few snakes. In my previous work here I’ve had some dealings with pythons, including one that was the largest snake I’ve ever seen. This python made quite an impression on me, and I really wanted to write (for the eventual book) a short essay telling how I felt when I saw that animal. Such narration is not my usual style, and I’m worried that it will sound exceedingly hokey (cheesy? stupid? I don’t really know the right word) in a book that’s supposed to be more or less factual. So I thought I’d float a draft of my python-essay with you folks. And I’d love to have your comments, at some point.

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Back in 1898, when Bishop Joseph Hartzell received his land-grant for “Old Umtali,” he could readily appreciate the scenic beauty and agricultural potential of the area. Still, the churchman from Ohio[1] might not have initially realized the full extent of his good fortune. He might not have known that his lands were—and would remain—blessed with an abundance of pythons.

In order to live long and prosper, African pythons must have three things: water, shelter, and an abundance of food. These requirements, of course, apply to wildlife in general, but Python natalensis—with slight poetic license, the Latin could be translated as “Christmas python”[2]—needs such resources scaled for a hatchling that could fit into your pocket and for an adult that could weigh more than you do. Around Africa University creeks, pans, and irrigation canals can supply water for most of the year, and the Mutare River never runs completely dry. Crevasses, caves, and abandoned mineshafts can serve as hideaways, but termiteria (whose entrances vary more in size than do the diameters of pythons) are most commonly used for shelter. A termite, or “white ant,” mound is icebergian in extent: its visible proportion scarcely hints at what is hidden below the surface. In this underground world, channels and chambers—any of which may be enlarged by sundry vertebrate inhabitants—provide refuges whose temperature and humidity remain constantly within python-acceptable limits. And when the clay surface of a mound bakes hard into laterite, these refuges become almost impregnable.

An African python will sometimes forage actively for its food, but more often it will strike from ambush. Perhaps because it can detect potential prey by an animal’s heat-signature against a cooler background, P. natalensis eats almost exclusively warm-blooded vertebrates. During their hatchling-year, A.U.’s pythons probably subsist largely on mice, which abound in both density and species-variety. Maturing youngsters convert to rats, plus some rabbits and a few birds. Over the years we have examined the scat left by adult pythons: identifiable remains have included a few claws from small mammalian carnivores and many horns and hoofs from campus antelopes.

The maturation-rate of wild P. natalensis is not known. In captivity, kept warm and fed all it will eat, a healthy specimen can exceed 2.5m in length within the hatchling year. In the wild this does not happen, for Zimbabwe’s winters are quite chilly, and depredation from ambush is in large part a matter of luck: some days you get the vlei-rat; most days you do not. African pythons are well-adapted for the feast-or-famine existence of an ambush predator. They are capable of very long fasts (for big adults, probably exceeding a year in the most extreme cases), lowering their metabolic rate to bare-existence levels. Then, when prey comes along, a python will take it—and, within some limits, the bigger the better.[3]

In other words, pythons hardly ever starve, so, although maturation can be quite slow, some pythons hang on, avoid the hazards of life for a few years, and eventually reach sexual maturity. Courtship and mating is well known for captive pythons, but these activities are seldom observed in the wild. Probably a patrolling male detects the special scent from the cloacal glands of a female;[4] he then follows her trail until he finds her, and mating occurs. Within about sixty days (???) after mating, the female will lay a whole bunch of eggs (perhaps as many as a hundred for a really big, well-fed momma). Most snakes abandon their eggs (or live-born young) immediately, but pythons are different. The female seeks a secluded spot (termite mound, mineshaft, whatever), lays her eggs, and coils her body around them. Then she initiates a series of contractions reminiscent of shivering in mammals. The metabolic heat produced by this intense muscular activity generates a great deal of heat, and, regardless of the ambient temperature, the eggs are maintained at about 30^oC for the protracted incubation period (about 120 days). After the young do hatch,[5] the mother (apparently) loses all interest. And that is understandable; after all, she has endured a whole lot of very hard work throughout a very long fast, and she needs to go about the business of rebuilding her own resources (small antelope beware!).

We have some familiarity with pythons on the A.U. campus. In 2007 we have caught two pythons. The first was a 2m youngster in found in a molerat colony. As you can see from our photographs, this python was not at the peak of the species’ beauty. The cloudy eyes indicate that the animal is preparing to shed its skin, and the engorged ticks on its sides suggest that this snake had been spending a fair amount of time in mammal burrows. The second 2007 python was a freshly-shed sub-adult that we discovered one night about 50m behind our house.

Back in 2000 we had found another python—a bit smaller—and implanted a radio transmitter into the animal’s pleuroperitoneal cavity. This enabled us to keep up with the whereabouts of the snake for almost 100 days. Although our radio-python spent a considerable amount of time underground, in termite nests, it was also a real mover, sometimes covering over a kilometer in a single day. We were interested to note that the python used every major on-campus habitat-type (and it once ventured off campus, by about 10 meters), sometimes ambushing in a flooded lowland field, sometimes hunting in the mountain rocks. Movement between these areas required that the snake traverse a broad agricultural landscape; inevitably it made these crossings by crawling along a narrow, overgrown fence-line.

When I (Ab Abercrombie) talked proudly about my radio-python, folks around Old Mutare would always ask about its size, and they would disparage the entire telemetry enterprise when they learned that the animal was little longer than the height of a tall man. “Wait until you see the big one,” they would say; “it’s six meters long—a real python.” Somewhat sensitive about the dimensions of my favorite python, I would reply with equal scorn, “There’s no six-meter python around here. That’s almost record size, and nothing that big could survive in the agricultural heartland of Old Mutare.”

Then, in December of 2000, at the advent of the summer rains, I had trekked to the southeastern edge of campus to examine a mineshaft where I had previously photographed a pair of porcupines. The porkeys were not at home, and it was with some disappointment that I descended the mountain slope to ford the Mutare River (there being no log-bridge at the time). I had entered a dense thicket in the narrow flood-plain of the Mutare and was forcing my way through the Fragmites stems, which were almost twice my height, when my eye caught a flash of sunlight on silver-gray scales. And there it was, stretched full-length by the riverside, the Python of pythons. There is no way I can describe this enormous snake; that would be like explaining what love is, when it happens, or like describing the Seraphim. For any person of the modern world, words would degenerate into silliness: “With twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.” As a scientist, I wish I could have laid a tape-measure along the snake; as a wildlifer, I wish I could have implanted a transmitter. And by gosh I’d have done those things if I possibly could have. But this was not a snake measurable in centimeters or locatable by radio-pulses. It was a snake outside of size and place; it was a snake belonging to the deep nature of Life itself…. Heck, I told you that words degenerate into silliness. Here is the simple truth. That snake was the best single thing that has ever happened to me, and I shall never want anything better. This was the real Python natalensis, the Christmas Python. (And if I could whisper something to you, I’d tell you how big I really think it was.)

[1] I write “Ohio” because that’s the state of residence that most mini-biographies quote for Hartzell. Actually, the man was born in Illinois and served his first church in that state. He was later appointed pastor to a church in New Orleans—to the only Methodist congregation in that city that chose affiliation with the Northern church after the denomination’s split. The 1896 General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, North, designated Hartzell as Missionary Bishop for Africa. Title to the land was granted by the British South Africa Company (whose big chief was Cecil Rhodes his own self). The BSAC had been granted the land by Chief Tendai of Manyika Land, in exchange for guns and “educational opportunities.” I don’t know whose land the chief gave away—or by what right. Anyhow, when I write the actual A.U. campus book, most of this historical stuff will appear in a separate chapter. But, for now, what are footnotes for?

[2] Nowadays the big pythons of southern Africa are considered to be a species separate from their big cousins to the north (Python sebae). The Latin name for the southern species is taken from the South African province currently known as Kwa-Zulu Natal. Natal (literally, “birth”) is the Portuguese word for Christmas.

[3] Except for the termite-eating scolecophidians, considered elsewhere, almost all snakes are adapted for taking large prey. Anatomically, the issue is, “how do you get big-diameter foodstuff into a small-diameter tube, when that tube has no equipment for slicing the foodstuff into pieces of convenient size?” In my herpetology course I talk at great (excessive?) length about swallowing-adaptations, which include stretchable skin, articulations of the quadrate bones, semi-independent lower jaws, and a flexible braincase. For now, let me say that, even among snakes, big pythons are real champions at swallowing really enormous stuff!

[4] Also in my herpetology course, I define snakes as creatures that live in a world of chemical information (loosely “smells”). In almost all snakes, special glands around the cloaca (the vent, where eliminatory and reproductive functions take place) produce substances with odors recognizable by other snakes. These are typically of high molecular weight and can therefore persist at detectable concentrations for a long time on the substrate where they have been deposited. Such chemical information is not apprehended by “smell” in the strict sense (sniffing through the nostrils that excites neural pathways interpreted by olfactory centers of the brain). Instead, the chemical messages from a snake’s cloacal glands are picked up on the tips of a snake’s tongue, with which the animal explores its environment. The tongue is withdrawn into the mouth, and its tips are inserted into a pair of openings in the roof of the mouth (the entrance to the vomero-nasal organ), from which the chemical information is relayed to the brain.

[5] In most python populations this occurs near the beginning of the summer rains, when food and thermal resources for the hatchlings are most readily available.

Vexed by Small Things

2007-11-22T22:34:00.000-08:00

“Woman Slices Hubby’s Manhood.” (Manica Post Headline)

“Now don’t get the impression that I care ‘bout what you do,

But when it gets close to Thanksgiving, I’d hide if I were you!”

(Song Lyrics by Lacy J. Dalton)

“I call him Footnote Ab.” (G. R. Davis, Wofford Biol.)

Although Old Mutare may not be the Center of the Universe, we do occasionally hear about goings-on in the rest of this world. Wednesday, for example, I learned that storms in Bangladesh had killed at least 1800 people. Such a tragedy lends perspective to one’s life, and on this Thanksgiving Day I must be grateful that my own frustrations have been less than the bites of anemic gnats! Still, being in a self-centered mood, I shall list my recent “gnat bites” and hope that they amuse you.

Minor Irritation 1: Neocolonial Exploitation. My first complaint is about Invigilation. This curious custom, by which teachers are required to monitor other folks’ examinations, is a holdover of British colonialism. I am scheduled to invigilate 12 exams. Fortunately, these have been collapsed into six examination-periods, but still, that’s more than 18 hours of watching students sweat. Furthermore, to insure the integrity of the process, an Invigilator is not allowed any personal amusements (such as reading novels or grading one’s own exams), and the Director of Examinations will come by to make sure that this rule remains inviolate.

Because I have other work to do, I griped a bit about Invigilation. The response was, “You don’t have Invigilation in your country?” The tone of voice can best be imagined if you raise an eyebrow and say, “You kill half the girl-babies in your country?” I responded, “No we do not!” The tone of my response can best be imagined if you raise both eyebrows and say, “Our Freedom Fighters whipped the imperialistic Redcoats bad at Cowpens, and if the Brits had stuck us with a stupid neocolonial custom like Invigilation, we’d have swum the Atlantic & burned freaking London!

Minor Irritation 2: Contagion. My second complaint is about the Botswana Boys. They have tried to be extremely nice to me. Last week, however, they gave a computer-virus (which I am still fighting), and then they gave me a bio-virus (not HIV) that has me hacking & coughing and sneezing through life these days.

Minor Irritation 3: Getting Stoned, again. My third complaint is dental. Toward the end of last week I broke another tooth. (This time the small piece of quartz was in beans, not rice.) I made another appointment with the good Dr. K, and he fixed me up. This time the event was less pleasant than previously: (a) the more complex repair took longer, (b) nobody was singing “Immortal, Invisible…,” and (c) no injection was available (Zimbabwe has shortages, you know).

The actual complaint: I have learned that I’m the real Thanksgiving Turkey. I hope you will not think that Irritations One through Three have been sufficient to push me towards Un-Thankfulness. Nay, friends, I am a tougher customer than that; even Zimbabwe’s dental privations are as nothing to macho-man Ab Abercrombie (uh, at least not ex post facto). What has unsettled my spirit is an uninvited memory.

Now let me stipulate one incontestable fact before I write another sentence. I have heard tell, from absolutely reliable sources, that Bishop J. Lawrence McCleskey is a fine man, a gentleman, a veritable prince of a fellow. It must be true; it is true, and I am an absolute turkey because I cannot transcend my vanity and let go of my anger towards this good man. I was first reminded of His Episcopal Excellency when I read the Post headline quoted above.[1] Then, on Monday, for my sins, I was forced to enter the J. Lawrence McCleskey Building—and was instantly bitten by the Black Dog of Depression.

Here’s some background. In the Year 2000, I was walking across the A.U. campus with a favorite student. This young gentleman, a thoughtful fellow who has gone on to do fine things, asked me, “Sir, why is it that all the buildings at this university bear the names of white men?”[2] I answered that I did not know. Then, in my vanity, I added, “…but I promise you one thing. If Methodists in the South Carolina Conference[3] ever give A.U. a building, it won’t be named for a white man.”

Now here’s a bit more background. When I was back in the States, while His Excellency, J. Lawrence McCleskey, was Presiding Bishop of the South Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church, the Noble Man Himself graciously requested that I come to Columbia and talk about raising money for Africa University. Of course I complied with this episcopal summons, and I made my stuttering, inelegant, half-assed case for scholarships. “But,” responded H.E., “perhaps a building is needed. A building would be so much more permanent.”[4] At that point I told H.E. about the complaint of my A.U. student—and about the promise that I had made to this young man.

Today the plaque that names A.U.’s Theology Building for the Reverend Bishop J. Lawrence McCleskey is supported by four bolts and four ornamental screws. This week I have expended too much time trying to loosen ‘em.[5] Yesterday—I was so depressed—I actually prayed about my anger & my great vanity, and I think I have a solution that may save my neck on this Turkey Day. Shoot-fire, I even hope that His Excellency the Reverend Bishop J. Lawrence McCleskey would approve. I’m just going to give the building an additional name. Yep, I’m going to print out a statement on a plain sheet of paper and post it over the (thus far) official plaque. I reckon that my statement will be allowed to remain for only an hour or so. But somebody will read it, somebody will remember it, and, well, some memories last longer than bricks. Anyhow, here’s what the statement will look like:

This building was donated, out of love for the people of Africa, by members of the South Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. The fund-drive was conducted under the dynamic leadership of the Reverend Doctor J. Lawrence McCleskey, Presiding Bishop. Officially, this building bears the bishop’s name. In a deeper sense, it bears other names. These are the unspoken names of slaves who suffered in the ricefields of Charleston County, of Orangeburg students slain because of their protest against injustice, of preachers and politicians and school kids and game wardens and lint-head textile workers—of all children of Sand and Palmetto who learned to do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly in the paths of the Lord. In recognition of these millions of unnamed saints, this building is now re-christened with the following two names that do resonate in the hearts of South Carolinians. This is now the

Marian Wright Edelman

and

Talmage Boyd Skinner

Building

Marian Wright Edleman grew up a preacher’s child in the strong Black community of Bennetsville, South Carolina. Throughout her adult life, she has never failed to Speak Truth to Power, standing like a tough, wind-blown palmetto against the storms of injustice. Because of her love, the children of South Carolina, of the United States, of Africa, and of the world lead richer, fuller lives.

Talmage Boyd Skinner, part Amer-Indian and part White Boy, grew up hunting rabbits in the cotton fields of Anderson County, South Carolina. He became a Methodist preacher, and he served every congregation with a love that transcended every separation of this sinful world. Nobody has loved Africa and Africa University better than this man.

[1] I do not know why I was thus reminded. I feel sure that the Great Man has never had any problems in his marriage. Nevertheless, when I saw the headline, I glanced at the knife clipped to my pocket and thought of J. Lawrence McCleskey.

[2] This complaint would no longer be true at Africa University—not quite.

[3] I love the South Carolina Conference with an emotion usually reserved for kinfolks and foxhole comrades. Although one of American Methodism’s poorest Conferences, our girls and boys in the Palmetto State have given more generously than anybody else to Africa University.

[4] I am sure that I have quoted this statement imprecisely, and I am sorry for that. I was probably upset because of my prejudice that scholarships are actually more permanent than buildings.

[5] In our ag-school grading system, 5 out of 8 is passing, but that doesn’t apply to the purloining of plaques.

Saints and Labors III: American Saints with African Connections

2007-11-12T02:15:00.000-08:00

“To all, life Thou givest, to both great and small; in all life Thou livest, the true Life of all….”

“Immortal, Invisible…,” Number 27 in the first U.Meth Hymnal

Saints from the Bayou Country. I’ve never found worship services to be much fun, and therefore I approached chapel last Wednesday without enthusiasm, commenting to my best friend, “If this isn’t inspiring, I’m gone.” As it turned out, I stayed for the full service because 07NOV was a morning of minor miracles. First of all, the chapel’s sound-system worked, and for once I could actually hear what was being said. Second, we had interesting visitors. As you will recall, in late summer of ’05 two massive hurricanes hammered the Gulf Coast of North America. Hearing this news, students and staff of Africa University—near penniless, as I have repeatedly emphasized—took up a special collection and sent it to U.Meth churches in Louisiana. On 07NOV a VIM team, comprised primarily of parishioners from those churches, arrived in Old Mutare. Personally understanding the nature of desperation, these Katrina survivors brought with them this world’s best cure for physical human need: Yankee dollars! Third, the VIM team included a Black pastor, and (another miracle) this American visitor was invited to preach. He screamed, shouted, waved his arms—and imparted a message of erudition, challenge, and hope. I have never before seen an A.U. congregation respond with such enthusiasm. The students streamed out of chapel, prepared, as the Reverend VIMmer Rudy Rasmus had ordered, to pass through any Samaria, bearing Living Water. (For some of our ag students, this will include best-practice techniques of irrigation.)

Future Saint of the University. One pleasant aspect of my trip to the USA was talking, by telephone, with Lavinia. I won’t tell you her last name right now, but I will say that I am living in her house. Lavinia is a big-time academic lawyer practicing up in New Jersey (or some such godforsaken clime). A year or so ago she applied for a Fulbright Fellowship to Africa, and in its wisdom the Foundation smiled upon her application. Therefore, next semester, Lavinia will be teaching and conducting research at Africa University’s Institute for Peace, Leadership, and Governance. This means that she will not be teaching ag students (her loss, and theirs), but she should have some interesting folks in her classes. After all, in Africa, what could be more interesting than exploring issues of conflict resolution and post-conflict reconciliation? Perhaps Lavinia will even solve the problem of warfare over seats on A.U.’s town-bus. Anyhow, I am thankful for Lavinia. First, I enjoyed talking to her, and I am convinced that she will bring new, important insights to Old Mutare. And, second, I really am living in her house. Since I am not a paid member of Staff, and since (gratias Deo) I am definitely not a missionary, my claim to University housing was minimal. However, A.U.’s “Powers that Be” (& who knows who is really in charge here?) had to hold a house vacant for a Prestigious Fulbrighter, and therefore I got Lavinia’s house for a semester.

Because we should all want Lavinia to be comfortable in her marvelous house, I am tempted to stage a contest among the (3? 4?) readers of this blog. As part of her grant, Lavinia has license to ship a bunch of boxes to Zimbabwe—free, through the U.S. Embassy in Harare. What should we advise her to send c/o Uncle Sam? I think I can guess some of your recommendations. Wendy Campbell will doubtless suggest a crate of Peter Pan Crunchy Peanut Butter. Lizzie Norman will recommend a Holmes mystery and two extra copies of Netter’s Anatomy. Vivian Fisher would send a few hundred memoirs about the First World War. I don’t know for sure about the rest of you, but personally I’d advise Lavinia to ship a really nice snake-cage. Last Friday a very friendly cobra showed up in Lavinia’s house. Being in an unsociable mood, I evicted the house-cobra to a distant locale. For that I apologize, Lavinia; you’ll never find another quite so nice; in fact, the consensus here is that you’ll see no cobras at all. Still, if you are very fortunate, you may come across some ophidian friend, and you’d need a nice place to house it.

Seriously, I am very glad that Lavinia is on the way. A.U. cannot afford to lose that Fulbright position, & the people here really need new insights into conflict resolution. So, were it in my power to Canonize, I would name Lavinia one of the Saints.

Sinner Redeemed. Archie Carr finished college with a Bachelor’s in English Lit, but in graduate school he got religion & switched to zoology. After sojourns in southern Africa and in the Caribbean, Dr. Carr returned to his native Florida. And over the years he became a sort of patron-saint for Southern herpetologists—partly because he could apprehend nature with amazing insight and partly (I admit) because some English teacher had shown him how to write so darn well. Archie Carr loved all things living (on his deathbed he asked a friend of mine to sneak a Short-tailed Snake into his hospital room), but he had a special fondness for turtles and frogs. I think Archie liked turtles because they endure. And he flat-out said that he liked frogs because they know the secret of life—which is to gather with friends on warm, rainy nights, thereupon to sing about the general joy of living & the particular hope of sex.

I don’t know how many frog species live on the Africa University campus. Presumably the total is between 16 (the number I’ve observed thus far) and 39 (the max that Alan Channing [2001] considers possible for Manicaland Province). I do know that A.U.’s anuran fauna is highly diverse (we have eight Families here; that’s about like the entire USA, which is a bit bigger than our 600 hectares), and I do know that virtually all species are rain-dependent.

Rain, and frogs, should not be taken for granted in southern Africa. In wintertime, you typically don’t see either one, and if you do, the vision is fleeting & pretty much irrelevant. But during September the cold abates, and in October the days are actually warm (= hot, if you’re a Yankee). November, as I have suggested, is for Old Mutare the month of Maybe. During November the southward progression of the solar equator gives us more daylight, more input of radiant energy that can heat the air and cause it to rise. Rising air, pushed ever higher by still-warmer air beneath it, begins to cool, and as the air cools to its dewpoint, water-vapor within it begins to condense. When the condensing droplets reach a critical size, they fall to earth—as convective precipitation, summer rain, the Rain that gives life to Zimbabwe’s people and frogs.

As any Zimbabwean can tell you, in some years this miracle does not happen. Moisture-bearing air-masses fail to move down from the Equatorial North and fail to cross the Afro-Montane Highlands that shadow us from the Indian Ocean. Obviously, no amount of convective uplift can squeeze water from entirely dry air, so drought results. During drought-years Old Mutare becomes as dry as my statistics lectures: maize-plants shrivel before they bear, children go hungry, and A.U.’s frogs have nothing decent to sing about. But in a good year, summertime brings the rains to Old Mutare. Agricultural toil is substantially rewarded. Termites emerge in clouds, thick as water; young children catch them afly and eat them like popcorn. Pangolin and aardwolf haunt the margins of civilization. Church crowds sing with thanksgiving. And the frogs of Old Mutare go wild with a joy that would delight the heart of Archie Carr.

Of course, not all frogs are alike. Toads are the gamblers among our local species. It doesn’t take much to excite a congregation of toads; give ‘em a light October shower, and they’ll risk their eggs in some temporary pool, hoping that the tadpoles will at least be safe from aquatic predators. Ridged frogs and reed frogs demand a little more out of life. They’d like some assurance that their eggs will hatch before they dry, so these animals seek more permanent water such as intermittent streams and agricultural canals. Rhacophorids (= Afro-Asian treefrogs) and rubber-frogs are among the cautious ones, and if you listen for their singing on nights of modest rains, you might consider them puritanical in their breeding habits. But let the skies break open! Then the rhacophorids will ascend the trees that lean over dry ponds a-filling. There, in ménages of two to a dozen, they will stir their reproductive fluids together to construct foam-nests that will protect their eggs until the tadpoles can free-fall into the waters below. And the rubber-frogs, with their gaudy skins of UGa red and black? On a perfect night you can run your hand through the right water-course—and have a rubber-frog attempting to mate with each finger (& perhaps 2 with the thumb).

So, during the month when Americans celebrate Thanksgiving, this is the big miracle that I am praying for—the breaking open of the skies and the affirmation of Life by the frogs of Old Mutare. Oh bear my petition before the Almighty, Saint Archie Carr.

Saints and Labors, II

2007-11-07T02:49:00.000-08:00

It’s now November, the scariest month in Zimbabwe, and things have been slightly unquiet in Old Mutare since my return from the States. Our ag students are restive because they are covered up with tests—entomology earlier, curve-fitting yesterday, genetics Monday, production econ and plant physiology still to go. Meanwhile, the University has announced a mid-semester tuition increase, payable immediately, and food prices in our dining hall have tripled in the last two weeks. Because one of our busses was wrecked (only 1 fatality), transport to & from town is now a real bitch: pushing, shoving, and physical rudeness rule a Hobbesian waiting-line at the bus-stop. Vague rumors hint that the V.C. (= Vice Chancellor, equivalent to a

U.S.

university president) might resign. Elaborations suggest that my noble dean could replace him, but Prof Tagwira is not actively seeking the post. The dean of the Theology School is said to be less reticent; she gave me some leaves of spinach, presumably not in solicitation of my (irrelevant) support. Actually, the V.C. seems quite content to me, and I see no reason whatsoever to credit any of this speculation. I just think that nervousness generates gossip—and that people are nervous because it’s November.

To share our November disquietude, we have another VIM team on campus. These good folks are from Indiana & Ohio, and their ostensible mission is to dig a latrine. (I am not making this up.) More important to me, they brought the three laptop computers that Terry Fergusson had purchased for the Ag School. My dean was ecstatic about the computers (particularly about their price), thanking me so effusively that I was embarrassed to ask for repayment (but I did). Of course the problem of allocating the laptops will be, uh, interesting; several faculty members have eyed them with more lust than Jimmy Carter ever felt in his heart. I reckon that, because it’s now November, people are nervous about what blessings they do and do not receive, so perhaps a new laptop could be interpreted (a la Max Weber) as a sign of divine favor in a scary season.

In November it’s no surprise that exploitation of the campus’ natural resources is increasing. Yesterday I came across a new camp of 6 gold-prospectors on the second mountain. These folks had no place on the river and were hacking at a quartz vein on the dry hillside. On the near mountain my trail-camera snapped photos of two hunters (one with a rifle) and their seven dogs. In official (and legal) exploitation, our fields are been plowed & disked: they await either soya or maize or both; decisions will be based on factors of economy and weather.

As November begins, the general preoccupation of agricultural eastern Zimbabwe is rain. We’ve had a few teaser-clouds, drifting in from northern convections. And Wednesday, in response to higher humidity, a Natal puddle frog called in an Ag Building sewer-drain. Needless to say, he was captured, photographed, and released. Today the skies are crystal-clear again, the frog is silent, and farmers are apprehensive.

As November matures, ceremonial gourds will rattle in local church-services while the people pray for rain. If none falls before mid-month, some folks will climb the highest hills to tiny Zimbabwes (roughly = stone walls) and petition gods brought southward with the Bantu invasions. Meanwhile, the VIM teams will praise the Lord and enjoy the picture-perfect weather.

I have started writing this blog-entry on 2 November. (I definitely should be planning lectures about Analysis of Variance, but I don’t feel good enough to contemplate Latin squares and completely randomized designs.) Halloween has passed, uncelebrated: with November hard a-coming, ghosts here were not considered especially funny. All Saints’ Day, on the other hand, had more significance, at least to me. In my last blog I tried to honor a few present-day saints by name. But anybody with sense knows that the greatest saints are seldom specifically recognized. A mother pretends she’s full so that her kids will eat a bit more. A man gives a few kgs of mealy-meal to a stranger. A cook is up at 4AM to buy bread for people whom she scarcely knows. The host of such saints is countless, and each provides a window beyond the scariness of this immediate month. And so, to heck with November fears! Come rain or no, the saints will keep right on laboring, until, for all of us, “…hearts are brave, again, and arms are strong. Alleluia, alleluia!”

Saints and Laborers

2007-10-31T00:49:00.000-07:00

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.

Walk on the Wild Side

2007-10-16T04:39:00.000-07:00

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.

Quick Note from Wendy

2007-10-11T08:24:00.000-07:00

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

2007-10-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

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.

Missionary Position

2007-10-08T03:00:00.000-07:00

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.

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

2007-10-05T18:06:00.000-07:00

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.

Tommy Atkins' Goats

2007-10-01T04:49:00.000-07:00

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.

This Is As Close As I've Been to Sweden and Italy

2007-09-28T03:30:00.000-07:00

In Africa I have seen enormous public explosions of hope and joy on exactly two occasions. In both cases, the Republic of Moçambique has been involved. The first outpouring occurred in 1993. Living that (Southern) spring in Mutare City, I had occasion to inflict horrendously Italianized Portuguese on the “Blue Helmets” from Italy who comprised the UN peacekeeping force in Moçambique. These soldiers, seeking occasional R&R across the border in Zimbabwe, seemed hugely appreciative when I tried to thank them for their difficult service. They also indicated that, as ’93 ran toward its close, I should watch for something very special, and in the December of my departure, I saw it! Dozens of busses came east from the direction of Harare. All were overflowing with refugees: screaming, singing, waving, they hung out the windows and shouted their joy to the people of Zimbabwe. “War finished! We go home! Guerra acabou! Voltamos a Moçambique!” Each bus was bedecked with flags—taped across the front (scarcely allowing air-flow through the radiator), hanging down the sides, waved from the widows—beautiful blue and white flags, the flags of the United Nations, the flags of Jubilee. And at the head of the procession was the military escort for these thousands of returning refugees: one little jeep, three Italian “Blue Helmets,” two rifles, and a gigantic UN flag.[1]

In 1993 the worldly cynics doubted that peace would last or that Moçambique would even survive as a political entity. But, over 14 years, hope and joy have trumped pessimism yet again. Today Moçambique is still at peace, and the country enjoys perhaps the fastest-growing economy in the world. (Yes, I admit that percentage increases are particularly dramatic when one starts at near-zero; still, “Moçambique’s economic miracle” is an admirable achievement.)

On 24SEP07, the joy of 1993 was re-expressed in our university chapel (built, incidentally, by donations from South Korea, a nation saved by a UN expeditionary force). In September, Africa University celebrates Dag Hammarskjőld Day. Indeed, in today’s Zimbabwe, probably no white person (uh, granting Jesus “colored” status) is more revered than the second Secretary General of the United Nations. He is admired because of his shrewd military-political decisions; he is respected because of his unquestioned integrity, and he is loved because, on 12SEP61, he gave his life on a peacemaking mission in Africa.

And so, in today’s chapel, we stood to sing three national anthems: of Zimbabwe, of Moçambique, and of Sweden. The Swedish ambassador said a word of thanks. And then we were addressed by Joaquim Chissano, former President of Moçambique. The words of this famous man were predictable—“peace and development are two sides of the same coin”; no Dunlapian eloquence here—but their very predictability testified to their truth. And, more than his words, the presence of Chissano, a man who led his country along the path of reconciliation, honored the memory of Dag Hammarskjőld, and of his spiritual children—including three Italian soldiers, sharing a jeep and two rifles, who led a triumphal procession of joyful refugees back into the Moçambique whose anthem we sang today. “…[N]ossa terra gloriosa,” indeed!

[1] I need to be very careful how I write this. Those of you who k now me well realize that I’ve had a lifetime love affair with the United Nations. And in the spirit of this celebratory week, I wish to recognize the positive role that the UN has played in Africa. On the other hand, I must not undervalue the enormous sacrifices offered by the people of Moçambique during their long, complex struggle for independence.

. “Give Us this Day our Daily Fuel.”

2007-09-28T03:26:00.000-07:00

Overheard on the A.U. campus: “They say that, in the USA, farmers are fermenting their wheat into ethanol to use as petrol.”

In Zimbabwe every mother’s child is aware that southern Africa has suffered from a decade of near-continuous drought. Therefore, when the first heat of spring initiates convective activity along the afromontane highland, many anxious eyes turn toward the clouds that build over Moçambique. By late September, all of Zimbabwe’s farmers are thinking about early rains—and most of us on this campus are hoping that they will not come.

Here at Africa University, we raise winter wheat. Because of our troubles with electrical power, we could not pump enough water to irrigate at optimal levels, but the wheat crop still looks pretty darn good, and we should be able to harvest it before too long. In the meanwhile, however, we are holding our collective breaths. Our wheat, of course, is a short-stemmed “miracle” variety, and only a deluge of Noah-ian proportions would cause it to lodge (= fall over). Even a modest rain, however, could initiate some germination, on the stalk. If this should occur, our only likely buyer would be the national grain board, which pays a standard price of abot $41,000,000Z/tonne.

This would not be good for us, because this year we are greedy for wheat-money. Indeed, throughout the Southern Hemisphere, farmers with winter wheat are dreaming of riches—because the mega-producers in Australia have suffered a general failure. This catastrophe is of such magnitude that shockwaves are already being felt around the world. In the USA, for example, futures for December wheat are being quoted at over $9/bu. That is almost 250% of what Zimbabwe’s grain board would pay; therefore we’re hoping that our wheat stays dry so that it can be traded at a more, uh, international rate.[1]

Of course, given the national food-crisis, it is conceivable that Zimbabwe’s government could appropriate 2007’s best wheat and turn it into flour. But I consider this unlikely. If modern universities run on electricity, then modern nations run on diesel fuel, and this country’s access to diesel depends upon her balance of trade. Therefore, I suspect that, one way or another, much of Zimbabwe’s wheat will be exported into a richer world, where people who pray for daily bread actually expect to get it.

Folks, I have tried to think through this, uh, bid-ness, and to write it up so that the intertwined issues of rain, wheat, and dollars make some sense. But I know I’ve failed—and to tell the truth, I’m not too sorry about the failure. Who wants to understand a world in which a breadless country contemplates the export of her wheat? And for heaven’s sake don’t let me get started on the wheat à gasohol foolishness. If that rumor has any basis in fact, then I reckon this mysterious world has de-facto amended the Lord’s Prayer.

[1] Purchase of A.U.’s wheat by the grain board would probably not result in more bread for Zimbabwe. Grain with any appreciable percentage of germination is unsuitable for flour. It would make excellent animal fodder, and Zimbabwe is very short of meat. But currently the slaughter of cattle for local consumption is severely regulated—and any increase in beef production would almost certainly be used to address Zimbabwe’s adverse balance of trade.

Africa gives Ab the bird(s).

2007-09-28T03:24:00.000-07:00

I spent too much of last weekend thinking about trail cameras. I know that they are only tools, but I’ve been treating the blasted things as if they were encrusted with diamonds. Whenever I set a camera this year, I remember how much it cost and how much trouble it was to pack and how in

Zimbabwe

trail cameras are as scarce as hamburgers. I did not feel that way in the Year 2000, when I considered myself a wild & crazy, free-wheeling impresario of trail-camera deployment.The basic problem is that on the A.U. campus, human extractive activities have increased by an order of magnitude since I was last here. Nowadays every game-trail has also become a people-trail, frequented by desperate locals seeking firewood, medicinal plants, or animal protein. None of these folks would know what a trail camera was, but most would scarf up an expensive-looking apparatus of plastic & glass: maybe they could swap it for a scoop of sadza or a plate of beans. Therefore, rather than deploying my cameras on trails as intended, I’ve been forced to hide them in the middle of nowhere. Worse, I’ve had to monitor them almost daily, thereby leaving human scent that scares varmints already harassed to near extinction. Consequently, as you would expect, my success in getting T.C. pictures has been minimal. And despite all my precautions, Friday night I lost a camera.

This theft irritated me beyond reason. Back in the States I deal with comparable irritations by ingesting a few dozen Whopper Malted-Milk Balls. Here, however, lacking such a certain remedy, I needed to achieve perspective—and Africa sure-enough provided that! The day after my hidden camera was stolen, I was walking trails in a thick section of bush just to the north of the A.U. dairy farm. Shortly before dusk I heard a rattle of dry leaves and the distress call of a bird in pain. Of course I hoped to discover a snake or genet in the act of depredation, but I found instead a fine Swainson’s Francolin caught in a leg-snare. Without even thinking I caught up the bird and cut the monofilament line from around its leg. The francolin did not tarry to thank me, but as it escaped into the bush, I felt very good about myself—for about ten seconds. Then reality hit me: the bird would have been somebody’s dinner, here, in a world where animal protein is as scarce as, well, as scarce as trail cameras.

When we ignorant white boys try to apprehend a different world, we don’t always think as clearly as we should. We are surprised when desperate folks see a university’s wild campus as an exploitable resource rather than as a study-area. We don’t recognize the value of illegal cook-wood for a mother trying to stretch meager rations across children whose stomachs always hurt. We refuse to understand that a meal’s meat costs a Zimbabwean more labor-time than a digital trail-camera costs a Wofford teacher.

I am nowhere near the Ginocchioan level of Zen-Enlightenment , so my achievement of perspective did not entirely alleviate my white boy pissed-off-ness. Still, Africa often provides rewards commensurate with the irritations she inflicts. And, on the Sunday after the trail-camera’s loss, I discovered an eagle-owl’s nest, complete with an enormous pair of big-eyed owlets.

Spring Mammalogy Pre-Registration Quiz

2007-09-24T04:35:00.000-07:00

Quote of the week (at faculty meeting): “I tell you, he could not do it. And a university graduate. Can you imagine a university graduate who could not assemble a boom-sprayer for a tractor?” [Reply was a general chorus of “Shame. Shame.”]

Campus scene of the week (in dining hall): I’m in line behind some Angolan cutie, who’s dressed as if she thinks this is Brazil. She addresses an ancient Shona serving-woman, who frowns as if she thinks this is Rhodesia.

Angolan student: “I want more cheeeken theees day. You must giiive me at leeeast three pieeeces.”

Shona server, dumping three chicken feet onto student’s plate: “Next.”

Pre-requisite quiz for potential mammalogy students: Identify this:

For a person clever with historical connections, the back side of A.U.’s campus might be reminiscent of the San Francisco Valley circa 1849. In each case, one could observe a sufficiency of gold-panners. By and large, our panners today are the destitute of the destitute, gaunt skeletons who live in scrapes under the river-bank and sluice-clear tons of hand-dug gravels for maybe a buck’s worth of “color” each week. The panners are said to be desperados, who would commit murder for shoe-leather. But I have walked among these barefoot men, and the panners who do not run away speak pleasantly enough. (Thus, retaining two pair of boots and lots of money, I can write piously about feelings of guilt—which we Americans in Africa substitute for actions of justice).

One must pass through the valley of the panners if one is to reach A.U.’s most distant mountains, and that is the region I had chosen to explore. The most direct path leads beyond the soccer field through a burned savanna and past the round, thatched huts of folks whose affiliation with the University is somewhat tenuous. Then one descends steeply toward the Mutare River. The crossing-point is a two-log bridge hidden among palms and perennial broad-leaved trees. This lush oasis, within a winter landscape otherwise resembling Arizona (minus the cacti), reminds one that A.U. lies between the Tropics—and suggests the greenness that will return if the rains come. Ascending the far bank of the Mutare, one must negotiate the deep, concrete sluice-canal where machine-dug gravels were cleared, back when yellow gold and white money were more available. After the canal, one crosses a two-rut track that once led toward Moçambique. Entrance to this road from the Nyanga Highway is now blocked by barbed wire and security guards, and the road is little more than a path. But it is the clandestine supply route for the panners, and I presume that it’s also the route by which “color” begins its journey toward a world where gold signifies more and less than a barefoot man’s survival.

Across the old road, one enters a different world. Certainly a bit of firewood is occasionally collected, and one sees a few wind-blurred shoeprints along the game-trails; still, this is a place from which people are largely absent. Such was not always the case. Prior to Independence, A.U.’s far mountains were mined for gold by First World hard-rock techniques. Therefore, tunnels penetrate the mountains horizontally, and on the westernmost summit I found a ventilation-shaft that might, for all I know, emerge in Canada. (I tossed a rock—and listened in vain for the sound of its impact.) I like the current state of this distant world because I am not a “people person.” I prefer books to blabber, snakes to sermons, equations to Convocations—and turtles to pretty much anything else in the universe.

My objective in this back-campus wilderness was a particular mine. I’d saved the GPS coordinates from the Year 2000, so I found the place without difficulty. I knew from unmistakable spoor what lived in the shaft, and I wanted a picture, no matter what. So, with my Olympus 770 in one hand and a torch (= flashlight) in the other, I wiggled my way into the black tunnel. Beyond the collapsed entrance I could stand almost upright. The floor was sandy and dry, but the air carried a musky smell that raised goose-bumps on my neck. At about 30m in, I encountered a few bats. I’m reasonably sure they were Tadarida aegyptiaca, and a competent photographer (= Wayne VanDevender) would have managed pictures of their short faces and convoluted ears. A bit short of 50m, the entrance-shaft came to a “T” intersection: the left turn was blocked by a cave-in, but the right-hand tunnel was more or less open—and there were footprints on the floor!

I shall not burden you, dear readers, with details concerning my elevated pulse-rate or about other physiological indicators of my excitement. I’ll just say that—oh, my God, I’m too close; they’re charging! Aaaagggghhhh!

No, wait. I’m writing this whole story as if I were a hybrid of David Livingstone and Johnny Lane. Basically, I crossed the Mutare River. Although I tried to be polite, I scared some very poor gold-panners off their digs. I climbed a small, fine mountain and crawled into an old mine. As I tried to focus my camera with too little light, the mine’s two non-volant residents ran past me. And all I got was one quick snap of the defensive end of a retreating—well, if you can’t guess the varmint’s identity, please don’t sign up for Wofford mammalogy in the Northern spring of ‘Ought-Eight.

The Electricity of Sweet Surrender

2007-09-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

I think that these blog entries have become way too serious of late, for I have given insufficient emphasis to the good news. And we certainly have good news: electrical power has once more become a reality at A.U.—both in the Ag building and in my house. This is due, in part, to a sweet surrender. [Note: As always I admit to being an ignorant white boy, never fully “in the loop.” I think I have the following details right, but I could be in error.

A modern university runs on electricity. So long as AC power flows properly, batteries will recharge; computers will run; lab equipment will function; telephones and photocopiers will work; study-lights will burn; British tea will be brewed & served without excess inconvenience. Therefore, let teaching staff come or go; let students attend class or not; let food supplies abound or be depleted to the last plate of sadza: the infrastructure of a modern university will grind onward to the very edge of personnel-starvation if electricity is available.

Africa University strives to be modern in all things, so its founders took steps to ensure the uninterrupted supply of electricity. The most important of these steps was the construction of an on-campus substation that would be linked directly into the national power-grid and thereby free A.U. from all but the most catastrophic interruptions in service. The heart of the substation, of course, is an enormous transformer. According to rumor, the cost of this monster would embarrass a U.S. defense contractor, so the University prudently secured performance warrantees from both the transformer’s manufacturer and its installer. However, when the transformer died this winter, our warranties did us no good—because the manufacturer blamed installation problems while the installer blamed manufacturing defects. With Methodist zeal the University “lawyered up,” and we beat the manufacturer, who agreed to repair or replace the transformer. But there was a catch: we had to deliver the great beast, in its fully assembled state, to Harare. This was unaffordable by an order of magnitude, so the power crisis continued.

During the height of the legal wrangling, ZESA (the governmental electrical supply agency) sent a representative to examine the transformer. He declared, “We can fix it right where it stands, in one day.” When informed of this news, the manufacturer and the installer united: “The instant ZESA lays one finger on the transformer, both our warranties will be void, and the next time your substation crashes, you will really be screwed.” Well, ZESA had a ready answer for that threat. “We will maintain the transformer in perpetuity, but you will have to sell it to us—and thereafter we reserve the right to charge you rent on it, as we would on any of our other transformers.” At this point A.U. could not afford to worry about losing the chimera of electrical independence. However, few cognoscenti on this campus believed that a mere ZESA technician could resurrect the Sacred Transformer when engineers trained in America feared it was dead forever. Therefore, A.U. refused ZESA’s offer, again and again. Last Friday, however, driven by both desperation and hope, the Powers that Be finally surrendered. On Saturday a ZESA man showed up with a pocket full of tools, and by Sunday we had power. Indeed, the power has been so constant and so stable that even the VIM-installed stove and refrigerator in my house are working great.

I have told you folks the long Transmitter Saga for a reason. I want you to understand why I believe in this country, why, the international news media not withstanding, I am absolutely certain that Zimbabwe will prevail. I admit that things are complicated here these days. There’s too little food, too much inflation, too little diesel, too much confusion. Nobody yet knows exactly what to do about 2007’s problems, and the optimism so visible in 1993 is now more difficult to detect. But if you look hard, you will see a thousand small proofs that the spirit of hope and triumph is still very much alive—because, long-term, these people just can’t be beat. A fire may threaten the house, but a barefoot girl will run for water until the blaze is extinguished. Birds or mice may get into the wheat, but somebody will come to chase ‘em away—and be there, 24-7. Cooking oil may be “finished,” but Momma will raise extra peanuts and invent new recipes.

So this is the truth. As the Bible promises, lights will continue to shine in Zimbabwe’s darkness. And if some lights are overcome for a little while, and if the American PhD engineers say they cannot be rekindled, a ZESA man will eventually show up with a couple of hand-tools, and your freaking transformer will get fixed. Dum spiro spero; surrender to the hope that is in your heart.

House That Love Built

2007-09-17T05:47:00.000-07:00

House that Love Built

I like my house very much, but it takes some getting used to. That’s to be expected because the place was constructed by a succession of VIM teams, none of which was over-burdened with professional building contractors. I’d watched the floor-plan staked out in 1993, and I’d seen the edifice standing almost complete in 1995. In 2000, it was temporarily occupied (by a choirmaster, I think), and in 2007, I have moved in. The place has 3 bedrooms, two baths, a carport, a kitchen, a patio, a sitting room, and a dining room complete with fireplace and a cathedral ceiling. The beds are modest, but the furniture is not. Massive, ornate, and covered with green velvet, the chairs and sofa look somehow familiar—though I’ve never actually been in a New Orleans whorehouse. The house has running water more than 60% of the time. The cold water is pure and delightfully cool; the hot water does get hot, apparently through some gas-powered apparatus that I have not figured out. The VIM teams installed a decent stove and an extremely nice refrigerator. Unfortunately, both of these ultra-modern appliances are electrical, and, even during those hours when electricity has been available (less than 25% during the 10 days I’ve been in residence), the current has not been sufficient for either appliance to function. I also had ants, but I poisoned them. I estimate the casualty figures at 15-25 thousand, and I still feel slightly guilty about this holocaust. The house temperature is perfect during the day; nights are a bit chilly, but blankets have been provided in abundance. I have candles, but, Abe Lincoln stories not withstanding, I have not found study by candlelight to be effective. Therefore, because the sun sets early in late-winter Zimbabwe, I’ve had some early-to-bed nights.

Thursday night, however, I stayed up a bit later than usual. Some persons of highly questionable parentage set fire to the residential part of campus in three areas. The houses of academic staff were never in serious danger, but the tiny, thatch-roofed shacks of some maintenance and service workers were definitely under threat. So, I spent a few hours holding a fire-line that paralleled the western margin of the athletic fields and then ran down a narrow path towards the settling-pond reservoir. The intrepid defenders on this blaze numbered from four to eight, depending largely on fatigue. We had one shovel and some broken branches.

Carrying a green plastic bucket, a little girl of about eleven ran back and forth between the fire and the nearest waterpoint. We’d dip a shirt into the bucket and then beat at the fire with it. Mostly, of course, we back-fired, igniting numerous small, controllable blazes along our defense-line and letting them burn toward the big fire. It was hot work: sweaty black faces reflect firelight in rich tones of orange and red. Before we whipped our fire, my own face was plenty black too, and I was spitting soot for more than a day. One of the two other fires was defeated by a somewhat larger team. The third fire, set among eucalyptus (and ask me if I care whether all those darn exotics burn to cinders!) died on its own accord. Anyhow, soon-come-morning, and I had to drag my white posterior to my 0800 statistics class—thereby discovering that firefighting is not the optimal vocation for somebody with a bad back.

But let me return to my more typical daily routine. And, since I’ve already written too much about my classes, I’ll describe meals. Once a day, weekdays, I can eat in the A.U. cafeteria. This is a neat experience. Two serving lines exist; they are segregated by gender, and a sign explains that segregation: “Because of excess pushing and shoving, ladies will be in one queue and men in the other. We hope this will make the shoving more fair.” I have not noticed any shoving at all, but students do sneak into the lines, and this is sometimes greeted with disapprobation. Great mounds of food are available; it is mostly very cheap sadza or less cheap rice; expensive meat can often be had as well. (Meat servings are not enormous. For example, if “fried chicken” is on the menu, you’ll get a humorous piece if you’re lucky, a radius-ulna piece if you’re not.) For meals when I don’t hit the cafeteria, I’m on the local economy—and it’s a health-nut’s paradise! Tomatoes, bananas, onions, and greens are available ad lib., at bargain prices. I am extremely fond of sun-ripened tomatoes, so I fix a sort of gazpacho: tomatoes and onions, diced with a touch of peanut butter, a cc of fresh ginger, a teaspoon of honey, and a generous shaking of hotsauce. It’s great, for an adult American. On the other hand, for the locals, the “food issue” is more than an entertaining inconvenience. Old folks pray in vain for daily bread, and one sees far too many children with silent faces and hollow eyes.

Zimbabwe’s food shortage was on my mind when I met the most recent VIM team. This fresh-faced corps consisted of half a dozen women plus one man. All were dressed in what I’ll call “church safari,” which is probably sold by Banana Republic & allows one to meet, with equal aplomb, either pastors or pachyderms. For anybody who’d talk to them, these VIM-ers were as friendly as puppies, so I grinned, thickened my South Carolina accent, and asked why they’d come to Zimbabwe. Smiling radiantly, the leader replied, “We hope that we will be able to paint a pastor’s house.” Now Zimbabwe may lack bread and meat, but it has a couple of million unemployed citizens ready, willing, and able to paint pastors’ houses. Since the median Zimbabwean income has dropped below $1US per day, some of these local folks might paint at least part of a house for the price (about $2-$3 thousand U.S.) of an air ticket from the States.

But whom am I kidding? Let’s say that I’d set aside the money I’m spending on lab equipment this semester, and let’s say that I’d stayed in Spartanburg, drawing my Wofford salary, but willing to give it away. That kind of money, donated to UMCOR, could have fed a regiment of hungry kids—or painted half the pastors’ houses in all of Manicaland!

In other words, few of us are really smart about how to address big problems, and I know that even my more generous impulses are inextricably tied to considerations of vanity & self. (I mean, I might work a semester or two in Zimbabwe, but Richard Nixon would need ice-skates before I’d serve one volunteer-day in a biome that lacked turtles and frogs.) So, is there any good at all in my being here?

I was contemplating exactly that question during a five-hour-and-fifteen-minutes ag faculty meeting last Friday. Absorbed in considerations of self, I didn’t realize until almost too late that I was being introduced, again. Dean Tagwira, a leader of almost Maultsbian saintliness, was calling my name. “We all want to greet Professor Abercrombie and thank him….”

For what, I wondered: for computer equipment, for half-ass teaching a semi-needed class, for books about wildlife management? For what?

“…to greet Professor Abercrombie and thank him—for coming home. So, our friend, we welcome you home.”

And what is home but a house that love built? So, I do like my house very much, and I shall always be grateful to those crazy VIM-ers who built it.

Silence

2007-09-14T05:38:00.000-07:00

Quote of the week: “You are from South Carolina? That is where all American bishops are from.” [Well, lots of ‘em, and some sons of bishops too….]

I’m writing this not because I am your responsible, adult, thoughtful Voice-out-of-Africa but because I am upset. Please read with thoughts of charity towards the writer. That is:

RANT MODE ON.

Some days ago, in a white Dodge minivan traveling from York County to Spartanburg, a very young girl asked her mother to explain about death. The mother, of course, could not immediately formulate a perfect response and said something about the dead being with God. To this the daughter replied, “I don’t want them to be with God; I want them to be with me.” Give the mother points for trying & the kid points for honesty.

Within Shona culture, questions about death may be even more difficult to address because the very word is seldom spoken. During a wedding that I attended here, the ceremony was delayed for almost half an hour because the minister was committed to the U.Meth liturgy and the bride-to-be was a decent Shona girl.

Preacher: “But my Sister, you must say ‘Til death do us part.’”

Miss X: “That I will not do; to say it is to bring it.”

The impasse was finally by-passed by mumbling, and the couple are currently living—dare I say it?—happily ever after. Anyhow, I think I might have some Shona blood in me; death is a topic about which I prefer not to speak. Nevertheless….

Some days ago, in a rusty Nissan pickup traveling from Mutare City to A.U., the unspeakable occurred. The antecedents of this event are complex, but let me begin with the basic story. Daniel Nzengy’a, my wildlife colleague, sent three students into town to buy equipment for upcoming fieldwork. (It was equipment that I should have brought to Africa with me, but I didn’t think I had the room in my luggage.) I have hinted at the difficulties we’re having in transport, but you should inflate my modest descriptions by an order of magnitude. Anyhow, the three wildlife students grabbed a friend, and the four kids somehow got a ride to Mutare. That went fine. After diligent search, they found some of the equipment; so that was good too. Then they caught a ride back toward campus—as I had done the previous day, in the back of a pickup. On a curve about 3km south of A.U., the pickup met a log-truck transporting salvage saw-timber from Nyanga. The log truck was cheating the curve, fast, and when it swerved to adjust, it threw a log against the pickup. Two of the wildlife students were uninjured. The friend was killed, his head smashed sort of like an overripe pumpkin. The other wildlife student took a glancing blow against the side of his head. He was rushed to Mutare General. He didn’t hurt so very much at first, but he was confused and had trouble focusing his eyes. The radiologist couldn’t get good shots, and, under the usual triage pressures, he decided to dismiss the boy (named Elvis; I should at least call his Christian name). Monday morning Elvis was unable to stay awake, even when people were talking to him. So he was taken to Harare; more I do not currently know. Those are the facts, on the surface.

Now it is Tuesday, and I’m currently blessed with two rare luxuries: (1) I have time for contemplation, and (2) I am able to run my laptop on AC-power. In this state of, uh, bliss, I am wondering about truths that might underlie the surface facts of the weekend’s tragedy. Eventually I’ll be sad about all this, but for now, I’m mad, and I’d like to blame somebody! My first inclination is to blame God: I usually do, and thus far He or She has shown remarkable patience at the abuse I’ve hurled so often in Her/His direction. My Wofford colleague, A.K. Anderson, can lecture learnedly about the problem of evil. But my own feelings are best expressed by a close paraphrase of Saint Dan Maultsby’s theodicy: “I know that if I were God, I’d screw up a lot, but I tell you one thing: instead of making more and more people, I’d try to take better care of the ones I already had.” But, alas, Dan Maultsby is not God, so the best we U.Meths and South Carolinians can do is to recommit ourselves to hope. Therefore I declare it. I hope there is a God, and I hope God is not exactly with us (a God-with-us should have saved those boys; you can bet your soul that Dan Maultsby would have) but is way in front of us, hastening us toward some kingdom where African kids do not get killed in the backs of Nagasaki nut-bucket pickup trucks. Anyhow, a decent God would be sadder than all the rest of us, and so, on this spring day of perfect beauty, let’s graciously let Him/Her off the hook.

But if I can’t blame God, where, then, should I focus my anger? Well, let me review some data. There’s too much saw-timber in Nyanga; there’s too little transport from Mutare; there’s one very wrong place on the road between them. Two vehicles leave the two distant towns and meet in exactly that wrong place. Therefore, maybe I could blame coincidence. And so, was the tragedy coincidence? You bet! It was coincidence in the exact, literal sense, like one of those co-incidence word-problems in high school math.

My father was a serious student of coincidence. “Big Ab” (Class of 1936) was steeped in the Old Wofford tradition of excessive modesty: he usually presented himself as not quite smart enough, not quite brave enough, not quite good enough…. However, my father was not overly modest about his skill at his vocation, and he would privately admit to being one of the best airplane pilots who ever lived. “Good flying,” he said, “is about the management of coincidence, because coincidence is what kills people—and because coincidence is usually just another word for bad flying. So if you’re going to fly responsibly, you minimize coincidence by P⁷: proper prior preparation prevents piss-poor performance.” Thus I ask: in the case at hand, who performed poorly.

First of all, I did. I could have prioritized my packing differently and brought the needed field equipment with me. More important, I trusted marginally interested third parties to determine whether VIM teams would be coming my way. (Thus far I’ve met with two, and either could have toted some of my equipment.) Making the proper enquiries was my job, and I should have done it for myself. And if students were to be tasked with an extra Mutare-journey during a time of “transport blues,” then I could have lectured them about safety, and I could have set a better example myself. Or I could have traveled to town and used my own money to buy the equipment. I forgot P⁷; I promise to try harder, but I think I’m going to feel pretty bad for a while.

Second, an isolated town the size of Charleston (Mutare only appears to be the size of Cowpens) should have modern medical-imaging equipment and radiologists available to run it. I have no idea how this problem could be addressed. But I tell you this: if such equipment and personnel were needed in Iraq, a C-17 would be wheels-up out of Charleston within a dozen hours. That is as it should be, and I do not regret the taxes rendered so that Caesar can work such miracles for his people at war. But I do wonder what we might render unto UMCOR to support God’s people at peace.

Third, the U.Meths have decided (wisely, I think) to support a university located > 20km from Mutare. And Mutare is a city to which, for a thousand reasons, the university must be closely linked. Perhaps, then, the church should think creatively about how that link is to be maintained. Because of “transport blues,” students miss labs, teachers miss classes, food-service personnel are stranded off-campus, numerous folks have to hitchhike, and one person was killed. And that’s in just the past week. Look here: several big NGO’s and many individual U.Meth congregations (some of them by no means wealthy) have generously donated cars and trucks to Africa University. But little thought was given to the maintenance of these vehicles, so time and constant use have taken their toll. The University has recently employed a highly competent mechanic, but he has almost no spare parts, and my daddy would not have deigned to change a sparkplug with the tools at his disposal. So, how about this wild-hair solution? A technically skilled diagnostic mechanic comes from the USA for one month. He or she evaluates the A.U. motor-fleet, its usage, and its maintenance requirements. Upon return to the States, this scout-mechanic organizes the ultimate VIM team. A pit crew of a dozen rednecks, preferably from South Carolina, descends upon Old Mutare. They arrive wearing NASCAR windbreakers and “Jacks for Jesus” ball-caps; in their luggage each VIM-er brings a toothbrush and a change of underwear—plus the tools, parts, and manuals suggested by the scout-mechanic. Are you worried about the response of Customs in Harare? I have ideas about how to address this issue; they may even be legal. Are you worried about the money for this project? I’d pay cheapest-airfare for the scout-mechanic, and, if Dale Jr. won’t put an A.U. sponsor-sticker on his race-car (Lord, how the money would roll in), the VIM team could be self-financing. Are you worried about project-sustainability over the years? Start with South Carolina. Let other NASCAR-Rebel States send teams, at six-month intervals, and after five years South Carolina will be ready again. Are you worried about insulting the local auto-fixers? I have discussed this VIM-project with A.U.’s new chief mechanic, and he said it would be the answer to his prayers. Yes, I admit that my idea is a bit silly, and I’d like to hear a better one.

OK, friends back home, I’ve ranted long enough. I don’t understand things here as well as I pretend to. I’m probably misinterpreting the facts and overstating the problems in this neck of the woods. And I realize that my “solutions” are mostly pipe-dreams (speaking of which, A.U.’s irrigation-infrastructure could use some donations too…). I don’t intend to criticize others; everybody else is working & trying much harder & smarter than I am. Attribute this essay to sadness—and to the fact that I’m as irritable as a black racer that spent a long winter under wet plywood. (Perhaps you would be irritable too if you belatedly discovered that hundreds of tiny ants had invaded your last stock of clean underwear.) If conditions permit, next time I’ll write about my house: that’s not a serious subject, and I think you may find it entertaining.

RANT MODE OFF.

Shaken, Not Stirred

2007-09-10T06:56:00.000-07:00

I come from the branch of Methodists who believe that Jesus turned water into Welch’s Grape Juice for the marriage at Cana. Our ignorance about spirituous liquors is profound, and on Jeopardy, even the rednecks amongst us select the “Opera” category ahead of “Potent Potables.” Nevertheless, we do watch movies, and we are all aware that James Bond prefers his martinis to be “shaken, not stirred.” Now, dearly belovéd, I want to offer two over-generalizations about Americans in Africa. (1) The typical visitor to this Continent is a self-styled Eco-Tourist, who has come to see charismatic megavertebrates [= elephants and lions, oh my!]. (2) On a more local scale, the typical visitor to Africa University is an Evango-Tourist, who has come to talk (and talk…) about Jesus and to have her or his heart gently stirred by the warmth of multi-cultural godliness. In my own conceits I defy both stereotypes: I have come to chase frogs. And in Africa, inevitably, my heart is shaken, not stirred. Of this I offer an example.

Miracle in Nyanga. Daniel Nzengy’a, my closest colleague in the Faculty of Agriculture, had arranged for the two of us to visit Nyanga National Park last Thursday. This was kind of a last minute deal, but some weekend transport had become available, so Daniel and I went to preview a Saturday fieldtrip for our Natural Resources students. For reasons that should become obvious, the Saturday fieldtrip could not take place. Still, the Thursday venture was, shall I say, interesting.

I was excited from the moment we hit the road—not because Nyanga is my favorite Park (too high and too cold) but because the Chief Warden and Park Ecologist was one of my Year 2000 wildlife students. Nyanga is only about 100km north of A.U., and our journey was entirely routine until we crossed the Park boundary—to discover that everything had been burned from the border-fence to the horizon. At the entrance gate we inquired about Chief Ranger Zara (my former student) and were told by a less than communicative guard that he was not in his office. Undeterred, we thanked the sullen gate-guard and drove to the Zaras’ residence. A Park employee, red-eyed from smoke and lack of sleep, explained that the Chief Warden had been injured and should not be disturbed. Daniel and I apologized and were about to leave when Mr. Zara, assisted by his wife, made his way to the kitchen door and slumped into a chair that his daughter had brought for him. His legs were newly scarred, his head was bandaged in bloody gauze, and his eyes had the “thousand-yard stare” of man who had seen too much in recent days.

I guess the story should have been predictable. The previous week, on the night when I’d watched the flames at Old Mutare, men from Nyanga Village had set fire to the Park. The reasons for this destructive act are unclear: perhaps the perpetrators were striking at the nearest symbol of Government, or maybe they were simply overloaded by the Disaster that their lives had become. Whatever their motives, the arsonists were clever enough to select a secluded area with an enormous fuel load, so by the time the fire was discovered, it had become a monster. (Those of you who have fought serious wildfires will understand this at a visceral level.)

On Wednesday, Chief Ranger Zara and his crew had chain-sawed and backfired a sector of pines, and by Wednesday night they were trying to defend a line extending eastward from Old Circular Drive. The crisis came around midnight: it seemed that the line might hold, so Zara took the big lorry [= truck] and went after his last reinforcements back at Park HQ. He was driving at breakneck speed when the steering-linkage failed. (That’s what happens when you try too hard for too long with too few repair-parts.) The crash was in a low defile, so Zara’s radio had no reach, and he lay in the wreckage for hours. Finally discovered, he was rushed to the nearest emergency room, Nyanga Station, where he was examined and received about three dozen stitches before he was bandaged up and discharged. I did not need to ask why Zara was sent home so quickly; in these days of shortages, you may be treated at a hospital or clinic, but if you recover, it will be at home, where someone might have time to care for you.

I looked at Zara’s face. Clearly he was hurting: sweat had beaded on the exposed line of his forehead, though the day was cool. “Pain,” I asked, “what did they give you for pain?” Zara touched a bandage on his face and examined his fingers for blood. “Fortunately,” he said, “the doctor was a competent radiologist. He determined that I had no internal injuries, so I could have painkillers both before and after the stitches.” Because almost-doctor Elizabeth Norman has trained me to ask specific questions, I pressed on. “What exactly did they give you for pain?” Zara sighed at the white-boy question. “They gave me the only thing they had,” he said. “They gave me aspirin.”

At this juncture Daniel suggested that we should leave, but Zara would not hear of it. “I have to tell Prof [= Ab] about the error that he made. Do you remember lecturing to us about ungulates that should not be released in Parks like this one?”

I admitted that I remembered. Back in 2000, I had expressed to Zara and his classmates my American-wildlifer’s prejudice against introducing non-native species into protected areas. And Daniel had already informed me that the Park had been stocked with zebra and wildebeest, two species not definitively known to have occurred naturally in the Nyanga area.

“Well,” Zara said, “an ecosystem may be like a broken lorry. If we cannot acquire the correct parts, maybe we repair with what we can get. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it does not.” Zara touched his bandages again, perhaps for emphasis. Then he continued. “In this case, your unwanted beasts have worked a miracle at Nyanga. What is the biggest, ecologically most significant mammal that has been absent from this region for more than a hundred years?”

I shook my head. Elephants had never lived as high as Nyanga, and people were not absent, had not been absent for five hundred years. Therefore, the question could have only one answer. But that answer, though it would shake my heart with joy, made no sense; it had been rendered impossible by a century of wanton killing and by the destruction of the highlands ecosystem.

“Yes, Prof—” Zara smiled, though clearly the gesture caused pain “—they came in the night, perhaps from Moçambique, and now we have four groups of them, each with a male and females.”

So this is the miracle in Nyanga. Ecologist Zara, unable to reconstruct the ecosystem with original parts, had rebuilt the critical trophic level with the best available substitutes. And then, to a degree, Africa had healed herself. Lions—freaking lions, by the grace of God—had returned to the Nyanga Highlands.

A.U.’s Southern Scene, or Quintessential Cuisine at 18o 54’ South Latitude[1]

2007-09-05T02:49:00.000-07:00

I’ve been looking for silver linings behind the storm-clouds of Zimbabwe’s current economy, and I have found a bright one. First I shall define the typical meal in this country, and then I’ll describe a hard-times improvement that should be in every Sandlapper’s cookbook. When a Zimbabwean thinks of a real meal, she or he wants three things: sadza, meat, and vegetables. Sadza is like grits on Viagra: you know, exactly the same old thing but made a bit stiffer. Meat in southern Africa means beef; here it’s boiled in a tomato sauce and served in portions of 3-5 cubes, maybe a little bigger than gaming dice. Vegetables will be something like mustard greens or collards, stir-fried. For the middle class (= endangered species; see below), the vegetables are fried in maize- (= corn-) oil or maybe sunflower-oil. But sunflowers have always been a minor crop, and repeated droughts have created maize shortages. Without a reliable supply of raw materials, the country’s only cooking-oil mill could not justify its connection to the ailing electrical-power grid, so it was closed. Such a culinary disaster would have defeated a lesser people, but Zimbabwe’s rural poor have risen to the occasion. Nowadays, at 18^o 54’ South Latitude, Momma will grow a few peanuts in her garden—and grind them into butter for stir-cooking her vegetables. So, you may be really southern if you eat your collards fried in home-ground peanut butter. (I’m sure that the good President Mugabe would sanction the substitution grits for sadza, and I’ll request his dispensation to use Peter Pan instead of home-ground. For West Floridians, armadillo may replace beef.)

The collards in peanut butter are really good. Otherwise, however, there’s little to recommend Zimbabwe’s current economic situation. In an earlier note I bemoaned my struggles with inflation. For me it’s a minor and temporary inconvenience. But consider folks who once comprised Zimbabwe’s middle class, the economic backbone of a nation that, back in the ‘90’s, was “going somewhere.” In some ways the essence of a productive middle class is to envision a better future and to save for it. And when I first worked in Zimbabwe, almost everybody tried to squirrel away at least a little money. Over just the past 5 years, however, by some accounting, Zimbabwe’s inflation has devalued savings by 99.99995%.[2] Now, think about the related issues of education and fuel. This week Zimbabwe’s elementary schools re-opened after the long winter vacation. Parents are legally obligated to keep their children in elementary school, and middle-class parents try to do it, no matter what. School-fees are not oppressive (unless one elects to send a kid to what we’d call a private school), but in hard times no expense is welcome in a household without savings. Furthermore, schoolchildren must wear uniforms, and many that fit marginally in June have been outgrown over the long vacation. It’s another expense. To make matters much worse, this year the government has virtually no diesel fuel to run its school busses, so children who could ride last June will be forced to walk—much too far, flirting with darkness mornings or evenings or both. (Or the kids will have to carpool by the dozens in private vehicles that are seldom reliable and often unsafe). Finally, consider the teachers, who are paid the equivalent of one or two $US per day. Many (male) teachers work all night as security guards. (Don’t you bet that makes for a stellar classroom performance?) Others have fled to South Africa, where students are said to be “cheekier,” but the pay is a whole lot better. And, most recently, school districts in the UK (particularly London) have been enticing Zimbabwe’s elementary school teachers into a world where the winters and the currency are both as hard as—well, as hard as cold sadza. So, this week some children have struggled their way to classrooms without instructors. And one wonders how, with no education, these kids will face the future.

These and other frustrations (mostly undetected by this ignorant white boy) have elevated the general level of tension among Zimbabweans. At the national University in Harare, student unrest simmers—and occasionally boils over into acts of destruction (thus far expressed against property rather than people). In the countryside, people burn the grasslands and forests. This burning reflects to some degree long-standing traditions of agricultural and rangeland management. Almost all tree-species native to this area are fire-tolerant, and the long-term ecological effects are similar to those of burning a South Carolina longleaf-pine savanna. But this year, in the darkness of electrical power failure, virtually every mountain within a thousand square kilometers has been torched.[3] I asked one English-speaking man about the fires, and he said, “Mice. We burn to get mice for meat.” Certainly meat-hunger is part of the deal, but I sense that more is involved. Of course I’m way outside of the Zimbabwean culture, and of course I’ll never get really deep into the local frustrations—note that I did not write “despairs”—of spring, 2007. So I could be wrong about all this. Besides, everybody tells me, “If good rains come on time this year, everything will be all right.”

Meanwhile, I’m still having fun. But right now I wouldn’t object to a nice, fat mouse, stir-fried with greens in peanut butter.

[1] Outsiders will please forgive the Wofford in-jokes. And everybody please excuse three footnotes; I shan’t use them habitually.

[2] This assumes that savings were invested at a rate that would have compensated for inflation in the USA. Interest rates in Zimbabwe were actually somewhat higher, so you might knock a “9” or two out of the devaluation-factor.

[3] Up to now, no human lives have been lost—but far too many houses have been destroyed.

Or, Can Some American-Presidential Candidate Fix This?

2007-09-03T06:52:00.000-07:00

I think I could have crunched the numbers OK, but otherwise I’d have made a wretched economist. Money just doesn’t seem real to me, perhaps because its “energies” appear to escape the laws of thermodynamics. Friends have tried to educate me about the nature of money as an information-bearer. For example, late one night in South Texas, a herpetologist explained economics to me this way: “Money is like a frog’s advertisement-call. It says, ‘Hey, come have sex with me.’ If too many other males are calling, and if there aren’t enough females, then you have to call louder, and you still may not get what you want.” But for me this education-by-simile did not take; I just kept on thinking about frogs and sex.

Money in Zimbabwe is particularly hard to understand these days. Inflation is beyond serious, and stated prices don’t mean a whole lot because different people drop different numbers of zeros in different situations. Therefore, “dis t’ing cost you twenty” can mean $20,000Z or $200,000Z or $2,000,000Z or $20,000,000, or even $200,000,000Z. (Oh, I almost forgot: the government officially dropped three zeros a while back, so if the speaker is talking of the old system—well, he is probably a frog with no hope of progeny anyhow.)

Now the official rate of exchange is $250Z/$1US. (For now let’s forget the old money.) But if you swap your Dead Presidents for that, you might as well hop away from the pond. I changed some money last Tuesday, receiving $200,000Z/$1US. Then, Friday, a gringa fresh from the States got $300,000Z/$1US. Neither she nor I nor the exchanger could say whether she got a better deal or whether it was just inflation. Anyhow, the biggest bill in circulation is $200,000Z, and that denomination is still rare. So if you go to change $100US, you’ll be needing a serious tote-sack to carry your $$Z. (Of course if the CID catches you operating in this “parallel market,” then your money worries are over, because you will become a non-paying guest of the State.)

Anyhow, with zeros dropping like flies, it does not pay to have a savings account; rather, you should spend your cash as rapidly as possible. But what you going to buy? On Friday I tried to purchase 20 AA batteries to run some GPS receivers for a field exercise. I eventually got 16, but I had to find a merchant who (a) had batteries and (b) was willing to violate all sorts of Zimbabwean laws against battery-hoarding. (If I’m not careful, I’m going to be back on the Group W Bench….)

Oh, sixteen AA batteries weight substantially less than the money I paid for them, so I returned to campus with a lighter spring in my step. And it's almost spring here; the birds are already singing. I'm sorry for you folks headed into the dismal seasons!

Hey, Hillary, Fix This!

2007-09-03T06:51:00.000-07:00

In my last installment I mentioned one Yalie who is President, so I decided to open this essay by mentioning another Yalie who wants that same job—and who claims to have ideas about how healthcare can be improved. During a previous trip to Zimbabwe, I wrote Ms. Clinton, a Methodist, and invited her to visit Africa University. She did not reply (her loss), but if she had come, she could have observed healthcare problems with both familiar and unfamiliar stripes. Unlike Ms. Clinton, when it comes to healthcare I do not speak as one who has authority. I report only what I am told, and I could easily be very wrong. Furthermore, here in

Zimbabwe

most of my sources are academics. Clearly that fact should make you take my words with two grains of salt.

In Zimbabwe healthcare is a legal right of citizenry. In theory, you can walk into a hospital and see a doctor for about the price of a Hardee’s Thickburger. (Deno, you can see where my mind is.) In practice, however, there are almost no doctors to be seen. This shortage is not, primarily, a function of the nation’s educational system. The Brits were social snobs and frightful racists, but they did lay the foundations for a decent educational infrastructure. The Rhodesians built upon this foundation (mostly for whites, of course, but that would change) and created a first-class university. Since the Revolution, Zimbabwe has prized education over any other public goal. So, yes, you can become a well-educated doctor in Zimbabwe. But in recent years few locally educated physicians or surgeons have chosen to remain in this country. Some ran because of the money or because they did not want to “waste” their first-rate education in a perceived Third-World backwater. Others left because they could not face soaring patient loads, declining access to First-World drugs, and OR-desperation reminiscent of a MASH at Pork Chop Hill. I do not judge the motivations behind Zimbabwe’s doctor-flight; nor would I suggest any long-term solution. I do know that, for now, a public-service model is crashing. And, for now, neither will a private-enterprise model succeed. The median income in Zimbabwe has dropped to roughly $1US/day; that does not buy a whole lot of modern healthcare.

The current doctor-shortage is an example of the bad news, of things that are going very wrong. But we South Carolinians are officially enjoined to hope so long as we breathe, and therefore I shall list five small reasons for continued optimism.

(1) For reasons of patriotism, conscience, or down-right obstinacy, many doctors and other healthcare professionals do elect to stay in Zimbabwe. Maybe they agree with my grandfather, a Depression-era physician in rural South Carolina: “For a real doctor, the hard times are the good times.”

(2) Under a new national policy, most locally educated doctors will decide to stay for at least a while. When a young woman or man finishes medical school at the University of Zimbabwe, and when she or he completes the Zimbabwe equivalent of board certification, that person will be licensed to practice medicine. However, the University will not award a medical degree until the semi-graduate has served at least two years in-country. (No M.D.? No cushy job in Johannesburg or Houston.)

(3) Africa University has opened its Faculty (= College) of medicine and health sciences. This Faculty is now certified to offer the MSc. in Public Health. Theoretical training emphasizes models of community-delivered care, and aspirants complete their Masters fieldwork in areas where health services are desperately needed. The idea, based in Wesleyan theology, is that the methodical practice of good works will lead to a second blessing of perfected, lifelong commitment. To me, it sounds worth a try. [Note, Wofford pre-meds: If you’ve got some extra time and money, and if you don’t get into your favorite med school on your first try, maybe you should consider doing an MSc. in Public Health at A.U.: how you reckon that’d look on your next application? Later, all doctored up, you might return to this country and offer some real service.]

(4) A few volunteer ex-pat doctors are doing heroic work in Zimbabwe. With my usual naiveté, I initially assumed that these folks were seeking some sort of martyrdom. But maybe I was wrong. Here’s an approximate quote from a surgeon whom I interviewed on an earlier visit to this country. “I admit it. I was getting bored with American medicine. But here I get to be doctor again. Hey, this is fun. In fact, I haven’t had so much fun since I was a senior resident. I just hope I can figure out a way to get some more sleep.”

(5) As Paul Farmer told us last spring at Wofford, economically enforced medical triage can be a heart-breaking exercise. Still, it does seem to me that Zimbabwe is expending some of its public healthcare funds in appropriate manners. Anti-retroviral drugs are in short supply (except, of course, for megabucks in a highly lucrative black market). Government policy differentially shunts this supply toward pregnant women. And I am told that the rate of infant AIDS has dropped appreciably. Scarce healthcare resources are also concentrated for tuberculosis treatment, which is said to be free, available, and epidemiologically effective.

OK, folks, please remember that my commentary above is based on casual conversations, not real evidence. Now I really need to get back to work, and besides, I’m sure you’re tired of reading this long stuff. I wish you health for you—and good healthcare ideas for Hillary.

Not China

2007-08-31T06:02:00.000-07:00

Probably you folks know that Google (host of this blog) and Yahoo released user-files to Chinese security agents—with devastating results for dissidents who had been using those Internet services. For that reason somebody (yes, I mean you, Vivian) may be concerned that I could get into trouble for expressing my opinions about the state of “things” in Zimbabwe. But, for three reasons, I’m not worried. First, I’m not going to write much about politics. Second, this material is actually posted in the USA—and not by me—from a South Carolina state institution, where freedom of expression is flat-out guaranteed. And third, however tight things may be here, Zimbabwe is not China. This country was founded upon the premise that freedom and law actually matter. Although it may be a bit tarnished, that tradition definitely survives.

Here’s why I shan’t write much about politics. First of all, I’m an ex-pat Ag-school teacher whose main interests are snakes and frogs. Second—well, most of you know how I feel about George W. Bush. I mean, I resent a President who caroused his way through my alma mater and who shows no apparent sympathy for the environmental stewardship policies of the United Methodist Church (of which Mr. Bush and I are both members). Still, I would not want some ignorant foreigner, with less than two years on American soil, to trash our only President without doing even ten minutes of serious study. As an ignorant foreigner myself, enjoying Zimbabwe’s hospitality, I feel no inclination to insult my hosts by criticizing their country or its politics. The leadership of the current president has been hurtful to many individuals and has probably damaged this nation’s welfare, but the man clearly loves his country, and to blame all of Zimbabwe’s woes on him is pure foolishness. I have already admitted that I’m not very good at praying, but Mr. Mugabe has been in my prayers for quite some time. I would take no pleasure in his distress.

During my c. 15 months in Zimbabwe, I have not put in my “ten minutes of serious study” about national politics. Therefore, I have learned little about the country’s socio-political realities. Nevertheless, I have observed that news media in the Northern Hemisphere sometimes overstate Zimbabwe’s troubles. For example, I once read that HIV infects > 30% of Zimbabwe’s population. As a biologist who had glimpsed the age structure of Zimbabwe’s people, I fretted over this figure and wondered whether such an infection-rate was even possible. Eventually I was fortunate enough to meet the physician-scientist upon whose careful research this ridiculous number was supposedly based. He said that the actual data indicated that about 25% of women who had recently borne children were positive for HIV. Perhaps, my researcher-friend said, the overall infection rate was between 10% and 20%. That’s still horribly high, but it does not approach the one-in-three holocaust so publicly presented by the media. In my opinion, Zimbabwe’s level of social unrest may also be exaggerated by the news people. When I was here in 2000, the New York Times ran a brief note that reported bread riots in Mutare. As a result, I received frantic emails inquiring about my survival. I had actually witnessed the Mutare “riots”; I would have termed them “a moderately loud argument.” Indeed, I considered them about as life-threatening (and about as interesting) as a Wofford faculty meeting.

I do not suggest that Zimbabwe is a prefect country (back in 1993 I had naively believed that she might be headed in that direction): if the Army has to monitor a bread-line, then something is seriously wrong. And I don’t think I’d want to swap Presidents with this place—though I would give the offer some consideration. But I would like to suggest that Zimbabwe’s critics (many of whom are far wiser and more knowledgeable than I) should meditate upon the roles that drought and history and international policies have played in creating her current plight.

T.I.A.

2007-08-29T03:24:00.001-07:00

Last night, through no merit of my own, I was given temporary access to vast quantities of very hot water and a bathtub built to accommodate the full length of an adult Victorian white girl. (I had to scrunch a bit to get my own self fully under the water, but I managed.) I am aware that drought could return to Southern Africa, and I do not know by what precious energy the water was heated. (Was it through the burning of scarce wood and the ATP cycled during its collection? Was it through the combustion of scarcer petrochemical resources?) I tried to feel guilty for my extravagance, but I could not. I was fairly tired, very cold, and extremely dirty; I also hurt a pretty good bit. So I lay in the water and thought about the phylogeny of the Reptilia (today’s Wildlife Management subject). If somebody had demanded at gunpoint that I exit the bathtub, I would have said, “Shoot me, you son of a bitch. If I’m headed for hell, at least I’ll stay warm. And if I’m going to heaven, I feel as if I’m already there.” This is Africa.

The day had been a hard one, at least from my soft-American perspective. Another instructor had come by to show me my classroom. When we got there, my students were present. I said, “So this is where we shall meet tomorrow.” One of the students replied, “The Timetable [= syllabus] was changed last night, and we are here for class now.” So I babbled about Wildlife Management for a while, trying without success to learn names that make “Abercrombie” sound as short as “Smith.” After an hour of embarrassment I escaped to my office and crashed down into the single chair—which crashed down itself, all the way to the floor. That hard landing jammed up my back quite painfully, and I spent 10-15 minutes cursing Africa University for its infrastructure and the United Methodist Church for its lack of support. Then I struggled into action and tested the PowerPoint projector that I’d brought from South Carolina. The power-load blew my 220à110 transformer, which had faithfully served three tours in Africa and one in Vietnam. This is a semi-tragedy since I brought only rechargeable batteries for my field equipment and since all my battery-chargers are 110-Volt only. So I reset my laptop and PPT projector for 220, and they worked OK; I’ll worry about the batteries later. After all, TIA.

While I was still in the throes of electrical tragedy, the Acting Dean swept into my office with the warmest of hugs and absolutely effusive praise for my teaching ability and my selfless dedication to Jesus and agricultural education. Well, folks, I thought it was affection, but it was, uh, foreplay: I was about to get screwed! It seems that one foreign lecturer believed what he heard about Zimbabwe—and on what would have been his first day of class, he backed out of his teaching contract (by e-mail; if he’d been here and resigned in person, he might have been killed, perhaps by me). Of course the Ag faculty will have to split up his courses amongst available staff, and I had been officially defined as “available staff.” In other words, I’d run from Sparkle City to avoid a semester of statistics—and am teaching statistics in Old Mutare. So what if the students don’t have textbooks or calculators; so what if I don’t have my notes or even a table for the normal curve. I just hope my Second Years know some calculus. And who knows; after all, TIA.

After I’d become a statistics teacher, I attempted to replicate, with Dry Erase Markers, Jesus’ loaves-and-fishes miracle. For some reason I failed and consequently had to give away one of the four markers I’d brought with me—uh, to a darn botanist. I celebrated my generosity (or stupidity) by trying to send some e-mail; this was another attempted miracle, which may or may not have failed. In the nasty world of local economics, I attempted to set up the exchange of dollars (in a market that is at best dark gray); we’ll see how that works. As quitting time approached, I saw an open storage-room door, so I entered and stole a T-square and a Keson land-measuring wheel from Engineering. As I headed back to my temporary lodging, I tried to say a few prayers (mostly that I wouldn’t get caught with the measuring wheel before Monday), but for me prayers are about as easy as A.U. e-mail.

Speaking of things religious, I should tell you that an old boy came into my office today trying to sell carved soapstone figures. I’d never had that happen on campus before, so I asked the would-be seller what the heck was going on. He said that he’d had a business in town that did OK, but that in recent years he’d made a lot more money VIM teams (VIM us U.Meth acronym for Volunteers in Mission; these folks are briefly deployed into sundry areas to accomplish sundry good deeds; at A.U. they would captive buyer-audiences for soapstone carvers). So he’d sold house & business in town to move next to the A.U. campus. “But this winter there have been noVIM teams, and I am having difficulty feeding my family.” I told the man good luck—no, of course I didn’t buy anything. (On campus? I’m not that crazy.) I did tell him that if no VIM teams came at all, we could talk in October. Perhaps I should not have been surprised soon to discover that this no-VIM-poormouthing was a scam, but at the time I felt fairly wretched about saying No.

Despite my (uh, in this case unnecessary) guilt, and perhaps as a special grace, I received the bath described in Paragraph One, and it was wonderful. Afterwards, I tried to sleep, but I soon woke up and began thinking about small-sample statistics—uh, in a very personal context. You see, late last night the darn mosquitoes came out in squadrons. (How they manage to sustain flight-metabolism at 10^oC is a mystery to me; they sounded as if they were cruising in on snowmobiles.) Since I haven’t been able to get to the Mutare chemists (= drugstores, who are probably out of Deltaprin anyhow), my thoughts turned to malaria. (Yep, I’ve already given out of my U.S. emergency stock of pills.) Since I couldn’t sleep anyhow, I pulled out a flashlight and tried to observe a mosquito in the process of Ab-exsanguination (sp?). But the little winged devils were very light-shy. (So why didn’t I sleep with the lights on? Power outage.) I finally did catch a bloodsucker in the act, and it was not Anopholes (sp?). So I had a very favorable result from a sample of one; that’s way too small to suit me; can’t get me no variance term; can’t work me no probability. Therefore, folks, if I start writing about lime-green clouds and the Three-Horned Nature of God, you’ll be able to guess what happened. And again, TIA.

Now it’s Wednesday morning, and shortly I’ll go out to seek an Internet connection for transmitting this missive. Meanwhile, I should offer an update on the VIM business. As has been my A.U. custom, I attended the Wednesday 0800 worship. As the service progressed, I was shocked to observe the entrance of about a dozen white people. It was—you guessed it—a nice, big VIM team, in this case from Fairview UMC in Maryville, Tennessee. You folks at home can have no idea how much I wish I could have discovered previous information about their coming. I’d have given hundreds of green-colored Yankee dollars for such news. It would have made a huge difference to my financial situation, to my personal comfort, to my book-related research, to my classes, to my colleagues here, to my students! If each VIM-er had been willing to carry even 10 extra pounds of stuff for me, I could have had a couple of hundred pounds of material that I really, really need. Before I left the USA, I’d asked about VIM teams but couldn’t get any relevant info. Now, for some reason, this missed opportunity has banged me around more than shortages, more than admin screw-ups, more than my add-on stats class. Indeed, I have been sitting in my office, muttering under my breath, suggesting that the whole U.Meth hierarchy should seek sexual congress with members of the Anatidae. Heck. But I know about common problems back in the States. T.I.A. (That is America.)

I need to recover my equilibrium and give up this selfish concern with missed opportunities. I think I’ll walk outside and try to see a new bird.ecH

Zimbabwe Welcome

2007-08-27T08:53:00.000-07:00

GR Davis and I probably did a good thing when I agreed that Wofford’s 2008 Interim to Zimbabwe should be cancelled. The country’s logistical infrastructure is not working very well. I explained in my last installment that transport is difficult and that basic food staples are in short (or zero) supply. I also learned today that electricity is available only intermittently, and Internet access requires both patience and luck. The University’s electrical substation-transformer went down last week, and the Faculty of Agriculture has been operating (for about 4 hours a day) on a big generator that sounds like a two-banger diesel. That means that nobody has yet succeeded in both composing and printing a class syllabus, so I don’t feel too bad about my own lack of preparation.
Despite classroom darkness and computer-deprivation, our Dean, the irrepressible Professor Tagwira, never lost his smile and went ahead with our welcoming convocation for the new ag First Years. This academic extravaganza was largely conducted by Mrs. Ruwo, who has been the ag secretary since 1993. Way back then she looked about 30 years old, and now she looks about 18; perhaps that is because she has lost a little weight and dyed her hair bright red-purple. She introduced me as Professor Abercrombie; that was heavy flattery since officially I’m only a lecturer (in Zimbabwe a genuine Professor is respected slightly more than God, and God is respected a whole lot), but my make-believe promotion did make me feel welcome indeed.
The Dean preached a real sermon to the First Years, begging them to serve molecular genetics with heart & soul—and to avoid the temptations of lethargy, plagiarism, fornication, and transfer into Business or Theology. Then he said something that I thought was rather wonderful: “I tell you this: if you learn to make two blades of grass grow where only one blade grew before, then you will be more important than the entire breed of politicians.” To conclude, Prof. Tagwira offered the first of two benedictions; the second was volunteered by a First Year who was dressed somewhat like a Tri-Delt at Spring Formal. After the speeches and prayers, Mrs. Ruwo (our youthening secretary) announced that First Tea [yes, Zimbabwe was a British colony] would be “served without sugar this year because there is none in this country.” But Mae Ruwo was wrong, perhaps for the first time in her hyper-efficient life; apparently some light-skinned First Year from Moçambique had smuggled in a two-liter jar.
So, Dr. Davis, Preacher Robinson, Dean Wiseman, I don’t really think things in Zimbabwe will be different by January. But I guarantee you this: our Interim students would have been welcomed by fasting and prayer at the Faculty of Agriculture.

Lead Us Not into THAT Much Temptation

2007-08-24T07:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve always considered myself to be a law-abiding sort of person, and I’ve been extra careful to stay legit while a guest in somebody else’s country. But events of yesterday made this old dog contemplate the learning of new tricks. The matter in question involved currency exchange. I was seeking transportation from the airport into town, and I had only US dollars. Furthermore, printed governmental instructions informed me (1) that I was obligated to pay in local currency and (2) that unofficial dollar-exchange could land one in dire trouble. So I said to myself, “What the heck; I’ll take some losses, but I’ll hit the airport bank and buy enough $$Zim for taxi fare. However, the official exchange rate is, uh, even less favorable than one might expect, and I was told that a 15-minute taxi ride, with all exchanges official, would cost me about four thousand US dollars! So I fell into the temptation to avoid that kind of high finance and caught a ride with the brother of a bishop.
It seems that the taxi-fare-for-megabucks problem may be symptomatic of other economic ills. The artificially high value for the $Zim is associated with hyper-inflation and shortages of most things that a reasonable person would want to buy (though, as suggested in an earlier essay, the supply of lions and elephants appears sufficient to meet the demand of millionaire Americans). The driver who came from A.U. to pick me up was ecstatic about being in Harare because he assumed that, in the Capital City, he could partake in a big meal that included real beef. To slake the driver’s craving for dead cow, we visited three old-fashion Zimbabwe hamburger shops: two could offer only “chips” (French fries); the third had managed to acquire a few pieces of chicken, which we greedily consumed. The A.U. driver, with characteristic good humor, observed, “This is our beloved leader’s plan to assure that his people do not suffer from excessive cholesterol.” Of course the comment was offered with some irony, but I believe the words also included a note of affection.
Anyhow, for now beef is off the shelves of the grocery stores and butcher shops, nation-wide. I don’t care much about the red meat, but rice is awfully scarce, and I haven’t seen any peanut butter at all. Thanks to careful rationing, bread occasionally becomes available, but in little old Rusape-town hundreds of people were lined up in hopes that today would be a loaf-distribution day. (Very nice music was being played, and none of the babies looked super-hungry.) Cornmeal is said to be scarce as well, but I don’t know that for sure. Soap-powder seems to be non-existent, and I’m wondering how I’ll make 100 days on three undershirts (Army-brown, thank goodness). On the good side, there was little traffic on the Harare-Mutare road; could that be associated with the fact that we saw no gas for sale in any of the dozen or so stations that we passed?
Before I terminate this set of first-day observations, I do want to write two happy things—the first general and the second Ab-selfish. (1) Perhaps, for once, CNN and the BBC are not exaggerating the nation’s shortages, but I simply will not believe that this country is coming apart. Zimbabweans appear to be the same resilient, kind, generous, polite folks I’ve learned to love, and I’ve observed not one hint of collective despair (just Lord please don’t let us have a drought until other things get better). (2) There is a gecko (Hemidactylus) in my room, and I’ve already seen a purple-crested lourie.

Group W Bench

2007-08-24T07:45:00.000-07:00

Johannesburg Airport. My departure for Zimbabwe was delayed because of immigration and work-permit problems, but I finally did get off, and I hope to be in Mutare sometime tomorrow. Catching the jet plane out of South Carolina was easy, of course; nobody showed any concern (or even much interest) in any of my equipment or baggage. I arrived in Washington-Dulles on time, but the South African Airlines flight was boarding almost an hour early. That suited me fine, but the subsequent delays on the transit bus were, well, interesting. August is, of course, late winter in southern Africa; most of the trees are leafless, and the temperature is suitable for American tourists. So, this is High Season for mission-trippers and safari-hunters; my flight was beset with both. On the transit bus (which carried us to the aircraft, parked way out in the middle of Dulles-nowhere), I started off sitting with a bunch of would-be slayers of large mammals. They were bound for several countries, and nobody was on his (gender-specific pronoun is used with full intent) first shooting trip. These would-be emulators of Teddy Roosevelt (or was it Hemmingway?) talked their death-in-the-tall-grass stories until one turned to me and said, “You look like a missionary. I bet you don’t even have a gun.” I allowed as to how that was NOT true; therefore I rose immediately in their estimation and was actually included in the macho-affiliation banter for a while. (My favorite tale was, “I’m on safari after a really big lion. It’s a guaranteed thirty days at only a thousand bucks per day.”) Then, after the boys had described the arsenals they had packed, they asked me, “What sort of gun are you carrying?” And I said, “A .22 rifle; I may go after guinea fowl.” And THAT was when the boys moved away to seek their own company. But it turned out all right for me. On the airplane I found myself seated beside one of the Great White Hunters. After telling me (again) about his hunting plans, and after receiving minimal affirmation from me, he said, “I think I’ll go see if I can find a seat with some of my, uh, colleagues.” He did, and I found myself with two seats from Washington-Dulles to Jo-berg!

Pre-Departure Blues

2007-08-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

OK, my good budy, Wendy Campbell, has talked me into starting up a blog. I'm not sure I'll continue with this madness-- or even whether I'll have opportunity so to do-- but at least I can add some first-attempt information.

I don't have a ticket yet, but the Church hierarchy in Nashville (the U.Meth. Vatican) has promised to mail me one. This could create problems, but who knows!

I have a huge amount of stuff to pack. This includes computer, live traps, radio-telemetry gear, PowerPoint presenter, and a computer Bible. I hope I can also take my "teaching rifle," but that depends on the BATF, with whom I need to make contact.

My left hand is shaking occasionally because I really am nervous about this trip. Wendy has assured me that, out of desperation, students in Mutare are already eating dogs. I am afraid that, by the time of my arrival, only the oldest, stringiest (and wisest) dogs will remain so that I may starve. (Also, I have firmly resolved that I shall eat NO named dogs, regardless of hunger or social pressures.)

Anyhow, this is just a test post. Maybe I'll write more fascinating stuff, so check in occasionally.

Ab