Sunrise with Seamonsters

by Paul Theroux

  We should not wonder why Tarzan came to the jungle. The reasons Tarzan had could be the same as those of any white expatriate in Africa. There are five main reasons: an active curiosity in things strange; a vague premonition that Africa rewards her visitors; a disgust with the anonymity of the industrial setting; a wish to be special; and an unconscious desire to stop thinking and let the body take over. All of these reasons are selfish in a degree. Mixed with them may be the desire to do a little good, to help in some way; but this is desire together with the knowledge that the good deeds will be performed in a pleasant climate. This, in the end, is not so much a reason for coming as it is an excuse. The wish to be special (and rewarded) is dominant; the need for assertion—the passive assertion, the assertion of color—by a man's mere physical presence eventually dominates the life of the expatriate. Tarzan must stand out; he is non-violent but his muscles show.

  Curiosity is the first to go. It may draw a person away from home but in Africa it diminishes and finally dies. When the expatriate feels he knows the country in which he is working he loses interest. There is a simple level at which the expatriate learns quickly and easily about his surroundings (and no one is more in his surroundings than the expatriate; the lack of privacy is almost total, but privacy is something upon which very few in Africa place a high value). He learns the settler anecdotes and racial jokes, the useful commands for the servants, the endless dialect stories about the habits of Africans and the rules of conduct which are expected of him as a white man in a black country. All of this information is slanted toward white superiority, the African as animal and, again, the kind of assertion that is based on color. A sample Kenyan story concerns a white man who sees an African walking a dog. "Where are you going with that baboon?" the white man asks. "This isn't a baboon, it's a dog," says the African. "I'm not talking to you!" the white man snaps. There are the expatriate truisms: never give an African anything; Africans really don't want anything; if you run over an African on the road you must drive away as fast as you can or you'll be killed by the murderous mob that gathers (this is not refuted even by the staunchest liberals); Africans smell, have rhythm, don't wash, are terribly happy and so forth. There are the vernacular commands, all of which can be learned in a matter of a few days: "Cut the wood," "Dry the dishes," "Mop the floor," "Get bwana's slippers," "Don't be sulky to Memsahib." The rules of conduct for whites are aimed at keeping up expatriate morale: never argue with a fellow expatriate in the presence of an African; always offer a lift to whites you see walking in the road; never be a loner or exclude other whites from your society, especially in up-country places; feel free to drop in on fellow expatriates—expect them to drop in on you; when traveling, get the names of all the whites on your route; develop an anti-Indian prejudice; fornication, conversation and general truck with Africans must be covert and kept to a minimum—sleeping with tribeswomen is bad for the morale of expatriate wives. The jokes, the racial stereotypes, the vernacular commands, the rules of conduct—all of these tell the expatriate that he is different, he is superior, he is Tarzan. This information is sought by the recently arrived expatriate; his confidence is built on such information. When he knows enough so that he won't blunder unknowingly into liberalism and so that he is able to dominate everyone except those in his rigidly defined society, he stops seeking.

  He wants to do more than merely stay alive; he does want to be special, visible, one of the few. But this is the easiest thing of all, and so surprising in its ease that the result is a definite feeling of racial superiority. His color alone makes him distinct. He does not have to lift a finger. The great moment in the life of every expatriate comes when he perceives that, for the first time in his life, people are watching him; he is not anonymous in a crowd, in a line, in a theater or a bar. With the absence of strict segregation he is even more distinct: he is among but not with, drinking in a bar where there are many Africans he will stand out. His color sets him apart and those he is among nearly always respect him and keep their distance: the Indian shopkeeper rubs his hands and scurries around trying to please him; the African carries his shopping for twenty cents, singles him out in a crowd and offers to wash his car while the expatriate watches a film, takes his place for a penny in the stamp line at the post office and a hundred other things.

  The realization that he is white in a black country, and respected for it, is the turning point in the expatriate's career. He can either forget it or capitalize on it. Most choose the latter. It is not only the simplest path, it is the one that panders most to his vanity and material well-being. He may even decide to fortify his uniqueness by carefully choosing affectations: odd clothes, a walking stick, a lisp, a different accent; he may develop a penchant for shouting at his servants, losing his temper or drinking a quart of whisky a day; he may take to avocados, afternoon siestas or small boys. When the expatriate goes too far with his affectations, his fellow expatriates say he is a victim of "bush fever". But they know better. What the expatriate is doing is preparing his escape, not out of the jungle, but escape to retirement—that long sleep until death comes to kill—within the jungle. Having proven his uniqueness by drawing attention to his color, by hinting through his presence that he is different, by suggesting through a subtle actionless language that he is a racist, and perhaps demonstrating one or two feats of physical or intellectual strength, he retires to a quiet part of the jungle and rests. He is fairly sure that no one will bother him and that he will be comfortable.

  Reward is a certainty. I speak about East and Central Africa. There are very few expatriates in these parts of Africa who do not make more money here than they would make at home. The standard of expatriate living is always very high: here the watchful parrot is a Nubian night watchman for the house, and the rest of Tarzan's useful animal servants have their equally talented counterparts in the cook, houseboy, steward, driver, gardener, and so forth. There is a functionary at every turn: carpenters, tailors, garage mechanics, baby-sitters and carwashers—each of whom will work for a song. They have been trained, by other Tarzans; there are always more candidates to be trained who are jobless, poor with large families and small gardens and not the slightest notion of either comfort or salary. It is easy to train them, to keep them employed and, especially, to dominate them. If they work poorly they can be fired on the spot. It is unlikely that the Labour Office will get after the former employer and intercede on the fired man's behalf. If the Labour Office did care to make an issue of it, it would probably lose. In the parts of Africa I have lived whites do not lose arguments.

  There are further rewards, equally as tempting for Tarzan as the servants and functionaries. There are baggage allowances, expatriation allowances, subsidized housing, squash courts, golf courses, swimming pools and mostly white clubs. The sun shines every day of the year on the flowers. There are holidays: a car trip to Mombasa, climbing and camping in the snow-covered Mountains of the Moon with a score of bearers, a visit to the volcanoes of Rwanda or the brothels of Nairobi, a sail in a dhow, a golfing vacation in the Northern Region. One day's drive from where I write this can take me to pygmies, elephants, naked Karamojong warriors (who, for a shilling, will let themselves be photographed glowering into the lens), leopards, the Nile River, a hydroelectric dam, Emin Pasha's fort, palatial resorts, Murchison Falls or the Congo.

  The expatriate has all of these rewards together with a distinct conviction that no one will bother him; he will be helped by the Africans and overrated by his friends who stayed in England or the United States. He is Tarzan, the King of the Jungle. He will come to expect a degree of adulation as a matter of course. He is no longer hurrying down a filthy subway escalator, strewn with ads for girdles, to a crowded train in which he will be breathed upon by dozens of sweating over-dressed people; he is no longer stumbling up another escalator to his home where his children are croaking and shrieking on the floor. Tarzan had his vine, the expatriate has his car and, very likely, driver. The idea of using public transportation
does not occur to the expatriate: it exists for the public, not him. Africans will wave to him as he drives by in his car; some, in up-country places, will fall to their knees as he passes. He will have few enemies, but even if he had many, none would matter. Everyone else is on his side. He is Tarzan.

  There is the death of the mind. The expatriate does not have to think; he has long since decided that nothing should change, the jungle should not alter. In Africa he is superior and should remain so. Most agree with him; all the people he works with agree with him; Africans with money and position are the most convinced of all that change means upsetting the nature of society.

  These Africans have come around to the expatriate point of view; they have been conquered with an attitude and a little money; they settle tribal disputes by saying to the tribesmen, "Let's be English about this" and ask the expatriate's indulgence in not being critical of the brutal and bloody suppression of a tribe or opposition party or minority group. "These are difficult transitional years for our developing country," is the excuse for these purges.

  The expatriate does not enter any fray; he takes Tarzan's view: it is wrong—because it is unnatural—to try and settle jungle quarrels. It proves nothing. The animals may chatter and squabble, but this is of no concern to Tarzan; this is nature at her purest and should not be interfered with.

  The mind dies and Tarzan discovers flesh. The suspicion about Africa that the expatriate had in a cold English or American suburb is confirmed in a Mombasa bar or a Lagos nightclub when three or four slim black girls begin fighting over him. They also fight for the fat bald man sitting in the corner, for the Italian merchant marine jigging in the center of the floor, with his pants down, for the Yugoslavian ape-man who has just stumbled in and is now tearing the pinball machine apart. The expatriate has gone away from home to give his flesh freedom. He never guessed how simple the whole process was. What makes it all the simpler is that there is no blame attached. Even if there were blame or reprisals, only the embassy would suffer. The expatriate is soon ardently dealing in skin and this, with the death of the mind and the conscious assertion of color, is the beginning of the true Tarzan Complex. The expatriate has been served, waited on, pandered to, pimped for and overpaid; he has fed the image of his uniqueness and his arrogance has reached its full vigor.

  There is a plain truth that must be stated as well. This Tarzan, like the Tarzan of the comics, is not an objectionable man. He is not Mr. Kurtz, "Mad" Mike Hoare or Cecil Rhodes. There is very little that can be called sinister about him. There was little duplicity in his reasons for coming to Africa, but overthrowing the government by force is the furthest thing from his mind. What is most striking about him is his ordinariness: he is a very ordinary white person in an extraordinary setting. He is a white man starting to wilt, sweating profusely, among millions of black men, frangipanis, wild animals and bush foliage.

  The liberal has it both ways. He enjoys all the privileges of Tarzan and still is able to say that he is a nationalist. He is the reversible Tarzan. His speech is entirely at odds with his actions: he bullies his servants in one breath and advocates class struggle in the next. When there is trouble he becomes Tarzan, with all of Tarzan's characteristic passivity. He does not fight, and yet the, schizoid nature of his existence drives him occasionally to apologize for a brutal black regime. The archetypal Tarzan never apologizes; he accepts the behaviour of the animals insofar as it does not bother him, Jane or Boy. The liberal Tarzan denies that there are differences in the jungle and insists that his color means nothing. But his life is much the same as the Tarzan expatriate, and his motives for coming to Africa are likewise the same. He is the most fortunate liberal on earth. He makes a virtue of keeping silent while the jungle is spattered with gunfire. He knows he will lose his job and have to go home if he criticizes the ruling party. Although he may say he is concerned with freedom, he knows that certain topics are taboo: in Kenya he cannot defend the Asians when they are under attack; in Tanzania, Malawi and a dozen other countries he cannot be critical of the one-party form of government; in Uganda he cannot mention that, one year ago, there was a forcible and bloody suppression of the largest tribe in the country. He believes that he has won over the Africans by saying the right things and praising the injustices. But the African attitude toward him, because it is based on color, is no different from the attitude toward the average non-political expatriate.

  The liberal's paradise seems to be a place where he can hold leftist opinions in a lovely climate. Sub-Saharan Africa is one of these paradises: the old order does not alter, the revolutions change nothing and still to be white is to be right; being British is an added bonus. The liberal quacking may continue, and the liberal may pretend that he is not Tarzan, but he is Tarzan as much as any tightlipped civil servant admiring his jacarandas. The Tory Tarzan keeps silent; the liberal Tarzan says "Hear, hear" when the preventive detention legislation is passed.

  A person should not agree to work in a country that demands silence of him. This rids the person of any human obligations and helps him to become Tarzan, the strong white man who has what he wants at the expense of millions of people who serve him in one way or another; he has everything, those around him have nothing. The very fact that silence is a condition of getting the job should indicate, especially to the academics, that the government is not ready for him. With this release from any feelings of sympathy or any real obligations toward the people he is among, the expatriate has a lot of free time to think, but no set standard for reflection except the excesses of past Tarzans. In this climate, with no sensible limits on thought, fascism is easy. This is the extreme no one expected before he came. The simple selfishness that was a part of all his reasons for coming to Africa had nothing to do with fascism, but within the slowly decaying condition of mind that is realised after years of sun and crowds, disorder and idleness, is a definite racial bias. It is not a scientific thing; rather, it is the result of being away, being idle among those he does not know. His voice gets shrill, unrecognizable, but he cannot speak; he has taken a vow of silence; his bad temper increases. An extended time in this unnatural pose can make him hateful; a black face laughing in the heat or screaming, a knot of black people merely standing muttering on the street corner can make him a killer.

  The sun should make no one a fascist, but it is more than the sun. It is a whole changed way of looking and feeling: "I now understand apartheid," says the Israeli hotel-owner who has spent two years in Nigeria; "Frankly, I like the stupid Africans best," says the white army officer in Malawi; "I wouldn't give you a shilling for the whole lot of them," says the businessman in Kenya; "Oh, I know they're frightfully inefficient and hopeless at politics—but, you know, they're terribly sweet," says the liberal English lady. If I stay here much longer I will begin to talk like this as well. I do not want that to happen. I do not want to be Tarzan and cannot think of anything drearier or more stupid and barbarous than racism. The last thing I want to be is the King of the Jungle, any jungle, and that includes Boston as much as it does Bujumbura.

  Somewhere along the way there was an understanding reached between Tarzan and his followers. Either it was a collaboration (don't bother me and I won't bother you) or it was true conquering that was in some ways permanent. There must have been this understanding or there would not be so many Tarzans today. I refuse to collaborate or conquer and further refuse to sit by while the double talk continues. Someone must convince the African governments that fascism is not the special property of the Italians and Germans, and ask why independent African rule has made it infinitely easier for Tarzan, complete with fasces, to exist undisturbed and unchallenged.

  Cowardice

  [1967]

  In the old days, young boys with nothing to do used to stand around drugstores talking excitedly of picking up girls. They now have other choices—they can pick up guns or protest signs. I tend to take the druggist's view: have an ice cream and forget the choices. I intend to give in neither to the army nor
to the peace movement.

  I am now certain of my reason for thinking this: I am a coward.

  It has not always been this way. I used to think I was a person of high principles. The crooked thing about high principles is that they can live in thin air. I am fairly sure mine did. For the past five years my reaction to anything military was based on borrowed shock.

  I still believe that war is degrading, that it gets us no place, and that one must not hurt anyone else. The pacifists say this and the government calls them cowards. The pacifists protest that they are not cowards. I feel no kinship with the government. I have some sympathy for the folk who call themselves pacifists because I believe many of them to be as cowardly as I am. But I see no reason to be defensive about it. Certainly they should not have to put up with all that humiliation on the sidewalk. As cowards they should be entitled to a little peace. They should not have to waste their time and risk arrest scrawling slogans on the subway or walking for hours carrying heavy signs. Guns may be heavier, but why carry either one?

  A soldier shuffled nervously in front of me while I stood in line at the East Side Airlines Terminal in New York two years ago. He turned abruptly and told me that he was going to Oakland, California. I told him I was going to London and then to Uganda. Harmless talk—the kind that travelers make with ease. He surprised me by breaking convention and continuing what should have been an ended conversation. After Oakland he would be going to Vietnam. I clucked at his misfortune and as we both thought presumably of death he said, "Somebody's got to go."

  But not me, I thought. I got my ticket confirmed and a week later I was in Africa, far from the draft board, even farther from Vietnam. Five years ago I would have hectored the soldier with some soul-swelling arguments. I was a pacifist and a very noisy one at that.