But I Digress ...

by Darrel Bristow-Bovey

  You know it’s Kenya because there is footage of Masai warriors leaping in the air in the traditional dance of welcome. You know it’s the savannah because one of the Americans mentioned being in the jungle, and whenever Americans talk about the jungle, they always mean the savannah.

  Americans, when they are away from home, can make the world seem like an awfully small place. Not all Americans, admittedly, are like the American with whom I once shared a luncheon table on a cruise boat on the upper Nile. (The Nile, incidentally, is also in Africa, although I had to spend several increasingly surreal hours trying to convince the American of that fact.)

  This American lady at lunch stared dolefully out of the wide picture window, just as the grand ruins of the temple of Edfu came floating into view, slow and shimmering like a mirage left over from a thousand years ago.

  “Don’t you just get sick of these old rocks?” said the American lady, without the hint of a smile.

  It is the kind of story that people usually make up about Americans, but it really happened. Not all Americans are like that lunching lady, but when they are, there are few cultural experiences more primally gratifying than banding together to laugh at them. Ordinarily when we laugh at them, Americans don’t say much in reply: they just hold up a dollar bill, and we blush and fall silent and shuffle away to watch some rugby. Which is why Survivor: Africa is such a boon and a godsend: not only have we American tourists to laugh at, but we have American tourists in a position where their money cannot help them.

  From the moment in the first episode when a contestant scanned the savannah like Alan Quartermain in sunscreen and neatly pressed khakis from JC Penney and said, “This is Africa, man, this is the jungle. There are lions and tigers and bears out there,” I knew we were in for a treat.

  This week the poor saps had to drink beakers of warm cow’s blood, fresh tapped from the vein by willing Masai. It is one of East Africa’s most stirring traditions that the Masai herdsmen shun their greens and steaks, living on a steady diet of blood and milk. Personally I have never quite recovered from the occasion on the plains of Tanzania when I wandered past a thorn tree and came across a couple of amiable Masai munching on a peanut butter sandwich, but I am all for a stirring tradition.

  The Yanks actually did quite well when it came to drinking the blood. Better than, say, I would have done. It was a little disappointing.

  We were on firmer ground watching them throw away their vats of drinking water because they were too heavy to carry on a forced march.

  “Ho ho,” we said, down at the Chalk ’n Cue. And also: “Stupid Americans.” We even slapped each other on the back. And how we hooted as we watched them try to make fire by rubbing twigs or clacking rocks together.

  “These Americans know nothing!” gurgled Porky Withers happily.

  “Ho ho,” we agreed.

  Ordinarily someone would have produced two twigs or a pair of rocks and invited Porky Withers to demonstrate precisely how fire should be made, but we were having too much fun laughing at the rich folks. No one wanted to spoil the mood.

  Our deepest, darkest motivation in watching, of course, was the unspoken hope that someone would be eaten by a wild beast. Isn’t that a terrible confession? But it’s true. Deep down inside there is a wicked voice that wants to say to some glubbering Yank nursing a bite wound: “So, how cute do you find The Lion King now?”

  We want to lay claim to the authentic experience of wild Africa, even if the closest some of us get to wild Africa is a Nando’s chicken with extra peri-peri. The fact is that we are protective of Africa, precisely because being African is the last thing we have left to boast about.

  Living in a game park doesn’t have much to do with living in Africa – and it is not something that many of us would be in a position to do any more successfully than the average American – but it represents an idea that we defend with jealousy. We laugh at the Americans because it is a way of asserting that we live in Africa, that we live here, even if the here in which we live is more like America than it is like the wild savannah. We laugh at the Americans because it makes us feel good about being us.

  But also, of course, we laugh at the Americans because, well, because it’s fun to laugh at Americans.

  What is Mark’s shuttle worth?

  SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 28 APRIL 2002

  WERE YOU EXCITED about Mark Shuttleworth going to space? Were you? Really? Good for you. Hold on to that inner child. Dandle it on your knee. Kiss it better when it cries. As for me, I did not much care that Mark Shuttleworth went to space. I kind of lost interest in him when he moved to London.

  For all the genuine enthusiasm I could work up on Thursday morning, he was just some rich guy buying a ticket on a really expensive flight. The biggest novelty about it was that the flight lasted longer than most, and the rich guy didn’t fly first class. He didn’t even fly economy class. He was packed away into an overhead baggage compartment; the kind of overhead baggage compartment where the air hostesses don’t even come around and sell you a packet of peanuts. Mark Shuttleworth has just become the world’s most uncomfortable paying passenger – except for people flying Kulula.com, of course. But it was preferable to flying Kulula.com. Whatever other drawbacks the Soyuz TM-34 might have, at least it left on time.

  My attitude towards the project was sceptical from the beginning. Frankly, I just didn’t think it was a good deal. You would have to pay me $20 million to get me to squeeze into some clanking 1960s Russian tin-can along with two odd-smelling continentals and trust myself to the technology of a nation that can’t even get its women to match their shoes to their hairnets while they queue to buy half a loaf of bread; all in order to spend several days urinating into a length of second-hand rubber tubing and saying things like: “Gee, look at that view” and “Say, Yuri, wasn’t that my toothbrush you just used?”

  But I wanted to be excited, I really did. I had watched Buck Rogers and Battlestar Galactica when I was young, and I was a dedicated fan of the first three Star Wars movies (it was a defining moment in the life of any young man of my generation when he had to sit down and decide who he would grow up to be: Luke Skywalker or Han Solo. Or Princess Leia, I suppose). Plus, the newspapers were getting so worked up about the launch I figured it had to be special. I haven’t seen the daily press this serious about a news story since the first series of Big Brother.

  In the days before the launch, I tuned in to the First African in Space channel (DStv, channel 38). I would not say it drove the adrenalin levels up. It seemed to consist principally of replays of Derek Watts’ Carte Blanche interview, followed by links with NASA TV. NASA TV is a thrill-a-minute educational service offering ways to make science fun. On the night before take-off (or T-1, as they say at NASA) the insomniac space enthusiast could tune in to a youth programme titled Data Analysis and Measurement – Having a Solar Blast!

  I hoped that Mark had something more entertaining to watch on his last night on Earth. A history of light industry in the Ukraine, perhaps, or a Russian cooking programme. (“You in ze decadent vest haff ze Naked Chef. Ve haff ze Chef Who Couldn’t Afford a Furry Hat and New Pair of Mittens.”)

  There was a moment, the day before, when I began to be stirred by the whole enterprise. The heart could not fail to respond to the footage of the rocket being brought from its hangar to the launch pad. It was slow and solemn, heavy with the weight of a great undertaking. Soyuz was sleek and strong and sexual, an enormous penis with nowhere to go but up. We watched the vast fuel tanks propping up the payload. “There is always the danger of premature ignition,” cautioned the commentator. How true that is.

  I began to warm to the occasion. It seemed noble and brave, and Mark Shuttleworth even managed to look a little dashing in his baggy blue cosmonaut overalls. Then again, anything that would get him out of those awful shorts and sandals is heartily to be applauded. The rocket itself was strangely moving. The craft and its supportive housing seemed almost nostalgic – all grey metal and mecha
nical locks and hand-stencilled flags over rivets and joins. It looked archaic, poignantly low-tech in a digital age. This was the same launch pad from which Yuri Gagarin rode a Vostok rocket into space half a century ago, and you would expect to find his car still parked out back.

  But by Thursday morning my enthusiasm had waned. That’s what bad TV coverage will do for you. The viewing audience was treated to an interminable static view from the cosmodrome. The rocket huddled in the lower left-hand corner of the screen while behind it, dwarfing it, the steppes of Kazakhstan stretched far away. Derek Watts described Kazakhstan as looking something like the Karoo, but from the empty grey awfulness of the view it more closely resembled the gigantic tongue of a man who drank too much vodka and smoked too many Pravda Filters last night.

  The rocket was tiny against the numb blankness of the land. It looked small and not terribly grand; like something that would have difficulty reaching Vladivostok, let alone outer space and back. There was no countdown when it went. There was a wisp of smoke, a surge of flame, the rocket lifted and hovered a moment, as though the hand pulling the strings was not quite strong enough, then suddenly it vanished upward like a slim arrow aimed at the sky. Minutes later the fire of its afterburners looked from below like a winter sun glimpsed through high mist.

  And then it was over.

  I am glad Mark Shuttleworth is safe, and I hope he returns that way, but there my involvement ends. Those Russkis just don’t know how to put on a show. Perhaps that’s why they lost.

  God is in the donations, not the details

  SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 12 MAY 2002

  IT CAN’T BE EASY, being God. It’s not all fun and games and burnt offerings when you are the Light of the World. It’s a full-time job, being the Lord of All.

  Being omnipotent will certainly help you rattle through your chores of a morning, but what with all the delivering from evil and smiting of unbelievers and deciding who prayed hardest to win an Oscar or the Currie Cup this year, I would be surprised if you had a spare minute for yourself at the end of the working day.

  I don’t know where He found the time to dream up the duck-billed platypus, say, or earlobes, or fingerprints. In retrospect, I suppose it’s not surprising that He never did get around to sending me the digital watch with the calculator and miniature space invaders game for which I begged each evening on my hands and knees when I was eight.

  As if all that weren’t enough, God also has to keep in touch with changing times. The march of technology waits for no one. When you wanted to get your message out to the world, it used to be sufficient to whip up a burning bush or a column of smoke or a talking donkey, but no more. Today God needs a satellite, and god knows satellites aren’t cheap. This was the thrust of Benny Hinn’s sermon on the Satellite Night Praise-a-thon (DStv, Events channel).

  The praise-a-thon was part of a drive to raise money to buy a satellite for TBN, an American evangelist TV channel.

  A silver-tongued shmooze artist named Benny Hinn stood at the podium in a small television studio that had been decorated to resemble a large modern church. A little balsawood here, some shiny gold fabric there, a painting on plaster or a stained glass window in the background, and the joint looked downright hallowed.

  “That’s right, saints,” Benny Hinn was saying as I tuned in, “the Galaxy 5 is the most powerful satellite over North America! And we want it! The word of the Lord deserves only the best! But it’s not cheap!”

  I was flattered that Benny Hinn should refer to me as a saint. I have never really thought of myself as saintly. Certainly, watching Benny Hinn, I was beginning to have extremely unsaintly thoughts.

  Evidently it costs some infinitely large and infinitely loving amount of dollars each month to keep Galaxy 5 in the air and broadcasting TBN to a grateful world. Whence do you think such riches shall flow? “Saints, you don’t have to wait, you can call right now and pledge!” said Benny Hinn generously.

  He held aloft a plywood model of Galaxy 5. “See! Doesn’t it look just like a little angel?” he cooed. “Your dollars can put one more angel into the air, hallelujah!” I peered at the screen. I had never seen an angel before, but if Benny Hinn is to be believed, and I can’t see any reason for him to lie, I can report that angels look very similar to wooden tomato crates with square wings made from tinfoil and bits of wire.

  Benny Hinn seemed to feel that sending cash donations to the TBN network would secure peace in the Middle East and protect America from terrorist attacks.

  “That is not a war between Jews and Arabs,” he reminded us, “it is a war between God and the devil.” It was unclear which side he aligned with God. Quite possibly neither.

  “Let us pray for the safety of any Christians in the Middle East,” said Benny Hinn pointedly. The rest of the Middle East’s residents, he seemed to suggest, could look out for themselves.

  “Now saints, remember September 11.” Benny Hinn surged forward. “Prayer can keep the enemy away! But how can we speed our prayers? By satellite, that’s how! Somebody say hallelujah!”

  “Hallelujah!” said the accountants and bookkeepers of the TBN network.

  Behind Benny Hinn on the stage, enthroned on gilt chairs with red velvet upholstery, sat Paul and Jane Crouch. Paul and Jane own the TBN network. Paul was resplendent in white suit and waistcoat and small white beard, looking like a pious Colonel Sanders. Jane was in the uniform of the televangelist’s wife: she wore a voluminous pink skirt, and had pink hair roughly the size and shape of Ayers Rock. Her eyelashes were as long and dark as a formation of sooty asparagus spears.

  Paul and Jane beamed and nodded and occasionally raised their hands in the air as Benny Hinn spoke. Whenever Benny Hinn mentioned money, they shut their eyes and swayed in a kind of rapture.

  Benny Hinn suddenly broke off what he was saying. “You know what?” he said. “The Lord has just spoken to me. Right here in my ear. He has told me what to do. I’m going to pledge $10 000 myself.”

  Paul Crouch leapt from his throne in protest. “No, Benny, I can’t let you do that!” he declared staunchly.

  “Don’t say no, Paul,” said Benny. “I must do it. God is speaking to me. Saints, can you hear God speaking to you? He is, you know. And you can call and pledge right this very minute.”

  The call for cash rose in pitch and swelled like a Gregorian chant.

  “Now don’t get me wrong, saints. You cannot buy the blessings of God. But any farmer will tell you that you can’t reap without sowing. Think of each dollar of your donation as a seed of faith.”

  It was hard to believe that it was all real and not some elaborate satire. “Every time you give a gift of money, you are raising a weapon against the devil!” purred Benny Hinn, brushing lint from his Armani suit. “God wants you to call now! I know God well. I spend a lot of time with him and I know He wants you to call.”

  It can’t be easy, being God. You work hard all day, and then just look at who you have to hang out with.

  An ordinary man who had done extraordinary things

  SUNDAY INDEPENDENT, 26 MAY 2002

  IT IS EASY to be dismissive of television. In fact it is so easy that generally it is the people who watch it least who feel most qualified to dismiss it. “Oh, I never turn on the TV,” they will say, with a tone of voice and cast of head and gleam of eye that suggests a certain pride in accomplishment, as though not watching television made them somehow smarter and more interesting than the rest of us who do. It is as though they feel that not watching television makes them better conversationalists, witty and thoughtful and more knowledgeable about Abstract Expressionism, say, or the causes of the failure of the Weimar republic.

  I am not sure why they think this. It is not as if they use their non-television-watching time to read an improving book or learn a new language or solve Fermat’s last theorem. If not watching television were a marker of great cultural or intellectual attainment, we might expect more Nobel prizes or contract bridge champions to emerge from the painted t
ribes of the Brazilian rainforests. Tibetan yakherds would be more in demand as guests at cocktail parties around the world. People who do not watch television are like people who live in Cape Town: they are irrationally proud of something which involves not doing anything in particular. The rest of us, poor slobs, have to try to be proud of the things we actually do.

  It annoys me, frankly. People who can extract no value from a medium reveal more about themselves than about the medium. There are joys that television has brought into my life that I could have experienced nowhere else. An example was the chance encounter I had on Discovery Channel last week.

  Aimlessly flipping through the channels, as I do of an evening while waiting for the drink to take effect, I landed midway through a show called War Heroes. The series is dedicated to remembering, and if possible interviewing, the men and women who in times of conflict have distinguished themselves by the kind of unthinking, reflexive selflessness that makes for heroism. It is the kind of selflessness – otherwise called bravery – that we all hope we have, but can never know until the moment comes when it is called upon.

  I missed the name of the man being interviewed, which was somehow appropriate. He was known during the war as the Wheelbarrow VC. He was awarded the Victoria Cross for, among other things, running through the crossfire of no-man’s-land to collect a wounded comrade, then braving the shells and shrapnel of an enemy mortar barrage to bring him back in, of all things, a captured German wheelbarrow. He is very old now, a slim man with fragile hands and Brylcreem in his immaculate hair, but his features are recognisably those of the impossibly handsome young man in the fading photographs. He sat beside his wife on a chintz sofa in the Essex countryside, frowning uncomfortably at his fingernails.