Wild Life
Page 30
Finally, thank you to Laura. It must have been weird when we just started dating and I handed you a giant stack of printed pages and said, “Here, read this. It’s my life story.” Thank you for your endless patience and encouragement to chase my dreams. None of this would have happened without you. I love you.
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About the Author
Keena Roberts graduated from Harvard with a degree in psychology and African studies. She was deeply affected by the impact the HIV/AIDS epidemic had on Botswana when she lived there; at Harvard, she studied Botswana’s response to the epidemic. After graduation, she spent two years working in the US House of Representatives on issues relating to foreign affairs and health policy, and later earned a dual master’s from Johns Hopkins University in international public health and development economics. Most recently, she has worked at the US Department of Health and Human Services in HIV/AIDS and LGBT health policy and for a government contractor on implementation of the Affordable Care Act in the United States, and she now works for an international market research company examining consumer health in more than one hundred countries around the world.
Reading Group Guide
Discussion Questions
The book opens with a hilarious and heartbreaking portrait of an excited young Keena dancing to “Gorilla Man” in front of all the other second-grade girls. After the humiliation, her teacher recommends that she “start acting like the other girls if you want to fit in.” Keena thinks to herself that “If I really wanted to fit in, I’d have to change the inside of me too.” What do you think about this advice? In what ways does Keena change herself over the course of the book, or not? Has there been a moment in your own life when you’ve faced a similar crossroads?
“‘Home’ to me meant soft wind and waving grass, the smell of zebras and the whooping of hyenas as the sun set over the plains…” What sounds or sights or smells signaled “home” to you in your childhood? What about now?
Discuss the differing roles that Masaku and Mokupi play in shaping Keena’s life.
Keena is six years old when she first discovers that she is “very different” from her Maasai friends because she is a white American. How does this make her feel, and how do you see this moment echoing throughout her experiences as she grows into adulthood?
One of the early chapters in Wild Life is titled “The First Three Times I Almost Died.” A few chapters later Keena casually mentions that “Chimpanzees have been known to hunt and eat human children.” Yet Keena’s parents make the choice to keep their two daughters with them at their field sites. Do you agree with this choice? Why or why not? Given the opportunity, would you do the same with your own children?
When the decision is made to move to Botswana, Dad tells Keena and Lucy, “You’re bush kids. You know the animals and you understand the dangers. We wouldn’t be going if we didn’t think you could handle it. We know you can. We’re all in this together.” Break down the messages he is giving his kids in this scene, and discuss the pros and cons of this parenting philosophy.
Keena is an avid reader of adventure and fantasy books, and at some lonely points in her life her closest companions are the fictional characters she loves. In high school, when someone ruins her copy of Watership Down, she vows to keep her books safe at home from now on. How has her love of reading affected her life? Are there any parallels to your own experiences?
From the moment they meet in first grade, Nat and Meghan are Keena’s closest friends at school in America. Discuss how these two friendships influence Keena and shape her identity as a child and adult.
Keena’s educational experiences are split between homeschooling in the swamp in Botswana and more traditional classes at a fancy private school in Pennsylvania. What advantages or disadvantages do you think she received from this unconventional schooling?
How does Keena draw on her time in Botswana to navigate life in Pennsylvania, and vice versa?
Given the opportunity, would you have wanted to grow up with the kind of “wild life” she had?
Author Q&A
1. What drove you to write Wild Life now? What do you want readers to take away from the book and your story?
I’ve been thinking about writing Wild Life ever since I started keeping a journal in Botswana when I was eight years old. So many times people have asked us about our life there and what it was like, and I’m glad I finally have the chance to share this story with the world. What I’d like readers to take away from this story is what a wonderful thing it is to be weird and interesting. It’s never a good idea to hide who you are and what you like just because it doesn’t fit into what you see around you. I also hope they learn a little bit about baboons and the Okavango!
2. If you could relive your childhood and adolescence, what would you change? What would you keep absolutely the same?
This is a great question! The biggest thing is that I wouldn’t have worked so hard at hiding myself. I would have been a lot happier at Shipley if I’d worn the clothes I wanted to wear and read the books I wanted to read rather than trying to conform to what my peers were doing. Of course, it’s easy for me to say this in retrospect! As for what I’d keep absolutely the same, that’s a lot easier: I would keep Baboon Camp and my time there exactly the same. I learned so much about myself and can honestly say I loved every moment there, even the tough ones. It’s hard to fix paradise.
3. You recently became a mother. As a parent, would you make the same choices for your daughter that your parents made for you?
Yes and no. I really appreciated how much responsibility and autonomy my parents gave me at a young age, and that’s definitely something I want to allow my daughter as well (though perhaps not the boat drive!). The larger question of whether I’d move my family into a tented camp in a remote area of Africa surrounded by wild animals is a lot harder to answer. Our way of life in Baboon Camp was already familiar after our time in Kenya so it wasn’t such an extreme change for me, but that wouldn’t be the case for someone who spent their early years in America. In that sense, no, I wouldn’t make the same choice my parents did.
4. Is there one thing you wish everyone in Africa understood about America? Is there one thing you wish everyone in America understood about Africa?
There’s a lot of history that gets overlooked when people from other countries think about “America.” I wish everyone knew more about the indigenous peoples and their cultures and what it was like on the continent before colonizers arrived—and that goes for Americans too. Americans tend to think of “Africa” as a single entity, and that’s a huge mistake. There were (and are) thousands of cultures with rich, layered histories that existed long before colonizers showed up and began slicing up the continent like a cake. We’d all be better served by moving away from a mindset that looks at history through the lens of conquerors and thinking more deeply about who and what was there first.
5. What was the most difficult part about writing Wild Life? Did anything surprise you about the process?
The most difficult part of writing Wild Life was absolutely threading a narrative between two settings. When I first pitched the book to my agent, there was very little about the US in there at all: he really pushed me to develop those sections to make them as detailed as the parts in Botswana, but it was really challenging to ensure that thematic elements wove between both settings in a balanced way. It took a long time to get right, and I was definitely surprised by how many drafts I ended up writing before we got it right.
6. I have to ask: I assume you’ve seen the famous Tina Fey movie Mean Girls. What was your reaction when you saw it for the first time?
Okay, so there I was: junior year of college, sitting in a movie theater with my friends. As the movie starts and we learn who Cady Heron is, my friends start looking at me one by one until they’re all just
staring at me. And then Katy says, “Oh my God, Tina Fey stole your life!” It was a hilarious moment. And true! Tina, if you’re reading this, we need to talk.
7. What are you working on next?
With my next book, I’m transitioning to fantasy fiction. I’m writing a story that’s actually based on events that really happened with our baboons when I was watching them, though of course in my book the baboons can talk. It’s basically Watership Down but with monkeys, and I’m really, really excited about it.