Vache Qui Rit

Well, there are certainly lots of movies like this and, yeah, the Forsyths and La Carrés have a lot of this. But, gee, there’s lots of good, and decently-known literature that violates some or all of these rules, starting with African literature.

When I was a boy, I wanted to live in Africa and go to Mars. One down, one to go – but still hopeful about Mars. I spent two of the best years of my life in Benin, upcountry, teaching schools with the Peace Corps. First, to immediately follow a few of the rules myself: Africa had a very definite feminine feel to me, from the moment I walked off the plane at Roberts Field on the way to Benin, until the minute I left Algeria for Paris two and a half years later. I have been back since. Africa still feels deeply feminine to me. Sorry.

Secondly, the constant presence of lovely bared breasts, at least in West Africa, in my field of view was one of my favorite things about living there. One of the female volunteers, another male friend and I went to the market for beans and rice one night toward the end of our stay and were served by a beautiful woman with very shapely bare breasts, causing Jerry and me to stare. Sarah reprimanded us, asking if we weren’t tired of the sight after two years. The answer was an insistent ‘no.’ Again, sorry.

It’s the news media that have the real problem seeing anything like an Africa that really exists. I remember a few years back when CBS Radio News announced that “The Pope arrived in Lomé, Togo today to the beat of tribal drums.” I called the national news desk after the broadcast and asked the guy on the phone “Which tribes?” “Huh?” “Which tribes were playing drums for the Pope? – Ewe? Mina?” “Huh?” “What makes the drums TRIBAL? What does TRIBAL mean in that sentence?” Etcetera. It became clear that ‘tribal’ just meant ‘primitive.’

I had a similar dialogue of the deaf with a newsman a few years later about the fact that in South Africa the death throes of apartheid were called “black-on-black tribal violence,” while the simultaneous breakup of Yugoslavia was never described as “white-on-white tribal violence,” as it clearly was, if either term had any meaning.