Second Letter
13SEP10
Sermons in Nitrogenous Waste
Last year, in one of my more expansive moments I promised in writing that I’d faithfully
maintain a blog during my next stint in Africa. Well, for three reasons I’ve decided to
break that promise. First, I’m afraid of boring good people to death. Second, my beloved
and faithful Blogadira, Young Doctor Campbell of Winthrop, has far more important
tasks to occupy her time this semester. Third, Chrissy and I have already had our public
say about Zimbabwe and Africa University. We’ve certainly said enough—probably too
much—and therefore I’d prefer to limit my communications to a reasonable number of
friends and colleagues. You can, of course, let other people read ‘em if you have friends
with a sufficient tolerance for my tedium.
Anyhow, some things are definitely better in Zimbabwe than they were three years ago.
That fact was brought home to me yesterday when I saw a patch of mold on a piece of
bread. In ‘ought-seven, no piece of bread in this country would have remained uneaten
long enough to get moldy. Also, Mutare’s stores have goods on their shelves. And the
means of exchange (paper, inscribed with dead American Presidents) may be ragged &
dirty, but it changes hands rapidly and keeps its value. As other good news I should
report that AU students are dressing more fashionably, and many could be mistaken for
Wofford kids, right down to the cell phones.
Symptomatic of Zimbabwe’s economic recovery is the previously unobserved littering of
roadsides, ag fields, and even forests. Plastic bags, together with other non-returnable
plastic containers, are almost ubiquitous. Softdrinks are now sold in aluminum cans, and,
regrettably, provisions for recycling are not yet in place. Automotive fuel is now widely
available. Diesel is about $1/liter; gasoline costs about 25% more. So the prices ain’t
cheap, but Zimbabwe’s roads have traffic again, and that looks sort of good to me.
Chris and I also welcome some on-campus changes. When the electrical power is on, the
University runs a Wi-Fi net. Like all other AU internet resources, the Wi-Fi cannot meet
the demand during hours of peak usage, and during non-peak hours the net is not often
“up.” However, Chrissy has discovered that on some mornings, before students are
awake and well before faculty and staff arrive, she can log into the College of Charleston
system fairly quickly, right from our house. So I’m guessing that we should be able to
get on-line at least three times a week. Also, the dining hall has a wider variety of food
available. We’ve pretty much stuck with the familiar sadza and beans, but, given funds,
one could eat rice and meat most days, and one Yankee dollar would buy you three
bananas & a Coke (some days). More AU farm workers have bicycles than in ‘ought
seven; a couple have cars, and we’ve even seen a children’s bike.
So that’s the obvious good news. On the other hand, there are some campus
disappointments. Nobody, it seems, has been able to get a handle on the starting of
school, so classes sort of dribble into session, and I’m still lacking a classroom for my
Wildlife course. Irrigation-water (because of Russian mining upstream on the Mutare) is
not in abundant supply, and drinking/household water must sometimes be diverted for
agricultural use. Electrical power has been unreliable. (Actually, for Chris and me and
the farm workers, it was reliably unavailable all weekend.) The University has given up
on Talapia production, so some of our best frog ponds are now overgrown with tangles of
grasses and briars. Saddest, to us, has been the unrelenting assault on the campus’ natural
resources. I guess this ongoing disaster was predictable—at least Terry Ferguson
predicted it—but most of us AU supporters thought we’d seen Zimbabwe’s economic
nadir in 2007, and we hoped that the campus would begin to recover. However, during
2008 the national economy dipped to lows we had not even imagined. So, of course,
people continued to strip the campus wildlands of all things useful. In particular,
firewood collection in the previously productive lowlands reached new heights; some of
our favorite places are now recognizable only from GPS coordinates. Bushpig thickets
are now open fields. Human trails cross the bush like spiderwebs. And, along the
Mutare River, additional gold-exploration pits have expanded the nightmare landscape
we observed during 2007. Of course we haven’t been here long enough to notice changes
in wildlife abundance. One still observes a gratifying diversity of birds (we’ve listed >
30 species in a week, and that’s without looking at sparrows, cisticolas, larks, or other
nondescript balls of brown and gray feathers). Saturday we got into a flock of perhaps 50
guineas. Our trail-cameras have documented the nightly emergence of bats. Vervetmonkeys scout the margins of newly-planted fields, and the man who shares our
compound claims to have spotted a cobra in our front yard. So wildlife-status is certainly
not demonstrably terrible. But it does not look good, and I’ve generally been sad about
things-wild at Africa University this winter.
In other words, during a weekend without electrical power and without sunshine and with
weather reminiscent of New Haven in March, I began to fear that, at some levels,
“decisions” are being made (largely by default) about the future of AU’s campus. The
wildlands will be exploited, not conserved, and our hopes about AU as a model for
sustainable agriculture and sustainable nature—well, as the Stones used to sing, you can’t
always get what you want. That’s OK. Chris and I have absolutely no right to decide
how a piece of Africa will look. Furthermore, we were allowed to present our case,
repeatedly. Africans appear to be deciding otherwise, and in the end we’ll affirm
whatever decisions Africans make.
Whew! I do hate to write all that political-correctness crap, and to make matters worse, I
actually believe it! So anyhow, yesterday, in an unusually deep funk, in unusually
wretched Zimabwean weather, I was trudging along, trying to think profound thoughts
about accepting Loss with a deep, inner Joy. Scanning a devastated sector of campus, I
preached to myself my usual sermon. Most of y’all have heard it or preached it yourself:
“The transitory nature of life itself means that every thoughtful biologist must struggle to
affirm with full heart the Eternal importance of the Temporary.” (Ah, such profundity;
ah, such wisdom; ah, such Resignation.) And then I saw a wonderful object. It was
white, as big as two fists, and it measured 7cm in diameter. ‘Twas a bolus of uric acid.
Some enormous python had left a clear message for Chris and me, “Piss on this
destruction and on your depression. On unclouded days I bask in Africa’s sunshine, and I
carry its warmth underground to incubate 100 eggs.”
At least that’s the sermon Chrissy and I read in that lump of “waste.” There are still
plenty of Wonderful Things to appreciate on the AU wild campus. So we’ve resolved to
let that be our major mission this semester: to see beautiful things and, without
demanding their permanence, to celebrate them with a joyful heart, and to confront loss
and despair with ample mictrition. And we are so, so thankful that a few of y’all have
expressed a commitment to join with us in preaching sermons with nitrogen.