10/29/2017 0 Comments Gogo and the Network of Live ThingsGogo: You are a true African khulu, King James. Me; What does that mean? Gogo: It means you tapped into the network. Me: The network? Gogo: The network, the network of live things. You found a rhino and you tracked it. Me: I did? Gogo: You did. I have inherited a 'gogo' here, from occult sources. "Gogo" is informal Ndebele for grandmother. I am learning Ndebele at the Alliance Francaise, twice a week. We've covered greetings -- salibonani, y'all. I am learning that Ndebele has a whole case for expressing greetings and inquiries at elders, monarchs, and rich people. Gogo Cynthia is my age, not a grandmother. But she has divined that she is, in fact, a grandmother, and it is a fact that is universally acknowledged and respected by all those who know her. She facilitates things for people, a connector between this and that, this person and that person. A 'fixer' in some registers, a 'hustler' in others, with none of the negative connotations of either, trust me. She is scrappy and delightful. She found (out/about/) herself at the Matopos, a spiritual place for the Ndebele, full of centuries-old rock art, and unfettered wildlife, and the grave of Cecil Rhodes. I went there yesterday in my new beat-up old blue Mazda, Sheryl, to be distinguished from the old new blue Mazda at home, nameless. Sheryl merits a name because she merits praise; a low-bottomed two-wheel-driver, she navigates rocky, uneven, one-track dirt roads like a real pro. I praise her every time we lever over a gully or ditch, every time I forget there are unmarked speed bumps on the busy road to campus, every time her acceleration falters and then grabs, every time her brakes slam shut when a herd of slowmoving sable skeptically cross the road. I didn't expect to see as much as I saw, through the grey hanging mist of a deeply unseasonably cold spring day. It seemed the herald of the rainy season, but we've had two false starts already. I was driving along a gutted road that suddenly opened in a high valley nestled in the bald grey domes of the hills. Out of the corner of my eye something large lumbered; impossibly; 100 meters away. It oscillated between pendulous, butt-first lengthwise ambling and perpendicular profile glory. It was a rhinoceros. It was glorious. Above, blood lily. Below, gratuitous dikdik pic. Photo Credit: James Arnett, @Matopos National Park. N.b. Not all of my posts are going to be about literature, although you must click here for a glorious short story by Doris Lessing called 'Sunrise on the Veld,' about a young man - much younger than I - contemplating maturity in the terrible scene of the death of a small antelope.
No dikdiks were harmed in the taking of that photo. That dikdik was just insolently picking his way across the clearing on his beautifully prancy hooftoes.
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AuthorFulbright Core Teaching/Research Fellowship to Zimbabwe, 2017-2018. Will teach at the National University of Science and Technology in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and conduct research on the city's literary history, its cultural infrastructure, and its outlets for creative writing. Archives
February 2018
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