The Reader Travels

With so much magic and wonder on the set of The Lion King, it was the image of the great Baobab tree where Rafiki the Mandrill lived that has stuck with me most. This is a sacred tree of the African savannahs, one that brings shelter and comfort to humans and creatures alike.

I found this tree first when I was searching for African tree cults, back when we were talking about librarian school. The Baobab kept showing up in my searches, so the image was already burned into my brain when I saw her standing there in the middle of the magical set.

Some legends claim that the gods ripped the Baobab up by her roots, turned her upside down and planted her with her toes stuck up in the air. Her branches are barren nine months out of the year, and her belly is large, a womb for creatures to live and grow.

A part of me felt like it was the magic of that tree that reverberated through Rafiki’s voice and down through my toenails. Remember the name of the Baobab tree, but also know the name of Phindile Mkhize, South African singer extraordinaire. I’m totally buying her next album.

I was all ready to leave Africa, but after going to see The Lion King last night, I had to dip my toes back in. Amazing, I tell you.

One of the friends who went was saying that if she ever got married again, she’d want her friends to dress up like plants and hang from the ceiling, just make a strange and wonderful production of it.

I have to admit, it was pretty romantic how the two lions were trying to deny their attraction, but they just couldn’t hold back because even the jungle vines were doing it. And who can resist their urges when they’re surrounded on all sides by hot and heavy plant sex? I know I couldn’t.

But then I was also immersed in the sights and sounds of Africa, the music and the movement, the lights and wonder. Mesmerizing me, calling me… back.

Graham Greene actually worked for the British secret service in Sierra Leone during World War II, so he had some real life experience to back up his stories of Africa and espionage.

In The Human Factor, Agent Castle spent some time in South Africa, but now he’s back home in London, working in an intelligence office deciphering intercepted messages. As I mentioned before, Graham Greene converted to Catholicism for his wife, and like Greene, Castle also makes certain sacrifices in his life for love. He’s bored in his office job, but that’s what he gets for marrying an African, right?

There’s a job opening up in Sierra Leone, but he won’t get it. He and his wife simply wouldn’t do to represent the British government in Africa. Besides, it’s just too dangerous. They’d be too hard to protect.

The black woman and the white man create a visual symbol of love that unites across diversity. So, Greene was a Protestant and his wife a Catholic. Love found more common ground, something deeper and more meaningful than those outward labels.

And yet, he dwells on the sacrifice. It certainly makes for interesting fiction, though.

All through the ages, artists have had to sell themselves to the highest bidder in order to make a living at creation. Some manage to keep a little more of themselves in their art, while others go to work for advertising agencies.

I try not to judge people for “selling out.” Money makes the world go ’round and all that, right? I am more inclined to think of commercials as art. Like the Sonic Drive-In commercials — the writing, directing and acting that goes into those is pretty impressive.

Anyway, I really relate to the married couple they have on there, and I often ask this same question of my own marriage. If she’s the straight man in the relationship, what does that make him?

Funny.

When we’re talking about Africa, we can’t forget the European imperialists, spreading their white fingers across the dark continent. Graham Greene is one of my favorite writers, his works adventuring across many continents, including Africa.

Having been raised Catholic and turning away from the Church in my adulthood, I am intrigued by Greene as a man, because he followed the opposite path, converting to Catholicism when his childhood was behind him. He plays the role of the romantic, choosing his faith for the love of a woman. He accepts his choices but constantly doubts himself, wondering if he’ll ever truly be one of them.

You can see Graham Greene in many of his characters, like the wayward priest in The Power and the Glory, a good but flawed man, mired in self doubt, feeling so often like he’s faking it as he ministers to the people of Mexico. In The Heart of the Matter, the first character we see is a fellow named Wilson, and though he isn’t the main character, he does bear some of Greene’s traits. He’s a romantic like Greene, trying to fit in with the other imperialists since he has just recently arrived in West Africa.

One thing to notice from the beginning of the novel is Wilson’s ultra awareness of race. He stands on the balcony of his club on a Sunday, waiting for his drink to arrive and watching the people around him. He ponders “the young negresses,” “the black clerks,” “one bearded Indian in a turban,” “a black boy” who brought him his gin, his own “pallor,” all in the first two pages of the book.

He also ponders his secret love of poetry and his futile attempts to keep from standing out among the white crowd. It’s his eyes that give him away, “a brown dog’s eyes, a setter’s eyes, pointing mournfully towards Bond Street.” When all he really wants to be is a white sheep.

Roger D. Abrahams retells a vibrant collection of stories in African Folktales. Some of the stories remind me of the Norse tales, the perennial “trickster” character weaving chaos like the mischievous Loki. The richness of the oral tradition also brings to mind The Arabian Nights, gaining a new audience in the written word, even if it loses the depth and timbre of the human voice.

I loved the introduction to this book. Abrahams talked about storytelling, comparing it to an African cloth, with different patterns sewn together, each piece an individual, but coming together to make a unique and beautiful whole. Stories are told around a camp fire with different drummers producing different rhythms, the folk roots of modern jazz music.

You get the picture, right? I’m going to stop now, or else I’ll just start lapsing into stoner talk, and nobody wants that.

One of my assignments in general reference class in librarian school was to pick a subject I wanted to learn something about and use a wide range of reference materials to find information about it. I had a number of topics I was interested in researching, including the Incan Empire, the Roman Empire, the Lewis and Clark expeditions and the history of Liberia.

However was I going to choose?

Well, it just so happened I watched a lot of Northern Exposure in those days, and I had recently seen an episode where Marilyn was breeding ostriches. Opportunist that he was, Maurice noticed how huge their eggs were and wanted to get in on the action, so he went into business with her. When the ostriches started laying really small eggs, Maurice was upset. He started ranting and raving about these creatures and how he couldn’t count on them and how he ought to just “send them all back to Africa.”

So, I took it as a sign that on the day I received the assignment, I found myself riding in the elevator on campus at Texas Woman’s University with Barry Corbin, who played Maurice.

Liberia could be the only destination.

I’m really not good at making up band names. Liberian Minks was among my best, if that tells you anything.

I had been pondering collective memory and how generations of enslavement could make such a difference in one’s psyche. Compare two minks, for instance, one whose ancestors have always lived free in the wild, and another descended from cage-bred creatures fattened and killed for their skins.

Similarly, ponder the African whose generations have always been in Africa and contrast him with the man whose ancestral path diverged, onto a slave ship, into plantations and generations of abuse, then back to the dark continent as if he could start fresh and clean and pretend it all didn’t happen. You know, like what they tried to do with Liberia?

Liberian Minks? Get it? This is why I’m no good at band names. First off, nobody gets it unless I explain the hell out of it. Then once I explain the hell out of it, it sounds really depressing, even though I really didn’t mean it to be.

I should just give up and buy myself a mink coat. They’re really pretty.