I Had a Farm in Africa

By Fred Owens

"I had a farm in Africa" is the famous opening line of Out of Africa, Karen Blixen's lyrical meditation of her life on a coffee plantation in Kenya in the old colonial days. "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills." I don't need to read the book again or see the movie again. I can just say that opening line, close my eyes and dream it. I didn't have a farm in Africa, but I did have a garden with tomatoes and strawberries and African herbs. The garden was at our rented home at 21 Shottery Crescent in Bulawayo. We lived there for most of a year and spent many  hot afternoons sitting in the shade of the pepper tree. So how did I get there.

I will start at the beginning. My mother died in 1996 at her home in Wilmette, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. That was where I grew up. I came home for the last time for her funeral and for the months-long project of clearing out the house and settling the estate. I was 50 years old, a single parent. I had just sent my younger child off to college, and I was free. I had moved out of my apartment after Eva left for school. I sold and gave away most of my furniture and put the rest in storage in the attic of Pam Fleetman's garage. And my mother died  --- I know I already said that once, but it was an enormous change, not so much that I was sad, because I was not sad, but I was totally dumbfounded and dazed. 

By the new year of 1997, I had emptied the old house and it was ready for sale. Mom left us some money, it was more than I expected, money I didn't earn and didn't especially deserve, but I guess it was a gift, a bonus that I could use to go someplace, almost any place, and not to travel there but to live there. I chose Africa, for the reason that was obvious to me because it was January in Chicago and it was freezing out there. I would go to Africa to be warm and to live there for a while, have a life with a house and friends and some work. Get to know the people and the climate, find a coffee shop or tavern or bookstore where I might pass the time. Study the plant life, especially the baobob tree. And learn the language and hear the music. So far away to Africa, over 8,000 miles from Chicago, and in the southern hemisphere to see stars I had never seen before.

I chose to live in Zimbabwe because Doris Lessing grew up there. I read her autobiography Under My Skin describing her life as a free-spirited young girl on a farm in the bush in old Rhodesia. As an adult writer with radical views she came into severe disfavor with the white Rhodesian government and was sent into exile, back to England.

Lessing returned in triumph after the 1980 victory of the revolution which brought home rule to the people of a country now called Zimbabwe. The new government gave her a farm. She was grateful for that but could not keep her words to herself. She  wrote about the violence and corruption of the liberation government, finding it to be scarcely superior to the old white government. So she was sent into exile a second time, possibly the only writer to accomplish that feat.

I bought a ticket and got a visa. I booked a cab to O'Hare Airport. When the cab came early the next morning, I soldiered out of the home where we had lived for fifty years, resolutely determined not to turn my head and take one last look. For me, my mother and that house were one and the same thing, but it was good bye. I should have realized that I had just become homeless.

Capetown is like a southern California beach town. Africa Lite. Lots of white people living in nice homes with ocean views. I took the third floor garret room at the lodge in Kalk Bay managed by Mia and Fatima Lahrer, a charming Indian couple. We had many vigorous conversations over dinner. I could see the warm waters of the Indian Ocean from my garret window. I might go body surfing at the nearby beach and then stop at the Cafe Matisse for a glass of wine and a flirtation with Rose the beautiful Coloured waitress. I might have drinks in the evening with Michael Pam, the old poet of Kalk Bay. I might go hike on Table Mountain with the local botany club and see the flowers that grow there and nowhere else -- what they call endemic. I had friends and I had a life in Kalk Bay. It felt more like Europe than Africa.

Then I called Eva my daughter and reached her at her dorm room in Oberlin College in Ohio. I told her that I had found my place. and she said, without a pause, Dad, that's not Africa, you said you were going to Africa. You can't just lie on the beach. C'mon, Dad. .... She could be so commanding. I must follow my mandate and launch a serious expedition into the heart of it. Take the plunge. Go there. Be there. This was not a vacation, but a quest.

That evening at dinner with Mia and Fatima I told them I must continue my journey to Zimbabwe. And Fatima said, You must go to Nyanga. I said why Nyanga, what is there, what does it mean. And she said, You must go to there, you must go to Nyanga.

The End, but stay tuned for the next chapter.... Nyanga means Moon in the Shona language. Let us go there together.

And don't worry about the virus too much. Wash your hands more often, cough into your sleeve, stay home if you feel flu-ish ... but the mask hardly seems necessary unless you work in health care.

Hope it rains here in Santa Barbara and soon,

Hope you all get the best weather you can dream,

Closing in gratitude,

Fred

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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens

My writing blog is Frog Hospital

I Wish I Had Never Gone to Africa

By Fred Owens

"I wish I had never gone to Africa."  Already I'm getting tired of that opening line. Readers are encouraged to supply a replacement. Maybe from the old Bob Dylan song, "I'd like to spend some time in Mozambique."

Jerry Thebe lived in a shed in our backyard in Bulawayo (a solid brick shed with shower, toilet and electricity, quite a decent shed). His parents owned the house we rented.  His family came from Botswana. And what language do they speak in Botswana? Setswana. They speak Setswana. That's their language. Ba- is a prefix that means people. Mo- is a prefix that means person. So Jerry is a Motswana who comes from Botswana. and speaks Setswana. That is our first lesson in African languages.

Jerry also speaks Shona, Ndebele, Xhosa and English. Maybe some Kalanga and Tonga. Most Africans know at least three languages and have an impressive vocabulary, at least as large as mine. When I first got to Africa I was riding a bus from Pretoria, across the Limpopo River into Zimbabwe on my way to Bulawayo, which is a day long trip, counting an hour or so at customs. The three young men sitting in front of me were speaking and laughing to each other with great enthusiasm. The beer they were drinking seemed to spur the verbal antics. But they weren't just speaking and telling jokes. They were playing with the language itself. They didn't just speak three languages. They spoke three languages at the same time, because that's more fun. And they laughed and drank more beer. It was ten a.m. We stopped for lunch at noon. They had huge plates of sadza and nyama, followed by more beers. They piled back on the bus and fell asleep. I enjoyed the quiet as the bus rolled along and contemplated my own inadequate grasp of English.   

I was forgetting about Jerry Thebe. He lived in our backyard for more than a year and studied software and computer usage. Later he moved to Gaborone, the capital of Botswana, where he worked in software. I last heard from him by email about ten years ago. I am trying to locate him now. He would be forty-something and likely has his own family. I would bet he's still in Gaborone, which is not such a large city. It would be fun to go looking for him. It is fun to find people --- when you're intentions are innocent, as mine are.

I also looked up Jonathan Timberlake, the botanist who published the authoritative guide to the acacias of Zimbabwe. As I said last week, he needed a sabbatical in the cloudy country of his native England. His fair skin was causing too much cancer. But he continued his work and edited the Flora Zambesiaca, which features a complete list and description of all the plants species in Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, and Malawi. The project was started in 1950 and it has cataloged 24,000 species as of 2012, in multiple volumes, sponsored by the Herbarium at the Royal Gardens in Kew.

Botany is such happy work. I imagine Jonathan Timberlake is fully absorbed in this project. And he too has quite an impressive vocabulary. I am trying to locate his email address. We did not get to know each other well when we botanized together in 1997, but he would welcome inquiries from a fellow enthusiast as I am.

She. She is the title of an Africa fantasy novel by Rider Haggard. He is the third person I would like to contact, besides Jerry Thebe and Jonathan Timberlake, except Haggard is dead, so this will have to be done telepathically. What will I say to him? Mr Haggard, did you really just make this up?  Rider Haggard also wrote King Solomon's Mine, published in 1885, which I absorbed. Here is what Wikipedia says, "Rider Haggard has been widely criticized for perpetuating negative stereotypes about non-Europeans." True, but they didn't tell  me that. I covered my ears. The fantasy was too rich. Knowing full well that there was absolutely no truth to this claim, I became quite certain that King Solomon's Mine actually existed and could be located in the Matopos Hills outside of Bulawayo, guarded by leopards with gleaming eyes. Ingwe means leopard in the Ndbele language. We sometimes drove out from Bulawayo and spent the afternoon by the pool at the Ingwe Lodge in the Matopos Hills. We drank Bollinger's beer and my wife went in the pool and began to learn to swim.  There are leopards in the hills of Matopos, and caves that hosted traditional ceremonies. And the buried treasures? You know they had to be around there somewhere, rubies and diamonds. I could sense it. Matopos isn't just magical it's extra-terrestrial.

I decided to leave out the part about the rumored, but never proven, affair between director John Huston and artist Frida Kahlo. This affair culiminated in Kahlo's arrival at the movie set in 1951. Huston was filming live on location on a tributary of the Congo River for the movie African Queen. That movie was adapted from CS Forester's novel of the same name published in 1935. The movie starred Humphrey Bogart as Charlie Allnut, the drunken captain of the African Queen, and his companion Rose Sayer, the missionary sister, played by Katherine Hepburn. Both the book and the movie were a huge success. Accurate or not, these tales form the basis of what we know about Africa. But the part that fascinated me the most was Kahlo's secret journey to the movie set, for her clandestine liaison with Director Huston. He lied to her and told her she would have a major role to play in the film. She knew he was lying. They fought. She came down with a tropical fever and almost died. Huston continued drinking Gordon's Gin with Bogart. Hepburn had brought her tennis racket with her to Africa but found it quite useless and it began to warp in the tropical heat. None of this can be substantiated however, so I must leave it out of the story. Some lies are too fantastic.

The next issue will introduce the Mataka family from Bulawayo and the woman I married. I'm trying to give her some fan fare before she enters this humble story.  I will undoubtedly seem dismissive, patronizing, disillusioned, uninformed and egotistical. I will try, but almost surely fail, to step out of the way and let the story tell itself.

In the meantime,  God Speed,

Fred

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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens

My writing blog is Frog Hospital

Africa

By Fred Owens

I started writing a story about the time I spent a year in Africa and married an African woman and built a small garden. It was so far away from here, in Zimbabwe in 1997. I started writing a story and the first sentence was, "I wish I had never gone to Africa." Then I stopped writing. Who wants to read a story like that?  People want to read something more encouraging and not so dark. I thought I could just color it pretty like the movie Out of Africa with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, I could keep out most of the bad parts, like the time I got robbed and beaten in Jo Burg. I could make the story more appealing that way with drama, adventure and beauty under vast African skies. I could write this story so well and so convincingly that afterward I would not be able to tell what were the true parts and what were the parts I created from my dreams. It would have to be considered fiction, with that formal designation of genre. Or just call it a story, like the stories my wife told. She could walk ten minutes to the local market to buy tomatoes for dinner and come back with a story. And tell me the story one way, then, when her sister came to visit, tell the story another way. She had no concept of truth. I would get mad at her and say stop lying, just say what actually happened. She could not do that. I would get madder -- are there any facts in Africa? None. Not a single fact from Cairo to Capetown. Fact-free Africa. There was nothing I could do about it.

Now, today, this morning, Feb. 18, it is four days after Valentine's Day and two weeks until the Super Tuesday presidential primary on March 3. My plan was to stop the African story and begin some words about the current situation.But I can only pass on a brief conversation I had with my sister Carolyn Therese, older than me by two years. She is a retired teacher from the Los Angeles public schools. Carolyn has lived her adult life in the exciting village of Venice near the beach. She knows many people and frequently talks to them about current affairs. So, besides being a wonderful sister,  I consider her to be an excellent source. With that in mind I called her last night and asked her, "Who is going to win the primary on March Third?" She said, "I don't know. I have asked many people how they will vote but nobody has made up their mind yet." That is what she said and that is a fact. We have many facts in our country, unlike Africa, which has many stories and hardly any facts.

Botswana is a round country, you can see that on the map. Botswana borders South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Namibia. Actually Botswana is a bit angular on the map that I just looked at, but it feels round to me. Also landlocked, which is the term we use to say no beach, no saltwater, no harbor, and no ocean. It is true that all rivers run to the sea, but Botswana has almost no rivers, except for the headwaters of the Limpopo River. I love that name, Limpopo, Limpopo. Rudyard Kipling wrote, "Go to the banks of the great grey-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out."  I did find out. I saw the Limpopo, saw the water-loving fever trees on the banks. I didn't see the crocodiles, but I'm sure they saw me.

I flew over the Limpopo at a low altitude in a two seater ultra-light aircraft, piloted by a wealthy South African white man who owned a large ranch on the banks of the Limpopo, called Sentinel Farm. We stayed at Sentinel Farm for several days looking at acacia trees. This was on a weekend expedition of the Zimbabwe Tree Society, a group of amateur botanists, mostly local people of British descent who loved trees.

Jonathan Timberlake had very fair freckled skin and red hair. He had written a guide book to the acacia trees of Zimbabwe and their many varieties. Poor Jonathan, as much as he loved Africa, the sun was killing his skin and he must venture outdoors swathed from head to toe in light cotton covering to shield himself from the sun. I heard later that he was forced to return to England because of this. I should make an editorial comment. It goes like this. Some white people get to live in Africa their whole lives. But many white people only get to live there for a certain amount of time -- a year, a decade, a few months. You never know how long. and it doesn't matter how much you want to stay or how much that you feel that Africa is the core of your soul's purest meaning. It's a mystery, but one day you're on a plane back to England, or to the states. And it's final, you can't come back. I'm not sure about that last part. Maybe you can come back to Africa. I will explore that idea later.

But at Sentinel Farm, beside the great grey-green greasy Limpopo river, the members of the Zimbabwe Tree Society wandered about the many thousands of acres of land which the white man owned, although there seemed to be entire villages of local people  living there. In any event we weren' t there to discuss colonial history, we were there with magnifying glasses to examine the spores on the underside of the leaves of the acacia trees, and to look at bugs and flying insects and butterflies that might serve as pollinators, and to look at the vast blue African sky.

Besides having a genuine interest in acacia trees, I joined the Zimbabwe Tree Society because we camped on expensive safari  property at the local rate. Tourists would have paid hundreds of dollars for a tour of Sentinel Farm.

The Study Manual for this week's Frog Hospital newsletter is a novel titled The Tears of the Giraffe, written by Alexander McCall Smith, about the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency which is owned and managed by Precious Ramotswe. The book takes place in Gabarone, the capital of Botswana. When I was in Botswana I encountered many people who appeared to be characters in this novel. I will marshal more facts about Botswana, but to learn about these people, read this fictional book, or any of the many other novels written about Precious Ramotswe, proprietor of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency.

And be sure to vote on March 3,

And, with regard to the corona virus, be sure to wash your hands frequently with hot water and soap.

Until next time, your friend always,

Fred

 

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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens

My writing blog is Frog Hospital

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day

By Fred Owens

Valentine's Day has already started at our house. We think of it as Valentine's month. I was explaining to Albert, our young housemate, that it is almost never wrong to give her flowers, on any day and for no reason at all.

Cousins. People were entranced by the report from my cousins in Wisconsin -- all Packers fans of course. But there is so much more to tell -- about  my Chicago cousins, all Bears fans and lifelong enemies of all Packers fans. I should say right here, that as much as I love my cousins in Wisconsin, when they play the Bears I want the Bears to win. I maintain a hidden shrine to Bears' guiding spirit and former owner George Halas. Always for the Bears I am. I grew up in Wilmette on the north side of Chicago near the waters of Lake Michigan. That's where I'm from.

More News from our Cousins in Chicago. Eileen, Peggy and Peggy's husband Frank are on a tour of the Mideast, riding camels in Jordan, throwing rocks at the Sphinx in Cairo and cruising the Suez Canal. The trip of a lifetime.

Politics. I know you are clamoring for an extended, long-winded essay on current affairs in the world of politics. Sorry to disappoint you, but all I can say or write is this -- Amy! Amy! Amy! Give us a Klo, Klo. Give is a Bu, Bu. Give us a Char, Char. What do you got? Klo-Bu-Char. Klo-Bu-Char. Goooooooooooooo Amy! She's gonna win. She will be our next President and she's all right with me. President Amy. How does that sound?

The Beach. Laurie and I took a walk on the beach this Sunday morning, at Hendry's Beach, right down the road. Good Lord, it is the entire Pacific Ocean starting at our feet and going clear to China. Where do the  waves come from? Someday I'm going to sneak down to the beach in the wee hours of the morning to see if they turn off the waves at night when no one is looking. I just think that because it so stupefies me -- that the waves never, ever stop. The sound may go dim, and the waves may dimple down and become small as lake swell, but they never stop. What keeps it going?

This morning we saw small waves and washed up seaweed. We saw sea gulls and pelicans. The tide was up too high for the shorebirds, besides that there was a whole gang of volunteers picking up beach litter. The sky was blue, but we can see inland that the clouds were building over the foothills and we might get rain this afternoon.

Facebook and Twitter. I am multi-tasking. I can actually do that, a little, going back and forth from Facebook and Twitter. On Twitter you can choose your preferred pronouns. I will choose he and him.

My Brother. My older brother by four years, Thomas Joseph Owens, was teaching history at Santee High School in Los Angeles, as he has done for about 30 years. Teaching full time and accumulating over 100 days of unused sick leave, because he likes to keep at it. Teaching every day until a few months ago when they discovered that Tom had two kinds of cancer. Not one spreading to the other, but two different kinds at the same time -- apparently that can happen. Not ever a smoker but Tom has Stage One Lung Cancer. They can cure that one with surgery. They operated and removed the bad part on Friday. It went well and they got it. But then he has the other kind of cancer too, Endo-neuro Cancer, bothering his liver and upper intestine. About to undergo radiation therapy for that.

Retired now, but used to working, he wonders what to do with his time. I suggested cribbage. He and I can play cribbage together and pass the time, perhaps in his front yard in Sierra Madre, where he lives, east of Pasadena.

My daughter says that Tom and I don't talk too much when we're together. Well, we spent 18 years in the same bedroom growing up. Got along pretty well, except when I borrowed his Buddy Holly record and forgot to ask. I don't know what happened to his Bo Diddley record. It wasn't me.

Happy Valentines to all of you,

Fred

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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens

My writing blog is Frog Hospital

On Twitter @froghospital

By Fred Owens

I have been on Twitter these past few days. I hope the brain damage is reversible. Trump is on Twitter, like hot breath from the gates of Mordor. I unfollowed Trump but I can sense his lingering presence in the Twitter background, this faint odor, ominous. I watched hours of the appeasement trail, i mean the impeachment trial. It was fascinating. Adam Schiff spoke so clearly. One of the Republican speakers, Patrick Philbin, presented himself very well too. Philbin was a very calm and assured public speaker. I could not agree with Philbin's argument but he presented it persuasively. The witness debate ended on Friday with an actual roll call vote. Despite knowing what the result would be, the drama of the moment was palpable.

Current events in Washington and in Iowa are happening too fast for me to maintain. Maybe I should step back and tell you about this book I'm reading, about the war in the Middle East. The Crusades, the Fifth Crusade in the year 1220, eight hundred years ago. But it's the same war. We've been fighting the Saracens for all these 800 years. We, meaning the cultural descendants of French King Philip Augustus and the English King Richard the Lion-Heart. Innocent III was the Pope at that time, the Holy Father was preaching jihad. The crusaders claim to Jerusalem was valid in my eyes. Jerusalem belongs to whoever can take it. 

The book I'm reading is titled The Templars, the Rise and Spectacular Fall of God's Holy Warriors by Dana Jones. The Templar Knights were a curious combination of piety and military violence in service to Christianity. The war with Islam continues to this day, 800 years later. I bought this book used, for $9, at the Mesa Book Store, here in Santa Barbara. Not a heavy tome, only 354 pages. You gain a little perspective when you step back, when you seem to observe one hundred American Senators driving this country to the brink of madness. No, they are not going mad, they are just confused. SPQR, Senatus Populusque Romanus means the Senate and the Roman People, who constituted the ruling body of the Roman Republic, until the Emperor took over. The Emperor took over because the Senators were confused. Actually it isn't clear how this happened, but ultimately the Roman Emperor ruled and all the Senators did was talk. It could happen here and some say it already has. I don't know. I don't worry about history repeating it self. It certainly can if it wants too.

Too much is going on. This isn't a bad thing, it just means I can't frame it. But neither can you frame it, nor the smartest people working for the New York Times. Reality has escaped us all. The framers are chasing reality and will catch it, and put it in a frame for us to ponder and control, but not this week. This week we have more freedom than we can handle. Picture a runaway horse. The witness debate in the Senate on Friday. Super Bowl LIV on Sunday (notice the Roman numerals), the Iowa caucus on Monday and the State of the Union Address on Tuesday night. Too much. I think I will skip Trump's speech on Tuesday night, maybe catch something on Netflix. Will all 47 Democratic Senators be in attendance when Trump speaks? He will likely speak for more than one hour, and wander off script. No, I've already been punished for my sins, I won't watch. And I expect to see some empty seats in the Chamber.

@froghospital  -- My esteemed son Eugene and my beloved niece Primavera both encouraged me to try something new in the way of apps and downloads and up to the minute techie stuff. I chose Twitter on a trial basis. It is more austere  and intellectual than Facebook. No puppies or kittens. Facebook is about how you feel and who you like. Twitter is about what you think. At least that is how  I will approach it. I invite you to follow me as I explore this new medium.

thanks,

Fred

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Fred Owens
cell: 360-739-0214

My gardening blog is  Fred Owens

My writing blog is Frog Hospital