Dinner in the bush, colonialism

I’ve been reading Eat, Pray, Love since December, but took a bit of a hiatus because I was getting bored in the Pray part of the book until recently. The Eat part was really good (translation: I enjoyed Elizabeth’s train of thoughts while in Italy), but the Pray part is now starting to make sense.

When Elizabeth Gilbert went to that Indian ashram to pray, she started reflecting on what a random old lady who was nearly one hundred years old told her — that in life, there are only two questions that humans argue over: (1) How much do you love me? and (2) Who is in charge? At first, I didn’t believe those two questions, but lately have been thinking more about it. At work, I constantly think about who is in charge – any conflict that arises often goes back to the idea that someone is under control and either I have to satisfy that as a paid employee, or someone under me has to fulfill my requests. The love part, though, I am not sure I believe the old lady – perhaps because Lizzie has not gotten to Bali yet where she is supposed to love (allegedly). Elizabeth talks about how her therapist was tasked to counsel refugees from Cambodia who traveled by boat and that at the end of the day, also ask the same two questions. 

Speaking of who is in charge, I’ve been thinking about colonialism and reparations a lot lately. (Warning: White Lotus spoiler alert) Paula’s attempt to help Kai steal several thousand dollars’ worth of jewelry, but in the process, ended up hurting Nicole’s family, has me very conflicted – is it ok to steal from those whose ancestors stole from your people? What do reparations look like? Ava from Abbott Elementary argues that having a white teacher teach Black students during Black history month while getting underpaid is almost reparations. Is me being here a form of reparations in some twisted way? Is it weird that I teach African geography to my students, while fully not being African? I’ve been having this discussion quite often at supper with my students and fellow faculty members, but have not gotten to any conclusion yet. Maybe I should be focusing instead on capturing carbon to make into Lulu leggings.

I have a fungal infection on my face, likely from a dog (Bhonzelda) according to my dermatologist. I was very worried about it before seeing the doctor, then not worried at after seeing her, but am now very worried again because I saw a tweet about how fungi are more complex than we think and could take over the planet – hoping it’s not true but please let me know if you know something about this. 

I went to a bush dinner (dinner in the jungle) with Alexa and one of her neighbors. We started off by going to the Lion and Cheetah Park which had several lions, a very large turtle, two ostriches (Sister Elizabeth and Captain Jack), a camel, monkeys, hyenas, but no cheetahs. After the park, our dinner commenced near a game park where we were set up to eat food while watching animals. Following around 30 minutes of sitting, the park keepers started pouring out food on the ground and calling —a herb of zebras appeared and began to eat, just about 10 meters in front of us, just as we were served our appetizer. It was strange - watching animals eat in the park as we also ate our own dinner with them watching us. Was the bush dinner for us humans to eat and watch animals? Or was it for the animals to eat dinner and watch humans?

One of my goals being abroad was to learn and experience life from a different lens, a global context, and then to bring it back to the US to inform my future work. The idea of going abroad and coming back to rebuild is the same exact idea that my school (USAP) was built off – students who are low-income, high-achieving receive fully funded scholarships to attend uni abroad with the goal of returning to Zimbabwe and rebuilding the most impoverished parts of society. Rebuilding is so important, and for some reason, it makes more sense for students to go to a higher resource country and returning to their nation to develop, rather than go abroad to a low-resource setting and return to the US to improve an already developed country. In brief, what am I doing here? And why? I think I miss home.

Alexa with camels

Zebras at night

Zebras watching me at dinner