15.
Grandma’s Juice
16th
December 2013
Words.
In this blog, I use them to depict the dire reality of life in a remote part of
Africa. But the tragedy unfolds there, whether or not I describe it. (Just like
when I am sent to do the shopping: what I buy is going to be wrong, whether or
not my wife gets the chance later to give me personal feedback. What’s the difference
anyway between fresh crème and crème fraiche? A trifle, surely?)
Anyway,
it is the reality that matters. The words can get in the way. The situation in
Berega, (as in many other parts of the world), is bursting with meaning and
import and consequence, but all you get are words. My words, in the case of
Berega. Can they be enough?
My
21-month grandson, already a master of the inadequacy of words, illustrates the
point: “Man-ma’s juice is hot!” ‘Man-ma’s juice’ was my cup of tea. This was Freddie’s
first full sentence, at the start of that wonderful decade between not being
able to speak, and not wanting to. It was so cute that we have not had the
heart yet to begin the rigid programming of mind which The World demands of its
inmates.
The
sentence was nevertheless wrong in every way: He calls both my wife and I ‘Man-ma’,
a corruption of ‘Grandma’, but I am in fact ‘Dandad’. It was not juice, it was
tea. And although he was correct to infer that beverages made with boiling
water can indeed be hot, this particular cupful was at best tepid. The nub is
this: Did we pull him up on the inadequacy of his descriptive powers? (“You
foolish child! I am your male antecedent; a beverage by definition cannot be a
vegetal extract; and this specific cup was barely above the melting point of caesium
at atmospheric pressure!) Yes, we did.
No,
not really. Instead we boasted about the cleverness and cuteness of little Freddie
to all those who have not yet got into the habit of crossing to the other side
of the road when they see us coming with a smug look on our faces, and a finger
fumbling for the photo album on the phone.
Freddie
also deploys many other teddy-cuddling cutenesses. My favourite is his tendency
to use ‘No’ to mean both ‘no’ and ‘yes’:
(“You
poor little baby, you are so hungry. Do you want some food?”
“Nooo-oooo-sob
sob sob-ooooo”
“Here
it is then…”)
(By the way, these
verbal faux pas are presumably designed by Nature to endear us to what are
otherwise machines for turning anything edible into poo. “I’m weally weally
hungwy” is far more likely to induce a beleaguered parent to stump up a sausage
than: “Mother, the hour of my repast has surely slipped into the abyss of
forgotten dreams. Ah! The sweet sound of sausages, that breathes upon a bank of
bacon, stealing, and giving odour!” Without the endearing mistakes, they weally
would be hungwy. Perhaps the highly intelligent Cro-Magnon man died out because
their children’s first sentences were particularly annoying – “Oi! Pig-face! Get
me grub! Now!!!”)
The
nub is this: words are important, but alone are not enough. Freddie, like rural
Tanzania, is bursting with meaning and import and consequence, for instance about
the potential danger of Grandma’s Juice or Bad Roads or High Blood Pressure.
The expression of this does not do justice to the reality or the understanding.
This
last month has been full of similar inadequacy of expression. My time has been
split between getting harmony and getting money. The various charities working
for Berega’s future need to harmonise, and that means having a collective plan
that says clearly what we are all trying to do; how; and by when. Meanwhile,
grant applications demand a certain practised style in the use of words: ‘The evidence-based
intervention propounds a setting-specific self-sufficient synergy between the
inter-agency evaluative action objectives and the … er … chickens’. (Often I
run out of steam towards the end of these sentences, which is why I am not a
very successful grant-raker.)
Words,
words, words, but what of the mum who does not return home to her children?
Does ‘1% maternal mortality per childbirth’ convey enough of the sadness? Does
it capture the empty, desolate weariness of the 6 and 8 year old sisters as
they struggle next day to find water and carry it home? All hope of schooling
now lost, how will they themselves survive?
I
feel the inadequacy, then, as well as the usefulness, of having adopted a
catchy title for what we are trying to do: ‘EMBRACE’ – Empowering Women to
Receive Adequate Care & Equality’. Thanks to Howard and Paul, we now also
have a logo, a flyer and a standing order form. A facebook page is being set
up. Twitter will follow. Thanks to Ammalife we have a Mother charity, and
thanks to Debbie and Blanché, a global following amongst the world’s pearly
queens. Thanks to lots of you (but not enough!), we have some money. Thanks to BREAD,
Hands4Africa, Mission Morogoro, Isaac, Abdallah, the Diocese of Worcester and others, we have a
plan.
What
is needed now is somehow to convey what is really happening there, and how it
is changing. What goes right, what goes wrong. What helps, what hinders. Which
sentiment, softly spoken by the right person to the right person, will have the
power to stimulate a new understanding and a new expectation in this beautiful and untouched part of Africa.
Words
will not be enough. Let me think, over Christmas, how the story of this next
year can best be told. Meanwhile, I hope that the story of a very successful
Childbirth brings joy to your world, and to those you share it with.
Laurence
xxxxxxx
By the way, apologies for the very
late arrival of this blog. Life has been full, in many ways. If in future you
would like to know when a blog is being posted, please email me, and I will set
up a Wandering Nib Club.
No comments:
Post a Comment