Most of what I knew about Africa & elephants came from LIFE. LIFE magazine, I mean. Because I grew up in a time when, already, children were insulated from life. As for the magazine, I liked to come home from school & read it through. I liked those big pictures & spent hours on the sofa each week studying them. This was at the hinge of the 60’s. By that time I was what we’d now call a grom. I was proud to be an accomplished Hodgmantm mat rider, & (as my feet were mushrooming & my money was even tighter than my shoes) a finless body surfer. Though I ached for a board, I hadn’t won that revolution. Yet. Anyway, I already knew that, in Africa, there were elephants on the beach where the jungle came down to the sand. That was cool. I was on the look-out everywhere for pictures of the ocean; there might be waves, you know. I was, after all, a sun blonde skinny grom.
One day, I saw a picture of Gabon, or, of a beach there. First thing I noticed was how great the waves looked; it was what we’d now call an “awesome point break”. But we didn’t have those words. Yet. This picture was taken looking up the beach, out towards a point. And I could see the sets lined up. Below that, along the shore, & up on the berm back from the water, was a line of posts, tree-trunks really, that were lined up, standing upright in the sand. But then. Towards the bottom of the page, I saw it: there was a man tied to each one. And I then understood: that was the point of this shot, they were not whole men really, just blood-droozed trunks. “Oooooh, like mau-mau.”
Then, I read with revolting interest. There’d been yet another coup & these guys were the loosers. The outgoing government. The heads of the leader & his crew sat neatly at their own big feet, as though they were looking out to sea. I wondered if they’d noticed, whether they’d understood how great the waves were that day. Perhaps they’d had other things on their minds.
That was the day when I made a point to remember that I never wanted to go to Africa.
I’d already decided about Vietnam.
Post script:
Now it’s Venezuela where we’re sending our troops to save, no, enslave them. We’re poised to attack & kill innumerable innocent civilians in order to obtain control of their oil. No weapons of massive destructinon, just the ruse of humanitarian need, maybe even to bring Democracy to Venezuela … while storm-thrashed Puerto Rico languishes & unaccompanied refugee children are caged at the border. Huh.
There is little to no talk about the decades of selfish extractive policies of profits for the USA throughout Latin & Central America which have led to this current refugee crisis of people fleeing the rapacious disintegration of their own countries. I expect the caravans will increase. People fleeing shark infested waters are obliged to take their chances with the machine guns on the shore.
There is this elephant in the room we once called the “American Dream”, what ever happened to “liberty & justice for all”? All American policy is driven now by criminal oligarchs intent only upon profits. I don’t relish the idea of an bloody uncivlized coup, but don’t they, tRump & crew, ever consider the possibility that they, too, could be trunked at the beach? Aren’t there sands & surf near Washington? Aren’t there elephants at the Washington Zoo?
~jwl
https://www.jonwarrenlentz.com
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