About a half a year ago, my six-year old Macbook finally
kicked it, joining two Nooks, an iPod classic, and a supposedly rugged,
shock-proof hard drive (I want my money back on that one) in the litany of
electronics that, thanks to Cameroon, are no longer with us. I suppose the bush taxi travel took its toll,
as did, I have no doubt, pervasive dirt and damp; but causality aside, this was
more than a minor inconvenience. Without
a Macbook, I have no way to update my iPod—which means for the last six or
seven months, I’ve had a limited and unchanging menu of podcasts and
audiobooks.
I should mention that this may soon become a moot complaint,
as my iPod itself recently suffered a violent accident while I was out making
sport (damn you, burpees performed on a rocky slope!) The screen is now shattered, and every now and
then the music stops altogether, replaced by a mechanical robot voice badly
mispronouncing the names of the songs in the order they appear. I like to think of these moments as my own
personal episodes of Stephen Hawking Presents: Your Playlist.
But getting back to our sheep: like many Peace Corps
volunteers, I acutely feel the lack of intellectual stimulation in village
life. Most of my friends are uneducated
women; our conversation is limited to updates about the children, the fields,
the corn harvest, and what sauce they’re preparing to eat with couscous that
day. Men are, for the most part, little
better. I cannot count the number of
times I’ve found myself entrapped in an inane argument, such as, “Did someone’s
goat die because of sorcery? It’s up for debate!” or, “Did Obama personally
fake the Libyan uprising so that he could kill Qaddafi, a hero of Africa and in
no way a violent and oppressive dictator? Probably!” or, “Does poverty exist
among white people? Or course not! Mais
ici chez nous en Afrique…”
This is what makes podcasts, second only to books, so
vitally important. While I probably
could spend all day in my hammock reading, I’d feel guilty doing so—but podcasts
are forgivingly portable, and much of my life in village involves mindless
manual labor. Whether I’m scrubbing
layers of mud from my floors, working in my garden, harvesting soy, hand washing
clothes, or cooking, I can turn on my speakers and listen to Ira Glass’
distinctive voice recount something quirky on This American Life.
Now, though, I’ve worked my way through everything, multiple
times. I listened to all four audiobooks.
I listened to V.S. Naipaul’s A
Bend in the River, twice. (Spoiler
alert: it’s just as depressing the second time around!) I can now anticipate
every joke on twelve episodes of The
Dinner Party, a culture show that gives you everything you need to win at
this week’s dinner party (what? It’s their tagline! It practically comes in the
same breath, now that I’ve heard it enough!) Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, I
adore Radiolab, but I no longer
wonder how a mantis shrimp sees color, or where bliss comes from, or what it’s
like to rocket through the earth’s shadow from outer space. I know all these answers. I’d like you two to ask new questions,
please. Same goes for the interviews on Point
of Inquiry and Inquiring Minds,
two fantastic podcasts hosted by Chris Mooney.
Freethinkers and science-lovers out there, let me recommend both of
these—assuming you listen to them like a normal person, not like a deranged
fanatic.
All this to say two things: 1. I’m really looking forward to
America, where electronics can be repaired or replaced instead of consigned to
the elephant graveyard that is my backpack, while the living remnants of their
dwindling herd look increasingly sparse on the bookshelf; and 2. I’ve spent
much more time than I anticipated wondering things like: Am I in any way
qualified to work in public radio? How do you spell Chana Joffe-Walt, anyway?
(Before you get impressed, I just cheated and Googled it.) And, most relevantly
for this blog post, does Garrison Keillor really
improvise every episode, or does he kind of have, like, an outline with rough
body paragraphs when he gets on stage?
And why does A Prairie Home
Companion hold such a nostalgic grip on my heartstrings, anyway?
I spent a while pondering this last one earlier this week,
as I scrubbed guano out of the corners of my bat-infested house and listened to
the antics of Dorothy at the Chatterbox Café.
I think part of it is for purely personal reasons: growing up, my family
listened to A Prairie Home Companion
every Sunday. It would be playing right
as we piled into the car from the 11:00 church service, and my mom would turn
on the radio in the kitchen once we got home and she was preparing lunch. By the time the Guy Noir: Private Eye
segment came on, we’d be sitting down to say grace. It was practically a ritual.
But I think, especially while I’m here, the content of the
show has a lot to do with my sense of wistfulness, too. I have no desire at this point in my life to
move to anywhere like Lake Wobegon. And yet—and yet, knowing very personally how
miserable small-town gossip can be; knowing how stifling is the lack of
exposure to culture and ideas (see above); knowing how quickly one can tire of
an inbred social group—even knowing these things, Keillor makes life in
small-town Minnesota sound, well, ideal.
There’s an expression one hears bandied about among
volunteers: “Cameroon. Nothing works,
but everything works out.” It’s a useful
mantra, particularly on those days when the bus got stuck in the mud, and then
the second bus had an engine stall out, and everything smells like fermented
manioc, and there’s a baby of undetermined origin snotting onto your lap and
it’s 110 degrees and you don’t have a valid ID, because the gendarme wouldn’t
stamp your papers because he wanted a bribe so you’re just hoping there aren’t
any police checkpoints ahead. Nothing
works. But, at the end of the day, things
will work out. It might not be what you expected, and it
might involve some harrowing delays, but you will, eventually, make it to your
destination, and have a great story to tell your friends over cold beers.
And this is what Keillor sells, about the American
existence. As someone who has spent two
years employed to promote our national values abroad, I can’t help but feel
cynical when I get into civilization, tune into the news, and find out what my
nation’s actually up to. Congress
continues to unquestioningly fund Israeli defense, despite major human rights
concerns about the deaths of hundreds of Gazan civilians. Corporations are now considered people, to
the extent of having religious beliefs they can impose on their employees. People we elected to govern us seriously
advocated setting the National Guard on children
coming across the border as refugees, because they were illegal immigrants.
(And yes, I am a month or two behind in the news cycle. I’m sure as soon as I catch up, I’ll be just
as horrified.)
But Keillor reassures me: everything works out. In Lake Wobegon, nothing ever goes seriously
wrong. It’s been a quiet week, after
all. There are mishaps, and awkward
social gaffes, but we laugh at them—and at the end of the day, we’re back at
the Sidetrack Tap, listening to Pastor Liz say something folksy.
This is what I need to believe about going home. We all fundamentally want to believe that our
fellow men are good people, because that means we’re good people—even if we suspect we’re the curmudgeonly Clive
Bunsen of our community or group of friends.
Keillor eschews national politics, indeed any politics, concentrating
instead on the minutia of everyday life: a small-town business like Ralph’s
Pretty Good Grocery and the fate of the local baseball team, the Whippets.
And this helps balance my priorities. When I go home, I’ll be going home to my
family. I’ll be going home to the town
where I grew up, where our version of the Krebsbachs and the Magendanz’ will
still be there. The important thing, in
the short term, won’t be some meta- thought experiment about What It Means To
Be American; the important thing will be connecting with people, going back to
Captain Buzzy’s Coffee for a Colon-buster, eating dinner with my parents at the
same Italian restaurant we’ve patronized for years, where the same two
middle-aged waitresses have served tables since I can remember. It’s a comforting thought.
Thanks, Keillor.
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