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Imbreastive -- Pressive! I Meant Impressive!
Sunday, Dec. 05, 2004 - 3:04 AM
When I went to South Africa last winter, we went to a mock Swazi village in what's called "no man's land" -- a sort of buffer owned by no country between South Africa and Swaziland. They do tours there for umphteen dollars. They show you their culture. You get to see Everyman's huts made with highly polished cow dung floors and their traditional dances. They show you what the Swazi king's "palace" is like with many huts -- one for each wife -- inside a giant maze made of straw walls. They cook food in the center of their huts and make bead necklaces and anklets for sale. In their culture, males only wear loin clothes and penis caps and females wear only grass or cloth skirts and beads until they turn 18. When you turn 18, you get a sort of sash/wrap apron to wear, too. It's tied under your arms until you're married. When you get married, you tie one side of this apron over your shoulder. It was quite uncomfortable, coming from a quite modest upbringing, to see girls in all stages of puberty walking around topless. I'm pretty sure I'm now wanted in over 30 countries for pedophilia. As I followed our guide from one attraction to the next, I was compelled to cup my hands on both sides of my eyes and keep my eyes on the spot immediately in front of me in what would be home to my next step. Yet I didn't want to offend them by showing that I was uncomfortable with their culture, and so, I tended to look people dead in the eye a lot more than I usually do. Surely this is some sort of a practical joke that these folks play on the Americans. They all go home and laugh at the Americans that seemed to be studying the Swazi dirt. And afterwards, they visit the witch doctor and contract AIDS and make spears to hunt their next meal and all the other things that Africans do. Except for those that are training to be on American TV -- the ones that have to practice running faster than anyone in the world to win gold Olympic medals and the ones that have to practice having jaundice and distended bellies and having lots of flies fly around them all while looking very sadly into the camera. Thinking back on it, I probably should have looked at as many developing racks as possible for the good of American-Swazi relations. Swaziland, at just over 10,000 square miles (about 300 square miles larger than Massachusetts), would make a great companion in the Coalition of the Willing.
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