The Wilderness Between

I really fond Paul Theroux’s essay, “Lighting Out,” to be extremely well written and organized. The way he captures Cairo in his interactions with the civilians is amazing. Personally, it took me back to Greece where I had a similar experience with cabdrivers and the general local tourism.

I really enjoyed the use of the phrase “inshallah” throughout the essay. I liked how it rounded the piece, and changed meaning for the author as the story progressed.

However, I’m not sure that I would have called this piece “nature writing.” This seems to me to be more about place in general than the other pieces we have focused on so far. Even in the desert, he focuses more on the Sphinx and historical aspects rather than the land itself. In the city, he focuses on the people. Too, his discussion of Africa seems entirely focused on culture, history, and people and not so much the land itself. He wasn’t worried about erosion, or the struggles farmers have with the ever growing desert. Theroux focuses on war, famine, and disease instead.

I’m sure that there is much more reflection on nature later in the book, but this particular chapter, while well crafted and fascinating, seemed more people based.

Then again, as we’ve often discussed in class, how can you separate nature from people and still have human readers become invested? The people of Africa as well seem particularly tied to their country. For example, we rarely discuss the individual nations of Africa. In Western news and media at least, we only talk about the whole continent. And with all of the disease, corruption, and general suffering, the people are stuck.

Perhaps this is a particular case where the people become the place, and the place becomes the people. It is impossible to separate one from another. Cowboys make the West. Farmers make the mid-West. Old money and big business makes the East. Movie stars make Los Angeles.

I think that in class, we have discussed a lot about twining people and place to make place more palatable and relatable to people. We have talked about it as a tool. But how about more simply, place is people; people is place?

In Theroux’s essay, we see the cab drivers and the desert. Forget wars, famine, rampant AIDs, and focus on the land. The desert itself is harsh and inhospitable, and the Nile River Valley only flourishes after the flood. To get through the more lean times, any survivor would learn to take advantage of the good times to get through the bad. To do what they could to survive.

I think we see this even now in the cab drivers as they smile while swindling you. These are desperate times for Africa as a whole, and the drivers have simply found some of the most effective ways of taking what they can. 1) Most important is friendliness because otherwise no one will want to do business with you. 2) Foreigners don’t know how things work or how much things cost, so adding a little extra (especially because they have so much) won’t be a problem. And 3) If you are persistent enough, or tell them about your eleven children and their hungry bellies, the foreign customer will more likely give in and even feel good about giving you their money.