(Good) Friday, 17 April 1987: John Cooke – Professor & Mountaineer

UB Environmental Science Computer Lab, 9:00 PM

I’m trying to get caught up on my writing this weekend now that classes are over for the year and I have finished preparing my final exams.  We had the day off today to commemorate the execution of a dissident Palestinian Jew back in the days of the Roman Empire.  I’ve just returned from a restaurant where I ate a mediocre pizza and am now sipping a Castle Lager.  It’s Friday night and I’m having a virtual “date” with my ol’ friend, Glenda, back in Denver who is the recipient of this letter. 

In a recent letter, Glenda had expressed concern about my safety and sanity.  Most of all she fears that I will get AIDS here.  I assure her that, to the best of my knowledge, there are no reported cases of AIDS among celibate monks.  As for my sanity, she is worried about the loneliness I’ve been experiencing over the past year in Africa.  Yes, loneliness sucks but consider the alternatives:  unemployed in Denver with friends to visit every day of the week or lonely in Gaborone.  Gosh, that even rhymes and would make a good heading for a personal ad.  The local pronunciation for the city is “Habboroney”.  Hey, how about, “Mahoney is lonely in Gaborone”?  

In response to Glenda’s suggestion that I take up embroidery, I explain that I can’t even sew a bloody button on my shirt!  No, I stay busy with twice/week French classes, weightlifting with friends at a local fitness center, running, reading in the new university library, and stamp and photo society meetings.

Glenda’s best piece of advice was, “don’t take yourself too seriously in a foreign country”.  Now that’s for sure.  The Batswana frequently laugh at me so I may as well laugh at myself as well.  There are the hysterics that I generate from them while riding my bike wearing a backpacker’s headlamp at night.  Then there are my students.  If I mention my ex-wife as part of an anecdote in my Geography of North America class, my students giggle uncontrollably.  But should I try to crack a joke, they just sit there poker-faced like pieces of furniture.  American humor doesn’t seems to translate well here.   

Putting aside my complaining for the moment, there have been some good times in Botswana.  Consider three nights ago when the Environmental Science Department had a real “piss-up” (a party with excessive consumption of alcohol).  It was in honor of John Cooke, our snow white-haired chairman who just turned 60.  I think the old bugger was really touched by the affair.  We gave him a case of champagne as his present and then helped him drink it up.  We also had a potluck dinner with some delicious curries.  I made a nutty-cheesy salad based on the version served at Zach’s Restaurant on East Colfax Avenue in Denver.  It received rave reviews. 

By the time the cake was brought in, most of us including John and yours truly were well-lubed with beer and champagne.  But John, being an ex-mountaineer, rose to the occasion.  He did a chin up on a door jam and then did a summersault while still suspended, landing with his feet firmly on the floor.  It was the goddamndest thing I’ve seen since my Denver friend, Bill, rode his giraffe unicycle on his 35^th birthday a few years ago.  

I first learned of John’s mountaineering exploits when he came to me with a book manuscript not long after I started teaching here.  It was a draft of his autobiography, and he wondered if I might give him some editorial comments on a chapter dealing with his ascent of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the 1950s.  John had learned from my resume that I had done editorial work and that my most recent gig was as the editor for Trail and Timberline, the journal of the Colorado Mountain Club.  

The Kilimanjaro climb story was a great read.  John and two friends had made the first ever traverse across Africa’s highest peak going up one side and down the other.  Their wives had provided a car shuttle service enabling them to accomplish the feat.  

In addition to bagging peaks, I also learned that John had explored a number of African caves both for recreation and for scientific studies.  Sadly, John is no longer able to climb or do spelunking because his knees are shot.

 

Highly recommended reading for an Afro-phile, if you can find a copy!

24 June 2023 addendum

John’s autobiography was published in 1991 by Tynron Press in Scotland.  It is titled, One White Man in Black Africa:  From Kilimanjaro to the Kalahari, 1951-1991.  I bought a used copy on-line from Abe Books a few years ago but unfortunately, it is now out of print.      

In the book, John traces his 40 years in Africa starting out as a young British colonial officer in Tanganyika (later Tanzania after its union with Zanzibar in 1964).  After earning a PhD in geography, he went into academia and eventually served as chairman of the Environmental Science Department at the University of Botswana until his retirement in 1991. 

In addition to describing his mountaineering and spelunking adventures, John describes his work with tribes in Tanganyika to help them improve crop yields, find markets for their products, settle intra- and inter-tribal disputes, and establish an effective legal system based on the British model.  John takes a balanced view of colonialism.  He acknowledges that it’s easy to criticize a system which was characterized by innumerable cases of abuse and exploitation.  He also points out that the British did bring education, Western medicine, communication systems, better transportation, and a legal system to the African continent.  John points out that many African countries have had mixed success since independence because of political infighting and corruption.  He does not feel that they should have remained under European colonial rule but argues that a more gradual road to independence might have worked better.  Instead, the colonial powers simply gave up and walked away from their colonies around 1960. 

I would argue that the British did a better job of preparing their African territories for independence than did the other colonial powers including the French, Germans (prior to World War I), Portuguese, Belgians, Italians, and Spanish.  By the 1940s, the British were moving some colonies and protectorates toward self-government and were encouraging tribal leaders to take an increased role in managing local affairs.  This was the situation in Tanganyika when John arrived in 1951. 

Some of the greatest difficulties with European colonial rule occurred in the European “settler colonies” such as Kenya, Rhodesia, and Algeria which had large populations of European settlers who arrived in the 19^th and 20^th Centuries.  As the “Winds of Change” began blowing across Africa after World War II, the settlers resisted giving up their stolen land and “white privilege” leading to armed conflict with the native people.  Consider, for example, the Rhodesian Bush War/Zimbabwe War of Independence from 1964 to 1979, the Algerian War of Independence from 1954 to 1962, and the Mau Mau Rebellion in Kenya from 1952 to 1960.