Sunday, 8 February 1987: A Bitter Rant about My Personal Life

UB Environmental Science Department computer room

And now, on to a subject that readers may be sick of hearing about:  my lack of luck with the ladies in Africa.  Read no further if you find sour-grapes screeds about my personal life boring, self-indulgent, and/or inappropriate.  I offer no justification other than the fact that my personal unhappiness probably clouds my objectivity about southern Africa and interferes with my ability to write about subjects that are much larger than my personal shit.  I also feel that my unsatisfactory personal life points out the difficulty that many single people would have living and working in a foreign society without a supportive intimate relationship.  Besides, I’ve just been out in a secluded corner of the campus where I smoked some excellent weed that’s available locally for excellent prices.

Women are a perpetual source of frustration for me in Africa and I’m getting terribly sick of being controlled by my heterosexual male impulses.  It seems like most of the appealing women here are married, like the ones I’ve met at activities put on by the Alliance Française, who are here with their husbands doing their French national service by teaching French in local schools.    

It’s too bad that I’m not attracted to the local women for there are plenty and I have the impression that it’s easy to pick them up in the bars.  For me, it’s more than just a preference for white-colored skin.  I also recognize the cultural differences between us that are too much of an impediment for anything but a superficial sexual relationship which doesn’t interest me.  I also find that Batswana women are a bit too sullen for me. 

A couple weeks ago, my new paramour, Carol, the U.S. Foreign Service officer, arrived back from her holiday in Cape Town, and we got together for an evening together as well as an enjoyable night in her bedroom.  The following morning she gives me the old, “Let’s just be friends” routine.   Since she’s being transferred to South America in a couple months, she doesn’t want to get involved in a new relationship.  Besides, she admits to having another boyfriend (in Pretoria).  And she thinks that all I want is someone to sleep with and any ol’ woman will do.  There is some truth in her latter assumption – suppose I’m not a very good liar.  It’s too bad because she is very interesting to talk with and great in the “sack”.  But I certainly wasn’t in love so it was no great loss.

As I was about to leave her place, an unpleasant memory popped into my brain which I had been suppressing.  “Could it have been you I saw a few months ago in front of the U.S. Embassy yelling at an African guy?” I casually asked.  She admitted that it probably was.  Yup, now I remembered, it was her.  At the time, I had felt really uncomfortable watching the incident as I walked past the embassy near the center of Gaborone.  Here was this American woman loudly and condescendingly berating an African embassy employee in public apparently because he’d fucked up.  It was a very negative side of Carol and remembering it now helped me feel better that our relationship was over.

 

View southwest toward Kgale Hill from the Science Block (science building) at the University of Botswana.  For the majority of my time in southern Africa, my love life was about as dry as the bushveld vegetation in the foreground of this photo!

 

I lost no time in finding another woman to lust after.  As with Carol, I met her at an American Embassy TGIF party.  Her name is Helen and she is a cute, 30ish, thin brunette who is here from Washington, DC on a USAID contract.  I thought she was out-a-sight and we seemed to really hit it off.  She immediately had me eating out of her hand with love in my heart and lust in my loins.  I kept getting a few scraps of her time and attention that weren’t taken up by the local American VIPs.  She works for an educational development organization but has to socialize with official Americans as part of her job.   I probably came on too strong but when I meet a woman I really dig, I want to pursue her to the fullest.  Cancel all other engagements.  But whoever knows what they want?  They play games and clueless guys like me go along with the program.  Guess I’m just a lusty romantic who seems to fall for women at the drop of a hankie.  I’ll probably go to my grave making a fool of myself with women. 

Helen seemed interested in me but I was probably too honest with her about my past history with women (including my 12-year open marriage) in response to her queries.  Tonight I essentially blew her off.  I figured she was going to blow me off so I decided to maintain some of my dignity.  It was the third date.  She seemed to be somewhat aloof during our conversations this evening, so I didn’t try to put any physical moves on her.  At the end of the evening, she suggested I write her in D.C. to let her know about what I decided to do with my possible two-year contract here.  I was relatively non-committal but doubt I’ll bother contacting her again. 

Look, Helen fits a stereotype like Heather from Save the Children Foundation whom I met in Lusaka last June and other American women I run into who are working internationally.  They are in their 20s or 30s, feel some liberal inclination to make a difference in the developing world, and have M.A.s from prestigious schools and sophisticated East Coast mannerisms.  Most of all, what they consciously or unconsciously seem to want is to “settle down” with an economically prosperous husband, have kids, and lead an upper middle-class lifestyle in a suburban neighborhood.  After they settle into this idealized lifestyle, they think they will still be able to make a difference in their careers but most won’t until maybe age 50 when their kids have left the nest and they are divorced (because if they are still married, their straight-arrow husbands wouldn’t tolerate them gallivanting around the world for some altruistic endeavor).

These women don’t want to take risks with just any ol’ Will who might be hanging around lecturing at an African university.  Especially if he’s 40, divorced, has a vasectomy, and couldn’t give a fuck about marriage and fertilizing their damn eggs.  I realize this comes off as some kind of bitterness trip but I just wish that some of them shared my outlook on life.  I wish that my lifestyle had some appeal to them but let’s be realistic.  I don’t have a chance with them.  They have their futures mapped out, and according to AAA, I’m located way off at the end of some gravel road – accessible but not a recommended side trip.

Perhaps I should be more adamant about my own road.  But I know (literally and figuratively) how innocent-looking dirt roads through the desert can be overwhelmed by raging torrents if an afternoon thunderstorm gets really intense.   Perhaps, I know through experience that bridges can collapse during flash floods even along paved highways.  So, I hesitate to be too sure of myself. 

“The water was warm.

The beach was empty but for one,

and you were lying in the sun,

wanting and needing no one.”

(Carly Simon, “No Secrets”)

Is that the way it is, Carly?  Am I supposed to be a committed hard ass?  How do I put this all together in a way that works for me?  Will I turn out to be a tired, bitter old man once I’m done chasing pretty rainbows?  Should I just forget love and spend some emotionally-empty time with the bar girls?  

Perhaps by chasing after the Helen/Heathers I am making the same mistakes I made as an undergraduate at Ohio State University:  pursuing attractive sorority women and getting nowhere beyond a lot of superficial dates.  I somehow hoped they could be seduced by my iconoclastic attitudes and sense of adventure.  I was living in Fantasyland far removed from their visions of the future.  Were I to do it over again, I would avoid the sorority houses like the plague and hang out at Larry’s, a bar near campus which was frequented by hippies and other counter-culture types.  Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be any Larry’s-equivalent hang out for ex-pats here in Gaborone.