I go out walking...before midnight.. out in the moonlight

July 12, 2008
Maun

When I lived in Austin a documentary caught my fancy: “Hands on a Hard Body.”

The joke, of course, was that the title depicted what might come to mind as available from a dark, sealed-off corner of the Blockbuster store, or, worse, at a gritty venue off Times Square where you wouldn’t be caught dead by anyone you knew. Fooled us, every one.

“Hands on a Hard Body” was cinema verite, darn right, but it was about an annual contest in Longview, Texas, at the Nissan dealership. The documentary captured the battle of wills: Contestants vie by standing until they drop – sometimes in a matter of hours, sometimes in a matter of days – trying to keep a hand on a vehicle. The sleepless, dazed, incoherent winner – the last one left standing with sore feet and with a numb hand on the hard body -- takes all: the spanking-new, Deee-luxe pick-‘em-up truck.
Ain’t she a beaut?

As a previous winner, man of the black cowboy hat with a porn-star mustache to match, summed up the competition, “It’s a human drama thing.”

I recall a skinny, ruddy-faced boy of about 20 describing to filmmakers his inclination to join the contest.

“You can do ANYTHING with a pickup,” he said.

He was consigned at the time to driving a VW bug on the backroads of Louisiana -- if I’m remembering right -- which must be a little like going hunting with a candy-colored letter opener. He had big dreams of being able to travel where he wanted to travel and do what he wanted to do and, best of all, haul whatever he took a mind to haul.

He didn’t last long in the competition. The Hispanic woman who listened to gospel music through her earphones and praised the Lord with one upraised hand (the other on the pickup, of course) clocked a better showing. So did the woman missing some front teeth who’d practiced in the noonday heat outside her house with its 3-ton air conditioner to get ready for the competition but ultimately stomped off in a pure-D butt-kickin’ huff, complaining how the danged contest was rigged because the judges hadn’t disqualified the ones who lifted their hands an inch or two here or there. What are you, judges – blind?!

But I have to say the ruddy-faced boy got it right. It takes living in Maun, Botswana, to walk a mile, or four, in the boots of that beetle-driving boy.
I find myself walking a lot these days, up my sandy road, along the main road, which they call the “tarred road,” to the Internet cafes, to the Bon Arrive, to the Spar grocery to the FNB bank. You name it. I’ve hoofed it already.

I look with yearning at the safari trucks barreling past me, kicking up another coating of sand and dust for my hair, of late a new color thanks to L’Oreal in a box. I admire the Toyota Hilux with a passion, not to mention the Land Rovers, miniature Nissan pickups and all-purpose Surfs. Coveting is a bad thing, right?

For the first time in my adult life I am without wheels. And for a woman who has been known to drive six hours from Kentucky to Washington, D.C., for a Sunday brunch, this is a sobering predicament. It’s high season in the delta. Even the local yokel City Car Concepts has no car to rent me, never mind the extortionist prices.

Trudging along in my cloud of dust on the road’s shoulder, not unlike Charlie Brown’s friend PigPen, I see all of the rugged people of Africa, men and women, white and black, hauling ladders, truck tires, camp supplies, even people, in the back of their trucks, and I feel like a teenager who’s been grounded. I cut short a perfectly lovely evening with a Motswana guide at 6 last night on account of my concern that my newest taxi driver, Phil, would refuse to ferry me down the sandy road after dark.

I am an oddity. A toddler on the side of the road with her mother pointed at me in amazement as I slogged toward the two of them, hoping to see a taxi at any moment. “Makgoa!” said the tyke.

I got my guide friend to explain it to me: “White person,” interchangeable, he said, with “Customer.” Nothing derogatory about makgoa. Just a fact.
And so I trudge on, understanding with a newfound depth of empathy what it is to long for a truck – any old battered model would suffice -- in the sands of Botswana. I could do anything if I had one.