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Perfectly nice cannibals
May. 20th, 2008 11:14 amNobody else is in the office yet today, and I have that "I didn't come to work on a Saturday by accident, did I?" feeling.
Last night I started watching the series The Flame Trees of Thika; I saw it on Masterpiece Theatre years ago when I was a child and loved it. I was so infatuated that I even worked out how to play the theme music on my violin. I spotted it on Netflix and thought I'd see if it lived up to my memories. After one episode, I think in many ways it does. The BBC production is based on the memoirs of Elspeth Huxley (of the famous Huxleys; my parents told me at the time that I was nearly named Elspeth and so I identified very much with our intrepid heroine), whose parents went off to Kenya to start a coffee plantation, essentially duped into buying some pretty worthless land and penniless by the time they got there, but determined to make a go of it despite every factor pointing towards the futility of it all. I am still struck by all the things that I was as a child--the sense of adventure, the beautiful scenery, envy of the life of a girl who sees lions and zebras all the time, the realization of a child that parents can be flawed human beings who don't know everything--but I see more now, the economic condition of the British Empire in the years immediately leading up to WWI, the role of women in colonialism, and most particularly the cross-cultural interactions among the various sorts of Europeans who ended up in Kenya, the Jikuyu tribespeople and the more educated Africans who look down on the tribespeople. Even as a child I was attuned to the injustice of treating people badly just because they wore body paint and happened to live in the bush*, but there's added depth watching it now. In a way I feel a bit like Elspeth herself must have, experiencing these things as a child and then thinking about them later as an adult. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of it.
*There's a great scene where Elspeth and her mother are having lunch by the side of the road with their (educated, non-tribal) African escort. A small band of tribespeople wander by, and the African escort scornfully says they are stupid and most likely cannibals. Elspeth says to her mother, "Do you think they are really cannibals?" Her mother answers, "No, I'm sure they are perfectly nice people." To which Elspeth thoughtfully responds, "They might be perfectly nice and still be cannibals, though. They'd just eat people instead of animals."
I received two compliments on my dancing that mean a lot to me, one through the grapevine from someone I know and deeply respect and one completely random out on the internets from a dancer who held up one of my YouTube videos as an example of a good interpretation of a particular song. It's nice to hear these things as I am gradually starting to feel physically strong once again. My physical and mental confidence are returning.
Last night I started watching the series The Flame Trees of Thika; I saw it on Masterpiece Theatre years ago when I was a child and loved it. I was so infatuated that I even worked out how to play the theme music on my violin. I spotted it on Netflix and thought I'd see if it lived up to my memories. After one episode, I think in many ways it does. The BBC production is based on the memoirs of Elspeth Huxley (of the famous Huxleys; my parents told me at the time that I was nearly named Elspeth and so I identified very much with our intrepid heroine), whose parents went off to Kenya to start a coffee plantation, essentially duped into buying some pretty worthless land and penniless by the time they got there, but determined to make a go of it despite every factor pointing towards the futility of it all. I am still struck by all the things that I was as a child--the sense of adventure, the beautiful scenery, envy of the life of a girl who sees lions and zebras all the time, the realization of a child that parents can be flawed human beings who don't know everything--but I see more now, the economic condition of the British Empire in the years immediately leading up to WWI, the role of women in colonialism, and most particularly the cross-cultural interactions among the various sorts of Europeans who ended up in Kenya, the Jikuyu tribespeople and the more educated Africans who look down on the tribespeople. Even as a child I was attuned to the injustice of treating people badly just because they wore body paint and happened to live in the bush*, but there's added depth watching it now. In a way I feel a bit like Elspeth herself must have, experiencing these things as a child and then thinking about them later as an adult. I'm looking forward to watching the rest of it.
*There's a great scene where Elspeth and her mother are having lunch by the side of the road with their (educated, non-tribal) African escort. A small band of tribespeople wander by, and the African escort scornfully says they are stupid and most likely cannibals. Elspeth says to her mother, "Do you think they are really cannibals?" Her mother answers, "No, I'm sure they are perfectly nice people." To which Elspeth thoughtfully responds, "They might be perfectly nice and still be cannibals, though. They'd just eat people instead of animals."
I received two compliments on my dancing that mean a lot to me, one through the grapevine from someone I know and deeply respect and one completely random out on the internets from a dancer who held up one of my YouTube videos as an example of a good interpretation of a particular song. It's nice to hear these things as I am gradually starting to feel physically strong once again. My physical and mental confidence are returning.
