johnbyronkuhner.com

June 16th. Potchefstroom.

We made it. A little difficult, but we made it.

The airport looks pretty much like an airport. But we're in Africa!

Our plane landed perfectly on time. We disembarked to find a lovely, modern, spacious, comfortable, neat airport – it is always pleasant to be reminded that the world’s worst major airports are in Queens. But the line to get through passport control was very long, and very slow-moving. In the end we did not enter the arrivals area until an hour and a half after our scheduled arrival, and our ride, Marianne’s husband, had already left, presuming we were not on the plane. Finding no one to greet us, we found ourselves a bit ill-prepared: I had Marianne’s number, yes, but only on my computer, which had no power, nor could we charge it, because we did not have the adapter, etc. So another hour passed while we changed money, got an adapter, found an outlet, got a cellphone, and called her. Her husband turned around – he had not gotten home yet – and came to get us.

Changing money I had one of those experiences which seemed just a bit different, as one does in a new country. There was a line of three customers all for one teller. There was another teller, who appeared to be working on her computer. After waiting quite a while, I went up to her and asked her if she was busy – because I began to feel that she was not – and she said no, she could help me. It seemed to me unusual that a bank teller should ignore a line of customers. In fact, until I asked, I presumed it was impossible.

Marianne’s husband Dirk picked us up in his BMW, which he drove impressively quickly over excellent superhighways around Johannesburg. The big highways, the desert air – we could have been in Phoenix, really. But then I saw a fire by the side of the road, burning up the dry grass, and not being put out. “It’s the fire season,” Dirk said simply.

We talked for the whole two hour trip, about many things. Only once really did Latin come up: he mentioned that the Afrikaans speakers were the special targets of resentment. I confirmed that the South African national airline did not use any Afrikaans at all, not even a word or two on its logo. We then spoke about the politicization of Afrikaans, how it is very specifically linked with apartheid in a way that English is not (Potchefstroom is “the Afrikaans University,” where courses are taught in Afrikaans, and there has been pressure to end this and teach only in English). I asked if Latin was also considered a mere colonial remnant.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any politics around Latin. If you asked ninety percent of the people in South Africa what Latin is, they wouldn’t know. I think that’s the problem.”

The highway ran right around Soweto and then began to falter. It went to two lanes in each direction; then lane lines vanished; then one lane in each direction, and utterly unlit. Stop-signs appeared out of nowhere in the middle of the highway, with people standing around at the intersections.

“Marianne didn’t want you driving yourself to Potchefstroom,” Dirk explained. “It’s very dangerous, really. The country’s very dangerous. You don’t want to end up in the wrong place, not going around Soweto. There are carjackings, and real violence. It never used to be like this before 1994. I don’t quite know why it’s like this now. I guess people thought that things would change faster. You mentioned before about the rand being weak against the dollar, and for the most part we don’t think much about that. I’ve got my money in London, if my daughters need anything, I can say, ‘here, enjoy something.’ But we pretty much just let the world go its own way, and we go ours. Whatever’s going on elsewhere, things here in Africa don’t change very much.”

Now we’re here. We really haven’t seen much that would be out of place in the U.S. But it feels a bit tattered, somehow – a bit tired. We are staying in the house of a university professor, but there is no central heating, and the lights are mostly fluorescent lights. It’s cold and dim. Not only is there no wi-fi, but none of the neighbors have any either – in a comfortable residential neighborhood, my computer doesn’t pick up any signals at all. In America I would pick up twenty different signals in a neighborhood like this. As we approached Potchefstroom there were more potholes, and more darkness, and a general feeling that something was falling apart and not being repaired. This too may be part of the changelessness.

June 16^th. On the plane.

 As we reached cruising speed, the flight attendants walked through the cabin spraying pesticides, to fumigate the cabin.

 My phone is off, and I neglected to purchase a watch, as I thought I might do before departure, so I have little idea of the time, but we are more than three-quarters done with the crossing, I think. As I pace the cabin – I am not very good at all this sitting – I am amazed, at how the whole plane of people shuts their windows – while Africa rolls by beneath – and sleeps or watches television. The complete triumph over the screen is not only over landscape but also over the book: no one on the plane is reading either. I feel I have been very sheltered – that I have been in this other world, where all that matters is God as revealed through nature, people, and books. But everyone else looks so much happier than I feel – all asleep, or glazed in silence. I feel myself chafing at the containment of long flight: I feel like a caged animal. I take no interest in the dishes brought out for my food; it all looks fake to me; I lose my appetite; I wither. All I want is to burst out again.

 Early evening. We have landed. The sun is setting; all I can say is that outside it looks just like an airport. Very flat. A lot of pavement.

June 15th. On the Airplane, D.C. to Dakar.

Seated next to a gentleman by the name of Ed Yates, who is a most impressive big-game hunter. He is bringing some acquaintances on a hunting trip – he is familiar with the country, having owned land in South Africa and gone on numerous hunting trips here. Indeed he has been all over the continent hunting, and has the calm demeanor of an expert. He says on this trip he will not kill anything, “except maybe if I see a brown hyena I’ll take one. I’ve pretty much done everything.” He says that all the South African animals may be shot in privately owned game parks, and that many farms are now being converted to such hunting reserves – it has the potential to be, so to speak, a higher-yield cash crop for these farms. And also, I will say, a more natural and appropriate one than maize or beef or sheep.

He was astonished that I was going to Africa to teach Latin, and wanted my information, saying he might write of it in an article he was planning on composing for Safari Magazine. “I have to say,” he said, “Latin seems a little out of place in Africa. A little incongruous.”

He has been all over the world, Zimbabwe to Mongolia, and taken all the animals, from lions to polar bears. He said the most terrified he has ever been was on two of his grizzly bear hunts. “Those animals were so huge, and so powerful, you really just don’t know what’s going to happen. To be honest, I was scared —-less.” (I am editing his words in case he reads this and wants none of his own profanity in print.) I will say, for my own part – this is precisely the animal I myself think I would be most scared of. Usually I want to see animals, but when I have been in grizzly country, I haven’t wanted to even see one, not even at a distance.

Now four hours into the first flight. No wifi on board and no more power in my laptop. Catherine and Ed are asleep. I have been hoping to get good computer time on this trip – we will see what ends up being available.

The plane is huge – 75 rows, 8 seats to a row – at least in the economy class. The passengers are black, white, and Indian, but definitely white by a large majority.

[For more information on Ed Yates, take a look at this article.]

June 15th. Dulles Airport.

Now at the airport. Unable to get the internet working properly. Pondering possible Latin texts for our classes in South Africa – there exist many Latin accounts of the animals – certainly good material on elephants, lions, and giraffes, from Pliny to Linnaeus. There is much Latin writing about North Africa – Carthage was their great rival – but these are perhaps no more relevant to South Africans than Aztec architecture to a New Yorker. There must be some good Latin about gold and diamonds. And perhaps there exists a Latin account of the voyage of Vasco da Gama, who named the Cape?

Marianne says she will be picking us up at the airport, which, since we will be arriving after dark, is relieving. It will be interesting enough having to drive a stick-shift car with my left hand, while driving on the left side of the road. Finding our way out of Johannesburg to Potchefstroom and then to her house, in the dark, might be more of a challenge than we want in our first few hours of Africa.

I will admit, I am nervous.

June 15th. Dulles Airport.

We drove down to Washington D.C. after a funeral in New York. I had my usual repeated meals of pizza while in New York, attempting to stock up on calories. It might be a long time before I have my next good slice.

In D.C. we stayed with Catherine’s aunt and uncle in the Virginia suburb of Great Falls. Their home oozed sophistication and comfort. It was a highly cultured Catholic family, which boasted volumes of John Paul II’s encyclicals and pretty picture-books of the churches of Rome. On the refrigerator were magnets of philosophers – Hegel, Hume, Leibniz, Plato, Aristotle. In the bathroom was a map of Florence. The paterfamilias was a first-generation computer programmer and Silicon Valley entrepreneur who was now an executive at Amazon. He was sophisticated, genteel, and had traveled widely; he was the son of a noted Catholic convert, Fr. Ray Ryland. One of his daughters had just graduated from high school and was weighing whether to attend the University of Virginia or Thomas Aquinas College, a conservative-Catholic great books school; another daughter, in high school, was leaving in a few days for Paris.

“Is this your first time to Paris?” I asked over dinner, which we took at a long table – there are nine children in the family and a long table was needed – in a dining room where the gold lettering on volumes of Horace in Latin glowed by the light of tapers. This was the kind of family where you have to ask teenagers this kind of question. It turns out that she had been there when an infant, which we agreed did not count as a real trip. Her family reminded her that before her departure she should consult with her brotther-in-law, who was an expert in Parisian – especially Parisian Baroque – architecture. When I told of my trip to South Africa, conversation turned to Mark Clark, a professor at Christendom College who was known to the family. (Clark was known to my wife too: he taught her astronomy in college. A beginning of an explanation of his polymathy may be that he was college roommates with David Morgan.) He was considered a great proselytizer for Latin and Greek – recently he had spoken at a local high school and said that what the world needed right now was Classicists, to decode and translate hundreds of palimpsests, whose erased, invisible original texts could now with superior digital imaging be read for the first time in centuries. It was said that I should channel his fervor when in South Africa. I was not certain I could know with any certainty precisely what the South Africans should be doing, so I expressed some doubts about my ability to preach this gospel; I said I wished Clark were going in my place.

I have said already that this was a cultured, as well as comfortable, house. It was also a religious house: before dinner the father said grace; after dinner my wife played piano and we sang hymns; on the wall in the kitchen was a framed picture of Mother Teresa with the motto DO SMALL THINGS WITH GREAT LOVE.

In this context Latin makes sense: it is quite simply the language of all this culture – really the language of our culture. We prayed in English, but using a Latin formula (“Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts” = “Benedic nos, Domine”); we sang Latin hymns; the picture-books of Roman churches were pretty, of course, but they were also our churches – I had prayed in most of them – and they were covered in Latin inscriptions. Rome, and Florence, and Baroque Paris were not just cultural achievements of people on a different continent: they were acts of worship, approved acts of worship, and hence implicitly a means of knowing the nature of the God we loved.

The religious aspect of culture also implies, I think, a kind of democracy. Bramante and Borromini and Giotto are, to the worshipper, also merely worshippers; they are not masters, but fellow-servants. They are relativized; they are not the highest value. Their worship, for all its technical excellence, may not be as worthy as the widow’s mite, and maybe no worthier than our own. And so the Baroque churches of Rome or the Gothic churches of France do not feel, to me, an impossible, irrelevant, alien, or imposed standard: here in America we may build similar churches, or build something new and different. When you are comfortable within the tradition – as believers are – it is no imposition, and no burden.

I am aware that this is the opposite of much of the modern’s experience of culture. Secular Europe often seems to be looking to venerate its artistic heritage primarily as virtuoso works of the masters. To me the fact that another person is excellent at what he does does not guarantee that I have anything in common with him. But that we both are worshippers – that we both bend the knee to the same thing – there I find common ground. Just as in a family – the act of worship, the recognition of a transcendent source makes all differences trivial, and unifies. Instantly I am curious about South Africa’s religious history. I doubt that any apartheid system in the state can be sustained without an apartheid system in the churches – as we had, for instance, in the American South (and still have to some day). If you believe, as believers do, that our worship of God is the single most important aspect of ourselves, you are forced to acknowledge the dignity of anyone who can worship God as well as you can.