THE DEAD FROG AND THE AVOCADO

 by Adam Harbinson

I’ve been to Africa a number of times, and I loved it. Everything about the place stamped itself indelibly on my memory – the smell of food cooking over open fires, the rich vegetation in the rainy season, the coffee beans scattered on the red earth to dry in the sun, the birds and animals. And the people in their mud and straw huts are so laid back they’re almost horizontal. They’re friendly, interested in who you are, and grateful that you’ve taken time to visit them. But I’m wondering now if that’s a romantic view that quickly dissipates after a few short weeks. My older daughter Sarah has been teaching in Rwanda for over a year now, but while she would freely admit that the exotic plants and birds are wonderful, the weather sublime and the scenery breathtaking, the romantic aspects of life in the bush quickly lose their lustre. Cooking over an open fire is great, for a week, but after a year trying to persuade the ‘builder’ to finish her kitchen she still cooks her food on the ground in the back garden. To me, the people were laid back, but to her they are either lazy, or disorganised.

A friend of mine went to live and work as a doctor there almost twenty years ago and the place nearly drove him nuts. Once he made the 52-mile trip to register a new car, but the Ugandan equivalent to the DVLNI was closed. The official had something to do at home, so he just locked up and toddled off – and the book; ‘The Man With The Key Has Gone’, by Ian Clark was born.

Sarah rang me the other night and she sounded like she’d had enough of the ‘Dark Continent’. When I was there, kids running alongside me, touching my white skin and shouting, ‘Musungu!’ was fun, but after a year and a bit, well, I suppose anyone would tire of it. My trips to the local market to buy a pineapple or a bag of Irish potatoes was a fascinating expedition, a exercise in haggling, but having to beat the price down from extortionate to reasonable every week just isn’t funny anymore.

‘What can I do dad?’ she wailed. ‘What advice can you give me?’ – and all I could say was, ‘It’s Africa. Get over it. You won’t change it, so you will have to change – or come home.’

The thing that brought matters to a head that morning was a huge African frog that lay dead and putrid on the doorstep as she set off to school. It was half eaten with its bits squashed and spread all over the place.

Then to make matters worse, Sarah who takes her work seriously, arrived in class – with bits of frog still stuck to her shoes – to find that 25 of her 40 pupils hadn’t done their homework. Their excuse; ‘We were praying’, sounded impressive – until Sarah explained that Rwandans have problems pronouncing their ‘l’s – it turned out that the entire class was ‘praying football’ well into the previous evening, and so they overslept.

However, as she railed against the very dead frog on her doorstep, she also happened to mention, just in passing, that there was an avocado tree in full bloom at the other side of the garden. It seemed to present itself as a compensation for her. And it struck me; that’s Africa. There’s a raw ugliness about it, but it is also very beautiful. Perhaps Sarah, whom I know very well, had a bad day because that day she focused on the dead frog. Normally she would see the avocado tree.   

In each of our days there are dead frogs and avocados, and the quality of our lives is dictated by the choices we make. We can choose to see a fragrant avocado in our partners, our children or our parents, our church or our place of work, in the weather or in our surroundings. But so often we settle for a frog.

Have your say. Visit my Blog