THE GODS ARE CRAZY (or What Goes Around Comes Around)

This morning we finished the jar of honey from Germany that Axel had packed into the bulging container that had arrived as big as a circus. As I was about to throw the jar away, my eye fell on one word on the German label: Kanada. This jar of German-bottled honey that had been filled courtesy of Canadian bees, had finally made its way home to Canada after sitting for years in Axel’s cupboard in Cologne.

I loved the movie “The Gods Must be Crazy,” the story of a Kalahari Bushman who while hunting is knocked unconscious by a Coke bottle thrown from a passing biplane. Never having seen anything like it, and falling from the sky, the Bushman surmises that the bottle is a gift from the gods. As such, it soon becomes a symbol of power and object of jealousy amongst the otherwise congenial tribe members. The Bushman, seeing the trouble the gift was brewing undertakes to return the dangerous it to the gods by traveling to the end of the world to give it back.

This movie and the jar of honey remind me that once I too returned a bottle to its ‘source.’

In 1993, I was in Puerta Vallarta at my first-ever Society of American Travel Writers’ convention. We were being hosted by a beautiful, new property in Nuevo Vallarta which had, much to our surprise, potable water flowing from their taps. Many of us had judiciously brought bottled water with plans to buy more as needed. One member out of Houston, Texas, had gone one step further. Obviously, a man with foresight as well as a thirst, the journalist had brought two cases of large bottles to the convention. But there was no need for the bottled water so by the end the week, he still had a cache of forty-two bottles.

There was no way he was taking them back home. So rather than waste the precious resource, he plunked himself down in the lobby on the day we were all checking out, and gave away bottles to all takers. Thinking ahead to how long and arduous my day was going to be with a flight schedule that would bounce me from Puerto Vallarta to Guadalajara to Mexico City to Chicago and finally, to Montreal, I thanked him for his generosity and quickly stuffed a bottle into my bag.

I sipped a little from that bottle all along the way and finally finished it off just as we were coming in for a landing in Montreal. At the time, it was Mirabel Airport that served international flights to and from Montreal. I was exhausted from a day of take-offs and landings, and had finished reading everything I had brought. Out of boredom, I turned the bottle around in my hand to read the label. It was a bottle of Naya Spring Water, a brand name that was just beginning to become familiar. And then I saw where it was bottled. Mirabel, Quebec.


The Naya water had travelled from Mirabel, Quebec to Houston, Texas to Puerto Vallarta, Jalisco and back to Mirabel. Before heading to customs, I dropped the bottle in an airport bin and waved a mental goodbye, content in having played my part in bringing it back to its source.

Skinned

There are concessions to make when living with someone. Three years ago, my partner and I, along with our two cats, moved in together. The house is located in the lower Laurentians because we both have a love and need for nature to surround us. It’s a lovely house with an open plan and we filled it with things accumulated through a lifetime of acquisitions and travel.
It was a little frightening at first because we both have a lot of stuff. Luckily, our tastes are similar and our furniture and art blended together nicely. I only had one serious objection to overcome. Axel had spent the better part of the 70s living in Africa, first Nigeria and then in South Africa. During those years, he collected many beautiful artifacts but there are a few I could have done without. Along with items like a magnificent Yoruba mahogany mask and beaded bushman’s skirt, he also brought two animal skins - a zebra and a springbok. Knowing they died long ago has not made it any easier to see them stretched out on the basement floor.
From the time I was a child, I had a strong dislike of using animal skins as decoration. My father, a tailor, regularly worked to convince me to allow him to put “…a little fur on the collar” when sewing my winter coat. I could never say yes although I knew it hurt him. To his mind, no fur on the collar was an indication that he was not earning enough to properly outfit his only daughter. So living with these skins means I have to curb my natural aversion. My solution is to walk around them. Even the cats walk around them although I’m not sure it’s for the same reason.
Axel did not kill these animals. In fact, he goes to extraordinary measures to rescue any living thing, be it a fly or a mouse, in order to release it outside rather than harm it in any way. (Killing is reserved strictly for mosquitoes and black flies.) Being of like mind about respecting life has led us to considerable research on how to repel the field mice that find any number of ways of getting into the house. We favour things like steel wool and sonic repellants. But these are beasties determined to get in. When we managed to block the wall that provided access to the cupboard under the sink, they began showing up in the dishwasher. How they got in and out without getting drowned is still a head scratcher. Anyway, we thought we had won that battle. Then last week, Mumzer, our ever efficient black cat, caught a mouse running around the TV as I was watching it. I saw the tiny little thing cowering among the wires. Suddenly, Mumzer pounced but Axel also leapt into action and cornered the cat, firmly but delicately extracted the mouse from his mouth and while I congratulated Mumzer on his excellent reflexes, Axel release the terrified beastie outside.
We were feeling very self-satisfied with our humanitarian efforts until this morning when I lifted the mat on Axel’s side of the bed. It seems that Mumzer has undertaken a project to produce his own animal skin rugs. There, beneath the mat was a flattened mouse skin, little legs to the side, tail curled upwards, headless - a miniature animal skin being cured in my very own bedroom.
“How did it get so flat? Did you squash it inadvertently getting out of bed?” I asked Axel.
“Not likely,” he said, “Looks like Mumzer ate everything but the skin, tail and feet.”
I looked with sadness at the shell of the beastie, then, asked Axel to dispose of it. This is one animal skin I do not have to live with.