Insect Collecting with Cultural Sensitivity

       For the past two days I’ve been hanging out with this French guy named Hugo. Like so many other people I’ve met here, Hugo came to Africa to be a pilot. And like so many of those other people, it isn’t going well. Hugo’s sticking with it, though. Where as most of the other guys (bush piloting is a major gentlemen’s club, only three woman currently work as pilots in Maun) head home when their three month tourist visas are up, Hugo has been living in South Africa for the last two years. His heart is set on this job and why not? Good hours, pleasant climes and the…eh hem…perks associated with flying young European tourists around romantic Africa. It’s good work if you can get it. 

            But in the mean time, when he hasn't been hanging around the airport (above is a tiny video from my arrival in Maun), Hugo has  been helping me catch insects. It started two days ago with some really crap games of pool, a couple of beers and a conversation about Jehovah’s Witnesses (or “the people who knock on your door and want to talk about how badly you’re living your life” seems to work if someone doesn’t know the English name). Hugo’s girlfriend in South Africa is a Jehovah’s Witness. She’s not super into it though- meaning, she smuggles her kid sister birthday presents when her parents aren’t looking. The fact that Jehovah’s Witnesses are forbidden from participating in extreme sports came up. I knew that they didn’t celebrate…well, pretty much anything…and that singing and dancing aren’t their idea of a decorous time but I’d never heard this one before. Turns out they can’t put their lives in blatant danger. I assume that’s a no-no because if your life is lived completely for God it’s not groovy to risk throwing it away. Neat.

The drier had apparently killed
itself and taken the laundry with it.

Thomas (left) and
Jaime (right) making a
statement

            After he found out that I am studying insects and trying to catch some while I’m here, Hugo wanted to come with me to collect. The next morning we met up to head out. Before we woke up  enough to go, Thomas, a Spanish pilot who arrived about the same time I did, and Jaime, a Portuguese pilot, showed up looking for their laundry. Backpackers has the cheapest laundry service (compare 35 pula for a load of laundry at Backpackers against 15 pula a shirt at Sedia, down the road). When the manager of the establishment came to ask Thomas to step aside with her so she could talk to him, something sounded amiss. They went in the back and when they returned thirty minutes later, Thomas and Jaime looked like they had been battling dragons. Check out the pictures. The drier had apparently killed itself and taken the laundry with it (and I thought it was the ironing boards that got depressed).

            The establishment gave the guys free breakfast but I think the fashion statement that they were making was compensation enough. If burnt shirts become trendy, please don’t buy one (but remember who started it). Hugo and I drove the other two back to Sedia and started collecting on the hotel’s riverfront. I took up the water net to try and find some water beetles, while Hugo went at it with the aerial net. Now, I don’t like to perpetuate stereotypes but there was a quality that came out in Hugo while he collected insects that was just so…French.

            Right away the guy netted two damsel-flies mating. This is always a win while collecting because you know that you have a male and a female of the given species (though one of the museum managers I work with will never take insects in this way). On the next swing, Hugo exclaimed, “I got another one!” I began to walk over to help him to help him get the insect out of the net but didn’t reach him in time. As Hugo examined the insect more closely, he saw that it was a smallish brown beetle. Realizing this, he said, “Ah, but this one is ugly.” and let the insect go.

            I tried to explain that I was interested in general collecting so any insect he caught was fine. Hugo seemed stumped, “Even if it is ugly?” Yes, even if it is ugly someone wants to study it. I don’t think it quite sank in because he kept doing it. At one point, he caught a butterfly and was about to release it because of its saveur douce, when he realized that the butterfly was brilliantly patterned on the inside of its wings. “Ah, no! You want this one, eh, it’s super cool.”

Hugo Guy Perol- Pilot
Turned Bug Critic

            I’m just reporting the facts. To even things up, here’s a joke Hugo told me about Americans. I hadn’t heard it before: “When God was creating the world, He created a land that was beautiful beyond compare and called it America. Filled with breathtaking scenery, the new land was perfect. When God stood back and looked at the world He saw that the new land was so perfect that it was unfair to the rest of the Earth. So, He created Americans.”
             Of course you  could replace "Americans" and "America" with any country you wanted to but the fun of the game is the back-and-forth. Unfortunately, this pun spar never made it past the back...or is it the forth...? I was clueless for a joke at the expense of our frog-leg eating distant cousins. The best I could come up with was  a flat quip aimed at France's military history but my joke  expired quicker than France's victory record after Waterloo.

My Trophy

          Later we ventured to the Sedia poolside to play some volleyball with Thomas and Jaime. Everybody was hungry, so we put stakes on the game: whichever team lost would pay for the winning team’s lunch. Thomas and I won, so Hugo and Jaime treated us to Wine & Dine, the “Chinese” restaurant in Old Mall. Chinese is in quotation marks because, even though an Asian man owns the place, there are only two Chinese dishes: noodles and fried rice. And you have to ask for them; they’re not in the display case. So, yeah, not Chinese food like back home but the noodles, best described as Mu Shu Spaghetti, were good.

            After lunch, I excused myself to “go take a nap.” Really, I wanted to do some more insect hunting sans Michelin assessments of the creatures but I didn’t want to hurt Hugo’s feelings.