Remembering Tiananmen
Thirty years ago (4-6ish June, 1989), I had no clue what was happening in China. Not because of a lack of interest.
I was off the grid. Obviously no cell phones then. No TV. Occasionally there was a radio playing, but mostly music, and in no language I knew. Ditto on newspapers.
I was living on a ‘lorry,’ traveling the Kenyan countryside. Not exactly what the locals call ‘the bush,’ but we didn’t see pavement for 25+ days of the 30 we were out. Coca-Cola was about the only connection to home I encountered.
[N.B. If you find yourself reading this meander in a few minutes and wondering, “what in the world does this have to do with Tiananmen?” (and if you have the patience) I promise I’ll get back to it, but not for a while.]
The lorry (‘big truck’ in U.S. English) was c.195x Mercedes decommissioned military brute with at least 750k klicks of hard driving in its past. It was painted bright friendly blue, a color so ubiquitous in the region I came to call it Kenyan blue, and white. The color was to avoid confusion on the part of anyone who saw it about its purpose: a safari (traveling) truck, not a military vehicle.
The truck’s name was Jojakim (the German translation of Jehoiakim). Jojakim was one of the ‘bad kings’ of Judah, during Nebuchadnezzar’s siege and subsequent captivity of Daniel and his buddies. Jeremiah was not a fan. Why name a truck after an awful tyrant who did horrible things (like, really really terrible things)? I’m not really sure. He, the truck, seemed to be a decent chap to me.
Why German? Aside from the obvious fact that it was a Mercedes-Benz, it was also owned and operated by Germans who happened to have started a youth-oriented Christian mission (think Youth for Christ) in Kenya. Yes, there’s a longer story there. But not this one.
Following impeccable East African/German logic, the mission’s activities included: a “trumpet school” that taught young men how to approximate playing trumpet or trombone; something like a Bible college; a book distribution warehouse; and an assortment of lorries that took teams of trumpet and trombone playing young men around East Africa to conduct open-air evangelistic meetings and distribute books.
Spending three months in Kenya with people named Johannes, Friedrich, Wilfrem, Birgit, and Ilsa is as confusing as it sounds. I’m only a novice linguist, but I can’t imagine there are many language families more phonetically dissimilar than Bantu and Germanic.
Why name trucks at all? Friendliness, I suppose, like Thomas the tank engine. All the trucks had names. Old Testament names. Noah was the largest, a huge MAN 8x8 with dual front turning axles that carried cargo and the good news of Jesus from Kenya to Zaire (now DRC) at least once a year.
Being young and adventurous, I really wanted to take that trip, but it was the rainy season. One simply does not attempt an overland African safari of more than a thousand miles round trip in rainy season — even in a badass overland truck — if it can be avoided.
Methuselah was the oldest (duh), with nearly 2 million klicks. David and Jonathan were the smallest, a matching pair of cute Unimogs (the old 406 style with curvy sloped noses); a nod to the relationship between the famous king and his nemesis’ son. Any hint of the more progressive interpretations of their relationship was probably unintentional, although, perhaps a bit of German cheek. You know, Germans and all.
My traveling companions were five Kenyan men from five different tribes (Luhya, Kalenjin, Luo, Kamba, Maasai) ranging in age from 17 to 35-ish (?), and two women (a Swiss-German and a fellow college student from Alaska who was no frills, had a caustic wit, and was predictably capable in the bush). I’m guessing at the ages of the Kenyans. We were all very bad at guessing each other’s ages. They all thought I was in my mid-late twenties (the highest guess was 28). I was 18.
Only my classmate and I shared a mother tongue. Daniel (Kalenjin) spoke no English. The rest could get by in English (or any one of three languages they spoke. I spoke Kiswahili on a toddler level. Daniel and I mostly smiled, frowned, gestured appropriately, or uttered individual words to communicate. We were in Daniel’s territory. More than a week into the trip we met his wife and three children. I can still offer “greetings in the name of Jesus” in Kalenjin, but have no idea how to write it.
Chris (Luhya), our driver and team leader, looked about my age, but apparently was in his mid-20s. Chris smiled and laughed almost constantly, no matter what was happening. Driving on ice-slick mud roads with deep trenches on either side through a monsoon rain: giggling. Repairing the innermost of a set of dual rear tires that weighed several hundred pounds each, on uneven ground, on the side of a hill: an occasion for merriment and joking. Reworking the bank of a (temporarily) dry riverbed with a pick and shovel to allow Jojakim to ascend up the 8–10 foot high bank before it got dark and might rain, causing the riverbed to become an actual river: a laugh a minute. Chris was saving up money and supplies to build a house (and supply a few goats) for his father-in-law-to-be so the marriage could move forward. He had been working on this for two years.
Jairus (Luo) and I connected on a deep level and became good friends. He was a city kid. Cared about what he wore. Natural leader. Taught us words and phrases in “Shang,” a Nairobi urban slang that borrowed from Kiswahili, English and several local languages. Jairus spoke German as well and contributed to the Shang lexicon. Listening to a tall dark Kenyan express his annoyance in a deep timbre Bantu-accented German, English and Shang, all within one long phrase is highly entertaining.
In keeping with all of the gendered dynamics of the times, the constructs of the faith tradition, and the local culture, the women were along primarily to cook — although they did that in addition to the teaching and speaking the male members engaged in. Then they sorted the bugs and grit out of the rice, lit the fires, made the bread, and cooked the meals. But they also assigned the men peeling, lifting, fetching, or cleaning duties as they thought necessary. Swiss-German (regardless of how kind and sweet a personality) is still enough German to cause substantial internal risk assessment when refusing a direct order delivered with conviction and a sense of authority.
Some of the men found these domesticities to be an entertaining novelty. The Maasai (even though the youngest among us) simply sat (or squatted in that way Kenyan men do, chewing on his ‘toothbrush’ stick) and watched with a mix of bewilderment and disdain at the odd behavior of his fellows. He contracted malaria during the third week of our four-week travels.
Calling all the women in such roles (regardless of age, marital or parental status) “Mama(s)” was the organizational culture, but something I just couldn’t bring myself to do. Perhaps in the third person, when referring to their function or to be understood by others. But never in the first person. Asking your college classmate, “Mama, what’s for dinner?” is just too weird, even when trying to be culturally sensitive to the context.
We would not return to our post outside Nairobi until the second week of July, more than a month after Tiananmen. I still didn’t know about it.
About a week after returning from safari I sprained my ankle. I was playing a game of what some might consider volleyball, on what some might consider a lawn, with a collection of Kenyans and Germans. This being Kenya, and my being a college student from California, we were all playing barefoot. I went up to block or spike (can’t remember which) and came down on an uneven tuft. Hard. Rolled my right ankle. I swear I heard a crack, but that might have been my back or neck as my body hit the well-packed earth.
It was at that very moment that I learned the meaning of schadenfreude. I did not know that word — wouldn’t learn it for several years actually. But it was most certainly my reality. As I lay writhing on the sod, grabbing my ankle (which I was absolutely certain was broken to bits), a dozen or more Germans and Kenyans broke into hysterical laughter. Apparently these two disparate cultures shared a playfully deterministic ethos that blended to turn my misfortune into the day’s most entertaining event. I was not amused. I told them so.
As I was recuperating in my room that week with my leg up, ankle swollen and as bruised as my ego, I was given a copy of Time magazine. “Tank Man” was on the cover. I read the article. That was my only real exposure to the events in Tiananmen Square. I wouldn’t hear any more about it until August after returning to the States. And even, then it was on the periphery of my awareness. But from that day on until now, I could have seen Tank Man and known what had happened (generally), when it happened, and where.
So it is staggering to me how this image has been so successfully cleared from the memory of the most populous nation on the planet. Or, perhaps more accurately, successfully policed out of public recognition.
[If you’ve made it this far, bless you. Your reward is a clip (not made by me, not of my trip) that will give you some idea of the experience: https://youtu.be/g4eso1-tIuA?t=285]
