Go Wild

My friend Rob, an Englishman whose ex-wife is Tswana, says that cross-cultural marriages are difficult. I tried to argue with him, since Poo and I seem to be doing pretty well, but he countered:

“Yeah, but every once in a while something happens and you suddenly realize that there is a huge chasm between your worldviews that cannot be bridged, that your ways of thinking are totally different.”

I suppose so. We went to the District Office to take care of some paperwork and there was a poor man there reporting the death of his son. He had two teenage sons; now he has one.

“Did you see that?” Poo asked me later. “I told you elephants are dangerous!”

She filled me in on the details: the man’s son had been crushed by an elephant. The other son survived by hiding behind a tree. We were driving up the road where it happened. Poo is terrified by elephants. She’s not a bit scared of cobras, but elephants make her tremble with fear.

“Let me guess,” I argued, “they were on a motorbike?” Thai teenagers on motorbikes are more dangerous than elephants.

“Yes” she admitted.

“And they were drunk and driving too fast, so they crashed when they saw the elephant, and THEN the elephant came over and stepped on the boy?”

“I don’t know,” said Poo, “maybe something like that happened. But elephants can do that. Sometimes they do it; we say, tok mawn, I don’t know how you say it in English.” She looked it up on the Talking Dictionary, or as she says, The Talking Dick. “Go wild!” was the first definition; “Lust” was the second.

Anyway, I don’t want to disrespect the grieving man or his departed son, but I can’t understand these Thais, Poo included. They think that speeding on a twisted, country lane with your 2-year-old unstrapped in the front seat and nine relatives in the back of a pickup is perfectly fine, but if there’s an elephant on the road, HELP!