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What Would Susan Orlean Do?
By John Liebhardt
Dear Susan,
I've got this problem, you see. It concerns a couple of my subjects, who were
more than happy enough to allow me to follow them over the course of a few days.
Well actually, I followed them over a course of a few weeks, if not months. But
that is not really important. (Maybe it is: I didn't have much work back then,
and I sold this piece about these two guys who deliver water to homes without
plumbing in Burkina Faso, and because I had some time on my hands, I wanted to
make sure the piece was well researched, well written, with all the lunacies--
is that a word?-- of their lives and the world around them. Just like you,
Susan. Think "The American Man, Age 10." Or following the Tonya Harding Fan Club
in "Figures in a Mall." Or think all the time you spent with John Laroche in
The Orchid Thief.)
Anyway, I wrote the piece. Well, first I followed these two guys around, trailed
them for awhile-- six weeks or so-- and started to get a good feel for the
narrative. Then I really put myself under the clamps and figured that in just a
few more weeks I'll have this piece pretty much nailed down. That's when my
editor started inquiring about my progress, and I was only too happy to give her
the low down: Mission mostly accomplished, let's just say.
My friends were only too happy to keep me around. I mean I was starting to
assist them with their work, not an easy task considering you're pushing around
50 gallons of tap water. (Susan, I don't remember you helping out in the
Seminole Nursery, but perhaps you left that part out of The Orchid Thief.)
I would meet them early in the morning, go on a few deliveries with them, buy
them a few Cokes, and they would talk about their lives, their upbringings, all
the lurid details of their childhoods. All of it. Sometimes a few Cokes (this is
not a promotion) turned into lunch and I would buy a few meat kabobs, and the
large bar that looked somewhat like a barn (complete with a dirt floor and
wooden tables) would start to fill up. Beer was guzzled; a whole host of
traveling salesmen toured the place, offering their goods to customers. Susan, I
turned away lamps, t-shirts, and pirated compact discs as my subjects told me
about their lives: leaving their villages, arriving in Ouagadougou, living on
the street, dropping out of school, shining shoes for pocket change, and finally
getting a job pushing water in an overturned 50-gallon bucket placed on two
wheels.
That was great stuff.
Eventually, my friends returned to their work, filling their buckets with water
and delivering it to houses. The heat and sun was much too unbearable for me, so
I returned home, almost too wired to nap.
It was near the end of the day when I woke to transcribe my notes onto my
typewriter. I recreated the scenes, wrote my crisp, crisp dialogue and inserted
chunks of local color. (Irony, I mustn't forget a little irony. Writing on
Africa needs a tad more irony, wouldn't you say?) After six or so weeks of this,
and after a few admittedly terse conversations with my editor, I turned the
piece in. Then, the usual back and forth between writer and editor began. I'll
admit I lost the fight over the stream of consciousness and the part of the
story told from the perspective of the bar. (I will publish that elsewhere.) I
spent two months or so of consulting Strunk and White online (at the behest of
my editor) and undergoing some grueling rewrites, but the piece-- all 304
words-- was finally suitable to both writer and publication.
It was then I bade a teary farewell to my blue-collar friends and I-- with a
heavy heart-- looked for my next assignment. (Coffin makers? Brew masters making
traditional beer? Women who wake at dawn to sweep the streets clean?) That's
about the time my friends began ringing me. I met the two for Cokes, but
admittedly it did not feel like the old times. I already knew their stories well
and had, in fact, distilled them for a very general reading audience-- somewhere
in the vicinity of 17 hits a day. I thanked them for their time, and let them
know if any reader had questions or comments for them, I would only be too happy
to send those on.
Susan, they called back! And back! And back! No work could get done-- what with
my sinus headaches and my desire to kick start my career as a travel writer, no,
travel book writer-- the telephone practically rang off the hook. In the months
before, I had foolishly handed out my telephone number to them, and lightly
explained "if you need anything, just… " and I thought my trailing off wouldn't
demonstrate my lack of the French language, but the fact I DON'T WANT YOU TO
CALL ME.
Anyway, I chalked it all up to a cultural misunderstanding.
Until they started asking for money. Yes, money. I had made a pittance on the
piece, and my wife was none too happy about the travel writing software that had
recently been tallied onto my credit card, so I had no money to give. That was
true.
Oh, they spun me tales: Now the harvest was over and a whole passel of new
village kids showed up out of the blue and started pushing water and
undercutting carefully constructed pricing guidelines. My friends found all of
their customers abandoned them for the cheaper prices of these shoeless
newcomers.
I listened to their tales, Susan, I did. I took it all in. But let's be honest,
our responsibility ends at the byline, or perhaps at the end of the story. The
tale is finished, guys, I said "the end." But apparently in Burkina Faso (third
poorest country in the world, from reliable sources) they don't have a "the
end."
My friends did want to end something, though. And that was their dependence on
earning a living pushing water. It was time they tried something new, they told
me and went about explaining that if they could just get some seed money-- not a
term they used-- they would be alright. They're too old to be pushing water,
understand?
I didn't know what to do. I tried the "the end" speech again, but to no avail. I
drove off and told them I'd see them soon. Which is where we are now, Susan. I
know you've spent some quality time with funky guys with weird agendas. Susan,
what should I do?
John Liebhardt lives and works in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso. He remains in very
close contact with his water-pushing friends, especially the one who left the
business and received seed money from a certain someone so he could begin
selling t-shirts, socks, and jeans on the streets. When he's not learning trying
to understand best practices for small business accounting, John posts his work
at
www.foreigncorrespondence.net.
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