Tortoise Dreams

A few days ago I received an email from an old friend, Andrea, telling me about a website where you can buy German books etc. for kids (http://www.alphabet-garten.com/). She and I were graduate students together at the University of Michigan, long long ago. Although we exchange holiday cards each December, we don't usually communicate directly, so she had to google me to find my (old) email address (which fortunately redirects to my current one).

Thinking about Andrea and Michigan and German led me to a funny little memory, just a blip. One of the requirements for the PhD when I was there (I suppose it's still a requirement, but don't want to assume too much) was a reading knowledge of two foreign languages. One of my languages was German, and a professor in the department administered a test to me and another grad student to see if we really could read articles in our field written in German. We were allowed to use a dictionary,  and both of us made extensive use of it during the test. We passed -- barely -- but the professor really chewed us out for how little we knew and how clunky our translations were.

I was very fond of this particular professor, in fact had rather a crush on him for a while, and chose him to be my advisor originally. (Incidentally, I'm not trying to be coy by not mentioning his name -- you can figure it out quite easily from the link below -- I just don't want the search engines to pick it up from here.) But I found him difficult to work with, and eventually fled to the security of a more "normal" advisor, though I kept the first prof on my committee. Here we are, just after my defense. Gosh, I look young.

So, anyway, I googled him, just to see what he's been up to. What he's been up to can be found here: http://www.dogonlanguages.org/

He was working in Mali even when I knew him -- in fact, he once mailed me a review of a chapter of my dissertation from Bamako. I saved it, still run across it now and then. But to see this website, all the amazing information and photos of what he's working on -- the scope of it, the death of one of the researchers involved -- it was quite overwhelming. Also, some of the photos reminded me of Ridgecrest. Seriously. Desert is desert.

I was filled with an immediate -- and completely insane -- wish to leave my family behind and fly off to Africa to help him with the project. A lot of help I would be. Can't even read German, much less speak French, which appears to be the language one would need out there.

Then I noticed a list of flora and fauna, and checked it to see whether the Sulcata tortoise was mentioned. Sulcatas come from northern Africa, though they are now all over the southwestern US, sold as tiny little tortoises in pet shops, growing to weigh 100-200 pounds, abandoned by their horrified owners in the desert and elsewhere. Sure enough, the Sulcata tortoise was on the list: "said to still exist in desert, also found as pet in villages and towns (e.g. Douentza)." I found a wonderful Sulcata photo on the website, which I just have to reproduce here:

reptile_turtle_Geochelone_sulcata_Douentza_2008_entire_moving_60625_JH.JPG

(Found at http://www.dogonlanguages.org/florafauna_dump.cfm?pg=37.)

That night I had a dream.

I dreamed that I left my family behind and flew to Mali to help with the project. Two young women came with me -- not sure who they were, maybe grad students who could actually be of some use. In the town of Douentza, we found the research group's headquarters, a small, rough, dimly-lit building. We went inside. My old prof recognized me, but did not seem especially surprised, or pleased, to see me. The group was polite, talking to us about the project, offering us tea and something to eat. The phone kept ringing and someone would answer it (the implication being that this was a very important project and many people wanted to talk to them about it). Then, down the hall from the back came an enormous Sulcata tortoise. It walked straight up to me and bit my hand, but it was only a nip -- I knew it wouldn't hurt me. And then, of course, it spoke to me.

Of course, I can't remember what it said.