People I Met Out There: The Jolly German
Sure it’s forty-plus years too late, but I finally purchased my first copy of the Beach Boys’ classic album Pet Sounds. This record, which was both inspired by the Beatles’ Rubber Soul and inspired the Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper, has found its way to the very top of more than one Greatest Albums of All Time list.
After two quick listens I’m still not sure why, but that’s not what brings Pet Sounds to mind tonight. It’s the song Sloop John B, which is covered on the album, and more specifically the line, “This is the worst trip I’ve ever been on.” Once again we’re back in Africa, but it’s not me who’s forlornly singing the above line, but rather the Jolly German.
I liked the Jolly German. He was like a lot of Germans, with their ruddy-faced men and bouncy bosomed women. They always seem so happy, sloshing around holding giant steins of beer, belting out loud drinking songs and grinding up the nearest living thing in order to create yet another kind of sausage. You get so caught up in their festive gaiety that you don’t even mind it when they come stomping across your border. Until it’s too late.
I met the Jolly German in the bush country in Kenyaon a three-day camping tour. He was traveling alone and I was traveling alone and so we were assigned to be tent-mates. The tour took us to LakeBogorio. You’ve probably seen photos of this famous lake which from a distance seems to be outlined in a pink highlighter. On closer inspection you find that the pink line is in fact hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of flamingos. I still have a pink and white feather from there.
I liked the Jolly German partly because he seemed to carry with him an aura of undiminished woe and yet maintained the highest of spirits. But mostly I liked him because he laughed at my jokes. He spoke a broken but passable English and I a high-school level and therefore non-existent German. We walked together out to the rim of the lake, hoping to get closer to the flamingos for that all-important photograph. At least that’s what I was hoping for; I don’t think the Jolly German had even brought a camera.
What he had brought on his visit to Africa was his girlfriend, a girlfriend who somehow in just a few days had managed to contract malaria and so, sick and defeated, had gone crawling back to the Fatherland. The Jolly German decided to stick it out. As we approached the flamingos we talked, and he explained that he had spent every last penny, or pfennig I suppose, on this tour that we were now on. When it ended he would be unceremoniously deposited on the streets of Nairobi, broke and woman-less.
And yet he was still laughing. With somewhat of a language barrier I wasn’t able to launch into any of my comedic routines that were particularly deep or complicated. In truth, I probably don’t have any routines that are deep or complicated. But with the Jolly German I didn’t need any. As we walked towards the feather-covered waters of LakeBorgorio I periodically stopped and looked at the bottom of my sneaker and shook my head.
“I don’t know why I’m paying all this money and traveling so far just to walk in flamingo shit,” I said.
I didn’t just say it once and why should I? Every time I mentioned flamingo shit the Jolly German laughed. I varied the delivery a bit and, like playing peek-a-boo with a toddler, it made him laugh every time. Even hours later after we were tucked away in our tent for the evening one of the last things he said before nodding off was, “Ja, at least we saw all that flamingo shit.”
When the tour ended and it was time to say good-bye to my merry Teutonic pal I felt a little guilty. I wasn’t exactly traveling first class (I had, after all, just spent the night in a moldy old tent with a poverty-stricken German) but I just couldn’t leave him in Nairobi with nothing. He had, after all, laughed at my jokes. I opened my wallet and handed him two hundred Kenya shillings, for which he appeared thankful. I’d like to end here but I feel obligated to tell you that the amount was the equivalent of about eight bucks, and so while I felt good that I had given him something I still felt cheap for not giving him more.
Ah well, I thought, he must bare at least some of the responsibility for the situation he’s in. After all, it didn’t seem as if he’d planned his trip all that well, malaria or no malaria. I thought Germans were supposed to be experts at that sort of thing? Occasionally I still wonder how he made out, and if somewhere in Germany there is a rotund middle-aged Jolly German laughing himself red in the face as he tells his family of his long ago trip to African, and about the American he met who said such funny things about all that flamingo shit.