Enacting Africa
Illustration: Ansellia Kulikku. My Instaratings from my previous week’s enactments were stellar. It meant one did not need to do a Selfcrit like the others. One did not have to ask oneself seven critical questions, or provide seven critical responses. Great Instaratings made one feel like a contestant in that show from long ago, Survivor: The one who did well in the team challenge got to scarf down caviar and gruyere cheese and chilled Pinot Grigio. Losing opponents subsisted on locusts and wild honey.
Not that we were allowed to gloat at the Ranch. We were one big team. We were one happy family. We were here to support each other. We would be nothing without each other. The idea was to be each other’s keeper. Gloating was not allowed, but it was OK to feel good.
My duty was to enact Africa. I pulled no stops. I made the clients wear a colorful dashiki. I gathered them in a circle and encouraged them to rid themselves of their old personalities. They were to visualize themselves under an iroko tree in an African village square. I started my enactment with the obligatory proverb about how it takes a village to raise a child—a proverb popularized by a politician. Allow me to make a little confession here: In all my years growing up in Africa, I had never heard anybody use that proverb.
I told my guests an African folktale filled with speaking animals and cruel kings and precious princesses and trembling subjects. I made them sing and dance, and had them play the parts of different animals within the story. They were transported to the heart of the eternal drumbeat that was Africa.
No wonder they had Instarated my enactment as outstanding.
However, Ling, my colleague, had received ratings that were less than stellar, even abysmal. The truth hurts, but sometimes you have to bite the bullet: swallow the bitter pill and; at least that was what most people at the Ranch were saying.
