Trees Never Meet

July 22, 2009 1:35 PM

Trees Never Meet is the thoughtful blog of David, a historian of Africa. Though posting has slowed recently, the archives are fascinating. On fitting in; on killing animals as an ex-vegetarian; on Namibian legal history; on "anti-conquests"; on the types of people who have inhabited Namibia since the conquest; on Namibian politics. David also has a fantastic, well-written dream blog.
posted by nasreddin (8 comments total)

You say thoughtful, I say tortured and over-wrought. Perhaps I'm unduly prejudiced by just having wrapped up reading a book of David Sedaris essays, but any moments of interesting insight seem to be overwhelmed by his need to tell us that he's aware of the insight, that he feels uncomfortable about the insight, about how white people unfairly create the context for the insight… That he seemed to be a rather doctrinaire and stupid vegetarian and then became a rather militant meat eater is more interesting to regard from outside than it is to delve into his thoughts on the matter.
posted by klangklangston at 2:23 PM on July 22, 2009

Though, lest that come across as all grousing, the bit on Namibian legal history was really interesting. But it was also the piece with the least of David in it.
posted by klangklangston at 2:29 PM on July 22, 2009

Jeez. Well, to each his own, I guess.
posted by nasreddin at 2:34 PM on July 22, 2009

Says the "ex-vegetarian" (a title used for cachet or not at all):

"I slaughtered a goat. I didn’t have to do it; but the opportunity was offered to me and I could not say no."

Man, I feel your pain. The stories I could tell as an ex-non-granny-basher!
posted by turgid dahlia at 2:37 PM on July 22, 2009 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I've read through a bit more of it now, and I think I just really don't like the posts you picked—he's most interesting when talking about something like how corporal punishment is viewed in different contexts and least interesting when talking about himself as a teenager.
posted by klangklangston at 2:40 PM on July 22, 2009

A whole MINUTE to saw the head off a chicken!? Now that is spectacularly inhumane... and I say that as a carnivore who as also killed chooks for the purpose of eating them.
posted by polyglot at 8:15 PM on July 22, 2009

Excellent blog! Brought back fond memories of the month I spent in Namibia, which IMHO is the best country for tourists in Africa. English is taught in schools, there is less of a colonial flavor then South Africa, amazingly diverse kinds of ecosystems, and decent infrastructure what more can you want.
posted by Suparnova at 10:17 PM on July 22, 2009

His writing style is very irritating, but I do find the story of a former vegetarian killing his food interesting. I watched my older brother kill a pig in Mexico when I was a teenager. He was given the opportunity by the father of the family we were staying with (who happened to have a slaughterhouse attached to the building they lived in), so he took it. When I asked him why he wanted to kill a pig, he said he had met people who had given him a hard time about eating meat, and he thought that if he took part in the process, then he could justify his meat eating. Be able to say, look, if I can kill it I can eat it. There's some integrity to that, when you consider how many people who eat meat in the first world would not be able to handle watching, let alone taking part in that most basic part of what they eat. Anyway, my brother also botched the job. Missed the jugular or something. It was pretty horrific, and the father of the family had to step in and "fix" it. It's not like we all have some intrinsic animal-killing skill.
posted by molecicco at 7:49 AM on July 23, 2009