Trivial Thoughts: The Perfect International Gift?

Before I arrived in Botswana, I read Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's excellent book, “The Old Way.” The book describes her experiences as a young woman living with the Bushmen – the Ju/Hoansi people of Namibia, to be precise. (Pronunciation: “Ju” with a soft J, and then a click connected to a slightly nasal “oh-ah-si” - the click is the same noise as “tsk,” or the noise you would use to encourage a horse. So, altogether - “ju-tsk-oansi.” It has a very pleasant sound, if you can spit it out.) Her father took her entire family to the Kalahari to find the Bushmen, back in the 50s when there were still some people living in “the old way,” the unchanged hunter-gatherer lifestyle of our earliest progenitors. (I won't gomuch further into the book, but I would highly recommend it – it was recommended to me by the Princeton alum who helped set up this post, and I'd like to second his endorsement. It's not very long, so go read it!

At one point in the book, Thomas describes how her family was returning to the Bushmen after a period of absence. They wanted to bring something as a gift, to make appropriate contributions to the reciprocal gift-giving system by which Bushman society is knit together. They decided to bring cowrie shells, having observed that cowrie shells were well-received and valued as ornaments in whatever culture they were introduced to. Cowrie shells hadn't yet arrived in the Bushman world, so they thought it would make an ideal gift. The shells were a great success, and were soon gifted, re-gifted, and spread far and wide among the different groups of Ju/Hoansi. (One of my friends in D'Kar has cowrie shells woven into his dreadlocks, and I wonder where he got them from, because they are still not very common around here, being as Botswana is a landlocked country... he is half Herero and half Bushman, but probably not Ju/Hoansi. Nevertheless, I wonder.)

Were I to come up with such a gift – something that has been universally popular in whatever culture it is introduced to – I would have to suggest bubble wrap.

I have not yet visited a place where the fascination and joy of popping bubble wrap does not exist. I popped through many a sheet myself, when I was younger – though I think I'd still enjoy it today, adults don't usually spend time popping bubble wrap in North America.

Not so in India. One of my favourite memories from my time in Kodaikanal was a moment near the end of the year, when a small army of ayahs, all dressed in their navy-blue saris, were moving desks from one end of the campus to the other, to accommodate the students taking their exams in the main hall. One of the my favourite ayahs, the one who cleaned the art studio, was gleefully sneaking up behind her co-workers and popping a particularly strong, vigorous sheet of bubble wrap right next to their ears. As they jumped in surprise, then grumbled and swatted her away, she just snickered and crept over to her next victim.

In Botswana, I have so far witnessed two bubble-wrap indulgences: First, at Dqae Qare, a huge woman holding her little toddler on her lap, smiling and popping some bubble wrap as her son shrieked with laughter and snatched at the wrinkled plastic bubbles, his tiny fingers too weak to pop them himself. His mother patted his chubby little legs and popped a few more.

Second, in one of the settlements, a tired and gaunt old lady sitting all alone, on a chair in the shade of her decrepit house, staring into space. Her face was still, a frozen collapse of wrinkles, but her hands moved with a slow rhythm as she meditatively popped a dusty and beleaguered scrap of bubble wrap, waiting patiently for the midday heat to pass.

.... You have to admit, it's satisfying.