The Water Lily
Parasite: an animal or plant that lives on or in another animal or plant of a different type and feeds from it OR a person who is lazy and lives by other people working, giving them money, etc.
“There once was a water lily. A plant coveted by some, we both know whom, because not many alike existed in the known world. A water lily in the land called Rwanda which grew in one particular pond, a shallow muddy place. And in the known world, knowing is prestigious and delicate. Not in the fragile sense, In the hungry-after-dinner sense, as the gluttonous tendency of those called discoverers. One day a group of people south of Nyakabuye decided to deviate the flow of the stream from which the pond was watered and it ran dry. Those discoverers were hasty to locate the last specimens of the water lily and perform their usual dance. A hop and a skip across continents and the lily woke up in a laboratory. There was big fuss and big money-from-above thrown round the child. Time and time again the scientists said “up! Wake up!” But the lily knew nothing of sleep or wake.
After countless attempts one of them finally found how to lure the plant, deceive it into growing and dying and reproducing and growing again. That one, the expert scientist, the “messiah of plants” sighed a sigh of relief, he had been so worried. Had the plant not survived what accomplishments might he have sung about, might have been sung about him? All the time he swung his tools they said this plant was testing him, his ability to save and repair. What exactly is the meaning of care when it is a duel between giver and taker? When he had won they all laugh-lauded at once “you have saved a species!” You have given it a foreign name, a strange name, brewed it in a foreign place, a strange place, where it will remain forever at your science-service.
Ah but this is the real kicker-snicker of the story – the pond will remain dry because, well that’s-how-the-his-story-goes. And the lily will never again see Repubulika y'u Rwanda. Not once will others-up-North know the name it was given in its mother-tongue nor of the way it was needed-treated there. Ah and speaking of tongues have I told you how I got here? I was also given a strange name and a strange class, a long-list-lame – parasite, louse, tongue-eating. Everything in Latin of course. Did you know the word parasite comes from the French which borrowed from the Greek to describe one who eats at another’s table? What emptiness they must have felt to describe sharing this way. You see this fish-you’re-holding? I am its interpreter. It and I travel the world in cycles and patterns that you do not find all that interesting. What you see is that it gives and I take. So you assume non-reciprocity with your machinehands and your profitbrain. You could understand if you looked closer. ComeLook! There is no duel here. Preservation is not a fight. Caring is not dissecting-understanding-knowing. Do you think I have ever seen a water lily? How could you possibly know?”
