Porn in the Workplace

Every Tuesdays and Wednesday, I pull myself out of bed, get dressed and walk myself to the Pankop Home-based Care and Drop-in Center. Sometimes (ok, most of the time) it’s quite uneventful. I sit and daydream while people talk in Setswana around me and I wait for a guy named MmmmPaul (I know his name isn’t spelled like this but it makes it funnier for me to think that it is).

This dude never shows up.

I met him once a while back when I went by the center after school let out to let him know I’d be there the next day. He gave me a lecture because I stood while I talked to him. “Dineo,” he told me, “you shouldn’t stand while speaking to a man.” Ha! My mind said, but I decided not to argue and willed my legs to sit. He told me he wanted to have a big meeting with everyone who worked at the center and formally introduce me to the organization. He made grandiose plans that I knew, because this is Africa, would never work out and said to come by at 9am tomorrow. I said my goodbyes and left.

At 9am the next morning, MmmmPaul was nowhere to be found. So, I cooked with the ladies at the center who made food for the school children and for the adult learners. It wasn’t too bad. Finally, at 11:30am, I was told MmmmPaul would not be coming in today. So I was given some food (a day doesn’t start off well without a plate of bogobe!) and watched a lame Nigerian film with a couple of other ladies who were “working.”

It’s been nearly three weeks since I’ve met MmmmPaul and we together decided working Tuesdays and Wednesdays would be best for everyone involved. I have not seen him since.

So now every Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I wake up pretty much whenever I want to (which in Africa, is usually no later than 8am for reasons unknown), get dressed, and walk myself to the center only to be turned right back around by the ladies at the center. “Come back tomorrow,” they always say.

However this Wednesday, in a defiant I will work today attitude, when I was told, “MmmmPaul isn’t coming in today,” I said ok, smiled and kept my ass in the chair. There was some Setswana chatter I’m pretty sure was about me, and then I was told to stir the chicken. So I stirred. Since it was late in the morning, most of the cooking was done so as the clouds darkened, the social circle that I had sat myself in began to move into the office. Although a part of me said that I’d made my case and could/should probably be leaving, I stayed and thought, What the hell, let’s see what happens after the cooking.

As everyone settled into the small office, somebody popped a dvd into the player and on came a recording of a street performance somewhere in Johannesburg. Damn, I thought, jibberish…at least the Nigerian films are in English. I watched anyway. At some point someone came to me with a bowl of bogobe and I began eating. I distracted myself from the boringness with the occasional glance at the TV and a lot of daydreaming of pizza and showers.

Then, thankfully, the film was over and I was halfway through my bogobe, which I consider a victory, and was about to excuse myself when suddenly rain started gushing down and the temperature dropped at least fifteen degrees. I considered walking through the rain but my beautiful handbag and my inability to explain a good reason why I had to leave right now made me turn back to my half-eaten bogobe and put my bag back on the ground. I was stuck.

Then suddenly, I heard American music coming from the TV. I glance over and do a double take as my mind processes what I just saw. Why is that woman on her knees? What is that…and then I read the script over the image, “Big Black Meat” and it all hit me.

PORN! Hardcore porn.

I turned towards the other ladies and must of given them quite the expression because they laughed at me and said, “Dineo, are you ok with the pornograph?” I hesitated only a moment. Was I being tested? How should I react? There aren’t any kids around, well, besides myself. How would Peace Corps want me to react to this? As the questions swirled in my head, I found myself faking cool and saying (whilst smiling, of course), “No, no. It’s cool. Ke siame (I’m good.).” Lie. All lies.

As I turned back to the TV, I thought more deeply about the scenario I currently found myself in. I resisted texting every PCV in my phonebook for some guidance and wondered if I should actually try to watch the film with interest along with these women I barely know or glance casually at the TV like it’s nothing, “Oh, Big Black Meat Two is so much better,” I could say as I roll my eyes. I looked around the room as casually as I could muster and saw that all the women had resumed watching the TV like it was Oprah and were back to eating their bogobe. I stared down at my bogobe and back at the TV where an Asian housemaid was showing the camera parts of herself that I don’t even want my doctor seeing. I couldn’t eat anymore. I put the bowl of bogobe down.

I tried to act casual. I didn’t know why I was so shocked. It’s just a little porn. I’m 23 and I’m in the Peace Corps. Surely I can handle a little “Big Black Meat”…at work…in Africa. South Africa just got a lot more weird.

However, as I tried to play cool, I found the relaxed nature of everyone during the film was more surprising than anything. About 20 minutes in, a man came by to sell some blankets. He came in, greeted everyone, said something about the blankets, some of the women felt the blankets and decided they were good, found some money, paid the man, he said goodbye and left…all like there were not three penises on the very large TV screen. At that moment I really started to believe that they were testing me, “Let’s see what the ‘lahoa’ (white person) does when we put on porn. It’ll be so funny!”

Another ten minutes passed as men and women came in and out to use the restroom in the office and only one woman mentioned anything about the fact that we were watching porn…at work. It didn’t even seem shocking to her. It was just, “Oh, pornograph.” It was kind of like she was at the zoo and had just seen the lion cage, “Oh, lions.” And then she left.

As the storm roared on and the sex onscreen continued, suddenly things were silent. There was a commotion as everyone wondered where the sound had gone. A few women tried to push the buttons on the two remotes that controlled the TV and dvd player but all they were able to manage to do was to restart the film. More Setswana erupted as they tried to get back the sound and to the place where the film had left off. As they scrolled through the chapters, the sound was nowhere to be found so the film was paused mid-sex scene and there was some yelling to someone outside. After awhile, a man came and they explained the situation to him and he pushed a couple of buttons without success.

I couldn’t believe it. It was porn. Sound in porn never really made any sense to me in the first place. How many times does one need to hear “Yes, yes, right there,” before it gets old? But these ladies were intent on having the sound back on. I guess they wanted to hear what happened in the lame and poorly-scripted storyline. I would have offered to narrate a story of my own, but wasn’t eager to add “Adult film scriptwriter” to my list of skills.

And then, just as suddenly as it began, it was over. The ladies resigned themselves to the fact that the dvd was not going to work and after a minute the rain stopped and I downed my tea and made my exit. I laughed to myself as I walked home.

Never a dull day.