Dr. Susan Burns stood in front of an eight-foot diameter concrete ring beneath the words, Uganda Equator. She straddled the line painted on the ground. Despite his jet lag and her offers to help him, Mike lugged a five-gallon bucket of water toward her. He’d just arrived from the U.S. to help Francis update the database at the malaria research facility. Earlier that day, Francis had invited them to the equator to see the Coriolis effect up close. The men had dismissed Susan when she told them it only worked on big things, like weather. “It’s science,” they said, ignoring the fact that Susan was a researcher, an epidemiologist. PhD was embroidered onto her lab coat.
Going to the equator would take time away from her research, but Mike and Francis wouldn’t shut up, as if repetition would convince her. “Clockwise in the south. Counterclockwise in the north.” Francis swirled his hands in opposite directions. “Straight down in the middle.”
Her parents always spoke to her the same way about her work. “If mosquito bites are causing problems, then kill the mosquitoes.” They didn’t understand the scale of the problem. It was bigger than a few mosquitoes. Hundreds of millions of people were infected with malaria now.
Before this morning, she hadn’t seen much of Uganda. She’d been working sixteen-hour days in the lab. The drive along Kampala Road to the tourist trap had reminded her of the roads connecting small towns in Ohio. Here, the dirt was deep red instead of brown, and papyrus grew in the fields instead of corn. Cattle grazed on the side of the road, too, but they were different.
“They are ankole,” Francis said. “A sign of high status. Susie, a woman like yourself would do well to marry a man whose family can offer one in payment to the bride’s family. The larger the horn the better.” Francis and Mike laughed at her.
“It’s Susan. Or Dr. Burns.” She set her jaw and swallowed her anger. She would prove them wrong about Coriolis. That would be enough.
Francis placed a box on the ground. It held three funnels. The outer two had a swirl painted in them that spiraled down into the hole at the bottom, mirror images. The one in the middle was unadorned.
Susan stood directly in front of the funnel in the north. “Only gravity will work on the water. It’s about positioning. Let me demonstrate.”
She reached for the bucket, but Francis grabbed it. He poured the water into the funnel to his right, to the south. “Clockwise!” he said. Mike nodded while Francis repeated this to the north, his left.
“No!” Her voice was higher than she had intended. “Stand directly in front of each one—”
They smiled at her as if she were a child.
Despite her protests, Francis repeated his demonstration several times until the bucket was empty. Then the men took selfies together inside the white ring.
Susan straddled the line and stared at them. They were two mosquitoes. The problem was bigger than these two fools. She looked out to the papyrus and the red dirt and the cattle. “I need to get back to work.”
Tonja, I was really engaged by the hook of this story, and the build was better. However, there really was no pay off, or the one on offer fizzled. Even watching mosquitoes spiralling down on each side of the equator, one clockwise the other counter-clockwise on her two friends would have been consistent with the story title. Meanwhile Susan gets a straight down dive bomb by a malaria marauder straddling the equator. Just one thought that might have tied the whole story together at the end.
Love it!
Ellen, me too. What a story. How did she get so much into so few words?! So well done.
Tonja–wow.
You give us this extremely hardworking American scientist 12000 km from home, working in Uganda to help end malaria for millions of people. She has a local guy named Francis doing data input for her in her lab, and her agency has sent another American, Mike, to help Francis with the data input work. Dr. Susan Burns finds out right away that Mike is not respectful of her, or a teamplayer (“despite his jet lag and her offers to help him”). And Francis “ignores” her. Yet the two men are also hilariously invested in convincing her of the truth of what she knows is an urban legend (that we can see water swirl in a small amount of water, like a toilet, or a bucket, clockwise or counterclockwise , depending on which hemisphere we are in). But unlike Mike, she is a teamplayer, so she relents.
The men’s thoughtless, dug-in ignorance reminds her of her family at home and their black and white thinking about her work: just “kill the mosquitoes.”
Dr. Susan Burns, Mike, and Francis go to one of the Uganda Equator tourist traps with the big white concrete standing circle and the North/South divide at the bottom, where tourists can stand with a foot in each hemisphere. On the way, they further insult her, Francis suggesting she could bring at least one ankole in marriage, and Mike laughing along.
In front of the concrete circle, she tells them the only thing they’re going to demonstrate is gravity. But Francis grabs the bucket from her to pour water into the big, painted funnels. The men don’t know, and don’t want to know, that at the level of small quantities of water in funnels and buckets, the Coriolis effect can’t be seen. They don’t know, like she does, that other sources of motion override the effect at that small level: “It’s about positioning.” But in their hubris, the men rebuff their superior, and miss out on knowledge.
I loved how this worked on the ladder of abstraction, Tonja. It’s this very specific, brief incident–the conflict between these male know-it-alls and their female boss–and yet it’s about so much more. How willing we can be to fool ourselves, and then dig in to our misperceptions and ignorance, like the men do.
And how nationalities mean little when some men will naturally ally with those who think like them about women, even on a different continent.
I really loved your story. Fantastic work.
Although the language was good in parts, the ending was weak. This slice of life on offer here appears to be more of a vehicle to convey the author’s sexist views rather than to create anything that has any substance.
Disappointing.
Jeff, that is interesting, can you say more about where you see sexism in the piece? Ruth