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.... Of Cabbages & Kings

10th December 2011
Elephant Story

How many of you have heard of the elephants’ graveyard? Now I realize that a writer who asks a question of that nature, places himself on the horns of a dilemma: on the one hand, there may be some readers who haven’t the foggiest idea what it is that I’m referring to, and on the other hand, there is no doubt that several of you are muttering beneath your breath, “What does Marquis take us for? Ignoramuses (or ignorami, depending on your taste)? Everybody knows about the elephants’ graveyard.”
So just in case, I beg indulgence of the second, more knowledgeable group, please just bear with me for a minute, while I explain to the first group that the elephant’s graveyard was a mythical place in Africa where old elephants were supposed to go to, to lay down and die, when their time came. You know, through sickness or old age. Apparently, if one ever found the legendary elephants’ graveyard, the number of tusks which could be gathered from the supposed millions of dead elephants, would provide enough ivory to make one rich beyond one’s wildest dreams.
There; I’ve slipped in my explanation, hopefully without the second group getting bored and falling off to sleep on me.
But while we’re on the subject of elephants, is there anyone out there who doesn’t know what the term “white elephant” means? Again begging the majority of you out there to bear with me, I would like to say to the few who don’t know, that broadly speaking, a white elephant is the description of any useless object which you have sitting around, and which you really cannot make use of. It’s like buying the Castries Bridge, transporting it to your backyard, and looking at it every day, wondering what the heck it’s doing there, taking up space; what the heck are you going to do with it; and why the heck did you buy it in the first place.
“What is it with all this elephant talk?” you may by this time be asking. ”Marquis has probably been eating too many peanuts of late, and it has now gone to this head. ”Well, I supposed I may as well stop with all the metaphors, and get to the point. Get down to brass tacks, so you can see where I’m coming from, as they say.
You see, sometimes, one finds oneself in a situation where you wake up one morning, turn on your TV or stereo, enjoy for a few minutes and all of a sudden, Pop! Something has blown inside the appliance, and there you sit, before a blank screen, or in complete silence.
It will make no sense jiggling dials or pushing buttons or checking fuses, the darned thing has gone dead on you. For a few days, you keep it at home, right there in is usual place, hoping that something miraculous will happen, and that like Lazarus it may possibly come back from the other world. Every morning you hit the power switch but to no avail. The age of miracles is past.
One day, realization hits you: you are looking at a white elephant. Yep, it’s sitting there looking back at you, a derisive smile lurking behind its elephant’s eyes, happy that it’s got you filled with frustration, right up to your neck teeth.
“Not so fast,” you think, ”I’ll take care of you.” And you pick it up and take it to one of our local electronic appliance fixer-uppers. You know, the guys who say that they can fix your VCR or TV or stereo quickly and efficiently, at low cost to you.

 
 
Next morning, you arrive at one of these establishments carrying your white elephant with you, expecting a quick fix. And that’s where your problems really begin. The first thing that should strike you is that, in order to get to the person behind the counter which is usually in the rear of the establishment, you have to pick your way through a vast collection, literally stacks upon stacks, of TV’s, radios and VCR’s, apparently waiting to be fixed.
Actually, what you’re wading through, even though it doesn’t immediately dawn on you, are piles of dead white elephants. Yes! You’ve found it. It’s not in Africa; all the famous explores who spent centuries looking for it were actually looking in the wrong place. Because the elephants’ graveyard does exist. But it’s here in St. Lucia, divided up in portions among our local repair shops.
You see once your white elephant takes its trek to the graveyard, it never comes back. There’s always some good reason why the poor thing just can never recover and find its way back on the road to good health and long life. As a matter of fact, I presently have a white elephant (my stereo amplifier) which is under care, and which I am now convinced, has taken its last trip. I just cannot restrain myself from giving you a blow-by-blow report of its doctor’s diagnosis:
After four months of waiting, I present myself at the establishment and ask about the health of my elephant.
“It’s almost ready. I could give it to you today, if I had and I.C”
Hey, this is good news, so I immediately head for the door. Suddenly I realize that I did not know what his favourite soft drink flavour was.
“Flavour of what?” he asked.
“Your Icy.” (Icy is a local soft drink brand name).
“My Icy? Icy?” he laughed. “Not an Icy, and I.C.”
“I don’t see,” I replied.
“Not an Icy to drink, an I.C., a part to make the amplifier (read ‘white elephant’ here) work. Now you see?”
“O.K. I see. Where can we find an I.C.?”
“Nowhere in Castries. I’m going to Vieux Fort tomorrow, so there I’ll see if I can find the right I.C.”
I looked around me, at the hundreds of dead elephants. “I’m sure that these corpses around here are not all subject to the same complaint as mine,” I remarked. “What if we see if we can get an I.C. from one of them, and see if it can do the job?”
“Not a chance. You see, your I.C. is quite special and no I.C. from any of the amps which we see around here will fit.”
I gave up. My white elephant had taken its last voyage and was now well and truly dead, finally at rest in the elephants’ graveyard.
As I turned to go, the sheer bold-facedness of our electronic repairmen struck me. Openly displaying , in the front of their shops, for all to see, the astounding number of appliances which they were not capable of fixing, which had literally died in their hands.
Imagine going to a medical doctor’s office, and having to pass, on your way to his nurse/receptionist, piles of cadavers of the patients whom he did not cure, and who died in his office.
Well, I am resigned to the fact that I have to replace my dead elephant with a new amplifier. But I am grateful that I have finally located the legendary elephants’’ graveyard. Although I shall not let the remains of my elephant rest there. I shall go and pick it up, take it home and bury it properly.
For I know that not only its tusks would disappear. So would its internal organs and whatever else might be found useful for transplantation or for some sort of Frankenstein operation, going to build a new elephant somewhere.
My elephant gave me good service. It deserves a decent burial.

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