Ja-nee

To a certain extent, you could surmise the recent state of things here by examining the latest additions to Cleo's vocabulary. She now asks, regularly, for creamy yogurt: creamy, because much of the (quite tasty) yogurt here contains museli, which does not delight a toddler to whom change is anathema. She also claims, on occasional mornings, that it happens to be a holiday: a word that we taught her when National Youth Day offered her a one-day reprieve from daycare, and that she has subsequently embraced as a plank in her case that we not take her to school. And, finally, there's the impressive thermometer, which she said quite clearly this morning, as we checked her for a fever (none: it's abated, despite Cleo's heroic and downright physical efforts to prevent a single drop of medicine from crossing her lips).

But her word of choice, without question, is no. When we left Baltimore, a month ago, we left with a relatively agreeable one-year-old in our company. Now we're in South Africa with a full-blown two-year-old, and she is embracing her toddler's right to deny all requests, suggestions, and pleadings. Cleo, would you like to go to the garden? No. How about a breadstick? No. Okay, then - some creamy yogurt? And the no simply becomes more and more emphatic.

So we deal with it, in a variety of ways. L.'s taken to referring to Cleo, like the Republicans back home,as the party of no, and occasionally poses sham questions just for the sake of comic relief. Cleo, would you like a million dollars? No-o-o. I try, on the other hand, to formulate questions that are relatively no-proof. Cleo, we can go to the beach or to the aquarium. Which would you like? But even that's a losing hand, as it turns out that no is a surprisingly effective response. Hey, Cleo, it stopped raining. What should we do? No.

Occasionally, though, you'll get a silence in response, or a modest grunt, signifying assent - or, at least, the absence of violent opposition. Take advatange of those moments, my friend: they are the widest opening you'll get. No clear vocal opposition to pizza? We'll take two, please - quick, and with olives.

The other day, though, I learned of a local variant of no that I'm thinking of embracing myself. In the terrific opening section of Rian Malan's blistering book A Traitor's Heart, in which he details the seemingly intractable tension between coarse, violent Boers and displaced, resentful South African blacks, he tells a story about a conversation he had with a Boer officer. The Boer spoke at some length about the virtues of apartheid, and offered a lengthy defense of the nearly constant anti-black violence in the 1970s. He then looked to Malan, for confirmation of his views. Malan, in turn, reached for a Boer phrase: ja-nee, or yeah-no. Something like the American no, no, or yeah, well - either phrased in a high pitch, to imply a sort of agreement - the wording suggests assent, without totality. It's more of a conversational lubricant, I gather, than anything, but it allowed Malan to avoid offending the officer - and, too, to avoid betraying his own symapthies for blacks.

So: are we thrilled about Cleo's suddenly perpetual opposition? No. Can we deal with it? Well, ja-nee.