Dear colleagues, friends, and family of our beloved Rogier Courau:
Greeting from Charlotte and Karen in California, a home away-from-home for Rogier during the 2007-2008 academic year:
Rogier’s 2008 dissertation, “States of Nomadism, Conditions of Diaspora,” (which he not so humbly gave us a copy of, insisting we read it immediately) opens its concluding chapter with two epigraphs, one from Virgina Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, and one from the 19th Century French Historian, Jules Michelet: “Oui, chaque mort laisse un petit bien, sa mémoire, et demandé qu’on la soigné. (Yes, everyone who dies leaves behind a little something, his memory, and demands that we care for it.) We’d like to share a few memories in our attempt to keep a vigilant watch over—to care for—what Rogier left us.
We both found Rogier to be a brilliant scholar, a food & wine connoisseur, an avid animal lover, but most importantly—a fast and fierce friend.
Charlotte writes: Although my privilege to know Rogier wasn't as long as many, his impact on my life was no less grand. Rogier was very gifted that way—being able to really affect people after he met them, leaving a lasting impression of his character emblazoned into memory! From his ability to laugh at almost any situation, to succinctly know the mettle of a person within first meeting him, Rogier’s joyous spirit made one feel distinctly privileged to know him.
I first met Rogier at a dinner party he was cooking in San Francisco, and after enduring a horrible day, Rogier's witty comments and infectious laughter were a much welcomed balm on an open wound. As a food and wine writer, Rogier and I immediately bonded over our shared interest. I remember specifically that evening a balsamic vinegar reduction that literally ended up as tar on the plate, as we were laughing and drinking through the cooking process and something had gone awry. Always self-deprecating, this was a laughing-till-we-were-crying dinner, where Rogier impressed upon an entire table of virtual strangers how amazing he was.
Later that same weekend I was able to spend time with Rogier while we rode up and down the Napa Valley wine tasting—one of Rogier's favorite past times. Unable to afford everything we wanted to do (most of this trip was financed on borrowed favors and credit cards put together) and even when we attained wonderful goodies from a great food and wine store and sat in the parking lot of the California Culinary Institute, which we couldn't afford to go to, looking out over the vines, enjoying our car picnic, Rogier couldn't seem happier. His stories of his home and the world around him always entertained us as he constantly insisted that South African wines were far superior to anything Napa had to offer!
The last night I was able to spend with Rogier, we enjoyed a wonderful multi-course dinner by one of the finest chefs in California. I remember how excited I was to try this restaurant and how he decided the theme for the evening would be his choosing the wine, and my choosing the courses! This lead to a wonderfully extravagant dinner, and I have heard rumors that Rogier repeatedly showed his food pictures from this dinner to chef friends of his in South Africa—but what was most memorable about the evening was Rogier’s enthusiastic and joyful spirit for spending time with friends and sharing his love of food and wine with the people around him.
That was one of Rogier's many gifts, to turn everyday events into adventures, and that particular evening, to this day, is one of my very favorite dinner memories. From his passion for education and learning, to his enthusiasm for life that could be witnessed in everything that he did, the world is far worse without his exceptionalism here with us.
and Karen writes: In reading Charlotte’s memories of some wonderful times we shared with Rogier during the summer of 2008, I am reminded of what a gift it was to be able to introduce two of my favorite people—Rogier and Charlotte—to each other, and how delighted I was by the two of them hitting it off so splendidly.
Last December, only a day or so before I got the news of Rogier’s death, I was asking Charlotte if she could do anything in the world for her upcoming birthday, what would she want to do? And she replied: “spend the day in Napa with you and Rogier, like we did last summer”—which was possible at the moment she uttered the words, and then impossible only days later. But I knew exactly what she meant. Spending time with Rogier was the best celebration there was—always an adventure, always a laugh, always surprising, interesting, and insightful. He was someone who could go from discussing literature, to politics, to opera, to wine, to a bad school-boy joke, and right back to theoretical debate in the same breath. It was an infectious combination. And it made me love him straight away. After meeting and becoming friends at a six-week critical theory program on the Cornell Campus in Upstate New York, Rogier, in his sometimes pessimistic mode, coldly pronounced that we probably would not see each other again, to which I instantly replied that we were going to be life-long friends and he was not getting rid of me.
After insisting he visit me in San Francisco, and coaxing him into letting me crash on his dorm-room floor at UCLA (well, actually, Rogier slept on the floor and gave me his bed—always the consummate gentleman), just to sneak in another visit before he left the U.S. to return home in 2008, I was lucky enough to visit him in South Africa in 2009—his home country of which he had been bragging since the day we met. When traveling with Rogier in Cape town last August he was the ultimate tour guide, drawing on his impressive knowledge of South African history and politics, the history of the wine industry in the Cape region, (each wine tasting being followed by Rogier insistently asking Would Charlotte like this? Would this wine be good enough for Charlotte? He had finally found someone who appreciated fine food and wine as much as he did!)
Often, in the midst of this seemingly random, frustrating world, when I look for signs—like any good English major closely reading for proof, evidence, signs of some order or logic, or God perhaps—I would think of meeting Rogier. In whatever random, harsh, often unforgiving world in which we find ourselves, here was a place where someone like Rogier—who I found witty and charming and entertaining and fabulous—thought I was fabulous too, and our paths somehow crossed and we got to spend some time together. That was enough for me. That was proof. Some order in the midst of all this. It was friendship. Someone you enjoy spending time with. Someone that made the tough stuff a little easier.
One quick story that I want to share was from Rogier and I driving down the freeway in Cape town, headed to the airport to catch a flight back to Johannesburg last August. As some of you might know, Rogier had had some conflicts with his landlady that were stressful. His landlady had three dachshunds, or as he called them: “sausage dogs,” her “retinue,” which became the brunt of many an inappropriate joke (you fill in the blank). Well, he got going on about the sausage dogs on our way to the airport and all of a sudden we were miles and miles past the airport and had missed it entirely. We had been laughing so hard, both of us completely missed the exit signs. We nearly missed the flight and had to call his aunt up to get directions back to the airport. It was a small thing. But it was how it was with Rogier so often, laughing until your belly ached, laughing so hard you forgot things like road signs, or exits, or airplanes to catch, or the possibility of one of you not being there any longer.
The last time I was with Rogier was at the Johannesburg airport. We ate some British potpie thing called “a foot long pecker.” Boy did Rogier think that was funny. He hugged me and said “I might not see you for awhile.” We were planning for him to make it out to Portland, Oregon for a visit in a year or two.
It feels a little harder to justify any pattern or grace in this world with Rogier dying so young. But knowing him was really something. Enough to give a person hope.
In sending a few thoughts, a few words from America, we wanted to close by turning to our own
Walt Whitman:
“I am not a bit tamed…I too am untranslatable
If you want me again look for me under your bootsoles.
You will hardly know who I am or what I mean,
But I shall be good health to you nevertheless,
And filter and fibre your blood.
Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop some where waiting for you”
