Today I've been pretending to be African again. The reason: Our washing machine has died. The lack of two things constitute Africa in my mind: Washing macines and hot showers. Washing clothes by hand makes me feel like almost being home again. Scrub til your knuckles are sore - then rinse and rinse again. After rinsing four times, you give up to the fact that you're never going to get all the soap out, and anyway, your're gonna have to wash that t-shirt again in a few days anyway. Back aching from bending over too long. Washing clothes is hard work. But it makes me feel that all I need to do is open the door and step outside, and there will be red dirt underneath my feet, the sun will beat against my head, and the air will resound with cockrows and distant radios and children laughing and singing. I get so homesick sometimes. Today, Africa is mercilessly far away.
4 kommentarer:
I wrote that once and it disappeared! Please delete if posted twice.
Nice post. I can feel your longing. I know it.
I have never been to Africa, and I can imagine how one can get attached.
I still remember the first sentence of a book by Doris Lessing, when she returned…
"Over the plain of Ethiopia, I saw the sun rose as I had not seen in seven years…"
Sometimes, even an out of order washing machine can be a blessing!
Sounds nice. I reckon it will feel like that when I return. I left a piece of myself in Uganda, and sometimes I feel like I'm not complete until I am there again. Anyway, I hope they'll get the washing machine fixed soon. My laundry is sort of heaping up ...
Hmm...
I see: you guys are still deliberately over-reporting the negative newsflow from the darkest corners of the black continent, purposefully exaggerating the reality on the ground.
Really you’re just a sore bunch of unrepentant Ayy-runian Marxists cum Thirdworldist poseurs!
For a change, why don’t you report the good news coming from Africa??
Such as this
;))
Hmmm. I'm not sure I understand where you are going with this. I write about Uganda because it is the one country I have spent enough time in to be able to write sensibly about. And my experiences from Africa are green and sunny and happy for the most part, not dark.
Besides, I'm not really reporting anything here, just feeling homesick ... I really don't see how more foreign military intervention of the sort referred to in your article is going to help Africa. In the past it has only led to more suffering for innocent civilians, and in my opinion, Bush lost his way in the socalled "war on terror" a long time ago.
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