Find another reason why

“I need to take some time to clear my mind – to find another reason why. Sometimes you got to get lost if you wanna be found”. These utterances are many times thrown around as if it is the only way to find your true purpose. Indeed this type of notion or need is one of the ways to find yourself – no doubt.

“Nobody knows how to say goodbye, it seems so easy until you try”. That, right there, is another way.

For me to say goodbye is heart wrenching. Good bye my love, goodbye my children, good bye my grandchildren, good bye my colleagues, good bye my staff. I am in a wonderfully blessed position to say goodbye to my closest loved ones only to have to say goodbye soon to those I temporarily left my loved ones for. My life is about saying goodbye, and it is never easy, even if I try.

It doesn’t have to be about finding another reason why, but rather realising your reason why. If indeed it is not easy to say goodbye, just maybe that is your reason why. Your reason why could be to appreciate those who appreciate you, love you, admire you, motivate you and give you a reason why. When feelings of saudade overwhelms you while alone for a while, the answer is right there. The something or someone causing longing or melancholy at that moment is your “reason why” – your true purpose.

Africa has a way to reform and refine you. Africa forces you to rethink your purpose, your “reason why“. For me that purpose, that “reason why” manifested in the many good byes that comes with it.

The Drug

Africa is like a drug, “they” said. Once you jump in and take a bite, you’re hooked “they” said. How absolutely correct, I would learn, “they” are….

North of the Limpopo

Some Africans North of the Limpopo river find it difficult to comprehend the existence of a white African in Africa. Stating my nationality as a South African is many times met with disbelieve. I must be from Europe or America, and I must be some liberal do-gooder or philanthropist visiting Africa to add to the ridiculous western habit of hand-outs and aid distribution. A white man born and bred in Africa, working on African soil should not be possible.

Contrary to my experience in South Africa, the average African north of the Limpopo treats the white man with a kind of awe, admiration and respect. But a different kind of respect, not the kind that borders on inferiority, rather a kind of appreciation. An attitude of mutualism, togetherness – realising that someone from Africa (black or white) is different, tough, understands difficult times, sociable and shaped by the sun and soil of the African continent.

Time spend in Africa soon made me realise the total absence of antagonism, resentment, racial hate, entitlement and the destructive culture of certain South Africans. Blame and demanding everything for free is not something you easily find north of the Limpopo, which explains the absence of beggars and loiters at intersections and shopping malls. Rarely will you find the deliberate destruction of critical life support facilities like trains, clinics, schools, universities and libraries. Here they have little enough, and they look after it. I am generalising, and of course pockets of destabilisation do exists, but not nearly as frequent and rampant than in South Africa today where it has become the go-to modus operandi.

Yes, the dependency syndrome is still alive, but for fuck sake they moved way beyond blame and hate, taking responsibility and realising that only they are to blame. Ugandans, Rwandees, Tanzanians are all sweeping the streets, maintaining infrastructure, erecting new buildings and attracting new investments – taking ownership. Best of all the lady behind the counter is keen to assist, anxiously smiles and proudly willing to serve. No sign of KFC fat and residue on her face, and certainly not having you wait while merely typing away on her smartphone. These people are simply to proud of themselves and their jobs to leave a customer annoyed and frustrated. All of them supporting a GDP growth of circa 5% in the region.

What is my point? As a white African from South Africa I feel welcome here, loved, appreciated. I feel harmony and attachment. Never do I get the feeling I get every time I disembark on OR Tambo entering South Africa. How on earth did this happen? I would never imagine that my country of birth would resent me and use every opportunity to make me feel extremely unwanted. How do we move on from here?

Interview with a Vampire

The Rock Bar, Speke Hotel, Uganda

As usual she had the most expensive cell phone in her hand when she touched me where I was sitting on a bar chair gazing at a useless soccer game on the TV in front of me – my right hand clutching an ice cold Bell Lager.

“Hallo Baby” – as if we knew one another for ages

“How are you?” – she continues

“What is your name?” – she insists

“Andrew” – my name is always Andrew in typical circumstances

“Where are you from?”

“Take a guess”

“From Spain?”

She is perfectly built and provocatively dressed – obviously, she is a “lady’s night” after all. (called “lady’s night” in Uganda after “lady of the night”).

She smells like a bottle of perfume broken on the floor, and stops touching me after politely asking her to do so. The bracelets around my right wrist fascinates attention and she recons I am “expensive”. Obviously meaning I must have lots of money, being a neatly dressed muzungu (white man) sitting at a bar – still fairly sober after all.

I decided to make it worthwhile this time around and started asking questions, after reluctantly offering her an expensive Camel Lite from South Africa.

“You must be dealing with plenty different cultures and races requiring your services…. Uganda is becoming a real international attraction for tourism and business, yes? ”

“O yes. My best customers are Indians”

“Why is that” I ask

“They don’t last long and pay well – the turnover is fast”

I take another sip of my Bell lager…….to let that one sink in a bit.

“Chinese men want to do ugly things”

“What do you mean?”

“In the ass” she says

I gulped down the remainder of the Bell Lager, and order another one. I ask her if I can get her something, suddenly feeling crazy sorry for this petite Ugandan whore next to me.

“Yes, a water please”

“Yes, and what about the others” – simply assuming she dealt with all races and cultures across the globe already.

“Black men are nasty and want to hurt us, also they hit us and don’t pay after finish”

I didn’t expect any different, and was now waiting for her experience with European men………nothing was forthcoming. I was courageous by now, gulping the second Bell down just as fast.

“…and European men, have you had European men before…”

“O white men talk too much, they talk about their problems and their wives, sometimes they even cry …”

And here I am talking just as much, at least not crying or complaining about my wife and problems. She is right – I guess, but I’m not done yet.

I nearly discharged the gulp of beer content in my mouth all over her after this comment, and decided to talk about something less confusing.

Her aim is to bank 5 – 6 Indians per night to pocket $800. Four productive Fridays and Saturdays gets her to a healthy $6000 tax free income per month. She also owns four hairdressing outlets in Kampala, which explains the expensive cell phone in her hand – now sticking to her palm, all sweaty after my interrogation session. Typical white man, talking too much.

“Are we doing it or what?” She asks impatiently.

“No, I’m leaving now, I don’t pay for sex, because I respect you as a woman” I said while walking away.

“Andrew….then you are a gentlemen”

I grasped for a moment … “Why, why would you say that?”

“Because a gentlemen is a man who shows respect to those who is of no possible value to him…”

My Brother from another Mother

I’m preparing for my first trip to Ghana.

Ghana, I need a fresh bracelet. There’s a place up the street in Rosebank Mall. Foreigners have little kiosks there and they make personalised bracelets for you. The Saturday just before the day of my departure I rush up to the Mall and meet Mike. Mike’s accent is West African, maybe Liberia, the Congo, Cote de I’voire or Burkina Faso (the land of the upright people). “Where are you from” I ask Mike. “I’m from Ghana” Mike replies with an overwhelming smile on his face. “How can I spoil you today my brother” Mike gets into business. My mind freezes at the knowledge of this man being a Ghanaian – I’m going to Ghana tomorrow.

I make a habit of studying my next country of visit before I leave, and was quick to react with “Ghana means Warrior King, right” . “Yes my brother we are the warriors”. I show him my worn out bracelets on my right arm, wave over his collection with my eyes and ask for something authentic, new for my left arm, because “I’m going to Ghana” I said. “I’ll make you one. I’ll make you one that says “AFRICA”. “You know what my brother, I have a brother in Accra, he’s doing the same things I’m doing, but Ghana is tough, That’s why I am here”.

Knowing this would be my first trip to Ghana, I spot an opportunity to get the number of a Ghanaian who I can call should I get lost or need something specific when I’m over there. Mike give me his number, and I leave with a sporting new “AFRICA” bracelet on my left arm.

I’m exited and can’t wait to land in Accra, the capitol of Ghana. Ghana is hot they said. This hot was not what I expected when I disembarked from the plane. It was a hammer blow of hot and humid right between the eyes – sweltering hot. It is obvious, the first thing to do now is to get to a pub for some typical Ghana Django Lager. From my hotel room – late in the evening – I wonder off into the streets to find the Django.

In a narrow street, around the corner, I find it. A typical local pub with tables, chairs, terrible music and ……. a little kiosk with throngs of pitch black locals floating around. Some with dreadlocks, some with bald heads. The man behind the table of bracelets is huge, bald, and grippingly sweaty. Let me blend in. I approach the bald guy and tell him about “my friend Mike” from South Africa. His joyful mood turns into an awestruck dark blue glaze on his face, looking at me for what seemed to be hours. “What did you say his name was brother”. “Mike” I said, my calf muscles shivering. “I have a brother in South Africa, his name is Mike”, the big guy said. “Ya, ya the Mike I’m talking about works in Johburg, he has a shop like this” – waving with an open palm over his table. The huge figured bald man destroys most of his table of memorabilia on his way over to me. “That is my brother, brother………Mike is my brother, I am Mark”

Not entirely sure what to expect when Mark eventually reaches me, I thought this would be the time to utter the fact that I have Mike’s telephone number. “You have” – now right on top of me. “Ya, ya let’s call him” – at this stage still extremely anxious and confused – I said. I dial Mike on my Blackberry, and Mike pics up on the other side. Thank God. I shoved the phone into Mark’s sweaty hands. The English accent transforms into a confusing slang of West African French English when Mark’s already shiny wet face dilutes with the most honest tears I’ve ever seen in my entire life. The two of them talk and talk, Mark waving his arms, shaking his head, stepping back and forth away and towards me, every time he faces me, his eyes are bloodshot, teary and deeply appreciative.

The conversation ends, Mark spoke to his brother for the first time in ages. The most truthful African kisses rain all over my face, while Mark clutched me with his huge, sobbing wet, musky body. What are the chances my brother ……………………….?

Suffering

I met Comfort Freeman (a Liberian) in Ghana. We shared different experiences after Comfort honestly didn’t believe that I am from South Africa. Any country on the African continent must surely be inhabited by blacks only. It is extremely hot and humid where we are while the copious amounts of “Stone Strong Lager” goes down like water.

Liberia is a country in West Africa which was founded, established, colonized, and controlled by citizens of the United States and ex-Caribbean slaves as a colony for former African American slaves and their free black descendants. Thus one of only few African countries not colonized by Europeans.

Comfort was a younger man during the Liberian rule of Charles Taylor. During his term of office, Taylor was accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity as a result of his involvement in the Sierra Leone War (1991 -2002). Domestically, opposition to his government grew, culminating in the outbreak of the Second Liberian Civil War (1999– 2003). By 2003, Taylor had lost control of much of the countryside and was formally indicted. That year, he resigned, as a result of growing international pressure, and went into exile in Nigeria. He was found guilty in April 2012 of all eleven charges levied by the Special Court, including terror, murder and rape. In May 2012, Taylor was sentenced to 50 years in prison. Reading the sentencing statement, Presiding Judge Richard Lussick said: “The accused has been found responsible for aiding and abetting as well as planning some of the most heinous and brutal crimes in recorded human history.”

Like always, I want to understand better, and I ask many questions. One thing bothering me was the fact that Liberians under Taylor’s rule apparently view him as a hero, and would actually like to have him back as their President. I keep this question for later and first want to understand more about the suffering endured by Liberians under Taylor’s rule. Comfort goes into deep detail of horrific cruelties suffered by citizens, as dished out by Taylor’s army and rebel soldiers. Amputations, rape, murder and other seriously uncomfortable atrocities. Comfort tells about him and his parents having to stay indoors for weeks, demolishing their shack from the inside to provide for enough firewood to cook and survive – not daring to go outside, or otherwise be slaughtered like chickens. He also tells about a time when you could not find a single chicken in Liberia. Chickens and eggs apparently had to be imported from Kenya.

The time is right and I ask Comfort, how on earth can Liberians ask for Taylor’s return with all these atrocities still fresh in everyone’s minds? How can he be viewed as a hero? Comfort’s reply is mindboggling: “Charles Taylor is our hero, he made us suffer, he taught us how to survive amongst suffering. Today we can handle suffering better than ever before – thanks to our hero, Charles Taylor”.

How on earth does anyone comprehend this? Is suffering the only thing left in some parts of Africa? Is suffering the one and only thing to overcome? Is this what Presidents are there for? It was Friedrich Nietzsche who quoted: “To live is to suffer, to survive is to find meaning in the suffering”. But is this not taken to literally in some parts of Africa?

Mark Manson describes man as – “Who you are is what you are willing to struggle for”. If this is how certain Africans make sense of life, let it be. And maybe, just maybe the rest of us are simply missing something very important here??

Forgive and Forget

Shake Hands with the Devil is one of the saddest books I have ever read and one of the most heart-breaking eye-witness accounts. A kind of naïve and painfully honest confession of the failure of a man and the total failure of an organisation, a meticulous description of one of the worst betrayals in the history of humanity. In spite of serious omissions, in particular about the massacres in the areas that were theoretically made secure by the UN, in spite of its ponderous and often verbose style, it is unfortunately a book that must be read in order to understand how, with imperturbable coldness and implacable cynicism, the peacekeepers allowed an entire country to commit suicide. As for Dallaire, who is considered a hero in Canada, he explains that he was a powerless victim like the 800,000 dead who continue to haunt him. – Gil Courtemanche, April 2005.

I’m busy reading this shocking account of the Rwanda genocide by Romeo Dallaire, having the usual Primus at The Forest Garden Inn, in Nyamagabe, Rwanda. I start a conversation with the waiter – in his late 20’s. It was somewhere in 2014, and I realised this youngster must have been barely 10 years old when the genocide of 1994 between the Hutu’s and Tutsi’s erupted. Knowing that the genocide subject in Rwanda is a petulant one, and not knowing how to prompt a discussion about it with the young man, I confirmed that he was circa 8 – 10 years old at the time. He lost his parents and a sister.

The young man – understandably so – not keen to take the conversion much further. I persist and asked him: “How do you deal with it, how do you forgive or how do you forget”. His reply is simple and painfully relevant. “……To forgive and to forget is easy, the difficult part is – which one to do first…..”

In our struggle to decide “which one to do first”, we many times do neither. These words explain so many of not only today’s global conflicts, but also our own deep and personal ones.

“……To forgive and to forget is easy, the difficult part is – which one to do first…..”

Bicycles & Dependency

The “dependency syndrome” is an attitude and belief that a group can not solve its own problems without outside help. It is a weakness that is made worse by charity.

No better example of – “I am not responsible for my own destiny” – exists in Africa than the attitude of the everyday bicycle user in Africa north of the Limpopo. Bicycle users – mostly dangerously over-loaded (overloaded according to the average westerner) with produce, valuables or friends and family members – always drive right in the middle of the road. The operator can mostly not see behind him (because of his overweight load). You, the approaching vehicle, has the important responsibility to warn the bicycle user of your presence. There exists no need on the part of the bicycle user to frequently look behind himself to analyse oncoming danger – in which case he can swerve out of the way. (I say “he”, because I still has to come across a female bicycle user in Africa north of the Limpopo).

The bicycle user’s safety is the responsibility of everyone around him, not his. I find this anomaly to be entrenched in the culture of many rural areas in Africa north of the Limpopo. “Our destiny, wellbeing, happiness and general right to survive, are in the hands of someone or something else – not ours.

This dependency syndrome is further described by an encounter I had with tattered and torn little children deep in rural Rwanda. I am used to the normal – “give me money” quote coming from the streets of poor rural Africa. On this day in Rwanda however, the juvenile youngsters were confidently chanting – “Give me My money”. My money ??? How deeply entrenched does a dependency syndrome have to be to result in a sense of entitlement and demand. As if to say – “you have to, need to give me My money. You feel guilty, you will give me My money, you owe us. Of course many of us then in actual fact do give them Their money………….

The “dependency syndrome” is an attitude and belief that a group can not solve its own problems without outside help. It is a weakness that is made worse by charity.

Chicken & Chips

Enro Hotel, Mityana, Uganda.

Not many guarantees exists in Africa north of the Limpopo. One guarantee that do exist however, is waiting hours for a lunch or dinner order in small-town rural restaurants, hotels or pubs. You gulp down copious amounts of good quality cheap beer, while jokingly believing that your choice of meat is probably still being slaughtered – waiting.

I order “Chicken & Chips”, hoping that this time around the African staple diet will probably not take too long. Several 30-minutes pass while frequent rounds of “another beer” suggestions go by………

The shy and aloof lady appears (eventually), stares at me for an eerie while and then embarrassingly announces that the kitchen don’t have “Chicken & Chips”. After already waiting for ages, a mix emotion of anger, laughter and amazement overpowers me. Going back to the menu and re-decide on another option would simply not be an option. So I ask – “okay, tell me then what do you have available in the kitchen?”

Relieved that I didn’t overreacted in totality, she declares – “We only have “Chips & Chicken”. This time however the laughter spontaneously erupted from within, and I requested the “Chips & Chicken”. The “Chips & Chicken / Chicken & Chips” arrived after several more beers. The plate had chips, chips, chips and a small piece of brutalised shrapnel of chicken.

This anomaly became one of my favourite African-experience-stories around friends and fire – from there onwards……….

As recent as only days ago, I realised for the first time what actually happened on that mixed emotions day in Uganda, and this understanding is critical for survival in Africa north of the Limpopo. Not having “Chicken & Chips” does not mean I don’t have “Chicken & Chips”, it only means that I don’t have “much” chicken. I have a small piece. But I have plenty of “Chips”. For that reason, “Chips” should be the first word of your order. I only have “Chips and Chicken” means, the portion will have a heap of chips, but only a shrapnel piece of chicken. “Chicken & Chips” means – more chicken than chips. “Chips & Chicken” means more chips (much more) than chicken.

The African Conundrum

The African conundrum… is rooted out of the historical, philosophical and cultural bastardisation, imbalances and inequalities which many post-colonial African governments have always sought to address, though with varying degrees of success, since the 1960s. Lamentably, this African conundrum is rarely examined in a systematic manner that takes into account the geopolitical milieu of the continent, past and present. This volume seeks to interrogate and examine the extent of the impact of the geopolitical seesaw which seems poised to tip in favour of the Global North. The book grapples with the question on how Africa can wake up from its cavernous intellectual slumber to break away from both material and psychological dependency and achieve a transformative political and socio-economic self-reinvention and self-assertion. While the African conundrum is largely a result of historic oppression and a resilient colonial legacy, this book urges Africans to rethink their condition in a manner that makes Africa responsible and accountable for its own destiny. The book argues that it is through this rethinking that Africa can successfully transcend the logic of post-imperial dependency.