White African

The girl I miss

2012-01-07T17:37:00.003+01:00

I have a friend who is dedicated to one purpose and making one woman happy. He gets up early in the morning and works all day and comes home 12-15 hours later. Still he has time for the small girl he has put in this world.

I on the contrary am very superficial. I travel across the world and every day I re-event myself. In the morning I wake up and decide to make another woman happy.

Somewhere very far away there is a girl who needs my help, but I cannot find her. She is maybe the only woman I can dedicate myself to. Here we talk so much about biology and blood, but I do not believe in those things. I already made too many mistakes which will torment me into eternity. This is the reason why I keep travelling across the world until I find her.

Taxi Driver

2011-12-22T13:08:00.007+01:00

My taxi driver during several years send me a Christmas greeting via sms to my Ugandan phone number. This year I am in Denmark during Christmas season, though I would rather spend every winter under Equators sun. But this year is when my whole Danish family are gathered like every other uneven year. The even years I spend with my African families.

I return my taxi drivers greeting - and thank him. You might think that he is only doing it to remind me to also use him next time, but I can never forget to call him when I arrive in Nairobi Airport. He has always been nice to me and treated me very good - besides he is a very nice man. I can recommend Roses Taxi and Lawrence to anyone. So if you are going to Nairobi don't hesitate to call me. Then I will give you his contacts and a few other necessary tips.

Happy Holidays ...
... I wish you a brown Christmas ...
... El Vez rocks ...

I can beat you!

2011-11-14T17:46:00.002+01:00

On the first nite in Kampala I am going to get something to eat before going to sleep – as I return to my home I decide to have a drink in Wine Garage.

I order a glass of red wine and stay at the counter to drink it. There is another man next to me. I greet him – he greets me. We talk casually, but suddenly he becomes hostile and agressive. I am admiring the painting at the wall. He says: ”stop, stop, stop ...”. I keep quiet to respect his demand and avoid to cause conflict, but he stares at me. It is hard not to react on his wild eyes, because his attitude is very violent. He begins to say, that he could beat me. I am not sure if I shall take it seriously or not. He continues: ”I don't like you”. I realise that a conflict is unavoidable – so I decide to pay my bill and go outside. He stands up and begins to push me. The waitresses befind the counter do nothing. I pay and walk outside to finish my drink, but he follows me and I see no other solution than leaving my drink and walk away.

I still remember his eyes. They were hard and evil.

Another day I went to have coffee in Javas Coffee (not to be confused with Nairobi Java House). Suddenly a rather big man comes to me and sit down next to me. Without any introduction he asks: ”Do you remember me?” I have never seen him before. He tells me that he works in Immigration. I suggest that he has seen me in the airport. He keeps on talking to me. I am not very interested or attentive. because I am on the internet and my time is running. He begins to talk about a wedding meeting he is going to attend but he needs fuel and ask me for 20000 UGX (equivalent to 7,5 USD). I say no and explains that I can help me friends here, but not somebody I do not know. Hereafter I ignore him. He says, that he is not a bad person and walks away. He sits somewhere else for a while.

In the following days I feel scared of what he will do if I meet him in the airport as I am leaving Uganda. I also avoid to go to Wine Garage again. It makes me think. To go to Uganda a few times is safe, but if you keep coming as if you were a Ugandan living in diaspora, then you will be confronted by the same problems as everybody else – the same treats, insecurities and demands ... or are these just dark sides of the growing of a middle class?

My hostility towards the middle class can be interpreted as sociological and psychological perversion, but here I only want to present a few things that I noticed over the years in East Africa about the middle class in Kenya and Uganda. In 2004 I came to Nairobi for the first time. Here there were a middle class as opposed to Kampala. The middle class in Nairobi would act reserved towards foreigners and Kenyan men sometimes shows hostility towards white men. The tendencies can now be seen in Kampala and in the meantime the middle in Kampala has been growing. The middle class has issues with everybody else – as opposed to the upper class and the poor ... the upper class is just rich and privileged. They do not need anything or anybody. The poor have no choice – they must do exactly what they are doing and can do nothing else.

But ... then again ... the discussion of classes might just be another round-a-bout, because the main issue is that I now belong here and therefor I have the same responsibilities as everyone else. With these responsibilites comes goods and bads. I have for some years been cherised with the goods, now the time has come for the more harsh realities. I need to be careful and take my precautions. Though I do not complain. I simple try to tell what I see. The truth - no, I do not care about the truth, nor do I want to judge other people or value their actions.

Visuability

2011-11-04T13:47:00.002+01:00

My glasses has gone from transparency to white-gray as an old man's hair. After many years my optician has refused to put them back on track. Right now I am back in my beloved East Africa and just after a few hours my glasses has again become transparent.

White babbling

2011-10-08T21:09:00.004+02:00

There will always be a white woman or man puking about conditions in Africa. They have always spent considerable time in Africa, though they still do not understand much.

Years ago it was Uganda. For several years Uganda was a donor darling. Apparently it has now become too obvious that the Ugandan President is corrupt beyond reach. An article in a Danish newspaper seem to indicate that Rwanda is the new darling. It is striking as well as surprising. The Rwandan President Paul Kagame did for years send his troups into the Congo to fight against the Ugandan Army and whoever else have been there - the battle field of Central African, where there has been wars constantly during the last 50 years with very vague international attention. The Congo messures the size of Western Europe.

Time

2011-09-25T19:06:00.003+02:00

Time passes
it is something, it has to do.
We believe the movement of time is an important part of life
one day is like the other
without meaning in a broader perspective
more time, more life.
We are thiny particles
it means more than we imagine
outside, warm and cold
it is our decision.
I prefere life.

(Beginnings p.16)

Aftermath

2011-06-02T11:44:00.002+02:00

I am not you
you are definitely not me
we are the intercourse
between
life and death

Desorientation

2011-02-12T16:44:00.019+01:00

I have a habit of travelling in and out of Europe - as I now call the place, where I am supposed to come from. It never was possible for me to accept the idea that I belonged to a specific place. As long as I can remember I have felt out of place. To go outside Europe gave me comfort - but it didn't give me any sense of belonging. I was given the possibility of seeing something else. Thereby I was able to tell different stories about myself.

In New England I was sliding along the walls as a young and scared teenage boy. I could not find any space that I regarded as mine. Most of the time during a full year I walked silent as an invisible ghost. I could have returned to Denmark, but it didn't appear as an option. Was I colonised by a broader purpose? Eventually I returned to Denmark, where I finished high-school, as I was expected to do. Again I felt out of place, but in more profound manner.

After high-school I decided to travel to Mexico. I was alone - it was a pleasure for me to go very far away. Every time I began to feel some kind of belonging or had met people, then I decided to move on. I am not sure if I was looking for something or just running away. Month after month I continued through Mexico and Central America. I was travelling with no purpose and no sense of direction. One year later I returned to Denmark. For many years I felt a huge gab. Immediately I moved away from the countryside to the city. In Copenhagen I walked restlessness through the streets in the coldest winter for many years. I lived my life on top of a black-out. I had all the good explanations, though none of them made sense, but I didn't dare to begin to develop a language that would describe the feeling of otherness, which I had slowly began to have in me. A couple of years later I began studies in the university. It appeared to give me a sense of beloging for the first time in my life, but in a peculiar way. I was engaged in politics, and I read many books. In all cases I constructed myself in opposition to others - also towards the people that agreed with me. It gave me the possibility to air out my aggressions. I was passionately involved in aggression, confrontation and conflict as a principle. I despiced notions of compromise, harmony and human relations free from power structures. Even in my interpretation of the theories I was working with I constructed myself in opposition to others that were reading the same books. I always defined myself in opposition, and I found very few people that made me feel safe and secure - and it was always in the boundaries of the academic world.

During the years in the university I began to travel again. The destinations were European cities. I believed myself to have a multiple heritage connected to urban spaces like Berlin and Madrid, but I was more and more attracted to the boundaries of Europe: Iceland, Andalucia, Finland and the Baltic states. All these places inherite a combination of Europe and something else. I also began to write fiction again. It led to a process where I had to leave the university for ever. After 13 years I finally realised that I didn't belong in the university. It seems as an irony that there is again a place where I don't belong. When I left the university it felt as a tremendous relief. For many years I could feel the joy, which gave me an almost orgasmic bodily sensation.

I was dragged out of Europe again. In Chiapas in the southern part of Mexico I was sitting and doing absolutely nothing. I was looking. Here was nothing I could understand - as an echo of the Zapatist Movement. There is nothing to see in Chiapas, except social injustice - like many other places around the world. You can go home now. We will fight our fight here. You will fight yours. Together we will make another world possible.

My intentions was to go more permanently to Latin America, but instead I ended up going to East Africa. In Tanzania I was received by a crystal clear sky with millions of sparkling stars. I remember none of them from my childhood. This becomes a symbol of my African experiences. Here I don't understand anything, and there are none of my previous experiences that can help me. East Africa is total despair - but I am attracted to the life that I see around me. After many years in and out of Africa I have accepted that I have no heritage. There will always be very different places which I will swift between to nurture my desorientation. I have just been given the notion of desorientation as a description of what I have been feeling for a long time.

Is this a way of de-colonising myself? This is all very personal and private. The path I am walking is paved with fragility, vulnerability, uncertainty and insecurity.

Life can never again become a habit.

A message from ...

2011-01-16T16:14:00.005+01:00

If I wanted to be religious, spiritual or believe in destiny ... these past weeks in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda have given me several opportunities.

The first days in Nairobi just before Christmas I met two friends coincidentally - I had lost contact with both of them, though we all are in each others Facebook-archives.

In Kampala Charles pulls by me in Kabalagala - I had actually thought I had lost him, because his phone was off when I was in Kampala in April. He was one of my first friends in Uganda, Ugandan friends - I mean. We used to meet in the evenings in Kabalagala together with other friends: Joseph, Richard (before he died), Francis ... Charles always told one incredible story after another. They were all definitely on the borderline of we in Europe regard as the truth - but here where storytelling is the core of communication the truth does not make a lot of sense.

The very evening that I return to Nairobi I meet Jack – by coincident in a City of 4 mill. people in Nakumatt Lifestyle in the center of town next to Terminal Hotel where I am staying. He is a Kenyan comedian, who came to Denmark and performed during the African Festival in Det Poetiske Bureau in Copenhagen.

I am not sure how to interpret these encounters – but I am quite sensitive to them and want them to be arguments for coming back here to live but coincident is part of life and if you look for them and sample them in bundles then they will grow beyond comprehension.

Comprehension is my preference no matter if it is beyond, across, underneath, above, before or inside out comprehension.

Guilty as charged

2011-01-11T00:35:00.003+01:00

I have been caught in a crime I thought I was protected against. It might not seem severe, but it is contradictory to my basic principals:

1) Give anybody the benefit of doubt
2) Do not think of yourself as above others

I treated her as a prostitute and not even a prostitute should be treated like this. Just because I walk into a bar, where I am usually attacked by suspicious women. I also know that here are all kind of decent women just having fun with their friends.

It is the silent corruption of a white man in Africa - or a rich man anywhere. I have slided back on that path, where you think, you can do, what you want and place yourself as superior. I will have to pull myself back, as I did before, and ask her for forgiveness.

It is ironic that I am far and for most known by the song "Mumusonyiwe" - please forgive him, which tells about a white man, who does serious mistakes and still is forgiven, as I properly have been and will be in the future.

You and me

2010-10-28T00:15:00.002+02:00

I am not you
You are not me

We are us

in the fragility of life.

Stop dreaming

2010-09-23T15:24:00.003+02:00

How many chances do you get to save another human beings life?

Deep protected in the shadow of the welfare state it is something you never have to think about, but outside - it is a dead serious fact of everyday life. There you will only get one chance, and if you do not act immediately, it will already be too late.

Do not hesitate!

Positive

2010-09-06T13:06:00.004+02:00

I dreamed of Africa.

Everything was taken from me
now I walk empty handed.

My kid is sick
and my friend is dying
a wife has left.

My responsibility.

Today he called to tell me
he had been tested HIV positive.

Never believe in miracles.

A Swedish woman

2010-02-12T21:44:00.004+01:00

I could be anywhere,
but it is only the language,
that is bothering me.

I have crossed the line,
I feel abroad, though I am just in another neighbourhood next to my home.
I could be in Germany, but I am not.

I am wondering, why she couldn't be Danish - she looks so Swedish.
There is a way she has her hair. It is very light.
But is it not the colour of her skin, that does the difference.
It is something else.
She is Swedish - she is shy in a way, that a Danish woman cannot be.

Wives

2010-02-12T21:41:00.002+01:00

Imagine if you could meet your previous wife, as if you never met her, and that you both had the experiences you have now!

Black men

2009-11-16T15:39:00.003+01:00

It is a black man, who is offering me his seat in my local shawarma joint. In a world without reference point I am drawn back into my African home. He makes me cry, while I am flushing everything I ever believed in down the toilet.

Flying

2009-11-16T15:33:00.003+01:00

I am in the midst of Europe - again. Here we don't have a clue about the world. We have lost every sense of relationship. Our own ideas are everything to us.

Women in black

2009-09-25T21:58:00.002+02:00

When a black woman look into my eyes, then I remember, what I didn't know just a few years ago. It is in her eyes. I can never forget her. She thought that I could fulfill her wishes. but I didn't know her deepest dreams. They were hidden behind her breasts which I didn't ever dare to touch.

We were different in ways none of us ever would like to understand. Our eyes are the only thing we will have in common. Though we already know that we have betrayed each other by the lack of closeness.

I am looking at you, because it makes me feel closer to myself. The colour of your skin gives me comfort and reminds me of lost friends under the sun. Relationships in vain.

You look back at me to see what can come come out of it. You cannot afford to let an oppurtunity slide away. A man like me represents a valuable experience even if I end up dissappointing you.

Belonging in tradition

2009-08-11T16:53:00.002+02:00

I never cared about what other people thought OR I never took it into account, maybe because what I did was the only thing, I could do. I was never part of modernity, but trapped into tradition.

We live in the world, where the majority live, where we don't have a choice. We do, what we do, because this is our only option. I never belonged in Europe. I was dropped here by accident and my destiny was to always go away to seek my other heritage.

I belonged outside in remote places - but still I walked alone.

Talking in Africa

2009-08-11T16:47:00.004+02:00

Especially in Africa women want to have somebody to talk to. In the beginning she might reject talking to you, because she is not used to talk to the man that she has sex with, but years down the road she will turn to you - only to talk with you.

Continental love

2009-07-16T14:23:00.002+02:00

I fell in love with a whole continent.
Even before I had seen most of it.
It was a dream I had in my mind since I was born.

Coming back to my African home

2009-06-28T00:08:00.004+02:00

I have been listening to Jimmy Katumba. It makes me remember Monday evenings "on the green". A big man coming on stage with his very big voice outdoing everybody else. Somebody out of the ordinary. May his soul rest in peace.

Luganda is a beautiful language - that give me eternal memories.

Who am I?

2009-06-13T01:21:00.007+02:00

You live in a parallel universe.

Sometimes you slide into
an extraterrestrial reality
and disappear.

I have dug so far down
into the unknown
that I don't know my way back.

Recently it has begun to attack my body.
I am heating up
feeling out of shape
bored like hell
my brain suffers a melt down.

I have no fever
it is all my illusion.
The blood test scares me
it is just my blood.

So many kisses
along the way.
Who was she?
I am just selling myself.

In the box

2009-06-13T00:15:00.004+02:00

Why is Africa so scary?

In my Nordic past somewhere outside Oslo the self name Scandinavian Benjamin warned me against getting lost in the black hole he believed Africa to be.
Just yesterday somebody declared that he was pleased that I had begun to write about Vesterbro (the neighborhood in Copenhagen, where I now live) instead of my previous African stories. He continued confessing that he had been very annoyed by all this African stories of mine. Before I could say anything he began to talk about all the foreign aid we give Africa and they don't get anywhere. He was very angry. But I never wrote about that. I openly was very confused. Suddenly it stroke me that bringing stories about the unknown can be uncomfortable. We only want to hear what we already know. It was so pleasant to hear about coffee in central Copenhagen. Kind of depressing really. Not my agenda.

Is it really so terrible to just listening to somebody telling about African stuff?

Africa unplugged

2009-05-24T01:25:00.003+02:00

Will this be the last time I am going to Africa?

I am trying to promise myself not to back like I have been doing again, though I have already begun to break the promise.

Let me at least only go back to Tanzania to learn Swahili and to Kenya only if I have a job.

Brutality

2009-05-24T01:01:00.002+02:00

If you go too many times to Africa and take her seriously, then you will never again be able to go home. It will get to you and you will feel home nowhere. When you realize the situation, that you have brought yourself in, then it will be too late - you have already changed into a snake.

3rd date disappointments..

2009-05-23T18:03:00.008+02:00

They have been going out a couple of times. Every time she brought some of her girlfriends along. He was not sure if it was a test. The first thought is always, that she is not comfortable to be alone with him, because they hardly know each other. Her girlfriends are protection against everything between awkward silence and rape. She doesn't bring the same girlfriends the second time, which makes him suspicious. Is she trying to fix him up with one of them? When it comes down to facts he wished that it had been the girlfriend from the first date. He liked Carol very much, and he even had fantasies about her. If it had been me, I would not have brought Carol along the second time. It is no mystery. On the second date she really tried to fix me up with one of her girlfriends. But that was maybe just a test? or? I didn't accept. The third date was very different. We were alone. Finally she went out with me - just me. I felt honored. There was a lot of silence. She wanted to know more about me. There is a tendency between us that we are always very trilled to meet each other, but when we actually meet, we get somehow disappointed in each other. It was more obvious on the third date, because we were alone with each other. It is not an unusual experience for me.I have that effect on many women. In the beginning I am interesting and different, but on the third date they realise that I am not kind of man that they want to settle down with. She said it herself: "All women want comfort". Whatever that means. I guess it means security - in the many different interpretations of the word. Either way I don't care much about security and comfort. Not that I mind, but it just don't come to my mind. After the third date I realize, that it is all about her security, and then it is too late.

She's not African

2009-05-23T16:25:00.008+02:00

Her color turns me on. As I watch her, I can see that she is not Kenyan. She must be American. In the beginning I was not sure. After a longer while looking at her she could ever be Danish. Only that she is black - but we also have become more colorful.

It is her body. The ways she moves. Her eyes. The face. She is herself. Nothing is missing in her life. It is only the small boy being teased by his mom that will make her smile.

Thinking about color make me crazy. It is an empty box. I am flying off the road. There will be women everywhere that throw themselves at you, if they want something.

In am going in circles. Recently Nairobi seems to form the same circle every time I am here. The first couple of days I am asking myself, why I didn't stay home or went somewhere else. Later as I travel around in Kenya I cease to think, because I find different kind of entertainment. When I towards the end return to Nairobi I am relieved, but as soon as I arrive I become depressed. Not sure, if it is because I am going to leave Africa or other disappointments.

Black women

2009-05-23T16:09:00.004+02:00

Every time I meet an African woman I get depressed.
I am always leaving. It is hard.

Is this a kind of cynicism?

I am alone in an airplane going to a previous destination.
I like my life - going places, but I can only do it alone.

African women

2009-05-23T15:49:00.006+02:00

I don't understand women, because I don't understand Africa. After all these years. How can I not understand? Maybe I don't want to.

"All women want comfort."

I am not the kind of man, that a woman will settle down with - I am the opposite of what many woman want. In the beginning women will feel attracted to me, but on the third date they will begin to be disappointed.

End of sexturisme?

2009-05-17T15:03:00.003+02:00

I see men travel the world - and nowadays some women follow in their footsteps. This seems to be the concept of equality between the sexes. They all fuck around - literary speaking, but it will not go on forever. It will stop for internal reasons.

They think they are getting too old, or they feel morally compromised, though the real reason is, that it will stop making sense. There will be a woman that takes your breath away. It might be a simple question. In a split, a shaken heart or pure loneliness. Among all the men and women you meet no-one will comfort you. You are always hunting dead meat.

One morning you will awake and be dead as well.

Me, Myself, I.

2009-05-17T14:45:00.006+02:00

I'm never myself. Always on the run. Never taking a rest.
You have to understand that being an Artist means to be a perversion of life.
I'm an exception. It will be a burden - never will I be as everybody else.
I still have a dream of being ordinary. I hate myself, but it is too late now.
Why did I do it? There is no turning back.
Why do you do it? I need to do it. "I am a Poet even before I am human."
I disgust people. It is my job. I'm not human. Who do you think you are? Somebody divine?
Soon it is all over, and I will be dead.

Handsome

2009-05-12T00:55:00.005+02:00

He can see that he is much more interesting than many other white men in Africa. Over the years he met many women who was cursed by beauty. Some a lot more than others. He never really understood them, or gave it a lot of thought. But after living a couple of years as a women, he knows it too well.
I will not say that he is cursed by beauty, but some men has a similar curse. It makes them objects not for women's desire, but for women's strive for comfort.
He attracts women's attention. Men have another curse, than women. It is not about looks, but it concerns the future.
His experience was very simple. After the third date they became disappointed. He is not the kind of man that women want to settle down with, but he is interesting. On the third date they all realise, that he doesn't care about comfort. He likes challenge. He is always heading somewhere. He wants more. He wants the world, and he wants it now - a very masculine piece of mind.

Coffee

2009-05-12T00:42:00.004+02:00

I'm waiting for my Americano again. It is what I usually do, when I arrive.

Many years ago I stopped drinking coffee above the clouds - it doesn't taste very good.

I have to drink on ground even when I don't feel like coffee, because I never know when I will to get the next cup. But I always feel like drinking coffee. In that way I don't have any problems.

Telephone excuses

2009-05-12T00:35:00.001+02:00

That is something you would tell your boyfriend ... not me ... that your battery is down.

Safari

2009-04-08T13:28:00.003+02:00

She always asked me, if I had been on safari, every time she had not seen me for a while. I always found it strange, why she should assume that I would go and watch big animals, just because I am a white man. I told her, that I had not been on Safari - only on vacation. She shook her head and continued what she was doing. Later on I learned that safari is the Swahili word for any kind of trip or journey.

Entertainment

2009-02-10T14:36:00.003+01:00

I am sitting in Simba Restaurant in Nairobi International Airport. I am waiting for my next flight and I don't want to waste my time going into Nairobi. I have 5 hours. I turn on my PC. Here is no wireless, but it doesn't matter. The internet is a waste of time. I will rather write another story from (my) wild life i Africa.
I am happy to have found Simba Restaurant. Here is very peaceful. This is all I need. I am sitting in a sofa opposite the bar counter. Here is another sofa set next to me. Some men enter and sit down. They start talking. One of them is a very big and very black man. He is a typical Luo. I am looking at him. He reminds me of someone, but I cannot remember who it is. I forget it again very quickly. They continue their conversation.

One of them says: "In Africa there are entertainment everywhere - even in funerals".

He has a point. Africans know how to party and have fun even in the midst of misery or maybe especially when they are unhappy. We don't talk very long about our problems. Most of the time we will only tell about our problems, when we have already found solutions to them.

Later a man sit down next to me with his drink. We greet each other. Out of politeness I start a conversation with him. It is something I have learned in Africa, that I am supposed and expected to do in a situation like the one I am in now. I ask him if he is waiting a flight, but he tells me that he is escorting the Prime Minister. For a moment I ask myself: "Who is the Prime Minister in Kenya." In feel stupid as I realize that the big and black Luo man is Raila Odinga. I try not to stare too much at him as him and his party are leaving.

So far apart

2009-02-05T17:11:00.010+01:00

I know these two people. He loves her very much. Maybe more than anyone can bear to be loved. he just wants her to be happy. He wants to take care of her. There is only one problem: they are very far apart. It pains him more than he can explain to anyone - not even to her. She is very beautiful, but she cannot see it. He will never stop telling her, and she will always say that she is ugly. They are often talking into the blue air without listening, because they are so far away from each other. They do what they do to survive in their separate lives. It is not easy for them. He tries to be strong, and he tells himself that he just has to take good care of her. No matter how she reacts he must never think that she does not like him anymore. He is strong, but it is hard. She is very kind. She has big faith in God. He respects her. Never in his life has he met a woman who believes in something like she does. He has always been looking for a woman like her and will do anything not to loose her. Maybe he is doing too much. She does not like to talk and the longer they are apart the less she talks. Her behaviour of not saying anything is very radical under the circumstances. Her silience on the phone and letters of only white pages. He feels he is loosing her. He knows it is not true, but he it still scares him. He knows that he just has to keep on talking to her and it will be all right. One day they will not be separated anymore. It gives him hope that some day they will be together forever. He tries to cheer her up, but he still cries every night when he falls asleep.

Remembering "Paris, Texas" Wim Wenders.

Alive

2009-01-31T00:54:00.004+01:00

I only live in that moment where the words come out of my mouth.
I am a poet even before I am human.
I owe her for this - a muslim woman from myspace: Neelofer Mir

Coming back to Europe

2009-01-31T00:36:00.002+01:00

Ten years later he expresses his gratitude to the people and the places that destroyed his European world view. (Tørk Haxthausen: "Hos de Sorte")

I would have died in Africa. (Corinne Hofmann: "Back from Africa")

I have been leaving Africa for 4 years, but I am still trying to go home ...

Found and lost

2009-01-31T00:24:00.002+01:00

I get so many beautiful things in Africa, but they are so easily lost again. I seem not to be able to hold on to her for very long time. She slips through my fingers as if she was never really here. I don't even see her before it is all over. It makes me sad for a while until the next women comes around to sweet me up and the story can rewind. I have been forwarded to a new irony.

Flying in Africa

2009-01-31T00:14:00.002+01:00

You can enjoy life in Africa, if you choose. It will cost a lot of money, but you will meet more people like yourself. They are rich, and they like using money on convenience. They prefer to have privacy and a piece of mind. You will not get to know them right away, and it will be pure luck to meet them at all.

Too many women in Africa

2009-01-30T23:47:00.002+01:00

What can he possibly want with them. If it was just sex, but he makes the mistake of implying a relationship to everyone of them. It will be a burden in his heart. He pretends that she hurts him, but there will always be another one to cheer him up.

Paradise

2009-01-22T11:45:00.003+01:00

I will soon be leaving Paradise. It is very hot and I am already heated up until the limit. Here are warm water and soft skin. I will go into the cold winter. It is my destiny to always come and go.

Trusting you...

2009-01-22T11:31:00.004+01:00

We meet and think that we know each other a lot more than reasonable. I tell you about myself. You continue to ask me the same questions again and again. You are cautious and push me away every time I try to kiss you.

Something in the past has made you insecure and fragile. You cannot trust me, but there is nothing I can say that will convince you about my sincerity.

You will have to watch me - regarde moi.

Woman in Europe

2009-01-22T11:24:00.001+01:00

The Chinese waitress is being protected by her colleagues - here will always be an European man mistaken her kindness for love.

Trust

2008-11-24T13:29:00.004+01:00

There is a saying in Africa - a proverb about trust:

I only trust two people.
One is myself
and the other one is NOT you.

In the beginning it is hard to believe, how social relations can even exist under such circumstances, but after some time you begin to have experiences that takes away your faith in the boy next door.

Nairobi Java House

2008-11-23T00:35:00.002+01:00

Here everybody have 2 phones ... and I am drinking an Americano.

Coming and going

2008-10-24T23:47:00.005+02:00

I like to come back and don't mind leaving for a while. But the best things always arise in the last moments. Work as well as women. The women I meet now are more classy, though I still find young prostitutes that hope I am a nice guy who will marry her and take her out of misery. I meet her in the same places, Once her name was Brenda. Today she is Sharon. She pretends to be free, but there will always be a white guy that she will have to go with. This time she is terrified when she sees him and whisper how he will beat her. It is no different from every other time.

I am a promise of better fortune - in her eyes.

Welcome back ... home

2008-10-16T13:17:00.002+02:00

Really it is the same every time I return. They are just rephrasing themselves slightly. He writes to me, that I can just sound in, when I arrive. I always do that, and no matter how busy they both are, there will be some space for me.

One day another friend passes by in the hotel in town, where I am coincidentally sitting that evening. He comes to perform, but he says he has come to see me. My sister next to me is laughing, while saying that he is lying. Everybody around the table smile. A little later my friend goes to stage and dedicate a song to me.

I keep coming back with the intention of given all they gave back to them, but I always end up being giving so much more. In the absence of other alternatives I will just have to keep coming back. In that way we can continue showing each other the respect we deserve.

This is the reason, why I am here.

Nothing less, nothing more, nothing else.

Respecting, cherishing, pleasing, honouring, worshiping ... Africa as she chooses to show herself to me and the world.

Little Ethiopia

2008-10-16T12:46:00.001+02:00

He wants me to go to Ethiopia with him ... but I have been there already ... for two weeks ... it is never enough. Here is a new Etiopian restaurant every time I come back. Even upstairs in Kabalagala where the Congolese used to have fun.

The Etiopians make good coffee. So I go there every morning to have my cup and read the newspapers. The food is good as well. Very nicely spiced. Always served on a soft floffy pancake that looks and feels like a towel, but after getting used to it, you do not think about eating something, that could have been drying your dishes. The people are light brown and carry a self-esteem unusual for the region in general. They are said never to have been colonized, but the Italians were in Ethiopia, which should be no secret, when you analyse the culture.

I dreamed of Africa

2008-09-14T17:38:00.004+02:00

I am not sure that this is the right place to write this. Several times I have tried to et rid of this blog or extend it into new frontiers. It seems that I am still here to write.

The other evening I saw a film titled "I dreamed of Africa". It touched me and by the ending of the film I was given a gift. I understood why we must always go back to Africa. The film is about a couple who go to settle in Kenya with her son. She looses her husband and the son to wilderness. The husband is killed by a buffalo and the son by a poisonous snake bite.

The film ends by letting her speak:

We came to this extraordinary place
and Africa let us live extraordinary lives.

Then Africa claimed an extraordinary price
that was Africa's privilege.

And now it is my privilege
to look after Africa
herself.

A deperate housewife

2008-08-08T01:22:00.002+02:00

I always meet her in the evenings. She likes to get drunk. We are playing a game. She wants men, but will always detach from you, if you show any interest in her. She only wants men to glance at her ... more than one man.

A small women, busy taking. So much talk ... which she herself calls honesty. We are just talking. I have seen her on TV ... another latina desperadas.

She is also just very sweet, but cannot control her temper, that is taking her away. How can you look a woman in her eyes, when she is always striking back at you. She will easily forget, that you ever saw her in the first place. She has already continued her strive for attracting masculine glance, but she will eventually return to you to see, if you are still looking after her ... nothing more.

She will ask you to introduce her to other men. You will never know, if she really wants only you, but it doesn't matter, because you already know, she is not your kind of girl. Even casual sex probably would have been worth while. Also in bed she would already have been off to the next one ... dancing for glance.

Giving up Europe

2008-07-24T13:37:00.002+02:00

What can you do in a foreign City without a coin in your pocket? You will have to stay home in the suburb with the African mama, where they put you as another trafficked girl waiting for permission to go out.

She was taken from home by men living abroad. They asked her to come to perform in clubs, but when she arrived, they cancelled all her shows, because somebody stole the posters for the first show. We all know, that there have to be an explanation. The promotor didn't do his job. Maybe that was the reason for asking her to pay her own ticket. He knew that there would be nothing for her in Europe.

She thought she would go home on the scheduled time. Sitting and waiting. Every day in cold a room. But the men in black had another plan, that she was not informed about.

Only once a week she will get information, when a woman sneaks her way into the house and they whisper in silence. This women has gained some respect by having sex with a man far away. The small woman in the house will wait for the weekly visits.

Before she came to Europe, she thought it would be Paradise. She is not sure, if she ever will come back.

White on return

2008-07-24T13:00:00.003+02:00

It has been silent here for a long time. I am not sure what is happening, but it appears that the white african is not completely dead. His spirit continues to play around with us. He might not be as african as we have been assuming. This can give him another lifetime. I predict that he in the future will broaden his perspective and as such resurrect in one way or another.

In any case you will probably see less silence in the weeks to come and hopefully a lot of noise. You are welcome to make some noise yourself.

Back in Kenya

2008-04-16T17:53:00.004+02:00

I am back in Kenya again, where the new cabinet not really has brought peace and silence as expected. There are fightings between the government and the militia from central part of Kenya.

In the meantime The White African has appeared as ghost in Kisumu last Sunday. Read more om 'Traveling beyond Limits'

Dead

2008-04-10T19:02:00.004+02:00

The White African has undergone serious injuries and after some struggle he died. We have been up country (deep in the village) for the burial. Therefor it has been silent here for a while. As far the future is concerned it is very uncertain.

I have already been spacing from 'travelling beyond limits' for some time. Maybe better know as 'six zero nothing'. It is also where you can find the remains of The White African.

Right know I am still resting in Kampala ... my african home as the late Jimmy Katumba used to sing.

Tolerans and respect

2008-02-17T23:39:00.002+01:00

I have finally realised the profane difference between European civilisation and everybody else. It is comparable to the relationship between tolerans and respect. In Europe we find that respect is a very strong word, which we cannot easily take into our mouth. Instead we choose to tolerate you. That enable us to keep a certain distance to everyone. Whereas respect requires a closer look. In contrary to what Europeans feel, respect will not necesarrily compromise your integrity.

Brudflader

2008-02-14T19:09:00.007+01:00

I have written an article about "Los Zapatistas", which has recently been published in the book "Brudflader" on Frydenlund. It will also be available on ebog, where downloads of separate articles will be possible.

My article follows the Zapatist Movement during the last 22 years. From they begin to organise themselves in the jungle of Chiapas in the south of Mexico. In the story about the movement I am mixing personal experiences from travelling in Chiapas and Mexico in general with a more formal presentation of the movement.

The Zapatist Movement has been known through the carasmatic spokeperson Sub-commander Marcos. On of my arguments in the article is that Marcos does not exist. He is always appearing disguised so anybody could be behind the mask. It can easily be backed up, if you travel around in Chiapas.

One morning in Roberto Barrios a young boy come to me and introduces himself. His name is Marco ... as he says: just like Marcos. In spanish -s indicates plural and very many boys and men in Mexico are called Marco. Marcos is just the symbol of everybody.

Another discussion in the article is how "Los Zapatistas" has influenced the way we think about political movements. In the mid 1990es they invited the whole world to a meeting against neoliberalism and for humanity in the jungle of Chiapas. By doing so they proved it possible to set an alternative agenda.

In general the article focus on the use of symbolic language and action as an important part of forming a political movement.

the Ghetto

2008-01-27T11:44:00.000+01:00

Also in Documenta I tried to stay outside the ghetto. It was on the first day. I saw photographs from somewhere in Africa. They will always tell you that Africa is so big that you will have to be more specific. But Africa is everywhere. I was thinking of Africa. It is not easy to stay outside the ghetto and eventually you will be punished, not everybody can survive. Although if you once have lost yourself to the outside, then you will always be falling. I am not sure, where I began to fall. I have been accostumed to believe that Africa alienated me. Send me into the big ocean with the destiny of no return. But it happened long time before. Besides Africa is not a plan, but a state of mind. Pure existence. To paraphrase a white african, who dedicated himself to avoid the white ghetto in Africa.

As long as I can remember I was afraid of you. I was secretely watching you but did never dare to talk to you or touch you. I felt that I was not part of you. It was only many years later, when I came to Africa that I dared to speak. I never felt so alone and so different before, but nobody seemed to care, not even myself. The real truth was, that everybody knew, that I could not be changed, so they had to accept me as I appeared to them. Things don't change and people remain the same. Nothing to do. When there is nothing to do, I should not try. She reminds me that then we will just get a headache.

On the last day of Documenta I joined an African party. In front of the screen in the room in the castle outside the city, there are mostly young french women. The party continues around the bondfire with african symbols and gothic letters across the screen as graphical interpretations. Black men introduces white mannequins. They burn them as witches in the end after fucking them roughly from behind.

Betrayal

2007-11-22T17:52:00.000+01:00

You have betrayed me too many times - I tried to draw a line.
I know that you didn't do it consciously.

We have been walking on the moon holding hands in eternity where nobody can be held responsible, although everything has consequence in our hearts.

I also betrayed you without knowing what I did to you. There was always something in front of me that shadowed my eyesight.

We did not follow a straight line, but went way beyond reason. After years of swallowing thin air we continued falling apart. I have never listened to so much silence. In time you can become deaf from listening to nothing. It has all gone away.

I thought that we would overcome ourselves with time. There is a belief that you can overcome difference through hard work but I worked so hard year after year that I am not sure what to think.

You are looking at me and saying, but we love each other - that is a very long time ago now.

Cada quien su Frida

2007-10-24T10:49:00.000+02:00

Mexican Theatre on Tour in Denmark. The group has just arrived from the Theatre Festival in Cadiz in Spain.
The title has an interesting play on words in Spanish. Sufrir means to suffer or feel pain, but also to endure. The ending -a indicates femininum. The play is made by the Mexican Actress Ofelia Medina and celebrates the 100 years anniversary of Frida Kahlo through magic realism, dance and music.

Tour dates in Denmark:

25. October: Odin Teatret, Holsterbro
28. October: Koreografisk Center Archauz, Aarhus
30.-31. October: Jomfru Ane Teatret, Aalborg
2.-3. November: Galleri Galschiøt. Odense
5.-6. November: Verdenskulturcentret, Kopenhagen

More info: http://www.internationaltforum.dk

Circumstance

2007-08-17T13:48:00.000+02:00

If you love an African woman and choose to have a relationship to her and even live with her, then you must understand, that everything between you and her always will be circumstances into eternity or death if you so wish.

One way - the only way

2007-07-04T12:57:00.000+02:00

They have told me that I should have anticipated what I came to see in Africa. I must have been very naive if I thought I could understand Africa and live like they do. I ought to have known that. A job for a Danish NGO in the third world can only be colonial. I know everything now and I always thought about every step I was to take, but coming to African was no anticipation.
I stepped into a place where I had no clues. I was in a different dimension walking on the moon. What I saw working for a Danish NGO was so much more extreme than I could ever have imagined.
We used to make fun of Greenland saying that people go there to make revolution after they didn't succeed at home. You will see the same in Africa.
White NGO's go to Africa to realise lost dreams of life using old fashion technologies that we in Europe consider to be graveyard trash. Before it was buildings and machines. Today it is organisational skills, social structures and falling down dreams that can never come true. We have always given Africa white trash.
No, I could not have anticipated what I saw because it was so much worse than my wildest nightmares.
They say that I have made it very hard for myself.
I went to Africa in the only way I could & I keep coming back out of force, not free will. Africa will never become a habit.
(rewrite of 2006)

Between continents

2007-07-02T13:12:00.000+02:00

We change after some years and become black but still bear a burden on our skin. In adopting the behaviours of our brothers and sisters.
She begins to have the demands to her boyfriend that her black girlfriends have. She has begun to think like them.
They have told me that if I stay in Africa more than 5 years, then I will never go home.
I look myself in the mirrow and I am not sure where I am.
His wife acts like a bitch and his black friends all tell him that he should not be so soft on her.
"She takes you for granted - you'll have to discipline her".
Discipline has never been my idea of a wife. Is she my daughter?
I begin to forget the reasons to respect her.
He will begin to talk hard to the woman next to him and not accept any argument from her, because she does not have anything to say.
In the evenings he has begun to do what all black men are doing to ease his mind after days of his wife's bitchy quarrelling.
I go out with other women. They will be gentle and charming as long as they are in the grace period. But when the become wife's they will be teenagers rebelling against dad.
I do not even feel bad anymore. Before I controlled myself. When I still had some morals left, it would all be in my mind.
My friends in Africa wellcome me in their lives. They appear pleased that I have joined them. I do not even live among them anymore. I left Africa long time ago - in due course before the critical 5 years. But I continue to be in Africa where ever I go and know it is already too late to go home. The 5 years are approaching very soon and my African life has passed away - a new beginning.

Living in the fifties

2007-07-02T13:06:00.000+02:00

Taking care of a woman I do not love.
We cannot have sex, because there is no tension between us.
She is like a rock in my bed, and I am on top of her for no reason.
I am in time machine. Gone back in time.
Everything is possible now.

Little Tasja

2007-06-29T01:09:00.001+02:00

The Danish/Jamaican reggae star Natasja has died. I still can't believe it. I was in my house in the Danish countryside writing my usual stuff, when I heard it. Even now after having returned to city it doesn't seem right that she is not here anymore.

In honor & remembrance of her I will continue playing her Denmark song, which shows how she was - direct, honest & alive.

Remember

2007-06-14T14:12:00.000+02:00

Kopenhagen says: Leave Christiania alone!

Uganda in London

2007-05-31T02:02:00.000+02:00

It is just another ghetto as everywhere else.
Here they will import African culture to survive.
Everybody know each other, but there are things, that can't be said aloud - and it is crusial, when you have to decide to stay another night or move to a different hotel.
There is no time to wait.
If you wait a little bit longer, then he will properbly solve the problem for you. I know that it is my fault. I brought him in this situation. But know when I am in London, why do I have to help other people? I left Kampala to escape these responsibilities - to be independent.
Here is a white man, why doesn't he just pay my bill?

Lost forever gone

2007-05-23T18:52:00.000+02:00

I'm walking without direction. Trying to find a place to rest. There is always a wind that bothers me or somebody talking, which scratches against my brain.
The first time I went so far away as I have been again, I was lost to solitude. This time I'm just lost. There will be no way back. My life as I thought is definitively over.
Many times in between I have been going to the borders of my comprehension. So I believed that I was prepared for the challenge that I blinded myself into, but if you only go to the borders, then everything you see is already integrated in you. Still you will meet the unknown, but you will be yourself later.
This time I went so far away, that I lost everyting I knew. I didn't see anything ressembling myself. I became alienated from myself. I died. The man I became was not me. He was my enemy, and he did kill me in the end.

1/12 05 Enjoying

2007-05-23T00:23:00.000+02:00

This is what I want - people to enjoy themselves and have a good time. It is not me talking, but a women I know. She says something like this about the audience she wants in front of every time. She wants them to have fun. I am happy that the computer expert in Nakulabye is reading me whereever I am traveling. One day he might tell us about 'africa online'.

25/11 05 Internet in Africa

2007-05-23T00:21:00.000+02:00

We thought that the internet would liberate and democratise the world and give specific advantages to the third world, because they could skip steps of technology. It turned out not to be true. It is not because, as always before, any new market every new commodity everything will be capitalised. It is because the mayority of the world can't afford using the internet. They have no real access. It is a surprise because anywhere you go there are internet cafés - like Coca Cola they have spread world wide (web). So it means that everyone has access to the internet - we think. In a way they have. To really use the internet you will have to be online for a longer time, and it is only we in the west and the north that can afford it. There are only a small group in the third world that can afford to be online to such an extend. We are talking about surfing on the internet or chatting. Imagine you are on an old fashion internet connection. I am talking about the situation where you are waiting up to 5 minutes just to get into your yahoo account. So you need to use very long time, and it will be expensive. You end up only checking your e-mail. We don't consider that using the internet anymore in our part of the world. So this is exactly waht most people manage to do checking their e-mail only. Even if you have enough miney to sit in the internet café for several hours, then you still end up only checking e-mail and writinmg a few quick ones. It is the structure that hits you when the clock i ticking. So not even I will really use the internet undersuch condition that are offered to the mayority of the world, though I theoretical have the possibility. I am not part of the mayority, but I have friends that are more normal than me. Some of them live in Kampala. I will try to describe for you how they can use the internet. First you need to realise some basic conditions. There are the women who only have 7 years of school if they are lucky. Not because there was no money for her, but because the family choose to give the boys propers educations and she was sacrificed. So today she writes bad and very slow. Then we have men with basic jobs or no jobs at all. If they are lucky they will get 150.000 Ugandan shillings (approx. 80 US$). Half of it will go to paying house rent. The house is two rooms for a whole family plus some extra relatives. The kitchen is outside on the ground. The bathroom is a shared pit latrin. Most of the remaining money goes to feeding the family. The man will work to save money. Transport is quite expensive. One hour in an internet café will cost you 2000 shillings so it is not very often you can afford to do that. So using the internet on a regular basic is not optional. If you do, it means to sacrifice daily needs.

22/11 05 Email reflexions

2007-05-23T00:16:00.000+02:00

We all now about them. We get them in huge numbers every day. In the beginning many years ago I welcomed them. It was like writing letters again. I was glad to have been locked into that silent intimacy again away from telephone calls during the day.
Very quickly I realised that you have to be careful what you write. You have to think carefully about the words you speak when they are so fast to post. All the time you used to have on the way to the red mail box made you thionk about a lot of things. I guess that all the years in the phone I forgot about thinking about the cause you can make. The whole idea of posting your letter as soon as possible and to respond just after reading what you recieve might be all wrong. Now here are so much noise in my box.
At some point I thought that I could use the e-mail for performative actions. That was after I already had contributed to increase the amount of e-mails in space. I was already fighting for getting attention. We all have our projects to carry out. I knew that I would never be able to compete in numbers so I tried to write e-mails that were supposed to be different and thereby get attention. At first they were just advertisements for cultural events. I tried to write e-mails that were tempting and appealing. They aimed to ressemble the event they were announcing or be events themselves. It became an obsession. Later on I realised that I had become dependent on such writing.
The interesting thing about hosting a mailinglist or a mailservice is that you suddenly have become something. You are no longer just a person. I did not think about before the recipients of the mailservice began to address me in plural. It surprised me because I thought I was only myself.
In Africa everybody knew I was a person, though they were sure who I was. This is provoking when we speak about sex. We want to know who was having sex with a multiple number of black women. Do we have to be provoked? Was it this just simulation? We like ficion and find documentary usefull, but everything in between make us feel uncomfortable. I tried to use my experiences from announcing events in Copenhagen when I came to Africa. I did what many people do, when they are away from home. We write letters to our friends and familly back home. So I did it too. I just choose to expand my family a little bit. The peculiar thing about hosting a mailinglist is that you tend to forget who you are writing to. You have a blur impression about a number of people, but their personalities mix and evaporate. It gave me a freedom to write but it is not good to have unlimited freedom, when you write. Once in while I received reactions, and I am very thankful for them, because apart from being thought provoking they also framed the space I was writing in. I became aware to whom I was actually writing to. I was always very surpriced to receive that particular reaction from that specific person. Sometimes I would get comments from one of my best friends, but other times I recieved an e-mail from somebody I had not heard from in many years. I was very excited about these reactions, because we want dialogue. The type of e-mails I wrote were not open to interaction. It was difficult to find a way to speak to me. There are limits to e-mails – surpise. I understand why my type of e-mails have limitations, but maybe e-mails as such are also difficult as a tool for dialogue. If an e-mail is directed only to you, then you will feel obliged to respond, but otherwise you will just take it into account and continue with your other business. To be obliged is not a very good motivation. I never expected any response to these e-mails, but I just had the urge to communicate what was going on. We all have imagination, but some of us has it to an extend so it needs a form of expression. Mine was the semi-fictional mailinglist named Paradise Lust. The name it self was not so important, but when I came up with the name it was crucial. Lust was obvious. I had been reading many book about lust until the point of no return. The end of virginity after 120 days. I don’t know about paradise. Milton’s book Paradise Lost plays an important beginning. There was a lady seducing me with her interpretation of the devil outside the gate to paradise. She is one of people who learnt me how to think.
Paradise Lust has died and I miss it – I don’t know yet, if I have a substitute that can satisfy me.

22/11 05 Continental Breakfast

2007-05-23T00:01:00.000+02:00

I live in the borderlines of continents...here is somthing to chew...in Uganda we get broken tea after 9 o'clock...in Northern Mexico I get a lot of chili to my frijoles and ride out in the desert listening to Vicente's ranchero...in Latvia they speak russian and feel free at the same time...my russian is as good as ever...in Indonesia I meet a women who gives me massage but she does not write back...Roberto Barrios does not exist anymore...I think about you.

18/11 05 It takes time

2007-05-22T23:52:00.000+02:00

Now I know what it is like. It takes time to know how much time is comsumed and if you live in a big house with staff to do everything for you, have an European toilet and a kitchen with a fridge - then you might never know.

Transfer complete

2007-05-21T17:55:00.000+02:00

I have now transfered, what was still available. A lot of text from 2006 has been lost. In previous lives I have learnt, that what is lost, is lost - nothing to do. But also what is really important has peculiar tendency to re-appear later under mysterious circumstances.

26/3 07 The Library (cont)

2007-05-21T17:45:00.000+02:00

To my newer readers I shall provide a short summary. I have not yet approached you with this story. To my older readers I apologise for this repetion. Although even in a short compressed version there might be additional knowledge due to the power of words. What we usually call the cracks of language. The summary will squeeze hidden experience by sucking these small and thiny pockets.
In Tanzania I met a man working for the Danish Foreign Ministry. At the time I was wondering why these state advisors seem so much more reasonable and sincere than all the NGO people who are supposed to be critical and progressive but are not. I began to queston the intention of my NGO employer.
I never knew his name and we did not meet again. We only shared dinner one evening. He spoke to me and I to him. When he learnt that I was going to Kampala he felt the urge to tell about a book telling the colonial history of East Africa. He could not remember the exact title or even the name of the author. He supposed that the title is “The Elucrative” written by a British man. The name of the author is perhaps Smith. He ensured me, that I would be able to find it in any bookshop, when I would arrive my destination in Uganda. I have been looking in every bookshop Kampala and asked everybody, but there is apparently no sign of such a book. Finally I discover the library at Makerere University. I have been misled, because my employer from the beginning insisted that there are no libraries in Kampala or Uganda for that matter. Therefor I did not think of the library. It was a coincident. A man in the University Bookshop suggested that I could go to the library. I must remember to thank him. I walked through campus. Such a space used to be mine but I left it because it was necessary. Now I had coincidentally returned. I felt at home and knew exactly what to do. It was not the only time I went there, and in the meantime I discovered the correct title and the authors full name. I went to one of the bookshops in town and rapidly the man went to shelf and found the book to me. I was so disappointed. It was a paperback edition from 2001 and published by Penguin. I did not want to buy it out of protest against bad rapping. Suddenly it was so easy. This destroyed the mystery I had been building up. Therefor I will keep on pretending a search for a book without traces and this led me back to the library for a second time. This time I was determinated to achieve my goal. That very day I will conquer the book with magical soul. Before targetting my eal business in the library I wanted to repeat my first visit. It is possible that I missed something and so I approached the index. I found the reference to my mystery on the same little card and with this knowledge I walked around on the floor. Of course I knew that I was supposed to go upstairs, but you never know if there was a hint below. You must never assume anything. It will hunt you down. There is no structure that can help you search and no matter how many concepts you develop you still find the good answers by coincidence. In that sense there are no shortcuts or as a former colleague once said to me. Life is one long road filled with an indefinite row of detours. When reaching the reference section I thought that I might be lucky but you can never rely on such hopes. It would have been too easy not even having to walk the stairs. Of course I was looking for any kind of shortcut to my destiny. The staircase was there in front of me. I knew the way already, but still it felt like an unknown adventure. So I walked the stairway to the next level.
I was upstairs. Everything looked the same. I tried to repeat my previous struggle towards the section for history books. Also here I saw no change. Since I previously was a Historian, it should not have been a surprise to me. Things does not change very much seen in a broader perspective. Here was still a lot of dust. Being in Africa I have already become accustomed to dust everywhere. Still it bothers me to see these books covered with reddish powder. It is not so easy for me to pretend that I was never here before. I know what will happen. The fact that I have already bought the book somewhere else and even read it cannot slip my mind. I am just simulating to look through the bookshelves.
Downstairs there is something that I deliberately have been ignoring as an act of my colonial behavoir. Already the first time I was in the library I noticed the computers. They were in a seperate room. I consciously decided that these computers did not exist. I acknowledged their presence but concluded without inquiry that they could be of no use for me. I was sure that the books in library were not digitalised. We can regard it as symbolic blindness. It is when somebody sees something without taking it into account. I did not grant the computer room any value. On the other hand I instinctively used digitialisation as a measurement for development. Something I have not necesarrily done, when I have found myself in libraries in Europe.
Also I have ignored the fact that most of the books in the library where stored in restricted areas called African Section. In order to access the books in this section you need to be a registered member of the library. I never registered, because you had to pay a fee. As a foreigner you had to pay a considerably higher fee in US dollars. I had hesitated to do that to keep my local identity in shape. I am sure that the books in the African Section are in a much better condition, but I have never observed it myself. I could in this way protect an important conclusion of mine about East Africa. Here people don’t read very much. One structural reason is that many are poorly educated, but more importantly the culture is organised through oral interaction. Therefor books are not highly valued. The library was in my eyes just a symptom.
I kept coming back to the library. In between my visits to the library I was thinking of proposing a project to improve the condition of the library. I even talked it over with a number of people. They all incouraged me to do something about. I thought that I could help to digitalise the material in the library. One day when I returned to the library, there were a lot of computers sponsored by Uganda Telecom. I could not help feeling a slight disappointment in my heart.
Nowadays I an sitting in a slightly different library with a view of the harbour front. The soft snow of Febrary is waving to me. I am reading about the railroad. The story is kind of dry and have a touch of old fashion documentary. The reading room gives me pleasure and put focus to my thoughts. The book is first edition with beautiful drawings. I try to prolong the legend.

25/2 07 Patience

2007-05-21T17:43:00.000+02:00

Patience
when they can hide in the jungle for 8 years...
when his grandmother can walk 6 km to the nearest town every day...
when they can walk barefoot in the rain for 5 hours...
...then I can wait to understand the woman I love.
I will be patient.

29/11 06 Forgotten books

2007-05-21T17:39:00.000+02:00

I went without my books. In the beginning I was terrified and did not know how I would survive. After some time I remembered when I lost my diary long time ago. I began feeling the same relief as I did with the diary. All my stories in the diary had gone and it made me feel free. I realised that by forgetting the books I am always carrying with me I had been freed from my own anticipation about what I am supposed to do here. I could choose to live without books and walk not guided by maps. Apparently I have been building up some kind of dependency so I went to buy one map of Kenya in the same bookshop that I have been in before. The old Indian man is still behind the counter. It is in the middle of the business area in Nairobi. Opposite one of the europeanised coffee shops. I did survive.

29/11 05 Internet right here

2007-05-21T17:10:00.000+02:00

What do we want with the internet? - why are we online?

Blogging is still only one way. Yes, you can write comments, but it does not come close to dialogue. It is my space. Internet is not about communication. We perform on the internet and express ourselves. When we write e-mails, we don't expect an answer, because an e-mail is a statement.

Sms and chatting is more like it. We were talking about the internet.

Let's face it - we publish ourselves on the internet. My interest in the internet is I, not we. So far have we come. There is a striking parallel between the development of internet and real life - or I should say Television. In the Television we see an explosion of socalled reality shows and contests where you can compete to become a star. Not because you are good at something, but because you are as bad as everybody else.

The structure of the internet has opened for this focus on everyday life as a public issue. I am not sure if the internet also is responsible for the performance of individuality, though the emphasis on everyday life bring you and me into the public agenda and interest. We are in the midst of such an identity crest every single day. It could be me - it will be you.

This is the superficial realisation of the welfare state - everyone have opportunity. We all have the right to win. It is the surface, because we all know who are the real winners, though everybody get a chance to succeed on one level. We have invented class division and exploitation inside the peculiar state of equality. We want to believe it.

Along the road we gave up on structure and decided that I am more important than we. We became personal and ordinary, but in a conceptual way - in the right way. We are competing to be slopy dressed in a fancy way. We struggle to be ordinary in a cool way. We have to be personal in a creative way.

So how far have we gone from dressing up to Sunday evening promenade?

22/11 05 Blog

2007-05-21T17:08:00.000+02:00

Well, I have began a blog. Some of my male friends that know more about using the internet, than I will ever do, told me that I must have a blog, so I had to do it. It took some time – I admit it. My blog is still a hidden secret, I know, but I am slowly getting there, I think. Getting where? That is my question.
Where do I want to go? – and how can I go on blogging?
I thought we could have some dialogue after years of arrogance in Africa. It is the same thing, I thought, just with interaction. I was wrong. It is nothing like writing an e-mail. You don’t feel that you do anything. When I write an e-mail, I send it out of my out-box, and it is received in your in-box – that is what I must believe. On my blog I just put text by text. They don’t go anywhere. I have problems publicising my blog, and when you know about it, I must be active and interesting. Otherwise you will leave me alone – tough.
My first problem was to write to my blog (oh, that is who I am writing to nowadays), but now am I writing. Then I was confused about how to tell, that my blog was there. We are back on mail, but I can’t write the same in e-mails as on the blog. Then I would have gone no where. So I try to write mails about something else and put a link on my signature.
Do they go to my blog?
Do I care?
Does it matter?
If somebody go to my blog, then all the troubles begin. I have to entertain you, very quickly, every time, in the way you prefer, in the moment you choose to be there. It it so complicated.
I wish I was back on mail. Do I?
The difference is that with my previous mailservice I created momentarily directions in space. We can call them ‘corridors of sense’, while right now I am building one space.
Me, who don’t like to go to the same place twice. She says that she wants an audience, but do I want audience? I don’t need an audience as long as I am doing the right thing. I must concentrate on my lifeline and not get confused about what other people might think. I need to combine blog and mail. On blog I am myself. I do what I want, and I don’t think. Through small e-mails I shall attract your attention. I am daring. I flirt with you. A blog is a private spot, which an e-mail can never be.

21/11 05 Africa does not know imperialism

2007-05-21T17:07:00.000+02:00

All accomplishments in Africa cannot be traced.
In Europe war was always about conquering new land and making sure that the future will remember you.
African wars are not about land. They are between clans.
So they are about power? No!
They fight out of honour and pride - they need to fight for respect.
Something Europe has forgotten about a long time ago.

17/11 05 The world of only ONE solution

2007-05-21T17:05:00.000+02:00

When I talked about "only one solution" I did not refer to a final solution. I am not claiming that their is one real solution. I am refering to the lives of millions of people - the mayority of the planet. Very many of them live the life - the only life - they can choose. They don't know about the conception of choice. It does not exist for them. They live the only life they can live. This is what I am talking about, when I invite into the world of only one solution. I want us to look at the world as a place where many people are trapped in their lives. They know that it is not leading anywhere, but they can't do anything different than what they are already doing and this is how we need to understand them.
I will try to introduce you to some peple I know, which I believe live in their only possible solution. They are poor in a way, some of them very much, others seem to be able to move but it never happens for some reason. Don't judge them - look at them. Regardez-les. I met this kind of people all my life, but I did not think about them in this way before three years ago. Therefore the examples come from Africa. This does not mean that it is an African phenomeon.

Better Fortune:
I call her that – maybe out of a wish that her destiny would have been different. She is young lady. She was very smart dressed and sitting in a bar with her friend. I notice her clothes and ask her about it. She tell me that she buys her clothes in Gardens City. For those who are not familiar with shopping in Kampala I will give you directions. Garden City is one of the newer shopping centres. This is the place everybody will say they go all the time, but very few actually go there. It is not very accessable without a car and expensive, which is part of the attraction. Besides they have fixed prices which is not a very easy thing to deal with unless you are taken there by somebody who is going to pay for your expenses. My friend and I went out dancing with Ms. Better Fortune and her friend. We had fun, but when I wanted to drop her before going home to sleep she cried like a little baby becuase I did not want to bring her with me home. I was chocked but forgot about it the next day. I kept meeting her around in different bars where prostitues and other opportunistic girls hang out in the evenings. It was obvious that her friend was already a full time prostitute, but I did not take it into account, maybe because I wanted to believe that Better Fortune was a nice girl that just were going out with her friend on Saturday night. One evening I meet her in a bar where some of Kampala’s most sloppy prostitutes come. I am just talking to her. Suddenly a man whispers something to her and looks towards the dance floor. In the next moment she has disappeared. I am wondering what happened to her. I see her sitting by the dance floor as if she is waiting for something to happen. She is. A white man approaches her and starts talking with her. They dance and she kisses him and after a very short time they are leaving together. I am sure now. She is working here. She is not a bad girl and not very different from anybody else. I have seen it happen many times. They all start out going to small bars to drink. Always with a friend that is already down the road. Slowly they get tempted to do the same. It can’t hurt if he will give me money. I will only do it, if I want to - but it will change. Suddenly she is in business and there is no way back. You might think that she must have other options, but what shall she do to get a life. She did not go to school. She does not have any money to invest in a more proper business. This one only need her body – it is true that the costs are big in the long run, but in the beginning everything is nice and easy. Meanwhile you will dream of the man who comes to take you away – far away – to his castle in another world. She still has the option of staying at home. Then there will be a man to get her pregnant and then run away with other women and this is what Better Fortune is trying to avoid. They are many. I am not saying their judgements are right, but they live in “the world of only one solution”.
Your question should not be if she has another option, but how you will meet her.
Will you try to understand her?
Can you excuse her?
Are you giving her the benifit of doubt?
To be continued...

12/11 05 White intellectuals

2007-05-21T16:59:00.000+02:00

Today I went to the University, which happens very rarely. There were times where I thought I belonged there, but eventually I changed my mind. It was another white intellectual pretending to speak about problems of Africa. It has become a burden for me. They don't know shit.
They are always very famous so everybody will applause and Ms Noreena Hertz will be a role model for a lot of young white intellectual women and I am not going to take this away from you. I had the same kind of problem a couple of months ago with Mr Michael Hardt. He is just sampling philosophical thinking from the last decades. They all want to save Africa, but they don't have a clue. We all know the figures of how many people who are dying every day, but it will not change the world to tell us again. I am not crying because of 40.000 dying. I cry because I didn't succeed to save my friends life last year and I will punish myself for that for the rest of my life. I know that this is another story. You know if you think you can make a Marshall Plan for Africa then you think wrong. Africa is a fundamental different story and you won't even recognise it. They will welcome you and they will please you, because this is what their culture tell them to do. When you leave nothing has changed no matter what you might think.
There are people and organisations that have been working in Africa for 20 years and they don't understand this simple dynamics.
Welcome to another day in the world of only one solution.

15/11 05 intellectual responsibilities

Posted by refuse2bcynical

Well what should they do then? NOT say anything? I have a problem when it comes to cultural explanations vs. direct actions. For instance I met this woman in a swedish university who claimed that the swedish gov. should stop giving condoms to masai people because its AGAINST their culture. I dont agree with that. Culture should be changed, even if it doesnt when u leave. Even if its "violence" on "their" culture. And the "saviour" culture should be changed too. We should be allowed to propose solutions to problems, even those who are not our own. But the methods for doing it should be radically changed. And there should be more condoms, not just in africa, but in copenhagen, san fransisco and everywhere. And capitalism/imperialism/colonialism should be overthrown. The sooner the better. I cannot see anything wrong in trying, at least trying, to propose other alternative ways than those existing.

15/11 05 final solution

Posted by Wondering

What 1 solution? The final one?

25/11 05 Comments

We all want to be seen - so we try to express ourselves. I write. The whole idea is that somebody reads you. How will I know what you think? I am waiting until you will trust me enough to react.
One day I received two comments. This is what gives your life meaning, but what are you going to do with them? Shall I answer? Must I?
I want dialogue so I must respond to your comments. Is this dialogue? I am not sure. It is like receiving somebody in audience. Important people have specific hours where you can come and speak to them. Kings interact with their subordinates in such a way. Today everybody are kings and queens, but this does not leave any space for dialogue. We will receive you and ask you to sit down with us so that you can speak your mind. We will listen to you as we listen to everybody else that comes to talk to us during the afternoon. In the evening we will have forgotten most of it except those of you who spoke our own thoughts.
Welcome to the world of new born autocracy.
I will respond to 'refuse2bcynical' later no matter if my responsibility is intellectual or not.

12/11 05 The woman I love

2007-05-21T16:56:00.000+02:00

I will marry this woman because she is the only one of all the women I have known that truly believe in something - she rescued me from being trapped in the small minority I was born into and welcomed me to the world where most people exist. She saved me from a sudden death in a world where nobody seem to feel mercy anymore and offered me a space in her world where every new day is different story.
This is not to offend you. It is not, because it was not real. I don't mean it as a an rejection of what we shared in the past. I am just saying that I never felt like this. It is not a very good explanation and I don't need one. I realised that this is not the time to talk.
She was right when she asked me to watch her and I try to do it. I listen to the astonishment in her voice when she speaks and I feel her temper breathing. Suddenly she talks very fast and looks around and gets very surprised because she is different from anybody else. In eternity she whispers to herself that she can't understand why the other girls fight and yet she sees very clearly.

8/11 05 What did you learn in Africa

2007-05-21T16:49:00.000+02:00

What did you learn in Africa today dear little boy of mine?
I learnt that poor men must die. They are sent in the village, even when they get only a flue, and there they die for almost no reason.
I learnt that a white man can't do any difference - not even saving the life of his friend, when he tries to. Here we have other rules, and you will be leaving very soon.

Hey, dear little boy of mine, what did learn in Africa today?
I learnt that white men can only care about a black women they have sex with and never about a black man - and yes, the white man will eventually go away without saying good bye returning to his wife at home if she is still around. So the black women are used to momentarily security. There will always come another man in her world of only one solution.

Dear little boy of mine, what did you learn in Africa today?
I learnt not to tell too much of what I think. I learnt to suspect everyone I don't know very well. I can't even trust my best friend anymore. I learnt to explain my unhappiness by circumstances. In a culture where the truth does not exist it is hard to believe in anything except God.

My friend what did learn today?
Yes mukwano you guessed me right. I left Africa and came back – left again. I did not learn anything. So I will keep coming back until I understand something to honor my promise.
I met a woman who asked me to watch her, but I still ask her a lot of questions, and when she does not know what to answer she begs me not to ask any more questions. On rare occasions she will ask me about something. Then I will begin to talk for a long time to explain what I think. In the end she will tell me that I was only supposed to say yes or no.

“Please be soft on me”

26/10 05 Rules

2007-05-21T01:02:00.000+02:00

In the middle of the parking lot I suddenly remembered. It was with big sincerity that she whispered to her friend and classmate. The presumable strong sentence of truth:
- You have to know the rules in order to break them.
I wanted to add:
- Only if you don't now how to rock - if you don't have meaning in your life or dont' have a project of your own. Then you need rules to fill out the empty space between you and the world. During that long time of training you might find yourself. Off course there are no guarantees.
They were attenting a classical music school where the only language accepted was Italian. But how can you allow yourself to speak such words, if you are a 'country' girl trying to get on stage? Some people might say that she succeeded in the end, but maybe they were just relieved that she chose to follow their rules. Yes, she did break them in a way, but we will never know if she found herself.

16/10 05 Julie's Place

2007-05-21T01:01:00.000+02:00

I am here again. In the small bar. As so many times before. Mze just walked in. He works in Town and comes here every day around 5.30pm. I have not been here in a very long time so he offers me a drink, silently. We salute each other again. He is a nice man who likes to talk. David - but nobody can call him that in his presence. It is late afternoon. I am sitting in the dark hiding from the strong sun outside waiting for my friend to appear, but I don't mind. I drink another one in the meantime.
She is like Brenda. Shy. Well dressed. Sweet. Drinking a Nile. But it is only a matter of time before she will be hooking. I remember Brenda very clearly. She is a symbol but of flesh and blood. Here are so many young nice beautiful women who end up getting in trouble because they think they only have one solution.
I am crying behind my eyes - so often I have been sitting here looking out on the hot sun imagining the world they have invited me into. Most of the time they are trapped in the world of only one solution.
The bar lady walks in - she bear the same name as my wife - she brings her two years old daugter with her. The daughter is very curious but also afraid of me. I am used to that. The mother was also afraid of me the first time we met. I remember asking for a 'short call' and she was supposed to show me the way to a place where a could take a pee but suddenly she disappeared. Apparently it is too scary to show a white man to the bathroom.

16/10 05 It takes time

2007-05-21T00:59:00.000+02:00

16/10 05 Color

2007-05-21T00:50:00.000+02:00

It is not about color
only if you think it is
but it can be
ignored
and it will disappear.

15/10 05 Resort Beach

2007-05-21T00:43:00.000+02:00

Here you never know what willl occur when you leave her out of attention. She might meet somebody she likes or that likes you and life will become pure hell. The risk of being caught seem so near and I haven't even done anything. Infedelity is a way of life on the shore of Victoria Lake. I would never think like this at home - where ever that is. I could very easy feel safe here - but not without money. Though there would always be somebody asking you something. I will continue watching him even when he is my best friend. I will be afraid of turning my back on him at night. After sharing my bedroom with her for over one year I still think about her friends as a danger to my health. My past experiences will hunt me down forever. Once I thought they were nice to me and they were right in warning me - I will never again be able to trust you as before. You will never survive Africa. This time there is not so much to take from me and I think it will make a difference, though I still bear the same color. Yes, I have colored skin - here I'm as dark as you can imagine. So strange after an entire life without color.

8/9 05 Suicide

2007-05-20T19:48:00.001+02:00

I remember I was along in the house. It was summer. I was going through a difficult time. Not that it was very serious taking into account my fairly young age. I was still in highschool. Still you never know what might have happened to me under slightly different circumstances. It was evening time and I was seated in my father’s study, though we also used that place as a second living room. I don't remember the atmossphere as very hard. On the contrary. I had a soft feeling inside. Suddenly I held a knife in my hand. I must have picked it from the kitchen, but I do not remember going to the kitchen. I was sitting down helding the knife in my right hand trying to move it towards my left wrist to cut the artery. There was a tension in the air so I could not come near. I was concentrated about the act for a while. I lost track of time so I don't know for how long time I was doing it, but I remember giving up. I could not cut myself. I have never tried again. I believe that I have gone through more difficulties later in my life and even more severe one’s but never again looked for death as a solution. I often thought about what happened that day in my parents house. Maybe the idea of taking my own life was purely intellectual. My girlfriend and I talked about being in the dark and falling into deep holes of nothingness.
My own experience gave my an understanding for other people’s decision of ending their life, but I realised that it was no solution for me. I have had a few friends that in specific periods of their lives have spoken about suicide, but it never seemed very serious so I was not scared that they would go through with it. I am sure that they meant it seriously at the time, but maybe it was more a cry for help or even just an act of dispair. One time I knew somebody that actually went through with trying to kill herself. She did not succeed. Another kitchen knife failed the mission. It is actually not so easy to cut yourself. The pills in her throat came up on the floor and she chose to make a telephone call. Everything appeared very prepared. She wrote letters to everybody. It does not seem real anymore, but it has marked me with a permament pain. The fear loosing the one I love and death itself has become so painful for me. I was strucked by lightening because I never thought that she could do it. For a long time I was terrified and kept on fearing that she would do it again. Every time I couldn’t get hold of her I would go into a state of insanity. There is specifically one time I remember, when she had gone to visit her parents out of town. I called her constantly for two days and was convinced that she must be dead. The only thing that could ease my mind was calling her again and again. I picked up the phone pressing her number. Waiting. For every time I heard the tone I got closer to explode in dispair. It is ringing. Waiting. After hanging up I am about to go crazy. I can only repeat my phone call. Sitting in my room in the corner as it gets darker outside. I can’t think. I am silent in a way that remind me of death. Coming too soon. It will be too late. Time elapses. She never tried to scare me again. During the years I even believed her, but I can never escape the fear that is inside me. It will stay. Mostly it does not talk to me but it will never die. Recently it has awakened rapidly and terrified my dreams and my bed became cold. I was back in the dark room with the phone calling another women to beg for her life. This time she told me and I didn’t remember the statistics. Do you kill yourself if you begin talking about it or is it the other way around? Now I know but can not reach out. We are not in touch. I keep telling myself that you can cry for help and I will save you, but why do you have to exclude me from your life. In my bed I cried and turned in every possible direction. I could not come to rest. What a price to pay for happiness just to vanish in front of my eyes. For several days I was struggling in my bed. Will she do it? I will never know.

15/8 05 Dreams

2007-05-19T22:09:00.000+02:00

I began to write my dreams in a yellow book from behind, backward and upside down. In front of the small book I had many years earlier been writing poems about women with names I did not even dare to pronounce.
The transcripted dreams became real by resting on the paper in shinny daylight. Dreams with silent shadows of darkness pulling themselves against the curly feather of paper dust. I am trying to withdraw from my gloomy nightmares into the contrast of sunlight.
One day in the sharp glimpse of autumn season I meet a man who claimed that my night dreams will always crible my future deeds. We began to play with the magic of day dreaming. My nightmares ceased to exist. We were constructing castles in sand and travelled around the whole world. Never again was there any paper between us.
We are now sleeping soft and sound during night. The most precious women mention our names and we take them with us in bed every night. Our night dreams have become reflections of victories in life itself.
Good night.

11/8 05 Lamu Island

2007-05-19T22:07:00.000+02:00

A woman with shinny hair
blowing in wind
that takes care of her wishes.
She is flying away
along the beach.
The bright breeze
cherishes her.

She is looking back over her shoulder
admiring the man she loves.
He takes her photograph in return
not to remember
he will never forget
only to please her.

The high speed
above the water shield
shiver.
Her smile trembles
in excitement
suddenly stepping out.
The wind nurtures her skin
in soft silence.
Spray of water
touches her body.
Warm sun
evaporate
pearls of salt
in her mind.

Only a black woman
in Africa
she is happy
can lean
against his chest.

9/8 05 Kazo

2007-05-19T22:03:00.000+02:00

Grandmother is always sitting in the same spot.
She does not want a fence along the road.
Grandfather suggested it out of love,
so she would get peace,
but she wants to shout at everybody who pass on the road.
Grandfather is a small man without many words
he keeps quiet and takes a drink on the way home.
She talks all day.

The eyes smile when I come to visit.
We don't talk together,
because I can only greet her.
She continues talking in a language I will never know.
In between she mentions my Wife's name
and laughs very loud.
Her whole body moves in excitement
finally she points in one direction to show me
my Wife.

Her Grandchild is sitting aside on the Veranda
smiling as only big love can.
Her eyes concentrate
all the moral pride
that runs from her heart.
I know
what it means.
She is silent as Grandfather's steps around the corner.
I have to know what she feels.
Her eyes will never reveal her mind.

Only Equator's sun can make you so beautiful.
It must be the reason for her black shine under my breath
The sun has melted
under the skin on black flesh
fried on the fire from a white man's fly.

Her eyes is waiting for mine.
We know what the waves do
we believe the sweat
we exchanges at night
will link us forever.
We move slowly
as if we know our direction.
There is a lot more
between us
than we will ever find.

4/8 05 Dear Ssebo

2007-05-19T22:00:00.000+02:00

Three years ago I came to Kampala. Since then I have heard your music almost everywhere. In the beginning I thought it was a waste of talent – why use a good talent on mainstream pop music, when it could be used for somthing more.
When I arrived I fell into the ditch that many ‘bazungus’ continue to sleep in throughout their stay in Uganda. From where they never learn to understand local music nor appreciate it, because they find it repetitive and therefore boring. I admit that this was also my opinion for some time.
I don’t know why I tried to get up from there. Maybe it was just out of a general curiosity, because for a long time I didn’t get anywhere, though I still decided to stick around. This is what you learn to do very quickly – to stick around – you must stick around if you want to understand anything.
During all this time of ‘thin air’ I realised something about you. It is not so much your music but your talent as a performer that attracts attention and should be appreciated. You are simply a very good performer and this is the reason why many people like you so much. Good performance fit perfectly with the outing culture of Kampala. I also realised another thing. You remind me of somebody. In the months of getting up from the usual ‘bazungu ditch’ I realised that you resemble a leadsinger in a Danish rock band. His name is Nielsen, which is as common a name in Denmark as Joseph is in Uganda. Those of you who know whom I am talking about will get my point, and if you don’t, then let me continue.
You have similar body expressions and the same tendency to jump around on stage inventing your own personal jumps. Therefore both of you are first and farmost popular for live performance and your abillity to move the audience. Many Danes grew up seeing Nielsen on stage every summer and the climax was when he steps forward toward the crowd beginning to pour a bottle of soda over his head, while moving his feet up and down without getting anywhere and shaking his body from side to side as everybody began to get wild. In Kampala the thin man in the expensive white suit lean slightly forward and look down on his fans talking with distinct energy before he moves to another spot on the stage to repeat the gesture. As the energy rise he moves faster and the audience turn into a screaming ecstasy.
I heard that you recently visited Denmark. Unfortunately you did not meet with your nordic twin brother, though I think you should have. Maybe next time. If you notify me, I will see what I can do to make it happen.
Your sincererly, The muzungu ditcher.

4/8 05 White Africans

2007-05-19T14:01:00.000+02:00

Some years back I went to Africa. I didn’t know what is was doing. This is what I do once in a while. It has become a habit, though I don’t know if it makes sense. I used to think that going to another continent had a specific purpose. I even talked about ‘out of continent experiences’. He also claimed that he did it for anthropological reasons, but now I admit that it all happened by accident. It was coincidental. I did it by mistake.
In Africa I met a white woman, who called me childish [‘barnslig’] for my birthday indicating that I looked younger than my age. I took it as a compliment, though I never knew if I deserved it. She was Swedish, but grew up in Tanzania. We always refered to her as ‘white african’. It was only later that I began to think about what it meant. She was not the only one.
We have all kinds of names. In Africa it is called tribes to be more specific. It is not because we won’t be a tribe, but we don't think about ourselves as such. We are not very many and only very rarely together like other tribes. We are scattered around and will only meet accidentally. We even identify ourselves being apart. It is our individuality that defines us.
While I was still around, I remember one day, when I was standing alone on the terasse in the big house I was living in and reading the back page of a black book. There is a saying that Africa never will become a habit. You will never get used to Africa. Maybe that is my problem, that Africa began to run in my venes. If you live on colored blood, then you will never forget the eyes you saw and the eyes that touched you. It is for real when a white man, who is married to a woman that grew up in Africa, tells me that I will never recover from Africa. I think he is right. Suddenly I don’t belong anywhere. It is only at night that I can breath. During summer season it is hard, because then it begins getting light around 3.30 in the morning. I realise how little time I have to live my life. It makes me change my mind. The best time to go to Europe is not May. Sometimes I try to mingle – and in order to do that I force myself to sleep at night. In that way I will be awake when other people go to work.
Bye.

3/8 05 Dear Baduzunguvu

2007-05-19T13:56:00.000+02:00

I write to you all today, because I don't know what else to do. It is not because today is any different from all other days. They are all the same. I didn't get enough sleep, came to late up, still dizzy, and there is another text message from one of my past girlfriends. I am thinking of calling her, but I have become so superstitious that I do not dare. I am afraid of what might happen. In generel I have become frightened. I am scared of every step I am about to take. I have stopped to believe in other people. I am jealous of any woman I meet. Everything she does give me pain. She does it on purpose to hurt me. I am trapped in her mistery. She walks to me and begins to hit me. After a while her hands are filled with blood. It is my only defence against her. My blood will infect her and one day make her stop. That is the relief I will wait for. The only hope that can ease my pain. The desire I feel for her is so much stronger than the pain she pushes on my flesh. Tomorrow I will resurrect without her.
Regards from white tarmac roads.

I am back

2007-05-19T13:29:00.000+02:00

Dear readers
I have decided to continue from here - hopefully without any lost entries. In the coming days I will transfer older texts from other sites and write news in between. Take care - be aware,