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Monday, May 30, 2011

Greetings

          While trying to find a box to send some unnecessary things home, I pass a group of five or six idle men on the corner across from Jambo Inn. They stare unblinking as I pass, and self-consciously I utter my “Jambo”. They burst into a flood of greeting, validating my observation that a stranger need merely break the ice. One of the men follows me and introduces himself as George. The man has the build of a wrestler and the stature of a giant, yet his eyes are demure and gentle. George offers to help me find a box and send it home, in exchange for my considering his brother’s company for a Kilimanjaro climb. I’m elated to have company, and begin asking George advice.
“I just got to Tanzania,” I confide. “The only word I know of Swahili is ‘Jambo’. Could you tell me what ‘Habari’ means?”
            “How are you?”
            “I’m fine. . .”
“Then you can say, ‘nzuri’ or ‘safi’ when they ask ‘habari’.”
George teaches me more Swahili, and soon I feel perfectly natural navigating the streets of Dar.
“Is it dangerous for me to walk alone here?” I ask.
“Oh no! Well, some people might try to rob you, but it is safe to walk in the light. See, how many people are around? Tanzanians are very good people, we are very peaceful. But you have to greet people, they can get upset if foreigners don’t even greet them.”
George motions to an alleyway bunched full of eclectic stores: computer parts and kerosene lanterns; barfi (Indian candy), used text books and hammers. Blocking the alley is an older African man slicing pineapple, evidentially the juiciest, judging by the Indonesian mothers who crowd him on behalf of sticky-fingered children. George gently presses the Fruit Vendor to the side with one hand as he squeezes behind him. I try to give the man an apologetic glance as I follow, but he never looks up from the pineapple, as if it were the wind that pushed him forward. George enters the first store to the left, which sells bottled water among fabric and bicycle tires, and sure enough there is a stack of used Kilimanjaro Water boxes against the wall. George speaks in brusque Swahili to a young Indian man with dark circles under his eyes.
“What?” the man responds with tangible irritation.
            A thin curtain rustles in the back of the room and a graying man appears. He looks George up and down, then glances at me. Even though I know nothing of Swahili, I could tell from the first interaction that George hadn’t greeted the shopkeeper before delving into our demands. I wonder why he hadn’t followed his own advice about greeting Tanzanians.
            “Hello sir.” I nod to the younger man and older.
            “How can we help you?”
            “This girl is searching for a box to mail to America. About this size.” George shapes the air, the exact size of the water boxes in the corner.
            “Sorry we don’t have boxes.”
            “Something like that would be perfect,” I motion to the corner.
            Both men look towards the piled boxes.
            “Oh,” the old man replies. “You want that. Yes, here you can take it for free. You need packing tape?”
The younger man passes us the box and we buy duct tape from behind the counter. “Karibu,” the old man replies in Swahili, as we exit their store.
George and I walk through the streets shimmering with high noon heat. We walk slowly under the weight of the sun, deciding to split for spell while I fill the box and we each find lunch. When we reach Jambo Inn, I notice his friends still standing across the street, waiting vaguely for something to happen. I’m not sure why George is helping me, shelving my errands with his quotidian frankness.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

The Last Conversation

(scenario continued from Imagine...)

It wasn’t Psychosis – there was no confusion of what was real and what was dreamt. It was just that reality didn’t seem all that genuine.

You arrive to your apartment shaking, feeling ridiculous. Your roommate is in the kitchen heating a can of soup. The red and white label is splotched with tomato pulp. The roommate catches you glaring at it. “Want some?”

You can’t control the gasping words that pour forth. Something sticks, like “our entire experience of life, from day to day, has been designed!”

And after some beats of silence your roommate chirps, “I think it’s nice.”

“What?”

“The supermarket. It’s nice that the produce seems fresh, and that the light is always as bright as midday, and it’s never too hot or cold. I like that the aisles are organized. It’s nice.”

Nice? But nice isn’t real! It is a comfortable, numbing lie,” You cry, exasperated.

You’re nice.” Your roommate plays the Devil’s advocate. You were taught that at school, to get to the bottom of things. “You’re a good person, and you’re nice – even when it’s not the whole truth of how you feel.”

“I know,” You scowl. “But I’d rather be honest.”

“We’re all products of our society. And it is produced by us, not by some manipulative entity. You have nothing to run away from.”

“I’ve memorized billboards that I don’t remember reading. I know the finalists for American Idol, and don’t even have a T.V. There are concepts in my mind that I didn’t put there that have no purpose but to induce craving, a purchase. . . I want the freedom to see things the way they are, to suffer even, to live a life unmediated.”

You march down the hall with your computer and purse.

“Where are you going?” The roommate asks, alarmed and moved by your resolve.

“Somewhere that doesn’t paint food. Some place far, where I can remember things that came before there was any question of authenticity.”

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Imagine...


You walk in the city to be alone amongst people, to watch the world, your home.

Downtown, the faces of empirical buildings leer gray reflections of a coming storm, wayward mists mocked in solid geometry. The sidewalks are littered with newspaper stands - Corruption in UN / Famine in Africa / Starlet Arrested. So, all is normal.

Shop windows along the street have already rotated seasons; plaid scarves and wool coats cling to the curves of cream-colored manikins. “The fabric of our lives...” you hear your mind sing, without glancing at the cotton models hovering above State and Wabash. 

A pair of pink earmuffs double as headphones in the gleaming white tech store, and a pulsing runway rhythm pours from within. You find your feet hitting the concrete in time with the beat, and you shuffle in triple to escape. You want to be free from the trap, from the constant suggestions filtering through.

Long cries pierce the windy avenue, emanating from a small girl with doll in matching blue pinafore. The child offsets her body to pull a scowling mother back into the American Girl skyscraper. Her mother relents to the tantrum and the heavy door swings shut, wafting the warmth of cupcakes behind.

They’ve really got us. You continue to walk, crestfallen. The melancholy is common, it creeps in when your mind has no immediate obligation. It always seems to bring with it the sense that ‘This is it. The best part of the day, of our lives. Then dinner. Then bed.’ And sharp on the heels of the glumness is guilt, for this really is it, the Pinnacle of privilege. You have the leisure to question the meanings of things, and the pocket money to have a cupcake too.

You enter a grocery store to find some dinner. The soup isle is mesmerizing. Rows of red and orange cans, so easy, so cylindrical. Just grab one and go. The produce is being misted, fresh, too perfect. You pick up a tangerine. The sticker says it has been shipped from Florida. You put it back. When you lift your fingers you find them shimmering and orange-scented. You touch the tangerine again – they are covered in something glittering and unnatural! The cabbage, the tomatoes, the carrots – have they all been painted? Your stomach churns, disgusted by illusion. Nothing here is natural! You run. 
  

Sunday, May 1, 2011

One Reason to Go

One of the reasons I went to Africa was to escape mediation. I felt that my life, in America, was in real danger of following the edicts of entities beyond me. This went farther than the schemes of marketing, little material seductions, because I felt that everything I experienced (from the subway to the supermarket) was modified or designed before I even got there. I was about to graduate college, so in a way life for 18 years had been defined by an educational system of ‘theory’ that has little to do with surviving in the world. And the next step society pushes new grads into would be a series of desperate internships and simplistic entry-level jobs. I felt the walls closing in on me, and wanted to tear everything apart, to be free, to suffer.

If the idea of ‘mediation’ seems impenetrable or (ironically) contrived, perhaps the scenario in the following entry will help convey the situation...