An African in England Questioned

imageA little while ago I wrote An African Questioned… about all the questions I have received with regards to being African and growing up in Africa.  This is part two to that “Interview”, An African in England Questioned.

Question: So are you finding England safer now, more relaxed walking down the street?

My Answer: Well the one thing is I don’t need to look out for lunch anymore, I mean there are no lions lying in wait for me to turn the corner.  That said there are some really strange creatures walking around, seriously.  Have you seen how bad things are here??? They don’t even know how to keep their rods up and under their animal skins, hanging half to the ground like they have sexy butts or something.  My thinking is that these English people don’t have the right animals to hunt in order to get decent clothes, well this is what I think anyways.

Question: Do the trains scare you?

My Answer: Not at all though I am a bit disappointed in the fact that they are slower than my good old trusted cheetah express.  Ah those were the days when you’d just hope on Cheetie and zoom overland in a heart beat, always on time and never on strike or breaking down. Man those were the days!

Question: How are you finding wearing normal clothes? 

My Answer: Well it seems like Afreaka exports its animal skin soaked in diesel to the Europeans, who woulda thunk that it would be popular here huh!  Normal clothes? They don’t fit as snug as my hides, not as tailored either though definitely cheaper phew.  Do you know Armani?

Question: So what do you think of all the cool cars riding around on the streets? Must be so different seeing real cars… 

My Answer: In my first week I managed to spot 3 bicycles, holy carambas have you SEEN those??? How people balance on them who knows, I mean surely it is a lot easier just hopping on a Cheetah or an Elephant, directing it to where you want to go, sit back and sip a pina colada while watching the scenery fly by? Forget those bicycle things, those four wheel contraptions!!!  I don’t trust anything that farts out black stuff!

Question: How did you get here?

My Answer: Well it has been quite a journey to say the least! As is custom I prepared for weeks in advance making special meat packages with Biltong, raw meat spiced and soaked in fermented juice hung out to dry.  Trick is to get it just right so that it still is a bit red when held up to the light, ah biltong, yum! Problem is though, this time the lion wasn’t so friendly when I went a hunting and for some reason it thought I was the new meat on the block *shrug’s and munches on another strip* Guess I showed him who’s the meat from the goose heh!

Anyways Biltong at the ready I then prepared my flight machine with fans, specially made wings created from ostrich feathers and the bone of a Rhino, put all the gears in place and packed my backpack.  All ready to go I strapped my starter, probably known to you as a leopard, to the frame and kicked with all my might.  Once he had reached top speed I released the catch and soared through the clouds above the plains of Africa.

It was a bumpy road thanks to the odd Bald headed Eagle thinking I was its long lost *ahem* mate.  They didn’t understand why I was not one of them or interested in their baldness but needless to say they eventually got the drift of my feather protected legs.

I weathered hail and thunder storms, confused birds and flashing orangutans, finally crossing over the Channel between the frogs and the bulldogs.  The frogs were scared and the bulldogs hungry but I got here safe and sound just a mere few months after leaving Afreakan soil.

Question: Have you managed to see or use a washing machine yet?

My Answer: Do I smell or something? I’ve been searching for a clean river for days now but to no avail…

Question: Can I post you something now that you are in first world?

My Answer: I am undercover and fear that a few of the animals back home may track me down and keel me like Jeff Dunham’s character… Yeah not pretty to say the least!

Question: You must really enjoy our Coca Cola or Fanta huh?

My Answer: What you call Fanta is rather interesting, I mean it’s meant to be orange flavour right but its like flavoured water on steroids, seriaresly eeew! The word orange belies to the fact that the product actually tastes like the fruit of orange… you know? REAL oranges? And just so you know your Cream Soda is a fake, uh huh, fake!

Question: Do you miss your mining days? Am sure you miss the cheap jewels and gems… 

My Answer: Not at all, just before I left afreakan soil I managed to find 5 diamonds in my vegetable patch, shine them up and bring them along… wanna see? Oh and a few nuggets of gold to, right there in the stone sitting on my porch… such luck huh! If you want to get rich quick definitely head over to Afreaka, you won’t be sorry! 

My Question: Do you know that we will never run out of gold?

Their Answer: No, why is that?

My Answer: Gold is merely fortified lion poop, over the years it gets old, hard and each time an animal walks past it marks its territory giving it the sheen you seen today on my beautiful golden tooth.

Ah the question one gets, none of these are current mind, think people are too wary of what they might hear from my mouth.  That said I have had a few come close to the above but bit my tongue because they are the mothers at the kids school *shrug*

My sarcasm needs sharpening just to find a victim hmmm

Wind Photos… and you thought I was kidding?

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An angler seems unperturbed by the huge waves breaking over the harbour wall at Cape Town’s Kalk Bay. (Yunus Mohamed, Die Burger)

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Gale-force winds in the Cape Town CBD were a little too strong for this policeman who ended up on his behind as he tried to cross the street. (Die Burger)

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A dog sniffs the base of a tree blown over in DeWaal park, Cape Town. ( Neil Baynes, Die Burger)

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Galeforce winds have brought heavy rains to the Western Cape. (Yunus Mohamed, Die Burger)

… see I wasn’t joking …

Give the sun back now ok?

The Aftermath of Elections

image I always worry about the aftermath of an election, there always seems to be violent tension, tempers rise and people become “possessed” by the “done in for” attitude.

My first experience of a true election was in 1994, our first legal election, legal as in fair, no discrimination, anyone who was anyone could vote.  The period leading up to that day though will be forever branded in my head.  The school bus used to pick us up and drop us off at a train station on the way to Cape Town. 

On one particular Friday, as the bus drove in to the road where they normally dropped us off, something happened that changed me forever.  All we could see was smoke, the flames were on the road itself and there was screaming.  The shrieks and the cries, both in agony and in anger, chilled me to my bones. 

I sat dead still in my seat as the bus driver tried to drive through the riot, navigate around fallen bodies, getting us to safety. I had never seen anything like it, the screams, the smoke, the blood, the anger and the sheer force of being in the middle of it threw me.  As I stared out of the window I noticed this guy about 3 metres away from me, he was half standing, half falling, just next to my window. 

All I remember is the ring of fire around his neck, the blood and the blood curdling scream bubbling from his neck.  A tyre soaked in petrol had been thrown over his head and lit, he had been necklaced and he wasn’t the only one, there were many. The smell stays with me till this day.

Where were the police? They were at another riot worse than ours just down the road.  I don’t remember the exact date, I don’t remember much other than what I saw, felt, smelt and tasted.  I remember that the bus driver started swearing, everyone was stressing and we were told to stay away from the windows.  I remember stepping off that bus a couple of blocks down the road and feeling my legs like jello, they shook like a leaf.

In 1995 I was in Kenya and just happened to end up being there during their elections.  For four days we weren’t allowed to leave our home, we were holed up inside, sending our security to go get supplies for us.  The screams from the road raged through the night, the loud bangs and the smell of things burning once more returned. 

Violence, anger, rage

It solves everything doesn’t it?

The US elections are finally hear and I am grateful but I know that the mud slinging will never stop.  No matter who wins there will be fights coming “Mine is still better than yours”, “This one and that one is a racist”, “This one bought so much clothes”… they happened before the election and they won’t stop when its done and dusted either.

People just don’t respect each other

I hope and I pray that both the American public and those in other countries do not react with disrespect once the final decision is made.

I hope there are no more attempts on Barracks life

I hope there are no more jibes about racism, who is and who isn’t

I hope that there is no more violence or hate crimes

I hope and I pray

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You don’t have to like each other to show respect, just common decency with the understanding that each has their own thoughts, their own views and own beliefs.

Hope you all had a great election day and it went smoothly,

Viva la new presidento who ever that may be

Cape Town 101

* I received this in an email, I so wish I had written it first dang!

- from Uncyclopedia, the content-free encyclopedia.

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Cape Town is a city on the coast of South Africa so called because the wearing of capes or cloaks is compulsory within the city limits. It was founded by Batman on his way to Melbourne from Holland in 1652.

Cape Town is also called “The Mother City”, believed to be due to the highly expressive vocabulary of the local dialect (in which the words “your mother” feature regularly) and the cheap and nasty (but potent) local wine. A different school of thought believes the origin of the name lies in the fact that it takes 9 months to do anything in this sleepy hollow.

image Cape Town is situated on a sandbar under Table Mountain (so called because unlike most mountains, it is flat). Cape Town became famous for the first successful heart transplant operation at its “Great Skewer” Hospital by Christian Barnyard.

Cape Town is neither as wealthy nor as large as Johannesburg, so the inhabitants compensate with a superior attitude based on the claim that they were there first.

Which none of them personally were, unless they are over 300 years old.

It is socially unacceptable for a Capetonian to talk to people that they have not previously talked to, which severely limits social interactions. If the opportunity should somehow present itself, a traditional Cape Town greeting is “Jou ma se *%#@”, often abbreviated to “Jou ma”, which means, roughly “Good day and good health to you and your good mother, sir!”

Robin Island was named after Batman’s faithful sidekick. Later it was renamed “Robbin’ Island” and used as a jail, like Alcatraz but with colder water around it and more sharks in it.

image In spite of the revolution in 1994 severe social inequality still persists. Efforts to redress this historical imbalance are progressing well, particularly the “mugg’em” initiative.

Popular sports are pretentiousness, drunk-driving, pole-vaulting, French dressing and Mexican standoffs. The summer sport of setting fire to the mountainside is more popular with tourists than with locals, though all enjoy the cheerful spectacle of the flames and smoke.

image Since 2006, the town council of Cape Town has embraced an “Amishisation” policy, and has turned it’s back on the use of electricity, declaring it a decadent bourgeois luxury. Electricity is slowly being phased out in a series of “power cuts”, and it is to be replaced by the use of candles, paraffin lamps and fires for illumination and sing-alongs for entertainment.

image Cape Town is the first place to boast an Invisible Bridge. However, the bridge is currently not in use as the city council refused to believe the claims of the construction company when they informed the council that they had developed a new building material which was stronger than steel but could not be seen by the human eye. The city council is said to have likened the bridge fiasco to “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.

image Roads Memorial celebrates the fact that Cape Town is where roads were invented. This is delightfully done by means of a monument which includes important tools to road-making such as lions, a man with a horse and some dude’s head.

Bergies are Cape Town’s world famous mountaineers who live on Table Mountain and often come down into the city to welcome foreigners with the traditional Capetonian greeting of “Jou maaaa se *%$@!”

Freshlyground ~ I’d like

This song has no real significance to me, it is just a song that I love to close my eyes and move to… Freshlyground, another South African wonder

What would you do if I kissed you? 
What would you do if I held your hand and laid you down? 
Would you find me overly unkind to you? 
Would you call me insensitive, and say that I deserve to die?
What do I do with all these feelings tearing me up inside? 
What do I do with all these wasted hours dreaming of you at night?
I’ d like to call you sometime…
What would you do if you knew the truth? 
What would you do if I told you the story of my life? 
Would you find me overly familiar towards you? 
Would you call me crude, fling me aside to the birds?
What do I do with all these feelings holding me back inside?
What do I do with all these wasted hours dreaming of you at night? 
I’d like to call you sometime
I’d like you to need me one time
I’d like to call you sometime
What would you do if I kissed you?
What would you do if I held your hand and laid you down? 
Would you recognize it’s a need I’ve been fighting for so long? 
Would you recognize it’s a hunger only you can fill? 
What do I do with all these feelings warming me up inside? 
What do I do with all these glorious hours dreaming of you at night?
I’d like to call you sometime 
I’d like you to need me one time 
I’d like to have you all the time 
I’d like to call you…

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