Hysteria at this week ending

When I read it – this morning - the first thing I actually took from the controversial Bullard article is how wary of China we should be. As neo-colonisers. If we are so pissed off at how European colonialism went, well, then we’d better manage the latest super power’s attempts.

Not that we shouldn’t have China come in and join the continent’s chaotic party (where everyone has maybe had a bit too much to drink and not enough to eat and are in that drunk tense stage), but that you always have to be careful of the most sober guy in the room.

[Update: A brother just emailed an excellent point about the article: "I think if you were to ask Bullard whether he'd rather have been born into a backward African village untouched by the modern world or into poverty in a South African township today, if he was honest he wouldn't choose the township. Its a lot more complex than to argue either one or the other would have been ideal, but complex is exactly what his article isn't, its highly simplistic and snobbish. The past can't be undone and all the world would probably be on a modernization collission course at some point whether colonialisation had happend or not, but I can understand that a lot of blacks are upset that while brutalities that happened in some parts of the world are remembered as periods of great evil (like the holocaust or the Japense invasion of China etc), what went on in colonial africa is often trivialised by Europeans (as Bullard has done here) as just getting Africans to build roads and modernize for their own good".]

All in all, I couldn’t really give a fuck. I am more interested in what will pan out in Zambia and in Oli Tambo Airport’s Arrivals hall tomorrow. And not for the same reason.

Unless of course someone in Zambia is hoping to get nookie before the hour of 10am, maybe even somewhere along a national highway. Then, hey, SNAP!

I was chatting to a Zimbo just now in the building’s kitchen. She is the cleaning lady for some other company. And I think she gave me the best theory on whatthehell is wrong with Mugabe.

He has never had children.

He is breed-less. And she reckons that it is only when you have your own child, and that perspective on life and love and parenting, that you would never ever be able to not reach out to and do all you can for a starving child.

He has some stepchildren, but without having conceived and held and raised his own offspring, he has not managed to develop any sense of empathy and suffering and selfless love.

An interesting theory indeed, and considering all other theories on the fool have failed, why not consider it. Perhaps then SADC should rule that old Mugabs has to spend six months doing community service at an AIDS orphanage. Hell, I just have to feel the arms of one of those kids cling around my neck, or have one babe stop crying as soon as I lift her from her cot, and I am surprised I ever find the strength to put the kid down again!

Anyone know of the location of the “Suggestion Box” for tomorrow’s Zambia Emergency SADC meeting?

Meanwhile, as for explicit displays of love, possibly in a public setting, patience depending…. The boy returns home after SIX WEEKS away!!

And I am a wreck of nerves and excitement. This really was much more difficult than I ever could have imagined. Especially considering we are only in the very early stages of a relationship, where insecurities abound. Place him slap bang in the middle of an awesome experience in some far far (farfarfarfar) away place and my mind has turned hula hoops in possible scenarios. And while the core of me knows these are ridiculous, and my rationality clings to trust, it does not stop the creative self-issues from trying to undermine all sms’d-emailed-phoned words that were sent from distant tundra. Damn overactive mind and soul baggage!

But all will be ignored as I jump up and down at Arrivals tomorrow morning, looking just like one of those fools from the opening and closing scenes of “Love Actually”, and then try to hold him off as I drive him homewards.

:)

My boy is nearly home!!!!!