It’s a Sunday night. I wait, for what I don’t know. I simply am.
I grip my remote, the portal to different worlds without ever getting off my ass.
I program my “Last” button between the two most important things on right now.
Millionaire athletic specimens bouncing a ball, running, jumping, shooting, blocking, pushing, fighting.
Very intriguing.

I hit the button, and am taken to a life of glamour. Red carpet, millionaire entertainers wearing million dollar clothes and jewelry, I can’t believe she’s wearing that. Can you believe how she did her hair?
They just eat up the attention. This is what they live for, and we give it to them. This is royalty of a different kind, and we are the lauding paupers, paying the pax romana to support their livelihoods. What a life. Awards, exposure, riches and wealth, they have it all, and for what? Because they act like something they are not, and are good at it.
Who are these people? Who am I?

I get back, back to my world, back to my day-dreams and the network of likeminded.
My life is unique in that my life experiences encompass three continents, and you can’t throw in three continents and not experience the contrast that life has to offer.

Its a tough call, but what in my life truly reflects me, and why am I not doing it?

12 hours after dripping-wet vanity, I get back to my other self and start reflecting on a completely different universe.
The news out of Africa hits me hard. My sister, her husband are floored with Malaria. This is the fourth time this year my brother-in-law has it. He is burning brain cells, and this could turn cerebral. My two nephews got some sort of virus. Fever, chills, sweat, nausea.
I sit comfortably on micro-fiber material in my AC cooled south Florida condo.

Across the border from them I hear 4 million people have been killed in the last 7 years. Countless other women, some just young girls, raped in front of their families. Population control. A tactic of the rebels in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The numbers rival anything since WWII.

Move north and east across another border and hit Uganda, where recent “elections” pushes the country into civil unrest. Borders are closed, but that doesn’t stop raiders from move silently across the imaginary lines.
I’ve got to get off of this couch.

I’ll be back in Kenya and Rwanda come summer. How much will my world change again? I already feel sick for getting enjoyment out of useless games and too tight dresses.

So I begin to pick up the pieces of a twice shattered life. Once there and once back. Just when I get comfortable here I realize I must go back. I cannot live my life appraising the fortunes of others, or arguing the merits of a slam-dunk or hair-do.

I am sure the game brought some off the streets, giving them a better life, and I am sure some award winning story-teller brings some sort of exposure to the decadence of life in mother Africa, but what really comes out of such things?

So I plan, with those in the same boat on the same sea, rocking and getting sea-sick on the same air. My best man, the African Digerati, bred in boarding school along the hills of the escarpment of the Great Rift Valley, brings his passionate vision to my attention.

Its time to move. Too much needs be done.
So I look to return to old watering holes, as I say.
My cohort says it more succinctly: “If not me, then who?”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 7th, 2006 at 7:53 am and is filed under Front. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.