hey,
i was having breakfast this morning, while everyone else was having lunch, and i was eating my rice with a fork. an old woman in a suit sat down at my table because there are no personal boundaries in Africa, and she ate her whole fried fish with her fingers and scooped up rice and put her hands in her soup and picked at the fish spine and licked it and slurped. she ate every possible bit of that fish, she sucked the little fried eyes out of there sockets and crunched the finer bones in her molars. another man, a stranger of the first woman and me equally, sat down at the small table, he sucked the meat off a greasy chicken leg in one gulp, and using his fingernails to scrape the marrow clean from inside the bone. he was wearing a suit as well. everyone in the mess hall, having chosen between either fried fish or chicken legs, was going on in the same manner, little piles of bones in front of young girls, old men, suited men, old woman and even little children. the old woman across from me picked up my spoon and handed it to me, encouraging me to use it instead of the fork on my rice, more surface area i suppose, not sure why i would choose the fork for the job in the first place, i always have i guess.
four american mid-thirties men came into the room after most of the racket had cleared out, it was me and them only for some time. they were talking about something or rather, about gasoline, and about things in general, when another two american fellows came down and sat at the table next to them. they struck up a conversation easily, all six of them were roughly the same person. they were each wearing baggy slacks ranging in color from gray to brown, with collared short sleeve shirts ranging in color from light blue to dark blue. all but one had short cropped hair, styled lightly in some way, the odd man out had an edgy cut, spiked up at the front. this man, with the edgy cut, was telling the rest about the price he payed for a vehicle, which he had purchased here in dar es salaam, ten thousand dollars, going into some detail. the two men at the separated table were listening uncomfortably, one man grasping at his elbow and the other mumbling to himself and making glances towards the speaker. the conversation ended and all six of them sat quietly a minute, drinking coca-cola.
i felt sick, i know i am one of them, i am a white man in a collared shirt drinking coca-cola in dar es salaam, i'm sitting at a plastic table in a plastic chair. i wish more than anything in the world to disassociate myself from these men. what exactly it is that makes them who they are, it's not the skin or the clothes or the hair, it is not the conversation even, it's nothing tangible. it's an abstract feeling that is emitted when six of them are so close together, in such a foreign setting, waves of horrible knowledge sweep across the room and affect everyone within range. i must leave and i must find something that will once and for all will draw a clear distinction between myself and the likes of these types.
there were two canadian woman in souvenir shop african garb yesterday at dinner, they had between them one african lonely planet, one tanzanian lonely planet, one large tanzanian map, one large dar es salaam map, one book on dar es salaam and one plate of french fries. they were bickering over what to see and in what order, drawing lines on the map, wanting to hit everything, as much as they could, by the shortest route. i have always felt that there are enough good things to see and do that if you simply pick up and walk out the door in a straight line, you are bound to run into enough of them. attempting to see everything, and specific things, and to choose them, leads to horrible pains and stresses. unnatural overwhelming sensations and fear of missing something or other take hold and lead to the complete missing of everything planned in the first place along with everything else. to think of the world and all the wonderful things in it greedily, as if you can choose good things to do and do them all, will cause you to walk right past the truly wonderful things in between.
and i really have to go from dar es salaam into the between that is between here and south africa,
ok!
love jasper
Tanzania's Flag
Map of Tanzania