Chapter Five

I got robbed last night.

Calm down mom, dad, I’m alright, everyone is alright, I lost my Blackberry, some cash and the cheap local phone I bought for staying in contact with people here. Wallet is safe, they didn’t get my cards or even the $50 U.S. that was in it. They were incredibly amateur, which made them that much more dangerous, in some ways, but which also made it possible to resist here and there in little ways, hold this or that back and get away with it.

Again, I’m fine, perfectly safe, they never even pointed a gun directly at me, it’s OK. I lost a few pictures, some of which I can take again, and other than that I think I got away clean except for about $60 worth of the phone and currency. My Blackberry is insured and the face was so scratched it was gonna need to be replaced when I got back to the states anyways.

You want the story? OK, here it goes:

I’m in the tiny little bar section of this Thai restaurant, hanging out for the last time with this one friend I’ve met here before I head north in a few days. We’re talking, laughing, planning to go out to a real bar in a few minutes when two black guys come in, no big deal, one is carrying an AK-47 and the other has a handgun, but I don’t see it at first, so I figure the one guy is just the restaurant’s security guard. Around here you see automatic weapons many times a day, so the simple fact of a guy carrying one is no cause for alarm.

It’s not until they start shouting, pushing people around and reaching in peoples’ pockets that you realize what’s going on. Soon people are on the ground or sitting in chairs against the walls with their hands up.

They don’t speak English well at all, but they tell us to put our phones on the floor and they keep shouting at each other to hurry, hurry, and something about a taxi. I pull out my cheap phone and make sure they see me put it down, then they demand cash, I pull out my wallet, thumb the Meticais out of it and fling them at him. For a moment he gestures at me like he’s gonna demand that I open the wallet and show him that it’s empty, but he gets distracted by something else in the room and I tuck the wallet behind me between the two chairs I’m sitting on and the wall. When he looks back at me he notices the square shape in my pocket and reaches for it. Disappointed—I’d almost saved the Blackberry from them—I pull it out and chuck it at him.

After that, I’m basically a spectator. The one with the handgun, at some point before this, had pointed it over peoples’ heads at the wall and fired it. I was looking right at him, I saw where the gun was pointed. There was no impact, no ricochet, the sound was too quiet. It was clearly a replica. Still, the other guy has a real enough looking AK-47, although he holds it very inexpertly. For a moment I tell myself how easy it would be to get ahold of the barrel and keep him from leveling it at anyone. But I tell myself not to be a hero and I just sit there with my heart pounding. I don’t feel helpless: like I said, it would be easy to disarm these guys, seeing as they’ve only got one gun. I’m not helpless, I’m just restraining myself. They’re not worth resisting over a few hundred Meticais.

Good thing, too, because the unintended consequences are impossible to predict. Soon a third guy comes in, with another hand gun that looks just like the first, but I can’t know for sure. And later, it turns out there was a fourth one on the patio which, from the description of the Chinese men out there, sounds like he was carrying a shotgun.

Now the owner, who’s quite drunk, is shouting at them, advancing on them, “So what!” he says in his thick South African accent, “I’m old! Kill me! Go ahead, just kill me!”

They level the AK at his chest and I think to myself, I’m gonna see someone killed tonight. In my mind’s eye I can literally see the blood blossoming on his chest and I can’t look away.

Finally, after an interminable instant, the owner’s friends pull him away and soon the guys have left and we’re all standing around trying to figure out if that really just happened. The bar around us is in chaos, the owner is pissed at everyone and everything, he runs outside, comes back in demanding his keys, saying that the guys’ taxi has “fucked them.” Someone reaches into the fuse box and turns out the lights, which seems like a bad idea, but apparently it prevents the owner from finding the keys. He fumes around, yelling at everyone, talking about how his dignity has been taken from him, which I understand, but he also points at two or three of us younger American guys, calling us ‘Marines’ and saying we’re cowards. Whatever, he was drunk, and he had a right to be pissed. I don’t take it personally.

Meanwhile there’s an older Swedish lady FREAKING. Screaming, crying, slapping her husband. Turns out they took her wedding ring, a tennis bracelet and her purse, which she was sitting on and seems to feel they would not have noticed if her husband hadn’t volunteered it. I feel for both of them. I did the same thing she did with my wallet, didn’t I? But I know he was just trying to keep his wife safe, and there’s not really time to think in that situation. Sucks.

All is said and done and we leave. Our local numbers are put on a list at the bar, but none of us really expect to get anything back. It all still seems surreal, and the only difference I feel is I’m a little bit more nervous walking on the street at night, but otherwise, it really almost feels like nothing’s changed. Some of the people who were there don’t want to post this stuff on their blog. Think it reinforces a prejudiced view of Africa. But this is where it happened. You can’t ignore it and think it will go away once people stop being racist. The only way to make it stop is to take it on, and the best way to do that is to make people talk about it and about how to stop it from happening in the first place. It’s all a very weird and mixed-up set of feelings that I doubt will ever get sorted out.

18/7/10

Chapter Four

I’m doin’ it! I’m feelin’ it an’ I’m doin’ it. Here’s the opening trip story, at least as far as Dubai, for now, we’ll see how much I feel like writing.

Those who received my very first e-mail are aware already that I missed my scheduled flight. I arrived at Tom Bradley International Terminal as the flight was leaving, walked up to the front desk of Emirates STRESSING; on the edge of tears really. But the guy was great to me, gave me a coupon for a discounted night’s stay which, despite being in El Segundo, was kindof ok, and confirmed me on the next day’s flight instead of leaving me on standby, which was incredibly kind of him.

So I went wandering up Sepulveda to find a RadioShack, the last act of my trusty Blackberry before relegation to the position of fallback camera after I packed the charger chord for my parents’ camera but forgot the camera itself, and ran across a great little ghetto fabulous sports bar with low light and red crushed velvet wallpaper (the ribs were amazing, by the way, kind of a honey sesame seasoning) and watched game 3 of the NBA finals. It would be weeks until I got word that it had gone seven games and the Lakers had won. I got none of the details.

But I took good advantage of the hotel’s free WiFi (another ‘last’) to download four solid articles of East African history, which I printed up in the management office in the morning, great thanks to the staff of La Hacienda for that. Then I took a soak in the hot tub and my last morning newspaper in English and some Mexican food, which I rightly expected I’d not find much of here. I got to the airport before the desk even opened and was through security with about three hours to kill, which I believe I spent on a final proofreading of my term paper (which I’ve gotten an ‘A’ on, by the way, simplifying my life considerably).

It’s difficult to condense a sixteen hour plane ride into an appropriately engaging half page, but that is somewhat simplified by the fact that I spent the whole thing reading and annotating the first two articles, sleeping for a few hours, and then writing up the first of two ‘historiographical summaries’ still due before my quarter was truly over. This was aided considerably by the fact that Emirates furnishes their long-haul planes with two power outlets for every three-seat row, but hindered by the fact that they also provide individual screens for every seat, a couple-hundred-video library and video games to boot. Those amenities, added to the leggy blonde Australian flight attendant, who flirted quite pleasantly throughout most of the flight (being the first passenger checked in, by about twenty hours, I got a bulkhead seat, so her fold-up was right across from me) and the really sexy uniforms they wear, including a red hat with a scarf pinned at the temple which hangs down and then wraps around the collar (the only time they have to wear it over their nose and mouth is if they get off the plane in Saudi Arabia: I asked) makes Emirates, hands down, the best airline in the world. I’m not a terribly experienced international traveler, but first hand I can say its better than British Airways, KLM or Lufthansa, and I have agreement for others who’ve flown with more.

Ok, enough with the Emirates ad. We landed in Dubai in the most opulent airport EVER, went through customs pretty quickly, although I ran into some trouble at the declarations post after two guards carrying M4s (I can’t tell you how strange it is to walk by police and even private security toting serious firepower: Beretta, Kalashnikov, serious shotguns held so frankly you’d almost…almost…think they were toys. But you get used to it) noticed me taking pictures of the fuckin’ marble-columned, literally acres-wide baggage claim area. They waved me on when I was a little too willing to open my bag for them (“No, no, no, tell me if you’re carrying anything to declare.” Tourist.).

So, you walk out of the air conditioned arrivals terminal and the heat hits you like a sledge. Luckily its early evening and the desert gets steadily cooler but never so far as cold, or even really cool. They take you to in a bus to the Millennium Airport Hotel, which is as opulent as everything in Dubai, even though the rooms in the ‘Emirates Wing,’ which are compped, including dinner, anytime snack and breakfast for passengers with overnight layovers, like me, are quite modest.

I had a bit of an embarrassing episode when I first got into the room. None of the lights would turn on. The TV turned on, and I even went so far as to check the circuit board before calling the front desk in confusion.

*Sigh* “Sir, you must put you key card in the slot by the door.”

It had looked like a light switch, but it had no moving parts.

Tourist.

So I grab a cab downtown with the doctor and lawyer twins who’d sat next to me on the plane, but we got dropped off in the wrong place and by the time we’ve walked almost the whole ‘round it looking for the entrance, the gates are closed and we miss our chance to go to the top of whatever-it’s-called tower, currently the tallest in the world or something, I think. Shit, saved me some money, though. Turns out its quite expensive for some vertigo and a few photographs.

So we took a few pictures from the base, wandered around Dubai Mall, which is like Mall of America type of huge, then headed off to this bar the Sheila had told us about. I will say about the tower that it’s a pretty impressive building that won’t fit in the camera frame, or even the field of human vision, whole. You look at the base and start looking up and up from about fifty yards away and by the time you get about halfway up, the lights at the bottom have already disappeared from even your peripheral vision.

The bar was also impressive. Four patios on two levels, two rooms indoors, live music, covers of John Mayer unfortunately, three bars and beach access with some impressive yachts at anchor in the bay. The Sheraton Hotel was next door. The place had taken advantage of the transit crowd, like us, by building a big white dome, air-conditioned and with its own bar and a big screen TV feed. It was the night of the opening ceremony and it was kind of crowded when we first got there, but it soon emptied out and we hung out on one of the patios, near a fountain with a broad pool that must have been quite expensive to feed with clear blue water in the desert air during the day.

We met up with a couple of guys we’d eaten dinner with at the hotel who had made it to the top of the tower, saw their photos and had some weak, overpriced drinks. Whatever, I figured I was lucky to find a wet bar at all in a Muslim country. The one guy was a kind-of douchie if gregarious thirty-something bartender from San Diego (“Don’t say I’m from L.A.!” Wah.) and the other his lapdog friend, so I went home with the twins. I had another summary to write, after all, and I surprised myself by mustering the motivation to read a page or two before going to bed.

Last word on Dubai is to repeat what I told the twins, slightly buzzed at a price that should have gotten me plastered, in the cab on the ultra-modern ten-lane main freeway on the way back to the hotel. It’s a place that feels so foreign to me that I can’t really be sure, but I think, with a few more weeks in town that it’s a place I’d really enjoy.

The trip to Nairobi was a six hour version of the same flight from L.A. but a less luxurious plane and a flight attendant team made up of the most incredible variety of gorgeous women you can imagine from the senior attendant, a gorgeous Nilotic black woman, maybe Sudanese, but with an unfortunate angry demeanor, to a buxom blonde Dutch, a dark haired beauty and the new girl they were training, a perfect-featured Spanish girl who I swear would have been putty for me if she hadn’t been training and I hadn’t had to write.

I still had a page or two to write when I got off the plane. Had to find an ATM, then bought a Nigerian team jersey to get change for the bills it gave me, The jersey cost five times as much as the visa it facilitated and I still haven’t worn it since I didn’t make the game. Now it’s basically useless since the damn team’s banned from playing internationally for two years. Fuck. Oh well, at least it saved me thirty or more dollars on the Zimbabwean visa.

I found a café on the airport campus that let me plug in, but I didn’t finish the paper (so vague and distracted because of the noise that I’m frankly surprised I did well enough on it to pull the full ‘A’ in the class) until the seventieth minute, so I missed the South Africa goal and only barely caught Mexico’s equalizer after dashing off an e-mail and attachments at a badly virus infected internet café next door that’s almost sunk my last flashdrive and I barely kept off my mom’s computer. I did keep it clean, Ma, I swear, but we really should get a Norton subscription on this thing. I’m finally sold on the two hundred dollars a year for it.

Took a couple of pics of the café where I caught the end of the game to commemorate the end of my term and the belated beginning of my summer trip. (But it looks like I've lost these pictures, at least until I get a new Blackberry and can upload the backup of the main memory drive onto it from the old one)

2/7/10-3/7/10

Chapter Three

Breakthrough! I’ve finally found something that I can use!

I’ve been trying to motivate myself to tell some stories about my trip from Nairobi to Johannesburg and my night in Dubai, but I just haven’t found it. There are some very interesting parts to the whole thing, but I guess there’s not really any single unified story, despite the long road along which it all happened.

I’ve been in Maputo, Moçambique (yeah, I went there. It’s called a cedilha and I think I love it) for a couple of weeks now and, first of all, the thing you need to realize about Africa is that you can only ever get one or two things done in a day because, well, people only really work a couple of hours a day and you never really know which ones they’re gonna be. So maybe you get to the University at ten A.M. and maybe the archive building doesn’t open until noon. If it turns out that what you’re looking for is downtown in the Bexia (or Lowland) district, you’ve not only got to make your way down there, for all you know, the guy you need to talk to went home at one. The only thing that’s guaranteed is that by four when the games start, no one is in their office.

So I’ve been trying to get into this one building for two weeks. There are four buildings associated with the historical archives directorate. One is on the campus of Edward Moudlane University, the national school, one is on 24 de Julho the upper street of the two major roads in town. In Beixa (sometimes written and said Beira) there’s an admin building where I had to write a letter to the Director General (a pedido, I’m told it’s an essential to getting anything official done, so I’ve kept the file) for permission to use the archives.

The last building is sort of an annex to the National Library which is on 25 de Setembro, the lower main street that runs through Beixa. It’s where the microfilms are kept and it’s been pretty clear for a while that that’s the format in which anything as old as I want would be kept. Still, around here, as with many places, you’ve got to do things their way or they’ll inevitably turn obstinate and it’ll just be like pulling teeth. The appropriate metaphor, I think, is more like waiting for a loose tooth to come out. So finally—yesterday now, because I got distracted from finishing this last night—I not only received permission to go to the annex and an introduction to the woman in charge of the microfilm, I also got the chance to borrow a friend of mine’s research assistant as an interpreter. Sure enough, not an hour in the microfilm office with this girl and I find myself with a catalogue book of documents pertaining to Moçambique from the national archives in Lisbon, organized by author, date and subject. I flip to the chronological section, copy down the call numbers of the first dozen and a half documents and voila! I’m off to make sure they found them all this morning and that I’m one step away from great success!

Of course, characteristically, the one step is inevitably turning into six already. Apparently, the machine that could copy the microfilms for me, something they would be happy to do, is broken. So now I have to find an old school film developer or another library or something that can do it for me. Africa.

1/7/10 – 2/7/10

Chapter Two

This entry ought to be an account of the events that brought me finally to the game, but once again, events have overtaken my ability to chronicle them. Last night I had the privilege of witnessing a ceremony of spirit possession and prophecy in the Shona tradition. I had spent the day wandering Johannesburg in the company of my recently acquainted friends because the one bus that hadn’t left for Maputo by the time I got to the station was already full.

I began the day in a plaza called Gandhi Square, after the Indian revolutionary who had spent his early legal career in South Africa (I think that’s all accurate). There was a coffee shop I’d been to the day before where the serving girls were friendly (NO, it’s not like that) and I figured they could point me to a bookstore as I’ve forgotten to bring anything to read. First, I finished my entry for the game at a pizza place (Debonair’s, it’s a local chain) and then I headed over. The place is called Urban Coffee or Urban Café, I can’t remember, and it’s the only place on the entire continent, as far as I can tell, that has public electrical outlets for the clientele. Anyways, something about Africans is that they always want to show you the way, no mere bad directions will do, they’re gonna come get lost with you.

So while I wait for the server girl, who’s just closing the shop, I chat with her boss, a beautiful black woman (here, they’d call her colored, ‘cause she’s clearly mixed race somewhere back). Anyways, she’s just opened the place three weeks ago and we’re chatting, when her friend walks in, a kooky, Professor Trelawny type who tells her friend she needs more African styling in her place (she’s an interior decorator). I assure her it looks great, all it needs is a space heater until she socks away enough for a real system.

Why am I telling you this? No good reason actually, it was just a pleasant hour and this is a journal.

Anyway, the girl takes me to a bookstore specializing in textbooks, tells me it’s too late to find another one on a Saturday, so she commences to monopolize my afternoon. Now don’t get me wrong, I had fun, met a friend of hers at a dark bar with loud DJ music and quite a crowd for a Saturday at two. She says in SA they literally just party all weekend in the bars and seems amused that we prefer to relax at home until nightfall. Anyways, she doesn’t seem to feel too comfortable about my safety there, so we begin bouncing around, she and her friend showing me the inns and outs (how’s that saying actually go?) of a neighborhood called Hillbrow, just outside the CBD, Central Business District. Long story short, (too late!) I get picked up at a McDonald’s on Gandhi Square at 6:30 and I’m asleep in bed at the school by 8:00.

I wake up to the sound of drums and choral music at probably midnight. At first, I think it’s the CD player (yeah, primitive, right?) that my host leaves on with a Luther Vandross album to go to sleep to. It’s clearly not Luther Vandross playing, but I figure he must have changed it. Later, I wake and think perhaps some people must be having a drum circle and party upstairs, where I know some other guys sleep. I check my phone which, thankfully, I remembered to plug in overnight. It’s fully charged. Its 4:30 pm, Pacific Time; 1:30 in the morning. I’m awake, and its beautiful music, so I switch on my voice notes recorder.

The first song lasts for ten minutes and I don’t want to stop recording to check if its working until it’s over. When it ends, I take a listen, but its seems like the microphone is only catching the very loudest sounds. I’m fully awake now. I decide to go looking for the party. Why not?

I get out into the hallway and realize that the music is coming from the classroom next door. There are about twenty people, mostly women, wrapped in painted cloth and western coats, many with leggings or jeans on underneath. It was a strange scene, and for much of the next three hours, I would be saying to myself again and again that there was a part of this scene that was both ridiculous and absurd, and another part that was completely sane and kind of otherworldly holy or sacred.

They were standing around in a circle, singing and dancing, and a couple of women were banging the wooden backs of erasers against the wooden part of a push broom like clavés. A couple of women come over to the doorway and I half gesture, half speak to ask if would be alright if I recorded them on my phone. They nod yes and slowly edge back into the group.

For the next half hour I filmed from the doorway as they danced and stomped and sang. At one point, a man holding two mallets and an animal hair whisk fell to shaking and shivering on the carpet and another, a woman, began moaning and groaning, eventually dropping to the floor and rolling around while the others continued singing around them. Eventually they all sat down and, since it didn’t seem appropriate for me to remain standing in the doorway, I slipped past the unhinged door laying on its side across the opening and sat down against a wall.

The one holding the whisk began speaking at great length in Shona, during which time he called up individuals one at a time who came forward on hands and knees to listen as he spoke directly to them. At some point, someone rolled him something that smelled suspiciously like pot when he smoked it.

From time to time, they would break into song again, and eventually an older woman took the leader’s place. She continued calling people up one by one and then suddenly, everyone was laughing and looking at me. The leader guy gestured to me and whispered in English (the first I’d heard in an hour) that the ancestors were calling me up.

I had seen enough to know what to do. I approached on hands and knees, clopping my cupped hands together and bent my head before the woman. The leader guy kept whispering in my ear. First she was asking for the white water so the ancestors could share in my good fortune. Then she was giving a prophecy. Now, someone brought a basin of pure water which she drank from as I bent my head, listening for the end of the prophecy when I was supposed to say something, kind of like an amen.

All of a sudden, I hear a pfffft! and I feel water spraying across the top of my head. Everyone laughs and cheers and I figure I’m done, so I crawl back to my corner. Then they bring a gourd out with some milky, spiced liquid. She takes a sip from a dipper then holds it out to me, crawling forward with her eyes closed, so I jump back up to her and take a sip, hoping this stuff doesn’t end up all over me too. But I hand the dipper to the leader guy and he downs the rest of it.

Now they all get up and start dancing and singing again. One of the ladies comes over and translates what just happened for me. Apparently, they’ve been consulting with the ancestors about their problems and the ancestors have been giving them prophecies in return. She tells me the woman had dreamt of me the night before and that the ancestors have prophesied that I would have good luck.

By now its four am. Johannesburg has been in the midst of the coldest June in memory and I’m beginning to shiver, although maybe it was just the effect of the ancestors leaving me. They try and oblige me by moving me away from the door, then when they start dancing again they give me a spot beside the space heater, which helps. But I have a bus to catch at 8:45, and I’m starting to get travelers’ diarrhea, although I haven’t admitted it to the point of taking the antibiotics in my dop kit. I run to the water closet, come back, say my thank yous and go back to bed. By seven, they’re gone. I wash a little bit from a bucket of boiling water over a drain, miss the bus at the main Jo-burg station because Ken, Rex’s friend who I’m staying with, thinks it’s at 9 and South Africa is the only country in Africa where busses actually leave when they’re scheduled to. But we catch up to it at the stop near Ellis Park. I don’t know if you call that good luck or bad, but here I am, we’ve just dropped some Portuguese and Italian fans in Nelspruit and the next stop, barring a lunch break, is at the Mozambique border.

Bye for now, plenty of stories to tell, so I’ll be back soon. Peace.

20/6/10

Chapter One

Did I call this just chapter one? It feels as if ten chapters worth of activity has gone by since I finally caught my plane from LAX to Dubai. From the sixteen hour plane ride to my first night in Asia to Nairobi and four bus rides through three other countries to Johannesburg there is plenty to reflect on, but I’ll start with today, while it is still fresh and the vuvuzela are still calling outside.

The United States have come from behind to draw Slovenia two-two, which should have been a win two different ways but for the officials. I arrived in the eighteenth minute after an adventure through the streets of Johannesburg and Soweto that is a story all its own, but includes my first right-hand driving experience in the most beat up little manual transmission Nissan pickup you can imagine. In my pocket were an unused ticket to the Greece-Nigeria game in Bloemfontein the night before, which I had them print up anyways, a handful of used bus tickets and coins in various currencies, and the phone number of a Boer security guard who’d said he’d hold on to my Swiss Army knife until after the game. I found my seat at about the five meter mark from what I believe was the south end of the pitch. The U.S. were defending on my end in the first half, so I actually got to see all three goals happen on my end. The score when I sat down was already one-nil Slovenia and the pretty thirty-something English-South African woman sitting beside me with her very enthusiastic husband told me the U.S. defense had been “stupid, and the keeper didn’t even move” for the shot, although later she allowed as how it was a really nice shot that he would not have stopped anyways.

So I sat down, ate the Wimpy burger I’d snuck into the stadium in my bag and waved my flag a bit and took some photos of the crowd, the field, etc. and chatted a bit with the South African couple next to me. They were from Jo-burg and were drinking Budweisers, which are an international beer now, I guess, and it looked like they were the only ones being sold, though I didn’t drink. I told them about how I’d missed the Greece-Nigeria game on account of being held up at the Zimbabwean border for eight (count ‘em, eight) hours by two women who tried to bring in, literally, thousands of Rand (South African currency) in goods to sell without declaring them. By the time the South African customs agents caught on, they were so suspicious of the whole lot of us, which included Zambian government officials on diplomatic passports, dancers with the Zambian national dance troupe and random individuals like me that they went through every single bag and suitcase twice and checked out immunization cards, to boot, something that hasn’t been done at any other of the half dozen borders and airports I’ve passed through so far, and which I don’t expect to happen again the rest of the time I’m here.

All of a sudden, the crowd roared and I looked up in time to see a Slovenian forward making a break for goal and a lob coming off the foot of his teammate. “Oh, they’re clearly going to call this one back,” I thought to myself, “he’s obviously offsides.” But I look to the line official and his flag is down.

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” I yell, as the Slovene picks up the ball in space, streaks up the near side and tucks it past a diving Howard, who, it must be said, did everything that could have been done in the circumstances. The South African guy beside me is going wild but showing me sympathy at the same time. Still, he thinks the guy was onside until we see the replay on the jumbotron, at which point we can all agree that, although his feet are on and the moment the ball is struck, the lean of his body has him clearly offside. So, what can you do? The U.S. is down two-nil and not looking very energetic, although by the end of half they’ve put together a couple of dangerous looking attacks. The South African guy and I agree that nobody really wants the ball. They keep laying off to each other looking for a better look and they end up serving lobs that will have a good result if they get lucky, but come to nothing when they don’t.

I buy a couple half liter Cokes and wander the stadium at half time. The U.S. fans look pretty dejected and only the Slovenes and the international fans seem to be having any fun. I walk past a sad looking cowboy smoking a cigarette (“Ellis Park Stadium is a non-smoking area,” blares over the loudspeaker, “please refrain from smoking anywhere in the building.”). I see the first pretty white girls I’ve seen in weeks. Mostly it’s pretty bleak.

(I couldn't figure out how to rotate it and I'm tired, it's late)

But the U.S. side finally shows some urgency in the second half. Landon shows the first spark of true brilliance I’ve ever seen from him when he receives a ball in space on the far side near touch in the forty-eighth, dribbles in, keeping the goalie honest by showing cross and then coolly slotting it over his head into the roof of the net. The stadium goes wild. The South Africans, who clearly just want to see good football, are high-fiving me and jumping up and down shouting U-S-A, U-S-A along with everyone. I’ve never been a fan of Landon Donovan, I’ll admit: I’ve always thought he was just ‘OK’ in an international context, but he’s earned himself a truce from me with that one, it was absolutely clinical. Clutch. I’m sure he’s been holding his breath.

Everyone knows the rest of the story. The U.S. equalize a few minutes later and the Slovenian side startgetting pretty nasty, booking three or four yellows in about twenty minutes. The only thing worth mentioning is that I took a photograph that proves beyond doubt that no one was offsides on the third U.S. goal. I don’t know what the actual call was, but the picture clearly shows the ball airborne and an easy three or four meters of space, so if it was offsides, someone’s career needs to be ended.

Oh, well. I left in the ninety-first minute even though the Americans were making good attacks to the end because that security guard said he’d only be on duty til six and it was already ten to. I’m glad I found him, because that phone number is useless to me given that I don’t have any international roaming. I’ll probably need that thing in Tanzania and it sure as hell was a comfort walking back to the empty school my friend Rex’s brother owns which I’m staying at these two nights. These two guys were about thirty paces behind me for like eight blocks so I opened up the knife blade and the nasty looking (and FUCKING sharp) saw blade and held the thing inside my hoodie pocket all the way home. I walk around enough to know that no one stays the same distince from you for that long without dropping back or catching up and I hear that’s what they do around here; follow you until you’re somewhere isolated, then they just stab you, bam! Well, I got back alright, but I had to keep the knife out for a while when a rather hostile, possibly drunk guy showed up just as I was looking for a nice stoop under street lighting in the courtyard to write this. Rex’s contact who I’m staying with was gone dropping his girlfriend off and I didn’t feel like hanging out in his room alone. Guess I’ve learned better than to do that in Jozi.

18/6 – 19/6/10

I just posed this on Hardblogger, Chris Matthews's blog

A). Michael Steele is according to all fair reckoning, the elected leader of the Republican party. Rush Limbaugh, to be fair, is mostly unquestionably the ideological head of the party.

B). According to this same standard of policy versus ideology, Barack Obama is NOT a liberal. He is absolutely an economic liberal [well he should be, liberal economics encourage prosperity while conservative economics encourage nothing but sometimes extortion (popular, criminal or otherwise)], but he is not an ideological liberal, and frankly it is offensive for a politician who will not ALLOW HIS CAMPAIGN WORKERS TO DISCUSS THE CONCEPT “UNIVERSAL HEALTHCARE” (even as it is different from Universal Access or mandatory insurance), who won’t reject a White House office of Faith Based Initiatives, who won’t pull American troops out of unpopular war [I don’t approve of all liberal ideology, but I acknowledge it]. Barack Obama is clearly an ideological centrist, right down to his women’s rights and environmental policies, which are his only non-economic reversals of the status quo, rejections of clearly conservative ideals in favor of popular, relatively liberal policies.

C). I agree with Trent Lott [(R)!]. Democrats have plenty of achievable governance they can pass over vocal Republican objection, all of which will make them look good while winding the clock toward Nov. ’10 when they will have a chance to pick up filibuster-proof majority. Remember that it is rare to the point of unheard-of for a president to lose ground in congress in his first midterms, and its one of the few clear black-marks on Bill Clinton’s record outside of letting his own perjury become a sideshow that he did so. Democrats should play by the rules, sure, they ought to break a filibuster the old-fashioned parliamentary (human weakness-dependent) way when it’s strategically possible or necessary, but it’s only the senate, there’s no need to get so godawful impatient Chris, we can get plenty done; remember what happened to the Whigs when they opposed a popular but inhumane war of aggression against Mexico? I can’t think of anything I’d rather do as an ideological and as an economic liberal than find out what happens when an opposition lets the ruling party hang themselves with the rope of that inhumane war. I can gleefully wait until Jan. 2011 for ‘Democrat’ carte blanche.

New Rule

Bill Mahr's thing but I'm appropriating it.

I can now post from my Blackberry. My Blackberry is also currently my only media outlet available. I will therefore be posting from 'anywhere', perhaps more often.

Back to the Parties

Ok, as always, its been a while since I last posted, but I'm going to keep it short.

I had a conversation recently about the "true" nature of the Republican party.  My counterpart insisted that George W. Bush did not represent "true" Republicanism, and that a true Republican would not have spent so outrageously nor violated the constitution so egregiously.

This was smart young man.  I can't remember just now with which of my friends I was having this conversation, but I do recall clearly that he didn't seem the least bit lost when I took his "true" Republican argument back to 1801, begining with the premise that the Republican Party (or, rather, the ideology that is today called the Republican Party), and I quote myself, "was founded by George Washington, or rather, founded on the image of Washington, because Washington never wanted there to be 'factions' at all, by John Adams and Alexander Hamilton."

I continued by pointing out that almost always since that time, there have been two tracks to Republican ideology, one represented ably by Adams, the other, frighteningly by Hamilton.  He readily agreed.  The whole problem with my friend's premise about "true" Republicanism, is that Adams did not want factions either.  It was almost exclusively on the engine of Hamilton's callousness that the two party system was formed, and Adams became a part of the conservative faction almost by default, because he needed those rightist votes combined with his centrist followers in order to win the presidency over Jefferson.

Notice that Adams HATED Hamilton, all his life.  Notice that with the exception of the height of their policy battles at the turn of the century, Adams and Jefferson were THE CLOSEST high profile friends of the whole congress of Founding Fathers, all their lives.  The truth is that the "true" Republicanism argued by my friend, has far more in common with Jefferson and the present day Democratic Party than it EVER had with Hamilton and his monarchist, treasury centered policy.  So the "true" Republicanism is actually exactly what we've had for the past eight years.  George W. Bush (the Federalist Society's president), is exactly the logical extension of the core priniciples that led to the foundation of the Republican Party.

The Thing About Making Fun of Barack Obama

So there's this uproar both from Barack Obama and from sources far around the political spectrum from him regarding the cover of the New Yorker, which I believe would intentionally damage Barack Obama about as much as I believe the son of god (any god) was begotten by a human woman and the child went on to do wondrous deeds.

The feeling of offense must be genuinely felt by Obama's supporters, among whom I don't classify myself (I'm one of his voters, but I wouldn't say I think he's the best candidate), because many of them get the New Yorker and like it's tone, generally. And in a sense, it is a funny cartoon, not aimed at Obama at all, but using him as the subject. The problem is that, being a political cartoon, and being a quite sophisticated joke, it is killed by the fact that there just isn't a lot of room for humor surrounding Barack Obama becoming the President of the United States of America.

In particular, the time surrounding his inauguration is a sensitive subject for his backers, who fear assassination (and for good reason of course). And more broadly, for people of leftist ideologies in general, the chilling effect of his assassination, yet another liberal Icon murdered in the long 20th century, would likely send shockwaves through the country. Drawing a picture, however funny it may be on a sophisticated level, that might easily be considered emblematic by the opposition, whether by isolated fundamentalists or by the broader conservative movement, while it isn't exactly irresponsible, is just effing scary.

There's just not a lot of room for humor surrounding the topic of Barack Obama becoming President. I mean, an unsophisticated person, i. e. an idealized voter of the red state presidential strategy, might easily look at that picture, go "Yeah, that's exactly what we're going to have if that nigger becomes President; a Black Muslim Anti-American Militant and his Black Bitch of a wife."

There's just not a lot of room for humor surrounding the topic of any black man doing something for the first time. Doesn't everyone know what a cross it was for Jackie Robinson to bear, being the first black man in Major League Baseball? How all his career, spikes would be turned up at him covering second base, how he was under near constant death threats all his life.

There's just not a lot of room for humor surrounding the topic of a black man risking his life to do something a white man might dream of doing all his life without the slightest knowledge that people of other backgrounds must fear for their lives when aspiring to the same ambition.

I don't blame the New Yorker for trying; heck, maybe they hoped to elicit that passionate response from the left, to stir emotions in preparation for the final campaign. I think that's basically the actual result, but really publishing it seems a lot like playing with fire in the old fireworks warehouse.

Farewell Angelina

This is a bit of fiction I wrote in college. I'm rather fond of it, but anyone who has a suggestion is welcome, in fact requested to comment. I don't consider criticism as intrinsically negative.

It begins with a familiar melody, telling a story from an unfamiliar world...

Farewell Angelina the bells of the crown

Have been stolen by bandits I must follow their sound

The triangle tingles; the music plays slow

But farewell Angelina the night is on fire and I must go.

There is no use in talking and there is no need for blame

There is nothing to prove everything still is the same.

A table stands empty by the edge of the stream

But farewell Angelina the sky is changing colors and I must leave

The jacks and the queens they forsake the courtyard

52 gypsies now file past the guard.

In the space where the deuce and the ace once ran wild,

Farewell Angelina the sky is folding; I’ll see you after a while.

See the cross-eyed pirates sit perched in the sun

Shooting tin cans with a sawed off shotgun

And the corporals and neighbors clap and cheer with each blast

But farewell Angelina the sky is trembling and I must leave fast.

King Kong, little elves, in the rooftops they dance

Valentino type tangos while the heroes clean hands.

Shut the eyes of the dead not to embarrass anyone

Farewell Angelina the sky is flooding over and I must be gone

The camouflage parrot he flutters from fear

When something he doesn’t know about suddenly appears

What cannot be imitated perfect must die

Farewell Angelina the sky is flooding over and I must go where it is dry

Machine guns are roaring puppets heave rocks

At misunderstood visions and at the faces of clocks

Call me any name you like I will never deny it

But farewell Angelina the sky is erupting and I must go where it is quiet.

Farewell Angelina

We had left the main camp late in the afternoon because I had wanted to ask the Lady Angelina to marry me. I am not a nobleman and although I will certainly be at least a Commander in the army someday it would still have been an affront to her honor to be asked for her hand in public by a commoner. I was going off on campaign soon; the Alleman were already raiding in the east. But I had decided that I loved the Lady Angelina and I knew I had to ask her before leaving on campaign because I would lose my nerve otherwise.

She looked so beautiful as we rode a mile or so from camp to a glade I’d found scouting before we stopped for the night. The Bells of the Crown hanging in her hair like musical gems gave off giggling tingles whenever she tossed her hair. I could hardly speak as we entered the glade and the sunset shone off her face, I had no eyes for anything or anyone but her, more foolish me. In my anxiety I bent down on one knee almost before we’d really come beside the stream with the fallen log. I stared into her surprised eyes and asked the question I’d learned by rote, knowing I wouldn’t be able to think.

“My love, will you become my wife?”

She screamed.

She screamed again and turned to run. Only then did I see the men approaching from behind her. As they reached for her I went to whip out my blade but a sharp pain at the back of my head put me on my face in the edge of the stream. Before my eyes cleared, before I could even roll over there were two men sitting on me.

“The first of you who makes another sound will eat their own tongue before we leave,” the voice was raspy and lilting. “We don’t mean you any harm milady, we only need those bells in your hair.”

When I heard this I was furious, this scoundrel was going to steal the Bells of the Crown and probably sell them to some noble who would use them to shame the King or else hold them ransom for a ridiculous price. I started bucking and squirming but all it got me was a kick in the groin, which of course shut me up.

It by no means cooled me off though, especially when they proceeded to lay hands on the Lady Angelina, taking the bells from her by force.

“You coward, no man with honor would treat a woman so—“ I stopped abruptly when a knife slid lightly along my neck, drawing blood shallowly and nearly cutting my jugular. I tried to slow the pounding of my heart, the pressure through my veins, anything to gain another micrometer from that slicing edge. I could feel the painful burning of the lightly sliced skin already beginning to throb in my brain.

“But I am not a man of honor Lieutenant Graves; I have been spying on you and I knew that you would be coming here tonight, I followed you from camp, I’ve been listening to your most intimate moments for months, knowing that you were the key to separating the Bells from their owners just long enough to snatch them.

“Ah, my dear, I am afraid I have ruined what was supposed to have been a very special moment. You should never have worn your lady’s Bells without her permission. I know because it is my way that she will not fault you. But the guilt will be intense. Hmm,” he smiled to himself, “no, not a man of honor at all.”

It was less than a minute before they were gone. They smashed my horn before leaving and galloped off without touching our purses or the strongbox on the wagon.

The moment they were out of earshot I was up and running after them. As I ran I shouted direction to the Lady Angelina to send men after me with a horse and my armor. I still remember her face, tear stained and still full of fear, but as I ran off into the night I saw her face grow determined and she turned to the wagon. The last time I saw my beloved Angelina she was marching over to the mule without even gathering the picnic basket from the ground.

The road the bandits took ran west; back the way we had come, away from the castle and its garrison only a day to the east. I chased them on foot for an hour before my squad game pounding up the road behind me. I didn’t even let my men stop to wait for me to mount up, only caught up with them a minute later. The bandits had followed a small cart path north and east, directly into the setting sun when the main road curved south around a set of hills.

The sun set in an orange blaze of fire that fueled my drive to find to bandits and I drove the horses hard those first hours. But in the twilight, I had to slow the men and in the end I had to call a halt when the trail could no longer be made out even though we climbed down from the saddle to try.

My squad was three twenty-man teams. The first team carries lances and broad swords and their horses are heavily plated. The second team carries large shields and one-handed battle-axes. They also have horses outfitted for a charge. The last team carries bows and broad swords. The bows are long for horse bows, meant for use while the horse stands still and the horses themselves are much more lightly armored so that the team can move quickly. You’ve never seen a more disciplined bunch than my boys; there wasn’t a sound from man or horse through the three-watch night. For all the bandits knew they had gotten away free as Scotts.

All night I sat up and kept an eye on my men. Well, I told myself that was what I was doing. Really I was replaying the encounter with the bandits over and over again in my head, first the lights sparkling off the Lady Angelina’s eyes, her spreading the blanket then me grasping her arm and sinking down to one knee. Was that a flicker of movement I should have seen? A clink of chain mail rustling?

I don’t know how many times I told myself that it didn’t matter if it was my fault, that what had happened had happened and now my only choice was to follow the lost Bells. My Queen had charged her serving maid Lady Angelina with the protection of those bells and I intended to see that what I had allowed to be lost was returned. But that didn’t help ease my guilt, especially when I thought how I had let these bandits interrupt our privacy, my farewell before going off to campaign, my proposal.

I thought of Angelina, I worried whether she would have answered ‘yes,’ I wondered how she would greet me when I returned the next day with the bells. The King would probably reward me with a small title, recovering the Bells of the Crown was no small thing after all. I scolded myself for thinkng of the advantage. Ha.

I never did sleep that first night; I kept thinking I heard the bells tingling in the night. It was never repeated but it would get me thinking through the same old circle of guilt. When I finally calmed my mind and settled down near sleep I would hear it again and start listening for it, but my mind would always wander and then quiet before the bells would ring again. The moment I could see my hands I began rousing the men, first my sergeants then going down the row waking each and whispering the day’s orders which began with absolute silence until otherwise ordered. We had been no more than half an hour behind the bandits when we made camp and they could not have gone much farther than us in the pitch dark of an overcast night even if they’d scouted the area beforehand. If they had been following me for a long time they probably had a hideout here but it was likely not their headquarters.

The true headquarters would be farther from the capitol: I have still never heard of another bandit incident within one hundred miles of the capital. Well, not in the last two hundred years. They would be going back to their true headquarters today if they could, but if I could find them before they left I could have the Bells back in the castle before the King even had a chance to hold court. No one would ever need to know they had been stolen; they don’t come out in public except at court.

Sure enough a half hour tracking on foot brought us to a secret trail and after scouting the area I surprised the bandits at their breakfasts. In the end I killed twelve and captured captured fifty-two of the outlaws, but a small group, no more than six escaped out of a second exit to their hideout. The bells escaped me. I sent the squad back to the castle with the prisoners. I collected all the papers I found in the leader’s tent and read them as I set out in pursuit of the bells with a dozen chosen men.

The papers contained many assorted maps, some of the area, which we put to good use in our pursuit. We realized they were heading for the King’s forest to the north by tracing our path on the map and we even chanced some shortcuts and gained nearly an hour by my guess.

We kept right on their tail like this for three days, sometimes losing a few minutes, sometimes gaining, always scheming, always pressing, but they were forever out of reach just at the next ridge.

I soon wished I’d brought more men and especially more mounts. I knew I couldn’t simply ride off across the kingdom with my unit but I still grudged the loss of manpower when I came upon fired bridges and toppled trees that had to be cleared. Lady Angelina had made quite a scene when she arrived in camp all windswept and calling to arms. Speaking to Angelina in private the King told her that he had decided he could not spare any units from the campaign but that he charged me directly with retrieving the Bells in the name of the Crown.

Lady Angelina, being clever as well as beautiful left this meeting with the King knowing that I could not hope to retrieve the Bells without soldiers and a horse and knowing that the King would never dispatch them. But I had given an order for her to deliver as she shrewdly saw and as the order to bring you a horse did not in any way keep your men from going on campaign they, at least, if not the rest of the king’s soldiers had to follow you. Such technicalities of logic are easy to forgive if one acts first then appologizes where permission might never have been granted.

It was thus that I had first been rescued from my sprint. A full rank would have let me surround and capture the horn that first morning but I had to respect the King’s word, I had to return my squad quickly to the capitol so they could go on campaign even if I did not lead them. They left the bandit redoubt as the sun rose and were aparently less than an hour behind the King in returning to the city. In the confusion of the Queen’s long welcoming ceremony no one even noticed their coming despite the fifty-two prisoners in rough armor and rich jewelery.

I felt badly for my men. I’d stripped the squad of most of it’s backbone, I’d left two talented recruits and a veteran of middle yerars in charge of teams of underseasoned men who were more frightened than anything at the prospect of going out on campaign. Unless they got a few more talented recruits to replace the dozen I’d taken as escort on my quest those boys would break like a stick if they faced any heavy units.

But I could not think of that. I had to retrieve those Bells, even more so now that I had the King’s command, but I didn’t need any more encouragement. The dozen ment I brought with me made it two to one odds in my favor instead of six to one against and there was time to replace fifteen men including the one dead and two seriously injured from the fight with the bandits. The squad would have a full roll by the time the King called muster.

We followed on our quarry’s very heels for four days before there was any real change in the routine of the chase. Late on the fourth day the terrain began to change, the forest to thincken and the land to roll in low hills. We began to encounter patrolls of soldiers who loomed on the hilltops threateningly and kept us from going past for fear that they were truly hostile.

I found a map of the area deep in the pile of maps; on it was marked a castle near the edge of the King’s forest. Using the map and some luck we snuck past the patrols and onto the castle grounds. I left my men guarding the exit by which we’d entered and followed the sound of bells on the other side of the castle. Sneaking past a pair of bandits patrolling I came to a place where I could here the bandit leader’s raspy voice.

“…Now, highness we have made a bargain regarding this little goodie and what you have paid me already is lost I’m afraid since my nw employer offered me three times as much money. And that is not the only thing which is lost to you,” a strangled cry brought me around the corner in time to see the Prince, filled with arrows, fall to the ground. Five bandits stood behind him lined up executioner’s style. One of them spit at the body and the rest laughed.

I was on them before they knew it, even before I knew it, and they fell to me in my rage like stalks of corn. I managed to take the Bells and I killed the remaining five bandits who attacked the Lady Angelina but the bandit leader got away once again and I, having attracted the attention of the bandits on duty guarding the castle was forced to cut my way back to my men past the two men I’d avoided before. That was the only encounter I had though and we slipped out of the castle and mad a run for it.

We were pursued of course by the patrols and we had a few close calls and we lost a man and two more took significant injuries. But finally came a time when I was sure we had lost our pursuit. I brought the company to a halt by a stream where I could wash the dried blood from my hands and bandages could be changed.

It began to rain as we ran from the castle, a hesitant drizzle building to a steady rain, which soaked everything to the bone. I’m told the King had a planned festival the evening he heard that his son had been killed and rather than call it off and go into moruning he only delayed the start of the festival so he could write a new commencement speech. The long and short of the speech, as I have heard it recounted is to say that I, Captain Graves am wanted for the treasonous murder of Prince Gerald and the thrft of the Bells of the Crown.

I tried to return to the castle. I arrived carrying the Bells of the Crown for all to see and presented them to the King with my version of events, but a man with a familir rasping voice, a councelor to the King interrupted me before I had the chance.

“Silence, lying dog,” he called me, ”You hve spun a pretty tale my friend, but we here have all seen the body of the Prince and it has been beheaded with a sword, not shot full of arrows. I have had enough of your lies, for returning the Bells you have earned yourself your life, but you are forthwith banished from this kingdom now and hance.”

Just like that I was chased from my home and the only master I ever served. With never a chance to tell them that this was the true bandit, without even the chance to see my Lady Angelina I was run from the capitol and hounded all the way to the border in the driving rain.

These days I fight for a new King, he has accepted my allegiance because he knows I am an effective commander, but I will never be a General as I might have in my true King’s army. My new King does not trust me though, he has heard both sides of the story and though he claims to believe me, I know that he will never trust me enough to give me a real command of armies.

I have fought in two wars against my old King. Apparently my name has become a common curse word in his domains, a very foul description for traitor. There are always plenty of commanders willing to fight me, the great betrayer, but none has ever beaten me and my King has lost ground to my new master year by year. It seems like I’m constantly at war now, either in the West against my old King or to the south against the Goths.

I know not how my lady sees me these day, she has probably married some rich courtier who lies through his teeth like all the rest and she likely hates me more passionately than any other in the capitol. As far as I’m concerned she can call me any name she likes; I will never deny it. I’m only tired of it all, tired of the war, tired of fighting the good fight for the other side.

I hate being a foreigner in a strange land. These court intrigues have broken me, left me a shattered hulk of a man. I fight because it is what I was born to do, but really all I want is to go off somewhere beyond the plots and beyond the fighting. When the rain comes down these day my thoughts turn back to those happy days returning from the King’s forest, still stupid enough to think I would be a hero when I returned, still thinking I was a hero.

But there are no true heroes, even the ones with the right intentions are only playing martyr in the end for the cause of someone else’s power. This is Farewell my Angelina, I wanted to write this to you, I wanted you to know my side. You have probably not even read this, merely tossed it in the fire, but I wanted you to have the chance to hear it anyways. Someday soon I will not be coming back from war, no man’s luck can last forever, after all. All I ever want out of this life is that you will mourn my passing and not find pleasure. Maybe in another time, another life we will have better luck, better time together, but I cannot bear the thought of you hating my memory through the long years of your life. I simply could not bear it.