Eight

Africa

If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a color that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me? - Karen Blixen

This place, that you call Africa, with its Giant Rift, its Great Dry Desert, has many many ghosts that rise from the sunburnt fields and ivory coasts. They rise like the tide, ululating at me. I wave and sparkle. I circle and loop the continent. I see spears abandoned between blades of singing grass. I see burning tires, plastic and aluminum shanties and disposable razor blades. Thick blood coagulates under the sun beside a severed chocolate limb. This place, that you call Africa, is far and forgotten by all those with television and telephones. Does this place know a song of you or me?


Does Africa know a song of me? Do I hear it when I fly past the shining smiling children? Their skins black and rich, like oil, glisten with sweat. I flow across the plains, through the huts and kraals and veld. I leave behind Baobabs and warthogs. I cross the lonely Karoos, with their solitary steel windmills creaking at the emptiness...and wait in the echoes of lost caves and dry riverbeds, for the echoes of ancient souls. I find bushman blood on rock. I find fires in the huts, fires chewing fynbos, coals puffing blue smoke into early morning air. I see pots brimming with porridge and beer. I see people on the phone, floating through the veld in their airconditioned ships.

The giraffe are running in slow motion, across wheat white grass littered with tree skeletons, in a place you call Savuti.
I float over the swarming zebra and more herds hewn by the longest barbed wire fence I have seen in the world. I search for lions but I cannot find them. The wire scratches lands swimming in the heat. Then I follow the longest and mightiest rivers in the world.

The flocks of the long dead linger in the vast fields of our forgetfulness. Trees fall, seen only by Chimpanzees, in steamy jungles. Baboons and bushbabies blink at a leopard in a nearby tree. A gorilla chews on a bamboo shoot while a squad of poachers take aim. Cruel unheard blows blacken and break the already broken heart of Africa. And even more brutality persists against our ignorance and neglect, making the bitter watches of the night, far beyond our cars and cares, darker still.

I rise, I have to, from the sleepy mists and see the sun stabbing at what is heartbreakingly beautiful. Flamingoes turn the air into flowers. A river, its veins clear as glass, quivers with silver fish and throbbing brown hippos that trample and crush red lilies and palms. This river gets itself lost in a desert, and spreads life like a giant hand full of sparkling gold coins.

I drink these fresh views. I fill with light. It is a sensation something like breathing. I fall down the Rift, treading along crooked volcanic crags and faults until I fly into the falls. Plumes of water crash into the firmament, breaking the mantle with its silver thrusts.
I swim along the cascades of fast foam and tumbling cumulous. I skip by rubber boats and yellow helmets.
You were here, I know. Your skin dripped with these waters, and your blood was cooked by the special African brew that brings flavor and vitality to all the creatures of this continent.

I step from waterfall to iceberg, and wait in the glare for the sun. It comes upon this charred surface and melts my cold dry seat to a cool icing that becomes soft grease that sinks into between the chocolate gravel, like cream onto skin.. The jet-warmed air carves at my throne all day, and when the sun sinks, edges are eaten away. I sway above the wisps and swathes.
I see the path, and the forlorn specks moving like commas through a dark, rocky paragraph. You were here too, at this summit of the African shelf. You, and my other son, and my husband.
You came here and did not stop, in your suffering, to reflect on the stupendous sweeps around you. Instead you battled to breathe, and to walk, and to think. You missed things like music, and warmth, and green grass, and flowing water, and soft, warm food.

My boy, my man, this is one of the joys of the dead. We dwell in these heavenly heights, able to absorb it all.
This beauty that is beyond the reach of the living.
There is absolutely no trace of any of you now. There is just a book in a sticker plastered trunk, a derelict sign, and in the crater, between two isolated chimneys, a single blue tent shuddering like a kite.
I go inside and find the campers there. They cannot sleep or dream. They dwell between life and death, as I do.
They seem to see me. They shudder and shake. Their heads ache, and fingers scratch at snowy zippers.

As I fly I see more precious water loosen from their icy ships and drip right through the cracks onto the snoring furnace below. I am part of the chorus that opens out over the African Plains. The song fills the abandoned buildings and flies down dusty roads. The acacias clap their feathery fronds. The lions stand silently on a hilltop, flicking their tails. Will you ever listen to this song of this place; this place that you call Africa?