Days Like These

Once again I am cramming for a job interview. This one means so much to me that I am not going to say anything revealing about it here in case I don’t get the job and have to act casual and ‘oh well, I was just doing it for a lark..’ about it. However I will say that there is a lot of reading matter…people study for years and still only skim the surface of this stuff.
Intriguing eh?

I have been missing my old buddy Teelo these last few weeks. I especially wanted to tell him about this potential job. It is coming up to year since his death and it is beginning to sink in that we are never going to chew the fat about Obama, beer prices, parties we crashed, dance competitions we won…’the muzungu and the point five’. (White chick and mixed race Rasta). Other friends feel it too. We keen but quietly by email. I still have his last two texts on my phone.

This is Teelo and me and a bunch of impala in Ndola on a film recce in 2000. NB Castle and Mosi

Och well and aye and on we go and all that. Well not if you are a banker. H’oh nope Not if you are hedge fund manager. Mr. Pool your loot and leg it.

What on earth was Old Mugabe banging on about today? God he is one mean old sod – desperately wanting to say he had been coerced into the handshake by the colonial bastards and the enemies within but Mbeki kept giving him Chinese burns so he had to attempt enthusiasm… old goat but still with a scorpion sting (to mix animal metaphors). The heckles were louder but still long distance. No one quite sure how close they can get yet. Inflation in Zimbabwe at 30 million and now the credit grinding (I would say ‘crunching’ but then it sounds like a breakfast cereal) that will start to wilt the ability of the Diaspora to send money home. This is going to affect everyone Africa wide. There are hundreds of thousands of people absolutely dependent on families sending money home. That and food prices exponentially rising and … (I can hear my cousin now. She is yelling ‘ First off you said no talk of death for a while and two, stop with the gloom.always the gloom!’ Quit it!’ She is a New Yorker you know.)

So instead I am trying to unpick a misplaced belt loop from this dress I want to wear on Wednesday. I thought I’d go sombre and classic..but with Big Hair. I know..I should be brushing up on my interview technique but I am worried about the shoes…

Ohhhhhh wish me charm, wit, resourcefulness and the ability to articulate even under stress, to NOT walk into anything too obviously and to engage and enjoy…but most of all wish me luck!

Will let you know how it goes!

RIP Levy

President Levy Mwanawasa is being buried today in Lusaka and Rupiah Banda becomes acting Head of State for the next 90 days whist everyone regroups and figures out what to do next.

Will the Cobra strike again or wil someone sensible prevail? I see Mugabe is at the funeral. Bit creepy really. If anyone sees him dance let me know.

Mugabe and the Vasda Nerada

Mugabe walks up to the UN podium stiffly, like the terrifying spaceman taken over by the Vashda Nerada in Dr. Who last week. I know I know…this is possibly not the most academic when it comes to serious political analysis but the Vashda Narada in Dr. Who live in the shadows, are deadly and are called the piranhas of the air, reducing anything that comes in to their path to bones and dust. A comparison has to be made surely. They have taken over and have feasted on any humanity left in Mugabe’s silk suit encrusted body and now are going on to reduce Zimbabwe to a pile of skeletons. . The walk gives it away.. (You’ll thank me for this when the truth comes out…)

I am very tired. Last week was difficult indeed. Someone I don’t know very well but am fond of, is very ill with a severe psychiatric disorder. I had imagined myself going to their house and helping her cook and clean whilst her partner finally got a break and went to work. I imagined I could ease things, help her rest let her poor battered boyfriend rest. I saw myself all sensible, coffee and cake, matronly ableness.

I was a being a bit of a twit.

Her illness makes her very paranoid and her thoughts go in basic circles that won’t release her. She is terribly frightened. Everything is personal; ‘ideas of reference’ I believe this is called. It is not possible to make a call, source a help line, talk to her boyfriend in front of her without making her more anxious. ‘What are you doing? What does it mean? What are you doing? What does it mean?’

She won’t let me help in the kitchen. She won’t eat properly, wash properly; she is hardly sleeping at night and not able to rouse herself in the morning. Her partner is exhausted and has taken so much time off work he worries he may lose his job. .

My presence causes stress but on Wednesday I get her to eat breakfast and then I run away to look for a local Citizens Advice Bureau. I find that there was one…but it shut 6 weeks ago due to lack of funding.

‘What do people in trouble, in confusion, do now?’ I ask the nice woman at the empty building’s reception.
‘Take leaflets…errr…that’s it really.’ She says. ‘I can offer you a solicitors appointment in August.’

I don’t want to but I head back to the house and the woman is a little more composed. We go and pay her rent; we go for a walk in the park and endlessly and on and on and around and around I try to reassure her, telling her over and over again what is happening, how people are trying to help her. She can’t believe anything I say. She is so frightened. Her partner comes home and I bolt.

At my older sister’s house, the vicarage in Staines, I sit with my back to the beautiful garden feeling sheepish and stupid. She watches me, saying nothing, as I rattle on angry, worried, defensive. I run out of words and she lets me come to my own understanding of the implications of the situation.
I become quiet. There is nothing more to be said.
My sister hugs me.