From Paris With Love

You have to admit, life is a little weird. I started this blog a little over a year ago with a blog about moving to Johannesburg and my feelings about living in the City of Gold. What followed was a series of blogs about my observations on South Africans, my encounters with racism and the terrible inequality that marks South African society. Now, one year later, here I am on the other side of the planet, this time I call Paris my new home.

You would think that living in Paris would be any writer’s wet dream? Inspiration falling from the gargoyles that line the ancient cathedrals on Parisian avenues, or perhaps being inspired by the countless fountains or courtyards filled with couples whispering sweet nothings to each other? In a way yes, I have had my head twisted around in a way it hasn’t been since I first moved to Algeria and came face to face with the Arab world. I have been opened up to another world, a whole new continent, a whole new people.

But at the end of the day, there is still that bothersome thing called life, to be precise, there is that bothersome thing called school. After my “delayed gap year”, I am back in University and the transition has been far from easy. To be honest: it has been harrowing. This is the part you imagine having to wake up early for twelve hour days, commuting seventy kilometres from where I live to the heart of Paris, an academic workload befitting one of Europe’s top varsities. I wish I could smile and say it has been nothing but peaches and roses but it hasn’t. But this is life, one can only grit one’s teeth and keep going at it until the time comes when it is second nature and you wonder what all the fuss was about.

But till that day comes, writing has to take a back seat. It is painful thing to do, a sacrifice as painful as any blood sacrifice the Jews had to take up to the Temple aeons ago. I am a writer in every sense of the word, images seem to be trapped in my head, I keep tapping interesting thoughts into my Blackberry (I now have such a long list, my next short story should be interesting if I ever get round to it). But if the pain begins to be overwhelming, all I have to do is look to my famous writer friend, Novuyo RosaTshuma, who was recently accepted by Wits University for a Masters in Creative Writing. This in the same year that she published her first novella to critical acclaim. Yes, the rain might be long in coming, but be sure it will come.

And as if to encourage me, the other day I happened to listen to Steve Jobs famous Stanford commencement address where he talked about being only able to connect the dot’s looking back. So while I wait for the dot’s to make some sort of discernible pattern, here’s a toast to life; its beauty, its vagaries, its absolute randomness and the incredible tragedy of being human.

The Eiffel Tower is really bigger than I would have thought!

Check out this photo stream on Paris, la nuit. It has beautiful photos!

Confessions of a writer

I am a computer scientist damnit!

I am supposed to be capturing data and transforming it into linked lists, studying their complexity and writing time sharing algorithms for execution by the kernel. But I write. I write and I write. I don’t write in C or Java or any other of those languages that Bill Gates & his ilk bequeathed upon us. I write in the language of Shakespeare and Shaw. I dream in metaphors like Oscar Wilde and poetry soothes me like the sound of music does a restless baby.

My fingers are never happier than when they are racing across my keyboard creating worlds and lives. My mind is never sharper than when it is imagining the lives of characters brought to life with the stroke of a key and killed by the time it takes to get to the spacebar. I write with the reckless abandon, opinions, beliefs of a deranged mind. No cow is too holy not to be explored, to not have its inner being laid bare on the page for all the world. What do I care of political systems or the private parts of South African presidents? If they make for interesting reading I will write about them. What do I care for a thousand years of religious dogma? If my character Anna does not believe in it, then so be it.

And so it is. So it is and so it shall be. I write to let loose the demons and angels that fight in my heart for release. I write to let the tears that I cannot allow to flow down my face to flow down the page. I write like I am possessed by the spirit of a little boy in India wondering if the tiger will be his next reincarnation. I write like that white farmer who watched a hundred years of his family’s heritage burn down in what is called reformation. I write like the lover lying in bed, his body yearning for release but his loved a thousand miles away. I write like the street kid sitting on the street corner begging for just five rands to buy his lunch. Just five rands.

I write for those who shall never have a voice. I write with my voice; a voice which is voiceless at times. A voice caught in the strict trappings of social dictate or supressed beneath the hierarchy of power in real life. On the page it is a voice that is as loud as the voice of God; a voice that can strike fear through the coal black blood of my pen bleeding life onto the page. I write as a scream to the world that doesn’t hear my voice, or perhaps to the world that does? I do not care. Listen if you will, what you make of it is not my business. That is up to you. Open your mind and let me in, let me wreck havoc with your beliefs, let me play with your best china and smile as I let it slip through my fingers and come crashing down at your feet.

I write because if I didn’t I would explode. These thoughts that race through my head have to have somewhere to go. They have to have somewhere to go to. I write because I am a witness to a life that is mine, a life perhaps that deserves to be witnessed by the page. Our silent pact. Our shared secret. Take, blessed and broken the words of my life. Take them, blessed and broken the tears of my heart. Take them broken and blessed the whispers of my heart. Do what you will with them O page, I cannot carry them in my heart forever.

I write as if possessed, words explode out of me as if from another being. I try to ignore them but if I do for too long my life begins to withdraw from itself. I hear noises in the middle of a silent room or silence in the heart of noise. I see glimpses of a world half lost, and I know I must find it. I sit to write with a vague inkling of what will come out of the page and lose myself. As if in a trance, the words march out in front of me, little soldiers in my army, preparing to wage war on reality. It is a sweet, sweet relief; like finding an oasis in a desert, or finally peeing after holding it in for too too long.

And then it is done. I have given birth to a page. Or twenty pages. Or a hundred pages. It matters not. All that matters is that within those pages I have captured something. I have hunted down through the wild forests of imagination a mythical creature and tamed it with my pen. Now it lies there, tamed but still dangerous to any who dares to enter the confines of the story. Dares to leave this reality with all its neat borders and rounded curves and comes to confront my creature. Perhaps you shall tame it? Perhaps it shall tame you? Who knows? I certainly do not. Neither do I care. My job is done. I have written. I can go to sleep. I am human once more.

    

When I am gone those words shall remain. When my bones have been ground to dust by the winds of time, those words shall remain. When the world has been ravaged by the hounds of hell and the heart of a million suns has torn the skins from our flesh, those words shall remain. Those words shall remain. The pen is mightier than the sword. Its words shall remain. 

A Picture is worth a 1000 words

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, let's test that theory. Write down your first thoughts in the comments section.

The Emperors have no clothes!!!

One of the defining moments in my relatively short life was picking up a book called ‘The First Man in Rome’ by Colleen McCullough at the Bulawayo Public Library, that hallowed place where I went every weekend to soak up the masters of literature. In those books I came across the political greats such as Gaius Julius Caesar, Augustus Caesar, Marcus Tullius Cicero and Gaius Marius. Men whose actions both good and bad shaped the rise of what is possibly the greatest Empire mankind has ever known, Rome.

Which perhaps would go far in explaining my utter disgust, my complete revulsion, my horror, the stupefaction that befell me as I read this headline: “Zimbabwe's latest way to stop HIV: Force women to have fewer baths and shave off their hair to make them less attractive”. My mind rushed for some explanation to such a startlingly stupid headline, perhaps it’s some comedian or stupid TV presenter running their mouth off. But alas. Dear reader, these words were uttered by none other than a member of the Senate of the Republic of Zimbabwe. The Senate!!! The halls of highest legislative body in the land, the halls that bear the same name that the Roman Empire gave to their own decision making body, the halls that are to be the fount of the will of the people, the laws of the land, the dignity and gravitas of the State; The halls populated by such idiots.

I am over reacting I hear you say? How can I honestly take one measly line, probably taken out of context and run my mouth off? The problem this is not the first time. A few years ago, another Senator announced in all innocence that scientists should drop whatever it is that they were wasting time with and invent a drug that stops men having sex with prostitutes, and in case we were people who believed in second chances she followed that comment up with a speech imploring Parliament to distribute sex toys in prisons to stop prisoners abusing each other. Or how about last week’s comment from the Vice President of the country that her husband regularly slept away from their marriage home but that like a good wife who knows she cannot tame the bull, she had stayed. The venue for these remarks was none other than the memorial service of said late husband.

This is just a choice selection of quotes from some of the most powerful people in that country of mine. I would add more but unfortunately there are laws in place that would make it a crime (which in and of itself is saying something). These are the people who lead us, these are the people we expect to wake up every morning and chart the course the future of our national pride, our heritage, our collective nationhood along the stormy seas of global politics. These are the people who, God forbid, we expect to guide us should World War III suddenly break out and threaten the very existence of the human species. These are the people we put our faith and trust in, who we invest with the highest privileges our country can bestow and expect to damn well work their hardest to show for it. And this is what they say.

“MDC-T Member of Parliament, Thabitha Khumalo, said that women should not fight their husbands’ girlfriends, saying this could reduce the spread of infections.” 

Minister of Information, Jonathan Moyo: “(South Africans) are dirty. In fact they are filthy and recklessly uncouth”. 

Dr Joseph Made, the Minister of Agriculture who famously predicted a bumper harvest months before one of Zimbabweans biggest droughts presenting a report to parliament outlining the reasons for his oversight: “Our investigations have shown that a monkey caused damage to a transformer, thereby sabotaging our preparations for the coming season”.

Patrick Chinamasa, Minister of Justice, on dismissing charges brought against the Zimbabwean government: “"The ICC is there for serious crimes against humanity - not ordinary crime, which is what these exiles [and the South African High Court is] trying to suggest."

Google is my friend. Do not think I had to go far to get these quotes, nor that they represent the worst. Like I said before, some quotes would get me arrested so I leave the googling to you. And perhaps let us judge them by their actions and not their words? Where do you want to begin? The bankruptcy and cessation of operations that Air Zimbabwe announced early this year? Or perhaps the Zimbabwe Electricity Supply Authorities admission that power cuts of up to 9 hours per day in urban centres would continue for at least the next five years. Should we consider the famous incident where Anna Tibaijuka, a United Nations special envoy was fêted like royalty in Harare and declared to be a champion of the African Renaissance…until the day she issued a damning report that stated the governments’ ‘Operation Murambatsvina’ violated both local and international law and deprived a large number of Zimbabweans of their basic human rights.

“Operation Restore Order, while purporting to target illegal dwellings and structures and to clamp down on alleged illicit activities, was carried out in an indiscriminate and unjustified manner, with indifference to human suffering, and, in repeated cases, with disregard to several provisions of national and international legal frameworks” – United Nations Executive Summary, 2005

There is a flag fluttering above the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe, another one stands proud above the Houses of Parliament and Senate and thousands more are scattered around the country and our embassies all over the world. These flags represent me, they represent the dreams and aspirations my ancestors had for me as they gazed at the African heavens centuries ago, they represent the blood of untold thousands who gave their lives fighting the fight of freedom, they represent the hope and the vision of a country born out of the ashes of a repressive regime that was Ian Smith’s government and the Mfecane that Shaka Zulu waged against my kingdom. Perhaps that flag will never fly as proudly as the purple robes of the Senators of the Roman Empire but our dreams are just as important to me, as precious and as deserving the utmost effort to make them a reality.

So I shall not hesitate in shouting that the so-called Emperors who run off their mouths calling for women to stop bathing or who strip any segment of the Zimbabwean population of their rights to liberty, to truth and to justice, that these men and women have no clothes and that they shame the hallowed halls of power of my land. They rule in the name of millions of Zimbabweans, what power we have given them, we can take away. Do not forget that Senator Morgan Femai.

Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.~ Marcus Tullius Cicero