Pretoria Thursday.
For a couple of days then I changed planes in Lomé in Togo. It had been a sweaty flight from Bangui in the Central African Republic. The change in Lomé on to Addis Ababa was stressful, in 25 minutes I had rushed through the terminal and into the next plane.
Once there at min new place I ask the young woman sitting next to – francais ou anglais? French or English? A common question in West Africa where these two languages lie about each other in a string of pearls of countries. English, she replied with some surprise.
It turned out that she was an American preschool teacher who during the Easter break took the opportunity to visit a friend in Dubai. She had flown directly nonstop from a winter cold New Jersey. I was sweaty and ruffled in my increasingly sprawling corona hairstyle, she looked at me almost terrified, wearing a fancy beige trouser suit and newly manicured nails.
I apologized and said that I was not my freshest self after my visit to Bangui. I had stayed in a cheap flea market hotel, with occasional electricity, rarely working AC and listless ceiling fan above the sloppy bed, no water taps for the past three days. And with armed militias lurking in the bush outside the capital, UN soldiers and Russian security advisers in aggressive sunglasses thundering in armored vehicles inside it, and bitter, angry, tormented Central Africans in the midst of it all. From there I came.
Initially the conversation went well. What is your favorite state in the United States? Yes, the San Francisco bay area is nice, but expensive, I replied. Her favorite place was Las Vegas. Then she wondered if it was Ghana we were in, well I said. This is Lomé in Togo, but the city is right on the border with Ghana.
How long does it take to Addis? Yes, barely five hours, I said. Oops – so long. Yes, it is a large continent, it takes two hours to fly between Johannesburg and Cape Town, I said – and then you are still in the same country. Cape Town – is that what lies south? I nodded.
The conversation slowed down in. She still became curious and started the screen to see the remaining flight distance – with her index finger she swept across, communities like Maroua in northern Cameroon, over the Central African Republic to Bentiu in northern South Sudan. And I could only state – there I have been. In Cameroon with the army in the border areas against Nigeria and the terrorist group Boko Haram, in South Sudan in a huge refugee camp that was completely flooded. Even there I had become completely overheated, I remember.
It ended up being completely dumb between us. There was nothing to talk about.
And I do not want to make me funny about ignorant Americans, she was not here to explore Africa, she was on her way to Dubai. I looked out the window and thought: what if I could transfer what I can and have experienced from this amazing continent? Maybe you should write a book about it? In that case, I would dedicate it to her.
But I forgot to ask what her name was.
Source: ICELAND NEWS