Lent is Coming

Most people make their New Year’s Resolutions in order to change something that they don’t like about themselves. They try to head off in a new direction that will bring some new happiness to their lives and make them better people. And I would suppose that because this is done at the beginning of a new year, it makes it some sort of winter solstice pagan ritual that has been handed down through the centuries and has been practiced by hundreds of thousands if not millions of people. There is of course the Christian version of this practice but that really isn’t a life changing event because the whole ordeal lasts less than 6 weeks, 40 days to be exact. So I have decided to do something for Lent this year.

A lot of people will give up drinking alcohol, red meat or sex, but I figure I would have to be drinking alcohol, eating red meat or getting some to begin with. Since I haven’t had a drink in almost 2 weeks and don’t think stopping would actually prove anything. And as far as the red meat goes, well I only eat beef about once a week as it is and that’s only when I’m out since I don’t buy it anymore. Actually if I gave up meat and fish all together, that would make a far more impressive statement but like giving up candy when I was 10, that ain’t happening. And I'm not talking about sex today. In fact when I think about it, there is very little that I would to give up and out of that much less that I think I could do without for 40 days.

Let’s face it, I’m no Superman or chosen one, I can’t go about wandering around in the desert for days on end being tempted by immoral acts and then come out clean and untarnished. Although, I am not sure what kind of temptations one can have alone in a desert, unless you start to use your imagination like how I’m starting to use mine and I don’t think I will go any further along those lines right now. No, instead of giving something up, I am going to start doing something instead of, or at least in addition to.

I had made mention in an earlier post of the amount of people that have died in Zimbabwe due to cholera. I have forgotten how much it was then but as of last week I had heard that it was over 2700 people and possibly more if you took the counts from certain organizations. I have decided that instead of me taking for granted the water supply that I am privy to; I shall now drink at least 5 glasses of clean water a day because others can’t.

What’s the big deal you ask? Well like WC Fields used to joke about, plain water is like a poison to me. Drinking water without sugar or corn syrup and food coloring is like a complete anathema to me. If had thought about it before Warren Buffet did, I would have bought stock in Coca Cola before the price went up because I love it so. Drinking water is an effort that I usually can do when I dropping down dead from thirst and exhaustion.

So there it is. Nothing earth shattering. I’m going to drink plain water, but maybe I’ll be able to figure out what others are going through or unable to experience.

Zimbabwe Redux

I've never been to Africa. I think I have always wanted to go because growing up watching Tarzan on TV with Ron Ely screaming and swinging from some big vine in the middle of the jungle made it so appealing... Keep your jokes to yourself.

Actually, I believe there is very little jungle in Africa, it's mostly savanna in the middle except for the Congo and desert in the north and parts of the south. In fact TV's Africa looked more like India. I think most of the continent looks more like the King Solomon's Mines Africa with Stewart Granger. But the fantasy is still there, plus I have the subconcious pull of going back to the homeland. You know they say that everyone is originally from Africa, black, white and everything in between, so I have a longing just to be there.

Since I don't have the type of job that would send me to any part of Africa on business or anything else, I would have to go under my own steam and with my own resources. That would probably mean that I wouldn't be able to do the climb up Mount Kilimanjaro, or the 4 week safari on the Serengeti with native bearers and Deborah Kerr or Meryl Streep holding on to my arm for protection against wild game. No, it would probably be the trip where I would probably be caught in the middle of some sort of blood diamond conflict, or a revolution where because I am so dark I would be mistaken as a member of tribe and with my luck the wrong tribe at that.

Maybe even worse than that would be to be struck down by disease in some shit hole of a town that my local travel agent recommended only because they were grateful for a commision. Malaria would be the obvious one I think to send me shivering in the middle of the night, completely delerious and out of my mind to meet the maker, but now they say that cholera seems to be breaking out and spreading from Zimbabwe. Apparently close to 1000 people have died from the disease since their last general election and there are are many more people who are infected with limited opportunities of receiving adequate healthcare. There are also signs that the disease is spreading into the neighboring countries. Thus Zimbabwe is again becoming another threat to the stabalization of the region.

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Cholera, who the hell dies from cholera these days?

I have tickets for Paris next week, but for personal reasons and mistakes that I've made in my thought patterns I don't think that I will be able to make it. So Europe and Africa are out for me right now and I definitely can't afford Asia, so I am left once again with staying home this holiday season, going back to Florida or having thoughts of Hoboken NJ. Don't ask.

As usual, I can't make my mind up.

Mugabe, white man's Burden?

When I was young, most boys like me would read comic books about Superman or Batman. Some boys would follow the Marvel Superheroes, but I never got into that. I was more of a strictly DC Comics man myself. But what I really enjoyed was going to the library and reading all of Hergé’s TinTin books that I could get a hold of. They were about childhood adventure, crime and travel around the world in order to save the day and put things right for everyone. Until I hit my mid 20’s, I had thought that I had read all of the TinTin books but then I came across the hidden book, TinTin au Congo and I was shocked.

I wasn’t shocked in a debilitating way. But I was offended by the cover of a young African child with huge plate like red lips flapping in the wind being driven by his white European pseudo master. I was reminded that these books were written in a different age when Hergé was a Nazi collaborator (maybe) and imperialism and colonialism was a good thing and black people were seen as less than human, or at least people who needed to be taught the right way. It was the time of the white man’s burden.

I never read the book not just because it was in French, but by that time black people were coming into their own. The King of Pop was black at the time and was turning the music industry around. The other MJ was the ruler of the sports arena and pulling in celebrity, fame and fortune. I think RJR-Nabisco was on of the largest companies in the world and that was headed by an African American and New York City had gotten its first and so far only black mayor. Apart from a few earlier troubles with Idi, most African nations were free and independent and headed for a prosperous era that they had not seen since before colonialism. Even South Africa looked like it would free Mandela and Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe was the one that everyone was trying emulate.

But I guess all that changed when Mugabe decided that the agreements that he had made for independence in Britain with the former Prime Minister of Southern Rhodesia, Ian Smith were no longer valid and he started to turn farmland once held by white settlers over to his own supporters whether they knew how to work a farm or not. They say that the land has become fallow now and inflation has risen astronomically and that the people are hungry. They say that other industries there have collapsed and the economy has become so burdensome that it affects the economies of Zimbabwe’s neighboring countries. I'm not saying he is wrong in what he wants done, but it may not be working out for him or the people.

There is to be an election in Zimbabwe tomorrow with the leader of the opposition Morgan Tsvangirai refusing to campaign because of the violence that they say is perpetrated by the Mugabe militia against those who do not support him. As Mugabe has already said that he will not leave office until his work is done, a sort of African version of Charlton Heston standing by the NRA podium crying out, “from these cold dead hands,” and holding up a rifle above his head. In other words, it's doubtful that any change will come to Zimbabwe unless it’s a Mugabe change.

What does all of this have to do with the people who live across the Atlantic? Nothing probably. Except maybe that if Zimbabwe is a allowed to become more and more unstable, how soon will it be before the country's instabilities become exported to neighbors like South Africa or Zambia where we do business? How soon then will it be that the US puts on its neo-colonialist hat to protect American interests like it has done so many times before? How soon will America have to start driving the Africans around just like TinTin? Who knows?