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I can still get very worked up about the barefaced con-job the catholic church and its associates pulled on us when I was a young boy. In those days in the late 1950s and early 1960s we were led to believe that those poor lost souls in the Congo were running around butt naked and without a grain of rice to eat. Good little catholic boys and girls like myself were encouraged to save the aluminium tops of milk bottles, which would - in some mysterious way - help to put an end to the misery of these downtrodden children of God.
It took me almost a decade to find out that I had been the victim of a world-wide conspiracy! Instead of butt naked and starving, in the Congolese capital Léopoldville they were living it up, with bars and music on every corner, the latest fashion, and - come to think of it - all the modern comforts we enjoyed at the time. In those days it was getting fashionable for women to wear trousers (well at least lady trousers...). Ladies with slightly loose morals were seen wearing wigs (I still have a trauma over a wig one of my aunts used to wear). Folk with a bit of money could be seen driving around on a Mobylette (or little egg, as we used to call these motorbikes).

It is exactly about this world that Franco is singing in his song "Quatre Boutons". In fact, he names the Mobylette itself as a symbol of modern life in Léopoldville. Marie, the female subject of the song, has acquired this motorbike through the opening of four buttons. And the four buttons seem to be a reference to the garment this woman opened: a pair of trousers. In those days before the "Recours A L'Authenticité" of Mobutuism it was just as normal for a modern Congolese woman to wear trousers as it was for a progressive Dutch girl. The fact that she received the motorbike plus a wig from a married man, with the implication of sexual favours which had been performed as payment for these modernités caused quite a stir in the more conservative parts of post-colonial Congo (as I am sure it would have done in the Netherlands). Franco defended himself, as he did later with songs like "Paka Lowi", "Hélène" and "Jacky", by arguing that he was only singing about what was happening in daily life. Besides, he was continuing a theme which he started earlier, with tracks like "Ngai Marie Nzoto Ebeba".
"Quatre Boutons" was one of the songs that led Mobutu to appoint a censorship commission a year later....

"Quatre Boutons" is on the A-side of this record on the Pathé label, which get its EP status from the B-side. Of the two tracks on this side, "Didi" and "Jean-Jean", I don't know the story. But it seems likely that "Jean-Jean" is about Franco's friend and bodyguard, who judging by the stories told by contemporaries also acted as an intermediary in Franco's personal affairs. If you listen carefully you will hear his name mentioned in other songs.

You may have noticed that the (front) sleeve of this EP does not mention the O.K. Jazz, but instead refers to the artists as "Orchestre Franco". I remember one of the members of the O.K. Jazz talking about Franco's struggles with (especially French) record companies; if I remember correctly some records were released under this name to circumvent a clause in a contract with another record company. I have tried to recall who told me this, but so far have been unsuccessful. If anyone has more details, please let us know.

While the tracks on the first Pathé EP have been re-released on lp ("Quatre Boutons") and cd (all), those of the second have so far escaped reproduction - let alone digitisation. And that is a huge pity.

This extraordinary collection of marvels opens with Franco's interpretation of a bossa nova, and, as if this is not enough, it is a version of a song made famous by Charles Aznavour (see this great video from 1963) AND it is sung by a woman.
And that's where the mystery starts.
"Miss Bora"Because who is this singer? It is clear that this is the same lady who sings "Mosika Okeyi Zonga Noki"(on Sonodisc CD 36553). But who is she?
Aboubacar Siddikh suspects she is Henriette Bora Uzima (or Boranzima, which is it?), but I have my doubts. Henriette, nicknamed "Miss Bora" by Rochereau, started off with the O.K. Jazz in 1963 but moved to Rochereau's African Fiesta in 1964 or 1965. I have never read or heard of her recording with the O.K. Jazz, and there is at least one recording of her with African Fiesta. Comparing the singer in this song, a version of the Cuban evergreen "Guantanamera", with the singer in the two O.K. Jazz songs I myself don't hear any similarities. I am including both "Guantanamera" and "Mosika Okeyi Zonga Noki" so you can judge for yourself. I am curious to know what you think.

Apart from the female lead the song is certainly noteworthy for Franco's lightfooted guitar flutterings. But musically it is blown away (in my opinion at least) by the second track on the A-side, "Ba Musicien Ba Mema Mgambo". To me any track with Kwamy is a treat. I think he is backed by Edo Nganga in this track. And I love this staccato singing, but it really takes off when Franco takes control after 1'44. If you liked "Dr. Klerruu" by Mbaraka Mwinshehe: here's where he got the inspiration!!

The B-side opens with a kind of Hank Marvin guitar, but soon switches into a real Franco style bolero, with both Vicky Longomba and Kwamy alternately taking the lead. I can never get enough of these boleros, but I am slightly (only slightly though) disappointed by the lack of 'intervention' by Franco.....
After "Jose Maria" there is another song in the typical rumba style of the mid-1960s O.K. Jazz. "Trouble Trouble" features Vicky singing the lead and again ends (after 2'00) with Franco demonstrating yet another technique in his guitar playing.
The only problem I have with this EP is that the music ends after only 13 minutes....

Pathé EG 926
Pathé EG 930
Guantanamera/Mosika Okeyi Zonga Noki

Alternatively you can download all the songs in one file.

P.S.: the photo on the front of the Pathé EG 926 sleeve (by Gilles Sala, as is the photo on the front of EG 930!) appears to be of the mosque in Bamako. A rather strange choice, considering the songs...

The film about living in New York post-9/11, is earnest and well meaning and, while dangerously sentimental at times, never quite crosses the line into maudlin.

“Max Manus” is a solidly acted biopic of World War II derring-do.

The Portuguese director Miguel Gomes blurs the line between nonfiction and fiction.

With “Our Beloved Month of August,” which opens today at Anthology Film Archives, the young Portuguese director Miguel Gomes breezily supersedes questions of naturalism and artifice with his interweave of stories set in the summer-resort village of Arganil—some of which concern his own troubles making the film. The heartiness of his approach infuses this by-now-classical device with new life. The sincere interest and tenderness with which he films the village’s residents and visitors, its street scenes and landscapes—and himself and his crew as they take care of the business involved in that filming—are in no way detached or alienated or kept at arm’s length by the reflexive frame, and it’s hard to imagine that anyone but the most rigidly doctrinaire critic or most narrowly conditioned viewer would find that it diminishes their emotional engagement with the film. On the contrary, the gradual emergence of the movie’s narrative threads from the documentary-style delving into the swirl of local events suggests nothing of the mind-game and everything of the filmmaker’s real experience, his growing absorption in the life of the village, and his passion for excavating into the apparent—the good cheer of vacationing throngs and the entertainment they enjoy, the local pageantry, the colorful local characters—to get to the personal stories and intimate history they embody.

And what are the filmmaker, his crew, and even the locals who are recruited to perform and complain about it, doing in the film? They’re working: and, during the gradual crystallization of the stories that Gomes finds he wants to tell, the sometimes comical and sometimes trivial detective-like process of sussing them out and pursuing them—and of getting the people whose lives the stories concern to divulge them—acquires a self-deprecating yet justly, quietly proud nobility that coincides with that of the people whose lives his own life intertwines with. There’s neither pity nor sentimentality in Gomes’s populism; the highest strain of modern humanism faces up to the first person.

Mr. Hogan had been prevented from leaving Australia, where authorities said he owed millions in unpaid taxes.

The translation of the well-received Escrituras de desencuentro en la República Dominicana (Siglo XXI Editores, 2005)—Divergent Dictions: Contemporary Dominican Literature—is forthcoming from Caribbean Studies Press this year.

This collection of essays by Néstor E. Rodríguez examines the trajectory of Dominican writing, exploring the founding ideologies and stances in Dominican thought, starting with authors such as Manuel de Jesús Galván, Manuel Núñez, Manuel Arturo Peña Batlle, and Juan Bosch, among others. He presents texts that offer contestation to this “homo-hegemonic” pole from the margins by writers such as Aída Cartagena Portalatín. Mapping various subversive strategies, Rodríguez arrives at the literary production of Dominican-American authors such as Junot Díaz, Julia Álvarez, Josafina Báez, Manuel Rueda, Rita Indiana Hernández, Aurora Arias, and Silvio Torres-Saillant, positing that their work constitutes “a radical aesthetic enterprise challenging the Dominican cultural establishment.” These writers represent Dominicanness as a diverse and heterogeneous cultural identity, complicating the purported homogeneity of the Dominican Republic.

Néstor E. Rodríguez was born in the Dominican Republic and grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He received a BA in Comparative Literature from the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras and a PhD in Latin American literature from Emory University. His essays and articles have appeared in academic journals such as Revista Canadiense de Estudios Hispánicos, Bulletin of Hispanic Studies, Revista Hispánica Moderna, and Revista Iberoamericana, as well as in the literary supplements of La Jornada (México), El Nuevo Día (Puerto Rico), Hoy (Dominican Republic) and Diálogo (Puerto Rico).

For more information, see http://www.caribbeanstudiespress.com/forthcoming.books.php?book_number=17&action=description

Mr. Gould, who played Trapper John McIntyre in Robert Altman's war satire "MASH," reflects on the film, his work with Robert Altman and his influential facial hair.

In “Going the Distance,” Drew Barrymore and Justin Long are young lovers struggling through a cross-country romance.

As part of its Conferencias Caribeñas 7 lecture series for the 2010-2011 academic year, the Institute of Caribbean Studies (ICS) of the University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras (UPR-RP) invites the academic community and the general public to the lecture “La actividad volcánica en el Caribe: Algunos de sus impactos” [Volcanic Activity in the Caribbean: Some of its Impacts] by Dr.  Lizzette A. Rodríguez Iglesias (Geology Department, UPR-Mayagüez). Dr. José Molinelli (Departament of Environmental Sciences, School of Natural Sciences, UPR-RP) will serve as commentator. The activity will be held on Thursday, September 9, 2010, from 1:00 to 3:00pm in Amphitheater REB 238 (Ramon Emeterio Betances Building), School of Social Sciences, University of Puerto Rico-Río Piedras.

The arc of volcanic islands in the Lesser Antilles (from Saba, in the north, to Grenada, in the south) comprises at least 17 active volcanoes, of which one, the Soufrière Hills volcano in Montserrat, has been in eruption since 1995. The Soufrière eruptions are characterized by the growth and subsequent collapse of volcanic domes, emission of ash and gases, explosions, lahars and pyroclastic flows.  This volcanic activity directly affects the population of Montserrat (of approximately 4,000 people). Due to its proximity, Puerto Rico is impacted by clouds of particles of ash and dust brought by the wind. These particles can cause respiratory problems, especially in a population suffering from previous conditions. Another major effect of these clouds is the interruption of air traffic. Dr. Rodríguez will speak about these and other ways volcanic activity impacts Puerto Rico and other islands.

For further information, you may call Dr. Humberto García Muñiz, Director, at (787) 764-0000, extension 4212, or write to iec@uprrp.edu

"With the wry, shimmery and thoroughly beguiling Somewhere, Coppola has perhaps made exactly the film she needed to at this point in her career: one that calmly takes stock of her abilities and interests rather than pushing them too severely." Guy Lodge at In Contention: "The director will, inevitably, take some flak for making a third consecutive film about the alienating side effects of celebrity and privilege — but as with Woody Allen and Upper East Side intelligentsia, or Mike Leigh and Britain's Tetley-swilling middle classes, this is world she knows and feels, and if she feels a responsibility to keep circling back to it in her work, then she should do so."

The director Zhang Yimou honors the unlikely affinity between himself and Joel and Ethan Coen with a remake of their movie “Blood Simple.”

Like its subject, the movie is sharp, charismatic and so light on its feet we never know which way it will turn.

The Puerto Rico Daily Sun (31 August 2010) reports that “it was Earl, not the FAA, which kept [Vieques Air Link] sidelined” on Monday. As I wrote in a previous post [Will Cape Air Nudge Out Vieques Air Link and Air Flamenco?], last week, National Hostosian Council leader Héctor Pesquera, claimed that Vieques Air Link and Flamenco Airways had been shut down by the Federal Aviation Administration due to improper use. According to Wednesday’s PR Daily Sun article, “FAA officials did intervene with Flamenco, cancelling the air carrier’s operational certification but not with VAL.” Here are excerpts with a link to the full article below:

VAL is one of the largest regional carriers on the island, flying around 230 passengers a day to Vieques, Culebra and St. Croix. Its main operations are based at Ceiba Airport, but the line has two other hubs, one in Isla Grande and the other at Luis Muñoz Rivera airport.

“There’s no truth to the rumor that the airline has closed operations as Mr. Pesquera said. We continue with our regularly schedule fights without any complications,” airline spokeswoman Jania Torres said during a telephone interview.

Carlos Rodríguez, VAL general manager, expressed concerns about the effect the dissemination of false information could have on his airline. “I’m concerned because it can hurt our business. We have never interrupted service in more than 40 years of operations. As with all airlines, FAA regulators visit us regularly, but never have they threatened us with any action,” Rodríguez explained.

As of its current operations in light of the immediate passing of hurricane Earl, Torres explained that all of the air operations were cancelled Monday morning. Flights are scheduled to resume today [Wednesday]. “We had been ferrying people the last two days helping the government. Once the storm passes, we will resume flying again,” Torres said.

[Many thanks to Robert Rabin for bringing this item to our attention.]

For full article, see http://www.prdailysun.com/news/Vieques-Air-flying-high-despite-shut-down-rumors

"Following her typically idiosyncratic revision of Bluebeard, Gallic helmer Catherine Breillat fractures another fairy tale with The Sleeping Beauty," writes Leslie Felperin in Variety. "The story's ending may be happier this time around, but the overall result is less felicitous than its brisker, more focused predecessor. Actually something of a mashup between Charles Perrault's Sleeping Beauty and Hans Christian Andersen's The Snow Queen — and featuring the erotic edges and anachronistic intellectual barbs expected of a Breillat pic — the film has provocative and compelling moments but feels too fragmented to match the helmer's best work."

"That the infirm of mind make for troublesome film subjects is demonstrated once again in Ascanio Celestini's striking but over self-conscious feature debut, The Black Sheep, one of three Italian films in this year's Venice competition." Lee Marshall for Screen: "Told by an unreliable asylum-inmate narrator who is too unreliable from the start to really engage our sympathies, this blackly comic denunciation of the casual way in which people can be committed to mental institutions has the audience caught in a cleft stick between compassion for the quirky social outcasts the film depicts and depression at the sheer sadness of it all."

Obama giving Iraq war alleged withdrawal speech in newly decorated Oval OfficeOld timey cash registerJasper Johns Flag sold for 28 million dollars

Oklahoma land rushOklahoma City Federal BuildingTimothy McVeigh

Sarah Palin giving speechAmerican parking lotsTeaparty billboardMassey mountain-top removal coal mine, W. Va.Roger Clemens departing arraignment hearingRanch, South DakotaTexas City, Texas; BP refinery in backgroundNogales, New Mexico, then and nowJ.P. Morgan, 1904Meth lab, Kalamazoo, MichiganSalmonella tainted Wright County Egg factory, Galt, IowaSingle-bullet theory JFK diagramLouisiana shrimp shopRonnie Lee Gardner, last Utah prisoner to be executed by firing squadGlacier National Park, MontanaButte, Mt   (photo Lynn Weaver)Leo Castelli, art dealer (with Ruscha on wall)Ben Bernanke, Fed director at Congressional hearingWarhol painting sold for 32 million dollarsAngry SimpsonsWall Street

American cultural icon (Copyright)Texas City, Tex. BP refinery explosion costing 15 lives

Redwood, Eadweard Muybridge

It is autumn on an even numbered year, and in turn it is time for America to crank up its bi-annual electoral machinery to its maximum pitch.  As customary and traditional the word high and low is that the newly installed President’s party is headed for a come-down, in this case perhaps a loss of its majority in the House and Senate.  Not that the closing two year cycle suggests it would make much difference: with a commanding, though “blue dog” tainted, majority in both chambers, the Democrats could barely limp a step without kow-towing to the vociferous shouts of right-wing commentators and politicians, who endlessly suggested Obama was in any event not legitimate by nature of his birthplace, his religion, and, sent only by transparent code words, his color.   For some in America a (half) black man cannot be resident in the White House.  These same people generally take their words literally, whether in this case, or in the Bible.

President Obama has, by his turn, not served himself well since the election.  Admittedly faced with an avalanche of welcome-to-the-job problems (thank you Mr Bush and company), which he faced with a calm coolness which might be admirable in some contexts, and in truth for the problems he faced was the right comportment – yet the tenor of the nation begged for passion and he seems to all appearances to be dispassionate.  Entering office he was perched on a wave of genuine public enthusiasm which he promptly deflated with both his demeanor and his staff and policy choices.  Perhaps this is revealing of his real political beliefs, which if so are essentially hard-core American corporate conservative with a lip service to broader public interests, or perhaps it was revealing of a naive political miscalculation.  In either case, much of the liberal/left is sorely disappointed, while the seething right clearly declines to be mollified by any gesture of compromise.

Thusly are our politics reduced to a pathetic cartoon in which the utterance of any truthful analysis of our national circumstance is political suicide.  No, our temperamental children will not face any reality that deprives them of their instant gratification.  Being woefully ill-educated, trained for decades to be selfish first and social last, and to run in horror at any word that begins with “c-o-m” our voting public is now bent on social destruction, deluded that they can have everything, pay no taxes, war for fun while utterly ignoring it, trash their neighbors, and somehow the grand “American Exceptionalism” will exempt them from all costs.  Naturally it will not, and as the cost is being applied, our electorate appears to be running full-tilt into the arms of exactly those who sold them the sweet story that you could have it all and not pay for it.  Were Reagan alive in two years, he’d probably win in a landslide of historic proportions, never mind it was his philosophy and economic policies which induced our current situation.  Ah, but he was, despite being a rather bad actor, a very good politician in that he could pull the wool over almost any sentimentalist’s eyes.

Thirty years on we are paying a very steep price for this shared delusion, and given the mind-set of the public, the price will likely get a lot steeper as our lemming herd runs as fast as it can to all the wrong people and policies – a sure-fire formula for even worse problems in the coming years.   Doubling down on our misguided practices is going to require the “miracle” which our Glenn Beck’s pray for, but the real world doesn’t work on miracles or snake oil.  Americans, accustomed to thinking of themselves as “different” and always being Number One, are likely to show their meanest and nastiest side as their delusions crumble about them.  The current season is merely a prelude.

The acclaimed travel writer Paul Theroux has contributed no fewer than thirteen articles to Granta – we have selected three short pieces from the archive as part of our Travel Week. They are free to read for two weeks from today (see here for information on buying a subscription to our archive for just £12.99).

In ‘First Train Journey’, Theroux describes his beginnings as a travel writer. The motivation behind his first book was more prosaic than the writing: ‘money was crucial in my decision to write my first travel book – simply, I needed it.’ He was also frustrated by the ‘sightseeing’ approach to much of the travel writing of the time, and wanted to bring to it ‘the moments of desperation or fear or lust, the details of meals, the names of books read to kill time, the condition of toilets.’ The Great Railway Bazaar, now considered a classic, was the result. Read this article from Granta 29.

In 1993, four years after Bruce Chatwin’s death, Theroux wrote ‘Chatwin revisited’, a qualified but ultimately admiring tribute to the great writer. A huge number of friends came to his funeral, Theroux writes – though very few of them knew each other. Among Chatwin’s odder habits were the ‘sudden disappearances’ he was given to; Theroux also speculates on another: ‘I believe he talked to himself, probably yakked non-stop, rehearsing his stories and practising funny accents and mimicry’. Read the article in full here, or visit the page for this issue, Granta 44.

Finally, below, we include Theroux’s contribution to a series of shorts, ‘How America Sees the World’ (Granta 84). Immersing himself in the travel experience, the author became more involved than he would have liked with a couple he met in a bar in Zambia one Christmas Eve. ‘There was no common ground, other than mutual exploitation.’

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How America Sees the World

This took place forty years ago in Africa, and still I ponder it—the opportunity, the self-deception, the sex, the power, the fear, the confrontation, the foolishness, all the wrongness. The incident has informed one of my early novels and several short stories. It was something like First Contact, the classic encounter between the wanderer and the hidden indigenous person, the meeting of people who are such utter strangers to each other that one side sees a ghost and the other side suspects an opportunity. It won't leave my mind.

I had gone from America to Africa and had been there for almost a year: Nyasaland. Independence came and with it a new name, Malawi. I was a teacher in a small school. I spoke the language, Chichewa. I had a house and even a cook, a Yao Muslim named Jika. My cook had a cook of his own, a young boy, Ismail. We were content in the bush, a corner of the southern highlands, red dust, bad roads, ragged people. Apart from the clammy cold season, June to August, none of this seemed strange. I had been expecting this Africa and I liked it. I used to say: I'll get culture shock when I go back home.

With Christmas approaching I went via a roundabout route to Zambia and on Christmas Eve was sitting in an almost empty and rather dirty bar outside Lusaka, talking to the only other drinkers, a man and woman.

'This is for you,' I said, giving the man a bottle of beer. 'And this is for your wife. Happy Christmas.'

'Happy Christmas to you,' the man said. 'But she is not my wife. She is my sister. And she likes you very much.'

At closing time they invited me to their house. This involved a long taxi ride into the bush. 'Happy Christmas. You give him money.' I paid. They led me to a hut. I was shown a small room, the woman followed me in. I stepped on a sleeping child—there was a squawk—and the woman woke him and shooed him from his blanket into the next room. Then she sat me down, and she undressed me, and we made love on the warm patch on the blanket where the child had been lying.

That was pleasant. I had had a year of women in Malawi, the casual okay, the smiles, the fooling, Jika's bantering, Ismail's leers. But, in the morning, when I said I had to leave, to go to my hotel in Lusaka, the woman—Nina—said, 'No. It is Christmas,' and made a fuss.

The brother—George—overhearing, came into the room and said that it was time to go to the bar. It was hardly eight in the morning; yet we went, and drank all day, and whenever beer was ordered, they said, 'Mzungu'—the white man is paying, and I paid. We were all drunk by mid-afternoon. The woman was taunted for being with a white man. She answered back, drunkenly. The brother stopped several angry men from hitting her. Loud, drunken fights began in the bar.

We went back to the village hut and I lay half-sick in the stinking room. Nina undressed me and sat on me and laughed, and jeered at me.

I was dressing in the morning when she asked me where I was going. Once again, I said I had to leave.

'No. It is Boxing Day.' And she summoned her brother.

'We go,' George said and tapped my shoulder and smiled. His smile meant: You do what I tell you to do. We spent Boxing Day as we had done Christmas: the bar, beer, fights, abuse, and finally that dizzy nauseating feeling of mid-afternoon drunkenness. Another night, Nina's laughter in her orgasm and in the morning the reminder that I was trapped. 'You stay!'

In her refusal to let me go was not just nastiness but a hint of threat. And her brother backed her up, sometimes accusing me of not respecting them. 'You don't like us!'

When I protested that of course I did, they smiled and we ate boiled eggs or cold peeled cassava roots or a whitish porridge, and then off we went to the bar, to get drunk again in the filthy place. And as she grew drunker she pawed me and promised me sex—now an almost frightening thought. Another day passed and I realized I did not know these people at all. The food was disgusting. The hut was horrible. The village was unfriendly, the bar was outright hostile. The beer drinking was making me ill. I was the only mzungu in the place—as far as I knew, the only one for miles around. The language that I knew—Chichewa—was not their language, though they spoke it. Their own language—Bemba, I think—was incomprehensible to me, and I knew they were plotting against me when they spoke it—quickly, muttering, so that I wouldn't know what they were saying. I belonged to them, like a valuable animal they had poached. Whenever they wanted money for beer, for snacks, for presents, for whatever reason, they demanded it from me. When I handed it over they were excessively friendly, the woman kissing me, licking my face, pretending to be submissive; her brother and the hangers-on praising me, praising America, saying Britain was bloody shit and asking me to let them wear my sunglasses.

That first night I had been wearing a light-coloured suit. The suit was now rumpled and stained; my shirt was a sweaty mess. They were the only clothes I had.

They said what a great friend I was, but I knew better: I was a captive. They were out of money. My weakness and arrogance had sent me straying into their world from my own world. And I represented something to them—money, certainly; prestige, perhaps; style, maybe. After the first night we never had a sober conversation. I was a colour, a white man, a mzungu. I had been captured and they wanted to keep me: I was useful. When they said, as they often did, 'You no go!' I was afraid, because they spoke with such irrational loudness and threat. The boldness in Nina that had attracted me I now feared as wildness. Drinking deafened her and made her a bully as cruel as her brother. George peered at me with odd brown-spotted eyes, as though at an enemy. Sometimes at night I was wakened by the human stinks in the hut.

I think it was the fourth day. My terror was so great and the days so similar I lost track of time. We went to the bar in the morning and at noon they were still drinking—I had lost my taste for it, as I had lost my libido; I just stood there and paid with my diminishing wad of kwacha notes. I said, 'I'm going to the chimbudzi'

'Go with him,' Nina said to one of the tough boys hovering near. I protested.

'He will not come back,' she said, and I realized how shrewd she was. She had read my mind, another suggestion of her malevolence. I took off my suit jacket and folded it on the bar.

'Here's my jacket, here's some money. Buy me a beer, get some for yourselves, and hand over the jacket when I get back.' The chimbudzi was outside the bar, a roofless shed behind the tin-roofed building, upright bamboos and poles. Maggots squirmed in the shallow bog hole. I stood there and was too disgusted even to unzip, and then I stepped outside, looked around, and seeing no one, I ran—at first cautiously, then really hard until I got to the road and flagged down a car. Of course the man stopped. He was African, I was white, it was Christmas, he needed money for petrol. He took me to my hotel: I had not slept even one night there. I asked him to wait, I paid my bill and got in again and when the driver said where, I said, 'Just keep going.' He drove me twenty miles outside town and dropped me at a roadhouse, where I spent a sleepless night.

What a fool I had been to trespass. The time I spent had not helped me to understand them. Apart from my initial sexual desire, my curiosity, my recklessness, there was no common ground, other than mutual exploitation. I was reminded of who I really was, a presumptuous American. In spite of my politics and my teaching in the bush school, I was little more than a tourist, taking advantage. To me they were desperate Africans, seizing their chance to possess me. It was Tarzan turned inside out, and redefining itself. I saw nothing more. I had simply feared them and I wanted to get out of there. Later the incident kept resonating, telling me who I was. Much more dangerous things happened to me in Africa—serious fights, deportations, gunplay—was there anything more upsetting than being held at gunpoint? But this was my first true experience of captivity and difference, memorable for being horribly satirical. It had shocked me and made me feel American.

~

See also... ‘West African Sketchbook’ (right), with new drawings by artist George Butler, whose work has appeared in four issues of Granta.

Subscriptions to Granta’s archive are now on sale: for just £12.99, the price of one print issue, readers can get access to thirty-one years of the best new writing. Click here to buy a digital subscription now; or subscribe to the magazine and get automatic free access to the archive.

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Visit nostos-algos.com, our new microsite
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Granta 111: Going Back
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RETURN TO HOMEPAGE

Wenn das, was Thilo Sarrazin angestoßen hat, eine „Debatte“ ist, dann ist Dieter Bohlen der Hegel von heute. Anders gesagt: Die Verblödung einer Gesellschaft hat nichts mit Genen zu tun, sondern mit ihrer Medien-Kultur. Und nur in einer ziemlich fortgeschritten verblödeten Gesellschaft kann jemand wie Sarrazin so viel publizistische Energie an sich binden, die man besser dazu verwenden könnte, Wege aus der medialen und pädagogischen Verblödung zu finden. Aber vielleicht ist das ja auch der End-Trick der ganzen Kampagne: Dass man lernt, nur noch auf die allerblödeste Art über Intelligenz zu reden.

The bungled wedding story and the road movie collide happily in “White Wedding.”