9jia Could Be Home

I live in exile in a strange country, surrounded by strange people speaking in strange tongues. I visit my home country the way Yankee tourists visit the Riviera, two weeks at a time, once a year. I only stay two weeks; because even my nostalgia is no match for the fear at the pit of my belle every time I am offered a glass of “pure water”, or the way my friends catapult from the back to the front of the car when I am forced to take evasive maneuvers to avoid giant holes in the middle of the highway. My time at home is always short, I am always in a hurry to return to this my new found land where I have chosen to hide myself. My shame runs deep, like the pools of mosquito infested stagnant water at the village, I cry at night from the pain that I know is somewhere being inflicted on the unlucky and the targeted by heavily armed thugs that own the darkness and the streets after 8.00PM. Somehow despite a GDP of $147 billon, the scream of the dying grows stronger by the day, you see my country is host to the silent curse of the big disease with the little name and unknown cure. Medicine cabinets are stocked full of fake drugs dispensed by unlicensed pharmacists and powerful priests claim to cure all kinds of illnesses by lays hands on people’s head. I internalize my sorrow a lot , when I am at home I can’t call my friends, I barely have any minutes and even when I do the South African company that owes my cell line is charging me 40 times what normal people would pay for the same service anywhere else in the world. There are plenty of others like me, we hang around the nice parts of this make belief place, wear fancy clothes and pretend to be something we are not, Americans. Everywhere I look I see doctors, lawyers, engineers, architects, artists, artisans, bankers, accountants all like me, lost souls trying to find a new meaning in Diaspora. The brave have abandoned their culture and left their heritage and history to be described by the lives of the unfortunate, the greedy, the unscrupulous, and the lost. I want to find outrage in my heart but my soul is empty, I have drained all my tears and my eyes are like hollow dark pools of black coal. The possibility that I will one day return to my homeland permanently is remote, you see I have broken bread here, my children will be born here, they will call this land home and refer to that distant place with the rich dark brown soil and the canopy of a thousand year old giant Udala trees as Africa.