On the way!
I had to book the tickets at the last minute, and the intercontinental transfer wasn’t exactly a walk in the park. Who else but a Breton heading for distant lands gets the chance to stop over at Marne-la-Vallée station? A stopover, you say? More like a stay: fifty minutes between two trains.
I drag myself to the cursed square, where the station itself looks quaint. The view of the attractions is like an invitation. A blimp rises, held by a cable. It must be possible to release that mooring, but the wind is blowing from the south. Flying over the poles to get to South Africa—even for the romantic vibe—doesn’t exactly thrill me. I call on Harry Potter, who fails to reverse Aeolus’s breath (his so-called powers are just hot air!), and Buffalo Bill refuses to help me hijack the circus balloon.
Many—kids with mitigating circumstances, but not just them—leave the place with an extra pair of ears, either fake fur or plastic: what’s going on between those four ears?
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Class struggle
The economy class on the first plane is only three-quarters full. Business class is even worse (or better, depending on how you see it): six seats occupied out of about twenty available. Paradoxically, on this route, the least unprofitable class for the airline is first class—except it doesn’t exist.
The second flight is packed: Ethiopian, which is at home in Addis, crams us into a much smaller plane.
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Bzz bzz buzziness
South of Addis Ababa, about twenty buildings are under (mediocre) construction. Packed tightly together, each stacking ten floors with around fifty units. Thousands of female workers who used to forage in the savanna will soon be crammed in there. In ten years, when their competitiveness fades, the world’s factories will move on. They’ll be left behind, their wings atrophied.
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Breaking the ice
In chic Stellenbosch, I walk with a bouquet in hand. It’s a simple, elegant, and minimalist arrangement of proteas and fynbos that seems everlasting.
A magical bouquet that earns me smiles from women aged seven to seventy-seven—smiles I never get when my hands are in my pockets (apparently, they don’t like one-armed guys).
It feels so good that I catch myself smiling.
Until a young man whispers, "You’re so romantic!"
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The world as it goes
Not even in inclusive writing would I tell you about that transgender organic farmer turned GMO salad manufacturer in a vertical farm built on the side of a building. Transgression isn’t my style.
On school forms, the terms "father & mother" have been replaced with: parent 1, parent 2. Parent alpha, parent beta—but reversible.
In Brittany, in the estuary below my place, the beautiful sea bass no longer spawn undisturbed, bothered by the constant back-and-forth of floating plastic—boats.
Here, in supermarkets, fruits, vegetables, poultry, and pork are inedible from having lost their roots.
Last trip advisor: The funeral home asks the orphan to fill out a satisfaction survey. She tells them to go to hell.
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Your kind!
At Addis Ababa airport, adjacent departure gates for two flights to South Africa, taking off twenty minutes apart. Without counting the Indians (we’ll get back to them), to Cape Town: 70% white, 30% Black; to Johannesburg, the opposite.
In Cape Town, sixteen border police counters open for a 300-seat plane. For the first time in a dozen years, I see a white woman in one of the booths.
The Swartland vineyard (black country) produces mediocre-quality wines. Despite its promise of plum and banana, this rosé (a hybrid?) Blanc de Noir is no exception.
On a campaign poster, the liberal candidate for Premier of the province promises equitable access to employment. Here, for a quarter-century, affirmative action has favored Black applicants for public-sector jobs—officially, even if it means hiring less qualified candidates. The candidate is white; his name is Winde (wind).
Everywhere, history is being revisited. Statues are being promoted, then torn down. Now, another victim: Gandhi. The global icon is criticized for remarks he made while a lawyer in South Africa—and later. He considered it "undignified" for Indians to be lumped in with natives rather than whites and argued that Europeans and Indians were of the same stock.
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6... 9... 12 mm
It’s not the calibers lined up on the rack but the result of the deafening rattle of hailstones on tin roofs, methodically peppering the sheep’s floor. For the first time in months, 12 mm of rain fell in less than an hour. What would slide off a gull’s feathers in Brittany is a blessing here.
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The Chinese women
Of course, there’s Mrs. Zuckerberg. But isn’t it a Western conspiracy against China—where there’s a well-known gender deficit—that the son of John the Irishman and Sonia the South African, and the son of Philip the South African and Mariejke the Flemish, both globe-trotters like others take the bus, are married to Chinese women?
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Dagobert
On the street, the paleness of his thighs streaking his black jeans—pre-ripped in China—crosses paths with his Yin: a young woman whose long black legs stripe her white jeans, just as shredded. If they swapped, the poverty would still be less visible.
When a burly Afrikaner drops off a pair of pants he’s tired of at the charity shop, the San seamstresses split them again to clothe their little tall men, slender as arrows.
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S.O.S. Plumbing (flight as a crime)
"Flight" sums up Zimbabwe’s missteps over nearly four decades (this country at the end of the last century is what Venezuela is at the start of the 21st: sitting on natural treasures, ruined by dogma).
First, the flight of farmers, then the capital that followed, dragging millions of inhabitants to neighboring countries.
The dictator-president’s headlong flight.
And now, the flight of artworks: half the collections at the MOCAA (Museum Of Contemporary Art Africa) currently on display are by artists from this country and are loaned (actually, rented) by government museums from what was once Southern Africa’s breadbasket.
It’s heartening to see that the extinguisher hasn’t snuffed out the creative flame, and that against a government with no vision, lines of flight persist.
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Volatile: poultry and the gases that bind us
On the streets of Paris, a pure white goose brandishes this slogan: "Fewer penguins on the ice floe, fewer in government."
Here, we don’t have ice floes, but we do have penguin colonies (you should see those in Betty’s Bay wandering through the village deserted by humans). Plus, an enlightened government is taking climate action: electricity is cut off for several hours a day.
Such injustice between north and south is indeed revolting.
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(www.birdsdessines.fr)
