Meg's Musings

Life is Lived Forward but Understood Backward

I only see movies about Africa with people I trust or by myself. Even now, hearing the bantu-accented words, the little brown faces, the surprising mix of colors, patterns and fabrics that make up fashion, Masai blankets, hospitals doing the best they can with so much less than enough---it takes me down.

I can’t describe it as pain or joy or wistfulness, but I get the same feeling I get after a really good date or a really rough conversation that had to be had. It’s a combination of nausea and bliss.

There are very few things I have had to leave unfinished in my life but my experiences in Zimbabwe still don’t feel closed. Sure, I can talk about them. Heck, I can give presentations. If you want to know, just buy me a drink and ask a few questions. There are stories I won't tell for a while, but I can show my scrapbooks and even talk about Gardner, the baby I tried to adopt.

But when I feel like torturing myself, when I wonder if I’m a decent, good, person, when I want to see if I’m a cold, heartless, white American bitch living the good life on the backs of others, I google the name of the orphanage, or the name of a friend or the university and relive a few days. They were short (just six months) but those memories are some of the most vivid of my life.

Egypt was different. When I traveled south to Nubia, it was like Sudan, but there is no genocide there. My mind, my body, I, escaped comfortably.

I saw The Constant Gardner tonight. I got interested in it as soon as I realized it wasn’t a romance built around gardening. Kenya is only a backdrop for a conspiracy and a love story, but the whole is more than the sum of its parts. Good flick.

posted by Me @ 22:12