Welcome to Nigeria. No, actually we don't want you anyhow, but thanks so much for asking. NOT!

There are those who would argue that my yesterday could have possibly been better spent. Even I would perhaps be inclined to think so, had I not been procrastinating and not doing the things I was supposed to do anyway, and as such the day actually, instead, will now forever epitomize for me the perfect day of pure and utter procrastinatory unaccomplishment.

What in the hell, woman? I mean... what?

Well, as it happens, a coffee with my Capetonian (A person who hails from Cape Town, South Africa. It is too spelled like that, I swear.) friend of Wheatlands News, the lovely and utterly smart journo Lynne (that's her reflected in the glass I think) who I've actually met through this here blogging thing and made friends with since she was in no way a psychopathic killer, a religious fanatic, or a crazed cat lady a la the Simpsons (and that's only bad because she uses the poor cats as weapons), turned into (How do you like my sprawling, to put it mildly, sentence structure? I know, bordering on insanely ingenious, neh?) a day sadly mostly void of coffee and cake, with nothing to eat but sugar free, teeth-whitening gum I had stowed away in my purse, at the Nigerian Consulate in Johannesburg.

After weeks of fruitless phone calls to the consulate (apparently, the whole answering the phone when it rings hasn't really caught on with the consulate staff yet), Lynne had finally decided to fly into Johannesburg yesterday morning and wrestle the visa needed for her travel to Nigeria on Saturday, out of the unhelpful folks herself.

She was giving the match 3 hours tops, and then we were going to be free to procrastinate our day away in the wonder that is the flashy and relatively safe (or so they claim, while I think they're wrong and I personally feel much safer [and more sane] in other parts of Jozi) 'the other' downtown of Johannesburg, Sandton. With plenty of coffee, foreign, air-freight mags that we would read for free at one of the book stores over a rather nicely executed latte, maybe a touch of shopping, some unadulterated people watching (believe me, Sandton is the place for flashier than Paris or any of the drag queens impersonating her put together amongst the Jozi-crowd), and of course lots of catching up and gossip, before Lynne's flight back to Cape Town at five.

Alas, 'twas not to be.

You really are all over the place with the lingo today, dude. What's with that? Plain, good English no longer good enough for ya, or what?


Hmph.

So I spent the morning doing some light shopping (Buying perfume and shoes, and trying on perfumed shoes [who wouldn't want a pair, or two seeing as I already own one, of these babies?] almost doesn't count as shopping, does it now? Everyone nod! Thanks.), and getting through my fill of the UK Vogue for free and some wisdom from the authors of the South African Cosmopolitan (I refuse to pay for the mag. It's just that useless) while waiting for Lynne. She had gotten to the consulate at 9am. Surely she'd have her visa by noon?

Finally, around rolled noon, and she texted me that things weren't quite going according to plan, and that she had been yelled at, treated like shit, accused of fraud, nothing was happening regarding her application, and that she had been told to either withdraw her passport or wait some more. To top it all off, that had been when someone amongst the numerous (and clearly not very overworked, as we later witnessed a clerk take a break for over an hour during their official 'office hours' and go grocery shopping) staff had been kind enough to actually acknowledge her presence in the waiting room, instead of avoiding her gaze and slinking away behind mirrored glass. She asked me whether I'd like to hang out in the waiting room at the consulate.

How could I have said no? Well, I couldn't. It was, after all, the waiting room of the Nigerian consulate. Who in their right mind would say no to that?

So equipped with two bottles of water, Lynne had asked me to bring, I set out to find the place. Time was running out. They were closing the doors at one. The GPS was no help. The lady who lives in it, was unable to locate the consulate, the road that it was on, and in the end Johannesburg as well. She kept asking me to make a left at a stop light in Pretoria, after which she would furiously recalculate before telling me to, what else, make a left at a stop light in Pretoria. I just drove up and down the street I thought the consulate was on until I saw a building that kinda, sorta, looked like an embassy.

I got lucky.

(Note to self: Learn which flag belongs to which country. Might come in handy when the woman in the GPS tumbles down into the wine cellar... Just saying.)

With not a minute to spare I left my car in front of some office's front entrance and dashed into the consulate. Seeing as I always carry in my wallet, when I need to stoop to that mind you, the card which can only be referred to as 'a frighteningly blond and pale woman in heels carrying what looks like whoop-ass in her purse' and in my desperation for entry decided to play it, I strolled right through the exit door, past the sign-in and the guards, straight into a largish but very sparsely furnished room with a counter with no one behind it, and frustrated looking people in various, most of them quite resigned-looking, stances, and found Lynne.

Who was holding a sleeping baby on her lap. Just not one of the grown-up ones she's personally brought into the world, but a tiny, cute, sleeping baby-girl. Not wanting to admit I'd missed her pregnancy, change of mate/ adoption process, and the birth of this little miracle (I really should read y'all's blogs more. I know I should. But really, I'm afraid to find out what I've missed...), I simply ignored the baby, let Lynne in on the bender-ways of my GPS sweetheart (she's really okay, until she hits the bottle or snorts something up her air vent), and how I almost didn't make it and...

And that's when I saw the lady in the corner, bawling her eyes out, the mother of the baby. And the people trying to calm her down. And the clerks quickly swishing by the counter separated from the waiting room by a glass clearly hoping not to be noticed on their way from one side of the offices to the other. I'm sure if food hadn't been involved they wouldn't have moved.

Later that day, after getting no answers regarding Lynne's application, as I was carrying around the tired and hungry baby clearly in no mood to be spending time in any embassy or consulate, her mother, as a last resort to finding some answers (all this poor Nigerian woman needed was a travel document for her Nigerian baby so that she could travel home to Nigeria), threw herself on the floor and pleaded on her hands and knees for one of the passing clerks to help her.

Even after "You want us to die here. In South Africa?" from the distraught woman, the clerk simply shook her grip off of the leg of his pants and disappeared behind the locked door.

From now on, when I think of the words 'undeserved' and 'unjust' what will undoubtedly spring to mind is the way the poor woman was treated by her own countrymen. For no other reason than they could do it, and get away with doing it. No one wanted to help her, instead it was almost as if they wanted to make her misery worse.

But when I think about the word 'smug' the only thing that can come to mind from yesterday on, is the face and the tone of one of the clerks, when she finally, at 4:30pm, came into the waiting room to talk to Lynne, only to tell her "See, this document is missing the sender's information and that's why we can't confirm it. No, you giving us that information would just defeat the purpose. Can't you see how it would defeat the purpose." This was a letter a Nigerian ministry had sent to the Nigerian consulate.

And then everyone went home. But not before one of the people from the bigger upstairs offices came downstairs in an effort to get us to leave too, pretended to be someone else than who he was after it became absolutely necessary for him to identify himself, told Lynne he would otherwise grant her the visa, but the office had been locked up by the visa people who had already left for home, and that she would just have to come back on Monday, because of the four-day weekend.

And then we really were thrown out of the embassy. Politely, but still. Swept right out the door. And Lynne ended up canceling her very necessary mentoring trip to Nigeria and paying double for her flight back to Cape Town.

I want to go to Nigeria now more than I ever did.

Do you think I should apply for a visa now? You know, in case I get to go for my 50th birthday?

My sentiments exactly.

Cause and effect

Today has been the first day off for the hubby since he arrived in Zambia, and this only because some of the stuff he needs to make heads and tails of his work here is still in customs, and today being a holiday, it is not coming out of there before tomorrow, if then. Bad for him, nice for me.

Why then are we not on our way back from Victoria Falls? Our ambitious plan was to start off 5AM from Lusaka, be in the historical town of Livingstone in southern Zambia at 10AM, take in the town, check out the Zambian side of the falls, and be back in Lusaka around 8PM, before the roads get too dangerous. But, alas, this was not to be. 

The hubby is sick. S -I - C - K as only a man is. He has the sniffles, and oh my is he miserable. The most he could muster, since we felt the need to give the nice cleaning people at the hotel some space to work their magic (and who really wants to look behind that scene anyway), was to drive me around Lusaka with the camera stuck to my face for a change, and treat me to lunch at a pretty cool local place. However, before we stopped for lunch a thought occurred, and after making the hubby flush all of his dirty tissues and really scrub his hands with soap, it still hasn't gone anywhere. I realized that the hubby could inadvertently kill someone.

Let me explain this horrifying conclusion. 

A while back I read somewhere that Zambia has one of the highest concentrations of people with HIV and AIDS. Unfortunately, I now know, this information is correct. According to Avert, 15% of the adult population in Zambia lives with this disease. I realize that the number is 3% lower than the number for South Africa, but we haven't been sick in South Africa, and at home the hubby would be just there - in isolation at home - if he was sick. Now, at lunch, by just breathing the same air with the other people in the restaurant he could pass on his sniffles to someone whose immune system would not be able to cope, and who would then become the main participant in one of the far too commonplace funeral processions that, even just in the past couple of days, I have already seen too many of. And, chances are, before attending the procession the person would in turn pass on what begun as the simple sniffles. There would be no testing and no medication.  

At the local marketplace there were far too many people selling headstones.     

When the reality finally hits home, it really floors you.  

Fall hits Joburg

Yesterday, in the evening my feet were actually a little cold. 

Gasps of horror.

I might actually have to wear socks in this country. 

Dang! 

I thought being in Africa meant that it would always be warm and I would be longing to wear a loincloth of some sort, but I also thought that Mexico would be filled with poncho-clad guys in big sombreros sleeping by a cactus with a half-empty bottle of tequila, or that Paris would be filled with waif-like women wearing berets, with baguettes dangerously close to their armpits. 

I am such a country bumpkin. I guess the weather serves me right, for entertaining Disney views of entire nations and cities. 

Anyhoodles, not going to wear socks until my toes actually turn blue.   

Never been to Africa

Without lying or exaggerating this is what some of my South African friends say, because they have perhaps never left South Africa, or only ever visited places like Namibia, Swaziland, or Lesotho. Namibia is the northwestern neighbor of South Africa, Swaziland is pretty much encompassed by SA on the east coast, and Lesotho is a country completely within the borders of South Africa.

But what does it mean? How am I to understand this, since I thought I already was in Africa? I mean the name of the country has the word Africa in it?!?!

So naturally I couldn't let this lie.

I'll try to shed some light on this issue and perhaps also finally explain it to myself. Or just ask more questions, and get multiple debates going while wine is flowing. 

According to my friends they are in South Africa, which is only linked to Africa by default, by the geographic location only. 

"Yee- yees?" I would say, thinking these people must have already had too much to drink. 

According to my friends they are not in Africa, because Africa has lions, elephants, zebra, mud huts, and guys with spears. No mock Tuscan mock villages, like the one we are forced to live in, no Montecasino, no Soweto, and no Cape Town. Apparently we live in the west, as opposed to Africa. Now, I never knew that these were direct opposites, but I have now been set straight. If I was being mean I would make a jab at the baggage the word 'European' has in this country. Just read Alan Paton's 'Cry the Beloved Country', and gauge the full meaning of the term in apartheid SA. But I won't get into that now.

Upon meeting one of our best SA friends for the first time, he made a comment that I will never forget. I thought it was an awesome response at the time, and it put a lot of my fears about coming here to rest, but I am only now starting to fully understand the various implications of that comment. On being lectured to by an Italian regarding what carpaccio entailed our friend retorted that he was "from Africa, not the deep dark Africa." 

Now I am left to wonder why it is so hard to be proud of this glorious continent, why is Africa only to be synonymous with a stereotypical image, and why are so many Africans themselves advocates of this kind of thinking? Not judging, just asking. Granted, Africa has its issues with wars and famines, and the unfortunately high concentration of dictators, but it also has unparalleled beauty, huge modern cities, cool, original people, multiplicity of interesting cultures, and, well, the animals of course. Why is it that being 'western' is something to strive after? For an American my home country, which all Finns maintain is in Northern Europe and completely westernized, must seem like belonging to a different category entirely with our location on the arctic circle, our long border with Russia, and our ubiquitous nudity linked to a tiny hothouse, lovingly referred to as the sauna. 

When did all the signifiers come to signify so much more than than simple geographical location? When did Africa become a loaded word, and one which even Africans themselves have a hard time stomaching? 

Elaboration anyone? Until I lose myself completely.

A serious talk with Mama Africa

I might just have to take back what I said previously about having found a country where I never have to wear socks. 

South Africa, I'm taking away some of the points I have given you. It is inhumanely cold right now, and the water coming down from the skies every time I dare to step out of the door is just really unfair, and stripping away some of the love I have for you. Don't get me wrong, I love the frequent thunderstorm shows, just not when I'm trying to sleep, or actually have to go somewhere. South Africa, my husband's hogging my car, so I have to walk. I am refusing to buy an umbrella, while all of mine sail on the Atlantic!

Mama, I am giving you a chance now. Like I said to the first maid: "This is your choice. Either you want to work for me or you don't. Prove to me that you want to continue our relationship." South Africa, stop mooning me and be my friend again. Remind me why I love you. 

Also, South Africa, while I'm at it. Please remove the bedbugs (deemed as such after an entire morning of googling bites, manifestations and such), and please never plague us with such frightening things again. Still, I understand you might not be responsible for them, and I should perhaps point my accusing finger to where everyone else's fingers are also pointing: the government. And that would be an entirely different post.