Runner-up in the 2009 Bradt Travel Writing Competition.
Anonymous arms handled large woven bags over the heads of the throng - an elevated baggage carousel. The crowd surged as we stepped off the ferry. “Bananas, bananas”, one vendor shouted as he thrust a bunch of thick, squat fruit into our faces.
Like doctors who warn an overweight, beer guzzling, two-pack-a-day smoker that he needs to slow down, so do proponents of population control warn of the calamities that await unbridled population growth. And it’s not because they hate humanity. On the contrary, it is out of a profound Love for Humanity that they do so.
Let me put my cards on the table. As a young adult with an innate curiosity in the world I became convinced that, in our time in history, the gravest danger to humanity was humanity itself. Considering this, I believed that the most generous gift one could give to this amazing phenomenon called Life was to forego the joys of personal procreation.
Sounds weird but stay with me.
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If you want to go quickly, go alone; if you want to go far, go together.
That’s Al Gore talking about climate change and the scary place the world’s at right now.
The proverb rings true for Africa. It’s through collective, not individual action, that things will change. Traditionally, Africa is about the collective. There’s a neat tie-in with Al’s message about the natural environment. Africa is, after all, the continent of Nature.
Kenya’s women activist groups have called for a week’s Ban on Bonking to demonstrate to the male leadership of the country they want political reform. Since the violence that marred last year’s erections, I mean elections, (a slip of the tongue or the African phonetic transposition of Rs and Ls?), there has been an uneasy truce on the political scene. Women have decided it’s high time this changed and to take matters into their own hands. They will even pay prostitutes to abstain, to get their message across.
There is something positively Gandhi-esque about the initiative and in a country so beset by HIV/AIDS and overpopulation, a ban on sex couldn’t be more to the point! Viva Mama Africa!
Every second Saturday is Good Hair Day, for dogs at least. In the small Moravian village of Elim, near the southern-most tip of Africa, dogs are given a wash and pamper by local farmer, Andrea Booysen and her helpmate, Belinda Owens. And it’s more than a lick and a promise for these often neglected animals.
Elim houses
While the world reels from the Credit Crunch, South Africans stagger about in a crisis of faith – faith in its institutions, its justice system and its leaders.
Pula ran across the bare, cracked, cement earth throwing her mother a toothless grin.
“Don’t be too long in the forest and remember the dangerous ones”, she called after her effervescent firstborn.