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Africa began with no call, no sign, no indication. The gate for boarding at Heathrow International Airport opened and that was the start. All rows, all seats, all passengers crowded like a Haitian voting-poll, but eventually formed into two snaking lines as black as a cobra’s sheen. A few white spots speckled the arrangement, I among them. Suddenly, the minority I sought was found—and it was me.
Another African Day
Camron Karsten2006-02-18 20:22:17
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but today the temperatures just plopped.” Lisa picked me up at the Colindale Tube Station. I was shivering as we walked briskly to the car. I had been waiting outside, under the dim yellow light of a street lamp, watching the streams of hot air empty from my lungs.
Lisa, born in Zimbabwe, moved to London nine years ago after visiting on her twenty-first birthday. She lives on the east part of town, working as a managerial accountant for a bank based in Geneva. “I called my Mum yesterday in Zimbabwe,” Lisa said as she cranked up the car’s heat.
And the distant horizons come to life amidst this city hum.“She said it was forty degrees and winced when I told her it was two here in London.”
That is forty degrees Celsius, which is 104 Fahrenheit. And the two degrees translates to 35.6. For Lisa, having come from this slightly tropic clime, she still finds it hard to adapt.
And coming off the plane I was dressed for the tropics, for my final destination was Africa. As the storied-buildings shadowed the London streets near Piccadilly Circus, I was pricked by the cold, my hands transparent, my windbreaker doing little to heed the fresh wintry breeze. I retreated from dusk and found an ever-present, all-popular Starbuck’s for my living-room bunker. With a cup of organic Earl Grey still boiling in its paper cup, a book set in a distant land swept with long harmattan winds, and a window-side table, time passed and my body found solace.
I read, sipped tea, now with scars on the roof of my mouth, and looked up to gaze at the swarms of humanity. The dress, the style, the mannerisms—the paces of each stride—the language. There were no minorities in London.
But at Lisa’s flat, we settled in amongst talk of Zimbabwe and the Africa I
Our presence was felt as the attentions were turned; the eyes falling the sheds of white skin on ebony scales.was about to meet.
“Zimbabwe has its fair
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Nigeria Gallery
