The Note, The Death, I'm Pregnant and Other Short Stories

Mood: Angry, Scared, Shocked, Pregnant
[Toot!] Index: 9.9
Communism Bit: On
Location: Job, of course

I'm pregnant, but that is for later in the post.

Around the beginning of the year, I walked to the ATM and got some load of cash. There was a 50,000/= in there. Crisp, new, so fresh, it burnt the eyes. I stuck with it for days, because I couldn't go and shove it at a taxi guy and say I want to stop right ahead - for 200/= - and expect to get the change. I had to go back once to the ATM and get 10,000/=, when I still had 50,000/=.
After suffering with that 50,000/= for a while, I sat down, black pen in hand, and wrote across its face: `Silly piece of paper. Only worth 15 guns in DR Congo.' I examined my work, liked it, grinned a bit, and pocketed the bloody thing.

Sometime later, I paid it off to some high-end eatery. (I was spying, not that I had abadoned the Revolution.) I completely forgot about the note.
Yesterday night, I had a 50,000/= in my pocket. Too big for a taxi ride worth 200/=. It was raining a bit. So, I ran to the ATM, and found the bloody things out of service. Hmm. The askari seated outside saw my sadness and asked what was wrong. In a short time, we were laughing about the emptiness of trusting in paper and so on, and I'm waiting out the rain so I can sprint across the road ...

And he says `You know, that 50K is only worth 15 guns. And I have one here. :oD'
I go like, `You have a gun or a 50K?' I could see the gun.
`I have both.' He pulled out a 50K. My 50K. He read out the `proverb' on the note: `Only worth 15 guns in Congo.'

You know the rest. I was shocked to shreds. And not because of that alone. The note had a story to tell. It had, along with my `proverb', three other observations.
`Only worth 1 woman in Zaire.' went one. Zaire, sic. Not DR Congo.
The next one was in some language (Nilotic, I think) that I couldn't read.
The third was `Only worth 50000 in Uganda.' Hahahaha. Some people think hard.
The askari didn't know why I was shocked. He added his own: `Only worth nothing in Wandegeya.' Hahaha. I was in Wandegs.
God knows who had held that piece of paper, where, why and to pay for what. Only God.

In other news:
I saw a fresh, fatal road accident at YMCA on Friday morning. It was the most-horrendous thing I ever had to look at. The guy had been literally squashed, head destroyed, by a car. The few seconds I looked, my chest heaved. There was blood and stuff about his head. The cop standing by couldn't get himself to focus. It was over. After having started life on the lap of a loving mother, cooing and smiling and learning to talk, expressing all emotions in a simple mono-syllabic language, on to school, mother is happy, the boy has grown up, then she catches him laying a girl, she expresses anger, yet celebrates his further development, then the rebellion, then she cries, my boy is becoming wild, then the days he didn't come back home, but he called and told her he was at a job, then the morning the loud friend walks to her door and refuses to laugh back at her taunts. John is dead. No, you won't be allowed to see him - we have promised to do you this one favour and never let you see your boy again. Peter, pick the woman up. Take her inside. Give her enough air. She'll be fine.

O, to Jah that I should never feel the Mother's Hurt. I love you, Ma.

Is this already too long? Can't know. I am not in the browser. Blogger has been messing me up, too. I'll see how patient I can keep being. Let's see ... what else? The dream I had.

I woke up on ... Tuesday, I think, with a bit of indigestion. The night before, I had dreamt I was pregnant. And maybe to make an explanation, the dream also packed an erotic line. Something to do with a busty chic and stuff ... I can't remember much, only the horror of not being sure who the mother was and how the bloody little thing will come out, seeing as I have only a ... RRRIIINNNGGG!!! Alarm. Wake the frig up, soldier! It's 0600h!

Lastly (relax, seriously, I'm closing). Australia asks you for your HIV status before you can go visit. If you are positive, chances are that you won't be let through. Now, I don't usually hear things to make me froth in anger so much. We are all segregative, but the fuckin' Australians should funckin' know better than to segregate against HIV+ people! Institutionalised stigma. And they are going to tell us, tomorrow, that they won't fund our budgets because we are not democratic enough, or because homosexuality is illegal here. Are they trying to say that HIV+ Ugandans go to Australia to fuck everyone in sight? Don't Australians know about condoms? Do they fuckin' know what it would feel like if we judged them basing on whether they have a certain disease? Do they know that there are many people who have HIV because they were born with it, not because they had unprotected sex? Segregation against people because of something they didn't choose? Why is it okay to be gay, but wrong to be HIV+? Do you know I'd have Australian citizenship if I went and said I'm looking for refuge because I am gay?

Maybe you people don't feel strongly about this, but I have had to hug a friend through the last minutes, and thinking `He is such a wasted skeleton. Death will be sweet for him. It will all end.' And I don't mean the physical pain, but the pain of having nobody around. He was stigmatised for being HIV+, and had only a distant friend to help him to the exit. Shit, people, this can't go on in 2007.
I'm going to throw a live (or at least rotten pieces of) chicken at the Australian Prime Minister when he comes for the CHOGM.