Africa is Everything

Africa. It sounds quite whole, really. Whole in sense like ‘France’, or ‘Holland,' or ‘Australia’. People sometimes say ‘I’m going to Africa’, or ‘I have been to Africa’ or even worse, ‘I have done Africa’.

But the longer I’ve been here, the less ‘Africa’ as a static description, one which conjures notions of stability, uniformity, or completeness, makes any sense to me. The more I have travelled, the more I have seen how varied it is. How stable in parts and fragile in others. How politics affects governance, and how governance affects boundaries. How those boundaries have been shaped through want and warfare, peace and promise. The place, if anything, is complex.

Very quickly I stopped trying to reach a definition of Africa, because it does not, cannot, and nor do I think should, exist. Definitions limit. They put boundaries on things. ‘Africa’ is a place that does not need to be contained.

Africa is everything.

It is music that makes your soul come alive. It is life that seeps into every open pore. It is death that hangs over cliff edges, so close, always too close.

It is colour, bright, shocking, glaring colour, which adorns every inch of clothing. It is stench, dark smells that rise from the gutters and hover like omens.

It is sunsets, which give new meaning to orange, to golden, to red, to amber.

It is houses of mud, which look like they would either crack in the sun or disintegrate in the rain. It is mansions overlooking lakes, with east and west wings full of empty rooms.

It is knowing that every third or fourth person you see probably has AIDS. It is knowing that the life expectancy of some is twenty-seven. It is knowing that there are men in power lining their coffins with gold-leaf. It is knowing that in some places there are no longer enough trees to make coffins.

It is laughter, resounding around street corners.

It is spontaneity, now.

It is hotels with four poster beds and crisp linen. It is hotels with no doors, no beds, no guests.

It is giraffes and elephants and a myriad of multicoloured butterflies. It is nasty ants, termite hills, mosquitoes. It is malaria and the constant fear of malaria. It is mosquito nets being used as fishing nets. It is condoms being used for making footballs.

It is people who care. It is people who don’t. It is some who try. It is some who don’t know how to try. It is a million angry emotions about to erupt, because they have to go somewhere.

It is hope, despair, frustration, bureaucracy, enchantment, history, death, more death, life teettering on the brink of death, life, more life, and life erupting with potential.

It is all these things, and that is just the beginning.