coffin for sale

Could I ever live in Africa ?My life is so radically different here than back home ; I don't drive here, and i really miss that independence. My only retail therapy here is going to the local supermarket once a week. Greedily i look at packets of soup, plastic containers, bone dry buns.I want to dye my hair, but only if I want to change it to jet black, I could . When I carefully choose some biscuits and cheese, I already know they will be a dissapointment .Everything is just not what you expect it to be; things are out of date, or packed in the wrong box, like lightbulbs so you arrive home with a bajonet fitting, ofcourse what you needed was a screw fitting.So you read with a torch until the next supermarket treat. And you know what ? You dont bother anymore with looking for the right things. Defeat sets in, and you just manage with what you have got. Your eyes register the rubbish piles, with children playing in it. The Boda Boda's , the local taxi mopeds with five , sometimes six people on it, settees, twenty life chicken in a basket.They weave in and out the crazy traffic, their ballast moving along with them. I have stopped holding my breath. The signs with' Coffin for sale', or' Jesus Saves hairsalon.'among the hundreds of street stalls, where naked children play with a rejected weaversbird nest.The markets are full of second hand western clothes, the buthers display chunks of bloody meat, covered in flies outside.their little wooden shacks. And here is the crazy thing : We , Mzungus,the white people, shop in the local butcher, which is huge, sells the most excellent steaks and french cheeses, fresh roses from the local Dutch nursery, and on saturdaymorning  wonderful French almond croissants , driven in , probably on a Boda Boda, all the way from Kampala. If there is a birthday party, everybody within the ex-pat community knows that The Serena Hotel sells the best chocolate cakes on the planet.
The prostitution of snakes and monkeys, the small rocky beaches around Lake Victoria, the chips with your omelette for breakfast,belong to a different world. The world of Africa. And I ? I am merily a visitor, will never belong. I will always be white. When I moved to Ireland, all those years ago, it was difficult at first, to fit in, but at least people didnt stare at me. Once a Mzungu, always a Mzungu.see for previous blogs also http://teatraveltien.blogspot.com