Africa Askew
Page 35
Besides, I became addicted to this new feeling. I can’t live without it anymore. And the fact that it has spoiled me for Germany seems more of a privilege to me. The boring mustiness has always been here. I just didn’t notice it. But now I know, and I can escape it.
In Africa, I’d always laughed at the people who went travelling with just a small plastic bag, or no luggage at all. But after moving four times in the course of a year, my possessions shrank to the contents of two large suitcases. And I think twice now about whether I really needed each of these possessions – just like a modern nomad.
So I certainly can’t imagine I’ll die in the bed I was born in. But in any case, that was only how lives were lived in the golden age of the bourgeoisie, and this ended with the First World War at the latest.
Now, in contrast, I’ve experienced a couple of times waking up in the night and not knowing, for a while, where I was – neither the country, nor the city, the house nor the room. That can be disconcerting. But that’s the price you have to pay.
And you just have to accept that, as an expatriate, the people who have stayed at home will think you strange – and not infrequently they’re probably right.
I, for one, will carry on anyway. The first dog in the street will tell you that[8].
Find PETER BOEHM on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Peter-Boehm/121666391323734
PETER BOEHM’s previous publications:
IM KÖNIGREICH DER FROMMEN, (German-language travelogue)
The German journalist, Peter Boehm, spent thirteen months teaching English in Saudi Arabia. This is his story. He talks of boys who can drive cars, but of women who aren’t allowed to, of unemployed people living in luxury, of women in Darth Vader costumes, of maids and their horror stories, and the insane building boom. But above all, Peter Boehm paints a detailed picture of an Islamic fundamentalist society, which is unparalleled in the world.
AFRIKA QUER, (travelogue)
English translation – AFRICA ASKEW – TRAVSERSING THE CONTINENT
Peter Boehm travelled right across Africa, in speeding SUVs, rickety buses and dilapidated trains. He travelled for almost six months, over 6,000 miles, through nine countries – Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, Niger, Mali and Senegal.
The journey was breathtaking and nerve-shattering, but never dull. The people he met were exciting, bizarre and pathetic, but they never leave you cold. In Somali, Peter Boehm describes psychiatrists who consider all their compatriots to be mad – as do the Somalis themselves and, in the end, even the author thinks he’s mad too! In Sudan, he meets doctors who re-seal women; in Chad there are street kids already sitting on their suitcases, awaiting the journey to Germany; in Mali he meets traditional healers who are, at the same time, GPs, best friends, and agony aunts; in Nigeria there are traditional leaders whose subjects throw themselves on the ground before them, and Islamic judges who savour the whippings they’ve ordered as one would a high-quality wine.
For good measure, Peter Boehm has kept a record of the troubles and transformations of a European in Africa.
Peter Boehm’s tone is laconic, and free of any sentimentality. You’ll never have read about Africa like this before.
TAMERLANS ERBEN, (German-language travel reports)
The essential companion for a journey to Central Asia.
TAMERLANS ERBEN contains reports from Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. It talks, for instance, about Central Asian food, the new capital of Kazakhstan, Astana, the Andijan massacre, the vanishing Aral Sea, the leader of leaders, the great Turkmenbashi, Buzkashi, Samarkand, bride kidnappings, self-immolation of women, the traffic in Uzbekistan, and much more.
SCHÖNESDING!, (German-language novel)
“Everyone wants to make the world better a better place, but no-one wants to make it more interesting. Isn't that odd?”
A young man goes to Berlin, because he wants to get a little space from his girlfriend. There, he meets Felder, who wears dark glasses all the time, always goes around barefoot, and has a friend named Hubsi, whose vocabulary has been reduced to two words – “Schönesding!” (“That’s nice!”) and “Wachauf!” (“Wake up!”)
The young man is both fascinated and repulsed by Felder, but he soon finds himself completely under his spell. Looking back, he says “Felder was my Svengali or my Jesus Christ – or even my fantasy hero. Damn it, man – what do I know!”
Dieter Bohlen, the titan of German pop, also makes an appearance.
Felder, Hubsi and the young man go on a journey which can only end in catastrophe...
“Schönesding!” is a black comedy and a bittersweet satire of the kingdom of the dead, between Cape Arkona in northern Germany and Oberstdorf in the south of the country, but at the same time it is a revolt against the half-heartedness of life, and the comforting background music for those still floundering before they cross the Styx into the underworld.
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[1]
As translated by Simon Elmer and Eliot Albers, in The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (April 2010)
[2]
Ibid
[3]
Ibid
[4]
As translated by Dennis J. Carlile, in Rimbaud: The Works. A Season in Hell; Poems & Prose; Illuminations, 2000, p. 407
[5]
James Bruce, Travels to discover the source of the Nile, in the years 1768, 1769, 1770, 1771, 1772 and 1773, published 1804, pp. 482-485
[6]
As translated by Mercer Cook, in The African Origin of Civilisation: Myth or Reality, Cheikh Anta Diop, 1974, pp. 111-113
[7]
Very typical German surnames
[8]
A reference to a quotation in Rimbaud’s last letter