White African

It is just another ghetto as everywhere else. Here they will import African culture to survive. Everybody know each other, but there are things, that can't be said aloud - and it is crusial, when you have to decide to stay another night or move to a different hotel. There is no time to wait. If you wait a little bit longer, then he will properbly solve the problem for you. I know that it is my fault. I brought him in this situation. But know when I am in London, why do I have to help other people? I left Kampala to escape these responsibilities - to be independent. Here is a white man, why doesn't he just pay my bill?

I'm walking without direction. Trying to find a place to rest. There is always a wind that bothers me or somebody talking, which scratches against my brain. The first time I went so far away as I have been again, I was lost to solitude. This time I'm just lost. There will be no way back. My life as I thought is definitively over. Many times in between I have been going to the borders of my comprehension. So I believed that I was prepared for the challenge that I blinded myself into, but if you only go to the borders, then everything you see is already integrated in you. Still you will meet the unknown, but you will be yourself later. This time I went so far away, that I lost everyting I knew. I didn't see anything ressembling myself. I became alienated from myself. I died. The man I became was not me. He was my enemy, and he did kill me in the end.

This is what I want - people to enjoy themselves and have a good time. It is not me talking, but a women I know. She says something like this about the audience she wants in front of every time. She wants them to have fun. I am happy that the computer expert in Nakulabye is reading me whereever I am traveling. One day he might tell us about 'africa online'.

We thought that the internet would liberate and democratise the world and give specific advantages to the third world, because they could skip steps of technology. It turned out not to be true. It is not because, as always before, any new market every new commodity everything will be capitalised. It is because the mayority of the world can't afford using the internet. They have no real access. It is a surprise because anywhere you go there are internet cafés - like Coca Cola they have spread world wide (web). So it means that everyone has access to the internet - we think. In a way they have. To really use the internet you will have to be online for a longer time, and it is only we in the west and the north that can afford it. There are only a small group in the third world that can afford to be online to such an extend. We are talking about surfing on the internet or chatting. Imagine you are on an old fashion internet connection. I am talking about the situation where you are wai...

We all now about them. We get them in huge numbers every day. In the beginning many years ago I welcomed them. It was like writing letters again. I was glad to have been locked into that silent intimacy again away from telephone calls during the day. Very quickly I realised that you have to be careful what you write. You have to think carefully about the words you speak when they are so fast to post. All the time you used to have on the way to the red mail box made you thionk about a lot of things. I guess that all the years in the phone I forgot about thinking about the cause you can make. The whole idea of posting your letter as soon as possible and to respond just after reading what you recieve might be all wrong. Now here are so much noise in my box. At some point I thought that I could use the e-mail for performative actions. That was after I already had contributed to increase the amount of e-mails in space. I was already fighting for getting attention. We ...

I live in the borderlines of continents...here is somthing to chew...in Uganda we get broken tea after 9 o'clock...in Northern Mexico I get a lot of chili to my frijoles and ride out in the desert listening to Vicente's ranchero...in Latvia they speak russian and feel free at the same time...my russian is as good as ever...in Indonesia I meet a women who gives me massage but she does not write back...Roberto Barrios does not exist anymore...I think about you.

Now I know what it is like. It takes time to know how much time is comsumed and if you live in a big house with staff to do everything for you, have an European toilet and a kitchen with a fridge - then you might never know.

I have now transfered, what was still available. A lot of text from 2006 has been lost. In previous lives I have learnt, that what is lost, is lost - nothing to do. But also what is really important has peculiar tendency to re-appear later under mysterious circumstances.

To my newer readers I shall provide a short summary. I have not yet approached you with this story. To my older readers I apologise for this repetion. Although even in a short compressed version there might be additional knowledge due to the power of words. What we usually call the cracks of language. The summary will squeeze hidden experience by sucking these small and thiny pockets. In Tanzania I met a man working for the Danish Foreign Ministry. At the time I was wondering why these state advisors seem so much more reasonable and sincere than all the NGO people who are supposed to be critical and progressive but are not. I began to queston the intention of my NGO employer. I never knew his name and we did not meet again. We only shared dinner one evening. He spoke to me and I to him. When he learnt that I was going to Kampala he felt the urge to tell about a book telling the colonial history of East Africa. He could not remember the exact title or even the name of the author. He sup...

Patience when they can hide in the jungle for 8 years... when his grandmother can walk 6 km to the nearest town every day... when they can walk barefoot in the rain for 5 hours... ...then I can wait to understand the woman I love. I will be patient.

I went without my books. In the beginning I was terrified and did not know how I would survive. After some time I remembered when I lost my diary long time ago. I began feeling the same relief as I did with the diary. All my stories in the diary had gone and it made me feel free. I realised that by forgetting the books I am always carrying with me I had been freed from my own anticipation about what I am supposed to do here. I could choose to live without books and walk not guided by maps. Apparently I have been building up some kind of dependency so I went to buy one map of Kenya in the same bookshop that I have been in before. The old Indian man is still behind the counter. It is in the middle of the business area in Nairobi. Opposite one of the europeanised coffee shops. I did survive.

What do we want with the internet? - why are we online? Blogging is still only one way. Yes, you can write comments, but it does not come close to dialogue. It is my space. Internet is not about communication. We perform on the internet and express ourselves. When we write e-mails, we don't expect an answer, because an e-mail is a statement. Sms and chatting is more like it. We were talking about the internet. Let's face it - we publish ourselves on the internet. My interest in the internet is I, not we. So far have we come. There is a striking parallel between the development of internet and real life - or I should say Television. In the Television we see an explosion of socalled reality shows and contests where you can compete to become a star. Not because you are good at something, but because you are as bad as everybody else. The structure of the internet has opened for this focus on everyday life as a public issue. I am not sure if the internet also is respon...

Well, I have began a blog. Some of my male friends that know more about using the internet, than I will ever do, told me that I must have a blog, so I had to do it. It took some time – I admit it. My blog is still a hidden secret, I know, but I am slowly getting there, I think. Getting where? That is my question. Where do I want to go? – and how can I go on blogging? I thought we could have some dialogue after years of arrogance in Africa. It is the same thing, I thought, just with interaction. I was wrong. It is nothing like writing an e-mail. You don’t feel that you do anything. When I write an e-mail, I send it out of my out-box, and it is received in your in-box – that is what I must believe. On my blog I just put text by text. They don’t go anywhere. I have problems publicising my blog, and when you know about it, I must be active and interesting. Otherwise you will leave me alone – tough. My first problem was to write to my blog (oh, tha...

All accomplishments in Africa cannot be traced. In Europe war was always about conquering new land and making sure that the future will remember you. African wars are not about land. They are between clans. So they are about power? No! They fight out of honour and pride - they need to fight for respect. Something Europe has forgotten about a long time ago.

When I talked about " only one solution " I did not refer to a final solution. I am not claiming that their is one real solution. I am refering to the lives of millions of people - the mayority of the planet. Very many of them live the life - the only life - they can choose. They don't know about the conception of choice. It does not exist for them. They live the only life they can live. This is what I am talking about, when I invite into the world of only one solution. I want us to look at the world as a place where many people are trapped in their lives. They know that it is not leading anywhere, but they can't do anything different than what they are already doing and this is how we need to understand them. I will try to introduce you to some peple I know, which I believe live in their only possible solution. They are poor in a way, some of them very much, others seem to be able to move but it never happens for some reason. Don't judge them - look at them. Rega...

Today I went to the University, which happens very rarely. There were times where I thought I belonged there, but eventually I changed my mind. It was another white intellectual pretending to speak about problems of Africa. It has become a burden for me. They don't know shit. They are always very famous so everybody will applause and Ms Noreena Hertz will be a role model for a lot of young white intellectual women and I am not going to take this away from you. I had the same kind of problem a couple of months ago with Mr Michael Hardt. He is just sampling philosophical thinking from the last decades. They all want to save Africa, but they don't have a clue. We all know the figures of how many people who are dying every day, but it will not change the world to tell us again. I am not crying because of 40.000 dying. I cry because I didn't succeed to save my friends life last year and I will punish myself for that for the rest of my life. I know that this is another story. You...

I will marry this woman because she is the only one of all the women I have known that truly believe in something - she rescued me from being trapped in the small minority I was born into and welcomed me to the world where most people exist. She saved me from a sudden death in a world where nobody seem to feel mercy anymore and offered me a space in her world where every new day is different story. This is not to offend you. It is not, because it was not real. I don't mean it as a an rejection of what we shared in the past. I am just saying that I never felt like this. It is not a very good explanation and I don't need one. I realised that this is not the time to talk. She was right when she asked me to watch her and I try to do it. I listen to the astonishment in her voice when she speaks and I feel her temper breathing. Suddenly she talks very fast and looks around and gets very surprised because she is different from anybody else. In eternity she whispers to herself that she...

What did you learn in Africa today dear little boy of mine? I learnt that poor men must die. They are sent in the village, even when they get only a flue, and there they die for almost no reason. I learnt that a white man can't do any difference - not even saving the life of his friend, when he tries to. Here we have other rules, and you will be leaving very soon. Hey, dear little boy of mine, what did learn in Africa today? I learnt that white men can only care about a black women they have sex with and never about a black man - and yes, the white man will eventually go away without saying good bye returning to his wife at home if she is still around. So the black women are used to momentarily security. There will always come another man in her world of only one solution. Dear little boy of mine, what did you learn in Africa today? I learnt not to tell too much of what I think. I learnt to suspect everyone I don't know very well. I can't even trust my best fri...

In the middle of the parking lot I suddenly remembered. It was with big sincerity that she whispered to her friend and classmate. The presumable strong sentence of truth: - You have to know the rules in order to break them. I wanted to add: - Only if you don't now how to rock - if you don't have meaning in your life or dont' have a project of your own. Then you need rules to fill out the empty space between you and the world. During that long time of training you might find yourself. Off course there are no guarantees. They were attenting a classical music school where the only language accepted was Italian. But how can you allow yourself to speak such words, if you are a 'country' girl trying to get on stage? Some people might say that she succeeded in the end, but maybe they were just relieved that she chose to follow their rules. Yes, she did break them in a way, but we will never know if she found herself.

I am here again. In the small bar. As so many times before. Mze just walked in. He works in Town and comes here every day around 5.30pm. I have not been here in a very long time so he offers me a drink, silently. We salute each other again. He is a nice man who likes to talk. David - but nobody can call him that in his presence. It is late afternoon. I am sitting in the dark hiding from the strong sun outside waiting for my friend to appear, but I don't mind. I drink another one in the meantime. She is like Brenda. Shy. Well dressed. Sweet. Drinking a Nile. But it is only a matter of time before she will be hooking. I remember Brenda very clearly. She is a symbol but of flesh and blood. Here are so many young nice beautiful women who end up getting in trouble because they think they only have one solution. I am crying behind my eyes - so often I have been sitting here looking out on the hot sun imagining the world they have invited me into. Most of the time they are trapped in the ...

Now I know what it is like. It takes time to know how much time is comsumed and if you live in a big house with staff to do everything for you, have an European toilet and a kitchen with a fridge - then you might never know.

It is not about color only if you think it is but it can be ignored and it will disappear.

Here you never know what willl occur when you leave her out of attention. She might meet somebody she likes or that likes you and life will become pure hell. The risk of being caught seem so near and I haven't even done anything. Infedelity is a way of life on the shore of Victoria Lake. I would never think like this at home - where ever that is. I could very easy feel safe here - but not without money. Though there would always be somebody asking you something. I will continue watching him even when he is my best friend. I will be afraid of turning my back on him at night. After sharing my bedroom with her for over one year I still think about her friends as a danger to my health. My past experiences will hunt me down forever. Once I thought they were nice to me and they were right in warning me - I will never again be able to trust you as before. You will never survive Africa. This time there is not so much to take from me and I think it will make a difference, though I still bea...

I remember I was along in the house. It was summer. I was going through a difficult time. Not that it was very serious taking into account my fairly young age. I was still in highschool. Still you never know what might have happened to me under slightly different circumstances. It was evening time and I was seated in my father’s study, though we also used that place as a second living room. I don't remember the atmossphere as very hard. On the contrary. I had a soft feeling inside. Suddenly I held a knife in my hand. I must have picked it from the kitchen, but I do not remember going to the kitchen. I was sitting down helding the knife in my right hand trying to move it towards my left wrist to cut the artery. There was a tension in the air so I could not come near. I was concentrated about the act for a while. I lost track of time so I don't know for how long time I was doing it, but I remember giving up. I could not cut myself. I have never tried again. I believe that I have ...

I began to write my dreams in a yellow book from behind, backward and upside down. In front of the small book I had many years earlier been writing poems about women with names I did not even dare to pronounce. The transcripted dreams became real by resting on the paper in shinny daylight. Dreams with silent shadows of darkness pulling themselves against the curly feather of paper dust. I am trying to withdraw from my gloomy nightmares into the contrast of sunlight. One day in the sharp glimpse of autumn season I meet a man who claimed that my night dreams will always crible my future deeds. We began to play with the magic of day dreaming. My nightmares ceased to exist. We were constructing castles in sand and travelled around the whole world. Never again was there any paper between us. We are now sleeping soft and sound during night. The most precious women mention our names and we take them with us in bed every night. Our night dreams have become reflections of victories in life itse...

A woman with shinny hair blowing in wind that takes care of her wishes. She is flying away along the beach. The bright breeze cherishes her. She is looking back over her shoulder admiring the man she loves. He takes her photograph in return not to remember he will never forget only to please her. The high speed above the water shield shiver. Her smile trembles in excitement suddenly stepping out. The wind nurtures her skin in soft silence. Spray of water touches her body. Warm sun evaporate pearls of salt in her mind. Only a black woman in Africa she is happy can lean against his chest.

Grandmother is always sitting in the same spot. She does not want a fence along the road. Grandfather suggested it out of love, so she would get peace, but she wants to shout at everybody who pass on the road. Grandfather is a small man without many words he keeps quiet and takes a drink on the way home. She talks all day. The eyes smile when I come to visit. We don't talk together, because I can only greet her. She continues talking in a language I will never know. In between she mentions my Wife's name and laughs very loud. Her whole body moves in excitement finally she points in one direction to show me my Wife. Her Grandchild is sitting aside on the Veranda smiling as only big love can. Her eyes concentrate all the moral pride that runs from her heart. I know what it means. She is silent as Grandfather's steps around the corner. I have to know what she feels. Her eyes will never reveal her mind. ...

Three years ago I came to Kampala. Since then I have heard your music almost everywhere. In the beginning I thought it was a waste of talent – why use a good talent on mainstream pop music, when it could be used for somthing more. When I arrived I fell into the ditch that many ‘bazungus’ continue to sleep in throughout their stay in Uganda. From where they never learn to understand local music nor appreciate it, because they find it repetitive and therefore boring. I admit that this was also my opinion for some time. I don’t know why I tried to get up from there. Maybe it was just out of a general curiosity, because for a long time I didn’t get anywhere, though I still decided to stick around. This is what you learn to do very quickly – to stick around – you must stick around if you want to understand anything. During all this time of ‘thin air’ I realised something about you. It is not so much your music but your talent as a performer that attracts attention and should be appreciated....

Some years back I went to Africa. I didn’t know what is was doing. This is what I do once in a while. It has become a habit, though I don’t know if it makes sense. I used to think that going to another continent had a specific purpose. I even talked about ‘out of continent experiences’. He also claimed that he did it for anthropological reasons, but now I admit that it all happened by accident. It was coincidental. I did it by mistake. In Africa I met a white woman, who called me childish [‘barnslig’] for my birthday indicating that I looked younger than my age. I took it as a compliment, though I never knew if I deserved it. She was Swedish, but grew up in Tanzania. We always refered to her as ‘white african’. It was only later that I began to think about what it meant. She was not the only one. We have all kinds of names. In Africa it is called tribes to be more specific. It is not because we won’t be a tribe, but we don't think about ourselves as such. We are not very many and o...

I write to you all today, because I don't know what else to do. It is not because today is any different from all other days. They are all the same. I didn't get enough sleep, came to late up, still dizzy, and there is another text message from one of my past girlfriends. I am thinking of calling her, but I have become so superstitious that I do not dare. I am afraid of what might happen. In generel I have become frightened. I am scared of every step I am about to take. I have stopped to believe in other people. I am jealous of any woman I meet. Everything she does give me pain. She does it on purpose to hurt me. I am trapped in her mistery. She walks to me and begins to hit me. After a while her hands are filled with blood. It is my only defence against her. My blood will infect her and one day make her stop. That is the relief I will wait for. The only hope that can ease my pain. The desire I feel for her is so much stronger than the pain she pushes on my flesh. Tomorrow I wi...

Dear readers I have decided to continue from here - hopefully without any lost entries. In the coming days I will transfer older texts from other sites and write news in between. Take care - be aware,