Mailbag

A reader has written in, apparently in response to my most recent article. Maybe I've been out of the U.S. too long, but I didn't understand this. I think this reader has a good point in here somewhere and I'd like to know what it is. A little help?

 

----- Original Message -----

From: [name deleted]

To: Bengali, Shashank

Sent: Friday, May 19, 2006 6:36 PM

Subject: is it right

sir

you talk about white people who have it all

 

they talk about the white man in america who have it all

 

let me tell you a lot of us people have worked hard for it and i do not mean the easy way

 

do you know mr brooks of kansas city-well he has called me a white boy and to stay out of black politicts

that is right -black politics-well you may not know it a lot of americans like to be called americans-not what the city of kansas city calls us

 

i joined the naacp and they told me to sit down and be quiet because i was tell the truth and they wanted to know if i was white

 

have you ever heard of the k-k-k-i don,t belong but were do i go to get  it fair  -why is it if your white you are wrong about things and if you make coplaints you are a racist-well it is changing-people are mad at the city because they do not car about every one here-it won,t take to much to have people rebel-my grand kids are not called americans in school but black kids are

 

why is it right for people think that only black people are the people of african

 

why is it right that a white man who comes to america to live can not call him self a african american on paper

 

do you wright only for black people

 

[name deleted]

Blokeback

I've been patronizing a decent little video store near my apartment for the past few months. It doesn't have the world's greatest selection, but it's got plenty of new releases, a lot of classics and a ton of TV shows. (They've also got more Bollywood than anyone needs.) So I've been catching up on "The OC" and "The Sopranos," shows I love for very different reasons. And in stark contrast to the Blockbuster in my hometown of Cerritos, Calif. - where the manager for the longest time was the spindly, angry ex-JV baseball coach at my high school - the two Sudanese who work this video store are really friendly and pretty cool. They've also been more than understanding when I've kept DVDs for 3-4 weeks at a time because of traveling, laziness, unwillingness to drive in Nairobi in the rain, etc.

(Side note: one of the clerks, this girl who looks about 22, refuses to learn my name, despite my having spent enough money there in the past six months to probably cover her rent. She makes up for this by calling me Hrithik Roshan, which I think is fantastic, and I'm not going to ask her to stop.)

The other day, however, I had a slightly off-putting experience. I went in to retrieve the next few "Sopranos" discs and generally shoot the shit. Hrithik-girl went through her usual spiel of recommending some horrendous teen melodrama (this particular day it was the latest season of "One Tree Hill," which had just arrived). Then she asked if I'd seen "Brokeback Mountain." I said I'd just seen it in South Africa with my girlfriend. Her face went blank.

"Did you like it?" she asked. Her tone suggested I'd told her I just got a colonic.

A little too quickly, perhaps, I said, "Yeah, I thought it was great."

She and another girl behind the counter looked at each other. "You're the only guy I know who's even seen it," Hrithik-girl said. She eyed me suspiciously. "How could you watch it?"

"Well, you know, it won all those awards. I really like the director. The acting was excellent. And plus, I really like movies where two male actors have sex with each other."

I didn't say that last part, but I might as well have. Here in my oasis of westerndom in Nairobi, where I can rent the gory "Sopranos" and the salacious "OC" with equal ease, I'd forgotten how foreign something like "Brokeback" can seem to the average Kenyan. The movie didn't make it to the movie theaters here, and it's hard even to get a decent bootleg on the streets (it helps if you pronounce it "Blokeback," like the Kenyans do, inverting their "r's" and "l's" so charmingly). Homosexuality is illegal here, and a lot of people don't have any patience for the thought of it, let alone its projection on a movie screen. When the movie came out in the U.S., friends and I debated when it would make its Kenyan premiere, and the consensus was sometime after Nairobi got an NFL team - or L.A., for that matter.

So I was fighting a losing battle with video-store girl. I asked her if she'd seen it - again, that colonic face. Did she know anyone who'd seen it? "One guy said that if he even saw a copy of the DVD, he would burn it." She looked at me again. "I didn't think you were like that, Hrithik Roshan," she said, and she and her friend started to giggle.

There was nothing to say to that. I gave her my name for the thousandth time, she made a note in the computer, and I was out the door with my "Sopranos."

Going home

I realize my posts are becoming fewer and further between. No excuses - just been busy with work, and when not busy, too lazy to write. I'm going home in 10 days and my mind's been preoccupied with that. I'm trying to think of the stuff I want to bring back, because I know that once I get there, between seeing friends and family and trying to watch or listen to as many Dodger games as possible, shopping time will be precious. Plus I'm sure my mom is going to want to fill my suitcase with things like frying pans and recipe books - things I'll never use.

 

So I've got a short list of books - my friend Kaduk's first book, Wrigleyworld; the new Philip Roth novel; a couple of Africa books. Any recommendations? Thanks to iTunes I don't have to worry about music, and thanks to those stupid region codes there's no point in buying DVDs. I'm trying to think of stuff that I really miss about the States when I'm here, and sorry if this sounds really cheesy, but the stuff you really miss you can't pack in a suitcase. Except for Pace medium-hot salsa - that you can. Writing that one down...

 

I got to spend several days in Cape Town last month with Bhargavi, bookending my Brangelina trip to Namibia. I've written this here before, but Cape Town is a beautiful city, and now that Bhargavi's been there a bit longer it was much easier to get around. We had several amazing meals, went wine-tasting (including at Ernie Els's ridiculous vineyard - which produces surprisingly good wine), played a round of golf (in keeping with the Els theme) and went to the movies three times - "Inside Man" (good), "Brokeback" (lived up to the hype, but definitely not coming to Nairobi) and "Shopgirl" (despite being a big Steve Martin fan, this one is flat). It doesn't sound like the most exotic time, but it was hugely fun - and just nice to be in a consumerist society again. It got me even more anxious to come home.

 

Back in Nairobi, the rain's not letting up and it's playing real havoc with my schedule. The afternoon rains seem to start every day at 4 p.m. and go until about 5 or 6. That means the roads are impassable until 6:30 at the earliest - to say nothing of the muddy lot where I park my car, where all the car guards walk around in gumboots. If I want to work out (usually I don't) I don't get to the gym until 7 or 7:30. My gym is in a big shopping mall, and arriving after 7:30, when all the shops are closed, can be pretty depressing. Lately, the only thing getting me to go even semi-regularly is the new podcast of Pardon the Interruption, which makes 21 or 22 minutes on the treadmill fly by.

 

I had to mention one thing from the news here last week - Robert Mugabe, the dictator of the collapsing country of Zimbabwe, had a highway named after him in neighboring Malawi. Mugabe is a pariah everywhere in the world except in southern Africa, where even a statesman like South African President Thabo Mbeki won't dare criticize him. In Namibia last month, I went running in downtown Windhoek, the capital, one day, and found myself at the intersection of Robert Mugabe Avenue and Fidel Castro Street. Castro wouldn't have been pleased - there were big hotels and shopping centers all around.

What time is it?

I came home to Nairobi over the weekend to the kind of weather that can really foul up your mood. It rains like hell for a couple of hours each afternoon, and most of the night. The streets turn into rivers, and it's times like these that having my red-state beast of a car - an ancient but still running LandCruiser - pays off. Yesterday, as I drove around two minibuses that were stuck in knee-high pits of water, I felt like I was fording a river like in the old Oregon Trail computer game, only this time I made it across.

It might be the mild seasonal affect disorder or the mountain of work that piled up in my two weeks out of the office, but it's been a long week. It started with the mildly frustrating trip back from Cape Town that began about 5 a.m. on Sunday, when I had to be at the airport. On the Johannesburg-Nairobi flight, I sat next to an elderly woman who was very sweet, except it was only her second time in an airplane. Every 30 minutes or so, she asked me what time it was "where we are." It took me a while before I realized she was waiting for the plane to cross over from South Africa's time zone into Kenya's, which is one hour ahead. I started to explain to her that it doesn't really work that way, that those lines on time-zone maps aren't painted on the actual earth and she could set her watch forward whenever she pleased. But then I shut up.

With a few minutes until landing, the South African Airways flight attendants did the usual deal where they hand out immigration forms to fill out and show when you land. The lady next to me decided she wasn't going to fill hers out; she'd just show up with the blank form and her passport and someone would help her. Knowing how pissy the Nairobi airport immigration people got with me when I used the unofficial abbreviation "NBI" in scribbling my address once, I offered to fill out the form for her. I don't usually even look at people on planes; for me, this was a major offer.

I was about halfway through when one of the flight attendants came by and told me to put back the tray table that I was writing on. "But I'm just helping out this woman." He didn't care. "You know," I said, "I've flown before, and believe me - I'll put the table up in like 30 seconds, as soon as I finish." He didn't go for it. I wrote her address and the date with the paper on the armrest, and I could feel a vein in my forehead bulging.

The rest of the week I've been busy covering the Darfur peace talks by phone from Nairobi. Monday night about 10, I was in my office in town finishing up my story and interviewing one of the rebel negotiators over a crackly phone line. Suddenly the power went out - naturally - and for about 10 minutes the only light on the entire street was the bright white of my computer screen. I was there in the pitch dark, deadline looming, straining to make out what that Darfur rebel was saying, and typing onto a keyboard I couldn't see. After 10 days in South Africa, I felt I was finally back in Africa.

I'll post again in the next day or so with more on my trip to South Africa. And if you're interested, the Darfur negotiations are to expire at midnight Thursday in Nigeria - in about 15 minutes. The story could change by morning, but here's how it was played for Thursday night's deadline:

- Mediators push warring parties in Darfur closer to a peace deal (Knight Ridder)

- Sudan, Darfur rebels presented with new peace deal (Reuters)

Update: The talks unraveled early Monday, with two of the three rebel factions refusing to sign the deal. A third said it was still thinking about it.

Finally, some good news about the media

Apparently some people still trust journalists.

 

Then again, this is compared with politicians, so perhaps it's a case of damning with faint praise. Either way, I'll take it.