Fear and Loathing in Retrospect

A layover in NYC came as a shock to the system, a million miles from wild Africa.

I didn't want to front the cash for digs, so I took the train into Manhattan with a feeling to find the epicentre of it all. I hung out in Starbucks for a while, marveling at the amount of people who drink that overpriced swill watching women through the window strolling the sidewalk in high heels, walking ridiculously small dogs with designer collars. These were normal people back here in the real world.

As night fell, I sat in Times Square watching shady characters lurk in the throbbing glow. Maybe not so shady as they appeared. My mind drifted back to corrupt cops brandishing kalashnikovs, then to the red earth of dirt tracks, to jungles and villages, to naked kids running around chasing sick dogs and chickens.

The reality sinks in. I can hardly recognize this place. I think of home, so close to me now and have a sudden overwhelming impulse to hit a ten hour bus ride and sleep in my own bed for the first time in over two years. I fight it off; it's not time to go back yet. I struggle to envision how I will ever go back. I don't fit in here. I little more than a faded t-shirt, a pair of Mozambican flip-flops and a pair of beat up old cargo pants. It was fine in Africa, but all of a sudden it's not so slick anymore. NYC.

Three days before I was in Lesotho, away from the opulence of the occident, sitting in a wind swept graveyard on top of a mountain, with the chiefs and elders long laid to rest. The valley beneath was alive with wildflowers as the spirit of the dead blew all around. Legends of spirits, spells, witches and demons, filled the air.

I listened to tales of king Moshoeshoe who united the tribes, took 140 wives and put an ended cannibalism some time around the 1870s. I learn of demons, Tokolosh, that haunt and possesses people, and witches who can invoke curses and raise the dead to walk amongst the living. Or so it is said. All this was put to me by a rabbit hunting orphan who spends 50 Rand ($7 CDN) for the services of a witch doctor who prepares ritual baths to remove the Tokolosh that curses him. Of course the exorcism takes time requiring several consultations.

I never thought about it, but witchdoctoring is a lucrative profession in some parts. How the hell did I get from there to Manhattan. The shock is nearly too great to bear as the clicks of the Basotho language fade into the depths of my memory.

Fear and Loathing in the mountain kingdom brought us out into the slums where a BMW driving nightclub owner started telling stories of the gunfights at his club. No problem anymore because his private security had just wasted three guys with shotguns. We slept at a monastery, and headed out the next day, drinking a few beers that pushed one guy over the edge and left him, jibbering away like some gremlin witch doctor invoking the Tokolosh and rattling pebbles in his palm.

We made wild detours into the heart of the kingdom where I gave my boots and a cheese sandwich to a man dressed in garbage. At nightfall we cruised into a sketchy city with dangerous streets and my gremlin buddy jumped out of the car and disappeared. We searched for a while, found him with the cops, threw him in the car, locked him in a hotel room, at which point he secured his release by kicking in the door, then caused a disgraceful scene in a restaurant, uttered some threats, threw a pizza at the wall. I had reached my limit so I opened the busted door and flung his bags into the hallway. He was later found sleeping on a derelict mattress down the hall. Ladislas (aka Big L) and I contrived to wake him by dumping cold water on his head the next morning and giving him a ten minute window to get up or get left behind. We were disappointed to find him awake. We doused him anyway.

Looking back at unprovoked conflict with criminal elements, we blew through the border again back to racist South Africa, with Ladislas (aka Big L) at the wheel and our newly rehabilitated witchdoctor/gremlin (now known as Paul) in the back managing our stock.

That was so fresh but so far behind me now. As I sat awake all night drinking coffee in small Manhattan diners and another realization began to take hold. I had just spent eight months of my life moving through Africa, into the heart of darkness and out the other side. It never seemed that long. And for what? I take with me an acquaintance with wild beliefs and misconceptions, the gospel for a continent that can't untangle itself from the earliest traditions of humanity, from the the corruption and anarchy that lie beneath the facade of order and development. I take with me the beauty of the continent and its people, memories of drum beats rumbling in the Congo. I couldn't figure out what to make of it.

Not there at the epicentre of the American empire.