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africa unite

sabrina foschini

And the night gone by reappears, because if the darkness is deep here it has the blackness that swallows stars.
I'm sitting in the middle of the red of the sand that divides the road, and in the middle of the different black of my companions. I have spoken with you, in the silence of the depths of hearing and of a worn-out wind that unbalances clothes.
Africa is red and patient, with the smells of all dirts and the expectation of something undefined that you would call God.
The heat at seven in the morning is not yet ferocious and I take on the rhythm of this time that asks nothing and expects nothing. I have seen thousands of bags on the branches, like mistaken flowers, and I have understood that here every gesture is complicated and lasts, resists all others, becomes unchanging.
In Africa every thing is long. Every gesture large, measured, difficult. The sadness with which children set off for school in the early sun of Dakar, with small braids that pull at their skin and shoes on their feet for the occasion, speaks of the difficulty each step takes.
I have seen iron shanties and sheets of cut metal on the ground, resembling a hell on earth, with rust and sand mixed together at the bottom and no difference between trash and goods for sale (sometimes the same thing), no separation between the road and nothingness.
Everything gets thrown on the ground, things that have been used, things that will be used.The road is a continuous time, a home, a prison, a leftover. No difference, between life and surrender.
The driver always drives along the strip of land next to the road as if he didn't trust the asphalt and motions to people, orders something to drink from a small girl who comes out of a hut with a plastic cup, obedient, without asking anything in return.
Children crowd around the car window to beg for things. Every kilometre we stop at invisible borders, with soldiers armed to the teeth, the fuse of the hand grenade so close I could pull it.
The children look at my skin, amazed; I am always "madam", the black youths that are with me treat me with familiarity. "Give me". "Give me a pen a chewingum, a jacket, a bottle." I've finished the fags, they went quickly, a white candy held between outstretched fingers like a holy wafer. I've taken the pencil out of the twist of my hair; now it will blow about like a whip on my neck and the necks of people near me, but the little girl who got the pencil as a gift went away wiggling her hips and waving it about like a trophy.
My friends from Mauritania touch me lightly with a thousand careless movements, they do it carefully and gracefully, without offending me. Meyne tells me he has heard that in Italy the femmes are queens. He has a brochure of I don't know what and he waves it in front of my face, concerned because now that we are passing the river, on the border with Gambia, the heat is really cruel, my defeated and perhaps desperate appearance must have frightened them. I say that in Italy no one fans me like this and he answers if that is so they are not kind.
The Senegalese youths who accompany us go through the red tape at office windows and custom controls. They complain about Gambia and its children, perhaps more persistent, perhaps beggars. They are convinced that the problem of this state comes from the fact that they use the language of their former rulers. "It's an English-speaking country," they explain scornfully.
The children, flashes of eyes in the dark land, ask for and sell things at the same time; above all cold water in knotted plastic bags, as in a fun fair, but it's as though no one had been lucky enough to win the goldfish. People suck thirstily and then throw the nylon into the heap, together with everything else, animals and clothing, peels and carcasses, I saw a dead horse tied to a pole with its legs stiff in the air like paintings of battle scenes, and donkeys turning into earth, and iron melting under the sun disintegrate, surrender.
The children are so beautiful, they have torn sleeves, costumes like contemporary theatre, with one shoulder almost always uncovered, shining with colour and heat, a sign of insubordination, natural, towards all clothing and coverings.
Along the edge of the road I can make out obelisks of earth, sculptures in the form of reddish towers at regular intervals like milestones, I think of some mysterious rite, the chanting of a prayer that moulds the earth into the same shape for kilometres, then they tell me that it's the work of termites, their nests.
Ziguinchor, our destination, is bathed by the river and is fertile, with mangroves that drink from roots visible in the air, a forest populated by Christian bandits, waging wars among the different ethnic groups.
Now we understand the reason and the legitimacy of the road blocks, luckily it's somewhat late to be afraid.
There are markets of jars, used bottles, empty medicine containers. Everything is for sale, everything that has already been sold, used and thrown away once before, but the gravel along the road is made up of shells.
Africa throws its beauty to the wind and conserves refuse, collects it, holds on to it.
Africa possesses hips that move openly, and meters of seed pearls, the bimbim that young men with unfathomable magic eyes look for in you with their fingertips while you dance, and who in their turnings make love count, make it possible.
Every thing gets touched and is pregnant.
Every thing absorbs the dust and doesn't get enough rain, will never get the rain that is lacking.
Hands gather the rice in the cooking pots, making circles around the edges, the same plate, the same fork. I understand the nostalgia for a glass, for white circles in fingernails. I long for a clean road for my feet, a rest from the infinite overtures, from the predatory gazes, from the continual offers that are requests, demands and prayers to mix with them, to become them for a moment.
What I am or what I would be is far away.
What I am here is a rough sketch of heat, a piece of wood cracked by drought, a body melting and burning, something like the four-angled cuts in a mango, something like teeth that sink into it to eat.
Here there is a population used to life as a favour, as concession.
The favour and the mystery of life, by grace received, the necessity of a godsend, the gift that saves one day, that fills the belly, that slakes the thirst.
Here is a people that awaits mercy and covers itself with grigrì, amulets of stitched leather, that covers itself with animated miracles to escape life's blows.
Here is a people that disturbs impatience and hurriedness, frightens them and laughs at them. There is an entire world held in the time of others and its own time, keeping it going indefinitely with its unchanging rules.
Africa is ripe and tired, it gapes wide open and splits on the ground like a fruit, every thing, every offering and every fall awaits the sun.
Here the days don't pass, the days let you pass, you are held in their embrace in every part of your body. I am here and I did not stay. If you come to Africa, she swallows you like a hot mouth and you cannot be elsewhere, not even in the place where you have always existed.
I shall come back to myself, in future days, and I shall surprise myself by recovering the gestures, the cleanliness, the rhythm that completely changes the music of every country, but for now I bounce at every hole in the broken seat of the car while from the radio, "Africa Unite" Bob Marley carries on singing.

translated by Brenda Porster

Sabrina Foschini was born in Rimini in 1968. She took her degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1990 and has since exhibited her visual art in numerous public and private galleries in Italy, France, England and Germany. She also writes critical articles and reviews for catalogues of contemporary artists and contributes to a number of art and literary magazines. In 2001 she published the booklet Andare per il sottile under the imprint of 'I quaderni del Battello Ebbro' (Porretta). In 2002 her collection Il paragone col mare and the long poem Inno del corpo ricostruito were published by Raffaelli Editore (Rimini). In 2003 the Edizioni Medusa of Milan published her collection of short stories, Due mani di colore, written together with Paola Turroni. For the same publishing house she has written and illustrated a children's book, Nove gatti. She has also created and staged several poetic works, both individually and with P. Turroni, including: Cinque dita, Ibrido, Pescatrice, Nodo, Cerchio di passi, Del corpo.

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Anno 2, Numero 9
September 2005

 

 

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