AFRICAN CONTINENT
Travel countries: Morocco
Experience: Concluding Africa trip with Moroccan tea in Casablanca

The trip is at its end… the last 300 kilometres of Africa. After having the 3rd cup of sugary Moroccan tea with concluding talks about Africa, sharing understandings and experiences with a curious and interesting American volunteer David, local boy with eyes shining from within came and unexpectedly kissed David’s forehead for three times. After a while follows a row of people asking for money to eat…
Even though it was nothing extraordinary to experience in Africa for us after 4 month already living here in this, I would call it, humanism, it was very sensitive for me listening for David’s experience after all, what it meant to him to be kissed by a random native boy and what are the feelings after the first days in a different continent. All my thought about the humanism, collectivism versus individualism, private space against common place and senses concentrated in a short, let’s call it, poem:

 

Africa – the cradle of humanity
Walls. Doors. Locks. Chains.
Masks. Statuses. Media. Lies.
What do we lose in order to gain?

GDP. HDI. Poverty Line.
Is that how we measure the distance we came?

1st     2nd     3rd  Worlds.
What are those boundaries about at all?

Talks about the hunger and tea discussions about fights –
It somehow stops when you enter Lost Lands.

“In Africa without money at least you don’t starve”,
Said my friend from the country once taken by France.

(You should not speak with your mouth full, especially about starving.)

Grabbing the land,
Disconnecting the food chain.
Eating what they grow,
Trashing with what we make.
Being called a sister doesn’t allow me acting this way.
Then I feel like calling Africa –
The Mother of Life.
When they have nothing –
They share one plate.
While we search for privacy –
For us they just pray.
When we count statistics –
They simply die.

It is left just to clarify:
Who are “we” and who are “they”?

They are the once who have not ate
The fruit from the tree in the Garden of Saints.

And we are the once who still can claim
That Nature and lands have been always for sale.