Zero tolerance

I sit down at the table and notice at once that there is nobody from my tribe near me. "Oh boy, this could be a long night", I think. "Whatever you do don't be horrible to the expatriates."

People sit there in their nice clothes, laughing, talking, looking as though they're at ease with the world. An attractive blond woman in a dress sits next to me. The shape of her face seems Scandinavian, in an Asterix-In-Norway kind of way. "Hullo", she says. "Anybody in this seat?"

"No", I say. "All yours." She puts her handbag by her knees. "You're looking smart", I say. "Where have you come from?"

"The EU function, Zero Tolerance to Homophobia."

"Ah yes, I received some emails about that."

"You did? I didn't see you there. How come you didn't make it?"

I think for a moment about whether to be honest. I want to say something that will make conversation easier rather than harder. But for some reason my brain won't allow it tonight. "I'd never go to an event with a title like that", I respond.

"Why not? Are you homophobic?"

"I find the title of the event absurd, and sinister."

"What could possibly be sinister about an event like that?"

"The event is about intolerance to intolerance. What that implies is that the EU doesn't mind intolerance, just so long as it is intolerance that it approves of. It reminds me of that moron totalitarian Herbert Marcuse's belief in "liberating tolerance", tolerance for things you agree with, intolerance for everything you don't. It's Orwellian double-speak, double-think."

"Oh come on!" she says, "you're reading too much into it!"

"And", I continue. "Homophobia isn't an action, it's a feeling; a thought. An event like that is essentially an acceptance of the idea of thought crime. And in Zimbabwe, in fact, it's not illegal to have homosexual thoughts, only to engage in homosexual acts. Zanu PF, savage and barbaric as it is, understands the difference between thoughts and actions, which is more than can be said for the EU, much of the time."

"Oh my goodness, you're being completely ridiculous!" she says. "Do you yourself have any problem with gay people?"

"What gay people do is none of my business. On that particular issue I'm libertarian."

"So what's the problem?"

"I've just stated it. Had the event been slated as "equal rights for gay people" rather than "let's show our Intolerance of thought crimes", then I might have considered attending."

"In any case", she says. "People mean homophobic actions when they talk about homophobia, not thoughts, so much."

"Well it's lazy language, then, to conflate a thought and an action until they become indistinguishable. Again, something I find a bit sinister. But you're right, it's common to hear homophobia being used to refer to actions, even though the definition of it concerns a feeling."

There is a brief moment of silence. I want to say so much more. I want to point out that the only reason the authorities allowed the event to happen was because they knew it was no threat. I want to tell her that if they had genuinely felt it was a threat, it would never have been allowed to happen. The fact that the event did happen, then, is proof that it had absolutely no impact on anything, accept, perhaps on the sense of virtue of those who attended it.

I decide against saying more. She breaks the silence. "Excuse me. I'm just going to talk to Katie, over there, haven't seen her in ages. Nice to chat."

"Bye. Nice to chat."

Cameron Diaz and the Nazi

So there I was minding my own business, walking along la playa Blanca, looking out for the pig I'd seen frolicking on the sand the previous day, as one does, when all of a sudden I saw a sign saying, "Vegan food and coffee". The bit that said "vegan" irritated me (obviously, Jules). But it crossed my mind that a vegan stand might sell coffee a little less Nescafeyie than other places.

Some years ago I suspect this beach had been a pristine 4km stretch of peninsula. Then it looks as though some clever fellow had built a road to it so that in months every square meter of it was covered by illegal swiss-family-robinson-type wooden structures: mini-hotels, restaurants, cafes and other non-descript-wooden thingies. 

Such structures would (I'm sure) have a pleasant desert-island simplicity to them were they few in number. But hundreds of them cheek-by-jowl give more of a kind of "listen-to-the-scandinavians-fucking-the-rastafarians-or-taking-a-post-coital-shit" kind of Ibiza-party vibe. 

In between (and in front of) the shacks, countless traders sold everything from pigs to massages to necklaces. The peninsula was without plumbing so everyone washed with vanishingly rare fresh water brought in with buckets from elsewhere. The toilets flushed with sea water (again using the bucket method). Sewage vanished magically, leading you to suspect that it ended up in the marsh area close to the beach.

Had it not been for the splendid company of my fellow wedding party-goers entertaining me with near-death boat experiences and witty "one-time-at-the-tin-roof" stories (not to mention Robyn's unforgettable, politically incorrect descriptions of China), I'd have likely arrived at the beach, drunk an overpriced GNT, and then left.

So there I was, day n on la Playa Blanca, determined to find decent coffee, and still wondering whether to go over to the "Vegan food and coffee" stand when, all of a sudden, I noticed that the coffee-selling person at the stand was hot. "Decision made!" I thought. 

I trotted over. "So, do you guys serve coffee that's half way edible?" I asked.

"Hullo, yes!" she said, looking like a youthful Cameron Diaz in a lost-at-a-hippy-commune-for-half-of-my-life-kind-of way.

"Are you sure? Can I smell it to make sure you're not telling horrible lies?"

She smiled as though I was behaving like a prick and poured a little coffee into a cup for me. I took a sip and did a Gordon Brown smile in return (you know, the kind he gives when he's just sold all of Britain's gold reserves for nothing).  "Sis", I said. "Is this it? No espresso machine? No stash of freshly ground coffee round the back you forgot to bring out this morning?"

"Well", she said. "At least it's not Nescafe!"

She was actually more beautiful than a young Cameron Diaz. Olive skin, sun-wavey blonde hair, greeney-blue eyes. "Bit of a looker hey!" I thought as I noted three peculiar things. 

1. She had dry food smeared around her mouth like a toddler who'd recently eaten porridge. "That is totally not hot", I thought. "But it's some how still endearing, like children are endearing" 

2. Her teeth were perfect, with the notable exception of one that looked like it had been hacked (or violently knocked) out to leave a brown, stumpy peg in its place. "Lady, when was the last time you went to a dentist?"

3. Her arms were incredibly hairy. "Intriguing that you're not self conscious about your hair. Endearing", I thought.

Christian came to me at that moment. "Dude, what are you doing here?"

"Still searching for coffee"

He looked at Cameron Diaz briefly. "What is this place anyway, some kind of leftwing-hippy commune?"

She smiled from behind the counter. "No, we're not communists", she said to him.

"Alright, China, just going to find Natalie, see you later", he said to me, walking off as though the hippy-commune had just transcriptionally activated his knee-jerk conservative-irritation genes.

At that moment a guy came up behind me. "Actually, I'm the exact opposite of a communist", he said, as he walked around me and into the coffee-shack. "I'm a Nazi". 

I looked at him, waiting for him to say something that would qualify what he'd just said as a joke. 

"You think that's strange, don't you, dude, because I'm black."

He was, indeed, black as the night. "Well, yeah, that did cross my mind as odd", I exclaimed.

"Dude, you've just been listening to all the media hype!"

"Media hype?"

"Dude, don't believe it all. Hitler was just trying to help his people, man. He was trying to improve them. Dude, media have been trying to vilify him for decades! I'm doing the same thing, dude, just trying to create the master race."

"So you think bad PR was his primary downfall?" I said.

He sounded like he had been recruited straight out of the cast of some cheap Californian surfer-dude movie. And he reminded me of Splinter from "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles". In fact, had Splinter been embodied in human form, this man would have been him. He walked around with his shirt off and, like you might expect of a Kungfu master, had a six-pack, and frowny kungfu eyebrows that defy description, except, to say that they had a Splinter-cum-Japanese-anime look to them. "At least you're ripped", I thought as I continued with, "Where are you from?".

"Egypt", he said. 

"But you sound like you're Californian."

"Oh, dude, yeah, I grew up there. But I'm Egyptian, dude! You can't escape your roots!"

"And what are you guys doing here, on this particular beach?"

"I run this place, dude. It's a Kungfu camp, and a University."

"A Kungfu camp.....and a University?" ("On La Playa-fucking-Blanca!!" I thought. "Of all the mad places to choose!")

"Dude, I do it all man. Kungfu in the morning, university by afternoon and evening."

"What's your syllabus?" I asked, trying not to laugh at the absurdity of the guy.

"Dude, we meld everything together: mathematics with language, ancient aboriginal chemistry with homeopathy, mayan stuff, ancient Egyptian physics. Man, when I meditate, I tap into my DNA from my ancient Egyptian people; just think what energy and information is stored in there? And think, I already know all of your type of education, your "western" education, or more like indoctrination, but I can also add to that, you know, dude, all of the extra stuff from my genetic history! Think for a moment about how powerful that shit is!"

At that point, I thought,  "I simply must escape! PS, thanks for cock-blocking me with Cameron Diaz, who incidentally needs dental work, and probably a visit from her parents, not to mention a bikini wax, if her arms are anything to go by."

 "....blah blah blah....man, that's why the end of the world is coming. It's just like Revelations all over again! Are you familiar with revelations? Dude, it's all in there!"

He seemed so riveted by the opportunity to relieve me of ignorance that I felt my leaving would some how be extraordinarily rude. So I stayed  and returned to the question of Hitler. "What do you make of the Nazi footage showing thousands of dead jews and other non-desirables being tossed into mass graves with industrial earth moving equipment?"

"Dude, I've studied those images! Man, they're not even real! They're all the same people! When you study enough of the pictures, as I have, you realise they're just moving dead bodies from one staged photoshoot to another! Oh man, I can't even believe you're buying that shit!"

"Yeah", said Cameron Diaz. "They just shift them from one place to another!"

"What!" I thought. "You, Cameron, Diaz!! Trust the only hot girl on this beach to be the member of some black nazi kungfu death cult!"

I looked at them both for a moment, wondering in my own mind what Splinter's brochure would read like. Obviously, he probably wouldn't put, "Wanted: hot, vacuous and troubled vegan women for indoctrination by black Nazi kungfu death cult leader. Please apply within. Must have no clue about how to make coffee."

I escaped after what seemed like an hour or so and explained to the party what had happened. Sarah immediately said, "oh my goodness, he probably gets to sleep with all the women too, whispering sweet nothings, like "Come on baby, it's what Adolf would have wanted!" 

"Damn you Whaley!" I thought. "If only I'd thought of that fricken line as my own so I didn't have to credit you with it when recounting the story! Thanks for nothin' "

I walked past the vegan store a few times over the the next two days. Miss Diaz would often wave to me like I was an honorary cult member, and sometimes look as though she might come and talk to me, only for Splinter, in the background, to immediately lift himself eagerly from his seat, as though he were preparing to deliver another groundbreaking educational sermon to me.  And then I would put my head down and walk with purpose, as though I were still looking for a decent cup of coffee.

An unusual lunch date

I walked along a leafy street this afternoon, in Medellin, taking in the splendour of the trees and buildings around me. A young lady passed me on the pavement. "Hola" she said. 

"Hola" I replied. 

I crossed the road some moments later and noticed that she was behind me. She said something in Spanish. I stopped. "Inglese solomente", I said to her, holding my hands up in embarrassment. She looked at me blankly so I pulled out my phone and got onto Google translate.

"Where are you going?" She tapped into it.

"I'm finding lunch", I replied.

She said nothing in response so I continued on. But she followed me once more and then took the phone from my hand as I strode and tapped something into the interface.  "Do you want sexual services?"

I walked on. "No", I laughed.

Still she followed me. Eventually I stopped and faced her. "What are you doing? Where are your parents? You look like you're about 17 for godsakes!" She looked at the floor and said nothing. "argh, this is frustrating!" I thought, as I tapped what I'd just shouted into Google translate.

She took the phone. "Venezuela." We began passing messages back and forth.

"It's dangerous to walk around streets having sex with random people. You can get hurt. You can catch diseases."

"It's because of economic problems in Venezuela."

"I'm going now, I need to get lunch."

"I can take you to a good restaurant."

"No", I said. "I've already got a place to go to." I walked off and then checked over my shoulder some metres ahead. She was in the distance moving in the same direction as me. Eventually I found the place I was looking for and sat down at a table. Seconds later she was next to me. "Are you joining me for lunch, or something?" I wrote.

She nodded and looked at me like she was Puss and Boots from Shrek.

"Argh!" I thought. "There I go, minding my own business, and the next thing I'm buying lunch for a prostitute."

I thought about shewing her away. But the thought of doing so suddenly felt a bit like strangling a kitten. The waiter brought us a menu. I tapped into my phone, "Where are your parents?"

She didn't answer. Instead she asked me how old I was.

"36"

"22" she responded.

"When are you going back home?"

She pulled a ticket from her bag and pointed to a line that said, "Medellin --> Caracas", in about two month's time.

"Do you have children?"

"Yes. One. He's 3 years old". She pulled out a picture of him. He was an adorable boy with the same kind of spontaneous joyful look as my nephew. A big smile and sparkly brown eyes.

"What's his name?"

"Alexander"

"Who looks after him?"

"His godmother"

I thought as she talked that I detected a tear, but then wondered whether that was my imagination. It struck me at that moment that I was surprised that she was crying; that I was surprised that she had the full range of human feelings. Why had I subconsciously thought that she mightn't? 

"Don't you know you can get hurt doing what you do? Can't you get another kind of job?"

"It's because of the economic problems in Venezuela" she replied, again.

And then I felt like an idiot. How the hell would I know what jobs she could or couldn't get? Why would she be in Colombia, hundreds of km from her child, if she had the option to be home? "Shut up already, Eastwood", I thought.

And, of course, those of us from Zim have always been familiar with economic migration of sorts. How many of us had to leave our homes?  How many of us found it unpleasant, lonely, uprooting, alienating? And yet we worked cushy jobs in full time employment in decent countries. We hadn't had to sell sex to strangers as illegal aliens in banana republics. 

The food came. She tucked into her salmon dish like she hadn't eaten for some time.  "Are you married?" She wrote to me.

"No"

"Why?" she asked.

"Why?" I thought. "What the hell is this? Some kind of 20-questions-prostitute-power-half-hour-radio talk show?"

The immediate dialogue in my head went something like this; "it's complicated. I mean, once, long ago, my ex-girlfriend of two years turned up on my doorstep in Zimbabwe and asked me to marry her. And I really wanted to, but couldn't for all kinds of reasons that I won't go into because I hardly know you form a bar of soap; I mean you're a prostitute I've just randomly found myself having lunch with for god-sakes, and in any case, what I've just said is the kind of thing that would likely get badly lost-in-translation on Google."

"I haven't met the right woman", I eventually wrote. "And I also want to be ready in myself for the responsibility of it. And some women can be terrifying."

She burst into laughter when she read that.

And then I thought, "dude, why did you even say that? I mean you're not really that terrified of women, are you? Maybe just the crazy-bitch variety who try to panel-beat you into a better person with such implements as blow torches, hammers and badzas. And I don't even go anywhere near crazies like that anymore.  And how stupid to even mention something like fear to someone who is likely traumatised by genuine violence. You really need to get on top of this casual lunch-time-with prostitutes banter, Eastwood." 

"Don't worry, you're hansom" she wrote. "One day you'll find someone nice!"

"Thanks, let's hope so!"

I finished my chicken and then wrote, "If you could choose what to do in life, what would you be?"

She seemed to think for a moment. "It doesn't matter, so long as I can look after Alexander."

Her words at once reminded me how immensely middle class and lucky I was; of how I have been indulged with choice at every stage of my life, sometimes to the point of anxiety. "Hmm, should I take that postdoc at Cambridge? Or should I return to Zimbabwe? Or then again, wouldn't it be fun to run my own business at this stage of my life, at least, for a while?" Bad feelings swept over me. I felt almost dirty for allowing our worlds to meet when they were so different. It felt some how horribly dishonest. "Oh goodness", I thought, "I'm one of them; one of those leftwing trustafarians who fraternises with the masses."

I asked for the bill. "Thank you", she wrote. "Con gusto", I said as I got up and walked away. But once again she followed me. We passed a cash machine and she tugged on my arm to stop.  She went into the cash booth for some minutes. When she came out I realised from her body language that she had likely hoped to contribute something to the meal, but then found she couldn't.  "It's okay", I wrote. "You don't need to give me anything."

We walked on. At the road to my hostel I stopped and pointed to where I had to go. She pointed in another direction. I held out my hand to shake her's. But she instead reached up and grabbed my face with both her hands and kissed me on the cheek. I had a momentary and overwhelming desire to protect her from all the evils of the world, to make sure that she and her child would some how be safe. And then I felt that crushing (and unfortunately, all too familiar) sense of helplessness that comes from knowing that a situation is much bigger than you. 

Later that evening I received a whatsapp message. It was from her. I realised she must have messaged herself from my phone earlier. "Can I see you?" she asked.

"That unfortunately won't be possible", I said. "I'm going back to my home country today. All the best for your and Alexander's future."