Things that tell you we are living in a strange era indeed
When you live in a place – for several years – there are things you tend to hear. All the time. In the 1960s, around the period when we were called Tanganyikans, you would hear THE dark phrase. End of life is coming. The atomic bomb is going to explode. We shall all perish soon.
During the 1970s, it was about revolution. There were so many conflicts and wars. Everywhere. Vietnam (ended in 1975), Mozambique (ended 1975), Angola, Nicaragua, Uganda (terminated when Idi Amin was deposed with the help of now Tanzania in 1979). All you heard in the 1970s – apart from excellent music – were fights, bloodshed, fights, civil unrest, bloodshed, fights, skirmishes, fights. Black September plane hijackings by Palestinians made their voices and pains heard. They are still in pain and screaming 40-50-plus years on. Right now Hamas and Israel are STILL exchanging fire. In 1982, the Middle East was also burning. You heard Lebanon on the news. All the time.
Cruel world.
“Cruel World” was a famous motto printed on T-shirts throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Fights. Unrest. Bloodshed, fights.
Come the 1980s, we got hit by a sinister disease called HIV or Aids. There was something really shocking about Aids because it put one of our biggest pleasures ( i.e. sex) in the limelight. Plus dozens of speculations...
We heard these...
HIV comes from chimpanzees.
HIV was created by CIA to make Africans look bad. HIV was created by whites to wipe out blacks.
HIV was aimed to wipe out the entire human race (does this sound familiar in present Covid-19 era?).
At that time, we Africans arriving in Europe were regarded as bringers and agents of a killer disease.
Anyway, in the 1990s – instead of “a big disease with a little name” (as the Afro American singer, Prince, sang in Sign of the Times in 1987) we had mad, cold-hearted, isolated killers on the rampage. It had begun with the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.
Then.
The Japanese sarin gas attack that injured 5,500 people and killed 14. Plus the Oklahoma bombing in the USA where 168 died in the same annus horribilis of 1995. This was becoming a trend and it spiralled into East
Africa, 72 months later. The American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were now in the spotlight.
At least 224 deaths and more than 4,000 wounded. The trend climaxed with September 2001. New York. Nothing like that had ever been seen before. We watched the planes flying and exploding into the American skyscrapers. How many deaths? Oklahoma, Tokyo, Nairobi and Dar es Salaam had been shocking, yes. Rwanda’s death toll was almost a million. September 11 reached around 3,000. That was a lot, and also shocking. The difference is now things were being made too public. And this happened at the heart of the richest nation on earth.
With the internet becoming the main mode of communication we have since lived through fear mongering, Chinese whispers and the quick spread of lies and truths.
Being witness to events as they unfold, began the trend, around this time.
During the last 20 years, we have seen consequences of September 11. Osama Bin Laden eliminated. Arab leaders assassinated. Muammar Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein ad infinitum...
Side by side with social media becoming a tool of instant news ...instantly, via the phone.
Meantime, we live with a permanent thirst for news, plus fear and conspiracy theories. In May 2021, Covid 19 – a disease that is killing thousands every day as we speak – there is also the hearsay and unknown sage.
So much has been said, is being said.
But London carries a double whammy. During the two lock-downs, another disease called loneliness has taken charge.
You hear this all the time.
I CAN’T FIND ANY MAN
I CAN’T FIND ANY WOMAN
Each gender claims the other is unavailable, unfit, unsuitable. Each time you amble down the streets, board trains and buses, you see humans staring at their phones. Constantly communicating with the screen glass that has become THE new lover.
The phone is the substitute companion. It is easier to take a selfie and admire yourself THAN to admire a stranger, face to face. Easier to “communicate” with friends who are too far (on the glass Android screen). Or own a pet. A dog. Cats. Watch TV. Same gender sex. So many substitutes that tell you we are in a very strange era, indeed.
