Tuesday Dawn

18 August 2009

It is 20 minutes to four at dawn. I am up on my hotel bed, thinking, writing and reflecting on my MA thesis, an indepth analysis of the dramartugical handling of the local and alien in the plays of Wole Soyinka and Dereck Walcott: Postcolonial Identities and Culture.

I am hungry and I love this because my favourite meal is breakfast and I will hammer it with all the energy and hunger.

Berllin has what the locals are calling the longest summer this year. I love it. And they love it too. Here, too, I begin to appreciate (again) some things we take for granted in Malawi. A typical example being the rising and setting sun as seen from most places in my home.

Here, in Berlin, you don’t see the sun rising or setting. This beauty of nature, the day star, is blocked by tall buildings as in all other cities I have been to: Oslo, Amsterdam, Washington and Jo’rburg; while Accra, Mombasa, Arusha, Nairobi and other African cities see the sun (and I speak as a witness), Malawi’s rising and setting sun is more inspiring for reasons I can’t explain.

Perhaps it is nature’s favour upon us. I will never forget the rising and setting sun in Cape Maclear. In the morning it rises up with energies as if being lifted from the waters of Monkeybay while in the evening, it is a weak star, drowning in the hills of Golomoti.

It is sweet and lovely. In Blantyre you see the sun rising, moving up slowly from behind some mountain, so too in most parts of Malawi. I miss this, I miss my love too.

The pain in my mouth is completely gone. The sores are healed. This is my disease. It attacks me when I am stressed up and the weeks before Germany were stressful.

But don’t you worry. I am fine and I will be fine throughout my stay here in Germany. Good to talk with you now. I will talk with you again, soon, especially as time and inspiration allow me to do so.