Time Is No More

A quite man with slow, deliberate movements suggesting what movement will be like upon reaching one’s seventies.  He seemed to look out beyond us at the table.  This was his first time to travel in-country many, in many years and like us, this was his first time in Zanzibar.  I exhausted my word purse of Swahili phrases quickly and thought to ask my cousin if she might translate for me.  Had he been a supporter of Nyerere?  I asked, hoping she could help me, suggesting a softball to begin with.

The tired eyes widened and he spoke for a while, slowly but deliberately, beginning now to use his hands. And my cousin explained:  He has seen Nyerere speak many times.  “Nyerere was a was a hero for the country and for Africa”, he maintained.  “I still listen to his speeches now, on the radio as they are rebroadcast.  “The socialism of those days, of Nyerere’s time is no more.  The politicians of today are all venal.”

I began to cycle through the independence era leaders that I knew.  Who else were your heroes from that time?  Nakrumah, I offered?  Sekou Toure?  “Yes.  Both."  "Leopold Sengor?"  Not particularly.  Hastings Banda from Malawi?  Absolutely not.  The socialist leaders were the ones he admired, including some whom history has not been particularly kind to, like Mengitsu of Ethiopia, whose terrifying legacy was well documented in the Red Terror museum we saw in Addis Ababa.  Mingitsu is still alive in Zimbabwe as Mugabe's guest.  Those two were alright in his estimation. 

What about international politics?  What about Nyerere’s war with Uganda?  Was he a fan of Fidel?  What did he think of Chairman Mao?  And as we went deeper into that time, which must have been both indescribably hopeful and for so many countries then, crushingly disappointing, I recalled the conversations I’d have with my own father in law, in his heavily accented Chinese, discussing his days of fighting against the Japanese, or the Americans.  Perhaps one day some young person will ask me through another language if I had been a fan of Ronald Reagan in the early 1980s and my eyes will widen and I will use my hands and say:  “No.  I hated the man.  It was very important to hate him at that time.”

Saturday, 07/08/17