Freddie's Corner

STORIES

The african dancer and the white man

A short novel inspired by a real story

19-02-2008 by Freddie del Curatolo

How well this white man dances...in short, it is clear that it is the first time that he is in the middle of a traditional dance of ours...maybe he has frequented those discotheques-bordello which I will never enter even if they pay me (and it is sure that they pay me).
I've only been to Dar Es Salaam once and I saw one of those sex dances from outside, while I was passing by in a matatu. It had colourful signs and even the bouncers winked as "shoga", queers with muscles. 
I knew in an instant that I would never make it.
In Dar Es Salaam I went to visit an aunt who was dying and would have left me and the whole folk-dancing group some money if a cousin policeman hadn't come along and taken everything. I went back to the village with a silver chain (I haven't sold it yet) and a traditional wedding dress that will be good for my daughter Caroline.
There, that night, on my way back from my aunt's house, I did a little thinking. I was sorry to arrive in the village empty-handed, after having created a certain expectation. The old father would sulk for a week and the kids would start to whine. I said to myself: I'll make the matatu stop now and go. I'll offer myself for a few thousand shillings to a horny mzungu or a greasy Indian and tomorrow morning I'll be back on the road. I didn't make it. Better to face the shame of a failed family mission than to hide all my life from my loved ones a sin that the Lord has witnessed.
Maybe in that dancing lupanare I would have met a jumping and friendly mzungu like this one swirling around me, in front of photographers and cameras, it would have been quick, painless and profitable. I wish.
This one has an idiot's expression and even some tics, but he's not like the losers who arrive here with the tour buses. They look like they've never seen a black person before. They roll their eyes as if we were a race of animals that have only studied in books. They clap their hands out of time and laugh, but it's a restrained laughter, their mouths don't open as wide as when you're really enjoying yourself. It seems that someone has forced them to watch our show.
Only at the end, when they want to take the picture next to our exhausted and sweaty bodies, do they look truly happy, it seems that their visit has made sense. We are like longed-for prey, followed and finally captured in images that they will carry with them all their lives, telling those who were not there how much fun they had that day. But that's just me, for goodness' sake.
And yet the white-haired gentleman of a certain age does not seem to have come here by chance. First of all, he's a protagonist of the show at least as much as we are, and secondly, he's not the one taking the pictures, but other mzungu are. Perhaps it is his birthday. 
His smile is relaxed, different from the mzungu smiles I usually have to put up with.
For him we are a show, not dancing animals on the side of the safari. You can tell he's been travelling, the old man.
Sharina, my friend, a dancer who has also had experience in Kenya, in Mombasa and Malindi, and who has made a killing in the brothel-discos, but is not ashamed to tell anyone about it because her husband is half an idiot ("forty goats make a brain", as they say in my country), says that the mzungu is an American, and Americans have dancing in their blood: we black deportees taught it to them, they copied our tribal dances and gave it a less instinctive and more studied, less animal and more gay, semblance of elegance.
The American touches me now, he asks for my caresses. Oh God, maybe when the show is over he will ask me to follow him somewhere, like an Italian buzzurro did last year. He spoke a language unknown even to Sharina, who chews Italian like she did in Malindi. 
"'He must be from Bergamo,' she said, wrinkling her nose.
'It's not a good disease, if you ask me. You make guttural noises like a wildebeest in the season of love and your nose swells up like a dog bitten by a snake.
Now we're cheek to cheek, but he's not looking at me, he's looking at the cameras. He's playing dumb. I keep dancing as if nothing had happened, Tanzanian flags are flying everywhere, the sky has opened up completely and the pounding of the drums makes the atmosphere magical. If this intruder with a plastic smile wasn't there to be photographed, it would be one of the best performances of our dancing body, but this way it is a bit more erotic, I don't know, I would be a liar to deny that it stirs something inside me. The main thought though is that at the end of the performance this time we will each have some extra money, I will be able to afford two kilos of broken rice and maybe even some ox bones to mix with the spinach. Tonight is going to be a special dinner, and we owe it to this nice and somewhat imbecilic mzungu.
There, the dance is over.
From a makeshift stage, important people from my country stand up, black and white shaking hands. Sharina says that the white man has given them a lot of money to buy medicine against malaria. 
The cameras turn off their red eyes and the white man thanks us all. 
He looks at me.
I look at him.
Maybe he's clicking something.
He strokes my arm, but something stops him.
Two huge individuals dressed in black invite him to follow, they have a serious look and white threads hang from their ears.
They seem to have come from another planet.
The white man doesn't stop smiling but it is clear that he is in obvious difficulty.
Where are they taking him?
I hope it's not my fault...

An unbelievable noise rips through the air, the red earth sticks to our sweaty bodies, the multicoloured skirts rise up and show the polyester knickers in which we are sheathed. Little Tanya and Mami are about to run away in terror. Sharina stops them with a reassuring look.
A motorised grasshopper, one of those they call a helicopter, lands on the lawn a few metres away from us.
The two men escort the white man to the entrance, he doesn't stop smiling and before he gets into the grasshopper he raises his right hand and waves it. He looks towards the box, then turns around and a second before going up he gives me one last look. Sharina is catechising Mami, the look is all for me. If I weren't black, I'd turn red. 
One of the big men closes the hatch of the grasshopper and the red earth rises once more. 
I can only close my eyes, but it's not darkness I see, in the sound of mechanical wings. I have imprinted the white man's dumb and inoffensive face, the inner fragility of a kid on a string who has been allowed, for a few minutes, to hop and graze beyond his range.
A sad man who felt like someone for a moment, a different, cheerful person, far from himself and his rich but unhappy world.
Maybe I too, in reverse, could feel so good, in a disco in Mombasa or Malindi. Freed from everyday thoughts, from the burden of sin, from the daily search for food, from the tasks that women and only women have to perform, from the stupidity of male chauvinists who are only capable of getting drunk and creating problems that they cannot solve if not by creating other problems, from the unconscious growth of children and the ancient and presumptuous advice of fathers.
By going in and out of mzungu like that American, I could learn something, live life to the full, broaden my horizons. Maybe even enrich myself spiritually, without having to regret anything, proud and free like Sharina and many other girls my age.
Thank you, unknown American. 
Tomorrow I'll pack my bags and leave, a new life awaits me. 

(ANSA)- DAR ES SALAAM, FEBRUARY 18 - US President George W Bush arrived in Tanzania yesterday as part of his African tour, which will not touch Kenya, where his deputy Condoleeza Rice is engaged in the difficult mediation work following the post-election political crisis. Bush entertained himself in tribal dances, exchanging winks and effusions with local dancers, in a joyful and festive atmosphere that is truly unusual for the African country, one of the poorest in the world. After the warm welcome he received, Bush reciprocated by greeting his guests in Swahili, the local language. "Vipi Mambo" ("hello, how are you?"), said the US President at a press conference. "It was heartwarming to see so many people on the street greeting us." Mkapa presented the Tanzanian president with baseball shoes signed by a well-known champion, receiving in return a stuffed lion and leopard and a zebra skin.

TAGS: ballerina africanauomo biancomzungu africa

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