Fiat Lux
Many people around here have heard or read such colourful figures as Lawrence of Arabia. Or Richard Burton. Or Gertrude Bell. These were all sons and daughters of the British empire at the time when Britannia indeed ruled the waves, and the sun never set on the Empire, because, literally when it was dusk at one end of the realm it was already light at the other. Or so it seemed.
July 30 2015 – There is so much ado about the killing of a Cecil in Zimbabwe that it makes you wonder. No, it’s not about Cecil Rhodes, the imperialist marauder who came, saw and raped a subcontinent in the nineteenth century. It’s about a lion – Cecil the Lion – that was killed by an American dentist with a hobby of trophy hunting. According to reports, Dr Walter Harper,…...
September 29 2016 – Most of our cities on the African continent are bursting at the seams with motor-vehicle traffic. It is divine bliss when one finds oneself in a capital city like Lilongwe, Malawi, where one can afford to take out one’s car for a pleasure ride around the town. Generally the scene is of a chaotic mélange of nauseating fumes, suffocating dust, blaring horns and foul-mouthed drivers and…...
May 26 2016 – Another example of my romance with T-shirts with catchy words in my youth came from Paris, and it went (my translation): “They all notice when I’m drunk but not when I’m thirsty.” Obvious, wouldn’t you say? It sure would be a crazy world if people went around looking at other people and saying, “Hey, you look thirsty; what’s the matter with you?” First, in our overly…...