Being able to transfer large files and keep abreast with what’s going on in the music world are crucial to my progress. That was another difference about being back home. I heard songs like Shaggy’s ‘Girl Next Door’ or ‘The Power of Love’ by Jennifer Rush which I literally had not heard at all in the last seven years, but those tunes are still going strong on the Zim airwaves.
Only a small amount of the latest breakthrough artists get as far as Southern Africa. The Lady Gaga revolution and Alicia Keys’s latest singles make it that far but it’s unlikely that artists such as Kid Cudi or The Arctic Monkeys make it there. So it does help being in the UK at the frontline of the music movement of the pop world.
Something random I noticed was how the cold tap produces water that’s just short of liquid ice and the hot tap produces water just short of steam, compliments of the gas boiler! Washing your hands is quite an assault on the senses. You get literal extremes in temperature, when the cold water back home (the times it was actually available), was usually around ground temperature, sometimes being quite warm in the heat of the day under a radiating African sun. Brushing my teeth with liquid ice took some getting used to when I got back to London.
Being surrounded by so many people was another adjustment I had to make but I had an abundance of smiles, hellos and stories to share with my fellow Londoners, whether they were serving me a sub at Subway or declining my offer of a seat on the bus. My African smiles and radiant energy had been topped up but they soon slackened after a couple of weeks, which was no surprise to see. You just eventually slip into the standard city behaviour and also start rushing along to keep up with the shadows of everyone else. Plus you just don’t have the extra time to stop and smell the grass as often as you’d like.
That radiance has been one thing I’ve struggled to maintain and replenish in a vast and generally impersonal place such as London. Back home, it would be given out by the dollop, whether it was from the petrol attendant at the filling station or the lady behind the reception at the doctors. A genuine smile and inquiry into your well-being goes a long way when it comes to the nourishing of the soul.
