After leaving Germany last week I came to my motherland, the United Kingdom, to visit family and friends for 2 weeks. Every time I come home - and which is about once a year - I am constantly reminded why I don’t stay, namely, life is organized rather than the constant chaos and ups and downs which I’m now much more used to. There are 101 other reasons why I feel more comfortable living in Africa of which you can read through the lines in many of my books, but which to sum up I would say, it is the immediacy of the everyday and where life just seems… well, more real.
Here is a poem on my British roots.
A land of the proudest traditions.
An island not conquered since William.
The home of kings and queens,
and where the sun never set over the Empire.
Henry and his six wives.
Shakespeare and Chaucer.
18th and 19th century greats
of invention, innovation and the written word.
Churchill,
Bulldogs,
1966 and all that.
Charles, Di . . . and Camilla.
The global phenomena that is the Premier League.
An island of:
Brummies,
Cockneys,
Geordies,
Mancs and Scousers.
A mongrel nation
no longer living the European dream,
but still following the American one
where anybody can achieve anything
under the umbrella of a crumbling welfare state safety net.
The UK is a country where you can:
love who you want,
worship at any altar,
be who you want to be,
do what you want to do,
fill your potential
or try and fail . . .
as long as you are in awe of the one true god - consumerism.