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@kunley_drukpa

Aug 23

“MY APARTMENT IN NIGERIA IS CONSTANTLY ROBBED” - what it is like to live in a poor part of a Nigerian city 🧵

In Ryszard Kapuściński’s Book ‘The Shadow of the Sun’ the author spends time in Nigeria and decides to try living in an African neighbourhood instead of an expat one. He describes how he is constantly robbed until a witch doctor helps him protect his apartment with enchanted totems

“The apartment that I rent in Lagos is constantly broken into. It happens not only when I am away for a longer stretch of time- even if I am going on a short trip to a nearby town, to Abeokuta or to Oshogbo, I know that upon my return I will find the window popped out of its frame, the furniture turned upside down, the cupboards emptied.

The apartment is located in the center of town, on the island of Lagos. The island was once a staging area for slave traders, and these shameful, dark origins of the city have left traces of something restless and violent in its atmosphere. You are made constantly aware of it. For instance, I may be riding in a taxi and talking with the driver, when suddenly he falls silent and nervously surveys the street. "What's wrong?" I ask, curious. "Very bad place!" he answers, lowering his voice. We drive on, he relaxes and once again converses calmly. Some time later, we pass a group of men walking along the edge of the road (there are no sidewalks in the city), and at the sight of them the driver once again falls silent, looks about, accelerates. "What's going on?" I ask. "Very bad people!" he responds. It's another kilometer before he is calm enough to resume our conversation.

Imprinted in such a driver's head must be a map of the city resembling those that hang on the walls of police stations. Little multicolored warning lights are constantly lighting up on it, flashing, pulsating, signaling places of danger, sites of attacks and other crimes. These warning lights are especially numerous on the map of the downtown, where I live. I could have chosen to live in Ikoyi, a safe and luxurious neighborhood of rich Nigerians, Europeans, diplomats, but it is too artificial a place, exclusive, closed, and vigilantly guarded. I want to live in an African street, in an African building. How else can I get to know this city? This continent?

But it is far from simple for a white man to move into an African neighborhood. To start with, the Europeans are outraged. Someone with my intentions must be deranged, not in complete possession of his mental faculties. So they try to dissuade me, warn me: It is certain that you will perish, and the only thing still in doubt is the precise way this will happen--either you will be killed, or you will simply die of your own accord, because living conditions are so dreadful there.

But the African side also regards my plan with scant enthusiasm. First of all, there are the technical difficulties--live where, exactly? This kind of neighborhood is all poverty and overcrowding, wretched little houses, clay huts, slums; there is no fresh air, and often no electricity; it is dust, stench, and insects. Where can you go? Where can you find a separate corner? How do you get around? What do you do? Take, for instance, something as basic as water. Water must be brought from the other end of the street, because that's where the pump is. Children do this. Sometimes--women. Men? Never. And here's a white gentleman standing with the children in the line for the pump. Ha! Ha! Ha! This is impossible! Or let's say that you have found a small room somewhere, and you want to shut the door to work. Shut the door? This is unthinkable. We all live together in a family, in a group--children, adults, old people; we are never apart, and even after death our spirits remain among the living, with those who are still in this world. Shut yourself alone in a room, in such a way that no one can enter? Ha! This is impossible! "And besides," the natives explain gently to me, "it is dangerous in our neighborhood.”

[1/5]

There are many bad people around here. The worst are the boma boys--gangs of debauched hoodlums, who attack, mug, and rob--a dreadful swarm of locusts that ravages everything. They will quickly sniff out that a lone European has come to live here. And to them, a European is a rich man. Who will protect you then?

But I held firm. I didn't listen to the warnings. My mind was made up--perhaps in part because so often I had felt irritated with people who arrived here, lived in "little Europe" or "little America" (i.e., in luxury hotels), and departed, bragging later that they had been to Africa, a place that in reality they had never seen.

And suddenly, an opportunity arose. I met an Italian who in a back alley not far from Massey Street owned a little warehouse of farm implements. Like many whites who were gradually liquidating their enterprises here, he had closed his business. The two-room service apartment above it was now vacant, and he was all too happy to rent it to me. He drove me there one evening in his car and helped me carry up my things (the metal stairs were attached to the building's exterior walls). It was pleasantly cool inside, he had turned on the air conditioner that morning. There was also a working refrigerator. He wished me a good night and quickly departed. He was flying to Rome early the next morning--after the latest military coup, he was afraid of further unrest and wanted to take some of his money out of the country.

I began to unpack. An hour later the lights went out.

I didn't have a flashlight. Worse still, the air conditioner had stopped, and in addition to it being completely dark, it now quickly became hot and stuffy. I opened the window. In swept the stench of rotten fruit, burnt oil, soap, and urine. Although the sea was somewhere nearby, you could detect no breeze in this enclosed and congested alley. It was March, a month of crushing heat, when the nights often seemed hotter and more stifling than the days. I looked out the window. Up and down the street below me, on woven mats or directly on the ground, lay half-naked people. The women and children were asleep; several men, their backs leaning against the walls of the clay houses, stared at me. I didn't know what their gazes meant. Did they want to meet me? Help me? Kill me?

I decided that I could not endure until dawn in these sweltering rooms, and went down. Two men rose; the others watched, motionless. We were all sweaty, deadly tired; merely existing in this climate is an extraordinary effort. I asked them if this kind of electrical outage happened often. They didn't know. I asked if something could be done about it. They conversed among themselves in a language I did not understand. One of them disappeared. Minutes passed--fifteen, thirty, forty-five. Finally he returned, bringing two young men with him. They said that they could fix the problem for ten pounds. I agreed. Soon, the lights were back on inside the apartment, and the air conditioner was working. Several days later--another outage, another ten pounds. Then fifteen, twenty.

And the thefts? In the beginning, I was filled with rage each time I returned to my ransacked apartment. To be robbed is, first and foremost, to be humiliated, to be made a fool of. But with time I came to understand that seeing a robbery as a humiliation and an affront is an emotional luxury. Living amid the poverty of my neighborhood, I realized that theft, even a petty theft, can be a death sentence. To steal is to commit manslaughter, murder. A solitary woman had her little corner in my street, and her sole possession was a pot. She made a living buying beans for credit from the vegetable vendors, cooking them, seasoning them with a sauce, and selling them to passersby. For many, this bowl of beans was the only daily meal.

[2/5]

One night, a piercing cry awoke us. The entire alleyway stirred. The woman was running around in a circle, despairing, frenzied: thieves had snatched her pot, and she had lost the one thing she depended on for her livelihood.

Many of my neighbors here have just the one thing. Someone has a shirt, someone a panga, someone a pickax. The one with a shirt can find a job as a night watchman (no one wants a half-naked guard); the one with a panga can be hired to cut down weeds; the one with the pickax can dig a ditch. Others have only their muscles to sell. They count on someone needing them as porters or messengers. In all these instances, the chances of employment are slim, because competition is enormous. And further, these are frequently only odd jobs--for one day, for several hours.

Thus my alley, the adjacent streets, and the entire neighborhood are full of idle people. They wake in the morning and search for some water with which to wash their faces. Then, those with a bit of money buy themselves breakfast: a glass of tea and stale roll. But many people don't eat anything. Before noon still, the heat is difficult to bear--one must look for a shady spot. The shade moves hourly with the sun, and man moves with the shade--following the shade, crawling after it to hide in its dark, cool interior, is each day his only real occupation. Hunger. One badly wants to eat, but there is nothing to be had. Making matters worse, the smell of roasting meal wafts from a nearby bar. Why don't these people storm the bar? After all, they are young and strong.

One of them, apparently, was unable to control himself, for suddenly, a cry resounds: it's one of the street vendors shouting--a boy snatched a bunch of bananas from her stand. The victim and her neighbors set off in pursuit and eventually catch him. The police appear out of nowhere. Policemen here carry large wooden clubs, with which they brutally beat offenders, striking them with all their might. The boy is lying in the street now, cringing, curled up, trying to shield himself from the blows. A crowd has gathered, which occurs here in the blink of an eye, since these legions of the unemployed have little to do besides waiting for some event, some commotion, some excitement--anything to distract them, to help pass the time. They press closer and closer, as if the dull thud of the clubs and the moans of the victim afforded them genuine pleasure. With shouts and screams they encourage and incite the policemen. Here, if a thief is caught, people immediately want to tear him apart, lynch him, chop him into pieces. The boy is groaning, already he has let go of the bananas. Those standing closest throw themselves on the fruit, tear the bunch apart.

Then everything returns to normal. The vendor still complains and curses, the policemen leave, the battered, tortured boy drags himself to some hiding place--sore and hungry. The onlookers disperse, returning to their places under walls, under roofs--to the shade. They will stay there until evening. After a day of heat and hunger, one is weak and listless. But a certain stupor, an internal numbness, has its benefits: man could not survive here without it, for otherwise the biological, animal part of his nature would bite to death everything that is still human in him.

In the evening, the alleyway comes ever so slightly to life. Its residents gather. Some of them have spent the whole day here, tormented by attacks of malaria. Others are just returning from the city. Some have had a good day: they found work somewhere, or else they met one of their kinsmen, who shared his pennies with them. They will be eating supper tonight, a bowl of cassava with a hot paprika sauce, perhaps even accompanied by a boiled egg or a piece of lamb. Some of this will go to the children, who watch the men greedily as they swallow each bite. Every bit of food disappears immediately and without a trace. Everything is eaten, down to the last crumb.

[3/5]

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@kunley_drukpa

Aug 22

ABOUT ‘AFRICAN TIME’

In Ryszard Kapuściński’s Book ‘The Shadow of the Sun’, about his time in Africa, there is a chapter where he describes his own experience of ‘African Time’ when he enters a bus and has to wait many hours for it to depart -

“We climb into the bus and sit down. At this point there is a risk of culture clash, of collisions and conflict. It will undoubtedly occur if the passenger is a foreigner who doesn’t know Africa. Someone like that wil start looking around, squirming, inquiring “When will the bus leave?"

“What do you mean, when?” The astonished driver will reply. “It will leave when we find enough people to fill it up."

The Europeans and the Africans have an entirely different concept of time. In the European worldview, time exists outside man, exists objectively, and has measurable and linear characteristics. According to Newton, time is absolute: “Absolute, true, mathematical time of itself and from its own nature, it flows equably and without relation to anything external”.

The European feels himself to be time’s slave, dependent on it, subject to it. To exist and function, he must observe its ironclad, inviolate laws, its inflexible principles and rules. He must need deadlines, dates, days and hours. He moves within the rigor of time and cannot exist outside them. They impose upon him their requirements and quotas. An unresolvable conflict exists between man and time, one that always ends with man’s defeat - time annihilates him.

Africans apprehend time differently. For them, it is much looser concept, more open, elastic, subjective. It is a man who influences time, its shape, course and rhythm (man acting, of course, with the consent of gods and ancestors). Time is even something that that man can create outright, for time is made manifest through events, and whether an event takes place or not depends, after all, on man alone. If two armies do not engage in a battle, then that battle will not occur (in other words, time will not have revealed its presence, will not have come into being).

Time appears as a result of our actions, and vanishes when we neglect or ignore it. It is something that springs to life under our influence, but falls into a state of hibernation, even non-existence, if we do not direct our energy towards it. It is a subservient, passive essence, and, most importantly, one dependent on man.

The absolute opposite of time as it is understood in the European worldview. In practical terms, this means that if you go to a village where a meeting is scheduled for the afternoon but find no one at the appointed spot, asking “When will the meeting take place?" makes no sense. You know the answer: “It will take place when people come”. Therefore the African who boards a bus sits down in a vacant seat, and immediately falls into a state in which he spends a great portion of his life: a benumbed waiting.”

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1744017316231188749

From the ‘AFRICAN MASTERTHREAD’ - you can read more stories like this below

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1744017316231188749

Some might say ‘they were waiting for the bus to depart for so long because the owner wanted to maximise profit’ - in which case I encourage you to take a bus journey in Africa. Very difficult to understand this different kind of relationship with time without experience yourself

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@kunley_drukpa

Aug 21

https://twitter.com/samuli_salminen/status/1958462257051980284

🇫🇮 New Finnish Study on the Net Financial Costs of different immigrant groups. It replicates the findings of the famous Danish and Dutch studies - almost all immigrant groups are net costs to Finland. Migrants from the Middle East and North Africa are the biggest financial drains

https://twitter.com/samuli_salminen/status/1958462257051980284

In Finland even western migrants are rarely net fiscal contributors

Finland’s data almost perfectly replicates Denmark’s

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@kunley_drukpa

Aug 15

Are Somalis the world’s number one rattlers?

They are such talented wind-up merchants it almost loops back round to being a soft power

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1845424771208470891

Apart from the many content ‘collabs’ my accounts have with them for which I am grateful I have come to in a certain kind of way respect their temerity. Did you know there are only 35 mil ethnic Somalis worldwide? Even vs eg South Asians they massively over-index as provocateurs

https://twitter.com/kunley_drukpa/status/1845424771208470891

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@kunley_drukpa

Aug 6

TALKING TO COMMUNISTS AT THE ANTIFA BAR IN HAVANA

There is a bar in Havana that a few of the old communists go to, some call it ‘The Antifa Bar’. Che Guevara apparently used to drink there. Talking with an old man on the street, whether he likes communism - since he used to be in the Cuban army so he personally fought for it - he asked where I was from, said he thinks Ireland. Went along with it and said yes and that my father used to be in IRA, just to see how he would react. His eyes lit up, “wow I love the IRA” - said you should come to the Antifa Bar with me we can talk more

Have been going back a few times now because I enjoy talking to the old communists. If you know about Cuban and / or communist history they really open up, they think you must be a fellow communist. Talk about Mengistu, Sankara, Hoxha… make a few pro-Palestine comments too and they are very happy. Got free drinks because of it

Second time I go a man with a guitar is singing communist songs. At one point he starts into ‘Bella Ciao’ in Spanish. Throw him a ‘solidarity’ fist he throws a fist back. Start talking to the old man from before - he claims he fought in Angola, when Cuba deployed its army there to help the MPLA communists during the 70’s Angolan Civil War. “What was it like fighting in the African bush?” “Difficult at first but you get used to it” “What did you think of Jonas Savimbi?” “He was a dog” “What do you think of Angola today?” “I don’t know much about it today”

He says he thinks Cuba today is a disaster though and he wants maybe if not full capitalism at least ‘to be able to earn and keep more’. But he also doesn’t think Cuba’s failures are the failures of communism, he says they come from the corruption and incompetence of the post-revolutionary generation of leaders, the failure to live up to ideals

“Are you still a communist even if you look around you at Cuba today?”

“This isn’t proper communism”

“Why not?”

“Let me tell you, they are corrupt. Fuck this Government. They don’t care about the people. I spit on what they call communism”

“You think they don’t go far enough?”

“Fidel’s vision was corrupted”

He still admires Fidel, Che and Raúl, thinks their ideals have been betrayed. I say I agree I think they are very romantic figures, Che especially

“Didn’t Che became disillusioned with the Revolution, the realities of Government? Maybe it is impossible for real life to live up to those ideals? So he left to go and fight in the Congo”

“He saw it was not living up to his ideals yes”

“And then didn’t he think the Congolese were incompetent, realise how far away from his vision he was with human capital like that, start to become even more disillusioned at the prospects of global revolution?”

“I don’t think he did. No, that isn’t true”

“I thought he did”

“No. He was always committed”

“I think he was disappointed”

“Sure”

“Then he went to Bolivia where he got shot”

“Yes”

“Shoot coward, you are only killing a man - very iconic last words”

“Let me tell you - here is the reality, Cuba was better under Fidel”

“Is that not just your nostalgia? You really think when his generation passed it fell apart?”

“There is no fucking zeal anymore”

“Do you think it is just the embargo doing this?”

“Not only, they are just fucking corrupt. But also I think communism is a state of mind. Listen to me - if you don’t have the right state of mind it is more difficult to succeed”

“It can work but it will fail if people are not fully committed to it? It isn’t the consequences of policy failures?”

“Let me tell you, you have to be committed like Fidel and Che were”

This is what Che says about the Congolese leader Laurent Kabila - who would later go on to become leader of the Congo during the Congolese Wars in which millions of Africans died - in his Congo Diary:

“He [Kabila] let weeks go by without doing anything. He had no seriousness, no sense of responsibility. I never saw him in a military uniform … we had a sense of frustration… and a profound bitterness, because we had not been able to bring to reality what we had hoped to achieve”

https://twitter.com/LiviaGettysburg/status/1953123006646985006

You have to watch out for the reflections when taking photos

https://twitter.com/LiviaGettysburg/status/1953123006646985006

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@kunley_drukpa

Jul 29

REVIEWING EUROPEAN CITIES - PARIS 🇫🇷

Impressions from recent visit to Paris and the ways in which the city is and is not changing in the 2020’s 🧵

This is not a complaining thread, more just to describe Paris as it is today and the extent to which Paris is or is not changing. ‘TLDR’ - A lot of what is said about the scale of change in France is true but Paris is such a great city it can still fairly easily accommodate it

Paris really is ball-achingly beautiful. Hurts to say it if you are British but you sometimes get a sort of seething Antonio Salieri jealousy when you walk around it because it is so often such an effortlessly attractive city. Severe Paris syndrome is invariably a bit contrived

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