EVOLVING SOUL

Their feet are swift, their bodies light, save for the old stiff-jointed grannies wheeling walkers. They walk like ants in many lines except they are not together. They are unaware of the other person and each person seems completely disconnected from the human environment around them. It is not in a mistrusting way; it is just that everyone and everything stays in motion and so there is no time to feel the connectivity with the stranger next to you. It is a very busy sight to behold but it is generally more silence to my ears than I am used to. I hate the noise of blasting music in towns and trading centres so this is more my speed but it just gets deafening during some hours or I feel like my voice which I thought was just composed and tempered suddenly sounds loud and is standing out. I’ll have to tell you about my laugh in another blog post.

On one of the wonderful strolls through the city centre of Leipzig, we wandered onto a less crowded mall street when suddenly a thunderous voice rose from another corner. An angry dark skinned African man was screaming into the phone as he hastily paced by calm, silent window shoppers. He spoke so loud as though to project his voice through the space of thousands of miles that separated him from the person on the receiving end of the line. I could not understand a word, and neither could the horrified white people on the busy market street, but we all knew he was quarrelling. Even for Uganda, that would have been extremely loud.

For the most part, as someone who learnt well from Dre’s lessons in black-ish on how to navigate through a predominantly white environment, I knew better than to pass by a black person without nodding at them with a smile. It’s amazing how that comes so easy. To be honest, it wasn’t even about what I had seen in Black-ish. It was an automatic response to a black person; smile, nod, raise an eyebrow, wink, something […] unless of course you meet someone who actively shifts their eyes away from you so that they preserve their individuality from “ish” like that.

In the case of the screaming man, I looked around and there were only two very melanin endowed people in plain sight; and I was one of them. He was in a hurry and would later turn around a corner to get onto another street. I wished to explain to no particular person among the quite scandalised white people that he is ” acting as an individual” . I adjusted my posture to look almost as though my physically upright body would depict the uprightness of my morals and etiquette. I know what you’re thinking: how foolish of me! I know. I feel that way too about myself but I needed to share this story.