RustyGate

Today marks the official 2 year anniversary of my embarking on my Asian adventure. More highs and lows than a fat bird with a chocolate addiction (that would be moi). To be fair, the seriously underwhelming lows have overwhelmed the highs. It’s really hard to score narcotics to ensure any kind of meaningful high here. Jokes about getting high, but scoring anything milder than tobacco is notoriously difficult here. That said though, here it’s illegal to possess marijuana but perfectly legal to possess marijuana seeds. Now pray tell, what on earth do the authorities is going to happen to those seeds?

October 2007 saw me facing the prospect of homelessness as the company I worked for went belly-up, leaving thousands of employees scrounging around wondering where their next meal, or fix, was going to come from. There is a lot to be said for unemployment though which gets too much of a bum rap. What’s not to like about spending half your waking hours sleeping and the other half labouring in front of inane Japanese TV. Although the volume can never quite drown out the sound of wolves baying hungrily at your door as the prospect of homelessness looms large and ugly. I eventually found myself prostituting myself again on the corporate machinery and became yet just another number in a long line of lifeless faceless cogs. And I still get the same asinine remarks and questions in my ‘new’ job as I did in the previous one. A young Canadian colleague recently informed me that Africa was a country. I thought, foolish me, here all these years on this God-given earth I thought it was a continent with 53 countries. It must be my poor Third World education to blame.

March 2007 was a particularly dark period. My former housemate was found murdered by one of her private students.

Now to my litany of complaints on what I have come to loathe about this place, and I say this in the nicest and least profane way possible. My patience is sorely tested every time I leave the house and walk up and down the streets. To put a stereotype to it, Japanese people as a rule don’t seem to walk with any sense of purpose, less so the women. They amble along at a pace even the snail would be most discomfited by. I’m hardly a hard-faced, hardened Londoner barreling my way through the great unwashed, but the speed at which people here drag their lifeless carcasses around is enough to make me want to pull out the remaining thinning curly black hairs on my head. The moniker ‘Louis Vuitton dinosaur’ is often bandied about to describe the bow-legged lurching high-heel shorn walk of the Japanese woman and her penchant for all things designer. Incidentally LV is the label of choice for upstart women with designs above their station in this country. A lot of which they purchase by either selling their bodies or their used underwear to dirty old men. I kid you not, it’s a whole burgeoning industry: young girls sell their used underwear to men for resale for anything ranging for ten to fifty dollars. The woman’s movement is very, very strong here.

Getting back to my original complaint about the pace of people on the pavements, the travesty is compounded by an evident inability to walk in a straight line, a certain innate crab-like instinct. No one seems to be able to stick to one side of the road with each person making it their personal mission to cover as much of the pavement as possible. Or trot in front of you and then proceed to slow down. I mean, like WTF? If there is road rage, I frequently suffer from pavement rage and have found myself shoulder-tackling the occasional errant fool who has the temerity to walk into my path.

The less said about my students the better. It would take more time than I have been guaranteed on the planet to detail my complaints. Not to put too fine a point on it, the question is not so much ‘What is wrong with them?’ but ‘What’s right with them?’. The one thing that I love about Japan is that it has brought out the misanthrope in me and helped pare some of my misconceptions about myself: I am not a ‘nice’ person, I am too bitter, twisted and cynical for that. I may be a ‘friendly’ person, but definitely not ‘nice’. The chip on my shoulder could replace the rainforests being depleted elsewhere.

A Japanese woman recently complimented me on my teeth. In any other country, she would definitely have been taking the piss. But man! Does dentistry need some major help in this country. This stunning girl steps up, beautiful face, lithe body, gorgeous rippling hair. Then she opens her mouth to speak. And the rest as they say, is history. Think Dracula with several rows of teeth growing over each other and the teeth an interesting stomach-churning shade of caffeine-nicotine heavy hint of beige. And just when you thought it could not possibly get any worse, some twinkling silver and gold flashed at you in the midst of all that rot and decay. Delicious I tell you. Myopia may have its drawbacks, but when it dulls the full impact of such sights, more power to myopia’s elbow.

So, in my 2 years of being trapped in Japan (more about the bane of that green bomber Zim passport later), I have lived in 5 different places. In house number 2 I had the misfortune of living with one of the 7 deadly sins made man, or woman in this case. Her name was Alia, an American lass. Now, for the most part, I have a death-defying affinity to filth but this girl put paid to my claims. She TKO’ed me from my perch in a move that would have had Muhammad Ali firmly on his feet. The one day she did a rather large number 2 which left skid marks so significant the whole F1 race track could have passed through, which she conveniently forgot to clean on the excuse that she did not have her glasses on. I am thinking, this shit is literally bludgeoning you around the head, this stuff is even talking in tongues it has such presence. My misery did not end there, used sanitary towels all over the apartment were my next gift from her, dishes left in the sink for weeks till they were almost moulding were another of her legacy. Granted this may all smack of kettles and black pots, but I am antique silverware to her blackened and charred three-legged cast iron pot.

What account would be complete without examples of people’s idiocy to foreigners, especially a Black African Female. So the first time I went to church, I went to one of these happy clappy ones. After the service, some Japanese guy comes up to me and says ‘Oh, you should have been here last year, we did Quincy Jones. I know you would have liked it’. I looked at him blankly for a few seconds, blinked, and then replied ‘Oh’. The assumption here being that all darkies sing and dance, a question unfortunately I have had to field rather too often, the annoying thing being that I do do both, and rather well, so it’s like fcuk! Here I am fulfilling the stereotype and there is nought I can do about it.

Then there is the issue of personal hygiene. It’s perfectly acceptable to pick your nose in public unashamedly, but God forbid you ever think about BLOWING your nose in public. And it’s also quite ok to sniff and sniff and sniff and sniff until you’ve sniffed your brains into your intestines but God forbid you ever think about BLOWING your nose. ‘Urgh’ do I hear anyone say?

Japan does have its redeeming features, alcohol is cheap, like one US dollar for a beer, its safe for the most part and the common person is quite honest. It’s not unheard of to leave your wallet on the train and have it returned to you within a few days, contents intact. The trains for the most part run on time except for when it rains, or snows, or its windy or there is a typhoon, or an earthquake or an accident (read suicide, the method of choice for people wishing to take their own lives and inconvenience thousands of others) or some idiot train driver has overshot the platform or some sexually repressed man has groped a woman on the train and needs to be ejected from the train, or some drunk fool has fallen onto the train tracks and needs to be hauled off, or that there are many people on the train taking too long to get on and get off.

I have met some good people while I have been here, who have all helped me cling on to the knife-edge of sanity. A sanity which I dare say is threatened by my continued presence here. However, the joy of having that green bomber Zim passport makes if difficult to get a working visa to many other countries. I really wasn’t aware that there were that many doors in this world. That could be slammed so hard in my face as to leave wood carving shaped marks on my face. Anyway,  it will make my own return to my home country that much sweeter when it eventually does happen. So here’s to wishing that there will definitely NOT be another 2 years of this place. And if through all this I have given the impression that I am not enjoying myself, whatever on earth gave you that idea?

Morgan Tsvangirai: Because it wanted a taste of life on the other side of the road. It was exercising its right.

Patrick Chinamasa: No. The chicken did not cross the road. In fact we need to verify whether in fact it was a chicken. As far as we know, the chicken is still there. It could have been an eagle. We have to wait until verification is done.

Didymus Mutasa: I do not think it crossed the road. If it crossed the road it’s because the white farmer dragged it. But we cannot allow that to happen. It will have to come back.

Joseph Chinotimba: The kichen, no, chicken is a sell-out against the revolution. The ‘O’ vets will have to eat it!

Robert Mugabe: The chicken will never be allowed to cross the road. Not in my life time! Let those that run away to Bush and Brown do so. Not my chicken! My chicken will never cross the road. It will never be colonised again!

Thabo Mbeki: Er … uhm … I don’t see any chicken at the moment … Er … I think it is right for us to wait and see. Let things take the natural course. If… if… if it did cross the road we will be told officially. If it wants to cross the road we will see it when it crosses. There is nothing to talk about at the moment … Er … I don’t see any problem right now.

Tendai Biti: We have irrefutable evidence from those who were at the road that the chicken has, indeed, without any shadow of doubt, crossed the road. I hereby declare that Chicken Huku Inkuku is now the legitimate resident of the other side of the road.

Bright Matonga: At the moment we know that it has not crossed the road, despite imperialist efforts to push it. We know they will try again and are now preparing to unleash the remaining 75% of our effort so that it can never be pushed again next time.

Nathaniel Manheru a.k.a. George Charamba: How can, a chicken, itself a hapless bird, be expected to cross the road unless it is pushed deviously and surreptitiously by the hand of the vicious and uncouth imperialists? The only chicken that can cross that road is a stooge, a puppet, an instrument of the West that will be rocket-propelled by the loud fart of Brown and Bush … Icho!

Levy Mwanawasa: It knew the ground on that side was sinking like the Titanic. It had to cross.

General Chiwenga: It can’t.

Commissioner-General Chihuri: It can’t cross the road.

Gordon Brown: It was running away from Mugabe.

Jacob Zuma: I think it is important that we be told whether or not the chicken actually crossed road. That should be very easy to do.

Jonathan Moyo: Of course, the chicken crossed the road because it could not stand the nonsense on the other side. But the shameless securocrats will do everything in their power to prevent everyone from knowing that it, indeed, and unequivocally crossed the road.

Judge of the High Court: Whether or not it crossed the road is a matter for the officials to declare at their own time. They have the power to order a re-check and verification as to whether it crossed the road before they can make the declaration.

Zimbabwe Electoral Commission: We are not in a position to say whether or not the chicken crossed the road. There are some people who have complained that it probably wasn’t a chicken at all and others saying it was being pushed or dragged against its will. We are currently considering whether to do a re-check before we can officially declare if the chicken crossed the road. We will take as long as we want to be fully certain that it was a chicken that crossed the road.

John-Arne Riise scores a goal for Chelsea in the fourth minute of extra time. You couldn’t make it up.

Is blogging journalism? A comment on my last post got me thinking, as I was advised I could be arrested for practising journalism without accreditation.

Now, this is not the first time I’ve heard this. Indeed, one of my colleagues went so far as to call me a journalist because one of my posts ‘resonated’ with him. Yeah, I ranted and raved in response. Bygones.

To answer the question of whether my blogging can be construed (by any stretch of the imagination) as journalism, the answer is an emphatic hell no. Don’t get me wrong, I have practised as a journalist in the past, albeit before the current regulatory framework (which makes it a statutory offence to practice without accreditation) was put in place.

This doesn’t make blogging on rustygate.org journalism. It can be, of course. When actual journalists blog, when they dig for facts, ask the hard questions and take mistakes seriously, then yes journalism can occur on a blog.

The definition of a journalist depends on the activity, not the medium. If you seek factual, contemporary truths for a mass audience, governed by the traditional rules of ethics and integrity, and disseminate these facts through mainstream print or electronic media, then you are, to all intents and purposes, a journalist.

If journalism is by definition the reporting of news in a fair, balanced and accurate way, then my blogging is not journalism. I am opinionated, ranting, often incoherent and frequently biased with little regard for accuracy or balance. I’m working out my own identity, and connecting with like-minded people.

And when my blog does contain bona fide news it is largely derivative, rehashing stories from print journalism and the web at large.

Journalism implies that a disinterested third party is reporting facts fairly. To do that job requires considerable training and the cooperative work of many minds.

So calling anyone who blogs a journalist is like calling anyone who takes a snapshot a photographer.

It is unrealistic to apply the standards of journalism to us, who rarely have the time or resources to source the news, let alone actually report the news.

As Paul Andrews wrote, “… we are stronger and more valuable working outside mainstream media, rather than attempting to mirror the purposes of the insitution we should seek to analyse and supplement.”

To be honest, I have no desire to practise journalism. The hours are terrible, and the pay sucks.

As for blogging? Chicks dig it.

How can you live with yourselves? You have failed, Thabo Mbeki, and failed spectacularly in your efforts to portray Uncle as a reasonable, moderate gentleman of the people.

Where are you now? What have your much-vaunted ‘mediation’ efforts brought to the people of Zimbabwe? We know how you revere Uncle Bob as a father figure, but know this - history will remember you not for your ‘efforts’, but for your silence in the face of impending doom on your doorstep. Thanks for nothing.

And you, SADC. Disaster always sounds a horn, and as we have seen time and time again, strength in the face of symptomatic decline can work to avert disaster. What do you think is happening now in Zimbabwe? The trumpets are blaring - the people are stunned, and the darkness is coming. Where are the pronouncements, the bold actions, the shows of strength and unity? I thought your allegiance was to the People of Zimbabwe, not a (now-opposition) revolutionary party.

Et tu, African Union? We shouldn’t be surprised, should we? Gaddafi is no role-model for democracy, neither are the other Leaders poster-boys for power-transference, are they?

But my message to you, Africa, is this; you know what’s happening, you know what’s coming, you know who’s to blame. Are you willing to let this happen? How many times shall we watch our fellow Africans killing each other without action, without intervention?

Or are you waiting for it to be over, so you can wring your hands and say how terrible it all was, hunt down exiled war criminals and murderers in your territories, and send people to Tribunals and The Hague and Truth and Reconciliation commisions?

More of the same, then.