The Perfect Man

 

Once she met the perfect man. Though, at that time, she didn’t realize it. It was only four years later that the recognition of his perfection came to her. Too soon, in her opinion, inexorably too soon!

 

Nevertheless, she shrugged and conformed herself with the thought that by then he would be just like the others she had met after him.

 

She met the perfect man for a second time. It was summer and he was tugging his wife along. The three of them had less than five minutes together, enough time for her to get an answer to an important question. He was still the perfect man and she doubt that his little wife knew how perfect he was, because in order to recognize a perfect man one has to lose him first. And she learned the sad truth: that the perfect man for her might be perfect for others too.

 

She could describe hundreds of things making him perfect, but at the end she always concluded the same: a perfect man makes a woman feel perfect too, makes a woman feel happy, makes a woman feel like she is the only one that really matters. He had done that for her and now he was doing the same for his wife. The perfect man!

 

She never met a perfect man again. Never ever! She even stopped trying to meet one. If it weren’t for him, she would doubt that such category exists. She would think that she had dreamed of meeting a perfect man. She would regard herself as a mad woman, only because of the ridiculous concept of a perfect man.

Hugging Africa

 

He is a nice guy. He is Russian and it shows. He has been traveling for three months in Africa, taking his time. His name is Alex and he has a simple plan: completing a circle in Africa, with start and finish line in Egypt. He didn’t tell, but meeting different people and places must also figure in his agenda.

 

Andy found him by chance and I think they get along pretty well. He tried to organize a few things during his stay, the most important being the assembling of a group who made sure that Alex’s motorbike was fit for the road ahead.

 

Alex told how he had this idea of completing a loop in African soil. At this stage, he estimates as much as thirty percent already done. Alex travels alone because all his mates are busy. Despite the unavoidable loneliness and worries, most of the time he feels well and safe. The image of a hostile and dangerous continent doesn’t seem to bother him.

 

From the places already visited he liked Tanzania the most, though he didn’t explain why. However, it’s to Mozambique he intends to return – if it’s correct what a little bird said.

Cursed!

 

Is there a real way to deal with curses? If you know one, you could be helpful here. Someone with a tremendous bad luck in terms of jewelry left for repair a silver ankle chain and a gold ankle chain, besides two pink stones to make up a pendant and a ring. Simple stuff! The person accepting the items and giving a receipt for them had a shop in a well-known mall since a reasonable number of years. Returning to the place a little surprised by the silence, that cursed person learned that the shop was closed and no one seemed to know the owners’ whereabouts. A tentative of contacting them by phone also failed.

 

Because it’s not the first time, the unfortunate victim believes to be dealing with a malign force. While investigating an old sorcerers book, the best remedies found read more or less like this: 1) For a mild protection: a fire constantly burning, holy water or the sign of the cross. 2) For a medium protection, one has to drink a mix of two strange herbs with two drops of blood, collected front the left paw of a black dog. (Poor Thoth!) 3) For a stronger protection, one has to walk everywhere with a wood stick decorated with a dried viper’s head. According to the same book, it’s infallible!

 

Any better suggestion?

Falling Into a Trap

 

KK, one of Andy and JP’s best friends, got married. To be precise, he was forced into marriage. This is his story:

 

KK is young. His plans are enjoying life, nothing else. But a few months ago he met a South African girl, during a very short period of her stay in Maputo.

 

Two months after, he was informed of her pregnancy. He followed the situation from Maputo. Then, one day, his heart melted: she was expecting twins! He offered, as he should, to pay for all the expenses, what he immediately did.

 

Almost seven months after the “fact”, two twin girls were born. The medical bill was astronomical, mainly because of the incubators where they have spent the first period of their lives. He paid and paid. At a certain stage, he couldn’t any longer afford and his mother started to pay too.

 

He didn’t complain. On the contrary, he looked like the happiest guy in the whole world. He behaved like he had hit the jackpot. He was investing in two wonderful children. After the hospital bills were fully paid, her family came with the following sentence: “If you don’t marry her, you won’t see the twins again!”

 

He panicked. Before the girls completed one month, he had already tied the knot. Don’t go thinking it was a simple ceremony! It started with a diamond ring and it went all the way through, until mother and twins installed themselves in his bachelor house.

 

It’s no use to describe how she was. Try to picture someone who spends most of the day in bed, watching satellite channels, demands two nannies for the babies and openly says she won’t breast feed the twins to spare her boobs… You got it, for sure!

 

KK friends, including Andy and JP, got suspicious. There was something fake about her. They talked with him, but he was too happy and too proud with his recent parenthood to listen.

 

Eventually, his mother got suspicious too. She took the twins and paid for DNA testing. The result was unmistakable: the girls were not KK’s daughters. The result is another friend divorcing. By now, the ones getting married are already divorced, so Andy and JP must be learning that waiting is the wisest thing to do.

 

Nevertheless, his worst mistake was marrying without love or he would keep her and the babies, instead of rushing to the lawyers. KK’s story can end up here. There is no point in wasting more words to tell how he and his mother are devastated!

White Cow

 

Isn’t it interesting how different people can be? Picture an old couple sitting on the porch of their country cottage. He has been watching some kind of animal from a distance. He stares at it until he can recognize a caw. Then, he turns to his wife and asks:

 

“Did you notice a white caw in the middle of that field?”

 

“Yes. As a matter of fact, I did. But I have to tell you, my husband, that you are wrong: that caw is grey!”

 

“No way! It’s white. From here I can clearly see its white fur.”

 

The woman keeps silent for a good while. She looks at the grey caw lazily grazing on the distant green field. Noticing that her husband is about to return to the subject to reaffirm the white color on and on, she cuts him by saying:

 

“You are right! That caw is white! My mistake!”

 

Yep! People are that different: for each stubborn mind there is a clever, conciliatory one.

 

This is about a woman called Francisca. With her methodology, she managed to live without ever quarreling. One is left wondering how wise is to be like that? It doesn’t make you live longer, since she died at 45 of heart failure. Could her gentle, submissive manner be already a consequence of her weak heart?

Macaneta Children

 

Children are wonderful and should deserve the best the world has to offer. We all agree with that, we all defend this unquestionable principle, knowing how, in reality, it is so very far from the truth. And the truth is that sick, dirty, hungry, alone, non-schooled, working and beaten children do exist… Nevertheless, we all can sleep at night. Why? Because we have a good pillow under our heads: the certitude that we cannot change the world by ourselves. Maybe we even believe that the world cannot be changed at all.

 

If you could meet children from Marracuene and Macaneta, you would face that world we want to forget when we go to sleep. Dirty face Carlos, the boldest of them all, talks and accepts to be photographed without begging. Because he must have a certain degree of ascendant over the pack, the others surrender too: curious Albino; skilled Paulo; starving José; taciturn Mateus; meek Aurélio; hard working Pedro; grazing brothers Luís and Armando; and fishing brothers Paco and Jorge.

 

Their usual ways of interacting with tourists are: car surfing, selling you anything or dancing on the sides of the road. No more begging or pestering if they know you, and maybe you’ll start to appreciate their simple, candid ways. At the end of a “talking session”, you can distribute small coins or handfuls of cashew nuts. Then, when you think it’s all over, you will feel someone shaking your blouse. You turn to say an annoyed “What now?” and you see a little guy, like Aurélio, six or seven, hand raised in offer of a flower or a miniature straw basket. You are left with the feeling that you have just received the best present ever given to you, even not knowing where that feeling comes from.

 

There are so many of them! One night a group of eight or ten came from the sea, visibly trembling with cold and insistently trying to sell minuscule fish. All these children face too soon the worst storms of life!

Cold Town

 

Johannesburg is surprisingly cold, especially for someone lost in the equation Africa = hot.

 

Even when most people seem so eager to tell that “summer is around the corner”, you can chill, shudder and freeze from one moment to the other. Except for cold fronts, we were told that the weather has been spring like, with temperatures dropping to negatives or close during the night.

 

The “City of Gold” had a different face to show us this time: 1) Traffic has increased substantially, and so pollution. 2) People are in general very friendly, but fear still reigns. 3) The whole town has become a construction site due to the approaching 2010 World Cup. Mainly the Gautrain, the first train transportation system, is causing a stir in terms of city traffic. 4) While middle and upper classes fear the worst from a scenario of Zuma as president, people on the streets swear by it, because “he is not elitist” and “he has suffered and because of that he will listen to people’s needs”.

 

Ah! Passion, ingenuity and politics! What a delightful cocktail!