Two African Tales

One of the best uses of a Macbook? As a night light to read in bed while lying next to your love!

I finished a slim story by Patricia St.John last night. I Needed a Neighbour tells the story of a little girl who survives starvation and war in East Africa.

A few months ago I saw a 'serious' Hollywood take on child warriors and illegal diamonds in West Africa. Blood Diamond had lots. Both of blood and the diamond in question.

The contrast between the two takes could not be more stark. St.John's book has death a plenty. But there are real tears. Blood Diamond has heaps of bodies - but the heroes walk away unscathed - never have to eat or defecate - and end up saving the world with plenty of melodrama. There is gore aplenty in Blood Diamond - it opens with arms being hacked off by drug crazed militias - but at the end of the film you are numbed - and plenty of the bad guys get knocked off by the gun-savvy and ruthless hero pair.

It seems to even compare the two visions of tragedy - other than this - they are fundamentally different in their basic beliefs and understanding of the horror around us.

St.John's book offers no easy reasons for the horrible decimation that took place during the Haile Mengistu years in Ethiopia and southern Sudan (no names of countries are given - but you can put the pieces together). Rather it follows a small family that becomes smaller, before finding some solace in finding each other again. But most of all - it is grounded in an escatology of hope - one that has Christ binding the wounds in the here and now - as small and insignificant as it may seem at times.

Blood Diamond uses the cynical term "TIA" - this is Africa - to try and give a hard-nosed view of what is reality. The good - if any - is a mystical leap into the dark. At the end of the slog, the simple fisherman is able to testify before important looking UN-types and a convention banning 'blood-diamonds' comes into force. After the fisherman has killed plenty of folks on his way across the landscape - and his Afrikaner foe/friend has outdone him - but conveniently died a romantic heroic death in the dying sun of technicolour.

What value does a single life hold? What do we do about the violence all around us? What do we do about the relentless crushing injustice?

We certainly do not break into a mercenary camp - steal sat phones and uzis and head off to find a huge diamond - and slaughter whoever comes in the way.

A day will come when every act will be brought to justice. When every thought and deed will be weighed before the Great White Throne.

Quayamat ka Din - the Day of Justice is just a heart-beat away for many.

Justice may seem far - given the often dreary history of humankind's brutality.

But the future is no hostage to the past. As horrible as the wheels of history have ground so far. Looking back all we seem to see is a sea of cruelty.

We know that a day will come when in the light of eternity - all the thousands of years lived so far will be just a breath. A moment. A blink of an eye.

In the new world - our history will be written in a very different way. The simple 'small people' that St.John sketches in her book - will be given the pride of place for their love, care, patience and suffering in the face of intolerable evil. Where will your name be in this new history of the ages?