Black kilt

Mariam back in Tanzania told me I’d appeared in her dream. Here I reproduce her retelling of it verbatim.

I dreamt about you having promoted to work on a certain big project in Madagascar I forgot the name of that project but it's about livelihood and climate change. There was a luncheon and you invited me to meet your Madagascar team. The location was not in Tanzania as the people were not speaking Swahili. The best part of this dream was me and you speaking in Portuguese and the surprise part was you speaking Malagasy with the rest. The highlights of the dream was the documentary which was aired all over shows the impact of before and after of the project though I didn't understand the language but people were cheering you everywhere.

The sad part was when the luncheon was over we were still with your team until the sun was setting and then you told me there are 3 things seriously bothering you and you said you will tell me shortly, then you jump into a swimming pool but when you wanted to come out something was pulling you down aggressively and you were struggling I tried to reach out my hands but it was not easy cause of the distance and I was crying for help but my voice was not coming out and was getting dark, surprisingly the pool edges changes and became more lusher and you were trying to hold the grasses but they were slippery finally you got a stump to hold on and managed to come out. When you came out you were wearing a black kilt.

I enjoyed Mariam’s use of the word luncheon, the unexpected ending and the fact that she has as bizarre and progressively outlandish dreams as me.

After work I successfully retrieved two rucksacks of stuff from the dispensa behind my old apartment block, where they’d been stored. I went to the usual praça on the corner where I used to meet Paulo the txopela driver, who has featured oft in my blips. He wasn’t there but the driver who took me to the airport back in April was. I enquired as to Paulo’s whereabouts as I’ve been unable to reach him by phone. Alguma coisa aconteceu, he said. Something happened. My immediate thought was a road accident. However it turns out that Paulo is currently on remand awaiting trial for going into a bank with some papers belonging to a client of his, but the papers were false. This could be a miscarriage of justice, but the other txopela driver wouldn’t be drawn into speculation.

This wall art that I passed is wishing for peace for Cabo Delgado Province, in the grip of a violent insurgency since 2017.