Westernised & Warped

Westernised & Warped

Westernised and Warped

          My fox terrier had died a few months earlier, but I was determined to go for two walks a day, anyhow. For my health, and all that. The worst of the summer was over, and I’d strolled the two-and-a-half blocks to Claudelands Park to observe the local citizenry taking pleasure in the peaceful pleasantness of the after-Saturday-dinner air. After circumambulating the main part of the park I found an unoccupied bench and plomped myself down.

          Circumambulate is a real word. At least it’s in the dictionary. Plomp isn’t.

          So I was sitting there in the shade of some big old tree, enjoying the light breeze and the sky, and the outlines of the trees against it, watching people of all ages and many ethnicities fly kites and throw things for dogs and play soccer football and stroll and suchlike. Just sitting there – an old man on a park bench. It felt good to place myself into such a recognisable category.

          A group of four or five young Somali-Kiwi blokes within a year or two on either side of 20 were walking rapidly along the footpath in the general direction of a pickup soccer football game going on nearby in which nearly all those playing were African. We made brief, passersby eye contact, I nodded, and we exchanged giddays.

          One of them stopped and asked me from under his NY Yankees baseball cap what I was doing. Smiling and friendly and energetic.

          I smiled back and told him I was just being an old man sitting on a park bench, as old men have done for centuries – nothing exceptional about it. Traditional.

          He waved his arms criss-crossed in front of him in the no-goal signal and casually remonstrated, ‘Hey, man, don’t be puttin’ yourself down like that!’

          I was mildly bewildered. ‘Whaddeya mean?’

          ‘Sayin that you’re old and shit. Why you wanna do something like that? Have some pride, man!’

          I’d assumed that Somali culture would have respected and honoured old age, as would most cultures unwarped by the marketing hogwash of global capitalism. Either I’d been wrong or its codswallop had already brainwashed this Kiwified kid into its warped perspective.

          Anyway, I assured him that it was cool, and that I didn’t think that being old is something to be ashamed of, or denied, and it let me ride buses for free.

          He clearly didn’t believe me, but quickly jumped our budding conversation on to origins, asking me if I was an American.

          Fucking accent.

          He, of course, spoke perfect Kiwi.

          I grumbled back something vague about being from lotsa different places and not wanting to go into any long story just then, but he didn’t seem to mind at all, preferring to talk about himself, anyway.

          ‘I’m from Somalia,’ he said. ‘That’s in Africa – did you know that? So I’m African. East Africa. Africa’s a big place.’

          ‘Yep.’

          ‘I bet you don’t know much about Somalia.’

          ‘Well, I know a little …’

          ‘There was a big war there, y’know?’

          ‘Yep. Of course I know that.’

          ‘That’s why my olds brought me here. The Americans made a movie about it – did you know that?’

          ‘Really?’

          ‘Yeah, it’s called Black Hawk Down. Ever see it?’

          ‘Nah, I don’t go see movies much.’

          ‘They made that movie right there in Somalia – in East Africa. You didn’t know that?’

          ‘Well …’

          ‘It showed just what Somalia looks like, man. That’s what my olds said. I watched it with them a bunch of times, learning about the place.’

          ‘I’ll have to watch it sometime.’

          ‘It can teach you about Americans, too.’

          ‘I bet it can’

          ‘Anyway, I gotta catch up with my mates. See ya.’

          ‘Just one thing.’

          ‘What’s that?’

          ‘It’s good to be old. You’ll find out. Just wait.’

          He shook his head laughing and took off across the park.

          We haven’t seen each other since, to the best of my knowledge.
          A year or so later I adopted a senior Miniature Schnauzer. All the Somalis in the park now give us plenty of room. Dogs are apparently not a part of our culture that they're quick to adopt.