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///catch.chins.camp
“What team does your daughter play for? Stoke Newington? I didn’t know that they had a cricket club in Stoke Newington…”. It’s a bit of an outlier within the ancient region of Middlesex, and if it wasn’t for the River Lea, there would have been a case for registering the club with Essex. Some of the neuro-syphilitic foxhunters in charge of Middlesex for the last 2000 years would have certainly preferred that.
I remember once, at the age of 12 or so, she played for East London Boroughs, made up almost entirely of Stokey players, against Ealing, and between the innings I overheard a chat between the umpire and someone he knew. He was asked:
“What game are you umpiring?” – and he said: “Stoke Newington against civilisation.” I was tempted to ask him if he can explain to me how I can get to the local lyceum, where Aristotle famously taught Alexander – when I studied Philosophy back in Germany I had read so much about Ealing, and I couldn’t believe my luck to be finally here.
That dinosaur hadn’t heard of, and will still not have heard of, demographical changes and developments in recent times, and if he had, it wouldn’t matter anyway. After all, it is old money that determines what is acceptable and what isn’t. In Ealing Town they have oak trees, in the east we have poplars.*
When the Yorkshire racism row started, with Azeem Rafiq accusing the county setup of being structurally racist, I hoped that he wouldn’t confuse anything – being at the end of deprecatory comments about one’s country of origin or skin quality, or being not selected because the selectors in charge only want to be surrounded by fellow Aryans are, if not two entirely different things, at least two issues that should be looked at separately. However I thought that the real problem lies underneath, in the classism of the system, because for a selection into representative cricket, the two most important criteria are a private school upbringing, and a parent who starts sentences with “when I was at the MCC last time, it happened that…”. That white people are naturally also overrepresented in this environment, is no surprise, but players with Asian heritage, who fulfil these criteria, find themselves easily integrated in the hegemonial system. It helps of course if you are not entirely useless at cricket, but that is not so dependent on natural talent, since you can afford private coaching every day of the week anyway.
On the top of the ladder, the English, with their sense of natural superiority, regularly ask themselves why, with all their entitlement, do they so often lose against Australia, India or New Zealand. Especially, why are the latter so good, if their entire population is only 5 Million people? One could point out that if your selection process focusses on kids from private schools, you restrict your potential pool of players to… let me calculate that quickly… the kids of a population of 5 million people. Ah well…
“What team does your daughter play for? Germany? I didn’t know that they played cricket in Germany…”. It’s a bit of an outlier within the ancient region of … I just figured that this loopy structure, that I set out so cunningly in my mind, won’t lead anywhere.
Unbeknownst to the English cricket aficionado, there are now 54 countries playing women’s cricket listed with the International Cricket Council, 8 of which play in the “Kwibuka” tournament, that is held annually in remembrance of something that I might have to research even more than I have by now, and which I might have difficulties to include in a blog that is mainly jovial if not satiric. I will get there very soon, though.
In the meantime, I have to conclude from my experiences with English and any other cricket is that the latter, especially with tournaments like these or the Fairbreak tournament in Dubai that took place a month ago, is in principle inclusive – nuff said.
And I also have to follow up on a few other questions which come up in a place like this, e.g. why is the sky full of black kites, where is the centre of Kigali if there is any, where is this mosquito that everyone warned me about, what is the real reason for all this tax payers’ money from Europe flooding into this country, how come that it takes about 45 minutes from the order to being served a coffee, why is everybody so friendly, and who was the bloke who asked us about what we are doing here, what do we think about religion, sex, lesbianism, marriage, the royal family, Johnson Boris, age gaps in relationships, smoking weed, education in Rwanda, and pig meat. All to be answered soon.
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///light.pasta.nasal*
Travelling to places which I don’t know, but of which I have a clear idea, have occurred more than once in my life. So I go straight to a famous bar in Pamplona, recognise an elderly woman at the railway station in Prague as someone who is in search of tourists needing accommodation, know where to find good beer in Berlin and avoid the Weisse mit Schuss, it doesn’t matter what I wear in Denmark or which currency is in my pockets in Luxemburg, and even if I lose my passport in some backstreet in Athens, I wouldn’t worry too much about finding the embassy. The only thing of real importance is that I know the translation of “pancake” in each of the languages.
Now then to Kigali, Rwanda. I have not the faintest idea. Just different fragments of information from pharmacists, guide books, documentaries, feature films, and news on current affairs, so altogether: mythologies. And of course the knowledge of the Western European running through my privileged blood, that this place will be, presumably, close to the heart of some darkness.
If you ask me for my nationality, the truth is I feel more European than anything else. I am part of this culture, this European civilisation. I can walk into any gallery on our continent and completely understand the images and the stories on the walls. These people are my people and they have been for thousands of years. I can read books on subjects from Ancient Greece to Dark Ages Scandinavia, from Renaissance Italy to 19th-century France, and I don’t need the context or the landscape explained to me. The music of Europe, from its scales and its instruments to its rhythms and religion, is my music. The Renaissance, the rococo, the Romantics, the impressionists, gothic, baroque, neoclassicism, realism, expressionism, futurism, fauvism, cubism, dada, surrealism, postmodernism and kitsch were all European movements and none of them belongs to a single nation. (A.A Gill. The Times. 2016)
No idea why I quoted that. What is fauvism anyway?
It is very clear that I will not survive. That’s partly the reason for not having bought a return ticket. Because…what do I know about Rwanda? Diane Fossey was killed there, for starters. And then, the list of diseases my pharmacist warns me about, reads like the 10 plagues of the old testament, which will all rain down on me, like frogs. I tried to be reasonable, and said that I do not need a vaccination against Meningitis, because I am not intending to have sexual encounters with the locals, at least not unprotected, and I will try my best not to get bitten by any animal that is frothing around the mouth. There is no vaccination against Dengue Fever however, and none against Sleeping Disease, while the treatment against Malaria is preemptive and also is only 100% secure if one can manage to not get bitten by members of that Anopheles-Gang, that roams the streets of Kigali between 10pm and 2am each night. I can’t avoid vaccinations against food-related inconveniences like Typhoid and Hepatitis A, though, and a refreshment course of Tetanus can’t hurt really, can it? That the authorities require a negative Covid-Test in order to enter the country, seems a bit petty in light of the above. I forgot to mention Yellow Fever. One might die from it.
Then there are the dangers of being trampled to death by what they call the big 5, presumably Elephant, Hippo, Giraffe, Zebra, and a morbidly obese tour guide called Harry. The chances of that are, admittedly, rather slim in the city, but you never know. In Disney-Movies they cause a lot of trouble everywhere they turn up.
Lastly there is the little issue of dissent, that is frowned upon, and any deviation from the lawful path might lead to some form of sanction. Amongst the most despised missteps one could possibly undertake are trying to bring a plastic bag into the country, wearing T-shirts with slogans, mentioning the war, touching people of the opposite sex in public, littering, and making critical comments about the authorities. Wearing camouflage shirts will bring you straight into prison, as it should be in any civilised country. So far, so good. Rwanda is regarded as the cleanest and safest country in the whole of Africa, with a state-of the-art telecommunication network, a front-runner of the free market, the pet-project of Tory development aid, and an example of how to overcome a national trauma caused by a genocide, the bestiality of which would have made Adolf Eichmann shudder.
And it’s a functioning democracy with free elections – from a UK perspective, where 40% of the votes might bring you a 80 seats majority in parliament, everything should be regarded as a functioning democracy, and if one of the presidential candidates repeatedly gains north of 90% of the votes, not only the UK, but the EU and the US regard this as a sign of reliability and will not hesitate to fund the government further, to make sure that peace can be secured for eternity. All proper, and the past, which has been constituted very much by division, has turned into a present, that is characterised by unity. Or so. And “pancake” is “Mandazi” in Kinyarwanda.
Anyway. The reason for the journey…
*using the location app what3words, to not forget where I am
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The sky is not completely dark at night. Were the sky absolutely dark, one would not be able to see the silhouette of an object against the sky.
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The Road 