αγριμολογος

Μία φορά και έναν καιρό, το Τσακάλι και ο Λύκος προσλήφθηκαν από έναν άνθρωπο ως έμμισθοι υπηρέτες. Καταμεσής της νύχτας το Τσακάλι σηκώθηκε κρυφά και άλειψε την ουρά του Λύκου με λίπος· στη συνέχεια, έφαγε την υπόλοιπη ποσότητα αποθηκευμένου λίπους στο σπίτι. Το πρωί, ο άνθρωπος ξυπνά, βλέπει όλο το λίπος εξαφανισμένο, και αίφνης σκέφτηκε, γνωρίζοντας τον χαρακτήρα του, το Τσακάλι. «Για πήγαινε δες την ουρά του Λύκου», δήλωσε ο κανάγιας, «και θα δεις ποιος είναι ο κλέφτης». Ο άνθρωπος πήγε, είδε την πασαλειμμένη ουρά του Λύκου με το λίπος, και στη συνέχεια άρχισε να τον χτυπά τόσο άγρια, που παραλίγο να αφήσει εκεί την τελευταία του πνοή.

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[Πατροπαράδοτο Νοτίου Αφρικής (κυρίως Ζulu, Xhosa, Ndembele) σε ελεύθερη απόδοση του αγριμολόγου]

Κλείνοντας εισιτήρια Aegean από εδώ, ενισχύετε τις Στάχτες

Durban 1989, South Africa

André Brink: an excerpt from A Dry White Season :

[…]I wanted to help. Right. I meant it very sincerely. But I wanted to do it on my terms. And I am white, and they are black. I thought it was still possible to reach beyond our whiteness and blackness. I thought that to reach out and touch hands across the gulf would be sufficient in itself. But I grasped so little, really: as if good intentions from my side could solve it all. It was presumptuous of me. In an ordinary world, in a natural one, I might have succeeded. But not in this deranged, divided age. I can do all I can for Gordon or scores of others who have come to me; I can imagine myself in their shoes, I can project myself into their suffering. But I cannot, ever, live their lives for them. So what else could come of it but failure?
Whether I like it or not, whether I feel like cursing my own condition or not — and that would only serve to confirm my impotence — I am white. This is the small, final, terrifying truth of my broken world. I am white. And because I am white I am born into a state of privilege. Even if I fight the system that has reduced us to this I remain white, and favored by the very circumstances I abhor. Even if I’m hated, and ostracized, and persecuted, and in the end destroyed, nothing can make me black. And so those who are cannot but remain suspicious of me. In their eyes my very efforts to identify myself with Gordon, whit all the Gordons, would be obscene. Every gesture I make, every act I commit in my efforts to help them makes it more difficult for them to define their real needs and discover for themselves their integrity and affirm their own dignity. How else could we hope to arrive beyond predator and prey, helper and helped, white and black, and find redemption?
On the other hand: what can I do but what I have done? I cannot choose not to intervene: that would be a denial and a mockery not only of everything I believe in, but of the hope that compassion may survive among men. By not acting as I did I would deny the very possibility of that gulf to be bridged.[…]

Johanneburg 1912

credit:  here

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