Here I go again...

November 15th

Today I finished painting class 4. A yellow classroom. Tomorrow class 5, a straightforward kind of green.

Otherwise things are kind of the same. Staying in the same guesthouse for more than a week now. But still not much rest, and always walking a lot. I'm trying to get serious... but it's not easy. After a 'radio'silence of half a year, I've started watching the news again and I'm reading newspapers again too. Not very much inspiring I must say. And I'm learning Swahili. I even bought a cell-phone! I gave up my resistance finally. Also, and I don't even know how or when, I have changed my opinion about things as the death-penalty and drugs. What the hell is happening to me? Must be some kind of virus.

This life is just too weird and beautiful. It's like a free-fall. All you need to do is pull the cord in time. The rest is beyond you. Really all you can do is enjoy. Fear is futile.

We talk about my trip. About fear and luck. Peta tells me about a friend of her who died last year while visiting her in Tanzania. I tell her about the friend of the Austrians who died in South-Africa in a freak accident while we are in Sudan. About the 50 killed in a Kenyan village. Ethiopian cattle thiefs attacked a village and stole the cattle. This happens not far from me the night of the day I crossed the border. And me? I remember those 4 Dutch journalists getting killed in El Salvador in the same week I was there. The shooting in the park in Guatemala City. I jumped up, but nobody else reacted. Next day I read in the paper someone did get killed there and then. Is it luck? I remember my father telling me about Berlin. How he rejoyced every time when the allied bombs were falling. How he and a mate were close when the Berlin subway got a full load. How they stepped on the bodies to help the few still living. Is it luck? I am not careless, but I do not care. I am not fearless, but I do not fear.

Walking home, no, no, no I can't be drunk again. I just had a little Vodka. But all that I am wanting, is that she would be waiting for me in my room...

In Davids office I look through the books. "Ecstacy: the language of existence" by an Indian guy named Osho. Never heard of him, although the face on the cover looks kind of familiar. I read 'Mad, because to them life is not a question, not a problem to be solved, but a mystery into which one has to dissolve oneself'. Yes! This book I shall read. I had asked Davids help to buy me a cell-phone, so we spent some time together. In his office he runs a computer business with 4 others. And with yet others they have founded a NGO for environmental restoration. The first evening he takes me to his favorite bar. I make a comment about a waitress, about how black she is. David jokes to her saying that I fancy her. The poor girl is totally interested in me now. She doesn't speak English and all I can say in Swahili is: 'Unanukia' and 'Ninataka mwili wako'. That might invoke an eventful evening, but it's so limited. Then the barmanager, Aisha, comes and sits with me. She asks me if I like the girl! Ehh... yes? (But she is so black, I still have no idea what she looks like). I'm getting a little lecture about white men and black girls. Thanks for that. It has no importance, I'm not ready yet anyway.

Later in the midst of conversation I find myself wondering if I could get away with the following fantasy. To just escape to a deserted coco-beach. Anywhere, if only the sun would shine and the beach be white. A nice cabin and my 18 year old queen. Get away? Why get away? Yes to get away from every thing I've said before. To get away from promises and previous plans. Get away with cheating God and the Devil. And in the end to cheat on life itself.... to just come and go. Ahh, but the trouble with fantasies is... they're perfect. And reality? Also perfect.... but almost.

In the class I'm singing: 'Doe het 1 voor de show, 2 voor het geld, 3 voor het publiek, maar doe alles wat je doet met hart en ziel'. The next morning I read: 'Are you living God right now or not? That is the problem. If you are not living him right now, you will never be able to live him, because he is here. He is always in the present - never in the past, never in the future. This moment is his abode. Enjoy him, delight in him this moment. So whatsoever you are doing, let it be worship, whatsoever you are doing, let it be prayerful; whatsoever you are doing, do it lovingly'.

And I know it all. I've known it all along, but I'm too much of a coward to switch off my mind.

As we decide to go to Tanzania together we need her ID-card. For that we need Rasta (Mike). We go to his shop to find him. He's not there, so we wait. We sit on a couch chewing Meraa. There is one boy there watching tv. I'm thinking: 'I wish he'd put on a reggae cd instead'. He switches off the tv, puts on a reggae cd and leaves the shop. This is a moment of perfection. After leaving Shashemene I wrote that if I've ever felt the working of the message it's right here. There is energy, but it's relaxed. It's love and it's fun. Nobody talks about messages, there is no pressure, the people just are.
And that feeling is here again. Listening to reggae music, waiting for a guy named Rasta. Even my hotel is in Haile Selassi road. And all of this with an African girl, dressed in nothing but a thin dress. All that is left to do is for her to do my hair the rastaway (after all she IS a hairdresser) and for us to move to Shashemene.

This strange, wonderful book I read begins with 'Here I go again...'. And he really does. Who is this? Where does he come from? Suddenly I realize: Osho is the Bhagwan!!? I'm laughing my head of and feel ashamed at the same time. I'm so opinionated, I've judged, accused and ridiculed this guy. Without even ever reading a single letter he wrote himself. I've believed and repeated what others have said on tv and in the newspapers. And now he manages, 16 years after his visit to this planet, to find a way to kick me in the ass. Great!