Minding my own damn business like I do (well... as much as Twitter will allow me to) I came up on (and I love that niggerish phraseology) THIS, I got to say it was with much appreciation that I went through it. A reason to look into the culture of other countries again... OK, Western countries to be more specific. To me the Afripop mag blog update was "The World According to 30 Zimbabweans" Nice, tight, and it made some damn sense. For once it wasn't some peeps bitching about a personified political reality, nor was it some other country gleefully reasserting the "third worldness" of Zimbabwe. Nah man these were world class players doing their damn thing on stages of all kinds in all kinds a places. Aite so Afripop is more about the arts then, say, straight politics, so there wasnt a politician amongst the artists. All the better! At least with really great artists (and I suspect the 30 up on that list fit the bill) you can trust that they don't lie to themselves.
I was pleasantly surprised to find a high school crush up on there, Chipo Chung, daughter of the then Minister of Education of Zimbabwe (Fay Chung) when I was doing hard time at a private boys school over there. My father felt that I needed "toughening up"... I am still wondering what that meant.. err so yeah, anyway... obviously this girl with the Asian persuasion so to speak was different from all the other girls we would get a glimpse of for whatever reason, be it a debate meet at school dance or some rugby meet somewhere. All the boys schools had sister schools that would cheer for them and visa versa; more importantly to stock the school dances with more desirable flesh. Honestly I can't recall ever saying anything intelligent to Chipo, but I do recall a group (can't we call a band of prepubescent boys a "grope" cause that's all that is on their minds 24-7) of us always trying to get a glimpse of this one girl, there were others but hey, you can beat her whole thang.
If only we could have recognised so many things back then... Like the fact that Chipo's mother, Fay, was a no nonsense woman from what I recall, so obviously the daughter was the confident sort, never mind the fact that boys are quite literally pussies at that age. I never saw any negative evidence of it on Chipo, but I know from my boarding school experience being different could be a back handed curse if not an open handed blessing... something that varied from year to year. Girlfriend was just 'aite from where we were crouching. So ya you know if we had recognised a gang of things in the hormone haze of those days... I would be typing a different sort of reminiscence about a girl I didn't ultimately know, and had actually forgot about until today when I discover that she is making a difference much like her other did (and still does) in her day.
Big up Afripop from dredging up a rather pleasant memory in its innocence, big up Chipo not so much for being one of my many frivolous crushes, more for inadvertently making that list "personal" for me and big up life you twisty mofo. I love living this thing.
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