Opiyo and Jaime speak in English. Opiyo wears black t-shirt and decides to lie in the black furry divan facing the garden. Jaime wears white t-shirt and decides to lie in the white divan facing the building. The same little black table puts distance between us.
The unexpected happens transforming the conditions of the meeting. English becomes the shared language, the common space where both guests are foreigners. Communication widens its limits.
The idea of a single home grounded in one single place link, connected to one single context stars vanishing. Maybe we should start thinking of a world crossed by endless paths. Home is made out of those things we can carry with us. Opiyo’s backpack is heavy.
Maybe the idea of a home as a unique reality is linked to a subjectivity conceived as an isolated individuality. But maps are crossed and the skin is a porous organ open to constant contamination. Identity as the search for an ontological essence is exhausted. Time and space are the two variables through which the self metamorphoses. Home and self are just a collection of alters. The ones chatting lying on the divans are radically different to those that ate lunch half an hour before.
Back to the main issue: “Africa”. Maybe I am deeply wrong, and Africa does exist beyond Western colonial anxieties. I feel ridiculous if I say “I am European”. It means nothing to me. Therefore I assume that someone saying “I am African” could feel the same. But maybe I am wrong because I have heard it several times coming from very respectable persons. Opiyo makes the point: maybe I cannot say “I am European” because I refuse moving from my Western colonial subjectivity that, as we all know nowadays, is defined as invisible. White and invisible.
