Now that we’re back in South Africa, I’m suddenly feeling bi-polar, like I’ve been manically singing silly songs for weeks, and now I’ve hit the deepest depression. It’s almost as if I’ve been racing around, trying to keep my energy up, so maybe the centrifugal force can keep me from falling, falling into the darkness. But I’ve stopped now, and there’s no more avoiding it.

Andre Brink’s A Dry White Season gives us a dark and dangerous look at government control and forced silence during Apartheid (which may be defined as, “separate but not so much equal”).

It was an excellent book, and they made a pretty good movie out of it too. These things are hard to read or watch, though, stories about human injustice, torture and all that. At least it wasn’t about genocide, though, I have a real hard time with that type of fear mongering and abuse of power, and we keep seeing stories like this from all over the dark continent, wet with blood.

I’m feeling pretty strong, though, that it only took me two weeks of goofing around before I could go back to Andre Brink. After all, I’ve had Looking on Darkness sitting on my to-be-read shelf for nearly eight years. I’ll let you know if I ever make it there.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 2nd, 2007 at 10:39 pm and is filed under Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.