By Denise J Hale

The rain hadn’t stopped since I’d left the house that morning. Not only was it wet but it was dark, as if the lucky sun had decided to stay in bed. It was Friday and I was busy, rushing about from place to place protected by my long, black coat and a canopy of angels. Now I was stuck in a long queue of traffic waiting to turn right whilst heavy rain bounced off my car and the windscreen wipers swished across my view. Winter hasn’t even started yet and suddenly I longed for a place where the sun did shine. Journeys‚ was this week’s theme for a story and my mind certainly made one as I visualised a warm country filled with sunshine. Somehow it combined with the Moulin Rouge‚ soundtrack on my sexy CD player, which was now playing a strange remix of Nature Boy‚ and thoughts of growing up in Africa started to gain footholds in my brain. For some reason this year I seem to start conversations with strangers who invariably have lived in Africa. This isn’t my story but is based loosely on someone else’s life. I hope they will forgive me for borrowing it. It’s about dreams, and hopes, and journeys to get what we think we want.

There was a boy who was born in Africa. Unlike most African boys this boy was white because, long before he was born, his forefathers had left their native country in Europe in order to find a better life. Africa is very beautiful and very warm, people coming from the cold, hard climate of the north probably thought that Africa was like Paradise.

But Africa was not paradise and life could be as hard here as the life that they had left behind. Crops failed to germinate or died from lack of water, they had to protect themselves from furiorous wild animals and there were different illnesses from the ones they had faced at home. Some people returned home disillusioned. Others stayed because, although it was not paradise, it was still a beautiful country lit by a golden light. The boy loved the country he lived in. He loved the smiling, hardworking people who moved lethargically though their day, as if they were aware of the brevity of their lives and had no wish to hasten to its demise. But he wanted something more. Like most children he needed to escape from the reality surrounding him into a more exciting world. Whilst his friends lost themselves in their books and their games, the world he lost himself in was bigger, and visible to all on the large silver screen at the only cinema in the country. That was where he wanted to be. Not on the ground with the rest of the people but elevated above them, flickering in the dark, forever immortal.

Sometimes at night, when it was too hot to sleep, he would creep out of the house and lie on the cooling ground. The sky would be spread above his head like a thick, dark-blue, velvet blanket covered in tiny moth holes that allowed the light beyond the blanket access to earth. Lying there, listening to the sounds of an African night and staring at the distance flickering stars, the images from the silver screen would flash across his mind and he knew that one day he would have to leave.

Africa is not actually a country, it is a continent made up of lots of countries, many of them financially improvised. The boy became a man and in order to fulfil his dream he had to leave one continent and travel to another. So he left his country in the south of Africa and eventually arrived in England. England was very different from his homeland. It was cold and full of unsmiling people who rushed about. The noises were different. The noise of machines filled the air here; aeroplanes, cars, even snatches of thumping music. It smelt different too; exhaust fumes and fast food, cigarette smoke and artificial perfumes. But mainly the light was different, some days it was grey and the sun refused to shine, other days it was as clear as crystal and some days it had a blue quality, but it was never golden.

The man clung to his boyhood dreams. He had already started to convert them into a reality at home with study, and by grabbing any acting opportunities he was fortunate enough to be presented with. Now, alone in his new home, he had to keep on trying. Yet he knew he could do it. Slowly others started to believe he could too. Sometimes the acting parts were small. Sometimes no one seemed to want to let him act. But enough people were willing to give him his chance and he was able to repay their faith in him. But when his dream had come true he discovered that creating one star in the sky wasn’t enough, he had to create more until the sky was covered. No one’s dream dies when it is fulfilled. Instead, phoenix-like, another raises to take its place. So the man continues to stride onwards as more stars appear in his sky.

Sometimes, when the man is alone, he looks at the night sky over the crowded London rooftops. The pollution from the thousands of street lamps mean that it is less dark than the African sky of his childhood and he sighs. One day he’ll return to Africa with its strange beauty, its golden light and its dark sky full of real stars.

Denise J Hale
26th October 2001
Not to be reproduced in any form without permission from the author.