One Step At A Time

I am a creature of habit, always have been. Don’t worry, I’m not attempting to stir things up by making large dramatic statements simply for the purpose of being wildly spontaneous, but I have always been someone that harbour's habitual practices. They're small things really, for example I went through a period during university of simply having to have the TV on as I slept. After some time this developed into actually not being able to get to sleep at all without the muffled deep hum of a low volume TV in my ears and the shadows of my socks dancing on the wall to the light of the screen as they dried on the radiator.

These routines are simple, without purpose and slightly silly but they still contribute to a portion of my sanity, a way for my brain to maintain it’s ritualistic, periodical and straightforward operation.

Since returning from the Congo I have started to look at the BBC news website daily. “So?” I hear you say. Well yes alright, reading the news isn’t odd at all but it can be viewed as such when practiced about 20 times a day. I’m not joking, the first thing I do when I turn on my computer is go straight to the BBC news website and race to the Africa section. There is (I have deduced) a twice daily turnover of stories meaning that in any one 24 hour period you would have a maximum of two, maybe three newly posted stories. You begin to understand then that twenty times a day is at least 18 times too many and the fact that I know this and do it anyway is all the more evidence alluding to my aforementioned, almost compulsive tendency.

Anyway, regardless of my mental state this practice has served its purpose. This evening just before going to bed I flicked over to the BBC news African site perfectly prepared to be met by the same headlines I had looked at 30 minutes prior. I was shocked then, to find that the early morning stories had just come online and was even more shocked to find an article of particular striking importance.

The article was all about the discovery of early human footprints that had recently been uncovered in Kenya. Now I love geology as much as the next student worker but was truly taken aback, not by the content but at the fact that it was the lead headline. For the first time that I can remember since beginning my sordid regular affair with the Africa news section here was an article that did not hint at my expected ‘unfavourable’ presentation of the continent with which it was now very easy to have empathy for.

There was no mention of any kind of suffering, embezzlement, poverty, conflict, corruption, disease, greed, kidnapping, pillaging or death.

Having visited the Congo and all the warmth and hope I experienced there I am aware that the news presents a somewhat slanted view of the daily going's on, but without even realising it everyday I have woken up, logged on and tuned in completely expectant of yet another negative report, fully buying into the presented state of affairs that the BBC can decide at any given moment to attribute to the continent on any particular day. And so it was with a very heavy heart that I found myself sat on my bed thousands of miles away from the Congo truly ashamed at my own shock that for just one day there was an article about geology that outweighed all other national activity.

May there be many more.

Jim