Words

Finally,I've got this blog show on the road. I've been in this Internet cafe so long they're getting twitchy ... you may not have heard that i have a role in a new Russian reality TV show called 'Dread In the City' ! Apart from a few hours when the city sleeps the producers call me back all the time. Once in a while there other black folks in the show, the majority of them seem to be African . I've decided that i must have superpowers because i seem to be invisible to them.


You know how we do when we're some place where you don't see a black face for an eternity .Then you see somebody ,you can't help yourself but you smile, you look to make eye-contact, you acknowledge.For a while there is blessed relief at not being the 'only'one.My experiences so far has been here,if the 'one(s)' you see are African in the main you can forget the sister-brother thing. I have yet to understand why. One thing is for sure my body language is very different from most of the black people that i have seen so far.It's almost like they want to make themselves invisible.


There's no denying times were and are tough here.The Russian body language is very very assertive and you have to meet it.This isn't a city for the faint hearted.It doesn't welcome you with open arms, it doesn't put on a show for you the way that say Paris does.It doesn't do gentle,it makes no attempt to seduce you. So when there is aggression here it is full on. Last week a Moscow court handed guilty verdicts on 7 members of a skin head gang.Messrs Ryno and Skachevsky erstwhile 'leaders ' of this gang are 17 years old .Along with other members of the gang they have been found guilty of killing 20 migrant workers and attempted to murder 12 more between August 2006 and October 2007 -yep , these 'children' meant business. They now await sentencing by the judge.


Now before, you think that every Russian is a fascist bastard and what the hell am i doing here as I'm such an obvious target. The prosecution argued that no mercy be shown . InterFax reported that the jury ( we must assume 12 'good' men and women) handed down their verdicts and 'ruled that Ryno and Skachevsky did not deserve leniency ' . It is an unfortunate fact that in Russia that are people to take up where Ryno and Skachevsky left off ,but ,we must hold onto the fact that 12 men and women from their community have not shied away from their duty nor have they shirked the responsibility placed upon them. The pain of the loss suffered by the loved ones of the murdered and the damage done to those whom these 'people' attempted to kill is beyond what language can adequately describe. Right now 'GUILTY' must be the sweetest sound that they've heard in the longest time.



It was my plan to have this blog up and running so that when i hit these Moscow streets it would be a way of keeping family up to date on what I'm up to here. I've been here 3 months now but it's never too late as they say.My first month it has to be said was hellish. For someone who rarely leaves their kids the reality of studying a language where it is a given that you will have to live abroad for a while came as a bang to the solar plexus when i actually got here. Me being me i.e EveryWoman ergo SuperWoman thought' i can handle this it will be tough but hey we have a dream right ?'


The first month i lived in a thoroughly unpleasant situation. The situation came to ' head' quite literally when one evening to cheer myself up I'd bought a DVD . I had to watch it through a laptop. I put it in and there was sound but no picture. So, as you do , i went on the desktop and pressed the icon with a clapper board and the word 'Movies' beside it. I pressed the icon and what should pop up .. pictures of my 'hostess' giving somebody a blow job. There weren't any pictures of his face just a thoroughly unfortunate exhibition of a parts of him that i had no wish to see. The fact that my 'hostess' didn't respect me enough to remove those pictures when she gave me the lap-top further added to my unhappiness in her apartment.

I made up my mind to leave... fuck putting things down to 'cultural differences'. Staying with her was making me ill ... quite literally. I felt like i had a 1000lb rock on my chest and i was losing weight. Leaving that apartment was the best thing i could have done.I live with a wonderful old school babushka who takes such good care of me .. she is so like mum it's untrue. The other day we sat in the kitchen together chatting and listening to Ella Fitzgerald on the radio while she chewed on chicken bones..... chewing on chicken bones .. now that's truly old school y'all !