rotterdam ... continued

cha!
as i was sayin the other day
tis the city that interests me most
bin here befo, about two or three years back
naturally t'was different then
the city had jus recently won the city of the yeah award
or sumtin to that effect cyaan rememba too well
i could see why but did not appreciate it much then
as i had a lot o' tings on me mind then
like how can i get mah ass back to amsterdam and how quick
t'was a disastrous trip, we was a group, and group dynamics took ova

so all me wanted to do was go to
mah favourite coffee shop in the red light district an hang...
but i was broke, as usual, so i had to hang here
so i did mah favourite pastime
walk walk walk with no destination in mind
along the way i bumped into two brethren
i asked them where i cud get sum reggae club coffee shop vybz n shit
them seh the aint no place like dat
but oh wait what about the bob marley coffee shop
the other guy hesitated, him did not want to send me there
him seh am alone, is far, might be dangerous fo a likkle gyal like me blah blah blah
me seh jus tell me where and how and
like the italians say: ci penso io
them tell me to walk down this ya road and jus continue str8
until i get to bob marley coffee shop

and i did. i walked in, i got buzzed in rather...
a very curious place it was i rememba
almost dingy with a lot of regulars there [i cud tell]
i ordered mah tea and chose mah spot at a corner
afta mah second cup me strike a conversation with the bar man
a moroccan who is Dutch anyway
by the time i was on mah second spliff
i start to check the composition of the people in there
its all men. young men. old men. middle man.
african. arab. indonesian. indian.
whatta curious mix it was.
an they were all Netherlenders!
fo me an arab chillin wiht an african chillin with an indian chillin with an indonesian
was such a sight to behold [i did not kno about surinam then]
half way thru mah spliff
me also check that there is no female species in sight only the I
and yu can also tell that these regular men don even bring their dates there
by the time i reach mah third spliff i notice sumtin else
all these male species are startin to flirt with me
thats mah cue, gots to go. i mah out!

i hit the streets again.
i am checking that i am in another part of the city
lots of africans arabs mixed and hardly any dutch people per se
i notice that i am actually inna de ghetto [where i belong ha ha ha haha]
ghetto fabulous faces ghetto yutes hangin by the corner
but mah western [educated] side of me got into the way o'tings
me started getting paranoid an shit
i am thinkin thats why that dude did not want to send me here
gotta gets outta here quick
back to the safe haven of youth hostels and travel guides and shit..
in ya dis ya time

fast forward three yeahs later....

Borders

Las nite i went to watch a movie called The Border.
its a strange non fiction story. A documentary film to be precise.
and its about a border. the strangest border that exist.
people in the film kept saying,
for over 40 years i have waited for this border to disappear
basically them (politicians) just cut a line with a pencil on the map
and created this border. what them did not realise was that
they literaly cut through peoples houses and lives and souls and shit
so relatives were separated from ea other
they had to speak to ea other over the border, not the fence like normal neighbors do
but across the border.
One incident was that a small girl was visitin her grandparents
when the border came into effect
so she was separated from her parents for the rest of her life
she could only talk to them at the border
them people were not allowed to cross the border....
strange shit ah go happen in this world
in ya dis ya time....

check out the synopsis here