Introduction:

Numerous excerpts from old journals kept in Tanzania and Zimbabwe where I once sojourned have already been posted on this site. These include pieces in ‘Scraps from Tanzania Notebooks’, ‘Scraps from Zimbabwe Notebooks’ and in ‘Scraps of Memoir from Afar’.

In taking a second look at the transcripts of journals from those years, I found previously unused bits that seemed to fit together into two coherent narratives: one from 1981 and the other from 1988.

Editing these excerpts was somewhat akin to translation. The ‘selves’ of 1981 and 1988 spoke in different voices than the one ever-transitioning from the present. Sometimes I felt like giving their heads a good shaking: especially when they were dithering, paranoic, selfish or blind. Yet I never altered their voices or falsified their actions. That would have been a violation of history…

Finally, many references are made in these excerpts to ‘characters’ who have appeared in earlier postings. As always, names of identifiable personages are changed or alphabetized to protect identities.

–FWT (lefthook51)

March 2022

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