Becoming The Muse

Coffee with white smoke

If you were having coffee with me, I would welcome you to my tangle of words and offer you a piping hot hug in a mug. If you can handle drinking hot tea from an enamel cup of the Kango brand you can survive the end of the world…

And on world ending matters, someone asked a loaded question about how horror movies tended involve the Catholic church. Is it because its one of the most well known, with mysterious rites that are easy to misinterpret or maybe its a stereotypical slander pushed by Hollywood? Anyway, one of the most secretive things about The Vatican is its papal elections, with cardinals sequestered away from public until they make a decision and the send out a white smoke signal.

The movie Conclave gave a dramatised version of things, while the reality is a lot less like a Dan Brown plot. I had expected the process to last longer, but the new pope was elected after four ballots during the 2025 papal conclave. While I had not expected an African Pope, given that of the  out of 133 Cardinals at the conclave, 17 are from Africa with 3 having stirred up a remarkable interest and support; Cardinal Peter Turkson (Ghana), Cardinal Fridolin Ambongo Besengu (DRC), and Cardinal Robert Sarah (Guinea).

The successor to Pope Francis is Pope Leo XIV born Robert Francis Prevost, has a degree in mathematics from Villanova University, which means not only does he understand Sin he also knows Cos, Tan and other trigonometric functions. He is the first American Pope and of course the world is waiting to see what bearing that will have on world affairs.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that some African Leaders have also faced backlash for travelling to the Vatican to shake hands with the new pope, given how the money spend on such trips could be better used in infrastructure and other developmental projects. Speaking about developmental projects The President and government officials who were in Belarus signed agreements to transform Zimbabwe’s healthcare.

Given that there is not much public detail about of how much is being facilitated or the nature of the agreements, one can see how word on the street suggests that one of the individuals who is said to be awarded the tender to renovate the hospitals was implicated in an unprocedural $60 million dollar tender project to supply PPEs at inflated prices during the COVID pandemic.

If you were having coffee with me, I would tell you that in a weird double standard development given the American government’s stance on immigration and asylum,  White Afrikaners from South Africa our southern neighbour, are being received in America as refugees of genocide. Crazy thing is I might probably be more at risk of persecution for some of the things I write on my blog than this lot, why the special treatment?

Some media outlets seem to be bending over backwards to push a narrative of a genocide targeted against Afrikaners. The reality is somewhat different, especially if one were to look at the historical disenchantment of the indigenous people.

Having lived through an era where we had a chaotic and violently executed land reform programme, whose effects we are still reeling from today, which is part of the reason for the country’s current state; as I and other people suspect, there was a deliberate sabotage of the economy to ensure its failure, as it would set a bad precedent for an African country to successfully take back its land and now here we are, as a cautionary tale for an ill-planned land reform exercise.. from bread basket of Africa to basket case.

If you see white smoke coming out of my house, it means that there is no electricity and we have started a fire to cook dinner, and if you see black smoke, it probably means the dinner got burnt.

Whats been going on in your neck of the woods?

~B