Chapter V: Safari
January 25th, 1908
Things have been going well, but not too well.
The Albanians have not only become a thorn in the paw of the Turkish lion but a thorn in our paw as well. They're just too damn obstinate. They refuse to listen to us when we tell them to save their strength for when we ultimately rise up against the Ottoman slave drivers; there is strength in numbers.
They apparently don't see things that way. They are fed up with the Turks and want freedom as soon as possible. If they don't choose to join us, they won't get it. Dirk and I met with the Albanian leader, a man by the name of Liridon, and we managed to convince him to calm his men down but he couldn't wait long, at least not as long as we wanted him too.
Truthfully though, I doubt it matters much. The Albanian armed forces are so small in number that they wouldn't mean much to the mass revolt of the people we have in store. They also don't blend with our ideology; they're friends by circumstances.
But I grow tired of business talk. I started this journal as a way to log my journey through the communist world, to document my hopelessly idealistic ideals. I really believed that the corporate, greedy earth could be swayed through words rather than deeds. I was a writer back then, I'm not anymore.
Nevertheless, I'll humor my old self for a short while and indulge myself in romantic musings.
I picked up the newspaper today and the featured story was an expose on the considerable uptick of wealthy European tourists visiting Ottoman Africa and the amount of safaris that have sprung up as a result.
It made me reminisce of the times I visited Ottoman Africa—the Tanzania province—years ago, as the routes for the ill-fated Trans African Railroad were being planned.
The idea was we would try to stake out where the intended routs were supposed to be. We'd find out where they would go, then infiltrate the surrounding areas so by the time bureaucracy was served and construction actually had begun, we'd have a solid footing in the community, making sabotage far easier.
The trip was awful.
The safaris had already started to spring up, and being surrounded by the grotesque capitalist pigs of Europe sickened me.
They were pompous, and lazy, and cruel to the natives. I've done...questionable things, but to see "nobility" go so low as to do the things I saw...
One of the most horrid things was when I saw a cartographer talking with some engineers. The village we were in was in the perfect plain for a railroad to Tanzania's interior. It had to be demolished.
The village that was fated to be destroyed.
As I heard these words I simply thought of the village. How many years had it been there? How many generations of Tanzanians had called it home? What myths originated there? What customs did they have?
The answers didn't matter. Where once stood a village of true nobles, would now stand a lifeless, horrific monument to the "progress" of mankind—nay, to the progress of money, industry, capitalism and the rape of the working man.
The over-zealous soldiers that were part of the group sent into Tanzania along with us interpreted the fact that the village had to be eventually destroyed as an order to destroy the village that day. I've seen battles, I've sent people to die, I've taken lives, and I've done so without remorse (and was even glad in some cases)but it was to a greater end: the liberation of mankind. The innocent lives I saw taken that day still haunt me.
And the European onlookers didn't bat an eyelash at the horrors. It was just another look at the wild nature of the savanna, something akin to watching a lion devour a zebra.
But they had riches, and power, so it was alright; they could do what they wanted. The had the
right to do that to another human being just because of their material wealth. So, while the trip was horrifying in some ways, it strengthened my resolve to the cause; I had to open my eyes one day and see red-colored stars in the sky, on all the flags of the world. Just like a beautiful, comforting red-colored star eventually adorned the Union Jack after the revolution.
At the risk of sounding even more romantic, I picked up a necklace that was among the ruins, I still wear it underneath my shirt to remind me of what I'm fighting for, and fighting against. The fight to liberate the worker was also the fight against evil. These disgusting caricatures of humans didn'tcare about life, they only cared about numbers, about profit, about productivity, about efficiency. Life is more than numbers. Humans are more than numbers.
I'm beginning to ramble...
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