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Caroline’s Incredible African Days

Caroline’s Incredible African Days

Visa day, 2015

She spots beautiful long locks that dance gently every time she walks down the clean streets of Kigali. Today, her walk is leading her to the American embassy where she has a visa appointment. The queues are long, the people sombre. You would think they are headed for a funeral. For many, they are headed for a potential funeral. If they don’t get the visas, they will feel like their future has died. Their American dream will have been replaced by their African nightmare.

Two hours later, Caroline get her visa. But for her, the African dream is part of her life’s driving force.

Random day, 2016

Another Tuesday. Another hot Kigali day. Eleven work emails to answer. Five personal emails to reply. Ten unread whattsapp messages. She will read them after replying at least five work emails. As for the personal emails, they will have to wait for lunch hour. Her colleague is her usual quiet but cheerful self. Her boss too is in a good mood. But her own mood is sitting on the fence dividing happyland and lousyland. She is aching to be published. Writing is her life and she first wrote he first book at 17 when most of her peers were mostly writing long texts to girlfriends or boyfriends. But she is not yet a published novelist and on days like today, this fact eats her up.

Environmental Africa Day

It is Friday the 14th of August. Caroline clicks on the link that her editor Bwak has emailed her. There it is. Her very own name and her very own article entitled, ‘By bleaching my skin I bleached my dignity.’ It is the first time she has been published by an established online magazine. It feels good. She feels good. She looks at a line from the story and her smiles grows wider, “She was a tenant of a small cosmetics shop downtown on the quartier commercial street. She looked like an Indian woman with scary green eyes.”

New York Day

The big apple is in her mouth. Literally. As she chews the sumptuous fruit, she savours the sights and sounds of New York City, the world’s financial capital.

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