Match boxes

Way back before I wrote anything down about Africa, I wanted to write a blog about matches. Scintillating, I know. Admittedly, my descriptions below may not entice and compel any readers as my build up will attempt to promise. However, I think matches for me became a symbol of my crazy mixed up life in Africa. So often, everyday at least once a day, I have a completely insane yet minute and ordinary experience that reminds me that I'm a long way from my originally perceived version of home.

Africa is chaotic and communal. It is cacophony and color. It is also careless and catastrophe. Obvious images capture some of it: half naked ladies shaking their rump shakers with defying agility and speed. There's also the broken-down truck on the side of the road crazily, insanely packed to the hilt with human beings, chickens and mattresses making the impossible but commonplace journey from Gulu to Juba...not even a bandanna to keep the crippling dust from seeping into every orifice. Or of course, the perennial flies in the eyes malnourished but adorable babies.

These images really are a part of the story here. And they remain affecting. Just the other day I called my mom distraught from meeting a young boy in Atiak trading post with a massively distended belly filled with worms and neglect. I may be struggling with cynicism at the moment, but this child and the millions of ones just like him remind me quickly to reel it in and remember why I'm here.

These images define my experience, but it's the little indescribable events that I wish I could bring to life for those not here, or even for those who've come and know exactly what I mean.

Krishna matches come in old fashioned boxes brightly colored with an image either of an infant goddess or a strange blond haired, pink skinned cherub called "Baby Boy" on them. Matches: brightly colored boxes with children on them...

They are wax matches and I have no idea if that contributes to the extraordinary range of reactions one receives when striking the box. All I know is that there is a wide yet consistent variety of reactions that has made lighting my stove or candles an event.

Some include:

The Ordinary Light: strike the match, light the stove. Rare. Delightful.

The Shooting Star: As the match is struck, its lit head immediately ejects itself from the rest of the match and projects dramatically in a high arch and with impressive distance across the room.

The Rocket: Hayden pointed out this nuanced version of the shooting star. While the shooting star is elegant in it's descent, you can image that the rocket hurls its head in a straight, heat-seeking trajectory and anyone and anything in its path is singed.

The Kamikaze: Similar to the shooting star and the rocket, except that the whole match, stem and all, lights up in a well, mini explosion that compels one to drop it immediately or die.

The Dud: well, obviously, a match with no reaction at all...many of those

The Decap: one strike and the head of the match pops off, but there is no flame. A more dramatic dud.

Double trouble: two match sticks fused together by 1 head - very good for lighting candles outside as long as one does so quickly. A lot of heat comes from this sucker.

The Faux Dud: You think it's a dud so you stop paying attention to it until you realize that your hand or your table is on fire.

The Slow Burn: similar to the faux dud, except it lights, you use it, blow it out and disregard it only to realize with time that your hand or your table is on fire.

It's scary to think how much time I've taken to think about this and now write about it. But those who've experienced the Krishna match box know. These matches are a symbol or perhaps even a metaphor for life in Africa. They are chaotic, communal, color, cacophony, etc.