The Strange Mission is relevant here although its resonances are not immediately apparent. In that sense it lives up to its
name - a small girl dominated by a big wall, holding a silver ball and dressed in that most ubiquitous of all Western cultural exports - the T-shirt.
The Beatles in Bogota, the University of Minnesota in Manila, Rambo in Rwanda. Strange, occasionally surreal messages on chests and backs all over the
world in tandem with  more
than a hint of charity organisations, hand-outs and cast-offs; “dead obroni,” as they say in Ghana, “dead white men.”
But what is the silver ball? A Star Trek accoutrement? An African fetish? No. It is, in fact, a Western cult object. In talking with
Ponger it transpired that we have one of the experiences that generated the picture in common. During the conversation we both (mentally) returned to
the classrooms of childhood, she in Austria, I in Scotland and we both ended up in Africa; she in a jungle scenario and I in the savannah. We must have
been about the same age as the girl in The Strange Mission when the teacher asked us to collect silver paper, from cigarette packets and milk
bottle tops, for children in Africa. |
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For the next few months parents and visiting smokers and had to engage in the ritual of burning the tissue off the back of the silver
paper which was then rolled into a ball. In Vienna chocolate eaters were also welcome. In Aberdeen milk bottle tops were strung together. Until we found
out that the silver paper was aluminium with a relatively high re-cycling value, we both imagined children playing either on a sun-beaten savannah or
in the deepest jungle with the silver balls and, in my case, wearing the silver necklaces. The latter, however, was qualified by a distaste for the smell
of old milk.
Closed eyes; our gaze remains un-met. Perhaps, however, there is a hint of the reaction children have when they innocently cover their
eyes and cloak themselves in invisibility. The (temporarily) unwanted world disappears, the integrity of the personal and, in childhood, magical world
maintained. Are we being denied this magical world and left with just physical relics of our cultural past ?
Here, too, the armies of God seem to come together with the ‘Soldier of Fortune’, with exotic fantasies of the French Foreign Legion
or perhaps with their modern avatars, the mercenaries who are no longer ‘the dogs of war’ but private armies organised as profit-making corporations
to protect gold, silver and diamonds - raw materials and commodities - against all forms of political
instability. No longer concerned with conquering territory and raising national flags, these highly trained groups are active in creating islands
of safety for profit margins. No longer bound to missionaries by attitude or birth they can leave the winning of hearts and minds to the church.
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