Meeting a Local Londoner

A Local Encounter that Changed my Perspective

It felt more like home, as if I have carried Africa with me to Europe. My arrival to the Queen Elizabeth’s floors and royal pavements of Her Majesty was greeted by the rainy and cloudy weather hanging lazily on the horizon above. It was like angels from the stairs above were ululating at my arrival and tear-dropping at my presence. A ‘Rain’ to most of us Africans is a blessing from the Mighty God and if it doesn’t rain for a long time and the draught hit our fields then we expect heavy poverty to take charge of our day to day situation afterwards.

I was deeply fascinated by the exercise of roaming around the city of London and playing games and other activities such as poetry, running competition, spoken words, drama, and music and walking around the streets. I begin to realize that the London I have imagined before setting my foot into the city was much of a fiction. The London I didn’t know was the London that never sleeps. I found ‘him’ (London) so busy like his brother, Joburg in South Africa. They have a lot in common. After four hours of walking around the streets of LONDON I realized that I carried the City of Johannesburg with me in my luggage to the Royal Home of the English Queen. He is interwoven with cultural diversity, multi-racial society and the hub of opportunities drawing people from abroad to his well. I enjoyed this activity so much because it opened my eye into the in-depth of the world’s most favoured city, it enabled me to explore his character and investigate his personality. London, he is a Prince Charming.

The other night as part of activities that sought to make us explore the city of London called ‘London Mid-night Walk, we were tasked with a project of walking into a local stranger and interview him or her about the experiences she/he has about London. The activity was very fun and difficult at the same time because my encounter was a homeless and jobless man called Brain Gibbs. This local encounter changed how I see things, especially coming from South Africa where only normal for a black man to be homeless and jobless. The whole London landscape has captivated me that I end up writing this other poem about my first experience about Europe.