Black Asphyxia
By Daniel Guy The sun comes up over the Indian Ocean and within a few hours it’s already 35 degrees along the East African coast. A local lad, Ibrahim, is cleaning the private beach in front of a grand colonial house, owned by Oliver Matuo, a close friend of the country’s president. There are plenty of discarded black plastic bags, torn to shreds among piles of trash washed up onto the white sands by the sea every day. At times the tide will throw ashore the strangest things, discarded in a plastic sack. Ibrahim would tell you, if you asked him. Today, as he rakes the garbage into a large clear plastic sack, he is thinking to himself how strange it is that man has found a thousand things to with plastic bags, and now it seems they too will soon be banned. Most days he is there, keeping the stretch of sand belonging to Mr Matuo clean and raked. He rarely sees anyone from the house coming down to use the beach. Just Asha, Oliver Matua’s only d...