Chapter II.

The Sacred Heap of Colonialism

Some images stay with you forever. Not the big, dramatic ones, not the lioness pouncing on the antelope, not the sunset over the savanna. No. Just two English people, reverently bent over a pile of warthog dung.

Safari, Kenya, Masai Mara.
Mr. Brown and his assistant, always in the same pose: arms as if moved by some tasteful but understated theater, chin up, gaze of the “arbiter of existence.” They walk on African soil as if every step was awaited by the earth itself.

The guide was local, competent, patient as Jesus giving pilgrims a tour of his own tomb. At one point, he stopped and began to show us signs of life. Literally: bits of dung.

– Here’s giraffe dung.
– Here’s buffalo dung.
– Here’s hippo dung.
– And over there, the most exclusive, fresh warthog droppings, still steaming like a new idea.

And at each of these relics Mr. Brown and his assistant would approach slowly, as if entering a cathedral,
bend down with dignity… and murmur in awe:

– “Amazing.”. “That’s… amazing.” “Hmm. What’s… amazing.”

I didn’t laugh. I couldn’t. It wasn’t funny. It was real. As if they genuinely, honestly, felt a sense of the sublime.
Not irony. Not distance. A reverence for shit.

And then, something inside me cracked. I realized I wasn’t looking at tourists, but at the last priests of empire,
who can no longer experience anything unless it’s wrapped in the word “amazing.”

They don’t touch. They don’t ask. They don’t feel. They’re not present. They evaluate.
As if the whole world is an exhibition, and every pile of crap is a test, can the aristocrat keep a straight face, even when confronted with shit?

And that’s the moment when mockery ends, and a grinding ache begins somewhere in your guts.

This wasn’t a BBC series. Not a pastiche. Not Monty Python. These were real people, standing over a pile of crap and saying “amazing,” with an expression as if attending the coronation of the Holy Turd of the Zanzibar dynasty.

And the warthog… didn’t even know he’d just shat out an exhibition.
But if you told him, he’d probably reply: – “Amazing.”

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