1 post tagged “washington post”

So I've not long finished watching tonight's episode of The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. Each week the show seems to get better and better. However, tonight's was pretty deep and a bit of a tear jerker as Jill Scott's character investigated the disappearance and possible death of an American volunteer worker and hints of a discussion about HIV/AIDS was obvious towards the end.

Aside from the case itself and the brief mention of "The Sickness" (I'm guessing the name called for HIV/AIDS in Bostwana) a particular scene had my radar going. At some point Jill Scott's character is talking with her friend (who happens to be romantically interested in her) about the case. In particular she mentions how she felt a wind and that it spoke. One what struck me, but really shouldn't have surprised me too much, was how they discussed the wind talking as if it were no big there. Try that here in the states and the average person may call the other "crazy." But it's stuff like this that I love. It actually reminded me of a class I had semesters ago with author E.R. Braithwaite (To Sir With Love) He would get on us for not really trusting ourselves with our writing and would often call upon the class to be in tune with there senses. Then he would go off on a tangent about how our ancestors would talk to trees and they would talk right back.

Well back to Jill and her friend...

So as Jill is telling her friend about what the wind spoke on and what everything meant, her friend was advising her on not to tell the mother of the American who is missing. In a nutshell he broke down a difference between Americans and Africans (at least in relation to those in Bostwana) in regards to listening to the wind. I can't recall the exact quote, but basically he talked on how we Americans are clever and how we use science to move about the world. However when it comes to things of the spirit, we don't listen to and for things like the wind. When nature or the environment is trying to tell us something we simply it ignore it, especially when it's right under our nose.

I couldn't help but chuckle cause it's pretty much true. 

This morning I was reading the front page story of the Washington Post on the case of a shooting death of a 14 year-old. The incident took place in 2007, but there was so much controversy surrounding the case because the boy was shot in the head by an off duty police officer that accused the him of stealing a mini motor bike.

Though the case is pretty much closed and a federal grand jury as ordered a secrecy restriction on the case, today's article examines a few facts that proved there were missteps or inappropriate actions taken on the part of the police department. There are still a few unanswered questions, especially one asking was the (said) boy the one involved in the robbery all along or at least the same boy that fired first at the police officer when first approached?

From the start my question has always been, what gave the police officer the right to go on this vigilanty justice hunt after finding out the property was stolen from his home? Why didn't he just stay home call his fellow dept. and report a crime instead of hoping in his SUV to go looking for trouble?

Yet I digress...

As I read through the article and took in every detail I kept saying to myself "If only the dead could talk. Only the 14 year old lying in the ground now knows."

But as I watched tonight's show and listened to the discussion about the wind...

Whose to say that the boy hasn't been speaking all along? Perhaps the truth is right under everyone's nose, but we are ignoring it.