Michael Jackson

• Forget Youssou Ndour, my host family has a nine-year-old boy named Alphonse (pictured above, and no I couldn't get a nicer picture of him) who just LOVES Michael Jackson. When he saw that my laptop played music he asked me for two artists. First of all, Akon, and after he hummed along to “I Wanna Fuck You” he asked to listen to Michael Sanders. Eventually I figured out he wanted to listen to Michael Jackson. So I played some songs for him and then he started describing music videos he has seen and asking me to play the song where Michael reaches out his hand and then yelps. Of course that is every Michael Jackson song, so I played him every Michael song in my collection. Next, he surprised me by coming back with a copy of the “The Essential Michael Jackson” a two-disc set of his greatest hits. Then he pulled out the CD booklet with song information and pictures and started pointing to various snapshots of Michael form his most famous music videos and demanding that I play “that” song. I, of course, would have preferred song titles rather than random gesticulations and him pointing insistently to the pictures hoping I would know what song that was.


• Then when I woke up last Saturday and walked into the living room for my daily bread, butter and tea, and it all made perfect sense. The TV was on and the whole family was watching a showing of all of Michael Jackson’s most famous music videos, “Thriller,” “Bad,” “Billie Jean,” “Smooth Criminal,” “Black or White,” “Do You Remember the Time,” etc. They just sat there for an hour (no commercial interruptions) and watched Michael Jackson. Could this happen with any other artist? Does any other human being on the planet have the kind of global reach Michael Jackson has? Michael Jordan? Bob Marley? Tupac? 50 Cent? I just wonder what would have happened if Michael hadn’t started fondling little boys and had instead continued churning out hits for the last decade. Would he have been crowned King of the World by now?


• Alphonse also asks me all kinds of random "little boy" questions. Today he asked me if where I was from we had trees and taxis. I had to assure him that we certainly did. He then reenacts movie scenes for me—complete with saliva-spewing sound effects—and asks me if I have seen the movie. Only once had I actually seen the film. The conversation went something like this:
  Alphonse: Do you know who the first president of Senegal was?
  Me: Of course, Leopold Sedhar Senghor.
  A: Why did they kill him?
  M: Senghor wasn’t killed. He died of natural causes in France like all the other sell-out African political leaders. (Ok, I don’t really speak enough French to say, “sell-out political leaders” but I did say that he died in France.)
  A: But I saw them kill him. Then they burned him.
  M: Are you sure it was Senghor?
  A: Yes, he had glasses like yours.
  M: They burned him right? Did they chop him up first?
  A: Yes.
  M: That was Lumumba, the first prime minister of the Congo. (I was hoping it was the film biography of Lumumba. I would feel happier knowing that between the crazy music videos and Latin American soap operas they actually show some educational content on Senegalese television.)
  A: Why did they do that?
  M: Uhhh…It was a coup d’etat. It is when they change the president violently because they don’t like him.
  A: Why didn’t they like him?
  M: Umm…where’s your ball?
  I felt bad for ducking the question, but how do I explain the CIA and imperialism to a nine-year-old African child in French? Any suggestions? Chimaobi?