Two days ago I was sitting at the dinner table at my guest house, chatting with the owner. He looked at me for a while. "I can see from your face that you must have been beautiful when you were young" he said.
I smiled uncertainly and kept my composure for long enough to finish my dinner. Later in my room I cried, then laughed, then cried some more. I've been avoiding mirrors for the last year or two as I don't like the evidence that stares back at me, but still hoped at the back of my mind that I was being self-critical, that other people wouldn't have noticed what I could see. Of course I always knew that the years of sunbathing would catch up with me eventually - and now they have. & what I also have to accept is that ageing is not an illness - something I will recover from next week - but that I will NEVER be young and beautiful again in my life.
The guest house owner was not being deliberately cruel. In Africa, the wisdom of age is valued much more than the innocence of youth, and beauty has little value. Any African man would choose a rich woman above a beautiful one, and as I am white I am obviously rich...
However whilst I am sure that I have absorbed some African values during my time here, I have clearly not lost the Western veneration of youth and beauty. If anyone knows a good plastic surgeon, please send me the details.
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About Me
- Louise
- Single British woman with a passion for travel. After twenty years working in the City of London on fraud investigation for a major accounting firm I finally made the leap and halved my salary to work for a development NGO in West Africa. Just didn't want to be part of such a materialist world any more. I also care passionately about the environment and may still get to do something in the conservation field one day. Personality? Shy in big groups though talkative and confident with small numbers of people; enjoy doing things with others, but would rather do my own thing alone than go along with a crowd doing something that doesn't interest me; in some ways a bit of a non-conformist but ultimately not a rule-breaker (happy to travel alone to strange and dangerous places but get jittery if someone breaks the speed limit); politically both red and green.
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1 comment:
I'm afraid this post made me laugh - maybe with recognition - although I have never been young and beautiful. I do share that feeling looking in the mirror when some middle-aged woman with facial lines and grey hairs looks back at me. However although I would like my physical youth back - I would not trade the experiences life has bought me for youth.
My hairdresser recommends Restolyne (sort of polyfiller for the face) to fill in fine lines and I am seriously considering that.
Chin-up Louise...or in my case "chins-up" ;-)
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