It is interesting how
one can be away from something and yet feel part of it. Recently there was an
election in Denmark – turned out to be quite a landslide similar of what was
witnessed in 1973… basically same party too, except even more radical now.
Anyway, I am digressing. There was an election, I could not vote and I am
something like 6000 KM away from Denmark. Yet the results had me being very
emotional for days – My colleague asked me about it the following day and I
actually cried. So remote, yet so very
close.
Yesterday I was
watching a movie and somehow - on my bed here in comfortable AC temperature - I
emerged myself so much in it that when it finished and I went to the bathroom,
I had to actively remember where I was. Something that once happened to me
while staying in a refugee camp in Ghana – I watched Sex and the City, I
promise you it was very odd to regain reality on a 2 inch mattress on a
concrete floor, with mice running on the bars under the iron sheet roof. The point is that this life of being away but
still so vividly identifying with life in another part of the world is very
odd.
I love my country, I
love being Danish (though in some countries I have felt it was a little
inconvenient), I think we as Danes are remarkable people, we are a nation with
less people than the capital of Ethiopia, yet we are everywhere in the world
and most people know something of Denmark, even if it just – footballer…
eeeehhh, Bentner – it is still something.
Now comes my
contradiction, we are, for some parts, an adventures country, but we expect
everywhere else in the world not to share this trait. My boyfriend is Ghanaian,
and we just filled in an application for a Shengen visa. In this application I
had to, amongst other things, explain when I last saw him. Rather easy, “this
morning when I left the house”. Now I have never applied for a visa in Ghana
where he had to explain when he last saw me, so that I could be given
entrance permission.
Considering the above
mentioned recent election, I have a suspicion that the next time we apply for
visa, I will have to list many more elements to explain why I and my boyfriend
should be let into MY country to visit my family during our holidays.
So remote – yet so
very close. I live so far away from Denmark,
yet the choices that the Danes have made in their recent election affects my
life beyond most peoples imagination. My partner is from Ghana, am I even
allowed to move back home next year then. Someone recently told me – well Malmø
is close. Yes it is – it is also in ANOTHER country.
Is it too much to hope
that Løkke will not succeed and we will have another election in the next, say,
3 to 6 months??? I would really like to be able to enter my country of birth
sometime soon again – for more than 3 weeks at the time.
