MOSH PIT

Accra, Ghana. 2035.

I like to think that you and I have something in common. That immortal feeling of not being alone in facing a difficult moment. Being part of the Mosh pit isn’t always a curse, sometimes it’s the only way to avoid breakage. Deep down we know how badly things can turn for us, but we choose to look the other way to cope. Implosion echoes somewhere deep down in my body and rottens a part of me. A part of me I can’t begin to find or touch. It feels like a goddamn unalleviated itch. Everything goes well for three days in a row and I can’t help but be reminded of that nausea.

I’m far outside my comfort zone nowadays. The current situation we find ourselves in began in 2022 and since then, people have been migrating incessantly from the Global North to the Global south. It hasn’t been shy or discreet, it was a full-blown planetary migration that doesn’t show signs of slowing down. It became simply unbearable to afford modern and comfortable living in the GN. Only the Three Percent can afford modern technology and comforts to bear the extreme climatic conditions in the GN. A lot are still suffering up there, the middle class is a concept of the past and very few individuals make it to the borders of the GS. Living here isn’t a dream either, Climate change and its nefarious consequences separated me from all the people that meant something. I haven’t heard from any of my friends or my family since our last attempt to move here together. We didn’t make it to stay united in the chaos of the Mosh Pit. I don’t know if they’re still alive and content.

I was born in the Global South but I am still, without a doubt, a product of the Global North. I grew up there and I still have a northern mentality. I like to complain, can’t help but complain when an already unstable situation devolves into utter anarchy here. Southern people have patience and resilience, when faced with a crisis they just sit there in dignified silence, they have learned how to take it. I still believe in old fables like long-term planning, having a soulmate, and I still, believe that avocado is healthy food. Pathetic.


Kofi, unlike me, was born and grew up in the Global South and surrenders to the will and plan of God. He hates avocados and always has, even before they were listed between the most toxic foods one could consume by the FAO in 2025. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here. Kofi is my trusted longtime friend and savior who met me at my weakest and helped me migrate to the Global South. As we are driving together on our mission I can’t help but think about my family and the soulmate I never managed to meet. The schedule I never managed to respect. Kofi, unlike me, married his one and only but is separated from her. We know she’s still alive and lives in France and serves an influential family of the Three Percent.

By 2025, the human-made mass has reached about 1.1 teratonnes, exceeding by far overall global biomass. Today is business as usual for us, we are crossing Africa’s western broken limb, in another hellish swing by car from the borders of Morocco to Ghana on a mission to stop an illegal load of waste coming from Europe. Started as a for-profit venture born of the Global North’s worship for excess, dead white men’s clothes and garbage are poisoning what remains of this glorious continent. We were labeled as terrorists by the Three Percent but in our southern motherland, we are mercenaries of peace.

Not long ago, 30 million tons of unwanted items were unloaded every week in the borders and in the market of Kantamanto for local black retailers to recoup, until when it became simply unbearable and not commercially viable. Low-quality products accumulated on top of an already fragile human ecosystem. Anything, from your ex marathon t-shirt to generic garbage without any value arriving in colossal plastic bales and divided in first, second, third, and fourth selection. The last one was made of clothes that belonged to actual dead people from the last Big Pandemic. Nobody wanted those so the GN made well sure to get rid of them. Kofi’s village was once made of retailers who called themselves gamblers. Every opening was a gamble and a mysterious riddle for them, profit wasn’t an assurance. He eventually figured out that the business was rigged and repurposed his profile, from waste gambler to waste terrorist. Professional colonialism and its power dynamics are prosecutable today, waste smugglers are considered worst than rapists or drug lords in African prisons. I promised myself that this would be my last mission. Someone awaits me in the Global North and my itch, my nausea, comes up every time I think about it. Someone is looking for me. God knows how much I miss my mother. When I was a child, living in the GN, I would see her coming down from the bus in the dark, after long hours spent cleaning people’s homes. Her hands were gentle but raw. She had dignity and even in the humblest attires, she shined like a queen in her armor in my eyes. She’d smile when home and never complain. It is a memory that will haunt me forever. I must go back.



Kofi’s hands are dripping sweat on the peeled grayish leather of the wheel and on the little black book where the route of our mission is handwritten. We were given clear instructions from our department before hand, it was supposed to be simple. The fumes of his sweat smell sweet, almost like the odor of steel. The falling drops dissolve some of the instructions and I think he’s lost. His whole body screams discomfort. His dark skin glows like a glass of milk and his sunglasses on the verge of falling on his naked lap. Our paycheck was guaranteed by the government and destroying this load would have assured us the bribery money we needed to cross the borders.

“We are almost there Maddie but I have a good feeling about this one.’’ He whispered to reassure me. I smiled back with the corner of my lips, feeling faint.

“Hey, drink some water… what is wrong with you, Hey!’’ He screamed handing me a slippery water bottle while I was crawling down. I remember drinking a warm sip of foggy water and seconds later reality became dry and dizzy. I couldn’t resist but falling asleep while the car was violently crashing.

We spend this life in the intimate chambers of our minds, sucked by that imaginary whole between space and time where our program is running. It must come from somewhere, this struggle to be good, to be sharp, to meet one’s soulmate on time. We have to follow the schedule, cost what it may. We are scheduled to survive and thrive in the Mosh pit. Everything else outside of this chamber is a huge pressure cooker where the only thing we are assured of is a final meltdown. We don’t know when. We don’t know-how. At some point in my schedule, Death smiled at my face during a shooting in the middle of the African womb.

Clean cotton sheets feel good on this side of the bed. I always liked that pure feeling against my skin, when the surface feels untainted, crispy, and raw against the limits of my body. Especially after a shower, when washing off a whole day from my back and brains. I try to go against gravity to pull myself up but fail to do so. For some absurd reason, I wonder how this would feel like if someone else’s body was sharing the same bed. I spent a lifetime looking for my soulmate. Where are you? Why didn’t we meet yet?

Kofi is mumbling something and shaking me, the limits of his blurry image appear in my view field as I try to open my eyes.

“Madeline, wake the fuck up, can you hear me? We need to think of a plan to run from this fucking country Madeline, they trapped us! All of it, a fucking rat trap. The fucking gov!’’ Rumbled again in the background of my unconsciousness.

I woke up hours later, leaning on my right side to shake away vertigo and suddenly the perverse redness of it all hits me like a hellish heatwave. As it happens when I am faced with anything uncomfortable or uncanny, I tend to cope by wanting to throw myself on it rather than run against it. The last thing I remember are the bullets hitting our windscreen and the violent crash. A wave of hellish fire hitting us straight in the face. I try to slowly move the tip of my finger to feel the hardened surface of that dark canvas soaked in blood. Touching it felt unnaturally satisfying. It was my own.

“Kofi, are you okay?’’ I whispered.

My bed was floating on a pandemonium of gutted clothes and trash. Kofi was laying on a pile, his stomach against the floor, his eyes wide open. He was awake, an unnatural peace around him. Between his hands the most beautiful red jumper. The light and silent breeze coming from the window made the blue paper bills detach from the jumper and fly all around us, like small silent butterflies. A childish grin appeared on his face.

“We made it Maddie! They’re over, they’re gone, we are safe here. Look at this, check this out!’’ He said scattering the paper bills everywhere.

“They knew that bale was filled with something fucking special Maddie, those corrupt motherfuckers. This is not trash, there must be more than 20 grands and counting here Madeline!’’ He screamed at the top of his lungs. I still couldn’t surrender to simply join his happiness, bending down a sense of uncanny familiarity made the blood in my veins boil.

“What happened… how did you find these?’’ I muttered getting closer to him. I felt that nausea invading my senses again as I got closer to the pile of clothes. The last time I felt my heart pound like that was in the Mosh Pit, when it broke. Touching the red Jumper filled me with a sense of oneness and wreckage at once. All of her belongings were squandered there in front of my eyes. In a pile of stuff, I recognized her shiny humble armors. They were all around me. All of that belonged to my mother. Her fairy distinctive smell resisted through the struggle and was mixed to that of blood, gasoline, and melted plastic.

“The gov knew about this, it was an ambush to stop us from getting our hands on this jackpot. They wanted it for themselves but we made it, we’re here, sit down, check this out!’’ He said again. For Kofi, everything felt pregnant with optimism and exciting new possibilities but for me, it meant smiling back to Death again.

“We have to go, Madeline, they are looking for us, it’s now or never,’’ Kofi whispered.

For once, my goddamn unalleviated itch was released into a loose knot. I don’t know for sure that my mother knew where I was, knew how to find me and help me. Her love and grace were tucked in a pile of trash and made it until there to find me. It was my time to find out whether she was still alive, whether we could tear down the laws of the Mosh Pit.

Where are you?

Majdouline M’saad Karfani