I am an African pastoralist, which means I raise cattle in the wide grass planes of Africa.

I have done this since I was a young boy, as my father did, and as his father did before him. It is only a few times a year that I go to the village to sell some heads of cattle, and it was on one of these recent trips that I came by an old and much dog-eared copy of The Communist Manifesto. I have read it, and must confess that I am not much impressed with what this Marx fellow has to say. But perhaps that is only because I am but a simple pastoralist, and know little of the world beyond the rolling fields of Africa. In his Manifesto he complains much about these bourgeoisies, saying that whenever they have got the upper hand, [they have] put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. If he is speaking of the mining-men, the oil-men, and the building-men that take more and more of the wild African land for their own purposes with each passing year, then yes, perhaps I understand his frustration. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, he says, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. I m not really sure what new wants he is alluding to, for my wants, and my wife s wants, have remained much the same as those of each preceding generation. But I do know that with each passing year the grasslands shrink, for on my wanderings I more often encounter the encroaching border of desert, a demarcation line where arable land meets harsh dune. My wife also complains more and more of the wells being spoiled, and I have had several head of cattle die in the past year from bad water. Maybe this is the doing of the bourgeoisie, or perhaps it is nothing more than the tragedy of the commons. Marx also speaks of how the bourgeoisie have made it such that differences of age and sex have no longer any distinctive social validity for the working class. This also puzzles me, for there has never been any confusion as to my role in life, versus my wife s role in life. Sure, she has complained on a few past occasions, but I took the matter in hand and she has not talked back to me since. When I bought her from her father for two steers and eight cows, I remember him warning me that she d often shown a bit more spirit than she ought, but his words have largely proven overly pessimistic. I know she is happy in her lot in life, as am I with mine. Maybe what Marx says does not apply to us as we are not part of the working class? That, however, makes no sense to me, as I do little else but work from the time the western sky begins to brighten until the gloaming at day s end. In truth, I found little in his writing that applied to me or my way of life, excepting perhaps that if I am one day driven from the wide Saharan plains by the bourgeoisie, then surely his words were a warning to me. What I should do, or can do, in response to this warning I do not know.