She goes to spend a month
(what is time?)
with some forgotten tribe
in the foothills of nowhere;
a slim, blonde ‘celebrity’
playing at being a noble savage
for the sake of hard cash and
some TV channel's ratings.

She arrives to a muted greeting,
small children hiding
behind a mother's ***** skirts..
There will be rain tonight,
even though it is
the season of the rich.

She will sleep on a pallet bed
shared with a 75 year-old woman
(she looks 75 but is only 42,
and has borne seven children,
three of them now dead).
On no! The old woman snores!
And how we laugh at our
western cousin,
cringing at spiders,
flinching at shadows!

Tomorrow she will walk a mile,
to symbolically fetch water
in an old jerry can,
and, hidden en route,
she will allegedly defecate
in the bushes!

See her eat some
vile local delicacy
as the headman's
honoured guest.
She will then be forced,
grinning falsely,
into some tribal dance,
wearing a headscarf and
clapping like a maniac.

And eventually, when they
have enough footage,
the sentence will be over.
"I have learned so much about myself"
she will bleat towards
a smirking, unseen director.

Later, as she climbs into an air-con
four-wheel-drive monster
that will whisk her back to
civilisation, the realisation is
that she never once
asked the tribe
what they thought of her.