Monday morning, I stuck up the three posters on the wall behind me.

Attie arrived – late as usual – but he didn’t even notice them. He just wanted to talk about his weekend sky-diving.

“Oh man, Dennis! There is nothing like it in the world! You’re high up in the air with the wind rushing past you and your adrenaline pumping. And the earth is coming up, faster and faster. And you’re wondering if your parachute will open. What a rush!”

And while he’s talking, he’s doing lots of arm movements, like he’s acting out the whole thing.

I forgot to tell you this about Attie: he is crazy about sky-diving. He does it a lot because his father works at a pilot-training school. And every time, he goes on and on. And on!

So while he went on and on, I turned to look at my posters. I was very proud of them.

The one poster showed Mr Mandela – my all-time hero! I was born just two days after he was sworn in as President of the new South Africa! How about that?

Underneath his picture, I’d typed out words from his speech. With each letter in a different colour so it looked like a rainbow. And that took a long time, let me tell you! But these were his words:

We shall build a society where all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall – a rainbow nation at peace with itself.

I mean, who wouldn’t be affected by words like that?

My second poster was a picture of Dr Martin Luther King. See, he was the Civil Rights leader in America back in the days when black people there got treated unfairly. They didn’t call it apartheid – but it sounds like it was just as bad.

Actually, it still sounds bad there in America. There are still race riots. There are still white police shooting black teenagers. And now that new president of theirs, that Trump guy, is sounding like the biggest bigot ever.

But that’s America for you! Sometimes when I watch the news, I get really angry about that country.

Like I told Attie once when we were sitting at my flat: “Bloody America! Bloody hypocrites! They act like they are always right and always the good guys! Meanwhile they go round the world, bullying people with their high-power weapons and leaving a fat mess behind. Like in Iraq – people are dying there every day still, ever since they stuck their big American noses in! Like Afghanistan – where the women get treated worse than animals, with no rights. I mean, what’s that about? How can they let their soldiers die to help a country like that?”

Like I say, I can get quite angry sometimes.

But you know what Attie said back? He said, “Now who’s a bigot, Dennis?”

“Don’t talk nonsense! No ways am I a bigot!”

“Yes, you are! You’re being intolerant, judging a whole nation, stereotyping them all.”

And Attie got that smirk on his face that he gets whenever he thinks he is being cleverer than me.

But what does he know? He doesn’t even watch the news. When the news comes on the TV, he heads to my kitchen for another beer. I bet he doesn’t even know where Iraq is!

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Tell us: How do you feel about the US of A and its place in the world?