title of blog

So let's see. What's happened in the past two weeks. Aside from my relative lack of impulse to update my blog.

Well, last weekend I went to a monkey sanctuary. Really just a little triangle of preserved forest with vertices marked by the villages of Boabeng, Fiema, and the community guesthouse, in which I stayed with some friendly dutchmen and enjoyed banana flavored pancakes topped with honey that tasted of the rainforest. The sanctuary is just the community's way of making a bit of money from their traditional veneration and protection of the monkeys in their little hamlet.


They have two kinds of monkeys: Colobus, which stay shyly high above pestering tourists, betrayed only by their long white tails, and Mona, which pay humans little mind except when they visit town in search of left-overs. Definitely a fun visit, although I think my monkey experience-- the monkey pickpockets of the Katmandu Monkey Temple, and the fearless yet irritable monkeys of southern India--has spoiled me a bit for these tame forest dwelling monkeys. Fun was had nonetheless.



This trip also prepared me for today's visit to the Kumasi Zoological Gardens. A rather small patch of green in the middle of a diesel choked city, which is as notable for the scores of giant Straw-Colored Fruit Bats that jumble freely in its many trees, as for the few animals it had in rather bleak cages. As with the rest of Ghana, which is sprinkled with open sewers, non-functioning traffic lights, and semi-functioning cars, the relative lack of any culture of litigation was evidenced by the fact that most of the cages were easily reachable from the railings which surrounded them, and a small snack vendor just inside the gate provided bananas, milk biscuits and other sundries which are as clearly meant for the animals as their guests. Although, true to form, I did see a diminutive sign somewhere recommending that I neither feed nor touch the animals.

I was, in fact, respecting this rule until I came upon a cage in which they had placed both a small Mona monkey and a baby baboon. And holy crap, baby baboons are cute. Especially when they reach out of the cage and grab your fingers. They're also pretty cute when they wrestle with mona monkeys.

On a completely different note, here is something to add to your list of hypothetical questions NEVER to be posed to a group of Jehovah's Witnesses without a native grasp of the english language:

Suppose that Michael Jackson--who we can all agree has serious mental problems--has the deep-seated desire to molest small boys. BUT, his whole life he has suppressed this desire, never molested small boys, repented of his desire (which is not to say abolished it), and has done whatever it is you think he needs to have done to go to heaven. Now. In heaven, will Michael Jackson be allowed to molest small boys?

This question was, of course, mentioned mostly in jest after a brief conversation dwelling on the more unusual characteristics of the once King of Pop and someone's comment about a radio-skit which referred to said King's ascent to heaven. And while I do think it brings up interesting philosophical questions about the nature of heaven, I can personally attest that the energy that will subsequently be required to explain the hypothetical situation to everyone's satisfaction will rob the subject of any ounce of humor it once contained, and the speaker of the desire to continue the conversation.

Luckily the conversation was witnessed not only by the aforementioned Jehovah's Witnesses, but also by a friendly Australian of 19 dipthong-laiden years who has also recently been abusing the good will of my internet-hospitality-network-faring friends, and who at least appreciated the humor of the question, even if she didn't quite come to my aid in explaining the intricacies of philosophical hypotheticals. Perhaps she is still sore for my having casually mentioned Australia's penal inception, for which she has suffered many jibes throughout the week of her visit.

that's enough for now, no? what's up with you guys?