Posts
I'm afraid not too much has been going on. Well not much that's particularly interesting, anyway.
I was in Kumasi last week for the ongoing HIV/AIDS counseling/testing training we're giving to our health staff. We're staying in a fairly budget hotel (even by my standards -- which is to say, I'm okay there, but even the Ghanaians are complaining), and the amusing sign you see in the last blog post is located above every toilet in the shared bathrooms.
I'm in the office now, but I'll be back in Kumasi this week for the second half of the training.
Let's see. Other news. I road my first Ghanaian Motorcycle this week, and, unfortunately, the lure of personal transport in a place where you can't count on anyone to do anything quickly is so great that I suspect I'll be riding more frequently soon. The project has a number of bikes, each somewhat apportioned to a specific person but often shared. And don't worry Mom and Dad. Most of the cars here are just as dangerous as your average motorcycle. Does that help?
Thought so.
In other news, I changed my flight ticket. I'll be flying into JFK on December 18th. Then I'll be heading up to Maine for the holidays and back down for some time in NYC and Baltimore before heading off to a new Millennium Villages Site (specifics still to be decided).
Some of you were present at the spectacle that was All-you-can-drink-Chinese-Food and Bull-Riding in Madison Square Garden in honor of my last birthday. Well. My father, the bull-riding aficionado, and always the planner, has already pointed out that the PBR (the Professional Bull-Riders Association, obviously) will be in the Garden again in my honor. So. January 5th bullriding? Anyone?
huh? huh?
Monday, October 15, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Sunday, September 30, 2007
stories that could have been avoided
just when you're thinking something interesting should happen that you can include in your blog, it does, and gives you a moment of pause about your wishes.
Last Sunday found me on the shore of lake Bosumtwi, a popular weekend destination about 30km out of Kumasi and famous for supposedly not having Bilharzia. I was joined by a friend from Stanford, Liz (researching HIV and malaria in pregnancy on Doris Duke’s Dime in Accra), and an Argentinean named Griselda (Gri-who-lda?), Griselda.
Griselda was staying with my friend Bright, having met him through the same internet site that I did, and looking for a little comfort after 3 or so months traveling overland from the westernmost coast of Africa.
The lake was somewhat picturesque from a distance, somewhat clogged with discarded plastic of various origins and somewhat completely not that interesting. Until we decided to walk a few miles down the shore road and found ourselves sweating and thirsty in an oddly comfortable oasis called the Lake Point Guest House.
We were greeted by a friendly thirty-something Ghanaian man who graciously served us a large bottle of icy water. Liz and I wandered off to explore the veritably edenic grounds and returned to a somewhat confusing scene.
It wasn’t clear what had happened, but something had gone rather wrong in the casual conversation that had been going on between Griselda and the Ghanaian gentleman. She was on the defensive, apologizing for some affront that she didn’t quite understand, and our host who was sitting behind the bar counter with an odd expression. He began to rather placidly insult her intelligence and educational background.
She called him close-minded for not giving her a chance to explain, and he asked her to leave his establishment, threatening police intervention. My comment, which would later be related to the Ghanaian police, was something like: I have no idea what’s going on right now.
Griselda finished her glass of water and made to leave, saying she would meet us on the road back to town. As she turned to leave she said “Good luck with your Mother.” Which made me wonder if I were unfamiliar with some standard Argenitinian insult of the Yo Mama genre.
At this point the man, who had until now remained seated behind the bar got up to follow her menacingly down the driveway. He loomed over her. “Be careful what you say to me, or you’ll have trouble.”
“I don’t want any trouble.”
At which point he forcibly shoved her down the driveway towards the road.
Liz and I sat rather dumbstruck by the entire scene, but at this point obviously some action was needed. Griselda walked away and the man stormed onto the grounds mumbling curses of some kind or another.
I collected myself and made to find the rather weathered Austrian woman who we’d been told was the owner. The message was going to be something along the lines of: I have no idea what happened in their conversation, but whatever happened it is wholly inappropriate that this man threatened and physically confronted my friend.
I was stopped by a few young Americans who had been sitting at a nearby table and seemed equally confused by the happenstances. They informed me that the enraged fellow was, in fact, married to the Austrian woman. While this clearly decreased my chances of motivating management to take drastic actions against the man, I intended to tell her nonetheless.
He had beaten me to the punch, though, and came rolling down the footpath, car keys in hand, proclaiming his intention to inform the police. Obviously his message to the woman was different than mine would have been inasmuch as she followed closely behind him displaying stunning control of an English vocabulary that consisted of “Fuck Off,” personal insults, and various other colorful entreaties to leave her lovely establishment.
She was uninterested in any additional information.
Choosing to forgo further pleasant conversation with our Austrian belle, I noted that the man’s car was already idling as he returned to grab something from the bar.
Worried about his intentions, and knowing that he would inevitably pass Griselda on his overtly unjustified trip to the police, I asked whether he intended to pick her up.
“I don’t care about her, I’m going to the police.”
Sure. Why not? I usually go to the police after committing battery.
Our Austrian hostess managed to stop cursing for long enough to accept my payment for our bottle of water, and as Liz and I walked onto the road we saw the man’s car stopped about 25 meters away, next to a shady tree sitting just off the road and surrounded by tall brush.
Assuming the worst, I began to run down the road, and neared the spot in time to hear a rustle rather like a hand being swept through thick brush, to watch the man emerge and continue in his car, and to meet Griselda as she emerged behind him displaying a flush that was remarkable for its confinement to the left side of her face.
Two points crazy Ghanaian guy.
As we walked towards town, Griselda, fighting with wholly appropriate emotional disorientation, related to us a casual conversation in which she had asked the man about his work, his time at the hotel, and had come to learn that he and the Austrian woman were married.
“She’s old enough to be your mother.”
Yup. Exactly.
While Liz and I would later agree that this was a rather tactless comment, it was not made with malicious intention, and regardless, most would rank tactlessness as a somewhat lesser crime than assault. Truth be told, Griselda had meant it as a conversation-starter so that she might congratulate him for breaking from the prevalent marital tradition in which men marry women whose age is a small fraction of their own.
She never made it to this part of the conversation.
We walked tensely back to town, not knowing whether to expect a man, a siren or a posse. None appeared. From the lakeside town we took a shared taxi to the next town in which we could catch a trotro back to the city.
As we entered the shadow of the Kumasi-bound trotro, the man arrived. He was accompanied by a casually dressed man who identified himself as Ghana Police, and presented identification to this end. After a brief retelling, which was doomed to be unproductive amidst the din and onlookers of a Ghanaian bus station, he asked that we return to the Police Station to consider the matter further. It was a pleasantly stated command.
It turns out that in Ghana, civil charges (akin to Disturbing the Peace) can be brought in the event of an insult. Who knew?
At the police station, we were each given a chance to retell the story, which was consistent across retellings except that the man denied the slap, and suggested a poorly fabricated story about stopping the car so that a garden boy could bring him his phone which he had forgotten.
Sure.
After allowing roughly 4 times the amount of repetition necessary to convey the story to all those present (which I took to be sufficient for even Ghanaian standards), I tried to bring us to task.
We just want to leave. We were about to leave. and We remain ready to leave your pleasant beachside community behind us forever.
So here’s the situation. She made a mistake. He made a mistake by shoving her [ignore disputed evidence]. What exactly do we want to do here?
Truth be told, the policeman was a wholly reasonable and rational fellow. He seemed to appreciate exactly what had happened and seemed to prefer that the matter be resolved “amicably” – which is to say that we all leave and no official investigation is undertaken.
He and his men moved to the next room to deliberate, to leave Liz, Griselda, the man, and I to stare awkwardly at each other, to allow Griselda to express exasperation in Spanish, and to let Liz to appropriately point out that, in the presence of a labile man, we probably shouldn’t speak in tongues.
Now. Enter the Chief.
Not the police chief. The local tribal chief. As usual, he was a portly, smiling gentleman with no official authority, but whose advice is gravely weighed and most-always followed.
The policemen emerge from deliberations. Greetings and pleasantries all around followed, of course, by several additional recounting of the day's events for the chief. Though this version was in Twi, he could nonetheless be seen to hold back a chuckle at what must have been the moment of alleged insult.
After all. She really was old enough to be his mother.
It was clear to even the non-Twi speakers present that the Chief was an amicable gentleman, generally supportive of amicable resolutions.
The options presented by the policeman were two: Amicable resolution, or official investigation. The latter would involve the taking of statements (what did we just do?), Griselda visiting a hospital for a doctor to search for evidence of assault (seriously?), and undoubtedly endless testimony from all those present in the district that Sunday.
Our preference had long ago been made clear. And, in the manner of a wounded adolescent who wants to make sure you know how wrong you are before he agrees that you’re right—in a manner so incongruous to actual events that it took me the perspective of several days to become appropriately angry at him—the Ghanaian man he agreed to our Amicable Resolution.
They had Griselda write her name on a scrap of paper, which would no doubt be logged, archived, classified, Photostat copied, scanned and put to other important official uses, and they allowed us to leave.
And that’s how I visited my first Ghanaian Police Station.
Last Sunday found me on the shore of lake Bosumtwi, a popular weekend destination about 30km out of Kumasi and famous for supposedly not having Bilharzia. I was joined by a friend from Stanford, Liz (researching HIV and malaria in pregnancy on Doris Duke’s Dime in Accra), and an Argentinean named Griselda (Gri-who-lda?), Griselda.
Griselda was staying with my friend Bright, having met him through the same internet site that I did, and looking for a little comfort after 3 or so months traveling overland from the westernmost coast of Africa.
The lake was somewhat picturesque from a distance, somewhat clogged with discarded plastic of various origins and somewhat completely not that interesting. Until we decided to walk a few miles down the shore road and found ourselves sweating and thirsty in an oddly comfortable oasis called the Lake Point Guest House.
We were greeted by a friendly thirty-something Ghanaian man who graciously served us a large bottle of icy water. Liz and I wandered off to explore the veritably edenic grounds and returned to a somewhat confusing scene.
It wasn’t clear what had happened, but something had gone rather wrong in the casual conversation that had been going on between Griselda and the Ghanaian gentleman. She was on the defensive, apologizing for some affront that she didn’t quite understand, and our host who was sitting behind the bar counter with an odd expression. He began to rather placidly insult her intelligence and educational background.
She called him close-minded for not giving her a chance to explain, and he asked her to leave his establishment, threatening police intervention. My comment, which would later be related to the Ghanaian police, was something like: I have no idea what’s going on right now.
Griselda finished her glass of water and made to leave, saying she would meet us on the road back to town. As she turned to leave she said “Good luck with your Mother.” Which made me wonder if I were unfamiliar with some standard Argenitinian insult of the Yo Mama genre.
At this point the man, who had until now remained seated behind the bar got up to follow her menacingly down the driveway. He loomed over her. “Be careful what you say to me, or you’ll have trouble.”
“I don’t want any trouble.”
At which point he forcibly shoved her down the driveway towards the road.
Liz and I sat rather dumbstruck by the entire scene, but at this point obviously some action was needed. Griselda walked away and the man stormed onto the grounds mumbling curses of some kind or another.
I collected myself and made to find the rather weathered Austrian woman who we’d been told was the owner. The message was going to be something along the lines of: I have no idea what happened in their conversation, but whatever happened it is wholly inappropriate that this man threatened and physically confronted my friend.
I was stopped by a few young Americans who had been sitting at a nearby table and seemed equally confused by the happenstances. They informed me that the enraged fellow was, in fact, married to the Austrian woman. While this clearly decreased my chances of motivating management to take drastic actions against the man, I intended to tell her nonetheless.
He had beaten me to the punch, though, and came rolling down the footpath, car keys in hand, proclaiming his intention to inform the police. Obviously his message to the woman was different than mine would have been inasmuch as she followed closely behind him displaying stunning control of an English vocabulary that consisted of “Fuck Off,” personal insults, and various other colorful entreaties to leave her lovely establishment.
She was uninterested in any additional information.
Choosing to forgo further pleasant conversation with our Austrian belle, I noted that the man’s car was already idling as he returned to grab something from the bar.
Worried about his intentions, and knowing that he would inevitably pass Griselda on his overtly unjustified trip to the police, I asked whether he intended to pick her up.
“I don’t care about her, I’m going to the police.”
Sure. Why not? I usually go to the police after committing battery.
Our Austrian hostess managed to stop cursing for long enough to accept my payment for our bottle of water, and as Liz and I walked onto the road we saw the man’s car stopped about 25 meters away, next to a shady tree sitting just off the road and surrounded by tall brush.
Assuming the worst, I began to run down the road, and neared the spot in time to hear a rustle rather like a hand being swept through thick brush, to watch the man emerge and continue in his car, and to meet Griselda as she emerged behind him displaying a flush that was remarkable for its confinement to the left side of her face.
Two points crazy Ghanaian guy.
As we walked towards town, Griselda, fighting with wholly appropriate emotional disorientation, related to us a casual conversation in which she had asked the man about his work, his time at the hotel, and had come to learn that he and the Austrian woman were married.
“She’s old enough to be your mother.”
Yup. Exactly.
While Liz and I would later agree that this was a rather tactless comment, it was not made with malicious intention, and regardless, most would rank tactlessness as a somewhat lesser crime than assault. Truth be told, Griselda had meant it as a conversation-starter so that she might congratulate him for breaking from the prevalent marital tradition in which men marry women whose age is a small fraction of their own.
She never made it to this part of the conversation.
We walked tensely back to town, not knowing whether to expect a man, a siren or a posse. None appeared. From the lakeside town we took a shared taxi to the next town in which we could catch a trotro back to the city.
As we entered the shadow of the Kumasi-bound trotro, the man arrived. He was accompanied by a casually dressed man who identified himself as Ghana Police, and presented identification to this end. After a brief retelling, which was doomed to be unproductive amidst the din and onlookers of a Ghanaian bus station, he asked that we return to the Police Station to consider the matter further. It was a pleasantly stated command.
It turns out that in Ghana, civil charges (akin to Disturbing the Peace) can be brought in the event of an insult. Who knew?
At the police station, we were each given a chance to retell the story, which was consistent across retellings except that the man denied the slap, and suggested a poorly fabricated story about stopping the car so that a garden boy could bring him his phone which he had forgotten.
Sure.
After allowing roughly 4 times the amount of repetition necessary to convey the story to all those present (which I took to be sufficient for even Ghanaian standards), I tried to bring us to task.
We just want to leave. We were about to leave. and We remain ready to leave your pleasant beachside community behind us forever.
So here’s the situation. She made a mistake. He made a mistake by shoving her [ignore disputed evidence]. What exactly do we want to do here?
Truth be told, the policeman was a wholly reasonable and rational fellow. He seemed to appreciate exactly what had happened and seemed to prefer that the matter be resolved “amicably” – which is to say that we all leave and no official investigation is undertaken.
He and his men moved to the next room to deliberate, to leave Liz, Griselda, the man, and I to stare awkwardly at each other, to allow Griselda to express exasperation in Spanish, and to let Liz to appropriately point out that, in the presence of a labile man, we probably shouldn’t speak in tongues.
Now. Enter the Chief.
Not the police chief. The local tribal chief. As usual, he was a portly, smiling gentleman with no official authority, but whose advice is gravely weighed and most-always followed.
The policemen emerge from deliberations. Greetings and pleasantries all around followed, of course, by several additional recounting of the day's events for the chief. Though this version was in Twi, he could nonetheless be seen to hold back a chuckle at what must have been the moment of alleged insult.
After all. She really was old enough to be his mother.
It was clear to even the non-Twi speakers present that the Chief was an amicable gentleman, generally supportive of amicable resolutions.
The options presented by the policeman were two: Amicable resolution, or official investigation. The latter would involve the taking of statements (what did we just do?), Griselda visiting a hospital for a doctor to search for evidence of assault (seriously?), and undoubtedly endless testimony from all those present in the district that Sunday.
Our preference had long ago been made clear. And, in the manner of a wounded adolescent who wants to make sure you know how wrong you are before he agrees that you’re right—in a manner so incongruous to actual events that it took me the perspective of several days to become appropriately angry at him—the Ghanaian man he agreed to our Amicable Resolution.
They had Griselda write her name on a scrap of paper, which would no doubt be logged, archived, classified, Photostat copied, scanned and put to other important official uses, and they allowed us to leave.
And that’s how I visited my first Ghanaian Police Station.
Monday, September 10, 2007
The Zoo II
Okay.
So by a twist of fate I ended up at the Kumasi Zoological Gardens a second time this past weekend.
When my friend became excited at the mention of my recent zoo visit, I was happy to oblige with a return visit inasmuch as my first trip had emboldened me to shun the dictates of common sense and I was now ready to poke my fingers into and provide bananas for as many cages as possible.
I was disappointed to find that, perhaps because of the late hour, the food-seller was not there to provide me with illicit animal goodies.
Nonetheless, I succeeded in shaking hands with a chimpanzee, being peed upon by awakening Fruit Bats and learning the following interesting fact: even Ghanaian zoo animals are confused by my being white.
I was alone during my first visit, so I had no chance to compare the behavior of the zoo animals on matters of racial discrimination. It quickly became clear, however, that while my favorite baby baboon and Mona monkey pair were happy to paw at my hands and pinch my skin, they were wholly uninterested and even rather hostile as they swiped at the hand of my friend when she attempted a similar feat. This tendency was displayed by a number of the aforementioned chimpanzees, a leopard, some hyenas and the lions.
Well, that's a partial truth. To begin with, I wasn't sticking my hands into those cages. Don't worry. Actually, it seemed that the big cats and the hyena thought her sagging leather purse was something they should eat. This was confirmed when my other friend took her bag and began shaking it in front of the apparently hungry lioness. While my discouragement did little to stop his taunting, a few menacing swipes and a grunt were enough to send my friends (and the other sundry Ghanaians around us) tumbling back from the railing as I stood there and laughed at them.
But anyway-- Ghanaian Zoo Monkeys-- racist.
So by a twist of fate I ended up at the Kumasi Zoological Gardens a second time this past weekend.
When my friend became excited at the mention of my recent zoo visit, I was happy to oblige with a return visit inasmuch as my first trip had emboldened me to shun the dictates of common sense and I was now ready to poke my fingers into and provide bananas for as many cages as possible.
I was disappointed to find that, perhaps because of the late hour, the food-seller was not there to provide me with illicit animal goodies.
Nonetheless, I succeeded in shaking hands with a chimpanzee, being peed upon by awakening Fruit Bats and learning the following interesting fact: even Ghanaian zoo animals are confused by my being white.
I was alone during my first visit, so I had no chance to compare the behavior of the zoo animals on matters of racial discrimination. It quickly became clear, however, that while my favorite baby baboon and Mona monkey pair were happy to paw at my hands and pinch my skin, they were wholly uninterested and even rather hostile as they swiped at the hand of my friend when she attempted a similar feat. This tendency was displayed by a number of the aforementioned chimpanzees, a leopard, some hyenas and the lions.
Well, that's a partial truth. To begin with, I wasn't sticking my hands into those cages. Don't worry. Actually, it seemed that the big cats and the hyena thought her sagging leather purse was something they should eat. This was confirmed when my other friend took her bag and began shaking it in front of the apparently hungry lioness. While my discouragement did little to stop his taunting, a few menacing swipes and a grunt were enough to send my friends (and the other sundry Ghanaians around us) tumbling back from the railing as I stood there and laughed at them.
But anyway-- Ghanaian Zoo Monkeys-- racist.
Saturday, September 8, 2007
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?
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?
Monday, August 27, 2007
Saturday, August 25, 2007
some things
Here's some random things about rural Africa that are unexpectedly familiar.
There are fireflies here.
Well. There are fluorescent bugs. While they occasionally fly, unlike their American counterparts they usually just hang out in the overgrown grass and glow. If you shine a blinking flashlight at them you can get them pretty excited.
They have avacodos here.
who knew? In the US one often forgets that in the real world agricultural goods are only available seasonally. I think we're just getting to avacodo time here. This past week when we were in Manukrom, a small village in our cluster, for an Antenatal Care outreach session, the villagers were kind enough to provide us with a meal (cocoa-yam leaf soup and boiled plantains -- one of my favorites so far) and some avacodos to take away. And I only became slightly ill the next day. I don't think it was from the village food, actually. Regardless, once my stomach had settled yesterday evening I made myself some homemade guacamole. Most everything else you might need (except cilantro) is easily available - tomatoes, onion, garlic. Put it on some bread and call it a meal! I did, and it was amazing.
When I actually make myself go running, I'm glad I went.
It's been hard here, sometimes, to find time to go running. Days here start early, and rarely end before sundown (which is around 630). I've haven't yet become foolhardy enough to go running at night. Sometimes if I'm in the office on a day when I know there will be evening blackout, I go home to take a long lunch and a run and return with the plan to stay late and enjoy the office generator's power. And while I've never been wont to run in the morning, I'm well enough rested here that I usually wake up before my alarm anyway (again: the roosters). On a recent morning I got up at 6 for a dawn run down a muddy farmer's trail through misty, forested hillsides. I was rewarded, as always here, with zen moments in dense dripping jungle, vistas from maize-covered hilltops and the sleepy looks of utterly confused villagers.
Coke tastes the same here.
As we know they formulate it differently for each country. But here it tastes the same, at least to my palate. There is no diet soda, of course, because why would you pay for a soft drink that has no sugar in it? Which is not to say that there isn't a need for it -- there is small but definitely present obese subpopulation here. A nutritionist in the project was telling me about the Nutrition Transition: as soon as a poor population accumulates a bit of disposable income they switch from micronutrient poor staple foods (here yam, cassave and maize) to highly processed foods which are equally poor nutritionally. I haven't seen a McDonald's yet, but I'm sure it'll appear as soon as the market.
hmmm. That's all I have for now. More soon.
Also, this weekend I decided to stay in Manso Nkwanta, and I discovered the wonders of GarageBand, the audio editing program that comes with Mac OS. Definitely some lo-fi productions underway.
There are fireflies here.
Well. There are fluorescent bugs. While they occasionally fly, unlike their American counterparts they usually just hang out in the overgrown grass and glow. If you shine a blinking flashlight at them you can get them pretty excited.
They have avacodos here.
who knew? In the US one often forgets that in the real world agricultural goods are only available seasonally. I think we're just getting to avacodo time here. This past week when we were in Manukrom, a small village in our cluster, for an Antenatal Care outreach session, the villagers were kind enough to provide us with a meal (cocoa-yam leaf soup and boiled plantains -- one of my favorites so far) and some avacodos to take away. And I only became slightly ill the next day. I don't think it was from the village food, actually. Regardless, once my stomach had settled yesterday evening I made myself some homemade guacamole. Most everything else you might need (except cilantro) is easily available - tomatoes, onion, garlic. Put it on some bread and call it a meal! I did, and it was amazing.
When I actually make myself go running, I'm glad I went.
It's been hard here, sometimes, to find time to go running. Days here start early, and rarely end before sundown (which is around 630). I've haven't yet become foolhardy enough to go running at night. Sometimes if I'm in the office on a day when I know there will be evening blackout, I go home to take a long lunch and a run and return with the plan to stay late and enjoy the office generator's power. And while I've never been wont to run in the morning, I'm well enough rested here that I usually wake up before my alarm anyway (again: the roosters). On a recent morning I got up at 6 for a dawn run down a muddy farmer's trail through misty, forested hillsides. I was rewarded, as always here, with zen moments in dense dripping jungle, vistas from maize-covered hilltops and the sleepy looks of utterly confused villagers.
Coke tastes the same here.
As we know they formulate it differently for each country. But here it tastes the same, at least to my palate. There is no diet soda, of course, because why would you pay for a soft drink that has no sugar in it? Which is not to say that there isn't a need for it -- there is small but definitely present obese subpopulation here. A nutritionist in the project was telling me about the Nutrition Transition: as soon as a poor population accumulates a bit of disposable income they switch from micronutrient poor staple foods (here yam, cassave and maize) to highly processed foods which are equally poor nutritionally. I haven't seen a McDonald's yet, but I'm sure it'll appear as soon as the market.
hmmm. That's all I have for now. More soon.
Also, this weekend I decided to stay in Manso Nkwanta, and I discovered the wonders of GarageBand, the audio editing program that comes with Mac OS. Definitely some lo-fi productions underway.
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