In Which Our Hero Is A Curmudgeon

April Fools

2010-04-01T01:22:00.001-07:00

Totally wasn't attacked with machetes.

But, if you want so hear my thoughts about teaching in Tanzania, check out the blog below.

Mista J.J.

2010-04-01T01:17:00.003-07:00

I really, really love teaching. More than anything else, my experience here has cemented in my mind that I want to be an educator. Remember in school, you always had one teacher, who was cooler, more approachable, fun, and somewhat bat-shit crazy? Well, here in Hanga, I think that’s me. I don’t just teach but I also kick it with the students. Teachers tend to be way authoritarian here, and I want them to see a guy who is better educated than virtually all their other teachers treating them like they’re not essentially beneath him. I also do some things I definitely wouldn’t do in the States. I remember one time (here comes the crazy part), I was teaching my computer class, and it was like 10:15 at night, and I really wanted to get out of there because I had to wake up at 7:00 if I wanted breakfast. The students were just not moving and being kind of obstinate. So, I started picking them up and carrying them out of the classroom. Now, to be fair, if I said leave my class and go to bed, in the States they would. Also, these guys are my age, but still.
   Teaching English to Swahili speakers is a major difficulty. The languages are pretty radically different. For example, in Kiswahili, there are virtually no prepositions, no continuous tense, no articles, no distinction between infinitives and gerunds, and strictly phonetic spelling which is seemingly really flexible. I can demonstrate what I mean by “flexible spelling” best with an example. I have one student named Caspary. Or Kaspary. I don’t think he his spelled his name the same way twice. Or one might spell his name Theobard or Theobardi. Also, the vowel sounds are different, Kiswahili has five simple vowel sounds, English has eight. There is no “th” diphthong or other diphthongs (eight in all in English) in Swahili. One time, one of my students wrote “hallo, I I thanks so much Chrast.” He meant Christ, in case you were wondering. Another time a student wrote “sanks,” instead of “thanks.” The first few times I introduced myself it went like this. “Jina langu Anthony.” “Antoni?” “Anthony.” “Ansoni?” “J.J., sema J.J.” People love calling me J.J. here. In Kiswahili, “je” means “do,” or “how.” So, in other words, calling me J.J. is almost the same as having the nickname “what, what.”
However, I think the funniest common mistake has to do with “r” and “l.” In Kiswahili, “r” and “l” are completely interchangeable. At one point I thought that people were saying two different words when they were one and the same, just pronounced differently. There also aren’t any words that end in a consonant, so they usually add random vowels at the end of a word, or sometimes in the middle. So, for example, there is almost no difference when they say, “play,” or “pray.” So one day, when I was working on pronunciation, I was thinking of monosyllabic words with an “l” or “r”. I wrote “roll and roller” and then “clap and clapper.” These came out “rorlrli and rorlrrlrlaa.” Coincidentally, they pronounce the name “Laura” very similarly. I hadn’t thought of it when I wrote “clap” and “clapper” on the board, so I was shocked to here forty students all saying in unison “crap,” “crappa.” I laughed uncontrollably for about five minutes. I thought “I gotta explain this in Kiswahili.” “ukikuenda crapper, ni kama kuchuchumaa choni. It was their turn to laugh. The “r” and “l” thing has been a source of constant hilarity. For example, last week, I was asked to be a sort of judge when our school debated another about the merits of a multi-party system or a single party system of government. I sat there intently listening and jotting down notes, when one student got up and in a very fervor filled fashion stated “yah, so the multi-party erection is much better than the single party erection because it give the better freedom.” I don’t know if I’ve ever been with 300 people or so and been the only one to get the joke before.
The students and Andrew and I have an in-joke that we find really funny, though I don’t know if the humor will translate to the page (or webpage, I suppose). So, in Andrew’s chemistry class, he was talking about buffers, when all the students in the class erupted in laughter. Andrew though maybe buffer sounded like a dirty word and Kiswahili or something, but the students just informed him that they just thought it was a funny word. The next day I used for pronunciation practice. I was able to get them from saying “buffa,” to “buffer” with a hard e and a rolled r at the end. Close enough for me, I suppose. So, now, anytime someone says or does something funny or ridiculous, or maybe if there is an awkward pause, someone usually yells buffer.
   Nearly everybody here has the same basic problems or errors when they speak in English. For example, they constantly say the word “somehow” when they want to say “somewhat.” Improper use of punctuation, capitalization, just general word choice, abound. Also, people often phrase things in a very awkward way. For example, the habit I’ve been trying hardest to break my students of is saying things like, “he likes so much to go to school.” Part of the problem extends from the word sana, because it can mean “so much,” “so many,” “very,” “really,” “a lot,” in English. You see they study English very similarly to the way we might study dead languages like Latin or Greek, in our education system. They don’t speak it, learn to understand native speakers, or pronounce things in a way that native speakers understand. There are definitely no oral exams. In many schools, the teachers themselves may never have talked to a native speaker. What happens is the teachers write the notes in English, explain them in Kiswahili, and then the students are tested in English. The knowledge is completely compartmentalized. In other words, if they have a math problem, they can solve it. Give them a word problem and they’re screwed. To complicate matters even further, I’ve only met a handful of teachers who are themselves proficient, let alone fluent, in English. In some of the classes I’ve sat in on, they’ve explained things in Kiswahili in an English literature course! Also, the teachers make obvious errors for example, spelling successful “succesiful” (the way they say it). Another time, a teacher wrote on the board “what is the roles of literature.” I’ve noticed that people have these massive vocabularies, but make constant errors with really basic stuff like verb tense, syntax, plural and singular, pronoun use, capitalization, simple punctuation, articles, and prepositions. That’s what the education system focuses on I also use a much simpler English vocabulary than other teachers I’ve seen. It’s like they expect everyone to run before they walk. What ends up happening is they misuse complicated words, and improperly construct complex sentences. They also constantly use antiquated terms. They speak like a British guy 70 years ago, and for a very good reason, the translations were made 70 years ago by stuffy British academics, and it hasn’t been updates since! Instead of saying, “do it this way,” someone might say “do it thusly.” It’s like an education system run by college freshmen. If they explained things in a simple way, they wouldn’t have to teach in Kiswahili. They also use a very imperfect immersion system. They call it English medium, but I would estimate they speak in Kiswahili 70% of the day. Even the signs “Speak English” should read “Speak in English.” Also, the time for English is split between grammar and literature, so there isn’t as much time devoted to actually learning the language. Essentially, the way the education system is set up, all they really need to be able to do is read English. They don’t need fluency or proficiency, or even the ability to apply their English in real world situations. They just need to pass the national exams (more on that later).
   You might find yourself asking why they learn in English at all. I’ve asked myself the same question many times, and indeed, so do the people who run the Ministry of Education. Here are basically the two sides of the debate. Our student’s aren’t learning a usable or correct form of English, so we might as well just teach in Kiswahili so they understand the material better, and make English something optional (like foreign language in U.S. schools). But here is the other side of the coin. There are certain concepts you simply can’t explain in Kiswahili. It’s nearly impossible to explain how light can be both a wave and a particle. Or how something could be hermaphroditic or asexual. Kiswahili developed as a trade language, not one to be used for academic discourse. Also, all the science, social science, math, etc. words that they use, pretty much come from English anyway. Plus, if they have any hopes for defending themselves from the onslaught of globalism, they need to an international language (I say international language, and not English, because due to the increasing influence of China in the area, it would be better for them to learn Chinese).
   Kiswahil, for all its faults as an academic language, has been one of the key things in Tanzania’s (relative) success. I mean, every other country in East Africa has been an absolute shit show at some point since its independence. It has a lot to do with their first president Julius Nyrere. The guy was a genius, it’s too bad nobody has been nearly as effective since. He’s responsible more than anyone else for the spread of Kiswahili (or in English ,Swahili, to clarify). Originally, it started as a trade language, not a native tongue. Arabic traders (read: slave traders) definitely influenced its initial spread. German colonists also spread it to help them (where as the English spread English). But instead of being a trade and slave language, Nyrere turned it into something different. Kiswahili is unique in some aspects because aside from the youth, or in places like Dar or Zanzibar, it’s no one’s first language. Tanzania is the only (or at least was at one time, I’m not really sure) African country to have an African language as its main official language. It’s the only African language that is an official language of the African Union*. It’s a great source of national pride. Also, where other countries have been wracked with tribal tensions, and in some cases warfare and genocide, Tanzania has remained stable. It’s a safer country than the U.S. This is largely due to the national unity a common language brings to places with artificial borders put in place during the scramble for Africa by European powers. But partially, its prominence holds Tz back from learning other languages. Americans don’t learn other languages, really, but we’re luck enough to have an international language as our native tongue. However, outside of East Africa (Kiswahili is used in Kenya, and its use is spreading in Zambia, Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, and even as far away as Somolia), it’s basically useless. Any Tanzanian or native Swahili speaker I meet in the States is going to speak better English than I speak Swahili.
   I think, in some ways, it’s because of this that many outside groups are hesitating to pump their resources into teaching English. The Peace Corps, lest we forget, was started to make Americans look good abroad, and that continues to be part of its mission. So, all the Peace Corps education volunteers I have met all teach math and sciences. I think, honestly, it would be better to pump most of them into English medium primary (elementary) schools, so student understand the material better later on. But the U.S. government would never do that because it smacks too much of imperialism for them to improve their image. I mean, they do need good math and science teachers, but I think in a holistic sense, teaching young people English is more sustainable and versatile. I mean, the education system is ALREADY IN ENGLISH. Though there are many problems besides the level of English, I still think it is the best solution.
   And there are many other problems. In other disciplines, while tutoring the students I’ve noticed some pretty glaring errors, and not just with grammar. The other day, I was looking at their geography notes**. Under the heading “Other causes of earthquake” it listened such things as “volcanic activity,” “human development like excavation and mining,” “landslides,” and “animals stampedes.” It later said something like minor tremors, but they did already call it an earthquake. Awesome. I’ve noticed a number of errors in the textbooks themselves. Here is one verbatim:
Simple Prepositions: These are prepositions which are not formed by any method and are common to a language [comma use sic plus the fact that the sentence doesn’t make sense]. They formed [sic] by one word. Such prepositions are as follows: At [capitalization, sic],by [comma use sic] for, from, in, off on, out, through, till up with, after, since, via, per, than town [wtf??? sic], past under to over, but round.
Examples:
She is at the bus stop.
He fell off the lorry [note, this is the U.K. word, the U.S. word is truck]
Rukia is killed by her husband [Wha? What the fuck? I mean seriously, people, a correct sentence, but huh?]
And that’s their textbook! You might think that’s bad, but at least my students have textbooks. The writers of the book only had their B.A. too. Also of the problem has to do with the ministry of education. They are the ones who allow this crap to be printed. The language system is basically based on an antiquated preWW2 era British system. Most of the schools are boarding schools. The have primary school standard I-VII, which is basically kindergarten through 6th grade. Form I and II are basically 7th and 8th grade, forms III and IV are 9th and 10th, and O level and A level are 11th and 12th grade. From III and IV students range in age from 17-28. If you are not familiar with the U.K. system today, the education system in Harry Potter is based on the old model. There is virtually no continuous assessment; instead, they have the national exams. National exams are a big deal the have one at the end of Form II, Form IV, and A level. Again, with the Harry Potter, they are like the O.W.L.S. and N.E.W.T.S. They cost money to take, involve a lengthy registration process, and have police officers with AK-47 at the door to prevent cheating (seriously). I’ve looked at these exams. I’m a college educated native English speaker, an I found the English exam confusing as hell. Andrew described the Physics exam this way: “a M.I.T. physics prof would get a 70% on the exam because the questions are so unclear and misleading.” I guess it’s a good thing they only need like a 30% or 40% to pass.
You might find yourself asking why use these exams at all. Well, in a sense, the government is stuck. They don’t have enough qualified teachers. Like in the States, the money lies in government work, business, etc. Places like Tz suffer from major brain drain. Many who get enough education expat. Most teachers don’t go to college. This basically means the same thing as having someone who just finished high school teaches 10th grade. In small isolated places, people who complete standard VII teach standard II or something. This means a 7th grader teaches 3rd grade. In the past few years, the government has built 2000 schools, but this means dick bupkiss if there aren’t teachers. Without some sort of accreditation process, these exams are the only thing the government can do to create some sort of semblance of consistency. So yeah, problems exist at the schools here, but these are good schools. The students, at least, have enough teachers and freakin’ libraries. Many schools can’t boast that. I’ll give you and an example, there is a school not so far from here that a couple years ago had 700 students and 4 teachers. It was a new school, all the students failed their exams, the students left, and the school went bankrupt. But this has turned into a success story. One of the best teachers from Hanga Seminary became headmaster there. He is doing everything right. He’s building it in a sustainable way. They are building an adequate library before the buy books so they remain in good condition. Right now, they have about 100 students (and they all passed their last round of exams). Right now, there are 10 teachers and he wants to increase the student body to 200 and no more. It’s sustainable that way both for the education of the students, and for the amount of food they need. Plug, plug, when I get back to the States, I’m going to try and fundraise them a library, and I’m also going to try and help get them a Peace Corp volunteer. But other problems exist. Legally, the headmaster or his (realistically only his and not hers) proxy is able to administer four strokes as a punishment. To beat a student otherwise is illegal. There are a lot of things illegal in Tanzania. There are also a lot of things that are never prosecuted. A cop is much more likely to (illegally, only immigration can do that) ask a white person traveling through town for their papers, hoping for a bribe, than to bust a school for corporal punishment. Now, at all the schools in Hanga it is strictly prohibited with varying degrees of enforcement. Other schools, it is certainly commonplace. Also, at some schools it depends on the teacher. If the teacher has a degree, and therefore indispensable, than they can do whatever they damn well please. It also depends a lot on the personal leadership of the headmaster. For me, if I see it, I have the knowledge to say you can’t do this. A teacher can’t counter with “this is our culture” because it is against their law. If the headmaster consents, my hands are completely tied. Now, I don’t want to paint an overly dark picture, that would be unfair and outright incorrect, but there are things that leap out to me as major problems. For example, it is not just common place, but almost assumed, that male teachers are having sex with one or more of their students. For the girls, it’s the possibility of a guaranteed benefactor. Now, I’d say this has more to do with the promiscuous culture that school abuse issues (make of that what you will). Again, in Hanga this is strictly prohibited, as these are Catholic schools (and it definitely never happens at the Seminary because it is all male, and there’s no pederasty, because of how homophobic this country is) and I would say it would be way more unheard of than beating and immediately punished. However, there was a case a few years ago that a girls schools that is a Catholic school where the from IV students pimped out the form I and IIs to villagers and collected money. Once it was discovered, it was stopped, but still. To an extent we have a self-perpetuating cycle. The repression done by some current teachers will lead to the next generation thinking it is acceptable. Now, as an outsider and a person who doesn’t know all the details, and can’t always make a clear observation I would stand behind under oath, I would say that some of the schools in Tanzania remind me more of a scene out of Cool Hand Luke than a place of education.
   But you need to remember reading this that their culture is different than ours. Corporal punishment in all circumstance is more acceptable. Also, living in what we would see as cramped conditions, is totally normal. Some people wouldn’t know what do to if they had a room as big as the average American teenager. That’s one thing I see no problem with (other than the communicability of disease). Also, the sexual dominance of older men over young girls is something that needs to be addressed at a societal level. In some ways many cultures throughout human history have considered this behavior normal. The best approach a volunteer or someone else can take is to talk about health issues and STDs for prevention, or help establish adequate social services. Anger or outrage doesn’t do any good. Only smart, calculated, and informed action does.
   I’d also like to point out that it is usually really good here. Students are happy. Teachers are happy. Sometimes the shit hits the fan, but not often. In terms of the bad stuff, the same thing happens in the States. And at least these schools don’t have crack to deal with. Or metal detectors at their doors. In many ways, the education gap in the States is much more disgusting, because the most powerful country in the world could solve it’s education problems in a year with all the money is spends on weapons that can potentially kill civilians, or the money spent on that second Escalade or Hummer. I mean, I think we have all had one or two teachers who were essentially useless, but had a job because they were a really good coach, or the school’s turn-over rate and pay were too crappy to keep the talented folks around. If you are thinking “what can I do?,” I have a couple answers, but most people won’t like ‘um. Become a long-term volunteer. If you stay short term it doesn’t do a whole lot in terms of impact (but it might for the personal growth of the volunteer). Donate to scholarships, but make sure they aren’t mismanaged or misappropriated. Or, become an educator yourself or help the kids in your local area. It’s easier, and more effective. DON’T send a bunch of shitty books to Africa. The bookshelves here are littered with Harlequin romance novels, or classics the students can’t read and don’t apply to their lives. There is a Spanish textbook here. Great, I’m the only one in Hanga that can use it. The money spent on the postage could buy them English-Swahili dictionaries or encyclopedias that they need much more. Or Scholarships. Make the smart choice and not one that alleviates a guilt conscience or give a feeling of false-self-accomplishment.
   So I came into this wondering whether or not I was qualified. As it turns out, I am hyper-qualified by comparison. Also, you need to remember that having a diploma, degree, or certification helps a lot to assure quality levels, but it doesn’t make someone a good teacher or even more intelligent and wise. Just because a teacher doesn’t have one doesn’t mean they are a bad teacher. Likewise, I’d like to think I’m a good teacher because I’m smart and I care. But who knows, maybe I am totally screwing these guys over because I’ve spent most of my time on teaching them how to use prepositions and verb tenses instead of things like writing recipes (it’s on the nation syllabus, really) or cramming a bunch of wordy impressive sounding vocabulary in their heads. Either way, these guys really make me want to come back to Tz and to be an educator wherever I go. Also, high school pretty much sucks wherever you go. I guess the only thing I can say with certainty is we all gotta keep trying. So, crap for multipartison erections, and sank Chrast for what you’ve got.

Post Script.
I didn’t know where this would fit in here, so I’m adding it as a post script. For some reason, people here freaking love professional wrestling. I can’t describe my confusion when my students (multiple times and parties) asked me “yah, so do you know John Cena.” “Who the hell is John Cena?” “Yeah, he’s very strong, and he’s so famous in America.” “Really.” “You know wrestling is fake, right?” “No, not.” “Then how come their faces aren’t bruised and bloody after the fight like they are in boxing.” “Yah, because they are very strong.” “Whatever guys.”

*Something like 30% of Kiswahili comes from Arabic, and large amounts come from English, German, and a lesser extent Portuguese, so, to be fair, it is somewhat debatable whether or not it can be considered a truly African language.
** So, when they reach O level and A level or university, they are channeled into different disciplines, and there isn’t a whole lot of choice in what you do. For example, one path is English, Kiswahili, and geography. The study of geography has nothing to do with linguistics. These just happen to be the three easiest subjects to pass the test in. Sigh. PBC, or physics, biology, and chemistry are the most difficult and sought after. If you can’t do, teach. If you can’t teach, teach Geography.

Holidays.

2010-03-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

So, I suppose this story, or collection of stories, is rather tangential. They doesn’t all directly relate to the previous story, world issues, or volunteering itself. It’s more about me (as if any of this isn’t). I suppose it’s something I learned here, or more accurately relearned. It’s about holidays. I’ll do this in chronological order, it seems best.

Thanksgiving.

It’s not really a long story. At Thanksgiving I had been here about three months. Usually, Thanksgiving is about getting you ass fatter with people you love, and if you so choose, getting drunk and/or watching football. Thanksgiving is one of the only holidays celebrated by only Americans. Sure there is President’s day, or something, but nobody really celebrates that, and for good reason. Name me a president who isn’t responsible for murder (yes, even Obama), and I’ll give you a messiah. Well, maybe William Henry Harrison, but I digress. So, I wasn’t all that crazy about going nuts with Thanksgiving, but Catherine, our matronly retired prof volunteer really wanted the celebration. So, she enlisted a bunch of the candidates at the monastery, a couple of the monks, and Andrew and myself to prepare a meal. Andrew, Catherine, and myself all love to cook, something we don’t get the chance to do here very often. Going to the supermarket to find a good turkey is nothing. Nothing. Having to go on a crappy bus into town, spend a whole day searching for supplies and hauling it back is something else. First of all there are no turkeys here let alone Butterballs. Catherine brined three chickens over night. We couldn’t find many normal stuffing fixings (except giblets) so we used stale bread and a can of corn beef hash. A can of sweet corn (they only grow white corn here) costs more than twice as much as it does at home. With the same money could buy you, like, 80 tomatoes when they are in season. We made it work. For the crowning achievement, we made an apple pie. A Thanksgiving staple and a relatively easy thing to make at home created quite a commotion. Regulating the temperature, jerry-rigging a pie pan for aluminum foil, finding freakin’ apples, at the very least, presented major logistical challenges. We made it all work. Nothing was quite like home, but we didn’t care.

As far as candidates go, many pretend to want to be monks in hopes of getting a free education. Others have a true vocation and are still treated like shit also. We mostly invited the later. So, for Tanzanians, special food doesn’t really matter that much. Not for the flavor anyway, status being a different issue. For them, it was maybe the only chance they will ever get to experience another culture. For us it meant something different entirely. We had eaten basically the same flavorless-but-for-over-salting-and-tons-of-oil food for a long damn time. We hadn’t been able to dictate what we ate. It wasn’t that the monastery is poor, it’s not, it’s really rich. Most Tanzanians just like really bland, crappy, food. I would compare it to coming to the rural Midwest from a different part of America, multiply it times fifty, wash, rinse, repeat. It was like an oasis. But more importantly, it was people who care about each other coming together to eat special food. Think about that. I mean really think about that. I mean, really think. I mean you can go to the store, right now, and buy a turkey or the fixing for stuffing. You could make basically the same meal you eat on Thanksgiving any day you want if you make the time for it. It took us three days of preparation. That’s the core I suppose, it’s special because you make it special. You could decide not to do that particular activity but something else you don’t get to do all that often. Hell, you could take your holiday off work and drink, clean you house, watch movies or Internet porn, whatever. But you don’t.

So I suppose I should mention this: Catherine, the most gun-ho about Thanksgiving, was not born in the United States, she was born in the Philippines. You see here, we get called “mzungu” every day, even Catherine, who, by their logic, should be called “mchina**.” But she’s not, and I’m not. We’re Americans. Catherine was born in the Philippines, but she’s an American too. So am I, even though my grandfather is a first generation American.

Why do I write about all of this ad-nausium? Well I suppose I stumbled upon two of the things being an American is really about (or, at least, is supposed to be). Note: Capitalism is not one of them. It doesn’t matter where the hell you come from, if you live in America, you are American***. Period. But further, Americans celebrate what really matters (at least until commercialism perverted it), the act of sharing things with, not exclusively those you love, but virtually anyone who wants to be a part of it all. And that, is something I can get behind.

Christmas

So, upon our departure from Dar I was left with a tough decision. Andrew is my boy and Steph and Nick rule, not to mention some other really awesome people who would be around Hanga during Christmas. But, I was confronted with something else. That same gaggle of tourists I mentioned before would be staying there at the same time. Also, Tanzanian celebrations, for lack of a better word, suck. There is usually a really long ass mass (if they are Catholic WaTz), a ton of boring traditional dancing (and the dances are usually in Kiswahili, unless they use a tribal language I can’t understand, a language that wasn’t that ubiquitous in this part of the world until a hundred years ago, make of that what you will), several really long speeches, food that is somewhat better than normal, and me sitting in a public place where I can’t really leave. Also, most of the monks who are our best friend are the younger ones. Being the lowest on the food chain, they are the most likely to have to take care of the tourists. So, I decided to meet up with some friends from the Peace Corps. in another village. It was a really hard choice. But I thought, not getting pestered and cooking myself trumped many things.

I ran into some of my friends heading the same place for Christmas when Andrew, Steph, Nick, and I were in town, said goodbye and got on a different bus. So, this won’t be one of my most interesting stories, nothing ridiculous, dangerous, or particularly wild. This is a different part of my personality that many people don’t necessarily realize exist. This experience consisted of making and drinking coffee (and taking a couple of hours to do so), cooking food, doing dishes and crosswords, and solidifying friendships. Anyway, sometimes, I suppose, I’m the most Zen when I’m the most domestic.

So, especially with the Peace Corp types, they have to do their own cooking all the time. Many are quite tired of it, where as I seldom have a chance to do something I love. It works out pretty well. I spent a great deal of my Christmas season (note two days before and the day after, not a month) cooking and cleaning, because I like to do it, and it gave a welcome rest to friends of mine. Also, something I came to realize (something I’d like to apply to the rest of my life) I’m not a Peace Corp. Volunteer. If Andrew or I want to talk about the problems of the day we can tell each other almost whenever we want. Not so with the PCVs, they are usually alone at their sites. Thus, I shouldn’t talk about my site-specific problems they can’t relate to because this is one of their few opportunities to talk about like problems with people who experience them. Some times slow on the uptake, I should have started cooking or cleaning sooner instead of trying to steer a conversation my way.

So, anyway, we spent the time in really good conversation, drinking the best coffee we’ve had in a while. My friend Amanda, who I have to say, I’ve really become close with and really respect (I’m not sure if she knows how much I appreciate her, but anyway) has an ability I cherish. She is someone who is able to call me on my shit and I respect when she does it without resenting it. Anyway, I think I was lucky to get to know her and her sort of new (they didn’t date during their training, really) boyfriend Marshall better***. So, we drank lots of coffee and hung out. One thing about the volunteer experience, I’m not sure if I have ever had an experience (aside from maybe backpacking trips) where I have had so many friends together for such an extended period of time just hanging out and shooting the proverbial shit.

We sang Christmas carols. I hate Christmas music. At least, I hate getting bombarded with holiday cheer (i.e. commercialism) for over a month. I had hearing the same thing over and over. I hate gaudy crap that doesn’t look good on anyone’s front lawn. I hate the materials and energy it all wastes. This time, however, it was wonderful. It’s hard to remember the last time I sang Christmas carols instead of hearing them while walking through the grocery store or something. So, we sang Christmas carols. It was beautiful. I mean really beautiful. Most people didn’t have good sing voices (and I don’t exclude myself), but it was incredible. Some of my students who lived in the village came to greet me, and (as opposed to the usually request of me teaching them to sing hip-hop) they got Rudolf the red-nosed reindeer. We all knew most of the words to all the songs we sang, and the disparate elements and distances that kept us from the other people we love made us sing the songs like we meant them.

We did have one very non-traditional element in our Christmas. We had an epic water balloon fight. Jack, Jack, Cindy and Ginny (I mighta spelled that wrong), the newer education volunteers, and I spent several hours filling water balloons. In order to do this we jerry-rigged a system where we cut the bottom off a plastic bottle and blew the water into the balloon. This worked surprisingly affectively and it made a gratifying plop when it filled. At one point, amidst the hours of witty banter and rapidly worsening soreness in our cheeks, Ginny had a full balloon her lap and one of the Jacks leaned over and touched his cigarette to the balloon. This resulted in a very wet crotch on Ginny’s end.

I at one point I sat on the porch with my friends Erica and Randy (who are dating) doing crossword puzzles. There were a few instances where I knew a particularly obscure answer or gave an unnecessary explication. Randy called me on my showing off. From then onward, I would act super-tongue-in-cheek know it all every time I gave an answer to the point where it became like an in-joke between Randy and I. At one point someone mentioned Cat Stevens, and I said deadpan and matter of factly “you know, I know Cat Stevens,” and we burst into laughter. Over the course of time, another volunteer, Tristan, and I became increasingly antagonistic over the water balloons. All of a sudden, I saw Randy shooting up like a bullet with two balloons in hand yelling something to the effect of “it starts now.” I screamed, “no wait, we have to finish making them first, not yet, what are you doing!?!?!” It was to no avail. Soon, all 14 of us became enveloped in the utter chaos that ensued. At this point, I’d like to point out that Amanda was the first white person to ever come to her village. Suddenly there were fourteen of us running, shouting, and throwing water balloons at each other. There is something strange and animalistic about the way people act in a water balloon fight. One moment, we were all friends, the next it would not be out of place to hear “you are the illiterate product of incestuous union!” as floppy projectile whizzes past your left ear. At any given moment, one might turn on her or his ally, like when I pegged Amanda in the back right after we teamed up on someone. Or the way that Marshall threw his hands around his body attempting to run and crouch at the same time when he saw my guile filled smile and murderous eyes holding two balloons and standing directly the stockpile of balloons and himself. There is something pathetic about shielding your face from something you know won’t hurt, but you run like the devil is at you heels anyway. Even some of the village mamas joined in. We didn’t have teams or any sort of rules, it was basically just a slaughter-fest, wonton and unbridled.

A bit later on, one mama who was Amanda’s neighbor, invited herself in, in typical Tz fashion. After a litany of greetings, she dramatically said, what translates to, “Amanda is my own child. And she eats rice every day!” That was pretty much it. This is actually the kind of shit that villagers talk about here. I also think she was drunk. They do a lot of that too.

Later that night, during dinner, I sat by Erica and we started talking about stuff like Wendell Berry. Eventually the conversation drifted to the nature of our Christmas. Beside backpacking trips or family holiday board games etc. I can think of two other times that I’ve past the time in a similar fashion. The first was in Ireland. Some of my friends and I went to a few storytelling nights. It was only us American college students and a bunch of old Irish people. There were sandwiches and pints while people told jokes or stories, read Robert Service poems, and played songs on guitars. It’s what people used to do to entertain themselves. One of the times I went, one of the performers couldn’t make it, and they asked if anyone from the audience wanted to do something. My friends volunteered me to play a song. I played “Moonshiner,” an old folk song that Bob Dylan and Uncle Tupelo both do versions of. It was amazing. The other happened at Billy’s house. Myself, Billy, Jasmine, Joe, Shaun, Joe’s sister and her friend who came from Scandinavia to the south to learn bluegrass, sat around drinking whiskey. We had two or three guitars, a fiddle, and a banjo. We passed them around and played songs for a couple hours. It was one of the most wonderful nights of my life. Before radios, T.V.s, ipods, and computers this is what people did. Most of us Americans have become completely disconnected this part of the human experience. I saw it in Ireland, when the country became rich, people turned their back on their traditions in favor of cell phones and McDonalds (this is a sweeping generalization, mind you). For example, the only people in Celtic Studies courses were older students and American exchange students. I see it happening here. Globalism is destroying the few tattered ashes of indigenous culture left behind by colonialism. So it goes. At least for a few nights, we unspokenly felt a part of something old. Old and good.

A little later we exchanged gifts white elephant style. Before, I gave a painting to the three volunteers I knew the best. It was great because each picked the painting that I thought matched them the best. Amanda chose the painting that used the Tz color palette the best. Erica chose a painting more close to the work I did in college, and the one that would have been my drawing prof’s favorite. And my friend Bill chose the one that had the most political commentary. I put another painting in the pile of gifts, but because I put it in upside-down, everyone thought it was just a piece of cardboard. Randy ended up choosing between that and a low quality Chinese pirate dvd of “Harry Potter and the Other,” which had all the Harry Potter movies, the new Star Wars, and for some reason, all the Home Alones. I ended up getting a big tub of peanut butter because I knew Andrew would like it. Firstly, because he really likes peanut butter, secondly, because he needs all the fat and protein he can get because he’s lost like 30 pounds. On a side note, Andrew, Nick, and Steph brought me a bottle of Jim Beam from the States. When they pulled it out I was speechless, I might even say that I nearly shed a single tear, but that might be exaggerating*****. I later went up to Randy and told him I was happy that he picked the painting. I said I might never see him again, and it was a good memento from that Christmas. He replied something to the effect of “treat every time you see someone as the if it’s possibly your last. It will change your life.”

For me Christmas means, basically, three things: A time to for family who I seldom see and very much miss, Mexican food, and mortality. I guess there is one reason don’t usually get homesick, all my extended family lives, like, a thousand miles from me. I’m used to it. Mortality is a weird one. In one of my first clear Christmas memories, I had a bad fever and I was wrapped in a blanket, almost hamming it up as the sick kid wanting attention. Then, I don’t recall how long after, we needed to take my Mom to the hospital. It might be the first time I became viscerally and tangibly aware of others’ suffering, not just existing, but my own being inconsequential by comparison. Every Christmas, I see my Grandparents becoming a little more feeble and aged. I hate it. I wish I had more time with them and more moments to spend. I want to hear Papa’s WW2 stories, I want to do crosswords with Granny, I want Dodo to control elements of my life. But that’s that. I am reminded of what I don’t have, and cherish what I do. I was reminded of the “true meaning of Christmas.” But it isn’t the sort of after school special moral that we usually get jammed down our throats. Sometimes, we need to stop everything, remember our traditions and just spend time with people.

New Year’s Eve

I sat in my room alone early on New Year’s, nursing a beer and feeling pretty lame. Andrew was on his way back from Dar and I didn’t have anything else better to do. So, I sunk in my chair relegated to listening to music and drinking my beer. I thought I might go count to midnight with the monks, drink a free beer and than go to bed. It was at that point I heard a knock on the door. It was Fr. Francis. He asked me if I wanted to get a beer in the village. That single beer that eventually multiplied many fold. Fr. Francis graduated with his masters from St. John’s the same time I graduated with my undergrad. So, besides the fact that he is awesome and speaks fluent English, we have that in common. We went to a patio type thing they have in front of a duka or store. I went into full Tz mode. We joked and talked, and I spoke in all Kiswahili to the villagers, and if I ran into trouble with my words, Fr. Francis could translate for me. I had the villagers rolling, I went on about my “I’m not European, I’m an American, thank you very much” rant. I also told them that my father was not able to visit my Grandparents because there was too much snow to leave the house. They were completely shocked. I acted totally like a drunk villager, yelling, telling people to go get things for me, etc. It was awesome. Francis sneakily kept ordering more beer for us when I wasn’t looking. At one point, I voiced concerns about how much it was costing to which he replied, “you know, we’re only spending something like $18.” Alright, if a priest says it, I can’t complain. I’ve been kinda dismayed here often about how much money I blow on stuff like beer, going to town, eating out, etc. I think in shillings now, so, it was like “oh man, 20,000 shillings is a lot of money.” It is nice to step back every once and a while and think, “at home this would be like 60 bucks, not 18, is okay to splurge sometimes.”

The night drew on and I wondered why I was more drunk than Fr. Shawa (his surname). Then I realized that I have been drinking Castle Milk Stout, which is 6% and he had been drinking Castle Lager, which is 5%. He’s also sneaky. We were a riot. I realized that it wasn’t just that Shawa was looking out for me, but he also wanted to be in the village and he was using me as an excuse. He was on point with everyone. The guy really knows how to mingle, get a little crazy, but still maintain his status in the community. A couple drunks harassed us for beer, in typical Tz “you’re rich, buy me shit,” fashion. At one point, one dude actually got on his knees in front Fr. Francis, and in unison we almost yelled simama or get up. Another guy would not stop harassing me. He just would not leave me alone. I got so fed up, that said “you want everything I have?” and I threw my pull-over on to the ground, spit on it (pretty much the worst insult here) and said “welcome.” I was bluffing of course, I did not want to lose my pull-over from mountaineering club in Ireland, but if he had taken it, it would have made him the biggest chump in the village.

Soon, both of us forgot about the incident. At the stroke of midnight, I started to run around to all the random people and shout “happy new year!” or “oyee” (which is pretty much a cheer, I would liken it to hip hip hooray or something) or “sema safi, safi!” People were eating it up. At one point, someone called me mbongo, which is slang for Tanzanian. It was one of my prouder moments here. Eventually, we started dancing. Fr. Francis was seamless and really in his element. I mostly tried to stop nasty mamas from grinding on me. After a full night of revelry, we both went back, me to my quiet hostel and him to his quiet monastery. He somehow was able to say mass at 7:00 the next morning. I, on the other hand, spent most of the morning completely incapacitated in my bed. At that point, it dawned on me that I had just gotten blotto with a priest in a village for free. Awesome.

So, I suppose I learned the true meaning of New Years, getting drunk and making a total ass of yourself.

Valentine’s Day

Every year, St. Cloud State has this massive radio trivia contest that lasts all Valentine’s weekend. Something like 60 teams compete for 48 straight hours. Andrew really did not want something like the Atlantic Ocean to get in the way. It sounded pretty hard core. His team had a website so they could streamline their operation and allow folks outside of home-base (they literally had a home base) to join their team more effectively. So, that weekend, Andrew and I stayed at our friend Alena’s place in town (Songea). I played support, cooking and cleaning while Andrew spent much of his time at the internet café. Alena’s house is basically the meeting place for the Peace Corps cats in the region, so she often has visitors and largish gatherings take place at her abode. I think I was probably really nice for her to have guest over that cooked and cleaned for her and didn’t (inevitably usually) leave an aftermath. Alena is pretty quiet, and I’ve usually been around her in large gatherings, so this time, it was nice to actually get to know her. We bonded over our love of environmental architecture (she has a masters in environmental engineering). The last time we talked, we discussed our dream homes we’ve been designing. I made some detailed sketches. She made a computer mock up. I felt hopelessly sub-par.

I cooked a lot of awesome food, and I was so excited about it that I planed the meals, like, a week in advance. One thing I made was that winemaker’s soup I like to make at home. It was really extravagant because wine and real butter are really expensive here. Every once and a while, it’s nice to forget you’re in Tanzania a little. Also, discover, goat bones that have been sitting out for a long time, make a terrible broth. Luckily, Alena had bullion cubes.

On the afternoon of Valentine’s Day, I went to the market and a few other places. I had a couple beers and had a lovely buzz going. The market is a bit of a hassle and I think it lessens the bite a little. It wouldn’t be that bad, but no one gives you a good price (because you’re white), everyone yells at you to buy stuff (because you’re white), and people with arms full of groceries will ask you to buy them food (because you’re white). I needed a belt terribly, because my old one broke. I’ve lost weight here, so I spent all weekend hobbling around, hiking up my pants. I told a bunch of street kids to go find me one (a totally normal thing to do here) and I gave them a tip (not as normal). Then, in the market, I told them to get me some bell peppers. They brought me a crappy one, so I sent them to get another. I stupidly gave them the money before hand, and they didn’t come back. Fuckers.

My buzz ended, I returned and started cooking. In earlier conversation, Alena mentioned that every time people came to her house they watched movies on the projector, because they can’t do stuff like that at their sites. She said she has games and cards and no one ever uses them. That night, I made a bit of a point (but also because I really wanted to since I hadn’t played it in a long time) of playing rummy. I love rummy. I learned to play it in Ireland and we played it there all the time. Andrew and Alena are also fans. Amanda, who had arrived at that point (the PCVs were all going to a training session soon) slept. She could sleep through a riot, I swear. Well, I suppose not, at one point she woke up when I was yelling about the cards. It was one of the most fun nights I’ve had here. It certainly beats almost getting beaten up by a bunch of knackers******. So, for the past couple months, about three different places in the village have been blasting loud music at an absurd volume from about 7:30 in the morning to about 1:00 or 2:00 at night. It’s horrible. Most people don’t live near it. Except for us. It sucks. A lot. I swear, they think that speakers are supposed to crackle because they always play it at a volume that threatens to make the tube explode. At any rate, we finished our good wholesome fun and went to bed (a far cry from what my good friend Dano calls “whiskey day” back home). At that point, just as I lay down to go to a nice silent bed, Alena’s neighbor, who I hate hate hate, started blasting Celine Dion*******. I thought about the whole constant sensory bombardment associated with the modern world, and I told Andrew, “you know, maybe I’m a Luddite.”

So, I suppose here, since I have so much time to think, I’ve really though about our holidays and how we choose to spend them. I suppose one positive here, I’ve learned a lot about what I value. Not the things, ideas, or issues I value, I already knew that, but more like the “why, how, because of, in what way.” I dunno, this whole time writing this I wanted to work in the Get-up kids song “Holiday,” but I wasn’t able. I guess I just did. Maybe I can see you on holidays. Worlds away. I’ll never forget all our yesterdays. Lucky if I see you on holidays. Holidays, holidays.

* I remember when I lived in Ireland I was fairly embarrassed to be American. Here, I’m like (in Kiswahili), “hell no, I’m not European, I’m American. My father is American, my mother is American, my grandfather is American, my Grandmother is American, I’m and American*. It’s like saying, ‘oh you’re an African, you must be from Kenya.’” They usually respond “hell no, I’m from Tanzanian!” To that, I respond, “Yeah, well, I’m from America!” I don’t know if I have ever picked sides like that. I mean, yeah, Europeans and Americans have similar cultures, but they are far from the same. I mean many Americans have never been to Europe. I think a lot about the PC lingo Americans use, for example, “African-American.” I mean, one might say “what? African-American? Are you saying that because my skin is black? I’ve never been to Africa, I’m American.” And it’s true. They have this “Obama conga.” A conga is an element of traditional native dress, that uses pictures to show pictorially show something about them and they use them for everything, carrying children, water on their head, other stuff, or as a dress. If a conga has numbers, for example, it means the woman is educated. Anyway, so I had a conversation about this with a short term Austrian volunteer where I mentioned “the conga with a picture of Obama and two pictures of the continent of Africa is hilarious (unless you’re a wacko tea-bagger or something).” She often talked about (what I perceived as) her mostly academic knowledge of Africa. Never mind that I spoke much more Swahili, but whatever. Not only did she start to talk about how Africans (as a whole, mind you, not just Tanzanians) thought of Obama as an African, but she went further to basically say that Americans did too. Hell no, don’t lecture me about my own culture when you have never been to my country. I think the conga is hilarious, and I sure as hell think just about any American I might talk to would think the same, including Neo-Cons or Obama himself. The dude is American. Unless you are one of those psychos who patrols the Rio Grande with a shotgun, that is.

*** I hate defining someone based upon who they are/were/are dating, whatever, because it makes it seem I can’t appreciate them as separate entities (which I do). At that finite point in time, I knew them as together, so if I write about them the same way.

**** By the way, we made burritos at my request and it made me incredibly happy

***** Which, by the way, has been the only whiskey I have been able to drink in almost 7 months. Sigh.

****** See earlier blogs for reference.

******* It’s not just this incident, I really can’t stand the guy. He’s a teacher at Songea girls. I’ve met him like 4 times, and by the second he acted like I was his best friend he had not seen for years. I assume he is trying to butter me up so that I can find him a university in America or Europe (it doesn’t matter which) he can go to. I remember one time, he greeted Andrew and I when we were at Songea Girls, and he kept slapping my hands to emphasis his happiness. I had long, deep cuts in my hand from falling the night before. It hurt like hell and I was ready to punch him. So, yeah, this dude sucks.

Desemba ni Shagalabagala Part 1

2010-01-18T10:28:00.000-08:00

Shagalabagala is a Kiswahili word that etymologically stems from Arabic. It translates to “disorderly,” but I’d like to think the meaning is closer to “shit show,” or “utter chaos.” I spent a large portion of the month bored out of my skull because our students are on Christmas break. I had to get the hell out of dodge. In my time here I have become, what I would like to refer to as, a total square. I wake up around 6:30-7:30 most days, I have breakfast, do some yoga (this is probably the most comical part), shower daily (though this hasn’t been true recently), drink only once a week or so and seldom become intoxicated (this also has not been true recently), most of my friends are monks, I usually dress well and am quite clean (it’s a very cultural thing, dressing like crap or being dirty is culturally insulting), go to bed early, I avoid all but platonic interaction with females, and I’m a teacher and a respectable member of my village (VILLAGE! I mean, I live in a sleepy hamlet for Christ’s sake). I also go to prayer like 3 times a week. Needless to say, this existence without the business of teaching, it would all make me go insane (especially the terrible food). It is a good thing Andrew and I planned a pretty chucky-jam-full holiday season. Things soon changed.

Steph, whom Andrew is dating, and Nick, who is Steph’s brother, both came to Tanzania for Christmas. This was awesome needless to say. We met them in Dar Es Salaam. I must say Bongo* is a completely different creature now that I have been living here for some time (see first Tz blog for reference). The bus ride was still long and relatively awful, but it was substantially nicer being able to order food and get the correct price etc. We didn’t see quite as many animals as last time (we drove through the national park at the hottest part of the day) but at one point we had a really nice conversation with an English teacher who was visiting his son for the holidays (things like that make all the difference). We spent the first couple days in Dar Kupumzika**. Some of the monks and other people who work at the hostel were kushangaa*** to see our advance in speaking Kiswahili. Also, quite lovely, the abbey operates a guest house in Dar, meaning we did not have to pay to stay there. Hanga, and the majority of the Ruvumva district, sits at a pretty high elevation and therefore is relatively cool. Dar at sea level was purely miserable. It was like living in Atlanta again, but without cooling systems built with modern means or architectural responses to the heat. Because of this, I slept in a pool of my own sweat. Did I also mention that I am not, in fact, an African?

Though resting in a different setting was quite wonderful, a few factors in our stay made it all substantially more enjoyable. For example, we have good friends who live in Dar (they student taught at Hanga). We met with Riehner, who, I have found out, spells his name with the Tz spelling of the German name, Rainery. For a refresher, he is a postulate at Hanga monastery and in the last year of finishing his degree at University of Dar Es Salaam. We met with him one of our first days, and we took the daladala to his on-campus housing. A daladala basically is a passenger van. In the country it refers to any van that transports goods or people, in the city it refers purely to a city bus. Most of these very public transit vehicles produce in Japan in the 70’s and 80’s. With Rainery, we got a couple beers and some kitimoto (pork) at a pub near campus. I soon discovered most of the desire to eat flavorless, crappy food mostly relegates itself to the southern part of Tz and not the entire country. It was roasted pork (nyama choma), but it came surrounded by a sauce that was a mixture of different peppers, tomatoes, onions, and garlic. Keep in mind the last time I ate kitimoto with Rainery was in Songea where there was only a pile of salt and some spicy peppers. It was laid back. We saw where our friend lived and went to a really great local watering hole. My stay in Dar especially has confirmed my idea that I never want to travel a place where I don’t either A. speak the language moderately well, or B. Have a friend who lives there. We went to only places locals went, did not get ripped of by taxis like the innumerable tourists, and did not have to walk around with a secret service-like honor guard of tour guides.

By the time we took the daladala back it was well past dusk. This was my first experience with public transport in a developing nation during rush hour. The hostel lay some distance away from the UDar (I just made that up) dorms so we had to hop a couple connecting Dalas****. This was insane. Each bus contained bodies contorted and pressed in unnatural ways. The buses read something to the effect of “maximum capacity” 35. Each held at least 50 people. When transferring busses we needed to push and budge, almost fight our way off. Being a giant American has some advantage in this. Getting back on is more intense. Many people vie for a spot, and when you want on your transfer bus, you commonly need to, quite literally, jump onto a moving bus that has every nook and cranny filled with human bio-mass. I’m not sure if I’m doing it justice. I’ve done my share of getting on crazy, crowded public trans, but none of it prepared me for this. And I did not know how swiftly I would have to adapt to more.

The next day, Andrew and I met with some of our other Tanzanian friends Upendo and Stimus (both past student teachers at Hanga). We started by just getting some soda and beer. It made Andrew and I both really happy to see both how much our Kiswahili had improved, and how much our friends noticed it. We took the dala to kaliakoo, or one of the central markets in Dar. When you live in a small town of village in Tanzania you must conform to a much different set of criteria than Dar. Dar is much like a big cosmopolitan city anywhere. You don’t have to greet someone every 15 seconds, and nobody cares how you dress (at least the won’t really care if you look like crap, but they will notice if you look savvy). For example, Upendo, who had given me crap for not rolling my sleeves down in Hanga, said something to the effect of “this is not a village, do whatever you want.” She, too, had transformed from looking like another country teacher (she dressed for the situation) to a fashionable city girl, obviously at home, the opposite of someone hot-shit in a rural Nodak high school that moves to the big city and struggles to be as cool. The market itself was dumbfounding. Small stores sold also sorts of clothing, and people pushed themselves into every available space. We saw as much hip-hop video wear as we saw congas and other traditional dress. At this point, I decided I wanted to find a replacement for my paddy cap, which I lost last winter. I didn’t find a suitable one (most were too hot or something tacky like a leather scally cap). I’ve decided before I go back to the States I’m going to get some clothes in Dar for job interviews and stuff. Though very expensive by shamba***** Tz standards, you can get dress shirt that costs $80 or something in the States for like 35,000 shillings (like 30 bucks).

Though I absolutely loved hang out with our Tz friends, doing whatever in particularly struck our fancy. You see we live under constant supervision with a bunch of folks who often times think we needed to be treated with kid gloves. At times the monks treat us like children lost in the forest. Never mind that I’ve been or lived many places more dangerous than anywhere in Tanzanian******. Also, living in the village, we are the talk of the town, and people notice our every move. It was really nice to be anonymous again. I didn’t have to meet hundreds of expectations. I could wear shorts without a nun telling me I’m not dressed up enough. I could go places without twenty people asking about my intentions. Andrew and I could be apart without getting asked where the other is by every person we encounter. I could swear and curse. I could do what I wanted. I also discovered that my village Kiswahili is much better than my city Kiswahili. Vocabulary like farming implements and jokes about bats hold little value in Bongo. Room for growth, I guess. And, we could decide for ourselves what food we ate.

So needless to say, the food has been getting to us. Andrew has lost almost 20 lbs (a large part of this has to do with our constricted meal times, his small stomach, and incredibly fast metabolism). I have lost weight too, but partially because I inhale beans every meal and, when we eat meat, I’m able to eat cartilage, connective tissue, pick bone bits out of my teeth, etc. I get more protein and I have lost less good weight than he. Being that I am a total foodie, the effect on me is more morale based than anything else. You see, we can’t really cook for ourselves very often, and when we do it’s sort of a production. So, one of the nights we struck out to go to a really good restaurant. Many of our Peace Corp friends recommended this Ethiopian place to us (also, by Tz standards, absurdly expensive). We invited our fellow volunteer, Catherine (a retired professor who takes a very motherly stance toward us) and her son and his wife who were visiting to join us. One of the brothers sent us a really strange text asking us directions to the place. It was really weird because it was almost as though he (the monk) was trying to take over the plans that we had originally thought of. Long story short, they weren’t going to meet us. Sort of the whole point was to get to meet some of Catherine’s family and spend a night relaxing, so we decided to save it for another day (note: when Andrew went back to Dar, around new years, they went to the restaurant, and evidently it was amazing). So, because of the new developments Andrew and I just took the Dalla downtown to find some place to eat. We thought we would just end up getting chipsi kuku or something********. Walking down the street, as women, who were clearly prostitutes, walked past us, wwe smelled/spyed a sign in Chinese. There is a large Chinese ex-pat/guest community in Dar because of the economic interaction between China and East Africa. We thought, okey, we gotta check this out. And so we did. It was a Chinese restaurant. When the waiter came to us, we asked him in Kiswahili if they had ugali. Ugali is the staple food in Tanzania. It is complete ubiquitous. I dunno if I have described it before, but it’s like corn meal porridge, but more fine, less liquidy, made with white corn, and tastes completely like a piece of cardboard that sits in a congealed lump in your mouth********. So, the waiter though it was hilarious. The also had whiskey. At this point, I had not consumed whiskey for almost 4 months. There was a bare, gaping, porous, pathetically sputtering part in my heart where no bourbon, Tennessee whiskey, Irish whiskey, Scotch whisky, or, hell, even Japanese whisky had not touched. Nothing comparable to even McMasters or Black Velvet. Nothing. I repeat again for emphasis, Nothing. Nothing. Andrew ordered a single neat. I ordered a double. They had Jameson, but they were out of it. I ordered Teachers because it was cheapest. When the food came, I learned something. So, there is authentic food and then there is the food adapted to the market of another culture. I uphold that, though certainly not authentic, Americanized Chinese food is the “ized” food in the world. Europeanized Chinese food simply is not as good. Tz Chinese food bore more resemblance to the European version. I did not care. It was food without too much salt and bad cooking oil as the only flavorings. It was wonderful. We spent about 1/5 of our month stipend on that meal (like a king’s ransom), but we didn’t care. For a long time I felt a great deal of guilt about blowing money on things like booze or really good food when people are malnourished, etc. Now I totally don’t feel bad about the occasional extravagance (note, not a lifestyle of it). Hell, if one stupidly expensive meal allows me to hang on and actually work my ass off for things I believe in, so be it. Guilt doesn’t do anyone any good. No one is Superman. And on a side-note, we notice while we were there, all the tourists and ex-pats ate wonderful, flavor-filled Chinese food. All the Africans ate chips kuku.

We walked out, completely full from the absurd amount of food we had consumed. We were not entirely sure where and when the dalla left to where we were going, or if they still ran at night. So, we walked in the general direction. It was dark, and rather sketchy, but we felt comfortable, in our element, and euphorically satisfied (and it wasn’t in the super sketchy part of town). In some pathetic attempt to trump the liability of our skin color, if a person of dubious-looking repute walked by, we started to speak in Kiswahili, as if we had not learned that people here did not often distinguish between rich-ass tourists and busted-ass volunteers. So, after the, quite possibly, sketchiest stretch I have ever walked, we made it to the bus stop. The moment we notice a dalla going our direction we hopped on it. Because we went a pretty dang direct route it was neither overly complicated not overly crowded (like 40 passengers instead of 55).

And thus, Andrew and I entered onto the dalladalla. The konda or konducta told us we needed to pay 1000 shillings. The price was 250, clearly printed on the side of the van. Keep in mind this entire conversation took place in Kiswahili, but I will translate (though I think the story is better in my broken Kiswahili). So, at first we realized that he was lying to us in an effort to steal from us. We asked him if it was true, and he said “absolutely.” We replied that he was, in fact, a liar. He then told us that it was a special night price. We refused to pay, and then observed him take the normal fare from other passengers. So, at this point I must admit our mistake. We only had 5000 shillings after going to the restaurant, and if we had made sure to have exact change, it wouldn’t have been as much of an ordeal. He came back to us and I said, “brother, the total is 500 shillings, okay?” At that point he started trying to argue with me in English rattling off random numbers. Getting increasingly more frustrated, I yelled “no, speak in Kiswahili.” At this point the rest of the passengers took notice. Before, they maybe thought that he was just ripping off some tourists going slumming, but, instead, they realized that we spoke a decent amount of their language. They were completely shocked and awed. I’m sure the thought process went as such: yes, they are wazungu, but they speak Kiswahili, and this guy is a thief. He soon replied with something to the effect of “I know I am ripping you off, but it doesn’t matter because you are white people.” A few people laughed. Angrier than I just about have ever been, I, a giant in his eyes because of proper childhood nutrition and pre-natal care, put my face almost next to his and said, “Kaka, Fuck You, je umenielewa?” This translates to, “brother, fuck you, do you understand me?” I don’t think he dared to blink. So, Kiswahili doesn’t have a whole lot in the way of swear words, so what I said meant exactly the same thing it does in English, except it was harsher. In other words, he thought I was about to kick his ass. Frankly, I almost was. I moved away, fuming, but content with the level of thorough humiliation I brought upon this slimy motherfucker, the other passengers began to treat us in an extremely friendly fashion, offering us seats, helping us find our stops, etc. So, let me admit, I don’t speak Kiswahili that well, but I knew a few words from making jokes that related really well to the situation. I talked to the guy next to me (and I am employing the direct translation using Kiswahili phraseology and everything). “That one, he is like a pirate, he is like a bandit.” Everyone else was not only rolling in laughter at this guy’s expense (and not mine, for a blissful change), but they also thought we spoke substantially more Kiswahili than we actually do.

I got off, barely able to contain my excitement. That guy was not going to fuck with another white person just because they were white any time soon. I said to Andrew “let’s get a beer.” I was karibu na cloudi ninei (I just made that up, it’s not something people say). We drank a beer and I got a sausage (most Tanzanian sausage is like a hot dog, funny because here it is a status food, where in the States or Europe, sausage originated as a poor person’s food). The konda did rip me off by about 500 shillings, (about 40 cents), but I didn’t care, it was a small price to pay for the most dignity I held based solely on my actions and nothing else for a damn long time. Did I mention I’ve become much more assertive here? I mean, I’m not sure I could have done that in the States. I got myself in a potentially dangerous situation because some jerk tried to rip us off less than a dollar each. I didn’t care. I’ve decided, sometimes you simply need to demand respect. I think one of the most valuable things I have learned here is how to become a person you don’t want to fuck with. I have subsequently told this story to many Tanzanians, most of them have found it hilarious, and shocking that I didn’t pay the full mzungu price. I mean, kondas will rip Tanzanians off too. I also tell the story with one of my favorite phrases in Kiswahili, which translates to “I have not become such a fool.” As I said, for the rest of the night, nothing could touch me. The next day did not quite go the same way, but I cannot say I have any real complaints.

Steph and Nick arrived the next morning. After we had gotten situated, Andrew and Steph went to the tailor with our friend Upendo, Nick and I got a couple beers and played some pool. Operating on Tz time, we all ran late. We had planed to go to Zanzibar that day, though we missed the ferry by about 15 minutes. This was probably for the best because Stephanie and Nick got a chance to recover from some of their travel weariness. Our day in Zanzi would have to wait. But when it came, it came with a vengeance. So instead we rested, got another beer or two etc.

We showed up to the ferry well early the next day. Waiting in line was rather uneventful. One guy who worked there walked up and down yelling in Kiswahili. All he really did was ask people to form a path between two lines. If he had that job, he definitely could speak English, and he was obviously just trying to scare the shit out of tourists. When we got to the boat itself, we notice that almost all the tourists paid the extra price (like 20 bucks) to get seats in the more comfortable upstairs. I simply snuck up. Most of the ferry ride, Nick and I spent on the aft-deck getting covered by salt. At one point some people took a picture with us. They didn’t even really speak to us, not knowing that I could speak Kiswahili (and, to be fair, I don’t know if they did either). I could just see the thought process: do we get a picture of the beautiful seascape? Oh look, let’s get a picture with the white folk. Whatever, I thought it was funny. We had arranged to meet with a guy Rainery knew who would show us around. We were filling out our immigration tickets when we called the guy and he found us. He came up and said some to the effect of “man, you’re residents you don’t need to fill that shit out, let’s bounce.” Wait, wha? He not only knew American slang, but that bit of American slang. I thought to myself, “this is going to be ridiculous.” Little did I know. We walked to a car where a friend of his waited for us. Later Andrew said he felt like he was in Jamaica (an he’s been to Jamaica). These guys looked, for lack of a better description, fucking cool. Like the dudes people at festivals in the States are trying to emulate. One had Tz flag bracelets and bent spoons up his arm. The other had sort of baby dreads and I think a sweat band. One almost looked like a member of the Nigerian band that everybody loves here called “P Square.” Neither wore shoes.

We walked straight past where tourist gathered and ate and went to a local spot. “we’re gonna show you a real Zanzibar breakfast.” And it was delicious. The folks in the hole in the wall restaurant liked us immediately when we started speaking in Kiswahili. I’m sure they found it refreshing to hear foreigners speaking their native tongue in one of the tourist capitals of Africa. We all made fun of the lack of spice in mainland food. We ordered, chabatie, spinach, and beans. This was much more delicious than you might think. Chabatie is a sort of flat bread, when I’ve eaten it in Hanga, it’s way too sweet, and they make with too many eggs, so it almost has a scrambled eggish texture. The stuff in Zanzi was slightly salty, but not overly so, and had a texture somewhere between nan bread and a tortilla. The spinach was creamed with coconut and onion, and the beans slightly spiced. So in Kiswahili, chai means tea, but all they have is black tea. When the tea came it was the wonderful spice chai that we think of when we hear the word. I topped it all of with a really good, spicy chili sauce. Keep in mind that the chili sauce in the rest of the country lists the first two ingredients as tomato puree and salt, and does not have actual chilies in it, but chili powder. I’m going to digress. I have been numerous times been called a drunkard in Kiswahili, but eating spicy peppers or chili sauce. Not just these guys, but nuns, villagers, etc. I have a theory that this is because people only use chili sauce when they eat kitimoto. The only time people eat kitimoto is when they are getting stupid drunk on pombe. This time, I didn’t deny it has vigorously as I usually do when I am with monks or students. It was kind of nice to be in a situation where an ability to throw down is not a bad thing.

We left the place and our two new friends (okey, so I totally forgot their names), and they lit what must have been their 3^rd or 4^th cigarette of the day. Keep in mind that is was like 9 in the morning. I sat outside with them when Andrew paid for breakfast, (probably less than a quarter of what any tourist paid that day ). They asked us what we wanted to do. We said, “yeah, all we want is to chill on a beach and eat some good food.” We hopped in our ride and they started to drive us toward their village. The whole time we just laughed our asses of, these guys were a riot. We rolled up to the petrol station to get some gas. While waiting, one of the two hollaed at some guy asking if he had some weed, it was slang laden, so I didn’t really understand it, but I got the jist based on the context. We paid for the gas, and filled up the tank. It was expensive, like 30 or 40 dollars American (we paid for gas on the way back too), but heck that’s what I would have done for a friend showing me around in the States, and they had taken most of the day off to show us around. They began to tell us more about Zanzi. The island has had a bad taste in its mouth since it joined with the mainland country of Tanzanika to form Tanzania. They talked about how the mainland just leached the wealth of Zanzi without solving their problems, for example, they had been without electricity for about two weeks. “This ain’t no government, man, it’s just a bunch of ganj smokers.” I told them the dalladalla story in Kiswahili and they thought it was hilarious. They started call me this slang word for big and strong. I really wish I remembered more the slang they taught me, nguvu means strong normally, but the new word was cooler. “No, man, we have to give you a Zanzibar nickname.” We drove along at a super fast speed. I commented about how crazy motorcycle drivers, or pikipiki are. One guy said something like “man, they just like to pretend to drive crazy, shit, when I drive piki, I like to pretend also.” These guys were fucking crazy. The kept saying ridiculous shit like “man you just wait till you see what we do with these soulja-boys, you gonna laugh so hard.” I would soon find out exactly what that meant.

We drove up to the first checkpoint along the road. The cop flagged us down. My friend in the driver’s seat turned to me and said in Kiswahili “I don’t want him to see my eyes,” as he pulled his sun glasses onto the bridge of his nose. He actually pulled us over voluntarily, just so we could fuck with the cops. He saw the white people in the car, but then we greeted him in Kiswahili. He then asked us for 5000 shillings. I said, “no, why, I’m a resident.” I proceeded to pull out my passport, and our friend driving told me to put it away, turned to the cop and yelled, “hey, fuck you, man,” slammed the transmission into gear and burned out speeding off. I was half torn between thinking, “I am in a car full of mad men, I am going to die,” and fits of laughter. We soon stopped at a fruit stand to get some of the best mangos I’ve ever had. We stopped at two more checkpoints, and they kept saying stuff like, “hey man, you handle the next one, fucking soulja-boys, this ain’t no government, it’s just a bunch of ganja smokers.” I soon found out that we were, in fact, doing something illegal, (besides the aqualung full of weed these guys had probably consumed). Andrew and I were fine, because we are residents, but technically those guys needed a special permit to drive people with a tourist permit. They explained that if the cops weren’t rude assholes, then sometimes they would bribe them, but usually they just drove off. The cops weren’t exactly going to arrest them or anything, they were breaking the law themselves.

We arrived at the beach still trying to figure out how Rainery met these crazy bastards**********. While at the beach white guy with a gut and dreads walked by and they yelled “hey, Rasta.” The guy just sort of looked at us, mumbled something unintelligible and walked a way, probably frightened. We laughed so hard. So, I know that it’s lame to turn around and laugh at someone when I am (for once) not the one getting made fun of. But, screw it, it’s chumps like that who create the attitude towards white folks that gives me hell everyday. Besides, I didn’t ever go as far as to make a Jack Johnson joke or something. Have I ever mentioned that I hate “trustafarians” and jam music with a burning passion?

We found a spot on the beach to put our stuff and Nick and I started walking out first. A bunch of kids were running around and they yelled in Kiswahili something to the effect of “look at the Europeans, they can’t speak Kiswahili, only European language.” I whipped around and yell in Kiswahili “I am able to speak Kiswahili, and I’m not European, I’m American.” They asked my name, some younger kids near by began to play with me. Did I mention that I love not being a fanny pack toting, Bermuda shorts wearing jackass with a large bank account? Well, maybe not being broke as shit all the time would be nice… We walked further out onto the beach, it was extremely low tide so we never actually made it out the surf. At one point we saw some guys hacking up a giant stingray that had washed up on shore. We kept walking avoiding the pressing danger of an unruly number of urchins and playing with starfish. We just walked out and kicked it. I knew Steph from college, but I had never met Nick before, so it was good to get the chance to get to know him better. I think the funniest part of our conversation happened when I mentioned it would me nice for a woman to be interested in me for something other than American citizenship. Nick responded, “yeah, I was going to ask you about that, how is it?” “Fucking terrible,” I responded. I soon got a couple nasty cuts on my water soften feet by bits of coral.

We soon realized that we had walked really far out and we were starting to feel sunburnt. Really sunburnt. That is because we were. Really sunburnt. We got back, and gave Andrew and Steph their chance to walk on the beach. Nick lay down to rest and I went to go get soda or beer. Our friends had told us that everything is more expensive on the island and even locals get the island price. I walked around hobbling in pain looking for an affordable beer or soda. I walked by several tourist traps, including on at which our Rasta friend was sitting eating at a joint that charged two or three times the local price. Vindication is sweet. I continued on, to another place where two women advertise a “Swedish Massage.” They asked me if I wanted to them, and I told them that I was very sunburnt. What I said translates directly to, “I am not able, my body is burnt/roasted because the sun is fierce.” Luckily I just happened to say it correctly, even though I didn’t really know how. They laughed, and I doubt they were completely familiar with the concept. I went into the nearby hotel to enquire about the price of beer and soda. The people who worked there told me the price and I commented on how expensive it was. We then proceeded to make fun of the tourists for getting horribly over charged. Whatever, they couldn’t understand a word of it. Further, anyone who could have understood, say, a volunteer or broke student, wouldn’t be eating such over-priced food. We all laughed pretty hard, and the tourists looked rather shocked to see me speaking the local tongue. On the way back, I greeted locals and not tourists. If I did greet tourists they sort of scowled at me with a look that clearly said “why the hell are you bothering me on my holiday, you stupid American.” Plus, with the locals, it’s the culture to greet everyone. I think it made them happy that I was able to do it properly to boot.

When I returned, I bought some soda at the place our friend dropped us off had, which turned out to be the only place with local price in the area. When Andrew and Steph returned, our buddy had arranged for one of his friends cook us a big lunch. We were going to have this black snapper fish that sounded delicious, but because the refrigerators were out of commission, and they hadn’t gone to the fish market that day, we had chicken instead. Each got a bowl of wonderful chicken in coconut milk curry and a pile of steaming flatbread. It was probably the best food I’ve had in country. We finished and we had to race back to catch our return ferry. We didn’t have time to mess around with the cops our second time around, so we hunkered down and hid behind tinted windows. We got back with plenty of time to spare, and, in one piece. We said goodbye to our new mental ward escapee friends and got in line. The line pretty much sucked because of the sunburn. On the way back, I expected a shitty, low budget, Tanzanian in-boat movie. I was mistaken. Instead they played “Hard Target,” a John Woo movie starring Jean Claude Van Dam. Shear absurdity and gratuitous violence. Any movie is an enjoyable movie here. I was happy.

Back at the hostel, a whole bunch of German tourists had arrived. It was really frustrating because they took over the place, without consideration for us. A couple of them were really nice and I had some conversations with them, but the rest stood aloof and snobbish. For example, we had to go somewhere else to hang out with Rainery because there wasn’t any tourist-free space for us to go. After dinner one night, I cleaned up with the monks and nuns, and the tourists didn’t so much as thank me, or the other people for that matter. I do so love it when important people display exactly how important they are. I would rather be around a bunch of wasted drunk and loud Tanzanians who ask me for shit. So we went back to the Kilwa Road pub instead of staying.

We soon departed back to Hanga. This was the most miserable bus ride I have experienced in my life. 14 hours on a bumpy bus with one of the worst sunburns I’ve ever had and dehydration, with shitty Tz movies playing loudly is not exactly my ideal way to spend a day. I suppose I did get to see every single P-square music video in existence. My taste in music is really going down the shitter. We did not arrive in Songea until, like 8 at night and we woke up to get to the bus station at 4 A.M. We spent the night at this hotel, the Angoni Arms, operated by a guy we know named John. He hooked a bunch of us volunteers up for a party we attended in October, and I’ve seen him a few times since. He always gives us a 5000-shilling discount, which is really cool. We ate there, got a beer, and I got to watch American T.V. I never thought I would be that excited to see American T.V., but to be fair, it was stuff like The Simpsons and The X-Files.

The next day after breakfast, I had a short conversation with John. I had originally thought that he gave us volunteers a deal because he’s a cool guy and it made economic sense for him to do so. It turns out, he grew up in a really shamba village where they didn’t have enough teachers at his school. He learned English because of a Peace Corps volunteer that came to his village. It’s stories like that keep me hanging on through the shittiest of moments here. I said goodbye to the rest of the gang. They were all going back to Hanga for Christmas, where the same sucky-ass German tourists we dealt with in Dar where also going. I instead met some other volunteers in a friend’s village. In some ways, I feel bad because I didn’t kick it in Hanga for Christmas, but really, I had a much more enjoyable time.

Continued in part 2.

*Bongo is Tz slang for Dar Es Salaam.

** It means resting. It’s one of my favorite verbs in Kiswahili. It captures the concept much better than resting or relaxing.

*** Kushangaa means essentially “shock and awe” or “surprise,” the word definitely comes from Arabic (like 35% of Kiswahili). It makes me think whichever government PR type that came up with “shock and awe” in the Gulf War must be both a linguistic genius and the worst sort of person.

**** So, this is a really fun habit I have picked up from some of my Peace Corps friends. I often Anglicize Kiswahili words.

***** Shamba means “field” or “farm” in Kiswahili, though it also refers to someone or something that is country (country as in bumpkin).

******* I don’t remember the exact statistic, but Tanzania is like 50 countries ahead of the United States on the safest countries list. Though, to be fair, there are some extremely sketch areas of Dar at night even for locals.

******** Chips Kuku means chicken and chips (the U.K. kind).

********* You know when you eat “Cream of Wheat,” and sometimes there are those nasty lumps? Well, it’s like that, but the whole thing is like that.

********** I mean, Rainey is a straight-laced, legit guy. He’s a teacher is going to become a monk. I later found out he and Paul, a past volunteer with BVC who stayed in Tanzania for three years, randomly met the guy when they were leading a group around.

In Which Our Hero Receives a Timbaland

2010-01-18T10:08:00.000-08:00

I shaved at the beginning of December, and did not trim my beard in any regular fashion until nearly the end of the month. Because long hair of any sort is most certainly not the norm here, I found people rather aghast at my appearance. Many people said I looked Osama Bin Laden. I did not, if fact, look so. I looked far more similar to Grizzly Adams or Paul Andersen. After about two or three weeks of comments about my ndevu, I eventually trimmed it (to be fair the bastard was terribly long). So the other night, I was at a store and the dude who runs the salooni (salon) struck a conversation with me and offered me a cigarette. Keep in mind, that cigarettes are not cheap here, and I was flabbergasted, because this was the first time that someone offered me a cigarette instead of pestering me for one*. Then he said, tuende salooni or, “let’s go to the salon.” I though “yeah, I might as well.” And so, This is the first time I’ve been able to communicate adequately how I want my hair to look. I told him I did not want my hair cut, but I wanted the beard trimmed, “Kama Timbaland.” Allow me to explain. When people said I had a beard like an old man or like a lion, or some other banal comment, I would reply “ah ah, kama Timbaland**.” You see, people here refer to a chin-strap as a “Timbaland.” In other words, in order to conform to Tanzanian standards I asked him to give me a chin-strap. I must also add, that African hair is more course, curly, and thick than follicle extrusions of the Caucasian persuasion. Every time I’ve had my beard shaved here he vigorously rubs the electric razor to my face, not quite drawing blood, but not far from it. Upon completion of my beard trim synonymous with college students who frequently lift heavy things, brag about the size of the heavy things they can lift, disrespect women, and then major in management, he began to trim my hair. Around the ears and cleaning up the back, fine, I needed done, but then he began to cut my bangs. He then combed my hair down flat and fashioned the hair into a straight line. Most Africans do not have a widow’s peak, and I have one that is very Slavic and Bella Lugosi-esqe. He summarily buzzed it off, though the hair directly above it is about a centimeter long. With the hair pushed down, I looked very similar to a medieval monk without a tonsure. It looks fine when I pushed up my hair, held in place by natural oils left by a lack of washing. A lack of washing caused by hygienic lethargy brought on by cold rainy weather and a lack of hot shower water. However, it is bordering on a very short Rockabilly pompadour. At this point I must consider a search for paten leather shoes, Reverend Horton Heat or Dick Dale records, and a Rickenbacher bass guitar. It actually does look pretty good. I’m not sure if an educated African who studied in America, let alone an African villager, would be able make these sorts of cultural comments in insult form. I am waiting patiently to see what people say about my hair. But for now, I am content to look like Timbaland and not Rutherford B. Hayes.

Oh, and P.S. there is a knockoff brand of Timberlands here called "Simbaland." I must buy a pair.

* I blame the European tourists who smoke like chimneys and still think that smoker’s code still applies here.

**”ah ah” is the Kiswahili equivalent of “uh uh”.

Mzungu

2010-01-01T23:48:00.000-08:00

Mzungu.
At first, this was, by far, the most difficult part about being here.

Now, I think it’s probably the food, but, every once and a while it stings. “Mzungu, give me money, mzungu naomba fedha, mzungu, pipi, mzungu, pictua!”

So, you know when you are at a zoo there is that sign that reads “do not feed the animals,” right? Well, I feel like I have a sign rapped around my neck that reads, “the animals dispense candy and cell phones.” In other words I get asked for money or objects every single day I am here in Hanga. Every day. Money, candy, cell phones, cameras, pictures, scholarships, etc. Every Day. And people stare at me. And people laugh at me. Every day. Hell, I’ve even had people sort of pet my hair because if feels different. Because I’m white. Mzungu, means “European,” but it is basically synonymous with “white person.” This whole matter that makes my life hell every days is pretty damn complicated. You see, it’s not exactly racism. Indeed, sometimes, mzungu is a compliment because it means you are rich and educated. You see every white person these people have ever seen are wealthy tourists, educated volunteers, or representations of Jesus*. It doesn’t really connect that poor white people aren’t able to travel to Africa. People often refer to you as mzungu, even when they know your name. Coming from a country with some of the worst race relations in the world, being referred to by your race is pretty damn awful. But it’s not always really racism, that’s not exactly correct. There have been only a few times where I have been actually discriminated against because of my skin color, but it’s not usual. Technically my heritage comes from Europe, so in the Kiswahili mentality, I’m European. By the same token and an African American would be called African even though we are both American. I mean a pretty fair number of white Americans who come here have never been to Europe. Again to them, it’s not an insult, it’s only insulting to us. It is not just children requesting novelties. I have been asked by multiple teachers if I could finance their masters degree. It’s like “bitch, finance my masters degree.” A mama* who runs a store asked me if I would buy her cell phone credit. “No, I will not finance your status symbol.” I’ve had monks ask me to set up scholarships, hell, I even had one monk ask me for a laptop (keep in mind this is not normal). In Kiswahili they call a spade a spade. At first I found it all utterly confounding.

It was not until I visited a village a friend who is in the Peace Corps works in. No one yelled mzungu, no one yelled requests. Everyone greeted me properly and I greeted them back properly. In this culture respect for elders is paramount. Then it clicked in my head. The problem is not really with Tanzanian (though it kinda is), it’s with Hanga. Let me explain. I’ve talked to African friends, not just monks, but business people, government officials etc. People who are more poor simply ask people who are more rich for money all the time. In my case, I just happen to have skin that denotes wealth. Also, I came to realize, it’s not appropriate in any culture in the world for children to yell at adults like that. Hanga is different for a reason. It is because of the foreign donations, tourists, and missionaries. I’ve talked to monks here and there have been instances where white nuns have handed out candy, an American monk handed out money, etc. Foreigners have created this culture, combined with the already existing element of asking for stuff all the time. These fuckers come for a week thinking they are saving the world and all they do is reinforce stereotypes. It creates a culture of want, begging, and resent. Terra Preta and education about nutrition and global climate change is going (maybe) to do that.

Since I have embarked on a campaign. I tell children that I have name and it’s not mzungu. They mostly nod, understand, and then go play. I’ve had kids say to other kids “that’s not mzungu, that’s J.J.” It’s mostly the vijana I have troubles with, hell some of the construction workers today joked about the fact I explained it to the kids. Most of the elders are shocked I greet them properly and treat them with respect in Kiswahili. They tell their kids to respect me correctly, make sure I don’t get ripped off with prices etc. The vijana still suck. The only way (aside from kicking their ass, which I don’t want to do morally and because it is a one-way ticket back home), is to publicly embarrass them. If they ask for money, I tell them to get a job, and if it is in front of a mama, it usually does the trick.

Some days it’s still bad, and I get incredibly frustrated. But, fewer and few people are bothering me about it. I’m making my stance firmly clear and a great deal of my ability to do that is through my growing command of Kiswahili. The other night, I celebrated in the village. Some people asked me for money, and the priest I was hanging out with. But, one guy who I had been joking with called me “mbongo” which is slang for Tanzanian. Although, I don’t think my Kiswahili is quite good enough to warrant it, and the dude was really drunk, it’s still pretty nice, to be a friend, and not a piggy bank.

*Hell, the word for God is Mungu, and can’t imagine there isn’t a connection.

** So, they refer to everyone by their familial status. Mama means mother, baba, father, dada, sister, caca, brother, shangazi, aunt, ndugu, brother. But you need to read a bit more in to it. Unless you have children you are not considered an adult (unless you a priest, monk, nun, etc. and even then priests are baba, young nuns are dada, older nuns are mama). Shangazi basically means spinster (with connotations of being sterile) and attaches your status your family’s children.

I guess, that is progress.

2009-12-18T05:37:00.000-08:00

In a place where one cannot drink clean water, have access to sufficient medical care, have much of a chance for any sort of education, or reasonably expect to live past 50, at least, you can still find music that employs auto-tune.

Everything I ever needed to know about Kiswahili I learned from the Lion King.

2009-11-19T22:31:00.000-08:00

So, as I have previously stated, Kiswahili is a ridiculous language. Unlike before, I am actually picking it up very quickly. Many of the first words and phrases I learned I have actually known for years. “Jambo” means hello (even though it is not all that commonly used compared to other greetings). “rafiki” means “friend” and “simba” means “lion.” Timone, Pumba, Nalla, and Scar, unfortunately, mean absolutely nothing. “Hakuna matata” translates to “we have no troubles,” or “there are no troubles.” People actually say this all the time. Children’s movies can have a useful application for life.

As a general consensus, every Tanzanian tells me the learning of Kiswahili holds no difficulty. This is not true. Originally designed as a trade language, learning Kiswahili, certainly gives one less trouble than learning English, say. There are no articles, no strange verb tenses, and everything is spelled phonetically. Okay, that makes it sound easy. However, Kiswahili has 9 different noun classes (though only 5 are ever really used) each with a different prefix and the prefixes change for plural and singular (except when they don’t). For instance, the M-W class contains only humans with the exception of the words for animals (myama) and insects (wadudu). The Ki-Vi class contains only objects and things, except for blind, deaf, or lame people, which also belong in this class. The prefix of the noun matches the prefix of any adjective or adverb you use. For example, “wadudu wengi sana” means “very many bugs” but “ndizi nengi sana” means “very many bananas.” This seems straight forward, except, though many words fit neatly into the various noun classes, many words seem haphazardly thrown in. For example, we find the word “chupa” or bottle, in the “n” class, and not in the “ki-vi” class where we find almost all other words that begin with “ch.”

Over the course of the past century or so, due to the influx of new cultural elements, as well as, the influence of globalization, etc., many new words constantly appear in Kiswahili. Such words as “bia, boksi, chayngi, simu, schule, komputa, shillingi,” and others have been introduced into the language only relatively recently. I use most of those words all the time. They translate to “beer, box, change, cell phone, school, computer, and shilling (the monetary unit here),” respectively. In Kiswahili, (and I suppose they do the same thing in most languages) all borrow words are merely phonetic spellings of their mispronunciation of words from other languages. However, this creates a problem in Kiswahili. I have no idea which noun class any of these words fit into. That means that I have no concept of how to say “a good beer” or “few computers.” I just have no idea how to conjugate the prefixes. Kiswahili, as a language, grows every day at a rapid pace to cope with all the new modern inventions. In the past, they maybe just used an old word and gave it another meaning, for example, “ndege” means both “bird” and “aircraft.” Now, that simply won’t cut it. This wouldn’t be a problem if the governments of Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda, and some other countries held a conference to standardize the language (something not unprecedented). If they do not do this, in, say, one hundred years, the language will become and even more impossible morass of verbiage than English. They need a Kiswahili OED.

Also, problematically, you simply cannot express certain concepts and ideas in Kiswahili. Sometimes this means that people will not understand a joke you make, for example “nitakupika” means “I will cook you.” We made the joke to a friend who helped us learn verbs and he said our grammar was correct, but you do not cook people so it does not make sense. I can imagine this complicates anthropological teaching. I also have no fucking clue how Catholicism spread here given the incredible difficult in explaining things like Transubstantiation or the Trinity. “What? You cannot eat a human let alone a god? What? It is a thing and a person? But things and people are in different noun classes? Does God have some sort of physical deformity?” Kiswahili has no word for fresh. One person explained to me “you see because this is a tropical region, everything is fresh, so we do not have word for it.” I beg to differ. I have seen the large, fly covered piles of dried rotten minnows ya’ll eat (dega). These are certainly not fresh, in fact, they are about as far from fresh something edible can be. Perhaps I made my statement too hastily, for you see, “fresh” or in Kiswahili “freshi” is a word. It means fresh as in the slang term fresh, for those of you how are not hip-hop inclined, fresh as in Fresh Prince of Bel Air. This means that youth all over the country use this word every day, and not only do not know the actual meaning, but also do not even understand the concept behind the word. For another example, if one recalls the “we slept together” incident, you must realize it would never happen in Kiswahili. There is not really a way to say this. It is almost as if they decided “one cannot express this idea because men don’t sleep together, silly goose.” As far as know, Kiswahili has no word for homosexual other than the (I assume) offensive slang term “kitifu*.”

Conditional sentences constitute a major part of English day-to-day use. “If I can, if I am able, could I, may I, if it is possible, etc.” have no real equivalent in the language. As we know, Americans never like to commit to anything, and if one commits to something and does not show up, she or he has just made major faux pa (I am fairly certain I misspelled that). If a person says flat-out no to something, we consider this rude. Not so in Kiswahili. If somebody says they will do something they very well might not do it, or at least take several days or even months**. For us as foreigners, especially, people here constantly ask us to do things, many of which are quite difficult. Luckily, all the many lovely noncommittal things English has to offer can be (sort of, kind of) expressed with the phrase “nitajaribu” or “I will try.” However, for the most part language is really devoid of gray era, which make many things incredibly difficult. It either is or it isn’t. No. The world is filled with viscous-metaphysical-volcanic-ash-cloud–nom-de-plume-Tom-Waits-albums-moral-ambiguity-motherfucker-irony-carnivours-flower-timebomb-vaudvile-act-I-don’t-want-to-but-I-feel-obligated-to-mustard-gas-ham-sandwich-hold-the-mayo-inncorrect-grammar-on-purpose-see-Kurt-Vonnegut-for-refferance-not-just-yes-or-no. Ugh. You can imagine how difficult this makes teaching something like history or physics. “Light is a particle and a wave? Huh?”

Sticking with the black and white simplicity thing, in Kiswahili using the command form does not seem rude to anyone (including when they speak in English). Thus, children on the street often tell me “give me money,” or once, “give me my money” and it does not register as something rude, even though we generally only associate this phrase with pimps. “Trick hit the track and trawl, I want my money.” I try not to take insult, even though the worst crackhead bums in America would never say that and expect a dime. There are sorts of ways to ask for things politely, but, for the most part, you only really use these with “wazee” or old wise people.

Perplexingly, there is not problem with a word having multiple and completely unrelated meanings. For example, nyanya can mean either tomato or grandmother. Moto can mean both fire and hot, that one makes sense. However my favorite has to be kupiga or to beat. When learning a language one generally learns the most useful and common words first. Imagine my chagrin when one of the first verbs I learned was beating. Also, mwongo or liar, was an early one. Keep in mind I speak much better Spanish than Kiswahili and I only learned mienteroso as a joke talking about telenovelas. Beating can mean a variety of things in Kiswahili, you beat someone in a race, you beat an instrument, you beat your cell phone when you want to call someone, or you beat women and children.

In a Kiswahili speaking world, devoid of grey area and hypothetical situations, I think back to the Lion King and its incredible improbability. Animals don’t speak. Timone and Pumba’s interspecies-homoerotic relationship would go either completely unnoticed or they would be hacked to death with machetes. If someone else is king, then you are not king. If somebody says differently they are a liar. If he or she is a liar, you should probably beat them, especially if it is a woman. A more likely scenario involves a bunch of rich, culturally insensitive Italian tourists going on safari and getting ripped off by the locals who proceed to get hammered on pombe in the shamba after a hard day of not work. Children’s movies don’t teach you everything. Hakuna Matata, what a wonderful phrase.

*I learned that one from my students.

** For example, I asked them to make me a bookshelf nearly three months ago. I would have just built my own, but they want standardized ones for the hostel’s look or something. So far, every other volunteer has gotten one (and to be fair they got theirs after 2 months). It does not take three months to make a fucking cabinet. They also miss measured it once, and another time the simply did not write down the measurements.

P.S. The word for “bell pepper” in Kiswahili is pelipeli hoho

A Few Tales of Idiosyncrasy and Shame

2009-11-11T09:23:00.000-08:00

These are just a few stories that I find rather humorous from my stay here. Many of them stem from cultural misunderstanding at which I often find myself the center of. Some are not necessarily stories of either idiosyncrasy or shame, but certainly, the have entertained me and I hope they do the same for you.
There are two places to access the Internet in Hanga, the vocational school and St. Benedict. St. B has only two computers that have access, and they are usually snatched up on a first come first serve basis (usually by teachers, and the students never have the chance to use them, sort of defeating the purpose if you ask me). The vocational school has a wireless hub, so I go there so I don’t steal a computer from a student, and I am able to use mine. This story takes place the one time I have spent any time in the computer lab at St. B, when I was waiting to meet another teacher.
While waiting, I read Infinite Jest, and with such a dense bastard of a book, I did not make much headway because when one sits quietly reading a book in Tanzania, people to not culturally recognize the don’t-bother-me-I-am-reading-a-very-difficult-seminal-piece-of-literature sign blinking in front of one’s head. In one such case, a teacher using the Internet asked me for my help. I rose and went to solve his problem. He had a user name and password that did not mesh with the website he was trying to use. I typed it myself, thinking it was case sensitive, and it, again, did not work. I told him I did not know the answer and maybe that the password to the site had expired. Then I paused. “Wait, what is this site?” It was something like Anastasia .com. I scrolled down a little. “Russian mail order bride!?!?” I half shouted. “You never want to use a website like this.” “Why?” he asked somewhere between cunning and innocent, “what is wrong with this?” It was wrong on so many levels I did not know where to begin. There exists many possible scenarios, both in terms of this man’s opinion and the purpose of this website. For instance, he might be thinking, “What? What is wrong with wanting to buy the marriage of one of these scantily clad Slavic women?” It is entirely possible that he though it was something like a dating service where you procure a beautiful white women as a bride who will take you to somewhere in Europe where everyone is rich and nobody wants for anything. Somehow or another, he must have thought that this was some legitimate way to get a wife (it doesn’t matter who, because she was scantily clad, therefore easy, and white, therefore rich), either some machismo attitude that treats one as a commodity or he thought this was a normal way to get women in industrialized nations. Either one of these leaves me with a greasy, skeezball feeling. Put to the delicate task of explaining this, I could tell him that this website either:
A. Exploits women trying to get out of poverty, and is little better than sex slavery
B. Is some Internet scam
C. Is just a porn site being access by a teacher at a Catholic school during school hours on a school computer
D. Something of dubious repute he is doing other than writing his fucking lesson plans

I tried to explain the first and I wasn’t getting anywhere, so I opted for the second and gave the details of an Internet scam. Note to self, watch this guy like a fucking hawk when he is around female students.

On a completely normal and average afternoon I walked past the hostel with my friend Eva, one of the volunteers from Austria. One our favorite monks, Br. Dominic, one of the young ones and a visitor for Zambia, walked by and we began with the customary barrage of greetings. They are way big into secret handshake type handsakes here. We exchanged ours and when he and Eva did also, she exclaimed something to the effect of “Ow, not so hard.” He then responded with the joke “you have to be strong like a man!*” and then he proceeded to give me another one of our sorta secret handshakes. At that exact moment both Eva and I noticed that during our entire conversation he had been hiding a pink Barbie bag craftily obscured behind his back. A moment of recognition passed between us, and in that brief calm moment, I fumbled in my head for something witty to say, Eva reached into her bag to get her camera, and Dominic began to run toward the monastery at break-neck speed before we could do either. He reacted so quickly that he was half way there (like 20 meters or something) before our gut wrenching laughter could even start.

This is not actually my story, but it belongs to Helena, German volunteer I got closest to, and Br. Marcelino**. Br. Marcelino is like freakin’ Santa Clause. He is this really jolly fellow who is always smiling and just makes you happy to be around him. He often refers to his huge belly as his “obesity.” “I will be back. I run slow because of my obesity.” He is a chef and he got his degree in hotel management in Kenya, and he loves to cook. This makes me like him even more. He is starting a cooking school for local widows and children of widows. He’s awesome. So anyway, he and Helena were talking, and he made the comment “See the fat nun? She was my student.” Helena responded “which fat one?” “Ah, the very fat one. Many of them are fat, but she is the fattest.” We on the volunteer end of things found this incredibly amusing.

We ate dinner, as per usual, one night at the Seminary with our friend Riehner, as well as the other usuals. Riehner, one of our best friends here, is a candidate for the monastery and also just finished his student teaching and is completing his last couple semesters of college***. Another of our friends, William, is in a similar situation and he went back to University of Dar Es Salaam a week or two earlier than Riehner. Both of their English is exceptional and they some of the most qualified teachers I’ve seen here (myself included).
So, at dinner after the day William left, we asked Riehner what they in did in Songea the preceding night. He told us the story, “we ate some food and drank a couple beers, then we got a room and slept together, and in the morning I saw him to the bus station.” The stereotypical, milk coming out the nose sort of laughing ensued. He was rather mortified when we explained the normal English usage of the phrase, and immediately began to correct the misnomer****. We’ve been making fun of him for a couple weeks now, each time taking it the point where he almost gets angry or really irritated, and then not mentioning it again for a couple days.

Fr. Kastor is quite possibly the most ridiculous person I have met here thus far. He’s this larger than life character, and when he enters a room, you know it. One almost always finds him on one of his two cell phones*****. At the Seminary graduation, for instance, I sat next to Kastor and a Peace Corp. volunteer named Amanda. I nudged Amanda and subtly pushed a small stenographer’s pad toward her. It contained a message reading “I think it’s totally legit for us to pass notes because Kastor has been texting this entire time and he’s the primary school’s headmaster.” Andrew has described Kastor as a dude (note, not a dude-bro). He is about the savviest person I’ve met in Tanzania. Keep this in mind. One time, I was drinking a beer with Kastor and shooting the breeze as we waited for some of our friends to come. The topic of discussion shifted to music, and I think I was playing some Bob Marley on my laptop or something (which is just about the only music I have that anyone over here has ever heard of). As we talked about what other music we liked, and Kastor replied “me, I like the music of Celine Dion.” Intrepid readers, you will remember my premonition from the first blog that this countries Celine Dion fetish would be some sort of cruel theme, if you will, a sort of recurring dream that just doesn’t quite want to die, and reminds you of it when you least expect it.
Kiswahili is a funny language. Most cases, instead of creating a new word to deal with a new situation, they will use an old word. That is why, for instance, the word for bird and airplane are the same. Moto means both hot and fire. Kupiga means “beating,” but it can also mean “dial a phone.” You can imagine my initial shock when I saw signs that told you to beat your cell phone. Anyhow one such word is simama, meaning stop. I once asked a person in the village who works at a store to confirm the meaning for me (as she speaks a little English). “Get up?” She said. I immediately though I miss spoke and backpedaled hurriedly and apologetically. Oh, I forgot to mention this woman has no legs. “Hapana, hapana, pole sana******.” I later found out I was correct. It means both “stop” and “get up.” Fucking Kiswahili.
So, another funny Kiswahili story involves a pretty massive cultural fuck up. The word for “corn” is mahindi. The word for Indian is mhindi. Note, I am talking about “Indian” as in the sub-continent variety. For those of you who don’t know, the English they speak here is much more similar to U.K. English. Some in the U.K. still use the supremely offensive term “Red Indian” to refer to Native Americans, and certainly all used it at the time they colonized East Africa. In other words, somewhere along the line, either some pith-helmeted venture capitalist dick-bag, or some supremely ignorant African linguists fucked up. Or both.

*Unlike many people here, Dominic is not some machismo douchebag in the slightest. He was just being funny.

** And who I miss very much.

*** I think that’s how you spell his name. On a side note, people here have this weird penchant for giving their children Anglo-Saxon and Latin saint names. It’s kind of the opposite of the states where, many African Americans have African first names and like Johnson or something for the last name.

**** Keep in mind that homosexuality is just about the biggest taboo around here. In fact, I believe it is illegal.

***** It actually is cheaper to have two cell phones here because of the way the providers compete against each other and often, they times do not enable the other company to use their service towers. But still.

****** No, no, very sorry.

Home Sweet Hanga

2009-10-20T00:00:00.000-07:00

So, you may be asking yourself, “self?,” “what is Anthony’s home in Hanga like?” Well, I have just the ticket to ease your long-suffering mind. I am, in fact, capable of telling you about these things. So sit back, pour yourself some chai bora, or kahawa, and plant your ass firmly in a comfy chair adjacent to your computer screen.

I am ostensibly from the mid-west. Unlike many places in the United States, when you are on the street, you generally wave or say hello to people, particularly if they are old. This sort of thing simply does not happen in other places in the U.S. particularly in big cities where if you greet someone they think you are panhandling, intending to mug them, or a Scientologist proselytizing or something. Even being used to greeting people you have absolutely no interest in talking to, I was not prepared for the East African greeting fetish. If you see someone you need to greet him or her. If you don’t, it’s, like, way impolite. Not only that, but you don’t just say a simple “hi.” There is an entire greeting lexicon of which you might need to say several. Each greeting has its own response and which greeting you use depends on the situation, for example:

Greeting
Response

Habari za asabuhi Nzuri (usually), safi*, salaama, (misspelled and not often used)

Habari za mchana
Habari za gioni
Habari gani
Habari yako
Habari za sacizi
Habari za kazi
Habari za kwamka
Habari zema
Habari na wewe
Habari leo
Mambo Poa, Shwali, Bomba Safi

Mambo Vepi
Hujambo Sijambo

Jambo Jambo

Shikamo Marahaba**

Mnzema Mnzema
(there is one involving Jesus that you say Christi, but I don’t remember)

(I dunno, but I think it also involves Buddy Christ)
(On a side note, I made this nice table in Microsoft word that didn't transfer to the blog. Bupkiss.)

I’m sure I misspelled some of those. And these are just the ones I remember, there are certainly more. The usage of these greetings varies based upon the time of day, the status of the person you are talking to, which party said something first, etc. The next step in the process involves asking the person where they came from and/or are going, like the parent of some pubescent. This particularly annoys me, as sometime I would like to remain anonymous. I understand this is a friendly, welcoming cultural element, but it does, in fact, annoy the living shit out of me half the time. It especially irritates me because these greetings are all essentially variations on the exact same thing, and one greeting and answer would completely suffice. But, there you have it. As a cultural ambassador I have to do my dead-level best to be polite, understanding, and not a raging asshole to random people on the street. It is a major part of day to day life here, so for the most part I have become accustom.
For those of you who are not aware, and perhaps, think that I am just “somewhere in Africa,” I am, much more specifically living in Hanga village in Tanzania, near the city of Songea. Here comes the nuts and bolts explanation part that isn’t particularly interesting. There will be no witty quips or obscure cultural or historical references for the next few paragraphs. Sorry. I’m not that clever. So, the place itself, physically, consists of a village of around 500-600 permanent residents, Hanga abbey, the monastery I live next to, and four boarding schools, Hanga Seminary (where I spend the most time), St. Benedict’s Secondary School (where I teach also), Hanga Vocational School, and St. Lauret’s English Medium Primary School.
The monastery in its operation reminds me a bit of a medieval monastery in respect to its observance of Benedictine discipline and obedience (I also think the part about the vow of poverty is a little fuzzy), and its complete self-sufficiency. They have well maintained gardens and chickens, goats, and pigs walk around everywhere eating trash. There are a number of the monks who I have come to really like, though a few are rather more sketch. At first I always ate at the refectory at the monastery, but now I usually eat at the Seminary. When we eat at the refectory, it is usually us white folk, a couple brothers and a few sisters who are guests. Some of the sisters are incredibly warm and welcoming and help us learn Kiswahil, etc. Others are decidedly more aloof. One interesting cultural idiosyncrasy, Tanzanians consider getting fat a good thing. Obesity displays one’s status and demonstrates the fact that they have a good diet and implied wealth. When we tell them that every third advertisement in the U.S. involves losing weight, they have a hard time believing this. “What does it mean to be fat in the U.S.?” They have a hard time believing us when we say people think you are unhealthy and lazy. So if you have the means, you eat alotta food with the intent of getting huge. It is usually the aforementioned aloof nuns that have the epic waistline, and this case I feel okay about holding certain American opinions. At one point, I used the term “dada-zilla***.” As you all know, the budding foodie in me takes my cuisine very seriously. With that in mind, I really hate not having the capacity to cook for myself, especially when I eat the same thing every day (see freshman year of college for reference). I don’t know if it is all of Africa or just East Africa, but people do not have any problem eating the same thing every day. In fact, they view it as a good, stabilizing thing. So, every day our diet usually can be broken down as such:

Breakfast: Always bread, some days eggs and a pottage stew, and rarely mandazi (kinda like less sweet cake doughnut) and this sort of gross French toast stuff.
(Keep in mind that I don’t currently have a working alarm clock and I usually get to breakfast late so all there is left is bread)
Lunch and dinner: Always- Rice and ugali****
Boga (all greens are referred to as such, but usually there is something more similar to bitter collards or kale)
Meat (usually pork, but sometimes beef or chicken)
Sometimes- Beans, peas, cabbage, cooked banana, salad, and tomatoes
Occasionally (usually on Fridays) Fish
Always- either papaya or bananas
Having listed that, the quality of food at the seminary is much better, and the variety is a bit better. The merits of the food aside, we simply enjoy the company better (that is to say we love the people at the seminary). That, and there are never nunzilla incidents. I was not here for this one, I’d like to point out. Andrew and Julia, a volunteer from Austria, ate at the refectory one day, and at one side of the table four nuns passed around a dish of fried bananas. They proceeded to take every single one, leaving only a half. Instead of passing it down, the particularly heifer-esque one took the last half before she had finished consuming her three. I would liked to point out, now that we lhave learned more Kiswahili, they seem to like us much more. The other huge qualm I have relates to the waste of food. Usually food, and a decent amount gets thrown away after meals. You would think, in a country with so many starving, they would cook less, or, like, keep it out for a while for people who are late (like the do at the seminary). It does, very much, bother me when people around here (and certainly not primarily the monastics) have this sort of American-like sense of entitlement. At least the feed their animals with the food.
One of my favorite places in Hanga has to be Hanga Beach. When I first arrived, some of the German volunteers teased my startlement and said “oh, yes, and there is a beach where they serve cocktails…” During the dry season, one could hardly hazard to call Hanga Beach a proper sort of beach let alone something that rests upon some sort of body of water, though I am assured the water level climbs steeply during the rainy season. Hanga Beach consists of a stilted platform that stretches over a seasonal lake that overlooks the mountains and forest in the distance. From a reasonably comfortable gap in space the place looks really quite idyllic. However, every time I walk onto the thing I have premonitions of a swift, untimely death. Clearly built with out any sort of safety regulator measures, Hanga Beach is the most ramshackle, hobbled together structure I have ever set foot on. The bridge out to the platform looks like something conceived of by the set designer for Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, and built by the extras to cut down on overhead costs. Nobody seems to share the incredible apprehension I feel every time I go there. Keep in mind that due to poor childhood nutrition, my beer gut, and the fact that I usually have a backpack with books on, I usually have at least 30 pounds on anyone else who goes there. They basically took randomly shaped rough-hewn logs and nailed them together. I step every time with trepidation, some boards move, some creak, most threaten to crack any moment, and none are pressure treated. Large visible gaps commonly appear where a more stable structure would have wood, and the guard rails sag, broken to the side of the walkway in several places. There is one spot where it noticeably drops lower when you step on it. Having said that, it is peaceful and quite and altogether wonderful otherwise.
So, I suppose I need to clear up a bit of a misnomer. I do not actually live in a monastery, but in the monastery guesthouse*****. The guesthouse is this damn silly project. With this sort of “if you build it they will come” strategy, the monastery, somehow, thought it would be a good idea to build a 100 room guesthouse. To put this in perspective, Hanga, a place with zippo in the way of tourism and like 600 inhabitants, built a substantially larger guesthouse than St. John’s, a monastery that has hundreds of people come out of the woodwork for homecoming and stuff******. Only the first floor in four of the eight or so units is complete. Instead of building one section and following though to completion, they build the first step of the whole thing. So, instead of making sure an entire section of the building was completely functional, the finished it in a piecemeal fashion, not dissimilar with the long uncompleted houses along the road that never came to fruition. One of the monks commented, “you can tell it was made in a hurry. The builders really have no sense of craftsmanship and taking pride in their work. Coming from the American standard, you-work-your-ass-off-to-the-nub in construction. Here you might have half a dozen people standing around talking while one person works. My old foreman would have absolutely reamed their asses. I honestly could do a better job (and in some of the tasks, have done better) myself on a lot of the stuff. It’s often simple things like cutting PVC pipe (one of the easiest things to saw) to the correct size, or having some sort of checklist for every room. We have been making endless jokes about the place. I’ll probably have to write a completely new blog entry to cover how silly the place is. Luckily, also, Br. Polycarp is doing an excellent job of whipping the place into shape The finished parts are very nice.. I have my own room with a bed, a desk, and the extravagant luxury of my own western-style toilet. I did not expect this, but I am certainly most glad. The toilets here (or choo) consist of a dry hole in the ground surrounded by a porcelain bowl of sorts that one squats over. It connects directly to sewage pipes and never quite stops smelling like a portapottie. I have yet to see toilet paper in one of these contraptions, but there usually is a faucet with a plastic jar. I have yet to work up the courage to ask if they pull some sort of bide-esque maneuver, or they simply go without. But I digress. So the really weird thing, the shower and toilet are in the same room with no sort of divider. So when I take a shower the entire bathroom floor floods and remains wet for hours. This means I need to take of my sandals lest I spread mud everywhere.
I promise the next blog entry will contain more entertaining stories (and I’ll start it sooner). One thankful thing, there are fewer goodbyes to say then hellos. Kwaheri means goodbye but I’ve hardly ever heard someone say it. Usually people say aya or badi, or both. This leads to fairly uncomplicated exchanges. Hello. How is the morning. Good. How is the day. Clean. How is the work. Very Clean. I am going to study Kiswahili at the seminary. Yes, later.

I'll have some pictures posted sometime in the next couple days.

* On a side note, safi can mean good or clean, so a literal translation for a greeting might be, “Matters of the Morning?” “Clean.” “Matters of yourself?” “Clean.” “Matters of the work?” “Very Clean.”
**So I really hate the use of this one, unlike the others which merely annoy me. Fr. Francis (who actually went to St. John’s for his masters) explained the origin of the greeting. Only children greet adults like this. So, students of American history know well the slave trade between West Africa and America and the Caribbean. What you might not know is that in East Africa, Arabic countries purchased the slaves. Fr. Francis indicated that these slaves received even worse treatment than their Western counterparts. Slaves would say shikamoo before kissing their masters’ feet. Few know the history of the greeting today, but it still leaves a pretty unsavory taste in my mouth.
*** Dada is Kiswahili for sister.
**** Ugali is sort of porridge/paste stuff. It’s more refined and much stiffer than corn meal porridge and has a consistency fairly similar to unfried polenta, but again much more fine.
***** So in reality, not too far from it.
*****Okey, so it’s not that dumb. When the government finally complete the highway though the (traditionally more poor) south, there will be a marked increase in tourism in the area. Also, a few conferences, usually religious or educator related, that have taken place there. There is a need for the guesthouse, but 30 rooms would have sufficed.

DO NOT FEED THE BABOONS

2009-09-28T23:58:00.000-07:00

This very well may be the first solitary and rested exhalatory (I think that’s a word, but Microsoft word disagrees with me) moment I’ve had in the past 5 days. Maybe that’s not true, but it does not feel like my lungs have been filled with much but so many shakings of dust*.
I suppose I must start this way, because, in a way, it was the start of the whole thing: British Airways fucking rules. I have never made too much fuss about my birthday, but having it in an airport just plain sucks. Yet, lo and behold, British Airways to the rescue! On the first flight I watched “The Hangover” (hilarious), and “Vicky, Christina, Barcelona” (it was pretty good, I guess, but after it was over I found myself asking “so?” I suppose in his old age Woody Allen has lost his ability to self-edit. But then again, I am more self-indulgent myself). The radio stations had the new Eels album and a myriad of other things that you would never find on any American airline. They also had a huge movie library of current films and classics such as “the Sting” and “North by Northwest.” On the second flight I watched, “Flight of the Conchords,” and “Doctor Who.” Oh, and there was also unlimited gin and tonics and bottles of wine. I didn’t have to even play the birthday card in order to get free shit. I love my life. British Airways, where have you been all my life.

Okey. Just pause for a second, I’m listening to “I’d Rather Be Riding Bike.”

Okey, back.

We arrived in Dar Es Salaam and Br. Jerome, the guestmaster in Dar, picked us up. I thought Europeans were crazy drivers (see blog entries from Ireland for reference), I thought Pete Williams was a crazy driver, I though my sister was a scary driver. This was before I set foot in Africa. I could determine virtually no traffic laws (excepting, sometimes, the side of the road they drove on). No traffic lights. No distinction between road and sidewalk. Bicycles, racks stacked high with eggs and other produce, weaved between traffic jammed vehicles and running pedestrians. Dilapidated junkers and lemons speed along side brand new SUVs. Some buses, new and plush, filled with tourists making their way to exotic Zanzibar. Others were little more than converted cargo vans, filled by bodies pressing rush hours home. Many of the busses toted slogans referring to the owner’s respective deity or religion. God is Good. Allah is Able. Barack Obama. Whomever. Well, I suppose they need it.
The city, the air smells. But not in the bad way, more like in the real way. That is to say, the aromas of thousands of cook-fires and smoldering garbage hung thick over everything. Every pleasing and disgusting odor hyper extended the senses. Banana flowers and open septic pits. The closest place I can think of that I have been is Juarez, but even then, there are fewer paved areas in Dar. Many of the buildings consistted of concrete and corrugated steel sheets with a varying degree of structural integrity (though in the city center, most of the buildings are many storied concrete Soviet-Blocesque structures) Twenty somethings with cell phones and Man U jerseys walked past decaying hovels under a billboard with a brand new awning stretched across it advertising some sort of techy novelty. It is such a weird mix. I mean, like, seriously, I though men in suits only walked next to goats in Monty Python skits and shit.
At the time I spoke no Kiswahili, so it was particularly overwhelming**. You can buy anything on the street. Now, we are not talking American-style hot dog stand and guys selling counterfeit Coach bags and Rolexes from trench coats. Not even the dude in front of the Twins stadium yelling, “tickets, tickets,” in hope of scalping together enough cream to later that night free-base some cocaine. Literally, it’s not like they have, like, a shopping mall where pubescents congregate about and spend their allowance. Anything. Sugar cane stands, fried chicken, watches, knives, all sorts of clothing, cell phones, you name it. There are even young kids walking around selling cigarettes like your film noir saucily flirtatious young broad that has a bit part***. Though I do not understand an ever-loving word of Kiswahili as if it were the Queen’s, it all sounds suspiciously like “holla, holla, hollah.”
That night a couple of the brothers took us (and a couple really cool Germans that were staying at the guest house) to an outdoor pub where there was a live band, for a beer. The smell of meat roasted on a long grill and Sportsman cigarettes permeated everything. There was a live band. This was awesome. The music sounded quite similar to comparable pseudo-dub sorta stuff that you might here in the background of Cool Runnings, minus John Candy and a rolling apparatus hastily constructed with some pallets (actually, there was probably some kids playing with something comparable at that very moment). Also, I suppose, the music would not terribly out of place at a trustafarian-jammy-festival-function. Well, actually, there were a couple deviations. They seem to favor this high-pitched, shrill, almost tonal more than falsetto, whine that actually sounds really cool when sung in harmony. There was one thing that I found simply amazing after years of helping run or running concerts and events. People weren’t talking obnoxiously loudly over the music. Now I’ve been to just about every sort of venue, punk basements, tired college shows, bars, festivals, big venues chucky-jam full of hipsters, and I can tell you this: the only concerts I have ever been to where people generally consistently pay attention to the music include
A. Basement shows
B. Symphony, Orchestra, or Opera performances
C. A concert where the band is just-that-good-no-matter-where-the-venue-is
D. The Kilwa Road Pub in Dar Es Salaam (thus far the only bar on the list).
It was incredibly refreshing. People just watched the music and/or dance. And there was even beer involved. I was floored.
On a brief side note, the beer (mostly of local manufacture) are all pints, that is to say 500ml. However, unlike my previous experience with the most glorious imperial or other pint, the beer has 4.5-5.5 percent alcohol, as opposed, say, to 4.3% stout in Ireland. It also runs roughly 1300-1400 Tanzanian Shillings (tsh). 1300 tsh is roughly one U.S. dollar $ bill, y’all. In other words, I could already see my new found status as a responsible, respectable, authority figure and educator of some repute, rapidly whisked away to the wayside (read: gutter).
We didn’t stay very late, as Andrew (oh, in case you don’t know, he’s my college roommate, friend, compatriot, co-volunteer at Hanga, and the responsible one) and I needed to awaken at 4:45 in the woeful A.M. to get to the bus station. Our bus was scheduled to leave at 6:00 A.M. It was scheduled to arrive at 4:00 P.M. This is what I expected. Lest we forget, I’m in b-fing Africa. We are on African time (similar to what, once, my friend J-Dubz in Atlanta referred to as CP time). Br. Jerome navigated us through this absurdly crowded, not to mention pre-dawn, bus station. And then, we found our steed. The Super Feo express. For those of you of the Spanish speaking persuasion, you will find this both amusing and prophetically accurate. We spent two hours in the bus terminal. There was no semblance of direction. Each bus jockeyed for a good position, and crept toward spaces they could not hope to squeeze through. I felt as though one dude in a neon reflector vest would have gotten us out of there and hour and a half more rapidly. I did not mind too much. I mostly people watched. There were dozens of hawkers all trying to sell various good through the bus windows, or sometimes coming onto the bus itself. They held loaves of white bread and doughnut like things (which I later learned are called mandzi). They propped crates of hard-boiled eggs with a strange whitish powdery substance covering them on their head or hefted racks of sunglasses or watches with upraised arms. Also sorts of snacks available at the finger tips. That is, at least, for those who knew how to ask for them other than with a series of points and grunts that would inevitably lead to getting ripped-off. Roast corn on the cob, peanuts, sodas and bottled water. However, I did not want any of these things. I think Andrew had similar ideas. I did not eat a blessed thing on that bus ride, except for some peanuts. I knew this to be the better option. Better, than waiting in mortal terror that I would be hit with bout of ass-shaking tremors launching ICBM rockets out of multiple orifices on a bus where there was neither a toilet, nor a way for me to ask anyone where the hell I could defecate. Further, the thought of being left at some rest stop in rural Tanzania like some troglodytic creature in a tanning booth did not sit particularly well with me.
After about 2 and a half hours or so, we finally hit the outskirts of Dar. The relatively well-maintained city center could not compare to the shantytown on the periphery. This is where the real poverty happened. Every single building was ramshackle. The ditches teemed with thin plastic packing strips, cardboard, food waste, and other refuse with animals and barefoot children walking amidst it. There is no such thing as road-side garbage collection in Tanzania. If someone does take care of the rubbish, they burn it in a chlorofluorocarbon-ariffic swirling mess of blackish smoke and flickering ashes. Some of the buildings consisted of a patchwork of corrugate metal sheet scraps cut into irregular shapes. Other buildings had a sort of wattle and daub-like construction with dried mud clinging to a half woven, half jammed into place wicker and reed with red earth irregularly chinking the crevices. I saw little pavement to speak of. Sometimes buildings, complete or not, employed poured concrete or cinderblocks. Some corner store-ish buildings had hand painted Tigo or other cell-phone brand advertisements painted across an entire wall.
As we progressed, the view looked a bit less sequestered and desperate. Still, gas stations constituted the only new or well-kept structures. The further west we got from Dar, it seems people favored fired mud-brick construction. Many buildings still seemed half finished, and some long neglected with trees and things growing in the middle of never laid floors. I later found out that people would build as they raised capital instead of waiting until they could afford the whole thing. I guess this is the African equivalent to over-running your credit cards and accumulating many cars on cinder blocks. Grassfires proliferated all along the road either for the ever-present slash and burn agriculture or irresponsible hunting practices (you know furry animals running from a fire are grouped in one place and therefore easier to shoot with things). Andrew and I didn’t talk for most of the bus ride, I was a bit too busy getting used to all the mind fuck. That, and I needed to pee really badly.
About at the midpoint into the trip we began to drive past national park land. The roads became noticeably cleaner. I think that had something to do with the fact that the Tanzanian economy is mostly based on cash crops and tourism, and the anti-littering laws were actually enforced in places where that would be endangered. This shit was indeed quite crazy. All of a sudden, I was, like, holy shit, there’s a giraffe. Now a zebra. A bunch of gazelle or impala (I suppose it doesn’t really matter). My mouth fell so wide agape I felt as though a tsetse fly buzz in there at any moment. Finally to top it all of, an elephant stood no more than 5 meters from the roadside, and out from under my view obscured by the bus, an elephant calf ran out of the ditch literally feet away from the bus. We weren’t the only doe and dewy-eyed folks on the bus, locals, too, pointed and gawked. Suddenly, I began laughing uncontrollably. A dented road sign bearing the seal of the Tanzanian Ministry of Something-or-other in all majuscule letters crossed my vision:

DO NOT FEED THE BABOONS

The sheer fact that baboon feeding warranted enough consideration, and it was a pressing enough issue, that one of the few road signs I saw the entire journey addressed the matter nearly made me urinate on my sticky, cracked vinyl seat. Indeed, there were, in fact, many baboons along the road in various stages of red-bottomed poo-flinging. I wonder if they are a hazard comprable to deer in upper Midwest, or perhaps they more like bears at camp sites. Or, maybe they just want to visit unforgiving ruckus with prehensile tails upon an ill prepared pith helmet and khaki clad populace.
This was quite possibly the most uncomfortable bus ride I have ever been on (and I rode Greyhound through Alabama). The seat was seemingly broken and my head could never quite be supported no matter how I rested it. Our seats were also situated directly over the wheel well, so the twisty, bumpy, Tanzanian mountain roads jostled us about so violently that we could not even think of sleep, lest we be thrown several inches out of our seat (I am not exaggerating in the slightest). It took a couple weeks for the cricks in my neck to recover (also not an exaggeration).
We finally arrived in Songea around 9:00 P.M. where also long suffering Br. Theodore picked us up. When we informed him that we had not eaten, he informed us that we would get some food. This was most wonderful to hear. We got chicken and rice (wali na nyama ya kuku) and boga (a sort of generic term for all mixed greens, mboga being plural). I jokingly suggested that we should get a beer too, but Br. Immediately acted upon the comment and took us next door for a not so cold one (bia ya moto being warm). While sitting in the sorta-bar sorta hang out spot where the staff sat around watching T.V., we opened out beer and joined them in lounging. It was a music video marathon. A Celine Dion music video marathon. The workers were glued to the thing. Remember how I said they like high pitched singing here? Well, they most certainly do. Do you also remember the program/sketch “Alvin and the Chipmunks?” You know how when you speed up a playback (by, say, playing a record a the wrong speed) it makes the voice higher pitched? Some industrious Tanzanian sound engineer jimmied the speed on every single song making it both slightly faster and higher in pitch. About 5 or 6 videos played over the time we drank my beer. I came to a horrible wretched realization. Not only is Celine Dion evidently one of the few wildly popular non-hip hop English speaking acts, but, all of her songs employed a higher pitched voice and sped up-tempo. They didn’t just do a greatest hits thing, but they played songs that I had never heard of. I mean, the freakin’ Quebec-release-only-back-cataloge-shit. Slowly it dawned upon me, this would be some sort of sick, black comedy, recurring theme through-out my stay here. Fuck.

East Africa, here I come. Don’t drink the water, don’t fornicate with the locals, and above all, don’t feed the baboons.

*Note, I did not finish this entry until many days after I wrote the first paragraph.
** Now, I speak about as much as a retarded 4 and half year old with a speech impediment, and probably a hair-lip for good measure.
***Though the kids do not resemble the bit-part actor in any physical manner, respectively.

Post Script: Blogspot does not have the font I normally use, Futura. This sucks.

One Last Thing To Do Before I Leave...

2009-08-31T15:41:00.000-07:00

Shawn

It broke my heart to leave the city. But it broke my back and broke my will.
But, my home I will remember, and people more important still.

If broken glass could rust,
These Bodies, These sums of moments

Buttsies and Whiskeys
Bridges and Basements
Jag-off and Jag-oves

So many days and bits
So many nights with nothing in particular to amount to
Unless we decided it did.
“Sleeveless and Side burned All Summer Long!”

“I’m Punk as Fuck”
So you were.

So it goes.

Go Light

2009-08-30T13:36:00.000-07:00

So it begins. I'm moving to bum f-ing Africa. For the most part, the home town has died. At least, it won't be the same. I'm ready to go. So keep reading, true believers.
Stay together, Know the Flowers, Go Light.

Strange Man Passes Out On My Couch. "What The Fuck?," says Anthony

2008-05-20T09:58:00.000-07:00

So this wasn’t a recent event, in fact it happened one of the first weeks during my time in Cork, but seeing how I have said fuck all to chronology anyway I felt like writing this story instead of working on my other one that is dragging a bit. Not that it will suck, I just am feeling lazy.

I got out of bed to use the bathroom. My roommate Brendan comes out and asks “is one of you friends staying here or something?”
“No”, I reply.
“Then who is that dude on the couch?”
“Huh?”
I peered into the living room, and sure enough, there was a dude asleep on out couch. We happened to have left the door open that night. Brendan went over to him and had to shake him rather hard to get him up, I think he might have even needed to punch the guy. Eventually the guy sat up like a shot
“FOOOK!”
The dialect of the Irish accent that calls Cork County its home is one of the most difficult accents to understand in the county (the other is a thick Dublin accent). When a person with this accent becomes drunk, they are totally incomprehensible. Even for other Irish people. This was such a case.
I kinda felt bad for the guy, and figured, shit, that’s probably going to happen to me someday. It would have perhaps been more funny if it were some decrepit crotchety old man, but it was a young guy. I figured I’d give him a glass of water so he didn’t die, and then get him the fuck out of out apartment. Brendan thought I was crazy for doing it. I couldn’t understand a fucking word, but from what I could gather he was trying to go back to sleep and we kept having to explain to him he couldn’t stay. I at one point I asked him if he had a jacket, he said yes, and I think he said it was black, but he could have said “uuuuuuuuhghhhghhghg fook ufuguguguuweeee whiskey.” He then proceeded to pick up every jacket in the room identifying it as his own. Each time, Brendan said “no, that’s mine.” When he knocked over my guitar, I reached my breaking point and we told him to get the fuck out of our apartment. He kept repeating “very cool, very cool.” “We know, we’re not going to fight you, but you have to leave.” Then he would sort of raise his hand as a request for us to pause for a moment, the way drunken people sometimes do when they think they have something really important to say, that usually just comes out “uuuuuuuuhghhhghhghg fook ufuguguguuweeee whiskey.”
He finally left, and we locked the door.
For a good while afterwards, we could here him stumbling around the halls trying to open doors. Our land lord has still never really fixed the door to the apartment building that would otherwise keep out the rif raf. Fascist.

The Most Excited I've Been For A Long Time.

2008-04-26T08:43:00.000-07:00

I needed a couple items of the ramen and tuna persuasion. How very colligate of me. And thus, I began the walk down to one to the giant chain conglomerate supermarket, Tesco (I even think it might be owned by Wal-Mart). I’d like to point out that I do the majority of my shopping at my beloved English Market, but when you need toilet paper and habenero Tabasco, there are precious few places to go. So, as I walked down, a couple of guys passed me holding a case (they call them slabs here) of pints of Guinness. I thought to myself “wow they must be having a party.” As I entered the supermarket, I noticed a stack of Guinness slabs. I look over and see the magic words, reduced to clear. A can of Guinness will run around 2.25 euro. These were cases for 15 euro. This works out to 63 cents per pint. I immediately called my roommate:
Me “Get down here, they have cases of Guinness for 15 Euro.”
Charlie “Cases as in…”
Me “24, yeah”
Charlie’s phone doesn’t work correctly and he has to speak with it on speaker phone.
Sarah *muffled excitement in the background*
Charlie “I’m on my way.”
I stood there, guarding our claim to cases like a miner in the Yukon, who after eating boots all winter had just found gold. My basket full of ramen and beer, at my side like a husky, my water-proof jacket robes of fur. I watched others see this deal and descend on the beer like vultures to malted barley and yeast carrion.
Charlie got there and we grabbed three cases.
In Ireland, to use a shopping cart you pay a one Euro deposit, and you can walk the cart back home with you (probably because of the reduced reliance on cars). We ended up pushing this incredibly heavy shopping cart the 10 minute walk to my place (which took much longer) over walk ways and streets, that I would not quite call cobble stone, but for sure was not concrete and asphalt.
I returned home with childish glee. In my eyes gleamed the first cheap beer I have ever found in Ireland. Before me lay 72 cans 36 liters of shaken, warm, about to expire, glorious stout.

We played rummy, watched Heroes, and drank cheap beer. It was a good night.

McClure, then London

2008-04-20T08:17:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long time since I’ve updated this business. I think this time instead of my usual witty, historical and pop culture reference laden, look-at-how-funny-I-am-fest, I’ll tell a bit more straight-forward of an update. First off, Jon McClure visited me in Ireland. Many of you don’t know MC, but if you haven’t chances are, I’ve told you about him. If you do get an opportunity to meet him, you find yourself one of the most steadfast and loyal friends you could possibly wish for. If you get used to his eccentricity, you see what a genuinely great person he is. He must have really scrimped and saved to make it here. I’m really impressed. He did some very McClurian things right away. One of the first things he did when we go to my place was break out his voltmeter, and check the voltage of the outlets. He then proceeded to hack into my roommate’s computer, check the internet, and fix all the spy ware problems.
Over the course of the trip, I took him a few cool places, some of my favourite pubs, the best fish and chips place in Cork (and probably all of Ireland), Jack Lennox’s. You feel some sort of heart palpitations walk in the vicinity. You get this massive piece of super breaded fish and a ton of chips, wrapped in paper. They have this really weird ordering procedure too, you sort of yell your order to them from line (or, sorry queue), they start cooking your order, and when you go up to pay, they ask you what you ordered again, there is no line of communication between the two sections.
We went to Blarney Castle, it’s really touristy, but it’s sort of a must see. The first time I went there my friend Sarah (probably my best friend in Cork) and we walk the five miles from Cork. There was only sidewalk (or shoulder) for about half way. With these fooking shitty Irish drivers I was afraid for my life. McClure and I took the bus. The castle grounds are really nice (this probably the most bland sentence I have every written). Of course going to a castle with me is sort of a loaded action. You’re getting a mini-lecture, I’m full of information, like for instance, Blarney isn’t really a castle, it’s a tower house, albeit one of the largest examples (the largest being Bunratty). So you can imagine 6’ 10” McClure craning his head under 5 and a half foot high doors and winding spiral staircase, designed to be kind of difficult to go up, and me shouting “WHOA! Check this out, it’s a bartizan1.”And he kissed the Blarney stone (and I figured out how to sneak into the place, but more on that later).
We also went to Cobh, the port town where the Irish emigrants made their last stop. It was also the last place the Titanic and Lusitanian went to port. It was really great to have a pint on the seaside. When were at a park there, he picked a shamrock from the grass and put it in his check book for safe keeping. We didn’t do much touristy stuff, but that’s not really what either of us wanted. Oh, another highlight, at the Beamish and Crawford tour we got to pour our own pints. That was awesome. I was almost at my financial lowest, because which, I didn’t get to show MC some of other really cool things around Ireland. For that, I feel pretty rotten. However, I do think he enjoyed himself. I don’t know how much MC would have liked to spend most of his time on buses rushing from one tourist trap to another.
I just want to add some of the very McClurian things he did:

He said, and I quote, “Russia is like the freaking Romulan Empire.”

He asked me if I had any copper wire.

To reiterate, he’s 6’ 10. He hit is head on a street sign. Seriously.

He has a North Dakota polito-blog and he kept it up every single day he was Ireland.
He grew this chin-pubey beard, when I told him it looked silly, he said his girlfriend likes it. For those of you who don’t know, McClure has a girlfriend now. I’m sure they're watching Firefly or UHF as we speak.

Another quote:
Me: So what is the biggest difference you’ve notice between the U.S. and Ireland?
Him: Well, other than the lack of ubiquitous cashless transactions, not much.

You see, a man with like 6 bank accounts (including an international one) didn’t bring a debit card, and almost nowhere in Ireland (except for supermarkets and the like) accept credit card. I knew he didn’t have much money, so I tried to spring for as many things as possible. And even then the only accepted it absolutely begrudgingly. I eventually let him spring for a pizza. It was funny to get a pizza from Domino’s in Ireland, (McClure works there in the States) and to notice all the weird differences. He even took pictures.

There is one other shitty thing I did with McClure here. A week before on a drunken whim a friend an I booked a flight to London, so I wasn’t in Cork from McClure’s last night. I totally forgot about the dates. I feel incredibly guilty about it. I’m mean sure he went out with my roommates, but it’s not the same.
That trip to London was sort of cursed from the get go. I bought my ticket just minutes after my friend, just enough time for 12:01 to role around and my ticket to jump from 60 euro to 90 Euro. At the current exchange rate, 30 Euro is about 50 bucks. She offered to pay half and I accepted (remember this it’s important for the next blog instalment which I will try and write tomorrow). The next day I looked at my travel itinerary and noticed our plane got into Stanstead airport at around 11 p.m. Upon further inspection, I realized that the bus takes two hours to get to central London. There was no way in hell I was going to pay 15£ (=30 dollars) to sleep in a hostel when I could sleep in the airport for free. My friend was quite dismayed by the prospect. Yes, if we had change the day, I would have had the exact same amount of time in London, saved 30 Euro, and hung out with McClure one more day. Fuck. I planned on meeting up with my buddy Andrew from high school. I had sort of counted on crashing at his place for free, but never really confirmed it. When I talked to him about it, I found out he was living with a host family (which would make for an awkward fest). So, more hostel money. Fuck.
On the way to the airport, this guy tried to pop out from a parked position and cut off our bus driver. The driver slammed on the breaks, and the car and the bus barely hit each other, not enough to do much but scratch the paint. The driver continued on the to the airport, and the other car chased us down, cut the driver off, parked, emerged in his full knackery glory, and starts yelling at the driver who proceeds to call the garda. Meanwhile my friend is freaking out next to me, thinking we’ll miss the plane. We made it all fine. I had made all my food for the trip (in the form of tuna sandwiches, egg and bacon sandwiches, and a container of rice) and luckily customs did not confiscate may only sustenance for the next four days2. So we set up shop in the airport, I put down my bag for a pillow, draped a coat over my self, and went to sleep in a corner in the airport. My friend changed into her pajamas, got in her travel blanket, took sleeping pills, put on her eye cover, put her iPod earphones in, and went to sleep.

I was fortunate enough to go to London once before when I was younger, so I saw many of the sites already. The friend I was travelling with is also the sort of traveller that “loves to travel” but kinda vaguely hates most of the trip. That is to say, complains about the weather, stresses about the travel arrangements. Since I had seen almost everything I had wanted to see already, I was content to let her choose the travel plans, something I think she misconstrued as me leaving her to do all the work. Having said that I’m sure that there are plenty of things about me that make me hard to travel with. The three things I really wanted to see were the British Museum, the National Gallery, and go on a Jack the Ripper tour. I was pretty ambivalent about everything else. So the first day we spent about 5 hours in the British Museum. The British Museum is the most famous history museum in the entire world and has antiquates from where ever the Victorians could get the rape and pillaging tea biscuits. It has huge collections from Europe, Egypt, Middle East, India, China, Africa, and everywhere else the sun didn’t set on. So by the end, my friend was getting hungry and antsy while I was running around “WOAH! A palstave axe! WHOA, the Battersea shield, NO WAY, Japanese Edo-ware! Holy crap! This is the Curdale horde!” You get the picture, but hey, I know probably as much about some of this shit as tour guides do, so whatever. So, figured I’d compromise and go. The rest of that day we just sort of look at some of the more famous sites, such as Big Ben, Houses of Parliament, ect. Not really my thing, but I guess if you haven’t seen it before it a sort of must do. Making me take your picture in front of it and walking around with a camera out, is, in fact, only a must you if you want to embarrass the living shit out of Anthony.
After a fairly packed day, we went back to the hostel and ate some food. For about half an hour I wrestled with country codes and other annoyances to get a hold of my friend Andrew. We finally meet up in the King’s Cross tube station (yeah, the Harry Potter one). We decided to go to Lester Square. If you’re not familiar, Lester Square is the sort of Times Square of London, or maybe more accurately Broadway. Regardless, it’s the bustling theatre area in London. The three of us are walking around and Andrew pulls out a small bottle of whiskey and informs me there aren’t really public drinking laws in London. This kicks ass. Drinking outside has always had to be some sort of clandestine, vaguely dangerous activity (as my record with the Minot police verifies). We proceed to walk around bustling area, drinking, catching up, that sort of thing. By this point the whiskey is gone and we buy a bottle of wine. Soon, said bottle of wine was gone as well.
Were not really doing anything, per say, but there was a sort of really fun vibe to the whole thing. We pop in to the nearest off-license (they don’t call um liquor stores) he points out the cheapest thing he can find. It’s this these 750 ml bottles of this sort of sparking wine that is about 5 or 6% alcohol. We both buy three. I also purchased my friend a pack of gum (also important to remember for the next instalment).He asked if we want to go to Trafalgar Square. I think this is a good idea. If you’re not familiar, it’s this huge square in central London commemorating Admiral Lord Nelson’s defeat of Napoleon at Trafalgar. Surrounding the square are many important sites, such as the National Gallery. While there, we randomly meet Andrew’s friend from his study abroad program (I don’t remember the guy’s name). Andrew gives me the bag with the bottles in them and tells me to hold it for him. He then scrambles up a marble platform. On that said platform are massive bronze lions, each weighing several tons, as well a giant column topped with a statue of Admiral Lord Nelson. I say to my self, “self, pass up the chance to get drunk on top of a world famous monument? Could you live with yourself… if you didn’t?” So the four of us are all up on this statue. It had rained earlier that day and marble has an unforgiving grip when it is wet. Bronze is equally slippery. I should be dead. At this, point we turn to our neighbours, a bunch of 14 year old English girls (and one dude). I don’t necessarily think that drinking on the monument of Admiral Lord Nelson was touristy but rather, something funny as hell. But to kids who are native, I think the concept is slightly different. That is to say, all across the world, stupid kids like to try and make themselves look bad ass. I’m sure if they didn’t have Trafalgar Square to climb over, they would probably buy some My Chemical Romance hoodies. Or, if they were part of “my generation” they would have had Insane Clown Posse t-shirts3. I think the fact they were drinking (I think they were drinking) with 21 year olds, who thought they were cool enough to hang out with further added to the perceived badassery. I thought, this is so fucking ridiculous it’s awesome. I’ll have to write about this4. So, your man (this is Cork slang) though we were hitting on his girl friend and he was acting very defensive. I remember at one point, he was talking about drinking and he said something like completely implausible like “the only time I can get drunk is when I drink like 700ML of vodka in like an hour.” Here I was thinking half-pint should stick to half-pints (you can get either pints or half pints). I also remember imparting upon him some pearls of wisdom… “drinking is fun, I approve, but never start smoking.”
After maybe an hour of shooting the shit with these kids, I went to the bathroom in a McDonald’s. When I came back some older guy was yelling at everyone to get off the statue. I soon realised that the dude had a bottle in his hand himself. It wasn’t some authority figure, just another guy drinking. I also saw broken glass on the ground from on of the bottles. I assumed it was the kids, but it turns out it was one of my friends. Go figure. The rest of the night was relatively unimportant, we went to McDonald’s. Go figure. We got back to the hostel and I talked to the crazy ass German guys about Banksy and stuff for like two hours. I also met a French girl who, not only was living in Cork, but in the building attached to mine, and taking the same flight back as us. We’ve hung out a few subsequent times, but she has since moved back to France.
The next day, we crammed an inordinate number of sites into one day. It was a goddamn world wind. We attended mass at Westminster Abbey (though we bounced half way through). The sermon was incredibly boring, and deadpan, but it was worth it to listen to the boy’s choir. It was actually very haunting and creepy, this ancient stone building filled with tombs, and this ethereal harmony filling the gaps. So we went along the whole area, Houses of Parliament, walked past the Mi6 building (that is to say, if James Bond existed, he would work there), etc. Sorry if this sounds like a grocery list of famous stuff, but at this point it’s getting long, and I’m getting lazy. The National gallery was awesome, though I was incredibly disappointed that I spent more time looking at pompous-ass Baroque portraits than Van Gogh or Cezanne, something that certainly chaps my ass and sense of aesthetic (we spent way to much time with the early stuff, and when I got to the paintings that excited me *ahem* some one was getting antsy). Still, one of the best art museums in the world is still bad-ass. Okey, more grocery list… National Portrait gallery, Buckingham Palace (SOOO overrated), Hyde Park.
We met up with Andrew again got some quick fish and chips, and left to go on the Jack the Ripper tour. There were two tour guides, and older guy and a younger woman. The said we should divide into two groups, and far fewer people went with the woman, I said “why don’t we go with her,” I kinda felt bad. Andrew insisted with the older man. His hunch proved right, I later found out our guide was basically the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, and this was the only day out of the week that he gave a tour. As this is dragging on, I won’t tell you about my vague obsession with how fucked up 19th century London was. There is a sort of almost mystic legendary appeal. It was the world of Sherlock Holmes and Dracula, the beginning of modern mega cites, the first subways, wealth and desperation, and the starkest example of oppression, probably in all of human history 5.
The remainder of the night, we hung out got some drinks, and back at the hostel I ended up hanging out with these wild Swedish kids (who all looked like models). One of them had lived in the states, had a nearly American accent and liked really good hip-hop. In the morning we did little but check out and get to the bus. Before heading for the bus, we sat on a park bench talking about how the trip had been a bonding experience while watching pigeons. While waiting for the bus, the weather was pretty bad, and my travel buddy was complete fuming. I really enjoyed the bus ride back, watching London pass in the rain.
The flight back was a complete ordeal. First, we found out weren’t supposed to be able to check in on-line because we didn’t have EU-identity cards (even though I have a Republic of Ireland ID). While in the airport I walked around the duty free, sampling whiskey (it was awesome). At the end of my financial rope, I got a bottle of gin (which I thought would be duty free, though it wasn’t it was still cheaper than Cork) and I picked up a bag of skittles for my travel companion, with the intention of being paid back (also important to remember). At this point I basically had enough money for a round of groceries when I got home. Of course, I was hurried along (and to be fair, it was good travel practice) so we could be early to our flight. The flight came in over an hour late. I spent a sizable chunk of the wait reading and making funny faces back in forth with my French friend who was behind us a ways in line. During the flight, they informed us we couldn’t land in Cork, due to the weather, and we would be redirected to Dublin. In Dublin, they directed us to buses (a four hour bus ride if I remember correctly). About forty five minutes outside of Cork, our bus ran over some metal and had a flat. Luckily there was the B & B we could park by and wait at. Having eaten nothing but two pieces of toast all day (it was about 10:45) I broke down and ordered a sandwich and a pint. We finally got back to Cork, however, they didn’t take us to the city, they took us to the airport, a fifteen minute drive outside of Cork. Luckily that is where our return bus tickets left from. My friend, exhausted and very irritated, commented that that trip back (which took 6 hours longer than it should have) couldn’t possibly have been worse, to which I replied “not true, we just made the last bus back to Cork by 5 minutes.”

1. Blarney castle does not have any bartizans, but nobody (but me and I’m sure a bunch of men wearing tweeds and drinking sherry) knows what the fuck a bartizan is anyway.
2. While in Ireland, I’ve taken a break from being a vegetarian. I still won’t get meat from a supermarket, but at the English Market (I probably should devout an entire blog entry to that place, it’s my favourite thing in Cork, oh, and I took McClure two or three times) the butcher I go to is a family butcher that only use range feed animals from their own farms right near Cork. Animal friendly (sort of), worker friendly, environmentally friendly, and cheaper. Liver and onions has become a staple in my diet, it’s a nutritional powerhouse. I don’t need to justify myself, fuck you.
3. I of course mean this in a tongue and cheek way. Also I would like to point out that I never once every considered doing so, though I guess C. Halseth at the Minot police thinks otherwise. Fucker. It’s an inside story. Anyway, I just meant that when I was 14 that is the sort of thing kids did to look badass and rebellious.
4. I am.
5. If you want understand some more of my mental pictures of the place, read Alan Moore’s From Hell or League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, as well as novels from the time.

Anthony Makes Pass At Irish Girls, Crashes, Burns. A Post Script Note: I Am A Golden God

2008-02-29T06:54:00.000-08:00

A word of caution. This entry makes me look terribly shallow, and if you think it will lower your opinion of me in anyway, read on, because this shit is funny.

In World War II Adolph Hitler sent paratroopers on a mission. These paratroopers landed in the private estates of many noble English families. Their aim you may ask? Assassinate members of parliament perhaps? No, in fact, he sent them diplomatically. He attempted to rouse the British nobility into an uprising against the crown. Hitler wanted rally the barons, appealing to the spirit of those like Simon de Montfort who lead the second Baron’s revolt against Henry III. He also implored them to recognize their proud Germanic heritage, as Angles, Saxons, and Jutes once dominated what we now called England. For being one of the biggest geniuses of the 20th century, Hitler was incredibly stupid. The nobles had these paratroopers captured by the military. I don’t remember the name of this operation, but I’m sure Casey does.
My point in telling this story, you may ask? This endeavour undertaken by the Third Reich is comparable to an American trying to pick up an Irish girl. At first, when I got to campus, pubs, etc. I thought “Oh, my,” Irish girls are all beautiful. This is not true. I soon realized the way they dress, present themselves, and love to go out, etc. was all very attractive. But only from a distance. I was fooled, many times over, into thinking a girl was gorgeous, and then soon realized when she turned around, that behind the thick eye makeup and cool hair, my initial response was not to be trusted. Having said that, the ones who are attractive are ridiculously attractive. There really is no middle ground. I think the beautiful ones let it go to their head that the entire population of Irish males are fawning over them. That is probably why the Irish are famously silver tongued. They have to be, or good luck with that whole progeny thing. I have also noticed (and any Irish man and many Irish girls will confirm) they are incredibly gossipy, catty, and devious. The old “a woman scorned…” proverb particularly comes into play. If you anger one of them, you might as well emigrate. Having said that, I have meet a fair number of really cool, down to earth Irish girls in class or on mountaineering trips, that sort of thing, and I’m not making any sort of blanket misogynist statements. There have been instances where I have talked to a girl a pub for around half an hour, many of those instances purely platonic. However, when I asked for a number, or to hang out I’d get an excuse like “oh, my boyfriend would not like that,” or, “I live far away.” As a naturally out-going person, I find this frustrating. Further proof that this is not just my imagination, my friend Dan, who is Irish, informed me that he never met a single American who has ever hooked up with an Irish girl. And, he used to organize events from international students, and has several close American friends who are back in the states now. At this point, I don’t even try. I guess I’ll have to stick to getting shot down by Americans.

A post script note: I am a Golden God, All Lesser Men, Bow Before Me.

I have an A game* and a B game**. Many of you have witnessed this, or been on the receiving end of either. In my B game I imagine my self some charming, debonair cross between Cary Grant, Woody Allen, Tucker Max, and Ryan Adams. In reality, I act like a sort of mix between an 8th grader who listens to too much Weezer***, Jon Lovitz, Tucker Max, and Rico Suave. I lay it on way too thick, make an ass of myself, and then move to the corner to drink whiskey****. On my A game, I am completely indifferent, do not try at all, have no intention of hitting on anyone, and end up being really funny and charming. This does not happen often, usually I am trying my damnedest*****. On last Wednesday night, here follows a story of my A game.
I was just hanging out with my roommates relaxing, having a few whiskey sours. I get a text (all people do over here is text, because calling is so expensive) from my previously mentioned Irish friend Dan. He asks me if I want to meet him and some friends at a pub. Having nothing else to do, I think, why not? I’ll go for a pint, stay an hour then go to bed. I arrive, and he introduces me to his friends. They had just left a student government function, and were all wearing suits and ties. I was in my Ergs t-shirt and Pixies hoodie. I soon start talking to this Irish girl (not one of Dan’s friends, but I didn’t realize it at the time). She cute, tall, blond, and wear a red corset (later in the evening she points out some thing like “you know I’m really only wearing underwear right now,” I can’t make this shit up******). I have not showered in one, possibly two days. Half the people around me are wearing suits, and I am dressed like a ragamuffin. I tell her a few of my better stories, such as the Knacker incident, or the Donny’s going away party*******, and she was rolling with laughter. I ask her to tell me a story, when she can’t think of one, I ask a few questions such as “what is your favourite colour********” etc. I also rip into her for mentioning she likes a Nickleback song (that stupid rock star one, which is somewhat clever, but still).
At one point Dan starts to talked to me, and a guy cut in to talk to her (I’ll omit her name for tact, but she told me people joke with her and call her Barbie because she is tall, blond, and has a super-American name. So imagine a really American name, and insert it for the desired effect). Dan points this out to me saying something to the effect of “you know, he’s trying to cut in on you.” Caring little about that, but mostly just enjoying myself, I, with the utmost deft and cunning, swoop back in when he does a quarter turn. Soon after I ask if she wants to sit down. We move to a couch where there are already two people making out. I hesitate and suggest we keep standing. Knowing one them (I think) she pulls me toward her and bades me to sit. I’m in the process of telling a story, but she leans forward like she wants me to kiss her, and I mos def wait to finish my story. I’ll leave the gory details to you imagination, needless to say making out with someone in a pub is tacky enough (at least, I think so, but Irish folks do it all the time, hell, they’ll make out on the street). Every once and a while we’d stop and talk some more, I asked some more “get to know you questions.” She asks me one question, which was what one might call “impure” or “lewd.” I was quite taken aback by it, but I think she interpreted my reaction as playing it cool. I was not. Merely surprised. She, throughout the night, like the corset comment made a few statements, that for the sake of modesty (I really have no shame, I know full well that your over active imaginations will make the events more outrageous than my colourful prose ever could) I will not repeat.
At closing time we leave, and she gives me her number. I ask if she really wants to hang out again, knowing the sorts of games these sneaky Irish play. She insists that she does. As I leave Dan turns to me and says “do you realize what you have done? You have done what no other American has done.” I reply “I am a Golden God.” He confirms, “You are a Golden God.” He informs me that he has to tell his friends in the States what happened, because they tried their hardest to do for 5 months, what my dishevelled, unwashed, ineffectual self had just done. I walk home and think to myself “Damn, muthafucka, I thought you knew? Shit.”
The next day I sent Dan a text which I will now transcribe verbatim.
Me: “I am a golden god, all lesser men bow before me.”
Dan: “Word of your amazing deeds has reached your homeland. You’ll receive a hero’s welcome home.”

A Post Post Script note:
I haven’t texted her back yet, but I probably will in the next day or so. Because the Irish use primarily text messages and not phone calls to communicate, I now enjoy and enormous advantage. Anyone who knows me, and has seen the film Swingers, knows exactly what that advantage is. But those are thoughts for another day. Right now, I am leading gallant forces, riding across a plain. My Helm, breastplate and vambraces shine with the finest gold filigree. My blade gleams with righteousness and fortitude. My banner aloft, I cross the Lee as if it were the Rubicon. Sir Ian McKellan is at my right, dressed like Gandalf, and Sir Anthony Hopkins my left dressed as Hannibal Lector. I lead the Third Great Baron’s revolt, soon, I’ll have royal heads on a proverbial pike********. Mel Gibson will make films about me, and greatly exaggerate the details.

Retribution will be mine, bloody and swift, and the world will tremble beneath me.

*For A game reference, see Dano Colon for reference.
**For a B game reference, see Dano Colon for reference.
*** E.G. my 8th grade self.
**** See Dano Colon for reference.
***** See Dano Colon for reference.
******Really.
******* A few details. Donny’s going away party was at some random 40-something year-old woman’s house, who none of us knew. Zack read people’s runes. As we left, she said goodbye to us wearing nothing but a silky bathrobe. We went down the water slide at Roosevelt park pool naked. When the police came I half scaled a fence until I realized I was naked. We ended up shooting the shit with one of the only cool officers on the Minot police force. We each paid a 75 dollar fine in the morning.
******** The stupid autocorrect uses the E.U. version of English.
********* Very proverbial and not literal at all, I just want to cover my tracks in case Mi6 is reading this. It’s a metaphor, damnit!

Anthony Finds Out What A Knacker Is, So Does His Face. A Valentine's Story.

2008-02-18T05:18:00.001-08:00

I could attempt to say something about the hallow and commercial nature of Valentine’s Day, but frankly, it’s all been said and probably better than I could do. What I can tell you about, is one of the most memorable Valentine’s Days I’ve ever had, and lemme tell you, it’s probably a metaphor for something.

Wednesday, February 13th: I had the worst date of my life. My game was on point and then I made a fool of myself, as per usual. Fuck.

Thursday February 14th 6:00 P.M. I finish with 6 hours of class, head to the nearest grocery store and purchase a loaf of bread, a bottle of ginger ale, and the cheapest bottle of whiskey they have.

6:20 P.M. I return home, produce my study ma
terials for my exam the following morning, make a veggie burger, make a whiskey and ginger ale, and start to study.

7:00 P.M. I make another tall whiskey and ginger ale.

7:30 P.M I make my next whiskey and ginger ale.

7:40 P.M. I can list all the major types of pottery imported into Ireland in the 12th-14th centuries, details about their production, and most of their dates.

7:45 P.M. My roommate Brendan and two of his friends visiting from London begin to play beer pong with Murphy’s Irish Stout.

8:00 P.M. My roommate Charlie’s father, John (who was also visiting), starts to play beer pong as well.

8:15 P.M. I start to play beer pong.

9:00 P.M. The ginger ale is mostly gone, so I make a small glass. About 1/3 of the 700 ml bottle remains. This is in addition to the beers accumulated through beer pong.

10:05 P.M. I leave to go to the library. On the way I meet Charlie returning from class. I tell Charlie that his dad is playing beer pong, get excited, and walk back with Charlie to our apartment.

10:45 P.M. We leave to go to a pub (unfortunately, Mr. Sipes does not follow).

11:00 P.M. I order a pint.

11:05 P.M.-12:30 A.M. I have a very vague notion of what happens at the pub until I leave.

12:30 A.M. I leave the pub and acquire a cigarette from someone on my way out.

12:38 A.M. I’m half way home or so.

12:38 A.M. Having not yet lit my smoke, I approach a group of five guys and ask for a light.

12:38 A.M. The group of men encircle me. If they were snapping, it would have been West Side Fooking Story. They are all dressed in the same sort of white track suits, buzzed hair with stupid lines buzzed into the sides. Gold chains. Gold earrings.

12:39 A.M. They start talking shit.
12:39 A.M. Confused, I say something like “hey, all I want is a light.”
12:40 A.M. One of them slaps me in the ass, the others laugh.
12:40 A.M. Having had enough, I decide I am not going to let some busted-ass, low rent, soccer hooligan, fuck wit, who dresses like a Florida retiree, fucking boyo, step to me. I throw my dukes up.
12:41 A.M. Busted-ass, low rent, soccer hooligan, fuck wit, who dresses like a Florida retiree, fucking boyo punches me in the face.
12:41 A.M. Shit talking continues.
12:41 A.M. I say something to the effect of “there’s five of you, how about I call my buddy Eidan, he’s Garda*, we’ll get sorted. But he won’t arrest you he’ll just help me kick your ass.
12:42 A.M. My assailants in matching attire back off and say “we’re cool…we’re cool.”
12:42 A.M. I say something like “then why you hit me you fucking bitches,” as they walk away.
12:43 A.M. I start to walk home again.

12:50 A.M. I tell my roommates the story. I never smoked the cigarette.

Prologue: The next day I told several Irish people (I went on a mountaineering club trip after my test, which went rather well) my story. The general consensus was, you never talk to dudes dressed like that, especially late at night when they are in a pack. Some people asked things like “what were you doing on the North side?**” I was informed that the sorts of people that confronted me are generally referred to as Knackers. A knacker is a busted-ass, low rent, soccer hooligan, fuck wit, who dresses like a Florida retiree, fucking boyo. They wear white track suits, buzzed hair with stupid lines buzzed into the sides. Gold chains. Gold earrings. They often carry knives, and go out looking to start fights. Some may be from the travelling community (think the Pikies in Snatch), but most are local fucks trying to act tough. I told Eidan the story last night, and he informed me of two things. If I have called him, he would have been there in 5 min, with a truncheon. Secondly if they were actually from the travelling community, they most definitely would have tossed my ever-living shit.
Next Valentine’s day, I think I’ll go back to my customary getting drunk and drawing pictures. That way, my face won’t be still tenderized four days later. Oh, and I think the ass-jackets stole my Eels hat.

*Garda are the Irish police force. I’ll cover more eventually in the forthcoming people, places, things, glossary, but Eidan is one of the few Irish people I hang out with consistently.
** The North Side is the rougher portion of Cork. I was not in fact on the North Side, but in a much safer stretch I walk every single day. I just had a bit of bad luck and no intimate knowledge of the shittyness of knackers.

Celtic Tiger Mauls Through My Pocket Book, Liver.

2008-02-11T08:06:00.000-08:00

When humans shifted from Palaeolithic societies to Neolithic, the nomad traded and atalatl for an ard. The change to a sedentary, agrarian lifestyle meant that these people found themselves at the whims of weather and harvest for their survival. Thus, food preservation became a necessary task. One of the first things that effectively preserved grain was beer. Indeed, some scholars postulate that the creation of beer predates even bread. In many civilizations, beer was drunk every day at every meal, and indeed without it, people would not have the requisite calories for survival. Further, poor water sanitation also promoted beer as the preferred liquid consumed. However, this function of beer has really ceased in the industrialized world.
But now, I actually depend on beer for sheer calories, or else I would waste away to nothing. I have quickly discovered that everything is expensive in Ireland. Food, travel, alcohol, and sort of good or service. For a base of comparison, the McDonald’s €uro saver menu advertises sandwiches for the low, low price of 2€. The exchange rate is currently 1.55 American Dollars to one Euro. That means, something, back home, that would normally be on the dollar menu cost three dollars here. During the 90’s Ireland’s economy underwent a massive boom, due to all sorts of economic policies and entry into the EU. They refer to it as the “Celtic Tiger.” Wages rose steeply. So did prices. Minimum wage here is around 7-8 euro. The job I had this summer would have paid me 15-20 euro an hour, rather than the 7.50 U.S. I received for sheetrocky red neck goodness. No, I’m not bitter, really.
Still, the learning curve is steep. There are ways to live somewhat on the cheap:

Do: Eat good bread, eggs, and other cheap produce from the English Market. Pregame at a good pace with a decent meal and only buy one or two pints at the pub.

Don’t: Attempt to make any sort of Japanese food. Get blackout drunk, speak with some Italians in Spanish, and then proceed to buy a round for a bunch of strangers.

Here are a few of my other initial observations about Ireland:
1. These people can’t fooking drive. The roads are fooking horrible, and basic automotive conventions, such as turn signals, are optional. There have been instances when, even though I have a fooking green walk signal, three fooking cars wiz fooking past me. There was one time where a car actually ramped up on to the fooking sidewalk to hang a Uie (is that how you would write the slang for U-turn?) right in front of my fooking pedestrian self.
2. The Irish have a reputation for fighting. I have seen more black eyes in my tenure here, than the proceeding five years in the states. I've seen kids fighting in an alley way by my apartament.You be the judge. Having said that, no guns, so, fair enough.
3. The stereotypical Irish accent Americans imagine the Irish use, is really only representative of crotchety old men. I have not heard anyone say “oh Jaysus.” They do say “fook” a great deal. For example, where we might say, “oh, for goodness sake” they say, “oh, for fooks sake.”
4. Their usage of the filler word “like” is quite interesting. Where we might say something to the effect of “it was, like, awesome,” they would say “oh, it’s grand, like.” In their usage, it’s is almost as though they combine the hyphen and comma before the word “like.” Like this: -,like.
5. All this reputation about terrible food is absolutely false. The English Market (more on that later), rocks my world. I would give some sort of bone marrow transplant or something to get the olive stand magically transported to Collegeville, MN.
6. They mos def drink as much as everyone says. And not just young people. There are particular pubs where 40+ is not the exception, but the rule. They're parting like the young folks are. On the most weekends, depending on the street, it will be filled with stumbly characters from all walks of life.
7. It does rain all the fooking time here. Seriously.

More to come soon, including a glossary of people, places, and things. And the next two intended entries:
Anthony finds random shit-tanked Irish man asleep on his couch. Hilarity does not ensue.
Anthony makes first pass at Irish girls, crashes, burns.

2008-01-16T03:45:00.000-08:00

There is nothing like quitting smoking to bring out your general distain for rest of humanity (as of writing this, it have been over a month, cheers). There is no worse place to get nic fits than an airport. It naturally follows that in such a state there are particular things I do not desire. Invasive surgery. Any sort of sentence detailing the merits of Dave Mathews Band. Essays that begin with passively constructed sentences. Dave Mathews Band. Neo-Conservative rhetoric. Airports.
I hate airports.
I told my roommate about this particular putrid hatred, to which he countered (something to the effect of), "You just don't appreciate the marvels of modern technology." The monolithic combination of lift, turbines, and government regulation, it is kind of incredible when you thing about it. Fair enough. Though, unswayed in my curmudgeony, I point out what I find one of my more clever observations (I think). Airports hold tens to tens of thousand of people. Every single one of them wants to be somewhere else. I am not an exception. I won’t give the long boring tale of my flights from Minneapolis to Las Vegas to El Paso to Houston to Minneapolis to Newark to Shannon, no. That run on sentence is long enough. But I will give you a few highlights, observations etc.
1. In multiple airports, I saw iPod vending machines. That’s right, I kid you not. You can go up, swipe your credit card, and then conveniently get iPod, digital camera, or some such accessories. Of course, this presupposes that you have a laptop with you to put music on said iPod, in which case, you could just listen to music from said laptop. Or, you have to wait until you arrive at some place where you can put your music on your hand-held, music player that was just delivered to you in the manner of Cheetos, or Famous Amos cookies. However, this is no more convenient than going out and buying one at a store. The marketing powers that be, must bank on the novelty of the whole thing to sell their product in this fashion. They must make millions. Sigh, history major, sigh.
2. In Newark I met a few folks including a large rowdy choir group and one person I have class with. I met another girl at the airport bar before take off. We chatted for a while. She is a (and I was not clever enough to come up with this string of verbiage, so I’ll give Woody Allen credit) New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps and the, the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, right, and the really, y'know, strike-oriented kind of, red diaper studying in Dublin for the semester. She kind of reminded my of my ex-girlfriend. And she also made me realize that my ex-girlfriend should have been born a New York, Jewish, left-wing, liberal, intellectual, Central Park West, Brandeis University, the socialist summer camps and the, the father with the Ben Shahn drawings, right, and the really, y'know, strike-oriented kind of, red diaper…
3. In the Las Vegas airport I was board and hungry due to a four-hour delay. I should add fast food to the list of things I hate, though, oddly enough, it does not contribute to the pangs of a tobacco-free travel. So I got a veggie burger and fries. None of this really has to do with anything except that it leads up to my observations about the cashier in the context of Iron Age history. In 1st century B.C.E. Julius Caesar conquered Gaul, which is now modern France. The Romans and Gauls fought the final decisive battle at a hill fort called Alesia. In the end, Caesar slaughtered children and stuff as per usual, and the Gaulish leader, Vercingetorix, was put to death in a gruesome and shameful manner. I think Alesia is one of the most beautiful words I’ve ever heard. I’ve used it in songs and other writings as both a metaphor and for its general pleasing quality. I plan on, upon breeding , to name a (female) child this. I have only met on person with this name. It was a girl on an archaeological dig I worked on when I was in (I think) middle school. When asked what her name meant, she replied something to the effect of “It’s a city in France, my dad’s a history buff.” I also remember her liking punk rock. I should have been in love. Oh, the errors of youth. Anyway, in the Las Vegas airport, the person working at the Burger King was named Alesia. Sometimes, I can be a very shallow and thoroughly disreputable person. And sometimes you meet a person and have to feel very much sorry for how absolutely unattractive they are. In the words of the band Butt Trumpet, “What the fuck did you do to you?” This second Alesia was one of those people. Question one: How did she get that name? Question two: Does this ruin the name for me forever? Question three: What level of hell does this put me in? Am I free and easy enduring only infrequent invasive surgery while Dave Mathews is playing, or am I in the belly of the beast thumb wrestling Brutus and Judas?

A post script note, I cannot use footnotes in the blog.This sucks. However, if I were able to use them please insert the following footnote after the words upon breeding. Footnote: If I, in fact, do breed.
For future posts, I'll figure out a different way to footnote. I'm crafty like that.

A promise of posts to come.

2008-01-13T12:19:00.000-08:00

So. Across the atlantic. I. Yet again. Write sentence fragments. That is to say, not much is that different. But. If I do have any for humanity, it's pretty well embodied in John Smith and Jolene Brink.
Having said that. My story is soon to follow.
Suckas.
Mo'Fucka. I thought you knew? Shit.

I meant to write "hope for humanity," but I think I like the ambiguity better.