Something Funny

So here’s a little tidbit that I found giggle-worthy today that I thought I’d share.

It was after six and I was sitting out reading my second Anne Rice book (“The Vampire Lestat” – not terribly good) watching dinner be prepared. This one big white cow came wandering into the compound because this is about the time the cows come rolling home, usually chased by the teenage boy and several kids. This one had just come in ahead of the others.

So she beelines for the mortars, pots and buckets, sticking her face in each and licking with her big cow tongue (which you can actually hear, the tongue is so strong and rough). Abi (my second mom) is running around making dinner, very busy, and kept having to shooing her off, waving buckets at her, hitting her with a stick, generally making the motion of “clear off!” with her hands, in between stirring the pot, moving this pot here and that pot there, putting away the sifter, walking into the cooking hut and back out, etc… The cow would go away a few paces and then come back.

So Abi is busy doing all this stuff for dinner and the cow comes back again so she finally just throws a bucket of water she has in her hands in its face. For some reason it was the funniest thing I ever saw. The cow shut its eyes and grimaced and turned away finally. And I just started laughing and couldn’t stop. I think maybe part of why I found it so funny is because a cow can’t wipe the water out of its eyes, it just has to blink a lot. Then Abi started laughing, then the grandma who was sitting next to me started laughing. And then the rest of the cows came rolling in and they all got shut away for the night.

The end.

…I guess you had to be there.

Bad With Good

So this morning I was so happy. My friend Ousmane from Guinea called and he said that Yogi is doing great and everybody in the village knows him and likes him and that I’ll not be forgotten in Santou as long as he is around. He also said that his wife Lundi is pregnant and going to give birth soon and that if it is a girl he is going to name her Dorian, after me.

I was so content! First of all that Yogi is not only still alive, but great (and fat, according to Ousmane), and then that I became aware that I had touched Ousmane’s life in my too short time in Guinea so much so that he would name his first born child after me. I mean, I had heard of that happening to volunteers but I didn’t think it ACTUALLY happened, or that it was really rare, and maybe it is, but nonetheless if it’s a girl her name will be mine! (if it’s a boy, Ousmane said, that will present somewhat of a problem).

So it renewed my desire to go back to Santou after COS and visit and maybe even try to take Yogi home with me (but that’s just going to have to be a whole lot of serendipity for it to happen). It also made me miss Guinea so much all over again and lament what I could have done there and the friendships I could really have cultivated, friendships impossible for me to find here due if nothing else to the language barrier.

Then I came back to site. And was informed that Puppy was hit by a car on Friday and died. Which brought back that awful day when our car ran over a dog and then I just sat there wondering if he suffered or if it was quick and just hoping it was quick and being glad to still have Doggie and Magellan (though I thought about how sad Magellan would be to have lost her friend).

Then, after getting all of Magellan’s stuff all set up (filling her litter box, cleaning her water and food bowls and filling with fresh water), I was informed that Magellan is also dead. W-T-F?!?!?! So in case you were keeping track, Mali has now managed to kill 4 of my pets in only nine months: Macguyver (cat), Shamu (chick), Puppy (dog) and Magellan (cat). Unless you also want to count my chickens Chester and Philip, whose deaths I consented to (they were sick) which would bring our grand total to six pets in nine months. Awesome.

I couldn’t understand how she died (they didn’t really say), only that she was found dead in Setu’s house. Or something or someone killed her there (or maybe Setu accidentally locked her in there when she went out of town) but at any rate that is where she died.

And so now I’m just f-ing depressed all over again. Both of my companions are gone in the few days I was away. And I’m too scared to get another one (and I could, Yusuf still has puppies) because it will probably just die and if it doesn’t I’ll have to worry about being too attached to it and wanting to take it home.

Now that it’s getting dark I keep looking around for Magellan, because that’s when she’d usually come out, hoping that my family was just kidding (they sometimes joke about stuff like that). But they’re not kidding and she’s dead and I’m alone again in this village where I can’t communicate with anyone.

They say you have to take the bad with the good but why does the bad have to arrive right on the heels of the good so that you can’t even enjoy it for a moment?

I hate being a transfer.

A Moveable Feast

Well, it’s July. A little less than six weeks before I go home for my sister’s wedding and a little more than seven months until my official COS date. Although I think I am going to try to COS in December. Raven and I were talking about spending Christmas in Ethiopia, then maybe hitting Eritrea before a 14-day backpacker trip organized by The Canadian Hostel in Egypt (PYRAMIDS!!!). I’ve also thought about hitting Kenya or Tanzania after that to go on a safari but I dunno if I’ll have enough money.
Then I’ve been thinking about going to see Molly in France for awhile. I have never been to France. Unless you count the Charles DeGaulle airport which is nothing to crow about. And at first when I started reading Hemingway’s “A Moveable Feast”, I still wasn’t really interested. But I just finished it and as he went on about the beautiful countryside, quirky cafes, wonderful food and delightful local white wines I was like…yeah. I could do France.
One of the things I miss the most is sitting around having a nice wine with my friends. One of my favorite moments from when I was home a few months ago was standing in John’s kitchen drinking a white port. Just shooting the shit. I think when I get home I’d like to instate a “Happy Hour Club”. It’ll be like dinner club was except it will be happy hours. And we can hit all the places around town that have happy hours and pick our favorite spot and then make it a regular thing.
When I was at COS conference an RPCV was there talking about how to readjust to America when we get back. Apparently people have a hard time adjusting. A lot of people say they start crying in the cereal aisle at the first grocery store they go to. I think I am just easy to adjust to stuff because I didn’t really have a very hard time adjusting here (as in to Africa, I did have a bit of a struggle adjusting after evac) and when I was home for five weeks, the first time I went into the cereal aisle I zeroed in on Cap’n Crunch, looked for strawberry-filled shredded wheat (didn’t find it) and put it in my basket. I certainly didn’t cry. Didn’t even feel like crying. The only time I got nervous was when I went to pick up a six pack of IBC Black Cherry and the box broke and shattered all the bottles on the floor. I had no idea what to do. In fact I kind of just stood there open-mouthed until a store employee found me, cleaned off my feet, told me to step away from the glass and cleaned it up for me. And didn’t even seem annoyed. But I was still too freaked to pick up another six pack until the next time I went to the store. And even then I slid a hand under it before I picked it up.
The point is that this RPCV who was giving this lecture about readjustment basically told us we are probably going to drop the majority of our friends when we get home. He said they won’t get it (can’t), the things that they do and complain about will seem really petty and they will just generally seem less intelligent than they may have before. I’m thinking of this sentiment like Joseph Conrad put it in “Heart of Darkness” – “I found myself back in the sepulchral city resenting the sight of people hurrying through the streets to filch a little money from each other, to devour their infamous cookery, to gulp their unwholesome beer, to dream their insignificant and silly dreams. They trespassed on my thoughts. They were intruders whose knowledge of life was to me an irritating pretense, because I felt so sure they could not possibly know the things I knew.” He said that you have to decide whether a friendship is really worth forgiving those things in order to keep it up. And he said in a lot of cases it won’t be.
I guess a lot of the reason is that they will get sick of hearing your Africa stories after about five minutes. I don’t know about other people, but I don’t really have a desire to talk about Africa. I did it on my blog. Copiously. I’m kind of Africa-talked out. In fact when my friends would ask me questions about it when I was home I’d just be like…”can’t you just go read my blog?” I dunno, maybe it’s different for other people. But I guess in the end it’s that I KNOW they aren’t going to get it and really explaining it, even a small question like “what do they eat” is going to take so frigging long to explain and after 5 minutes of what would be a 30 minute answer I’d see the eyes glazing over and I’d just rather not.
Anyway. I don’t really see myself dropping my friends. I didn’t think of them any differently when I was home and I was there quite awhile. But who knows?
So back to wine. I really want to go wine tasting. There are some good wineries in Southern Illinois (in fact my sister’s wedding is at a winery) so maybe while I am there I can talk someone into going wine tasting with me for a day. Maybe my stepmom would want to go. Or maybe my stepmom, Mattie and Michelle. Or maybe my cousin Maggie will be there. Who knows? But I am going to propose it to anyone I think might be into it.
One time for my birthday Bates gave me a Sideways Wine Tour coupon. It was an invention of his own mind but basically he was saying he would take me on the Sideways wine tour in California (you know, like the movie). We never did it. We were really busy in film school. When I get home I should try to find that coupon and cash it in!! Although he is broke now so I probably won’t hold him to paying for the whole thing. Hear that Bates? WINE TOUR! Get ready!
I want to live in so many places. And do so many things. The next book I’m about to start reading is about an Australian expat’s life in Amsterdam (“My ‘Dam Life”). It seems like it would be fun to tramp around and do random things for money and live lots of different places for a few months at a time. But then if I did that I would be putting off my career even longer.
But how important is it to have a career? And how late can I start? ☺