Its mango season. Again.
I was riding out of Nampoch this morning when Kodjo flagged me down. He said his wife is having contractions. She was walking around trying to see if they
were real or not.
(update: its a boy)
If you want to know something of my current state of mind, know this. I am switching between “Spancil Hill” by the
Dubliners and the Dropkick Murphys’ rendition of the same song, “Fairmont
Hill.”
Fruit in the States generally sucks.
Except for apples. And
grapes. I was thinking about this when
we were eating pineapple for breakfast at this Rasta place in Cape Coast. The pineapple he served us, while lightly
bouncing to a reggae beat, was pale white.
About the same shade as my stomach.
Bit into it and the flavor explosion on my tongue about took my head
off. It tasted like how you hope every
pinna colada you’ve ordered will taste.
It tasted like how that ¼ of a golden pineapple sitting in a plastic
tube in Meijer’s looks like it should taste.
It tasted like Rasta guy had just biked over to the Garden of Eden and
picked it. It was that good. Like the
bananas that I wax vocal about.
Coconuts? Speak not to me of
those hairy uniformly sanitized things piled in Kroger’s like so many discarded
Rocky Mountain Oysters. Speak to me
instead of those fuzzy little balls of goodness whose meat whispers to my mouth
secrets of nature. Give me an avocado
sprinkled with salt, pepper, some lemon juice, and I will show you manna. Last night N’tido gave me some ungrafted
mangos. Little things more string and
seed than pulp, but containing more flavor than any two of those
nerfball-sized, insipid mangos that grace your produce section. Give me a fruit that tries to choke the life
out of my taste buds, I don’t care what it looks like.
Ive been watching American TV again since I was in Ghana and downloaded the
3rd season of the Walking Dead.
I am, in my old age, or maybe in my isolation, somewhat surprised by the
level of violence that permeates American TV.
Sure, I expect splattered brains on HBO shows, but on network TV? What I find more interesting, however, is the
ongoing, hypocritical Puritanism on the same shows towards sex. Everyone (almost) has sex. Not everyone joins biker gangs and beats up
their rivals. TV shows are rarely merely
entertainment, usually they have some societal/cultural message they
explore. This is what makes good TV
shows interesting. The violence in these shows suggests that America, as a
culture, is more comfortable working through societal issues via the medium of
fantasy violence. That’s kind of scary. Which kill more people, guns or boobs?
Its been raining a lot recently.
Kadar took me down to D’s last weekend.
I was surprised how green Mt. Bassar was compared to my house. Last Tuesday night a massive storm came
through. It soaked everything pretty
well. On my way into town this morning,
I passed a lot of people out planting corn and other stuff.
There is a natural gas shortage in Togo for some reason. My egg sammie guy is down to his last
tank. Literally the next day after he
told me about the gas shortage, D called me to say her gas tank was out. We started a massive search to find someplace
that had full tanks. Bassar, no. Kabou, no.
Sokode. nope. Kara, maybe. . .
nope, just kidding. Not for a
month. Luckily, Kadar remembered that
he’d bought a tank for his girlfriend in Kabou that she didn’t use, so we took
that to D.
I think that Nighan is pregnant. Again.
My new favorite breakfast is spaghetti au gras with a hotdog omelet on top.
or a calabash of tchapka
Another sign that rainy season is picking up is that a lot of people are
walking around my village with plasters stuck to their faces. Pasting together injuries from moto accidents
on muddy roads.
Something I’ve been thinking, from my weekly meander on Facebook, is the
claim that guns are part of an “American” way of life. I’ve just been wondering—how much time a year
does the average American spend playing with his/her guns? Couple hours a week? A month? A year? A gun supplies what percentage of the average
American’s yearly caloric intake? 25%?
10%? 1%? I grew up with guns and I have
a hard time seeing how my way of life would significantly change at all if
strict gun control policies were enacted.
I certainly wouldn’t starve, or be somehow less “American.”
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