je ne vends pas ça

yesterday we went to this restaurant for grilled chicken and french fries. the guy promised us that the chickens were already prepared but there was a suspicion as to whether he meant that they had already been captured, or they had already been bled and plucked, or they had already been quartered and washed, etc. there is rarely ketchup at a restaurant but you can get maggi msg sauce in its stead. we had to drink a second beer since it started raining as we were preparing to leave.

since dschang is a border town, haggling is bilingual. i saw on the vcd kiosk a film with the title "THE BIG LEBOWSKI," and i picked it up. the cover featured a man with his short half torn off, sweating and holding a machine gun, another with a knife in his hand and blood, a robot or a tank, all on a backdrop of explosions. it seems that the title THE BIG LEBOWSKI was imposed on the cover of Delta Force X. the discs were in fact those of the movie the big lebowski, but the clever nigerian distribution agents had doctored the cover so as to suit local tastes (anything with steven segal in it). i don't know if this counts as false advertising.

bon soir, mon ami, celui-ci coute cinq cent, vrai?
pas vrai
we be na combi dem...

i'll post the big lebowski cover next chance i get. i think it would be to drake's amusement. buying coconuts:
c'est cent cinquant, non?
trois cent
na white man price o! we di go, you done kosh me (walk away)
three
(continue walking)
two
(turn around)
donnez-moi l'argent

you know you have gotten the right price if the vendor quietly says "donnez-moi l'argent." if the vendor looks intent on ripping you off, you can cut the process short by pulling out the amount you want to pay and shoving it in his hand, say "prennez l'argent" if he closes his hand around the money, the sale is made. fresh coconuts are about forty cents, and pineapples so sweet you can eat the rind are about 75 cents, but where is the rum?

on the avena situation: here in dschang cans of quaker oats are for sale at "the white man store." the directions for preparation in english are for making oatmeal hot cereal, those in spanish are for making avena the beverage. you gring about two tablespoons of oats into a powder then add to a cup of sugared milk, bring to a boil and turn off let thicken, add cinnamon. you can use honey instead.

the avocado mama had a bucket of beignets labeled "ca va se savoir" the mark everyone knows to be chinese. perhaps because everyone knows that americans hate chinese, she told me that she is not one to be selling chinese beignets, which brings me to other facts i have learned about americans:

-we are all honest and can repair any car or computer (macguyver)
-men may be carrying a gun, and have amazing fighting skills (steven segal)
-women cannot get enough sex (porno)
-we have little else to do but sit around with our friends spending money (any syndicated television show)
-we are either a scientist, a doctor, a professor, or a priest (misssionairies and NGO's)
-we do not like children and we abandon our elderly parents (family planning campaigns)

you win some, you lose some