with angelic host

#9 puff puff
i passed through herr geraldo anasazi's hometown to survey the scene. we went to hollawood bar on the historic market square to eat grilled mackerel and consider solicitations from prostitutes and geraldo's female students. in the morning we ate beans and puff puff at a tournedos amongst the del monte rubber and banana plantation houses. it looks so strange, those identical concrete houses packed so closely together. tenants get free rent as long as they are working. if you want to retire and still live in the house, your children will have to be workers too. we went to pa's house and madame had pa's daughter and some random cousin cook breakfast for us. geraldo mentioned that the daughter had been feeding him almost every day since he got there, so i suggested that he should just marry her. she's university educated. this proposition proved to be not so simple, as there were various other women around the area bringing food over for geraldo, perhaps with similar intentions. even the waitress at the country club seemed to take a similar attitude in serving him his fried chicken and chips. cameroon has restricted the importation of frozen chicken, so most chicken you eat will have been freshly killed, very juicy, not much meat, and bones soft enough to eat. munka scholastica came to the house one evening (i still haven't figured out which if any of the children in the compound are hers) and asked me privately who had brought the fufu and ero for geraldo, with guarded envy. i explained that he was perfectly capable of collecting the two types of leaves needed to make the ero from the forest, prepare them with red oil and spices, peel, soak, cook and pound the cassava, and arrange it attractively in two pots all by himself. laughter