built on

en cuanto mi puesto como periodista satírico, acabé echado por haber gone too far con mi comedia negra, me dijeron que por qué me quede yo en país si lo odio así. tenía que reir y marcar otro exito por la comedia negra. en outre, je me lance ce soir, so long suckers! cuando fuí a lewoh para arranger quelques sujets financiaux, tout le monde a cru que je m'en étais allais pour jamais. les he asegurado que ce n'est qu'une absence pasagère, más veremos. i wrote a small document on pidgin english for the new american trainees, and became convinced that i will have to study igbo and occitan to be able to speak with any authority on the subject. proxima vez subiré desde europa tchau la gente

Song of Roland

Carles li reis, nostre emperere magnes
set anz tuz pleins ad estet en Espaigne:
Tresqu'en la mer cunquist la tere altaigne.
N'i ad castel ki devant lui remaigne;
Mur ne citet n'i est remés a fraindre
Fors Saraguce, ki est en une muntaigne.
Li reis Marsilie la tient, ki Deu nen amet,
Mahumet sert e Apollin recleimet:
Nes poet guarder que mals ne l'i ateignet. AOI.

Li empereres se fait e balz e liez:
Cordres ad prise e les murs peceiez,
Od ses cadables les turs en abatied;
Mult grant eschech en unt si chevaler
D'or e d'argent e de guarnemenz chers.
En la citet nen ad remés paien
Ne seit ocis u devient chrestien.
Li empereres est en un grant verger,
Ensembl'od lui Rollant e Oliver,
Sansun li dux e Anseis li fiers,
Gefreid d'Anjou, le rei gunfanuner,
E si i furent e Gerin e Gerers;
La u cist furent, des altres i out bien:
De dulce France i ad quinze milliers.
Sur palies blancs siedent cil cevaler,
As tables juent pur els esbaneier
E as eschecs li plus saive e li veill,
E escremissent cil bacheler leger.
Desuz un pin, delez un eglentier,
Un faldestoed i unt, fait tut d'or mer:
La siet li reis ki dulce France tient.
Blanche ad la barbe e tut flurit le chef,
Gent ad le cors e le cuntenant fier:
S'est kil demandet, ne l'estoet enseigner.
E li message descendirent a pied,
Sil saluerent par amur e par bien.

.

alianza

i laid to rest suspicions about my leaving lewoh forever, washed the dishes before going out this time but left the grass growing long. people were mad that i did not arrange my grass to be cut the day before i returned so as to make me look important. everyone was giving me monkey kola because it is in season.

better late than never

i taught some chemistry classes for three days this week. i have to take the classes the first week then give them over to the americans who are learning pedagogy. again i ate grub worms on the way north to yaoundé and i'm only here a few hours. this time i have to go to lewoh to pay my electricity bill and njangi. some guy, presumedly an authorized money changer following procedure, sold me forty four dollars, meaning that i have now completely turned this and next month's salaries into foreign currency. after i settle my accounts in lewoh i have nothing to worry me except getting to douala intl by vingt trois heures friday night

que no duerma con otra, morena, solo conmigo

i figured that since i would be spending so much time on bush taxis this weekend i may as well accede to the looseleaf sheet with a city's name, a question mark and a double underline. yesterday morning i walked out to the road and yelled okara got to the bus station. i was sitting next to a young father who did not tolerate his daughter's squirming about. i woke up at a péage and bought two sticks of grub worm soya from a little girl who was running so fast with the plate held up above her head as a waitress does. you just have to throw the coins out the window and they pick them up from the ground. when you're on the bus sleeping you always wake up every 30 minutes to speed bumps and children yelling arachides grillés! noix cassés! pate de mangue! soya! bananes! mandarins!
i got to yaoundé and walked around two hours on a sunday looking for a clé minute and eventually settled for a salami sandwich and yogurt and delaying the trip to douala. i reasoned that i could avoid going to tiko all together (the reason for getting the key copied), with good auspices and street smarts. my ticket had turned completely black somehow. it was a paper ticket so would have to be traded for one bearing my name.
this morning i got the 6.30 to douala full of students and business men trying to make it to work by 9.00. i spent about seven hours in douala's tricked out bonandjo' quartier. but first i went to the airport. the taxista ripped me off, but not nearly as badly as the other times i've gone to the airport. a guy who was most likely unemployed and had no business at the airport arranged a 15-second meeting for me with a travel agent at the airport. she said that the situation wasn't my fault and that i should go to the office of a certain M. Nya downtown. as a mnemonic aid, i noted that with a falling tone, his name would mean animal in nnwe. my soi-disant protocol agent told me the name of M. Nya's quartier and i write it phonetically. he offers to accompany me and i decline.
in bonandjo' i enter the office and i tell the only guy there, c'est m. nya? je viens de parler a votre ami à l'aeroport, une telle mme. geradine. voici mon billet, qui m'est venu dans une mauvaise condition. he looks at the ticket and types on the keyboard for about thirty minutes without saying anything. without prompting he starts to read a telex to me.

passagere venu lovegren/jesse stop billet ilisible stop ticket no. xxxxxxx stop

he makes me a photocopy of the mysterious telegram and says that as soon as he gets an affirmative response from new york he will issue me a new ticket. this came as a complete shock to me, as businesses in cameroon generally are not interested in dealing with customers, especially those with unusual problems. since it was then 3am in new york, i spent about six hours eating sandwiches and coffee and reading a spanish translation of a stephen king book i found at the transit house in yaoundé. i went back and he said that he had received confirmation and that i should return at quatorze heures demain. i said perhaps a more convenient time could be arranged and he proposed one hour hence, much to my surprise. an hour later i had my new, legible ticket and was on my way to the bus station. some women fresh out of paris were jabbering in ewondo the whole way and i kept being awoken by speed bumps and noix cassés!

tomorrow is back to mbalmayo where i have to teach a chemistry class. i'll go to lewoh to straighten my electricity bill next weeekend

radio

the city of ebolowa has a name which means rotting monkey in bulu. they say that the disease ebola gets its name also from bulu. i spent most of friday and saturday morning in mbalmayo devising a theory that would help me calculate the probability of every possible roll in farkle. i completed the task and had statistics to always tell me the smartest play. i was in last place when i played last night. i have to go to douala because my plane ticket was blackened

Angels sang there with mirth and glee

on some days i wake up early. you can hear only birds and crying babies. last night was poitrine fumé et oeufs frites à l'especiale. bacon grease and champagne. then watching some ivoirien videos françois o o o! françois vient de morir o! i don't know why we were celebrating or if we were celebrating at all for that matter. i had about 50 mL of champagne and a fried egg. then this guy asked me about his sandwich. i looked at him without saying anything. he said it has been eaten and then he walked away. then we had a conference about how i should go apologize to the guy. then the conference changed to how we should inform the guy that his sandwich did in fact still exist. the dentist said i have a cavity so it gets filled today. i saw a chinese in the dentist office.

on va bouger bouger

mi star per yaoundé, non sabir cosa far aca. mi bisogno cacciare cane, bisogno caminare per mbalmayo

bii songe na duala

when i had between seventeen and nineteen years of age i found it fashionable to boycott various things. i felt that there was a problem somewhere in the world, but i didn't understand the world well enough to describe only the problem; only manifestations of the problem. first came drinking from straws, which i decided at a whataburger restaurant in harlingen, then came coca-cola and other soft drinks, then came various restaurants, newspapers, neighborhoods, etc. eventually i became wise enough to understand that the problem was so vast and amorphous that i could never describe it, at least never could i understand it as fast as it changed. tonight i was reminded of the time i attempted to enter buddha bar in paris but was denied since i was nowhere near the coolness-richness threshold. i went to a bakery run by some frenchman to watch the game on a big tv. i spent more money than i cared to and never got the food i wanted, and the food i didn't want wasn't enough. at half-time gordon and i went outside and had the usual icelandic mackerel grilled on burglar mesh and only got cheated by 50 francs each, compared to this boulangerie in which each and every french citizen holds a stake, where it was conspired that i may spend some 3500 francs on things made with stale bread and three hours delayed. i decided i would boycott all restaurants that have printed and laminated menus, where the waitress comes without you yelling at her. that is to say all white man restaurants. bakeries too. well maybe i'd go to a bakery again, not in yaoundé, though. i don't even like bread. after the game we went to our favorite bar in omnisport where the waitress is familiar with our preferences and the place most likely changes into a casino and whorehouse at 1 am--i've never been there past that time but i believe that the unseen is always more exotic, more lascivious and more awakened.

cha cha cha

a) dr. njika met me at a gas station and showed me the program she had invested so much time in. there was a classroom full of small children. they were all bangwas living in yaoundé and their parents did not want them to forget the dialect. since it was the first week of the class, they were working on reciting the alphabet that dr. njika had invented. then reciting all of the numbers up to 100 and various parts of the body. she said that she had five very dedicated teachers, though she was the only linguist, and in the first couple weeks would have to be always sticking her head in to make sure that the children and the teachers were reading the symbols correctly. she took me to her office and gave me a copy of her dissertation, even though it needs correction and is not fit for publication. reading the abstract i thought that it would have been nice to have the book a year ago, but at least now i have a solid background with which to read it.

b) in mbalmayo i met a certain mme. ndemaze. her village is close to lewoh, so she invited me for dinner and her husband gave me a copy of a high school text book he wrote and bought me a beer. we watched the portugal france game at their house and she apologized that there wasn't enough dried crayfish in the eru, but i said i wouldn't have known the difference and enjoyed it all the same.

c) my boss raised his eyebrow and told me that apollinaire was not only a drunk and a surrealist, but also a pornographer. i said i did not know this and he said that yes, very serious pornographer. i had the feeling that he approved neither of pornography nor of apollinaire. i was curious enough to google around until i found the text of Les Onze Milles Verges. you learn something new each day.

Elle murmurait :
- Baisons... Je n'en peux plus... Méchant, voilà huit jours que tu n'es pas venu

d) finally the end of two years of that song stuck in my head. from that one bus ride in costa rica with severe diarrhea to yaounde wearing women's sweat pants from lost and found waiting for my clothes to dry. i said i had heard a sample of it in ajong's bar. the next time i heard it i asked for the cd jacket and pegged the name to my memory.

obsesión

no es amor
lo que tú sientes
Se llama obsesión
Una ilusión
en tu pensamiento
Que te hace hacer cosas
así funciona el corazón

kunya bebia

charcutiers
Originally uploaded by jlovegren.

these were questions i asked of loafers and busybodies. there are charcutiers. i know this because i have seen them and met them personally. they have sold me pork before. the guys in the picture may or may not be actual charcutiers, but they were selling pork at sa'a ntchen when i went. someone told me that the butchers generally require a fee of 5000 francs, five liters of raphia wine, and 2 kg of prepared pork to be able to declare a pig fit for consumption then kill and butcher it. this was considered to be a reasonable fee until the day that the charcutiers were reported to have butchered a pig that had already died of african swine flu. people took the meat home. when they burned off the hair and scrubbed the bristles off the virus entered the air and infected living pigs. three died in anya, including one pregnant sow with ten piglets. perhaps more died in njenawum or mbin. i don't know if any of this is true, but it is surely based on the truth. after this incident pig owners in anya boycotted the directives of the ministry of agriculture and refused to do business with the licensed butchers. anya is awash in black market pork and a pig hasn't been killed in the usual stall on anzoah for at least six weeks, as far as i remember. people do not mind killing their own pigs without paying any royalties, though no one believes this situation can persist much longer. pig owners advertise by word of mouth and carry notebooks in their pockets. when someone claims they will buy some pork, they note their name and the number of kilos, including any special indications. now we buy pork like we would buy cocaine. you know a guy that is sitting on a few kilos and he's looking for people to unload it on. you agree to come to his house at such and such a time and everyone knows the standard prices. three small sheets of corrugated iron were laid out. two sheets were placed together and they dump her out onto it. she is washed off. a young man with a very sharp machete cuts all the skin around her neck and hacks through the neckbone. the head is removed and placed on the third sheet. now he cuts the skin around the midsection and the innards spill out. these are placed next to the head and an old woman comes out of the crowd to stake a claim on one of the parts. she called it a certain word and i remembered this and wrote it down. it looks like a chamber that would come between stomach and intestine. they cut the back bone and cut the hind parts into two quarters. now people start to crowd around the guys with the scale. we press our money into nkem ngwehjong's hand so he knows how many kilos and the man with the machete starts preparing people's orders. they bring out a calculator for transparency. the whole thing took about an hour and a half. i went home and burned the hair off on my gas stove and scrubbed the skin and washed it. i made curry and shared with my neighbor.

killing kunya

efong's tavern
Originally uploaded by jlovegren.

i couldn't wait to wake up. all my dreams were rushed and never felt real since there was always waking up in the back of my mind. i woke at 5.30 and remembered i had been drinking the evening before. it was my stomach that reminded me. nkem ngwehjong had been talking idly about his sow and six o'clock and how many kilos all the past week. i showered and dressed, then went to his compound. i heard a loud squealing as i was locking the door. pigs often squeal when they're about to get fed or they have to move from the place where they were, or they are being killed. it could have been one of several pigs in the neighborhood. on the street in front of the compound a couple of the men responsible for killing the animal were nervous and they were pacing. people from the quarters and school children were standing in the street to gossip. women with bobolo or akra bean cakes on their heads passed on their way to the market, taking the gossip with them. i learned the words in nnwe for escape and capture. the phrases i heard that i already knew were beat to death, beat on the head. the pig had been struck on the head with a blow that did not kill her but scrambled her brains. she had run into the bush and couldn't be reasoned with, on account of the brain injury. this ruled out another blow to the head, because a mad pig cannot be trusted to sit still while a person comes to hit it with a log. a man arrived with a rusty shotgun and a single shell. this was about an hour after i first arrived, since it took some time to decide to use up a good shotgun shell and then to fetch the gun and the man who could shoot it truly. the pig was standing next to another pig sty. we cleared back and then the shot came. some people were yelling "a ka' miksa gi!" but it wasn't entirely true. the shot landed around the pig's face and throat. at a banquet the following day someone found a pellet in their meat and commented on it. the rumor mills had been running smoothly enough that it was only necessary to say that the meat came from nkem ngwehjong's pig. after ten minutes they came out of the bush with a lifeless pig's body in a wheelbarrow. it was a very big one. now you may be thinking one or none of several things:

1. this is charming how people gossip
2. why would you kill a pig in your front yard?
3. isn't there a licensed charcutier in town?