ice everywhere, money everywhere

lesong shie
Originally uploaded by jlovegren.

of the dictionary, i redid the semantic domains, put the verbs in imperative form, identified groups of synonyms and deduced a few etymologies:

-lesong (tooth) from songe (to remove a long object from the place where it is impaled)
-agaba (boyfriend/girlfriend) from gabe (to move around a circle of people, distributing food or gifts)
-akate (book) from kata (to crumple or roll into a ball)

this indifference to how things really are

FBI: Extremists driving school buses
here is an article of highest interest. the FBI has noticed, as the article says, that foreigners with ties to extremist groups have been able to obtain licenses to drive school buses.

it provokes these questions:
what is a foreigner?
what is a tie?
what is an extremist group?

because the AP-news-reading public is likely to have different ideas than the FBI, a responsible journalist would have endeavored to explain how the FBI obtained its information and who it investigated. a responsible wire editor would have checked whether the information in the article supported the headline.

two weeks ago in lewoh, reports from reliable sources indicated that a certain man, a known practitioner of witchcraft, offered some secondary school students some money to carry some wooden planks to his farm. when the students reached the farm they noticed that he was in the process of conjuring a rainbow, which is known to be an evil force that can swallow up those upon whom it descends. a mob gathered in the market square and were planning to beat the man to death, he having been captured. his life was saved by the doctor, who cleverly convinced the crowd to wait until morning to kill him, by which time they had lost interest in the matter.

if you promise to pull this hook out my lip

a woman walked in and started speaking french quickly and in the strange fashion that europeans employ but with the cadence of a caring chismosa mexican.
t'as dit que eh? i say, in the local fashion. a bit more exchange and we have a comfortable medium to discuss her hija and whether her village in the north is suportable with its clima gente and endless greetings.

i went out in the embouteillage to get a couple of sandwiches then had a beer with an american who they were out to get. i advised him that if they're out to get you, you gotta accept it like a pirate on the morning of his execution who asks for nothing more than a slice of red baron pizza and get it over with already. buy a bootleg vcd of shakira videos, exchange three failed phone calls with a rasta who i was supposed to meet at the place i was sitting at the moment, to find out later he was across the street looking for me.

there was a moment at carrefour batie nlongkak that i only find funny now. i was in a taxi and there was a foule all desperately looking for a car. a guy runs up in step with the taxi and puts his head in the window, saying his destination and on part, non? (it's usually the owner of the car who is saying this to reluctant passengers) and his associate opens the trunk and jams some wooden shelves in. the driver says that the wooden shelves are not supportable because if the trunk is not all the way closed he'll have to give a bribe that is larger than the fare he was gonna pay.

i found a willing audience for my latin quotations with tran, who claims to have been the captain of the latin quotations team in high school. the dode and i discuss how sex is negotiated between speakers of different languages, from a structuralist perspective.

dixitque Charles Barkley "anything less would be uncivilised"

they not breathing after this one

one morning they entered the hospital before dawn and they took him on a bike to m'mok mbin. he is wasting away from not eating, "dry" as they say in pidgin, so everyone guesses it's AIDS, though it's not. after being offered a goat and a fowl. the doctor was able to remove a piece of rusted metal and a cat's tooth from his head. in fact, they were removed from his agege, like an effigy or voodoo doll, but they lead parallel lives, and their relationship is that of two pieces on a chessboard to each other. when any piece moves, all relationships change. later in the week i brought a fowl, with instructions to make a broth, and a type of medicine sold on socalo street that is said to be an antiemetic. the doctor discharged him because it is something a divisional hospital cannot diagnose. they tried another holistic doctor, who, for a goat...

rain is falling here and there but there is still dust in the air because people are slashing their fallowed fields, burning and tilling them, sowing macabo, maize, plantains and egusi melons. there is also the matter of taking coffee that has been drying, (now that the rains are starting) and bagging it and negotiating with the men who have trucks, who park and sit leaning through the windows, staring down at the dust and letting the sun strike them, killing the engines and never really talking. a smile means the negotiation is still early, a sigh means an agreement has been reached. last week two armed men went to somebody's compound and beat him and wanted to steal his sacks of coffee. they dared to because he lives far away from other people so they wouldn't hear his scream. they walked three kilometers up a steep hill and up the narrow path to the compound to steal two sacks of coffee, weighing 80 kilos worth about $36 each, then carry them on their heads down to where they would hide them and later sell.

i'm big ballin'
baby yeah
spendin' g's
i'm on my grind all day
makin' money with ease

and if you don't love me now, you'll never love me again...

Non ignara mali. Miseris sucurrere disco.
(the exiled queen dido to shipwrecked aeneas "i'm not ignorant of misfortune, i'm learning to help those in misery")

what the two of us have in common is knowing the feeling of waking up washed up on the shores of dreams, and how hard it is to first sit up then clear your head. towards the end of the school year, teacher and student, a decrepitude enters our morals and our will to leave the bed. (for the children it's easier because their beds are uncomfortable and next to the kitchen fire and three brothers smashed up to you) standing naked before a bucket of cold water (you are supposed to wash with this), shaven and washed, before 60 noisy 13-year-olds (you need to keep them occupied for the next 1.5 hours)

a sign outside tells patients that they do in fact have rights. for example, they should be given a receipt when they give money, they have the right to ask for the doctor, and the nurses are not allowed to shout at them. maimuna is talking on the phone and the nurse is sticking a thick needle in her gracile vein "ah ah ah. .... non, c'est qu'ils me piquent." drifts in and out of sleep, high on codeine. we go out and have a dinner of cow foot and tomato sauce with cheap draft beer, sweating. we come back and uncork a bottle of marquez de chivas, drink from plastic cups with a few of her cousins, sitting on the floor in a room buzzing with fulfulde electric fans french pidgin, breathing... on a muslim prayer mat we sweat and sip the wine. the tradition is to have a wake for someone who is not dead yet and not going to die, though they would have liked to kill her. she listens to prayers, complains of numb or itching hands, depending on how long since the last injection, tells the story thrice, vomits twice, accuses jerry of checking out her cousin ("she likes very much men, you know") then falls asleep.