my baskets are coming home

i had dinner with a friend last night who kept asking me why i don't live in africa, because of how funny i find everything all the time. and i asked him, doesn't it get boring?
nope.
so i need a vessel to transport my baskets. i was imaging the big nylon bags the locals are alyways piling up at the airport, full of "imports." basically a big rice bag.
so at my lunch break i wandered up the street to the little row of lebanese convenience stores. they're each the same, with plastic baskets, brooms and free-standing fans all crowding the doors. the first had a faux-hawked metrosexual youngster behind the elevated counter (at the level of my neck), in his hot pink "I'm hot" t-shirt, thumbing with his three blackberries and grooving to the deafening Jay-Z.
i found some soap, a request from home (did you know 3/4 of the soaps here are "whitening"? scary), though it says "savon de marseille" on it, and it's a big block my mom probably pays 20 times as much for in France. when i handed it to him, he did a little cocktail move and tossed it over his head and caught it behind his back, after doing a spin. nice. he was super friendly until some poor old gabonese lady came limping in to which he pointed and screamed, check your bag, you're not coming in here with that! very rude. i noticed this only pertained to people of the, uh, darker skin variety. everyone else was more than welcome to saunter in with their vegetables.
anyway, as i explained what i wanted he waved me off yeah yeah i know - barouuuuuuuu! and called his slow-walking zombie employee who took me in the back aisle where we climbed over piles of shower curtains and doormats and then s l o   o     ww    l  y   went through like, 15 different gift bags, like what you give someone a CD in and showed them to me. too small, i need big! big like i want to carry a pig!
"this one has a pig on it."
no, not piglet from winne the pooh, a big bag, like a RICE BAG.
so he takes me to the 20 kilos of rice section.
i just want the empty bag.
"vous voulez durisdedans?"
no, just the bag.
the guy looks around all nervous...can't compute!
i finally found what i wanted across the street (for free! unbelievable) and it's actually a cool rice bag with chinese writing and shrimp on it, so i was in a real good mood. i hopped along through a little kid's street soccer game and tried to show off my mad dribbling skills, but i accidentally kicked the ball in to the sewer. the nasty, open, rotten, sewer with dead cats in it. errrr i had to back away as they glared at me, (i'm wearing white, there's no WAY i'm going down there) so i went the other way and passed my peanuts-in-a-bottle lady who was all, "hey where's your baskets?" like, she thinks i carry them around every day? i bought some peanuts, and then remembered i had this 5,000 unit cell phone credit thingie i won't use, and i handed it to her, maybe you can use this? it's 10 bucks worth or something, so she threw her hands up in the air and cheered "5 mille unitééééééés!" and gyrated her hips in a sexy way i thought was only possible on tv, and then "i'm closed for today!" well, me too lady, i'm outta here, we're off to the beach!

basket buyers anonymous

hi my name is aurelgrooves, and i'm here today because i'm addicted to baskets. i just keep buying, and buying, and buying, today i spent my perdiem on baskets, not on food and i have no idea how i'm going to bring these back on a plane.

also in this photo, dead cockroach #362

top top louis

so the good thing about where i'm staying is the Top Louis grocery store that's open all the time.

outside, the ladies sell fruit at half the price and twice the quality as inside - including, and these are my absolute favorite i will totally bring them home - tiny roasted, shelled and hand peeled peanuts inside old whiskey bottles. with a J&B cap and everything, just pour out your peanuts. it must take weeks to shell these all, yet they sell a 1 liter bottle for the equivelent of 3€. and not only that, in some of the bottles they'll even make a gradient of colored peanuts or designs, some lighter lines of peanuts amid the darker ones, like those bottles of colored sand you buy at beach boardwalks

one stop shoppin'

inside, it's another world, the supermarket is run by a family of really grumpy unhelpful chinese who mumble and don't open their mouth and you can't understand a word and all they do is shuffle around and mumble-yell at their gabonese employees who sort of ooze around like zombies. 

the deli section is nothing less than terrifying, week-old terrines covered in fly excrement and animal parts that even africans wouldn't stoop so low as to eat. nevertheless there's a semi-cheery deli zombie guy, with some 60s women's supermarket outfit and paper hat who struggles with the slicer. 

the lumberjacks, some colleagues and i were invited to a friend's house for dinner, so we wanted to pick up some wine. i have to say the selection at Top Louis is rather impressive, though the contents are what you'd expect at a gas station. the bottles are all dusty and dirty, but not in a good way. rosés are more brown than pink, sparkling wine with yellowed labels that students might drink and overpriced merlots from spain with ferocious animals on them and such. the colleagues were french wine snobs who were taking foreeeeever to pick something out "do we like languedoc?" the smell of the meat section was making me dizzy. come on guys, seriously? let's get outta here! 

there was an employee guy nearby, shuffling around in his lime green uniform, rearranging some of the bottles and so i say ironically, in a sort of british accent "perhaps we should ask the sommelier for a recommendation?" and the employee guy, who is wearing 2 left flip flops and has 1 rotten teeth left springs to attention "how may i help you?" 

uhhhh, do you have any cotes du rhone?

"why of course, this one is my favorite" and it's a bit like a monty python skit but we go along. we kinda can't believe it, but the guy seems to have tasted everything. even the concha del toro (too sweet). we throw him a couple curveballs ask for things that don't exist but he's totally on the ball. so what's his favorite? "Chateauneuf-du-pape, of course."  it's only 35€. far out.

a little visit from the NYT

there was a bit of commotion today with all the phones ringing around the office, and all the logistics guys running around frantically. 2 journalists had showed up for a field trip without visas and were stuck at the libreville airport. amateurs. there was a bit of wrangling and bribing but our driver finally brought them in. 

so this guy barges in to my office and says "hey, i need internet, gotta send a story, ethiopian prime minister is dead" and i sorta rolled my eyes and was all, "yeah, i know, i saw it on France24 at breakfast" and i made sure to say france24 so that it hurt a bit. well, turns out he's the Pulitzer prize winning east africa bureau chief for the new york times. oops. he had a cute pulitzer prize winning photographer with him who has a crazy story i didn't find out until after. http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/h/tyler_hicks/index.html explains all the khaki outfit. They are doing a story on the poaching crisis.

they were arguing over the payment to their translator and at one point the photographer says "our translators in syria, they sometimes get shot at." no kidding. 

makes me feel kinda silly talking to them about sandwiches and how people pee in the street here, but anyway.

foresters

last night i had dinner with some foresters. foresters are basically your grungy lumberjacks who come from france or belgium and operate sawmills in the middle of nowhere in gabon and develop rather vulgar vocabularies and unruly facial hair.
so we met alain who discovered this rather nice little vietnamese place with little outdoor palm huts and menu full of mostly non-vietnamese fare. alain says he has a discerning palate for asian food because he meets so many chinese mutherfuckers in the bush. so while the foresters cursed away and talked about the various parasites that come out of ungodly parts of their bodies, i searched for one authentic offering, the buon bo, which i recall from normal vietnamese restaurants are tasty rice noodles with salad, tangy sauce and grilled meat. so, in gabon where i guess they have quite limited ingredients the rice noodles are actually spaghetti and the meat and sauce are basically bolognaise covered, but it's the vietnamese version so it's covered in fish sauce. meh. i slurped my spaghetti anyway, riiiiight at the moment that alain described in full detail the 20 cm long worm that exited him ah-hem. i'm eating spaghetti, here alain, please. "but you should have seen it, it's little black head and loooong body!" 
i also learned about vertical sawing and horizontal sawing and one is better but i forgot which. i think i'd rather forget the whole affair, in fact.

welcome back to gabon

it was a hectic arrival in librevile, multplied by the fact that i really really had to pee (any flight with destination african country always looks like a tornado hit the restrooms after 20 minutes). i stood on this random line at arrivals only to realise it was the yellow fever vaccination verification which crap! i totally forgot it. in kinshasa they would lead you into a room and inject you with a dirty needle with "serum" they probably cultivated from a toilet, but in gabon it's a simple fine payment (aka bribe) procedure. the man who explained the formalities had a cheschire cat ear to ear grin when he said "we accept cash payment." so large was his grin, i became jealous of his healthy perfect gums, bright white teeth, good floss technique. he and his colleagues all shouted simoultaneous amounts that sounded like a mumbled average between 30, 35 and 50€ and being a reasonable person i opted for the median value, which ended up being 40€ because they have no change, naturally. i asked for receipt which complicated things - they distracted me and asked about my heritage and marital status, gave me a receipt for 20€ and sent me on my way. i then realized i had forgotten my tube of maps on the plane, and then had to pinky swear marriage to a second gentleman to escort me back to the aircraft to get it.
i tell you, the moment i come to africa and i don't get 3 marriage proposals within 20 minutes i will finally have to admit that i am just too damn old.
but it seems people have been watching the olympics because instead of the usual "so you are from france, do you live in paris" barrage of questions it's now, "are you from uruguay or macedonia?" and the new one "are you jewish?" which is fun to hear during Ramadan but anyway.
they always seems to think being jewish automatically means you are from jewlandia and when i told them that doesn't exist they seemed incredulous.
anyway, as expected during a 5 day holiday weekend, the driver meant to greet me was nowhere to be found - my colleagues had warned me of this earlier "the last day we could remind him was tuesday evening. we hope it sticks until saturday."
so i had to exchange some money for a cab. i went to the western union thingie outside the airport and as i waited on an orderly line this securty guard guy, 3 meters away who couldn't find the effort to leave his lounged pose in a plastic chair demanded that i needed to give him my money and get a number from him on a pink piece of paper and wait for him to call it. the transaction being, of course more complicated than it should be - couldn't i just wait on this line, and then give my money to the lady in the cage? no, i had to give him the amount i wanted to exchange first. now, given that we are basically amidst a mob of deviants, that doesn't seem like such a great idea (too late to explain that to the american tourists who were counting out their hundred dollar bills, and dropping them while fingerless children sifted through their luggage pockets). tell me again, why can't i just give it to the lady at the window when i talk to her and do a money "exchange" as the sign suggests? this argument goes on way too long, him explaining that it went faster this way, that it's the only way i could get a number, and that he had the power. 24! 63! 89! he belts out, and 3 people get up to go to the windows. see? i have the power. he couldn't tell me how many people were waiting, how long it would take and it all seemed like a losing bet so he shooed me away to some guy in the parking lot, who is THE non discreet man holding up a black briefcase stuffed with bills, coming out of every zipper, all thumbs up.
he had a calculator and kept calculating, taking money away, adding money, classic confuse and diffuse tactics like the guys on the street with three cups and one has the ball. i ended up getting swindled out of 70€ for half what i wanted in exchange but at this point i didn't care. i was already sweating through my jeans. and then in typical unrelenting african fashion i then had to then argue with they guys who want to carry my bags and then the taxi driver over the price which was actually on a sign on his car. "but lady, we need to pay for parking." sigh. i thought we had finally agreed on a slightly less gouging price but he pulled the very clever give the change in a crumpled wet lump of small bills that i had no desire to count before he sped away.
sigh. so there i was in front of the house i am meant to stay in and it is...obviously, locked, no one home. so now begins the typical african logistical clusterfuck. white girl on the dusty sidewalk with luggage looking lost attracting 3 more marriage proposals and questions about my preumsed belorussian heritage. i finally waited for some girls to walk by to use their phone (african lesson #4: don't ever give an african man any way to contact you, or anyone you know) as mine wasn't dialing. i rang a colleage, didn't answer...20 minutes later, as i was sweating even more profusely and thinking about finding a hotel, the girl comes running back to bring me a return call. how nice. important communication! the night guard at one office has the key, and he should have given it to the day guard who should have given it to the driver. as i sleuth my way through this long phone chain i find out that the driver is still at the carwash and never got the key, the day guard doesn't have it and never heard of this plan, and the night guard, the tall one not the short one, called in sick, and said his replacement was coming, but we didn't know to which office he was out of phone credit so you have to call and call and call until he answers. do you see what i have to deal with here? in the meantime i am attracting an increasing number of curious onlookers who offer their advice "have you tried going to the bar where the guard hangs out? I can send my son little thierry there to see [for a price]" "oh, i can offer you my phone, it has credit [for 3 times the price]" or "how about calling the german guy who was staying here last week" something i actually did [very exensive].
night falls, i take refuge at a bar. i get a little tipsy on a very large beer, eat some tasty tasty garlic gambas and fries, over which i smother with mayonnaise via a faulty squirt container and then head out towards the office. the day guard greets me with a plastic chair to sit with him in the courtyard. the night guard didn't show. "sit down my friend and we will figure this out." which really means him playing around with his ring tones and asking me what Euros look like. i bought some more beer, got hit on by a guy at the construction site across the street, and well, 2 hours later i was about to give up when a man came in to the office courtyard to pee and i asked if he knew anything about a key, and then he made some calls which all started with "there is a white lady here who wants the keys" and someone found the night guard at the disco club across the street and hurrah! i'm home sweet home!

i have a chandelier

i have a turn of the (last) century chandelier in my home. it's the best!

mother lugged it over from france and i've been looking for a place in berlin that would fix it up. 

i recall biking by this place in kreuzberg, across from the u-bahn tracks. it is just unbelievable. haven't seen so many chandeliers since Versailles.

we've got crystal

they all had price tags on them, like, 5,000€ and stuff. the young friendly turkish guy hung mine in the doorway. the crystals rattled everytime the U5 came along. he estimated the age and then pointed to a very similar one, Frankreich, ja?

he said he would replace the missing crystals, clean it, put a new wire inside and give me a chain and a cup for the ceiling so it would look nice. it felt so fancy. less so when he said he would do it for 50€.

when i came back to pick it up he nodded his head "bicycle, no way. you need a car." so i went to find my new obsession, a drivenow car share and pulled up with a mini cooper. "mini cooper! much better!" he buckled her in the front seat and i was on my way. didn't even get a receipt. who cares, because now, i have a beautiful, entirely functional, turn of the century french chandelier in my hallway. right above the litterbox :) 

maybe?

there's a new marlboro ad campaign here around the word: maybe, like, don't be a maybe. though the ad i saw in the movie seemed ripped from a just do it nike ad but anyway, oddly enough, on the same s-bahn station platform you see this beauty:

an 8€ pregnancy test called "maybe baby" being sold from a vending machine that also had red bull, haribo gummies, rittersport and XL bi-fi rolls.

when i buy a pregnangy test, the last thing i want it to tell me is "maybe, baby." i'd want a clear yes or no?

or, maybe you shouldn't be buying your pregnancy test from a vending machine on a subway platform in the first place.

or maybe you just want another bi-fi roll.

Wider die Mudigkeit!

go to this! i am...

also, peru has monkeys

so i saw 7 species of monkeys in less than 24 hours. quite the record.

also, pigs make great pets.

zazie le chat (1992-2012)

Zazie le Chat.

c. 1992-2012

Zazie le Chat lived an impressively long life under the furniture of her many loving owners. Trembling in constant fear of people, especially black and jewish people, the vacuum cleaner, airplanes, cars, the microwave, snow, fast movements, noises, thunderstorms, she nonetheless gracefully survived many traumatic experiences, including: 2 generation of Bush Presidencies, a leg-breaking fall from a tree, the first Iraq war, 9/11, the war on drugs, the second iraq war, the war in afghanistan, the war on terrorism, being trapped in a fridge, a tail-amputating porch door, and many encounters with other cats, squirrels and birds. While being politcally active, she was smuggled over both the canadian and US borders, tortured a Syrian roommate in North Carolina, lived in Washington DC, and hated John McCain before retiring to nursing care at her birthplace on Long Island in 2010. Zazie loved hiding, basements, windowsills, closets, catnip, asking to be let in and then not coming in, drinking half n half, drinking tuna water, rolling in dirt, rolling in lavender, rolling in sunbeams, wet food, chin rubs, beds, very occasionally the lap of a human, and uncomfortable lounging surfaces such as books or shoes. She is survived by her grieving mother, grandmother, grandfather and a number of other caretakers who will greatly miss her long and subtle adoring presence.

getting bitten in the peruvian amazon

revenge of the ants!
so, doing some field work in the Peruvian Amazon. our international team of scientists from every continent was out measuring the diameter and height of some trees. the strategy was i would follow maminiaena (from madagascar), who would mark the trees with a number, then i would measure the diameter and call it out to Maru, and Nelson (both from Peru) would estimate the height. arif helped us square out the plot, and double check the measurements. we were sweaty, hot, swatting mosquitos away from our faces.


at one point maniamami and i were at tree number 13 and we hear arif saying.
OW. OW. tree number 13, hieght 24 meters. OW. OW.
what's wrong arif?
bugs. biting me. OW. OW. tree number 14...

so i go over to measure the diameter and ow ow ow ow OW! ANTS! biting me everywhere, in my clothes in my shoes in my underwear all over it's horrible. mamiana- man- Mami! are they biting you too?


yes! aie! aie aie aie! ow! ow! and we are jumping and dancing and itching like our feet are on fire.

Arif is standing like a statue. OW. tree number 15. OW.


maru and nelson come, in a helping manner, like they have some special Andes secret cure.


where does it hurt?
does it sting? or does it feel like a burn, like someone is putting a cigarette out on your skin?


burning! cigarettes! ow ow ow!


and maru and nelson talk to each other, oh, si si, they are definitely tanganara. fire ants. oh, they are the worst! it's going to hurt for at least 8 hours...good luck!


and then they are off. ow ow OW! we are still jumping around and the other groups come over and point and laugh.


you should take all your clothes off! ha ha ha

OW.
and then wise old jc explains to the gathered spectators how the fire ant works...it is usually up on a tree or a leaf and when it sees or sense you underneath it jumps down on you to bite you and all of their friends follow.


and so that was how i felt the wrath of 100 fire ants and my body is peppered with welts like nothing i've ever seen before...thank you peru!

paint

yoyogi park

nice sunday in tokyo, after some more shopping in harajuku, my all time favorite neighborhood with all the fashionistas-stop! stop! no more shoppinbg! no more room in my bag...ok, fine...how about a nice 2nd hand kimono...-  i went to a shrine, and yoyogi-koen park. ok, the shrine was nice, got to see a wedding party...but the park? it's like the japanese don't have enough with facebook, twitter and all the other gadgets to broadcast their crazy personalities, they need to come to the park and just...act weird.

shopping at the kimono market...

take the dancing rockabillies. guys dressed up in jeans jackets and elvis hairdos dancing to old rock and drinking beer. they aren't even begging for money, they're just having a good time. and there are competing rockabilly groups too, like the fat guys over there, with a boombox just loud enough to mix with the third group.

dancing elvis guys

 a capella groups, improv troups, children's games with adults, you name it,, all can be found in yoyogi park. totally weird, totally fun!

the big X

so in japan, if you ask for something and they don't have it, they make a big X with their arms. they could just say, no, iie, or shake their head, but no, they make a huge exaggerated X.

times when i have seen the big X:

can i get a receipt?

do you have any vegetarian ramen?

do you have size 43 shoes for my gargantuan footed boyfriend?

do you have a table for 4? (bar is empty, they don't want foreigners)

can i - (they don't want to even talk to a foreigner)

shinkuju cheap eats

the people at this conference all turned boring and so i went by myself to shinjuku. it pretty much looks like roppongi and shibuya, lots of lights! do they ever turn them off? i thought there was a nuclear crisis not too long ago...

all of the lights...

 anyway, i found a neat arts store, a muji, lots of teeny bopper fashion stores with  craaaaazy preppy/slutty shoes, lots of bars and small places with tiny doors that are cluttered with curtains and foggy glass so you can't see inside- why? yso you can go in and then say, oh, this is italian food or a strip club or a benihana, sorry was looking for teriyaki? but then, a little out of the way this really dirty and cheap pork noodles place. i knew it was pork because there's a happy pig out front.

come eat pig!

the pig was far more friendly than any of the staff (all wearing yellow windbreakers) or customers...they had a menu with pictures, and some words in english, including a dish called "jew's ear?" uhhh, i just pointed to the ramen with spring onions and seaweed. by the time i got my soup everyone had left, they slurp it up mega-fast, pay and leave, especially the guys in suits. i sat at a long counter with lots of condiments all fogged up by the steam coming from the open kitchen.

no time for noodles must hurry!

want some brown stuff in your soup?

it set me back about 6€ and was worth it! a sort of opaque, porky broth with thin noodles and veggies and nori. and because my noodle picture didn't come out, here is a photo of my 7€ lunch!

love lunch!

tomorrow i go to hamakura so i'll have some pictures of something other than japanese food...

eat eat eat lunch lunch lunch

i've stopped eating breakfast in order to make more room for lunch. lunch is so good! before lunch break at the conference, i sorta hang around the japanese people and see where they go and join them.

here was day 1 lunch. egg is raw (just like at breakfast, i found out). you break it into the little bowl and add soy sauce and then pour over rice. to my disappointment the rice isn't really hot enough to cook the egg, so it just becomes gooey rice. add seaweed (little black things) and pickles to mask out feeling of eating raw egg. drink miso soup from bowl (no spoon), make loud slurping noise. 

the grilled eel was what the polish girl ordered. price: about 8€.

the next day, i found out the lady i was following wasn't japanese, but thai and had no idea where to go or how to order. but we found breaded pork. japanese schnitzel! the waitress was super grumpy, but her schnitzel sauce was super tasty. price: 10€.

we also went to a sake bar one night after the conference, and i ordered octopus balls. they were gooey and covered in fish scales and let's just say they did not warrant a photo. blech.

karaokeeee!

it was inevitable. to honour a family tradition, i must not leave tokyo before karaoke-ing. at least twice. so tonight was the conference after-party reception, and upon my urging, followed by...karaoke. must get one practice round before the real deal with the Fuji family saturday.

but as it turns out, all these japanese guys from the conference, with suits and fancy huge touch screen telephones arguing for 20 minutes couldn't agree on a karaoke place nearby, and i was the only person that recalled seeing one or two on my jetlagged dazy walk though rappongi.

there was lots of bowing when i offered to show them a place to go, and so 20 minutes later, here we were in some fancy lobby with crytal chandeliers, ordering a room on the 10th floor, overlooking the city. 

this place is fancier than my hotel

it started off nice enough, confident japanese balads and some madonna. it took a while to get a hang of all the electonics, and what to order "drink menu so crazy!" and we got maracas and tambourines to do it right. 

it was all pretty normal until i ordered japanese sweet potato whiskey shots and some guy took his shirt off...

ummmm

and then we sang a duet...

practicing the shapiro rendition of "rawhide" for saturday

and then, as the only native speaker in the room who could read fast enough i was asked to do "american rap song very please!" and ended the evening screaming biyaaatch and singing about pimps and hos and drugs and thugs and thankfully no one understood but loved it all the same.  oyasuminasai!

oodles of noodles

so with a few hours to kill until i could pass out in my hotel bed, i wandered around the roppongi/midtown area. lots of shops, karaoke bars, and pet stores that sell monkeys (i want one!). i had a hankering for some noodles, and finally found one, thanks to bright colored pictures outside and a sign that said "it is smart to eat japanese noodles with moderate sound. you will see the enjoyment!" convinced me.

i went in to see men lined up at a counter, loudly slurping and not looking up from their bowls to see me. i went to site down the chef guy started saying something and pointing, and i thought he was asking me to slide the door shut better. so i did that, but then he wanted something else, so i though, do i grab a menu? no. it turned into a little game of hot and cold, i started to take off my coat, like, is that it? or do i need to remove my shoes (i had just gotten yelled at for wearing them in a fitting room). so what is it? 

oh, it's this crazy machine, i must use it to order. ummm

i'll have what he's having?

so, you put your money in, press a bunch of buttons and sit down. the people who came in after me were getting pretty antsy, and i felt their pain, just like the loser tourist who spends way too long buying a subway ticket,  soooo i just pacnicked, put in a 10,000 Yes (isn't that like a 100 dollar bill?) and pressed a bunch of buttons, took my change, gave the receipt to the chef guy and sat down. 

a few minutes later i had 2 delicious bowls in front of me. one with a very concentrated fishy miso and meat type stuff which was gross at first but then got way better, and the other, udon noodles with a soft boiled egg and nori (excellent choice!)

breakfast is served

the guy next to me was doing some pretty aggressive slurping, which i tried to copy but only ended up choking and coughing. so, no moderate noise from me but lots of deliciousness!

i'm [back] in japan!

wow, has it been 30 years already since I walked the streets of Tokyo? well it doesn't feel like yesterday because quite a bit has changed...

were there always so many people with surgical masks? and how come no one has one with a cartoony print on it? boring white seems so not japanese.

the toilets have improved vastly, from scary black holes as i knew them, in which i would alaways manage to pee on my shoes and pants (i still don't know how to squat in those things), which are now futuristic contraptions with more options than my telephone. i appreciate the fake tinkling pee sound (press the music note button), or the animated flushing to drown out your more natural sounds. and heated! 

number 1 or number 2?

 

 

anyway, i was unimpressed that my hosts who organized my flight and hotel didn't notice the 6 hour difference between my arrival and check-in time. so my first day in Tokyo was spent wandering in yesterday's underwear and zero sleep. 

in only a few hours i was delighted to find out that people still loudly slurp their soups, and hand you things with very deliberate finger gestures like they are hand models. lots of bowing. and, lots of no no no don't do that! oops. 

office space

so we are in our third government office space since the project started, because we are in a land rife with office space politics. because when you want an office, first you have to paint it, disinfect it, tile the floors, bring the bathrooms to an 18th century standard (the smell prevented me from getting close enough to the troph out back), kill lots of insects, install lots of air conditioners, electricity, a generator, and the final touch: internet.
and we've found that once there is internet, a higher government guy up will show up, come in and shake everyone's hand and congratulate you on your new setup, take a peek into the nice bathroom and then a week later you get an eviction notice, that the office of technical assistant to the partner of the associate of the mining minister or something is now taking over the office and you have to find a new one.
and so we are not only fixing up the national park system, we are nicely renovating offices all over kinshasa. 
most of our old items have made it the new space...except for the espresso machine. you see, a george cluny nespresso machine is as much a status symbol as a land rover. when you go to some high powered government guy's office the first thing he'll show you is the nespresso machine, and he'll say "oh, i'm out of those little capsule thingies, my secretary just went out to get them..." and, well, everyone knows that even if it had a power cord, you can't find any of those capsule thingies anywhere in kinshasa. you have to get someone to bring them to you from europe. and if you know someone in europe well enough so that when they come here they personally bring you nespresso capsules, well then you are obviously well connected.
another thing that happens when you go into a new office space is the little power struggle, you have to figure out whose turf you're on, and who to be nice to to in order to not find banana peels on your car, or who won't steal all your toilet paper and mouse pads and stuff.
in our case, we have the power, as we have the one and only key to the secret women's bathroom. people come to us.
meanwhile, the men's bathroom has been clearly labeled:


this here is da man's room!

so, as soon as the new people move in, the other people from the offices come and try and position themselves in the best way possible and shuffle for authority (which also puts them potentially in a position of getting a bonus..). so this morning a guy in a suit showed up and tried to tell us that he was the boss of the building, that we had to inform him of all his movements and we're like, but we talked to so and so, and so and so, so who are you? and he kept being really vague, and we finally asked a reputable source and well, it turns out he was the gardener, just wearing a suit. clever move, mr. jardinier...

p.s. this is the garden

the field team





to the river and no turning back...



giorgio armani on the right...

the only wildlife i saw...baby goats! super cute!



countdown to the journée internationale de la femme...

so thursday march 8 is international women's day.
in congo, that's a big deal, because it's kind of established that every other day of the entire year is man's day.
there's also mother's day, but then again, that's only if you have kids, and you have to be nice to your mom too, so it's never a days just for you.
so there's international women's day for all women. and it's is a big deal.
there are banners, there are signs, drunk women on the streets, and most importantly, there is a special fabric with a lady and the date on it. everyone will be wearing this fabrik on thursday.
so the ladies at the cafeteria (a little shack with a gravelly courtyard out front, run entirely by women who make you wait 90 minutes while they prepare rice and chicken) kept asing me if i had my dress planned yet and no, i didn't.
so we got down to business. they closed the door to the shack (only slightly angering the long line of customers ho have been waiting, probably more than an hour for their food) and started measuring me, talking about style, getting soooo excited and then...the price. it seemed to go up as soon as they saw how much cash i had in my purse, but it's ok, it was still only 20 bucks, including purchase of the fabrik (in the place where i got mugged, i'm not going back there), and sewing. all made to order.
so they are planning the typical african thing with the matching skirt and top and headgear and in my experience it's the kind of thing that looks cool when you wear it once in africa but then it's kind of tight and uncomfortable and never comes out of the closet. so, in about 15 seconds, with lots of hand motions i designed a sort of 50s marilyn monroe dress, because that's what came to mind.   
the next day i went to lunch and there it was, exactly what i ordered! though, in some crazy blue and brown and white african swirl because they thought it was nicer than the women's day print. ok. awesome. 
so we closed the door to the shack and amidst the flies and the food i stripped down and tried it on and it fit perfectly. i went out of the shack to see in better light and immediately the men, even guys all the way in the parking lot were whistling, woooooo congo style! she's white on the outside and congo on the inside!  

..after the bombs. lunch!

so after a rude awakening by nearby explosions, we sat inside for a while upon the recommendation of our respective embassies we watched the news, drank coffee and played a quick game of carcassone, now becoming an obsession in the apartment.

something's burning in brazza...

once it was declared safe, we decided to reward ourselves with the fabulous 34$ buffet at the cercle francais. it's a total ripoff, but good for the sheet variety. and it's the only place you can safely eat salad. there are plates of fried anchovies, pasta (a rare luxury), nicely cooked plantains, roasted vegetables, big cold bottles of Tembo...finally, some vegetables. especially after our dangerous escapade into the world of meat on tuesday -guitly as charged, it was my idea to order the 100$ 2kg meat platter, just for fun. it was mostly bloodsausage, which the germans in my group didn't mind at all..mmm lecker! but if i can offer a word of advice to the kinshasa tourist, you don't want to know what's inide congolese blood sausage.

anyway, at the end of the buffet was something for the cooker jules within us all, pate en croute! or, this version, a sortof giant goat sausage inside a loaf of whitebread, served with its mayonnaisey sauce. it doesn't have the adornments you might see on kitschnclassics, but hey, this is kinshasa, gotta make do with what you got.

and over here is a barbeque'd suckling pig, teeth and all.

soft, furry, crunchy eared pig.

which isn't just a pig, it's been deboned and stuffed with potates and pineapple, my little friend.



shouldn't you be gettin' pedaled?.







explosions rock kinshasa

so last night, when we were on the balcony of our cheaply fabrikated chinese 5 story high rise, gazing out into the greenery (we have a little game, where we pretend we are in the caribbean, and make comments like, want to go to the beach and have a pina colada?) and then someone made the usual comment that "it's a good thing kinshasa isn't in a seismic zone." these buildings would crumble in a second.
the next morning, around 8 am, i was literally knocked from my bed by what felt like a truck ramming the building, or maybe an air conditioner falling from the roof. it happened a few more times and i went out of my room, like wtf guys is there a horse locked in the bathroom? but instead there was a giant mushroom cloud rising in the distance.
it thankfully does not appear to be close enough to our downtown, but everyone is out in the street, on the balconies. our shaky poorly installed windows rattled some more, and there was a moment when we all ran into the kitchen.
i made instant coffee and connected to the news. we heard a lot of windows broke in the centre of kinshasa, will which inevitably turn into open looting. a woman with a bleeding elbow, says she was closer downtown and basically fell over from the blast.  
if it weren't for the annoying visa process, i would have actually been in brazza right now to meet with a master's student i'm trying to help out there...anyway, we've been told to stay inside, and we will. though we're kinda out of food (lots of johnnie black label and champagne though).
i'm reading the book "the fortune teller told me" and it makes me think i should go see one now...  

i spy with my little eye...

so on this trip there's been a lot a lot of inside freezing cold air conditioned office time, and not a lot of kinshasa. so, whenever a colleague has to run an errand or something i ask to come along, it's a good distraction, and just so crazy, just eye widening unbelievable can't stop looking kind of crazy. in fact, there are so many things to see that you just end up pointing out stuff to eachother, to enrich the experience.
and road trips, even short, are just the best.
it's non-stop stuff like:
-check out that car that only has three tires and emitting sparks!
-look, there's a chinese stoplight that isn't working and it's a total mess
-oh, and there's a chinese stoplight where every light is green at the same time, what a mess! 
-watch out, giant pile of garbage

that's actually a very small pile of garbage

-ohhh was that sludge pit a river or..(yes it's where we get our drinking water hahaha) 
-that guy is giving you the thumbs up, because he thinks the two white girls in the car are your wives, wave back!

couch for sale? or someone's patio?

-drunk driver, swerve!

-baby on the pavement! baby on the pavement, stop!

-that man over there is selling a bag of bricks, want to buy it?



they told me this is where i'm staying next time



-that woman has -er, had an ipad...

-there is a ton of pondu in that car. and a goat on top.

road trippin' with my goat and stuff

-that's the crazy lady with the knife we saw yesterday, lock your doors!

-policeman, lock your doors!

i got room for one more jug!

the eggs: you just never know

so last time i thought i had settled the issue with the eggs. there are people who walk around with 15 layers of cardboard racks of eggs on their heads. i used to think, wow, they're super agile and steady to not let those eggs fall! but in kinshasa, it turns out they are mostly hard boiled. no big whoop.
so we were on the road the other day, on our way back from bombo lumene and i had skipped lunch because i opted for a swim, and so i was starving.
the two others congolese guys with us asked to stop at this little market, and they got out and started haggling over pondu, these huge bushes of greens that are really tasty. they were buying piles, i mean, piles so large they ended up filling the entire back of our truck. i like to make funny of the taxis with this stuff sticking out all the windows, but that was eventually us.
anyway, they were doing their thing and i scanned the market and woot! there's an egg lady! so i jump out and get some eggs. i hear our driver start to say something like "check that the eggs are....." but i was too far away.
i buy 2 eggs for 600FC (pricey!) and i say to the lady, who has 2 kids hanging on her back "these are cooked right?"
and she nodded and i added, "well OF COURSE they are cooked ! who would buy raw eggs in 30 degree heat from some lady on the side of the street, right?"
and this is an important point of this story - she gave me a napkin. albeit a tiny napkin, it was a napkin, in a bag, to indicate i would be eating this egg very soon.
so back in the car, i'm riding middle backseat (i lost the shootout) and i'm eager to chow down and this egg is hard to break. i fake trying to break it on the driver's head, but instead kinda smash it on the headrest of the front seat and ...
blubbbbbbb. this egg is not cooked!
boniface is so pissed because he JUST cleaned the car and there is raw egg everywhere.
so he's screaming at me, and i'm trying to hold it right so it doesn't spill, but the white is just dripping between my fingers and i'm yelling at the dude next to me, i don't know his name because he's just a hitchiker but dude, open the window! open the window! and he's some guy who has never ridden in a car i guess (less likely), or maybe all the cars he rides in have no windows (more likely) because he's just pushing on the window, thinking it will project outward, but instead i'm dripping egg on his pants so i turn to my left and the lady next to me is all NO WAY! and this isn't exactly the kind of place you can just stop on the side of the road, there's no shoulder, every other vehicle is a giant truck overloaded with piles of stuff and jugs and goats and they have no visibility, so finally i just fling it outside an open window, and it totally smears all over the outside of the car, attached to small string of egg white on my hands.
and then it was totally silent, like after a big traumatic experience, and we are all checking out clothes, gauging the damage, and boniface is just shaking his head, pursed lips.
so i pull out my tiny napkin, and all i could say was, hey guys, she gave me a napkin, you know.