mangolandia

In the same vein as the last post, just trying to make some work I did last year accessible, as I[m realizing it could be useful (as people email me about it). In the same file as, “less email, more mangos!” So please find the work I did for Welthungerhilfe / German Agro Action in Liberia last year. 10 manuals, mainly pictures, aimed at demonstrating techniques of sustainable agriculture. They are meant to be used in a facilitation context (Farmer Field Schools). More information available from WHH Liberia if you like.

http://www.somethingconstructive.net/upa

The directory has them both in screen form (the order makes sense) and publishing form (the order does not)

Due to a request from some compadres in CEDICAM (Nochixtlan, Oaxaca, Mexico) I could be translating them into Spanish soon. Either way, Ill try to put the Srcibus files online soon so other people can have their way with it.

Please let me know if theres any other adjustments you need for your work

- Ankur Delight

Not a traditional post, but realizing through emails I{m getting that I did a terrible job of sharing some of the work I did in Liberia, and some people would like to have access to it. So here is a pdf describing the system I set up for WHH Liberia{s Urban and Periurban (UPA) Agriculture project in 2011. There are some links to it online, but none of great quality.

The document is, of course, outdated, but it gives enough of a sense. Basically, QGis is the root, and you can use this Google Satellite Maps Downloader to get large offline data chunks of your African city.

http://www.somethingconstructive.net/gis

There should be a one-page summary and the full document in that directory. If this is useful to you, but harmfully out of date or otherwise wrong, please dont hesistate to email me…

Ankur Delight

today i bring to you a few new years gifts in honor of the gregorians, and the recent full moon. you don’t have to open them. they can just sit there on your mantle, or archives. forever.

but first, just a little reminder about the InYourHeadNess of it all. as in, the 36 hour bus ride from tucson to mexico city with salsa music and meteors still reverberating in my mind and even sticky on my body, and the occasional darting field mice of doubt –

why are you here?
what are you doing?
what other names do you have under these southern stars?

once again, the amorphous facade of a plan, just enough to slip by the bullet-proofs vests of the border patrol without a full-on interview (as I here him whisper to his partner, he’s got all kind of stamps from weird african countries, like li-BEER-ia), but certainly not enough to convince me what i’m doing is actually worthwhile. but then, it just take fifteen seconds off the bus in the polluted mexico city area, florescent lights of the bus terminal, pay phones, ATMs, and tamale carts, to remember why it is we do anything — whether it’s travel disguised as work, work disguised as travel, orange juice, or sunset walks to the tailor:

we love it.

there’s this linguistic concept here, the “mandado”. it translates to errand, but is a form of “mandar”, to be sent. to have been ordered. so “ive got to do some errands” becomes, for me, “i have been given a sacred mission”. and that mission, walking down the streets between the lush vegetation, honking bicycle carts, aggresive drivers, and street musicians, is to love every moment. standing with the juiceman this morning as he squeezed (literally) dozens of oranges for the two liters of juice i desired, watching him methodically grab oranges from his mobile (shopping-cart) juicing station with his right hand, and return them to a jute compost bag with his left. interminable cycle of creation and destruction with the delicious juice of life in between.

it happens to me everytime i travel. i’m on the plane, wondering why i’m going where i am, and why not somewhere else. why i’m making these decisions myself without the gentle cradle of obligation to support me. and then i get there, i smell the air, i see the people, and i know, i just Being there. nothing more and nothing less.

so that’s it. small distinction still between thinking and being. anxiety and relaxation. the future hanging out in the corner, smoking, with coincidence and the other NOTs.

happy holidays. don’t let them end. 2012 is just the beginning. the dawn of a new era. or, as I tried to express yesterday to some new friends in Mexico (at Isla Urbana, an urban rainwater-harvesting project):

A veces,
puedo ver pequenos rayos de luz,
el amanecer que nos espera cuando
unamos y juntemos nuestros trabajitos,
cuando lleguemos a tejer
nuestras passiones y conciencias
en una tapestria gigante,
la cual cubre
todas
las sombras pendientes
con amor

or,

Sometimes,
I glimpse those first tender rays of a waiting dawn.
We’ll get it together, throw in our pieces of the puzzle,
untangle the strings and weave together
our passions and our conscience
into a giant quilt,
smother any tempted shadows with love

*

gifts include: pictures, a schedule, a poem, one meandering canyon’s thoughts, and a recipe for egg curry, from niger.
1] ginga egg curry recipe, from niger
==========================

courtesy of mlle balkissou of bruxelles and niger. but, like the rest of us, she really lives in the Heart.

[preparation]

0. West-african music on the ra-di-o
1. You take some onions and peel them and cut the ends off. (“pro-tip” follows) sometimes it’s easier to peel them after you cut the ends off.
2. Cut the onion in half, from end to end, so it has the widest and safest cross-section on the board.
3. Align the onion with the stars and your knife and cut it in thin strips from end to end, taking pleasure as it all falls apart.
4. Prepare gnger and garlic. Garlic is crushed together and ginger is julienne rather small. Let’s say you have two onions. Then you might have one cubic inch of garlic. And, the intense part : almost as much ginger as onion.
5. One large tomato for your two onions, cut into big pieces. One small can of tomato paste, at the ready.

[fascination]

0. Heat some oil in a pan. You might be healthy but this _is_ west african food, so you can put a little more than normal. the entire bottom of the pan (once the oil is hot) perhaps. If you have some palm oil, or dende, it would go well.
1. Fry the onions for a bit. Once they begin to brown, add the tomato paste. Mix it all in. Add half the garlic, half the ginger, and the tomato. Stir it together
[1.5 Optional small green chiles, minced, could enter the picture here.]
2. There are two kinds of water in the world. Small water and Plenty water. Add small water, so everything is incorporated, happy, and in communal harmony.
3. Crack your eggs (one per person? more?) into the soup. Let it thicken. As the eggs cook, add the rest of the ginger and garlic.
4. Let it cook until everything has firmed up a bit. If you need more time, add more water or oil, depending on whose looking.
5. Salt.

2] a few pictures
==========================

from this fall in sequim. mainly demonstrating the incredible power of water in different ways. and horses

https://picasaweb.google.com/mangolandia/Fall2011Sequim?authuser=0&feat=directlink

3] one meandering canyons thoughts
==========================

perhaps because i don’t have a camera, i’m just going to tell you we want walking before the new year through the canyonlands national park in utah. stepping through the fractal of rock across colors and cultures. the red zone. the white zone. the tan zone. sometimes, through the grace of geometry and water, trees and bushes, a season wash, the movement of water etched into sand, pebbles, cliffsides, and the whole domain. carved by time.

and somehow, in this magical and brutal landscape, people had been paid to make trails, to guide young trippers through the magic of the world in such a way they had a reasonably good chance of finding the vehicle again. and on this trail, sometimes only marked by small cairns across huge slabs of rock and ice, i came to understand how often and how deeply guided we are, in so many of our experiences. there you are, in the middle of the nothing, scrambling over boulders in pure amazement, following a track of small towers that somebody you’ve never met left for you. winding across the mountain to the left — take the high road or the low road? both are reasonably passable, both a little scary. but somebody chose the low road. why? to show me something. to take us by the old skeleton of a goat, or get a view of a specific needle rock miles away, or to make our heart beat just so?

this notion of the individual, the path, that i so cherish. where is it? every article we read is guiding us through a discipline, every trail through a landscape, every tool through a craft. and, suddenly, it pops out into high relief — if we’re so often guided, around corners, averting death, through certain ways of thinking, judgments even… then it’s our responsibility to understand who these guides are, why they’re guiding us, and who to thank.

looking sideways at the spectacles to see what shade they are. a last-ditch effort to understand why everything seems green, or depressing, or what have you.

luckily, out in the Needles, it was pretty harmless. they nailed iron ladders into the rock at times to give us the inexperience of scaling the unscalable, and subjected us to breathtaking views and humbling realizations of scale, space, and time. i could relax into their intentions, their mentality. they’re taking us on a trip. a guided tour of wonder, so we could relax more fully into the wow, knowing their must be a way down.

sometimes it’s not that way. maybe with the news. but anyhow, we all know that. as the man says,

“You who choose to lead must follow
But if you fall you fall alone,
If you should stand then who’s to guide you?
If I knew the way I would take you home.”

4] schedule
==========================

ankur is really trying to do something this year. focus more on understanding interactions between soil and water, humans and our environment, through the lens of the gift economy, applied to the world around us. the gift ecology, perhaps. as such, he’ll be receiving mail in paris a few months this year, and in india for the rest. specific details to come, but the departure seems to be march 1st. mexico until february 4th. sequim until february 11th. san francisco until february 25th. a few days of free time.

perhaps back in the states for july. depends on the oil economy. please let me know if you’re getting married. that kind of stuff is important.

5] poem: Salty Green Tea
==========================

Morning light over the mountains warms the eyes
Salty tea from desert water in hand
We both are strangers here.

Eyes shut, the mind leaves to visit
The best people it has ever known.
Sun continues his rise.
Everything dissolves.

Is it possible? –
these accolades, judgments, predicates
are merely outstretched hands,
empty and grasping?

It is possible.

Nouns and adjective themselves collaborators in
a vast internal conspiracy tacking up
the facade of certainty, of permanence.

Let me try to peel the onion
without shedding more tears:

i. He is a great man
ii. He was so good, for me.
iii. He spoke to me with Such Kindness*
iv. Once, when he placed his hand atop my head,
I could feel the coursing divinity
v. A brief moment, love.
(* with kindness, you must tie your shoes)

6] healing notes
======================

Thank you for your prayers and response and laughter at my bike accident. It was really terrible for a while there. I don’t even remember the flying through the air part, and that must have been the best/worst of it. But I’m really much better. I owe incredible amounts of gratitude to the “surgical immobilizer” industry, which probably produced hundreds of thousands of neoprene movement constraint devices in 2011, one of which I wore stylishly for almost a month. Lots of gratitude as well to Mark Spencer, whose healing touch and massage skills I credit with my recovery on the physical side, and to the magic of ICE, which somehow reduced the inflammation on my right knee so I can run again, and almost sit in full lotus. Injury has a lot to do with a fear, and even now, I hesitate to make movement I know I can. A learning process. But anyhow, I’m better. Thank you thank you thank you.

love
Ankur Delight

www.mangolandia.org

The travel has been serious. Monday from Paris to DC. A few hours in Spa World. A few hours outside of it. Tuesday morning flight (from the old terminal of) National airport, through Denver to Phoenix. And a carpool down to Tucson (pronounced with an ‘x’ of course) on Thursday. I’ve been really excited about this trip, centered on a 10-day Water Harvesting Certification course offered by Watershed Management Group. Already there’s been so much I wanted to share — and not only about how water harvesting can aid in disaster risk management — but also about its correspondence with gift economy and gift ecology principles, and about the general climate in Arizona.

There’s the arid, yes. But there’s also the woman from the National Committee for La Raza, some sort of Hispanic lobbying group, who sat next to me on the plane and felt compelled to _whisper_ about the antics of a policeman named “Joe” and racist laws that reminded her of being persecuted in the 60s when she first started dating (hold on to armchairs and trackballs) a black man, after high school. She was seriously afraid other people on the plane would here us talking about the rights of immigrants. And then there’s my time with Jocelyn in Phoenix, me trying to understanding the intricacies and difficulties of applying principles of conservation and rationality to the political and legal realities of the state.

There’s a lot more on all of that, and the course as well — which I can best describe as “The Future” — but I’m going to hold off until a little bit later, to be able to focus on the importance of awareness in our everyday life, and the dialectic between the protective halo of the material world (and its financial derivations) and the gift of presence.

If that doesn’t make sense, I mean to say: you don’t need shoes that protect your ankles if you take each step with care. And you don’t need a rice cooker if you can plug yourself into the rice, detect the subtle changes in smell and sound when the water has gone. And you don’t need the new mephone to tell you the weather in paris if you live there and can look out, or go through, the window.

But, on the other hand, even if you have been cultivating awareness for months and years, you still might be biking down the road in Phoenix, having visited a beautiful mountaintop (still looking for patience), and submit to a daydream. And, even for a moment, if you placed your consciousness in the far and there as opposed to the here and now, you might not notice the weird pointy spiky teeth in the ground that regulate car entry on your side of the road.

And when you did see them, a dozen feet ahead of you, you might not know which way they were pointed, and whether your bike could handle it, and it might not be your bike to risk anyways. Because you’re in Phoenix for the first time, exploring the arid American southwest. Looking for mangos. Dolphins. etc. So — as a result of this momentary lapse in awareness — you might hit the brakes a little too hard, observe yourself flying through the air, the bicycle behind the teeth and you (thankfully) in front of them, landing with face shoulder and hands on backpack and asphalt.

Casualties of Phoenix Mountain Park Autonomous Bike Wreck:

- one shattered bansuri (key of C)

- one battered but still possibly functional voice recorder

- wounded pride

- inability to dig

- separated shoulder ligament, possible fracture

- big “ow” left wrist

- small “ow” right wrist

- vivid but not quite fractal bleeding/scarring on left shoulder

- huge bump above left eye

- nasty but “manly” cut slightly to left of left eye

- confidence

Which is to say, humdulillah. We’re all alive over here, and grateful. Been taken care of is amazing. Not being able to put on a shirt is humbling. The hospital experience — which I was convinced to submit to by my hosts, Jocelyn and Sam, both EMTs, was hilarious enough to warrant its own writing. Maybe tomorrow. The course started yesterday, the digging doesnt start until Tuesday. I have a surgical immobilizer and a climber’s worth of of motrin. We’ll see what happens.

Pray for my health. Thanks.

- ankurbhai

Ok. Now that you’re already sold because of the copious and frequent updates from our Monrovian Palace and the lush welcoming tourist industry of Rebuilding Liberia, I need to send out some travel information. Seriously though, a short, direct plug getting to the point of what every email should be telling your heart: “come visit”.

It’s extremely unlikely you’ll have another opportunity to chill in our spare bedroom on an awesome (“a punishing teacher” according to one local veteran) beach, chop vegetables grown by the farmers I’m meeting every day on our new “kitchen island”, and get in a good dose of disaster/humanitarian tourism/understanding. After almost seven weeks, I’m still unclear on how to synthesize many aspects of this experience, but I can say that

a) The people are cool.

b) The vibe is weird.

c) I don’t feel unsafe.

So there’s that. I also have been trying to get at the root of “The African Question”, with little success. You know, “The African Question”. As in, “How’s Africa?, man”. Whereas nobody has ever asked me “How’s Asia?” or “How’s South America” or “How’s North America”. I guess there was a little bit of “How’s Europe”, but maybe that’s because we were taking smallplanes and tinycars and longtrains to visit different countries every weekend or two. I’m trying to understanding this “Africa” consciousness, to what degree it’s invented, to what degree it’s imposed, to what degree it’s embraced. I saw a Liberian guy the other day with a gold bling-bling Africa-shaped pendent on his gold bling-bling necklace chain. That answered some questions. And I tried to voice my questions to a colleague at the German Agro Action office in Tubmanburg yesterday, about why so many nations, tribes, languages, and cultures could be lumped together so often as Africa, and what exactly do they have in common? I wish I had recorded the patience and certainty in his voice when he told me, “You see, we are all on the same continent. That is how we are all African.”

But, you see, it’s the truth.

Point being: This is what you need to visit:

1. Time. Two weeks is good. One week makes sense if it’s remotely “on your way” to somewhere else, or if you’re coming from nearby (Africa, Europe, sailboats).

2. Money. We have most of the expensive things covered (ie housing and cutting boards) and the vegetable shopping and local beer is on the house, so don’t worry about that one. But you’ll need some money for the plane ticket.

3. Plane ticket. We have benefited from the services of Charles Fernandez, specifically getting tickets from and through Brussels. He is apparently based in Pennsylvania, but is very responsive with phone and email:

Charles Fernandez
Travel Consultant
MTS Travel
124 East Main Street, 4th floor
Ephrata, PA 17522

866-315-2136
Tel: 772-283-1298
Fax: 772-283-1539
Email: charlesf@mtstravel.com
http://www.mtstravel.com

4. Yellow Fever Vaccination. This is generally not covered by insurance as it’s a sort of luxury item (yeah right). So it could cost you 100 usd or more. I know. I know. I know. Think of it as a tax. If your local County Health agency doesn’t have it, they will know who does.

5. The Visa. Appsarently, no matter what visa you buy, you get a 30-day visa when you get to Liberia. So, if there’s any way you can just get a 30-day visa from the local Liberian consulate (I didn’t see it on the menu, but then I was stuck on the multiple-entry variety), do that. I’ve heard from people it’s free, which is 200 usd cheaper than what I paid (and was useless to me when I got here). I think the point is, you should have _a_ visa, but don’t need anything more specific than that. Ie: go for the cheapest option.

6. The Weather. The rains begin to end at the end of September, so anytime from October through December would be awesome. We leave sometime around New Years I imagine.

Those are the details. That is the love. I’m writing this from the “Mosquito Room” at the Welthungerhilfe office in Monrovia, so-named because of the Mosquito net propaganda posters on the wall, supposedly. But I can feel the biting at my feet, now up-crossed in the fancy swivel chair, and I’m thanking my lucky stars I took my Chinese malaria medicine this morning… I’m probably 1/3 of the way through my project of research and writing agricultural training manuals for local farmers, due on the 25th of August. I’ve met with some incredible people and eaten some incredible fruits (and vegetables) of their labors, and now begins the time where I must earn the respect I’ve been given and produce something beautiful and relevant to their lives.

together,

Ankur

ps The title is apparently a common phrase here. It means, “Arab Money Never Ends”. Common enough that the phrase ARAB MONEY was emblazoned on a taxi we saw last week, leaving the passerby to mouth the implied “Can’t Finish” to himself in a pleasant chewy wonder.

So it hasn’t been easy, but between the faux busyness and the real business I’ve done a damn good job of not writing (but once) in the last 31 days. I’ve succeeded enormously in not writing about our amazing week in the Italian countryside, now down to its last drops in my memory just as we finished the last drops of our artisanal amazing aromatic olive oil we carried with us, straight from the presser’s hands in Civitta di Bagnoreggio.

I’ve also done a great job – if I do say so myself – in not producing the little audio segments I’ve been assembling out of bleating goats, coughing generators, laughing children, frying chiles, and various other aurals and ends that decorate our West African existence. I haven’t pounded out lengthy complaints and analyses of power dynamics among the different ethnicities, classes, and stati here, though I’m often going over it in my head. I haven’t spent any time on the Humanitarian Industry and what a disaster its existence is in many ways (perhaps fitting, because its non-existence was and would also be another set of disasters). And I certainly haven’t bitched in written form about US AID contractors furnishing themselves 3,000 USD apartments with taxpayer money and then winking and clinking glasses over it.

So I suppressed writing about meeting my neighborhood kids and even the neighborhood farmers (Alfred and Clinton, who are awesome), about running with my new friends on the beach and listening to their songs. I even didn’t make time to write when I was applying for consultancies with the aforementioned Humanitarian Industry, and neither when I got the jobs I wanted (I am now a sort of West African Desktop GIS specialist and Agricultural Training Manual Designer, á la fois).

But here I am,

on the balcony

in the rain,

with sugary juice

and the sweet fragrance

of burning plastic in my system.

And the thing I can’t not write about anymore is the little girl I just meant. I don’t remember her name (I’m terrible with Liberian names so far, I can’t understand why, perhaps it’s true that I’m getting older) but she was small and wearing a green dress (maybe it’s called a frock) and had no shoes and was dragging a plastic garbage can as large as she was, away from my “compound” (the 10 foot high wall that surrounds this three-story cement house, looking over the beach, the Atlantic, the Chinese embassy, and a score of abandoned unpainted concrete buildings that, I have learned, are not-at-all abandoned).

I see the little green girl dragging the big green plastic garbage can and I’ve got nothing to do so I offer to help her and she accepts. I haven’t seen her before and assuming she is a neighborhood kid getting some water or something for her mother. The “abandoned” buildings are probably innocent of running war, so it’s not such a strange idea to get from the neighboring “bossman” compound. But we go past the first inhabited ruins and down a small gully, cross a road, and start heading down a worn path through the bush. I haven’t seen any houses that way – I know the lagoon is up ahead soon – and am curious to find out where she, and I guess we, are going.

But it isn’t until we right up to a stinking pile of plastic and scraps do I understand that we’re not carrying water in the green garbage can but we’re actually a funny not-black man and a small green black girl carrying garbage. I release the can, she tosses off the lid, overturns the contents, and says “Thank you”. I am too taken with seeing the remnants of my way of life to respond.

The same plastics, bottles, wrappers, and food scraps that I haven’t pushed my “family” (6-8 expatriate United States citizens wrapped up in the now-famous Humanitarian Industry) to separate, reduce, or more efficiently dispose of, now right in front of my eyes, and under the bare feet of this small green black frocked girl.

We fed the food scraps to the downstairs neighbor’s goat until they ate it three weeks ago. Now it’s all just a big mess. I save some of the seeds to plant, and reuse all the good plastic bags, and save the beer bottles for local kids who want them, and try to reuse the juice bottles for spice containers. But you wouldn’t guess it from looking at this pile of rubbish, rapidly decomposing and toxifying, at the edge of this local lagoon where my neighbors fish and bathe.

So there’s that. A moment for that. Please, just a moment.

And a strengthened awareness of the immediacy and power of a zero-waste lifestyle, how “humanitarian” it could be for this little girl’s life, and my own. Tonight, enshallah, Kate and I are moving into a new home, just 200 meters away, bordering the same lagoon. I am prepared to reuse, upcycle, save, compost, and burn anything I need to, but I don’t want another piece of my consumer lifestyle to touch the hands or feet of that little girl.

Of course, the only real solution to the Trash Issue is through developing the consciousness that “There is no such thing as away”. “Away” is a fiction. We are throwing our garbage onto other creatures: human creatures, animal creatures, plant creatures, soil creates, planet creatures. There is no away that’s not somebeing‘s home.

okay. Not so cheery. And I’m not even going to make the time to get into a harangue about how REDUCTION (not induction) is the only solution, because I’m going to make some popcorn for my home-coming lover, and dress it with tahini (whose plastic container I will use to store fresh peanut butter from the local market).

one love through it all,

ankur

So obviously I know very little about how this whole “weblog” universe works, ironically enough. But somebody wrote something I want to share, so I think I’m just going to paste the link in below and allow you to go there if so choose. It’s a few words and pictures about last fall a reunion at Lost Meadow, and captures some of the beauty of the North Olympic Peninsula. If I could somehow include the entire post and pictures below, I would, but you’re going to have to make that extra click for now,

http://mdiv.wordpress.com/2010/06/22/lost-meadow/

one love

Ankur

<!– @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } –>

Let’s get something straight here. There’s going to be a lot of talk about “black” people. Not like “black people like mayonnaise” or anything like that. More like “That black person is very black”. And when I talk about black people, in the following words, paragraphs, days, and months, I will mean someone whose skin is very near to the color black. Not black in terms of race, ancestry, heritage, or anything like that. Black like the color.

Now.

The first image I have is from this morning’s expedition (rolling in the President’s taxi, comme toujours) to Waterside, a district in downtown Monrovia whose streets are crowded with water, running and still, trash, goods, and services. Everything cloth plastic and metal a consumer could consume. Complete with MAERSK freighters on the backs of semi trucks stopping ahead of unload boxes of who knows what all and everything else (too).

At the top of the hill, we see a wildly painted motorcycle with Jamaican colors and two black men stop at a policeman’s request. The policeman (black) puts his hand on the motorcycle, turns the key, shuts down the bike. I can’t hear him ask for money but the President fills me in. As we roll down the hill I turn to see the driver push away the policeman’s hand, start the bike, and go through the intersection. The power is there, but neither just nor respected. One hopes for a connection.

What is most clear to me here, and why perhaps I couldn’t write anything before today, is know less about this place than I do about any other. And, to tilt the ratio even further from understanding – I have been told so much in relation to what I know. So much about the mythical Africa. So much I have been told, been read, and so much I have soaked up just from thirty decades of reading the news and histories.

When I got here, for perhaps the first time in my life, I felt trepidation. I have been told so many times that “Africa” is dangerous. Unsafe. Insecure. I have to be careful. So I get here, to a cheap hot airport, amidst red clay soil, and wait for bags expecting to get robbed or accosted. And what happens? Nothing. Fewer touts and distractions than everywhere I’ve been in Asia, safer roads and fewer drivers than I’ve seen in Central America. Not that it’s not dangerous, it’s just that all of the hype leaves me in a position where I can trust none of the hype. It’s the same story – so much of what they taught me in school was wrong (or plain lies), so much of what I read in the news was wrong (or deceptions), that I get to a point where I desperately want to trust what someone, of us or them I care not, says, and – once again – I can’t.

So here I am, in the one place in Monrovia where I can get some internet, an air-conditioned hotel serving me an excellent (as too oily as it would be in India) plate of vegetable biriyani, and all I know is I’m committed not to talk about Africa or Liberia in any general terms at all.

What I do know, though, as always seems to be the case, is what I love. So that’s what I can talk about today. And this is what I love: the President, the Ocean, and the Market.

The President started off as a humble taxi driver, christened Anthony, born in Liberia, exiled to Guinea and the rest of West Africa during years of civil war, and now back in the country, living with his mother (who never left, all through the war), and driving a taxi. So, to be fair, he was Kate’s driver when she came on her exploratory visit back in March, and was our driver back from the airport a week ago today, last Monday. But pretty soon it became clear to all of us – Kate, Anthony, and myself – that Anthony knew everything that we needed to know, could do anything we needed done, and was fair, just, vigilant, and compassionate in the way a leader must be. So he became the President, and we became his ministers. Naturally, Kate is the Minister of Gender. And I am the Minister of Culture. All the Presidents humans. Well, you know, there’s only three of us know. But good government starts small, that’s our theory.

The Ocean is what keeps it real, pulls my head out of the fog of prejudice and the general sense of Lost that dogged me for the first few days here. I can’t go out at night (it’s “dangerous”). I can’t walk long distances by myself (it’s “dangerous”). But I can go down the Ocean, a five minute walk past the few neighboring houses and children. I cross as the neck of the lagoon, crest a ridge of stand, and mind myself face to face with ferocious blue-brown water, just an eternity of sound and storm and water between us and Brazil, past and present, here and there. Just one eternity. The same red palm oil, the same huge mango trees, the same traditional blouses and hats of the women. So I go to the Ocean, run along the beach and surf, splash up to my knees, dream of frisbees, smile at the couples making out in the sunset, and literally feel myself forget what I’ve been told…

The Market of course is the antithesis of the air-conditioned Internet hotel. Everybody is black and bustling. In the morning all the produce is vibrant, before being sapped by the heat. Here’s a brief catalog of what I’ve found so far:

eggplant (five or six kinds, sized from raspberry to plum, colored white, yellow, orange, and green).

eggplant, four inches long, purple, striated

okra

chiles (pimenta malagueta, like in Brazil), big piles for 5 LD each

plantains (four for 50 LD)

cassava, potato, and other tubers

greens (a whole section devoted to them: the greens from cassava plant, from potato plant, and various others I don’t recognize, all sold as 5 LD for a two-hands-full, or processed through a machine (looks like what comes out the wrong end of a juicer) for use in soup (pictures to follow)

peanut butter (homemade, for use in soup, 10 LD for a small plastic pouch the size of a plum, maybe 50 g)

palm oil (looks just like dende in brazil, 40 LD for 500 mL)

rice from the USA (parboiled and not), China (parboiled and not), and Liberia. we have the Chinese stuff at home, and while it’s tasty and somewhat brown (maybe parboiled but not husked?), it’s also the dirtiest rice I’ve ever had. eight washes and I still feel like I taste something old and musty when we eat it. bought the Liberian stuff today.

all kinds of beans and lentils – including what I recognize as chori from India, pinto beans, and some kind of scarlet runner beans, in addition to black eye peas and other split peas.

generally a trend I’ve noticed in markets all over the world: beans cost about twice as much as rice. seems to imply the conventional nutritional wisdom is that you should cook twice as much rice and beans to get your complete proteins…

*

So there’s that. First impressions of my time here on the third floor of a house, sharing a bedroom with Kate and common space with four other US ex-pats in the NGO world. Listening to the roar of the Ocean and the snap of lightening. The rainy season delivers. I’ll have some audio soon, and recipes to boot. I’m keeping it real. That much we can be sure about. I’m keeping it real.

Also, as a post-script, Kate and I saw “Good Hair” last night. It’s a movie made by Chris Rock about African-American hair culture. I’m hesitant to say “black” hair culture because I’ve just learned that the “black” people in the US, though browner than I am (mostly), are still pretty much brown. These people, all around me, are Black. Like, the color, you know.

Ankurbhai

<!– @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } A:link { so-language: zxx } –>

dear fellow passengers

voyage is fractal. every space ship in every compart ment holds a flotilla of no-less-spaceships. and you’ve known all the pilots, or will.

I find myself wrapped up in interstate bus travel, enjoy the wilds and snows of connecticut and new york, the surprising springtime in boston, ahead of schedule and surely asking for a stern rebuke, and comfort and glory of travel itself, that precious time to ourselves, wherein we can discover whether we truly

enjoy

the company

we keep.

nothing like the metro north trains up the harlem line to the western tip of new york state, connecticut, and massachusettes, passing schoolchildren sledding and frozen swamps, whose barren trees poke out of their icy skirt, willfully demonstrating, it seems, that we have no idea how deep and tall they actually are. as a guest here, and a farmer, I wonder what people eat, if agriculture is possible in such climes, why – if indeed those scarred cones were once hale and productive apple trees – there aren’t still farmers coming out every wednesday to sell a new variety of apples they had been storing for

just

this

moment

winter apples and storage apples that don’t even ripen towards february. as it is, all the humans I know insist on shopping indoors, at big corporate organic supermarkets, where the apples come from washington or chile or new zealand. what ever happened to buying bulk in season? storage and preservation? shouldn’t there be a warehouse full of dirty local beets and cabbage and potatoes and carrots from earlier in the season, to buy 20 pound boxes of? isn’t that how we’re going to train people that you can always eat locally and of the land, that it’s not such a boogie fashion trend to breed new slivers of identity? are we talking about food or just another commodity?

the answer, of course, that the god’s always throw to us in times of need, is

MAPLE SYRUP

during my estancia with lizzie and baba (www.lizzieandbaba.com), the best music on either side of the mississippi, as far i’ve been concerned, we went out daily to harvest and drink the sweet coconut-water of the northern climes, cold as the driving snow, right from the tree. raw, unpasteurized, innocent of refineries and rbgh, non-gmo or anything but divine.

and then you can boil it, down down down to the 40:1 recommended ration (that’s 2.5 gallons to the cup) to get the hot sticky syrup that contains (I swear to the gods, all of them)

vainilla, butter, caramel, pine, butterscotch, rum

in every warm mouthful. maple syrup. it must be what these strange northeastern native survive upon for the winter season, because god knows there’s nothing else around but snow and firewood.

anyhow, back to the voyage at hand. fellow sojourner and truth-seeker

(responsible for these photos of our bicycle trip through india: http://mangolandia.org/photos/twopass/

)

TOMAS WERNER

TOMAS WERNER

(www.tomaswerner.com)

has departed his native slovakia and temporary asylum in mexico to run rough-shod over the north of amerika, by bus and photography, through the following states of the union:

NY-DC-VA-NC-SC-GA…..all the way to San Francisco

(which is a state)

He is a consummate artist and (easter) european. You will not be disappointed. Please host him on his travels, or at the least, send the modern de Toqueville a message of support (not more than 160 characters, please).

His phone number is: 347-574-6862

As for my own self, I’m in Boston for the week and entering the fog thereafter. Perhaps a weekend in DC in mid-march, and totally lack of clarity for April. I’ve started working for The Man again, a few hours a week, in the material form of two cool Michigan dudes based in San Cristobal (I can’t imagine a better look for The Man), so I may head back down there for a spell.

As always, tomorrow never knows, but the idea of actually living out a season on a farm calls to me deeply, and it’s unclear how long I can, or should, resist.

one love

many instruments,

ankurbhai

feb 20 / norfolk ct / usa / 2010
dear(est) friends

It’s an eventful life. The book reading in philadelphia went really well, with beautiful conversation around the book. I’m growing more comfortable with the idea of talking about this thing I did as if it has some interest to others. A dangerous comfort, perhaps.

Anyhow, I’m doing another reading here with my friends Lizzie and Baba in CT. It’s tuesday at 5-8 at their home. If you want to come, let me know, and I’ll give you the address.

If you are not in Connecticut for some reason (why? it’s where the action is. if by action we mean snow and lack of fresh fruit), then there is actually some kind of

LIVE (free or die)
TELEVISION
INTERNET
SHOW

that Lizzie and Baba do every Sunday. It’s called This Abundant Life, and I recently found out that I’m going to be on it, with or without a haircut it seems, this Sunday (tomorrow).

check it out here:

http://tiny.cc/W2UB8

(special guest ankur shah)

The fact that’s it’s LIVE (free or die) means that you can’t watch it later, I think. 7pm Eastern, 4pm Western. Fill in the blanks, Australia.

Apologies for the events-oriented nature of this email, more storytelling and some photography from Mexico lindo y querido coming next week. But I’m really delight for some measure of rural stability after the last three weeks in north american megapoli, and here I can wake up to the meditation, music, and woodstove that do me well.

one love
ankurbhai

ps never stray from the funk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHE6hZU72A4