mangolandia

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

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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

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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

Clearly I have no concept of fitting space time into linear and timely communiques, so I’m acknowledging that from the beginning, that my ratio of plane flights to reporting is abysmally high, and getting to the point of this straight up:

There is book reading in Philadelphia at 7pm at Wooden Shoe Books this Thursday February 18th. They contacted me after the reading at Bluestockings last summer, and I’m excited that we finally organized a day together. If you happen to be in or near Philadelphia, it would be great to see friendly/known faces in the audience, or if you think somebody might enjoy the event, please let them know.

Usually with book readings I try to get everybody’s name and a sense of what people want to hear about, there’s no predetermined sermon or anything. Although, sometimes, true to the name, I will read. And I take requests.

After that, I’ll likely be doing some other readings in Connecticut and maybe down in Baltimore next month, as part of my East Coast estancia. As they say, the hacienda must be built. Mexico was three trips in one and I have old napkins and Gandhian cotton paper full of stories and ruminations that I may or may not put together in the coming times.

It feels like I’ll be on the East Coast until May and I’m excited to visit the Beautiful people, so please send me an email if you’re down. And if you want to organize a reading in your hometown, that’s a great excuse as well. And I have a phone. And if I haven’t called you yet, it’s entirely my fault.

All love

Ankurbhai

Yesterday was the first of December, and I made my wish list. I have 24 more days in this bioregion of salmon and berries, this ancient nation of rainforests and rainshadows, enchanted forests of brassicas and sandy carrot armies.

Too many to name of course, as are the gifts and gratitudes always, but there is some writing, some painting, some producing and some publishing to be done. I’m hoping to have some our writing and photographs from the pilgrimage up to the ganga organized by the time I’m out of here, to have written a children’s story for a dear young friend, to be producing and offering Max’s pamphlet on the Apple, to plant dozens of trees on this tender piece of land (the lost mountain observatory), to have enough cash in my pocket to walk the earth for a few months more, to be inspired by a showing of Andy Goldsworthy’s _Rivers and Tides_, so I can walk through these woods with new eyes.

Thanksgiving was, as always, a grand success. We had nine people in the house most of the week, and every meal was a holiday splendor, full of delicious food (mostly from Nash’s) and music. Recipes and songs. Songbooks and Cookbooks. Blending together with our energies and smiles.

And what I’m really hoping for, personally, for this season, is to put together some sort of capstone, some sort of project that encapsulates much of what I’ve been seeking and finding across the world in the past few Whiles and Years. An offering to all those who have taught me, guided me, and supported me, an homage to that underground economy of the gift that lifts us all, without which the songbirds and clouds would refuse to inspire us, without which precipitation and evaporation alike would withhold their magic. Details to come as I work further, but as of now, I see it as both a conclusion to how I’ve been exploring, and a foundation for how I want to continue to explore.

There. And here. Yesterday, also, I went to the ocean, took a camera and some words with me. I’m not too accomplished with the movie-lite software this gentle computer offered me, so smile kindly when you watch it. And you might have to turn up the volume. It’s inspired by a song, Hold Me Now, by Matt Coffman.

the movie attempt:

http://www.mangolandia.org/video/iwentotheocean.wmv

overflowing gratitude
and
december sunshine,

ankurbhai

details and marketing:

a) now is a great time to buy lots of cookbooks and travelogues for your holiday friends. ten books are 101 dollars (shipping included). i leave town on december 24th. email, or call 360 683 5398

b) i will be in asheville, nc from dec 24 – 30, and in mexico thereafter. i have no plan fixe from mid-jan onwards, but am aiming to visit el salvador and mexico df.

c) there are some pictures of people and places around here

http://www.mangolandia.org/photos/late-november/

http://www.mangolandia.org/photos/december-one/

good morning. this morning, international inspirate and dj Aparna Kothary interviewed me about _cooking com bigode_ and _sometimes we walk alone_ on her radio show, naansense.

the link is here. the link is now.

http://wmucradio.com/stream_ripper/tue/Naansense_800_1000.mp3

i think i was on around half-way through, 9am eastern time. and, though it hasn’t finished loading yet, she asked me to request a song at the end, and i went for anything by Bootsy Collins, so that’s certainly more worthwhile than whatever i had to say…

love

ankurbhai

dear loyal friends

in an effort to make the cooking com bigode website more intelligible to all living beings, i have decided to add a page housing photographs of the general public cooking with moustaches.

now, let it be said that i am _Well Aware_ that some people don’t have moustaches. the moustaches in the photos do not have to be real. they can be, alternately:

: other peoples hair
: your own hair but not from your face
: dill or fennel greens
: rabbits feet keychains
: anything else

but what i am asking for is for _you_ to have a picture taken of you with a moustache AND one of the following

: cooking
: pretending to cook
: a pressure cooker
: a robot
: a knife
: a copy of the book

and most importantly for staying warm in a temperate climate…. if you don’t have a copy of the book, you are dearly invited to get one.

www.somethingconstructive.net/bigode

and, i know the holidays are approaching, and everybody loves giving cookbooks for the holidays, so do not hesitate to order 10 (ten) copies of the book to give away to everyone you love, at the incredibly discounted suggestion of $101 (the final one is for goodluck; shipping on big orders is still free)

nb: if you have an authentic and outrageous moustache, photo response to this email should be considered MANDATORY. send me an email of a picture of you with a moustache. horn. okay. please.

love
and
carrot/apple/ginger-juice blended with whole spinach and parsley to provide goodness and energy almost all morning long,

ankur