Correction:

In case someone English is reading my blog, came across my February post about slow tape and then inwardly or outwardly laughed at my American ignorance: I misspelled Sellotape. I suppose “cellotape” would run the risk of being pronounced like a musical instrument

I can spell Sellotape correctly now because we installed a British-English dictionary on the computers at the school. So I could also define a rubbish lorry for you.

Thunk!

Mango season is in full swing, and it will only be a matter of time before you're as sick of reading about mangos as I will be of eating them. Here's something I wrote about mangoes a few weeks ago:

April 7: Mango season is starting, but I have yet to eat a proper mango. I’ve eaten under-ripe mangoes stewed with sugar, honey and cinnamon (thanks, Julia!) and mangoes so over-ripe that the peel contains nothing more than a pit floating in slushy juice. But I have not yet tasted a mango with the consistency and taste of a mango plucked from a branch, as opposed to the mushier taste and texture of one picked from the ground. I was also thinking this afternoon, as I gnawed on a mango pit (the flesh around it has a tangy flavor that the rest of the over-ripe mango doesn’t) and juice dripped from my hands and chin, about the different mango experiences of The Gambia and Hong Kong.

The Gambian mango experience is as I just described. An absolute mess. The mango drops—randomly, unexpectedly—from a tree, or maybe the sky, because you’re not actually aware of its falling until it hits the ground with a splunk. That’s a “splattering thunk.” A child will rush to pick it up before a goat or sheep or another child does, and after washing it off (because dirt has stuck to the crack in the peel where mango innards have started to ooze) he will take the largest bite he can manage, peel and all. And juice will ooze between fingers and onto toes and become smeared across the chin. And he will grab slippery hunks of orange sticky mango and pass a piece to everyone around so that they too may become a drippy sweet mango mess. And when it's all over we wash our hands off in a bucket.

Mangoes in Hong Kong, on the other hand, were always like Grace's dessert platter that night we went to the Tuen Mun lantern carnival. A sparkling white plate. Miniature scoops of mango ice cream. A pale-orange pastry-like concoction. A cup of mango juice with tiny rice balls and mango cubes floating inside. And a perfectly peeled, flawlessly sliced tidbit of real mango.

I cannot decide whether I prefer Gambian or Hong Kong mangoes--the experiences were wildly different, but equally enjoyable. Anyway, "you cannot compare an elephant with a cat."

Cheese!

I texted Julia one afternoon to tell her the oil with my rice tasted like cheese. Her reply implied that the heat was causing me to hallucinate. It’s a logical conclusion, but thankfully, the wrong one. Amadou explained that this oil is made by skimming off the top when they’re making sour milk, and then allowing this skimmed-off part sit for a few more days. Fulas can do anything with milk!

Sadly, our rice hasn't been cooked in cheese-flavored oil since...

"Girls are more intelligent than boys"

At the school's most recent debate, I was put in charge of scoring the participants on "expression/content." This allowed me to take notes without feeling awkward. Following is my summary of the arguments for and against the statement: "Girls are more intelligent than boys."

For (“which I say a big YES to”)

• girls are found in art, science, politics
• girls send boys to fight wars for them while the girls sit at home and enjoy
• intelligence cannot only be defined by test scores
• girls are good at domestic work
• girls can handle different positions without problem
• girls have been leading boys in exams
• best student in grade eleven last year was a girl
• the president says educating girl child means educating the nation
• girls never get caught stealing; the girls send the boys out while the girls stay home and enjoy
• boys play games and refuse to fetch firewood for their parents
• boys are sleeping in classrooms
• the boys are only intelligent when it comes to stupidness
• if you hit your head with a stone it will be good for the stone but it will never be good for you
• a girl will ask a boyfriend to buy something for her and he will not have the money
• girls are important
• Delilah’s intelligence caused Sampson to go against Allah
• a woman’s intelligence caused Adam to go against Allah
• girls cannot be compared to boys
• girls can catch criminals but boys cannot
• two girls from the school are now at Gambia College but only one boy is
• boys write on the blackboard, the fence, the walls, etc. while girls are writing notes that will help them
• even in our homes our mothers are more intelligent than our fathers; fathers sit around talking at the bantaba while mothers discuss school fees

Against (“which I say a big NO to”)

• boys are physically stronger and have a wider capacity for thinking
• the government is supporting girls because girls are far behind
• boys are not called to conferences, e.g. for child rights and gender, because boys already know that information
• girls and boys are like rabbits and hyenas
• looking at past school records boys have been among the top students
• girls are always dropping out from poor performance and failing exams
• we rarely see boys repeating more than one year
• there are more boys than girls at school
• intelligent boys do not impregnate girls, but girls get impregnated by dumb boys
• the great discoveries of science have been made by men
• God says leaders should be respected and often leaders are men
• it is a natural phenomenon that boys are ahead of girls in every way and there is nothing we can do to change
• girls spend boys hard-earned money buying asobis
• girls spend all their intelligence on break time
• the thinking capacity of boys is stronger than girls’
• doing domestic work doesn’t require intelligence
• girls don’t know what is good for them, they just want to satisfy themselves
• girls only intelligence is in harassing boys sexually; they will start walking like little girls until they meet a boy then they will walk like a [some non-English word that elicited laughter and applause]
• girls are used as domestic slaves because of the intelligence of boys
• our ancestors believed boys are more intelligent because they can defend the family
• the government is helping girls because they know boys are naturally gifted by the Almighty
• Adam would not have been called to examine with the angels if boys weren’t more intelligent
• boys are leading in exams
• girls don’t take teachers’ instruction but boys do
• girls are provided with everything and still they are lagging behind
• men are more leaders than females
• boys are more performing in chemistry, physics and mathematics
• Islamically it is accepted for a man to lead in prayer but not women
• a lot of presidents who are men, although some are women they are not as many—why? it is because of weakness of women.
• boys are always thinking about exams but girls are always thinking about boyfriends
• 0.22% of girls will pass

Skink?

After Sini asked again about the chameleons and birds in America, she wanted to know what other Gambian animals are also there.

Sini: Are there palater in America?

Me: Palater, palater… I forget palater.

Sini: You do not know palater?

Me: I forget!

Sini and Fatou Sowe’s Musa (not Baby Musa, who is Fatou Bobo’s Musa) try to describe palater for me:

Musa: …it is in trees…

Me: I know! Lizard.

(I think me suddenly remembering after Musa mentioned "trees" is just coincidence; there is no way trees remind me of lizards)

Sini: Palater is what in English?

Me: Lizard.

Sini: Lizard. It is in America?

Me: Yes. But Gambian lizards and American lizards are not the same.

Sini: The lizards are red?

Me: Yes. And black and this [I point to something blue] and this [I point to something green].

Sini: And lukagede, are they in America

Me: I do not know lukagede.

Sini: It is like a lizard, but it is not a lizard.

Me: It is small?

Sini: Yes.

Me: But it is not a lizard.

Sini: No, it is not a lizard.

Me(thinking, maybe it’s a gecko?): Is it inside houses?

Sini: Yes.

Me: But people do not like it.

Sini: No! If they see it they will hit it. [she does a whacking motion with her hand]

Me: I know! It is a gecko! Fatou Bobo saw it in my house and her shoe [I take off my shoe to demonstrate] she did this [I pantomime whacking a wall with my shoe]

Sini: Yes! In English it is…?

Me: Gecko.

Sini, Musa and Cherno: Gecko.

Me: In Pulaar?

Sini: Lukagede.

"Luka” means “scream,” but I don’t know if the name comes because people scream whenever they see a gecko or because the geckos themselves are vocal reptiles.

Sini: And kordo-mbodi?

Me: I do not know it.

Sini: You do not know kordo-mbodi?

Me: No. The Gambia does not have them?

Sini: No, The Gambia has them.

Me: It is not a lizard?

Sini: No, it is like a snake.You know snake?

Me: Yes, I know snake. But it is not a snake?

Sini: No, it has legs.

Musa: Four legs.

Sini: Two and two.

Me: I think I have never seen it.

Sini: No—it has color, it is red and white.

Now another woman briefly joins our conversation. In English, she says: It is red and white. If you see it you will think it is a snake, until you see the legs.

Me: And it is red and white?

English-speaking woman: Yes.

Musa: It is this and this [he points to a piece of orange and white fabric lying on the ground]

Me: I think I have never seen it.

Sini: It has a snake’s head.

Me: But it is not a snake? And it is not a lizard?

Sini: No, not a snake, not a lizard.

Me: I think I have never seen it.

Sini: You have never seen it?

Me: No.

I consulted with Julia afterward, and she thinks maybe it is a skink, but we have yet to consult her reptile-identification guide. If so, I spoke half-way true. I have never seen a red and white Gambian skink. Only blue and yellow American ones.

Chameleon request

Dear Person-reading-this,

The title of this blog post might cause you to think I'm requesting a chameleon. I am not. The Gambia has plenty. But once more, Sini wanted to hear about chameleons in America and once more, for lack of better words, I told her we keep them in cardboard boxes and feed them leaves. Then she wanted to know about birds, so I told her we keep those in our houses too, but I couldn't even say we keep them in boxes because that would be too obviously untrue, so she probably thinks American birds fly around inside people's houses.

My request is this: Could you pleases send me photos of a pet store? You would actually need to print them out and send them in an envelope, so when I addressed this letter to "Person-reading-this," I actually meant, "Person-reading-this-who-is-someone-I-know-and-therefore-someone-who-knows-my-mailing-address." I realize this requires a bit of effort (driving to pet store, explaining why you're photographing the guinea pigs, buying postage stamps) but photos of PETCO would be invaluable, and would guarantee even more amusing conversations for me to share, particularly if you actually did photograph a guinea pig.

Thanks!
Sonja

Tutti Fruitie?

I'm still among computers and internet, as I was yesterday, but yesterday I was too busy reading Little Bee, assisting with science experiments (by chewing bread and monitoring banana-flavored petri dishes), and trying to resuscitate nearly rotten mangoes to write anything. Plus other people needed a turn with the internet. (internet arrives in the form of a USB stick and is only available for the computer with that stick).

Perhaps you are curious and want to hear more about Little Bee: Little Bee is one of my new favorite books. I wish I weren't already on page 188 because it ends on page 271.

Perhaps you are curious and want to hear more about science experiments: I chewed bread until there was nothing left to chew, waiting and waiting for it turn sweet so that iodine dropped on top of it would not change blue. It always changed blue. I think I've got faulty saliva. The petri dishes were banana flavored because Trish couldn't find unflavored gelatin. Although doesn't gelatin come from animal hooves? We could make it the old-fashioned way!

Perhaps you are curious and want to hear more about resuscitated mangoes: I'd brought a bag of ripe mangoes with me to Basse, and the mangoes became successively more ripe, as mangoes tend to do, until they were very nearly like water balloons, except filled with sickly sweet mango juice. So I thought maybe I could peel and boil them and something would happen. But nothing did, so I added sugar. And still nothing happened, so I added lemon juice. And still nothing happened, so I poured the boiling mango/sugar/lemon juice concoction into cups and stuck them in the freezer, with the mindset that "at least they'll be something cold to eat." And hours later I pulled out the cups of slushy mango mixture and ate some. At least they were cold.

Perhaps you are curious and want to hear more about tutti fruitie. Yesterday for dinner I ate Navratan Kurma, which is “Vegetables and dried fruit cooked in a rich, creamy gravy—a dish fit for kings!” that came in a bag in a box with a promise of purity. Seriously, these Ready to Eat Indian meals are delicious. I bought this one a month ago and figured I should eat it soon because although it says it will last twelve months from manufacture, it also stays to store in an “ambient condition” and I am not sure how ambient the inside of my metal food trunk is. Can I say, just one more time, because I don't have a thesaurus: it was delicious. Additionally, the only ingredients I could not pronounce were Indian ones like “asafoetida” and “ajowan,” not ones that made me wish I remembered more high school chemistry. The box even has a nice little seal on it that says “Made with 100% Natural Ingredients.” And one of these natural ingredients was “tutti fruitie." I’ve never heard of tutti fruitie outside the context of rainbow-colored Baskin Robbins ice cream, so your curiosity will remain as unsatiated as mine.

Computer!

So I'm back in front of a computer, only a few days after the last string of posts-published-to-future-dates ran out...hooray!

The sun is hot.

Not that you need this image in your minds, but I was just thinking, maybe we have skulls around our brains so that if our brains should melt, at least not all the brains would leak out, and then if we entered colder weather again, the brains could re-solidify into a mass somewhat resembling their former selves.

It is not even cold at night anymore. Not even a little.

In other news, Rugi's returned! And Fatou, Pateh and Baby Musa. They arrived the day before yesterday, and I arrived in Basse today, so sadly, I still have no new conversations with Rugi to report. Rugi returned from Senegal with newly braided hair and brand new shoes (pink, plastic). Also, Baby Musa has grown HUGE--in a good way, not a blob-of-butter way.

Now I'll type up some future reading for you.

Slingshot!

I helped Mamadou make a slingshot, by which I mean I held pieces of elastic steady while he cut and tied and fastened. He told me he was going to go to the bush and kill something, but I did not recognize the animal. This means it was not a bird, snake, scorpion, goat, sheep, donkey, horse, chicken, duck, cat, dog, mouse, lizard, mosquito, monkey or hippopotamus. Or a lion, elephant, or bee. What else could it be?!


He said he’d already shot one of them in the eye, but it's possible this was only in his imagination. He also told me if he shot a bird we’d cook and eat it, and then he aimed his slingshot into the mango tree.

Probability!

Here’s how sex-change surgery relates to probability:


Me: Can anyone think of an example of something that absolutely we know it will not happen? Something whose probability would be zero.
Student: A boy cannot be a girl.
Me: Actually…

And thus commenced a brief and undetailed conversational tangent in which I attempted not to freak out the twelfth graders with the power of science. Then it was back to maths.

Me: So can you try to think of another example?
Student: A dead person cannot become alive.
Me: Sure.

"I am interested in geography"

In the car ride back from Kombo to Basse, back in March, I had a very drawn-out conversation with the man sitting next to me. The conversation did not begin until half-way through our journey, when we’d already been sitting beside each other for several hours, and the conversation took place in a series of two or three sentence exchanges alternated with fifteen to twenty minute gaps of silence. He was always the one restarting our “conversation,” but I didn’t really mind because I had nothing better to do. Plus I think he was genuinely trying to be nice to make up for the creep sitting next to him. Anyway, the man next to me asked questions like how did I like The Gambia and how was I dealing with the heat and how was the work. He also wanted to know if America had “diamond prospectors” because he is interested in geography. I was disappointed to have to disappoint him. “No, no diamond prospectors.”

Not quite The Metamorphosis

Woke up one morning to find I’d shared my bed with a cockroach. I’d pulled off my bedspread to shake it out and found him lying there on the sheets, all twitchy and dying. So at least I know the insecticide in the mosquito netting still works. I shook him off, stabbed him a few times with a stick and separated him into three or four pieces. Hopefully cockroaches aren’t one of those animals that can regenerate from an arm. Not that it mattered, because an army of ants quickly arrived and consumed him.

Boys can cook!

For a few days during the time Fatou was gone, Neene's knees hurt too much for her to do any work around the compound. This left Amadou doing the men's work and the women's work, including the cooking. Surprisingly, he cooks a really good peanut sauce, and I was a little sad when cooking duty returned to Neene. Which may or may not have been in partly due to the following conversation that took place between Amadou and his uncle Kairaba:

Kairaba: What are you doing?
Amadou: I’m cooking.
Kairaba: You are cooking attaya?
Amadou: I am cooking lunch.
Kairaba: Hah! Today you are Fatoumata!

Bruce Lee!

One night Mamadou informed me that he is Brucelin, which I took to be his pronunciation of Bruce Lee after he did some accompanying punchs and karate kicks.


Mamadou: If I do this [he punchs the air] the person will fall.
Me: He will fall?
Mamadou: Yes.
Me: Just one [I punch the air] and he will fall?
Mamadou: Yes. And die.

The next night I asked if he was still Bruce Lee. No, he was Commando, a.k.a. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Which is a name I somehow spelled correctly, according to Microsoft Word’s spell-check.

Bathroom mangoes!

Sana, sweeping his arm to indicate the vastness of the mango tree in my backyard: All these mangoes are yours.

Me: All?
Sana: Yes, of course! The mangoes are in your bathroom!

Scorpion mystery solved!

Remember how I wrote about the mathematical way to kill a scorpion, by sticking a thin stick through it? I learned the reason. If you kill a scorpion by squashing it to a pulp you have killed the scorpion. This is a problem because it will cause many more scorpions to arrive. But if you allow the scorpion to die on its own, such as by sticking a twig through it, or tying it in a tree by its tail (which I was informed many people will do) this will not happen. Maybe scorpion guts attract other scorpions but a dead scorpion that merely dangles does not? Maybe it's just supersititon? The answer when I return to site! (remember: even though you're reading this April 4, I wrote it March 13, back when I was still in Kombos). The day before I left site I found a scorpion in my yard and killed it until it was VERY dead. So if I return and the ground is a crawling carpet of scorpions, I’ll assume there’s some scientific truth to the matter.

Conversations with Rugi: Meeting!

As of the day that I'm actually typing this up, Rugi has not yet returned, nor her mom nor Pateh. Maybe she will have returned on the day that you read this, which is April 10, but regardless, this conversation took place back in January or February.

Rugi and I are sitting in the compound after breakfast.

Rugi: It’s a meeting.
Me: You and who also?
Rugi: No, the chairs.
Me: The chairs are having a meeting?
Rugi: Yes.

My dirty village dog...

Items Levi enjoys eating:

• plastic bags
• donkey poop
• decaying chickens
• decaying mice
• spiders
• ants
• mango leaves

Hello?

One morning some guy called me three times and refused to believe that he had the wrong number. Here’s sort of how the conversations went, to the best of my memory.



Me: Hello?
Stranger: Hello.

The voice is speaking with a Gambian accent, so I switch to Pulaar.

Me: Who are you?
Stranger: [says something in Mandinka, but nothing sounds like a name]
Me: I did not hear. I only hear Pulaar.
Stranger: [something in Mandinka]

I hang up.
He calls back.

Me: Hello?
Stranger: Hello.
Me: Who are you?
Stranger: [something in Mandinka]
Me: I do not hear Mandinka.
Stranger: [something in Mandinka that includes the Mandinka word for “Fula”]
Me: Yes, it is only Pulaar I hear. I think you have “wrong number”
Stranger: [something in Mandinka, that includes “Brikama,” which is a city]
Me: Brikama? I am not there.
Stranger: [something in Mandinka, said in a “goodbye” tone of voice]
Me: Until later.

I meant “until later,” as “goodbye.” But the phone rings a third time. Same number, but a different, Pulaar-speaking voice, is calling.

Me: Hello?
Stranger 2: Hello.
Me: Who are you?
Stranger 2: I am not the person who called before. I am calling because you said you speak Pulaar.
Me: Yes…
Stranger 2: [something in rapid Pulaar that I do not capture]
Me: Your name?
Stranger 2: Ebrima.
Me: Ebrima who?
Stranger 2: Ebrima [he says his surname but I don’t hear it]
Me: Who do you want?
Stranger 2: It is you I want.
Me: But I do not think I know you.
Stranger 2: Where are you?
Me: Fatoto.
Stranger 2: Where are you?
Me: Where am I?
Stranger 2: Yes.
Me: Fatoto.
Stranger 2: Fatoto?
Me: Yes.

[pause]

Me: Who gave you my number?
Stranger 2: No one gave me your number.
Me: It was on the house? [often address-book-like lists of names and numbers are written in charcoal on the outside of people’s houses]
Stranger 2: Your number is in his phone.
Me: But I think you have “wrong number”
Stranger 2: [something in rapid Pulaar, but I catch what sounds like the name of a village. I forget the name now, but it started with a “T”]
Me: I do not know T----.
Stranger 2: You do not know T----?
Me: No. I think you have “wrong number.”

I hang up.

The actual conversation was even a little longer, and why someone would waste their cell-phone minutes like that is beyond me. Shouldn’t my inability to speak Mandinka have been a dead giveaway for the first guy who called?

And you might ask, why didn’t I just try speaking English? I didn't do that because I always want to see if I can get away pretending I’m not a toubab. I think the garbledness of the phone connection disguises my accent just enough, and also allows me to ask sentences to be repeated without arousing suspicion.

Yup. For 2 minutes and 58 seconds I was a Gambian.

If I wanted a reason to stay inside and lock the doors...

One afternoon after I’d finished laundry and was fetching something from my trunk, I see a long, shiny black snake slither past the screen door to my back yard. I yelp! and run outside (outside to the front, obviously, not outside to my backyard with the snake) screaming “A snake! A snake!” Hawa runs away from my house and jumps onto the bantaba. Neene stays where she is on the collapsing bantaba next to my house. Rugi tells me to sit in the hammock. I tell her if I sit down I will not be able to run.

A man walking past our compound is called over and told about the snake. He grabs a large stick, takes off his shoes, and goes into my house. He doesn’t see anything and ask where the snake was. I cautiously follow, wave my hand in the general direction of my backyard, and run back outside to the front. Then Mamadou takes off his Teletubby shoes to follow the man with the stick, carrying a stick of his own. Still no sign of the snake.

Suddenly I hear a lot of banging and clanging and smacking. Fatou Bobo has come over and is hitting the outside of my corrugate fence. Neene, still sitting calmly on the broken bantaba, tells me a snake was also in the compound this morning while I was at the school. More boys join the crowd and the whacking of my fence with sticks continues.

Then one of the boys points out the swarm of bees in the mango tree overlooking my yard. I thought I’d heard swarming bees while doing my laundry, but it sounded so exactly like a swarm of bees that I thought it couldn’t actually be bees, because surely they only sound like that in the movies. The boy instructs me to be careful because “they will kill.”

Eventually everyone leaves my house and the snake is pronounced gone. Neene tells me that when Amadou returns home I should send him to the market for something that will stop the snakes from entering. I hear the word “dirt,” and she makes a spitting-into-her-hands motion, and a spreading-around-my-fence motion, so I assume she is referring to cement, which you mix with water and dirt and if spread around my fence would block the gaps and stop snakes from entering.

Then Fatou asks if I’ve washed yet. I say no. She says go wash, the snake is gone. I say okay…. She says if I see a snake, call for her. I finish washing without complications, but just as I’m re-tying my head-wrap, Hawa calls for me to come outside. A group of people are whacking the ground near Amadou’s house –another snake has been spotted and a konkoran is running across the field, waving his arms.

Photos of amusing-ness

Baby Musa

Pateh throwing water at Rugi by the mango tree.
I was told the mango tree was hacked at so that it would produce more mangoes.

Yaya, Ali, Mamadou and Eeli after a konkoran came by and left some of his hair

Goat!

Circumcision ceremony!

Maybe a week before I needed to go to Kombos in March, I went to my husband's circumcision ceremony.



He doesn't usually cry when I hold him--honest!

I'd attended a couple of circumcision ceremonies while still in training village, but we always arrived and left too early for anything more than sitting awkwardly and eating a few handfuls of benichin. We also didn't know enough Pulaar to say anything besides, "Good afternoon, how are you? how is your family? how are the children?"

So I was super excited when I walked over to the compound with Fatou Bobo, Hawa and the kids and saw a huge crowd of people around a circle of sitting children dressed similarly to Saliou, but without the awesome hat. Then we moved to the back of the crowd.

Is "irony" the word I am looking for? In the previous ceremonies I'd attended I could clearly see that nothing was happening. This time, based on the sounds of music and dancing, stuff was obviously happening--but I couldn't see anything aside from the backs of the people in front of me. And then it got dark and I couldn't even see those. So if anyone wants to send me stilts and night-vision goggles...I'm kidding.

On the bright side, I did notice several women wearing my village's Tobaski asobi (the sea-foam green one), so it was asobi after all!

Note the woman towards the far left

Chocolate-covered raisins...

The chocolate-covered raisins I bought were a waste of 47.50 dalasi, just as a warning to anyone else looking to buy chocolate-covered raisins in the Gambia. Or England, because that’s where they were originally sold. Perhaps it was due to staleness, perhaps it was due to me only being accustomed to Raisenettes, but whatever the reason, I could not finish the bag.

Ahhh...

The pleasure of falling asleep outside is not so nice as the pleasure of waking up outside. The air is chilly and smells like early morning in a forest near a lake. And I wake up under a mango tree. There are not many finer things to wake up under.

Except maybe a mango tree whose mangoes were ripe. Then I could have woken up and eaten a mango.

Untitled

I am sitting in front of the computer in Basse right now, in my striped pajamas, after eating leftover garlic  bread for breakfast and watching an episode of "The Office." Have I already used "Untitled" as the title for a blog post? "Untitled" always seems like it should be the title for some astounding work of deep but hidden meaning. Unfortunately, if you are a person fond of deep and hidden meanings, that is not the reason I chose this title. I just couldn't think of anything better, probably because I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to write.

Here are some unrelated bullet points:

• Term 2 is ending in two weeks, and then the school is closed for two weeks (that's a lot of twos) before the start of the final term, which ends in July.
• I found a cake-decorating book in the school library but I've been afraid to open it.
• Fatou, Rugi and Pateh still haven't returned, so it's just been Neene, Amadou, Mamadou and me. It's been strangely pleasant, because without his  younger siblings around Mamadou's a sweeter kid than I'd thought possible. While we're waiting for dinner we'll lie on our backs and stare at the stars and discuss important matters, like soccer games and the scrape on his foot.
• Somehow, the mangoes are still not ripe yet, but they're dragging down the tree branches so that I can't walk around my backyard without ducking my head

Alright, I'll go type up some posts for the future now.

Obama Lube Super Diesel Essence Engine Oil

Today is April Fool's Day, but for real "Obama Lube Super Diesel Essence Engine Oil" is a brand of engine oil.