mira pregnant

8/12/2001:
Diarou was right. Mirabelle is pregnant. i brought up the topic today while we were both doing laundry on the balcony. she just laughed and asked if Das told me... i denied, but i don’t think she believes me. anywho... i pray they’re blessed with a healthy child. maybe a boy. maybe i can help them name him/her.

the lights are out... took a tough bath just now. bones aching. from that and laundry...

...lights just came back on. lying here in bed debating whether to iron my pants now or not. could get up early and do it. could just wear them wrinkled.

i had a long conversation with Francois this afternoon. all about my cross-cultural presentation topic. we spoke at length about death and mourning and so many other things in regards to culture and religion. he has a background in anthropology so we both went off on tangents often. tradition and modernity. cultural values and logical reasoning. faith and explaining it away. it was nice getting into all that... religion, sociology, etc.

i find my topic interesting, comparing death and mourning across cultures. there are some issues with comparing what i describe as an ideal of a Muslim context and the reality of a West Cameroonian one... not really accurate. also an issue saying all that and then some in French. we’ll see.

i'd like to ask Diarou about the history of the North. how the people became Muslim. when?... whether they moved there, were conquered or converted. if there is a local/native culture underlying or mixed-in with the Muslim culture and how it manifests itself. talking to Francois really got me excited about reading the literature and history of this country. looking forward to that.

the talk also got me thinking about the future... how i want to keep up with the religion/sociology/anthropology aspect of my education, but in what capacity? higher degrees? just reading? conversations like today? i.e. formal or informal.

the same goes for plants; form or informal education and career choice??? and teaching, where does that fit in? the work Francois did with an NGO in Kribi on forest conservation and local cultural perception of their work is attractive. a mix of natural and cultural resource work.

so many questions to address in 2 years. don’t know how/why i thought i could plan the rest of my life (it seems like that, at least) from here?