more malta

9/24/2001:
OK, malta is growing on me. just had a couple at Flo’s off-license. they’re better/easier on an almost empty but stable stomach. may actually taste good soon. more a meal than a drink, really. and my only option in terms of appeasing the generous folk who keep offering me drinks.

the Prefet (or Sous-prefet?... a nice man from the West) bought me one. and the VP of GTHS. then i went to the back and ate with James (Flo’s husband) in the parlor. watched some CRTV (Cameroon Radio and Television). talked a little Anglophone politics. TV was interesting... saw President Bush and all the major players on “our” side for the 1st time in a long time. Powell, Rumsfeld, etc.

also saw a side of Cameroon i’m not used to seeing... sometimes i forget it even exists. privileged, posh, Westernized “Yaoundites” on the news. civil servants at seminars, officials at meetings, students in clean schools with computers... all very well dressed, nice cars, choice shots of the city. that ain’t the Cameroon i know! and yet it is Cameroon. James had a few things to say about that.

i’ll end with a point about pests. ants in the kitchen. a roach in the bedroom. termites in the parlor. slug in the bathroom. really making it difficult just to be patient and be at peace here in my abode. makes me think about “Moontiger" [a powerful and probably extremely unhealthy asian-bran insecticide], too. but i’m won’t go there.