So the desktop computer gave me the weirdest message in the world, and then died. Bricked, as my computer fixing nephew says. I tried everything while having a two-day panic attack and all I could get was the bong and the fans. The end of Idol and I lose my computer? In a country where I am the only mac resource? Wah! So I've been living off the laptop for a week. Yesterday I came home and the computer is up and running. Perfectly. Zoueha says she dusted it and it came on. This is not the first time she has repaired a piece of electronics she knows nothing about by dusting. She is starting to scare me.
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time of our lives
We have exactly a month left in Niger. Everything we do now is the last time, so everything is bittersweet.
So I'm weepy. Good bye, good bye, and good bye.
Among some of the lasts this week: The end of American Idol, Season 7. David Cook, my dear, go kick some guitar playing butt in the music industry. I haven't been able to get enough of your gorgeous voice and raw emotion, although my family will tell you they have had too much of it. I will miss the weeky dose. I know what it's like to live one's dream. It happened to me. Good bye sports class, it was so sad to have the last class in our trainer's packed-up house. The class has been a weekly highlight for the two years I've been here. I really need her voice to come on the iPod every once in a while (between David Cook songs) and say "hold in them abs." Stefan, you were Mr. Personality during your first piano recital yesterday. The biggest round of applause went to a six-year-old boy who has only been playing five months and pulled off Beethoven. Final bows all aournd.
i always thought i was quirkier than this
Right when American Idol tour tickets went on sale, the show was rebroadcast and Camille was in the tv room, "Mom, David Cook is on right now and I can't believe you aren't in here!" "I'm trying to get concert tickets!" Talk about Sophie's choice. Right as I was trying to buy tickets, of course, the electricity goes out, purchase interuptus. It was only out long enough for me to run around the house once, freaking out. I made Peter look at where our seats would be and he said it doesn't matter where the seats are, he knows I will be running down to mosh pit, if they'll let me in. And yea! I can't wait. I hope it doesn't start three hours late, and that the minister of popular culture doesn't give a long-winded speech before they bring on the singers, like certain other concerts I've been to recently.
I've been saying for weeks that I don't care who wins, just please don't make David Cook sing a mall-purchased cheese ball of a song celebrating this is my now, this is the corniest song of my life that I will forever be associated with. I think the artistic freedom that would come with the silver makes more sense for him, and I sort of hate to see Archie lose. The finals show is going to be shown live here in the middle of the night, and Nina wants to stay up and watch it with me. Isn't she the best SIL ever?
Oh my gosh, I just read that Archie is going to sing Imagine again, and DC is going to sing a U2 song, Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For. They do listen to us. Unless the Cook camp is just teasing us, which you know they love to do. And let me go on the record now, I am NEVER watching American Idol again.
what the fulbrights are up to
Jennifer and James, our former next door neighbors here in Niger, have written a new book. Walk don't run to Amazon.
concert
Last night's Fati Mariko concert celebrated the release of her new CD and was slated to start at 8:00. Around 8:00 I called Sue, see below, who was already at the Palais de Sports for another event earlier in the day, to ask her if it was was starting. "They haven't taken down the basketball equipment yet," she told me. I called her back at 9:00. "There are like, ten people here," she said, "they're still setting up." If I waited any longer I'd get too tired and decide not to go, so I left the house at ten after ten.. The Palais de Sports is five minutes from my house, I got a parking place five spaces away from the front door. Think I'll get that kind of parking at my next concert? I went in and found Sue in the front row, there were maybe two hundred people in a venue that will hold a couple thousand. Why it wasn't packed I don't know.
A karaoke warm up act sings on stage, it includes a midget dancer, who actually is good. Then we have some clowns who are not. Then a single guy sings karaoke. I complain that if this were the US, everyone would be stamping their feet on the hardwood floor and screaming, "Fati, Fati!" There would be an MC to whip us into a frenzy. Instead the Minister of Culture gets up with a thick packet of notes and makes a long-winded speech. The only Americans there have not lived in the US in the last two decades and have lost touch with how exciting a concert is suppose to be. I want to scream, but am too bored. Someone walks around giving away (badly designed) and now outdated posters. Finally, finally, Fati Mariko is in the house, takes the stage.
And yea! She's great! Six dancers are with her, and their costumes are beautiful and the dancing is amazing and the singing is fabulous! And everyone sits politely in their seats with their hands folded on their lap.
This reminds me of a Neville Brothers concert in Switzerland where everyone sat in their seats, really rocking out by tapping their toes. At that concert I was with other crazy Americans and we ended up going on stage and dancing at one point.
So then Fati Mariko sings my very favorite song of hers, Bébé, and she's amazing. I mean, really, like a $60 ticket at the Filmore. She sings four songs, and then we have a couper d'electricité, and the venue is plunged into utter darkness and silence. Hundreds of cell phones light up. "Did we rock too hard?" I say to myself and "I guess that's the set." We sit in silence for ten or fifteen minutes, no announcements are made, no effort is made to get the show up and going. Everyone starts to leave. I don't want to find my way out of a pitch black building by myself, so I leave with some friends. I asked Sue today if the electricity ever came back. "Yeah, they got it back on, but we left before they started the show again." Maybe they really got going in the middle of the night.
mother's day 2008
Happy Day to all the moms out there, and those with moms.
chimp mother, in zarma
Meet Sue Rosenfeld. She runs the program for exchange students for Boston University here in Niger. If you google Niger, the first hit is Sue Rosenfeld. When you ask her long she's been in Niger, she'll tell you to the day how long it's been, every time. Today it's twenty six years, five months and three days. She comes to our house once a week to watch some version of reality tv on the Embassy-supplied American system. Lucky for me, Sue is addicted to American Idol and Survivor. We watch our shows, then we talk about books.
Sue raised the chimpanzees the National Museum until they were old enough to live on their own. Once she came over and tossed her key ring on the sofa. It weighed more than she did. I went through the keys one by one and each was a story. Two small keys were identical. "What are these for?" I asked. "The key to chimp cage at the zoo. You can have one if you want." I put it on a necklace.
Sue lives without air conditioning, because her students do. She speaks English of course, but also French, Zarma and Hausa. She has superstar celebrity status in Niamey, if you go in a restaurant with her, it's like you're there with Madonna, better than Madonna, because here they may not know who Madonna is, but they WILL know who Sue is. She received an award from the National Ministry of Athletics for her involvement in basketball, (Camille, age ten, is taller than Sue.) She is Judy Blume's first cousin. She once had her dress torn off at the zoo by a chimpanzee.
In this photo Sue was dancing in the first rain. Scarlett had called us while we were at lunch to say "The sky is red," (it was going to rain for the first time in nine months.) Sue's response: "The eagle flies at midnight, what are we talking about here?"
From the Quoteable Sue: Why have cat when you can have a dog? Why have a dog when you can have a chimpanzee?
dinner at midnight: hungry like the wolf
Peter keeps asking when I'm going to post this picture, so this week seems appropriate. The wolf is scary, but Little Red Riding Hood doesn't seem too concerned. We went to a costume party at the French Embassy compound, a pirate had a pop gun he kept shooting off. We ate dinner outside next to the river at what felt like the middle of the night, then danced to Brenda Fosse music with our friends.
In Idol news, and really what else is there? I'm sorry to see Jason Castro go, but he seemed ecstatic to be voted off. Love that kid. Simon: "Jason, what were you thinking?" Jason: "I was thinking Bob Marley! Yeah!"
musician
Stefan has been taking piano now for a couple months, he's really into it, he plays piano off and on all day. He doesn't like to read music much and easily memorizes his pieces. He also plays fly-swatter guitar.