Fall Readling/Listening List

Adiga, Aravind The White Tiger

Chekov, Anton Great Stories

Dewey, John How We Think [in progress]

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor The Brothers Karamazov

Duncan, David James The Brothers K

Hawking, Stephen A Brief History of Time

Henrik, Ibsen Four Great Plays [in progress]

Jacobsen, Howard The Finkler Question

Levy, David Skywatching

Nabokov, Vladimir Ada

Newton, Jack; Teece, Phillip The Guide to Amateur Astronomy

Thoreau, Henry David Walden and other essays [in progress]

Tolstoy, Leo Anna Karenina

33 magazines, including issues of The Atlantic, Harper’s, Muse, The New Yorker, New Scientist, Science News, Technology Review, and Wired

38 Episodes of This American Life

Gombo et Aubergine

Ingredients:

4-6 medium eggplant, firm with no insect holes

10-12 medium okra, the more ridges the better

½ kg ground beef or mutton*

1/3 cup peanut oil

Half a head of garlic

Two thumbs of ginger

10-15 small dried chilies

1 teaspoon anise, or 3 stars of star anise (better)

Two small onions

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 tablespoon honey

1 tablespoon bean paste

1 tablespoon water

Chives

Handful of shelled, roasted peanuts

*only use meat if the animal was slaughtered that day, so the meat is fresh, if you have a meat grinder, because meat isn’t sold ground, and if you’re extraordinarily wealthy, because meat is expensive. If you’re worried about protein, just add more peanuts.

Preparation:

Peel and mince garlic and ginger (a spoon works well for peeling the latter). Peel and slice onion into wide strips. Trim and wash eggplant and okra. Slice eggplant into any shape, keeping the volume under 10 cubic centimeters. Slice okra laterally, at an angle, into sticky flowers.

Add some of the oil and the dried chilies to a large, high-walled, heavy-bottomed pan. Heat until the oil runs like water, and add the garlic, ginger, onion, and anise. If using meat, add it shortly after, and cook until grey. Add the eggplant and okra, and almost all the rest of the oil. Stir-fry over high heat, minding that the bottom doesn’t burn. Mix together the honey, soy sauce, bean paste, water and the rest of the oil in a cup. When the eggplant is getting soft, pour the mixture onto the vegetables and allow to boil for a couple minutes. Remove from heat, and garnish with peanuts and plenty of chopped chives. Serve with plain white rice and Sino-Afro slaw (recipe to follow). You can eat the chilies if you're brave or lazy.

Serves 4, or one hungry Peace Corps Volunteer two and a half times. 

Labé

Labé is the second-largest city in Guinea (60,000+ inhabitants), the capital of the Fouta, a veritable metropolis compared to the villages and towns that dot my map. I always arrive from the east, just before dusk, covered in dust. One of the corporals at the checkpoint knows me, and so never lets me pass without first chatting for a bit. On days he isn’t there, just remember: greet people with guns, the bigger the gun, the bigger the greeting.

Just like any other big city, the roads are worse within the municipality than outside it. Heavy truck and motorcycle traffic chokes the narrow bridges, alleys, and everyone’s lungs. Trucks that aren’t going somewhere with a full load of things and extra people on top are parked along the sides of the road, receiving long-neglected and now critical repairs. Dogs and sheep lay in their shade.

Unlike towns en brousse, buildings in Labé have signs, lightbulbs (not illuminated, of course), and customers. Unlike in the village, bottled water, onions, and diesel are cheaper, and taxi rides and plates of rice and sauce are more expensive. There are more choices, more refrigerators, more foreigners (few compared to none), more schoolchildren, and more metalworkers’ shops. You need to watch where you’re going.

The most striking aspect of Labé is the people. Because the Peuls of the Fouta are part of the much larger Fula group, and because it is a commercial and administrative center, there are more different looking people here than anywhere except Conakry.

Light and dark skin, all sorts of facial features in all combinations, all heights, and every possible definition of clothing are well represented. Students wear uniforms: red, blue or green gingham for primary school, khaki for middle school, and white on top with blue or green bottoms for high school. Hair and shoes: anything goes, and does. Wigs are more common than long colorful extensions woven into the braids, and dreadlocks are discouraged. Workers wear dirty jumpsuits, businessmen wear suit jackets or colorful, krinkly boubous, and young men wear impossibly bright and clean button-downs with a heavy coat of perfume. What women do can be inferred from their attire as well: Market ladies wear a simple complet of colorful fabric (or a an old tshirt supporting a forgotten candidate and a wrap skirt, if they sell fish or peanut butter), alarmingly young mothers wear tight dresses and babies, linked by a tight towel, and wealthy women wear expensive looking cheap jeans and glittery tops, or complicated layers of imported Malian fabric. Children wear what’s left: tattered shorts, sports jerseys, and snowsuits.

The combination of massive market, towering (relatively) but crumbling administrative buildings, and just-installed power poles (the future cabling lying on the ground between in tangles or spools) gives Labé the feeling of a real place to live; where things are often changing, but nothing ever really becomes different. The same potholes are there, along with new ones, the same broken trucks are being hammered upon, along with older ones, the same sandals are being sold by a different vendor, four doors down, and the bread is always just beyond fresh.

I like Labé.