Asakiyume mita

It's a general truth of online life that you shouldn't read the comments--it's where the virulent nastiness lives.

Every now and then, that's not true though. After falling in love with the song "Xam Xam," by Cheikh Ibra Fam, I let Youtube take me on a tour of related songs.

It brought me "Gambia," by Sona Jobarteh, a beautiful song written to celebrate 50 years of Gambian independence (in 2015).

I happened to glance at the comments, and--my heart!

I'm a German, 55 years and my husband was a Gambian. He died here in Germany in 2011 (cancer). Today he would have celebrated his 62nd birthday. In 1998 he took me to his country and we spent there two years. This was the most beautiful time in my life. For the first time in my life, I felt like real living – I felt alive like never before. So I want to say "thank you" to my husband again, who showed me a place where my soul could breath. Whenever I feel down, doubting what this life is all about, I go back in my mind and think of those glory days.

And this...

Oh, i can recognise my grandmother at the end of this clip dancing with a group of women's. Thank you sister sona for futuring my granny. This will go down in history. Gambia for ever true.

And this...

I am from Ukraine and this music made me cry. It touches something deep in my heart. I think we missed Africa and we miss it. I play it and dance in the kitchen. I would like the whole world to go out in the streets and dance African dances. As not only live in our brains, but also in our bodies and our hearts.

And this..

From Somalia 🇸🇴 much love ❤️ our brothers & sisters 🇬🇲 beautiful country & beautiful people ❤️

And on and on...

"Am from Uganda ... I am from the Caribbean ... I'm a dutch old (63) man ... I'm latina from Colombia ... Je suis de la Côte d'Ivoire 🇨🇮 ... I'm Argentinian ... I'm a Proud ERITREAN-AFRICAN ... I am from India ... I'm a japanese student ... I'm from Morocco ... I am welsh ... I am from Spain ... I am white African from Mozambique ... I'm Nigerian ... I am peruvian ... I am from Croatia ... I am from Bangladesh .... I am Congolese... Sending love from Ghana ... Greetings and best wishes from Latvia..."

(And several from the United States, too.)

All full of love for the song. Really made me feel like part of one human family.

There's something inherently mysterious about living on the edge of thousands of miles of rain forest. Mysterious things just happen; that's just the way it is.

My tutor sent me this video (and gave me permission to share it) of an eerie encounter she had with a horse the other evening. For the record, I saw no horses whatsoever while I was down there, and though I'm sure that there are people who do have horses, I find it hard to imagine them in the neighborhoods I was in. This horse was apparently out enjoying a nighttime stroll... alone...



.... There are mysterious horses associated with other Amazonian cities and towns--like the Peruvian Amazonian town of Caballo Cocha. That town exists near where long ago (so the story goes) there was a village of the same name that disappeared below the waters of a lake, a colonial town with houses, a church, and of course horses. Now, when someone passes by in the direction of the current town of Caballo Cocha, past the lake, one can hear the neighing and galloping of horses, the ringing of church bells, and the sounds of gunfire. Some people, passing by the lake, see people in the sunken town, inviting them down to share in a party. At the beginning of the 20th century, soldiers were afraid to let their horses near that lake for fear they'd be drawn down into it. (Source for my retelling of the legend)

And the current town has a statue of a white horse rising from the lake.

( photo by my tutor, from a visit she took there )

This story and video offered up to you for this season of spirits and mysterious things.

There's a woman from Timor-Leste I follow on Facebook, Esteviana Amaral, who shares beautiful, sometimes funny, sometimes touching reflections on daily life. Kirsty Sword Gusmão put me onto her with this video (in which you can hear Tetun spoken beautifully). Since then, I've been enjoying--and sometimes translating--her work. Here is one from last Thursday. (Her original post)


(The photo is the one Esteviana shared with the post)

Her words:

Iha momentu balu ita presiza tuur no haree de'it natureza halo nia servisu, udan monu ba rai, kalohan nakukun no loro-matan sa'e.

Momentu sira ne'e bele repete maibé kada minutu ne'ebé liu ho nia istória rasik. Husik natureza hala'o nia knaar no buka tuir ó-nia ksolok rasik.

My translation:

In some moments we need to sit and just watch nature doing her work, rain falling to the ground, dark clouds, and the sun rising.

These moments will repeat, but each minute passes with its own story. This self-same nature carries out her duties and seeks after your joy herself.

Kirsty liked my translation and shared it on her Facebook page!

This is one thing I want to go back to the Amazon for: to join in in this (if there was a community that wouldn't mind that). The screenshots here are taken from a gorgeous 21-minute video made by the Department of Intangible Heritage of Peru's Ministry of Culture (the Tikuna/Ticuna/Magüta people's ancestral lands encompass portions of Peru, Colombia, and Brazil).

Here's a link to that video: Uí, preparación y vigencia de la fariña entre los ticuna

It starts by situating us in relation to the forest, to the trees and plants. An anthropologist says that for the Tikuna, "plants are the beings that possess all knowledge ... they are the most intelligent beings there are." I like it better when people are allowed to speak for themselves, and fortunately that's the case in the rest of the film. But I like this idea, and at least I could feel warmth and respect from this woman toward the Tikuna, and toward their respect for plants.

( screenshots of the flooded forest and a solo tree against the clouds )

It starts in a field, digging up the cassava tubers. You can see what the cassava plant looks like on the right, and you can get a sense of how big those tubers are! Coincidentally, in the story by Nando I'm currently (very slowly) translating from Tetun, a husband and wife are digging up a kind of yam, and it's a lot of work, and looking at this video, I can see the how and why of that.



Some peeling happens right out in the field. I took this screenshot because I was admiring the little kid, who, though it's not clear in the picture, is wielding a knife of his own: helping!



And I liked this image of everyone coming back to the community with the tubers they'd dug up because of the boy playing the drum and cradling a tuber like a phone between his shoulder and head.



Half of the peeled cassava is left in water to "ripen," and the other half is immediately grated (and then left to ripen... both portions are going to be mixed together in the end, and it all ends up grated, so I'm not understanding this step, but I'm sure there's a good reason for it).

In the community where this video was made, they have a machine for grating the cassava:





(Some cassava is also pounded. Again, not clear on how this figures in to the process. I thought I was understanding the Spanish fairly well, but I could have missed something.)
( strong arms )

The video also shows women making the sieves that will be used to strain the grated cassava, and also making the tipiti, a long, woven tube into which the grated cassava is packed.



Once the cassava's packed, the tipiti is hung from a tree and a heavy stick is inserted at the bottom of the tube. Then someone sits on it, and the tube contracts and the moisture is squeezed out of the mash!



The person speaking says if you don't want to sit on the stick, you can just use one that's very heavy that'll do the squeezing for you.

And beneath the cut you can see the mash coming out of the tipiti and being strained:

( three photos )

Next comes toasting it. You start early in the morning and go through into the afternoon, or even, if you want, to the following day:



"If there's no fish, there's fariña. What's important is to never lose the cultivation of cassava because in it is the people's way of life,” says one man.



( two photos of fariña in meals )

¡Gracias por acompañarme en esta história de fariña!

We didn't actually ride in a tuk-tuk until we were heading back to the airport on our last day in Leticia, but I thought I'd share these very short videos Wakanomori took because it'll let you see the streets of Leticia and how dominated they are by motorcycles (and secondarily: tuk-tuks).

We saw whole families on one motorcycle: a mom and two schoolkids she just picked up from school,* plus a baby asleep on her shoulder. Most people ride astride, but we saw some passengers sitting sidesaddle. We also saw lots of people carrying home big bottles of water**--the water-cooler water bottles.

Here's a photo of evening motorcycle rush hour, as seen from our open-air eatery:



*A lot about Leticia reminded me of Timor-Leste, and one thing was that there aren't enough school buildings for the students, so kids do school in shifts: some kids go in the morning and some in the afternoon. We went walking one day at around noon and happened to pass a school where parents were picking up kids, and it's quite evident again at sunset that another group of students have been let out.

**The tapwater isn't drinkable in Leticia or in the other municipality we visited, Puerto Nariño. But Leticia is building a water purification plant, so maybe one day? And Gustavo Petro, former guerrilla fighter and new president of Colombia, has promised to invest in the countryside, so maybe for Puerto Nariño, too, one day.

None of this is the rainforest-and-river content you might be expecting from a trip to the Amazon, but I really love, love, love knowing, as best I can, ordinary daily life in the places I visit, and this is part of that.

Part one (40 seconds)



Part two, featuring the roundabout (36 seconds)

I finished watching Laloran Justisa yesterday--I'll miss it so much; I loved it. There were a few series-long story arcs to wrap up, the most moving being the story of the main character Rosa's missing older sister. In Episode 1 Rosa and her mother are sitting in a church, remembering Adelina, who was stolen away by the Indonesians during the occupation. This happened a *lot*. They are looking at a photo from Rosa's baptism.

( the rest of the story )

Super happy ending.

I've been listening to a lot of music from Colombia's Pacific coast; I love it. This song, "Yo bebí del agua turbia" (I drank the cloudy water), is not only beautiful itself, it has a beautiful video to go with it. Ever see a video of a place and feel homesick for it, even though you've never been there?

The white lacy dresses the women are wearing: I remember my sister and I had UNICEF cardboard figures from different countries, with facts about the countries written on the back. I had a girl, not from Colombia but from Panama, wearing an outfit like this, exactly like this, and I was entranced by it. I wanted my mom to make me a dress like it. That didn't happen! But I can still remember the cardboard figure of the girl from Panama, holding out her skirts.

Yo bebí del agua turbia
Porque me apuro la sed
Yo bebí del agua turbia
Porque me apuro la sed

Nadie diga con orgullo
Que esta agua no es de beber
Nadie diga con orgullo
Que esta agua no es de beber

I drank the cloudy water
Because I was pressed by thirst
I drank the cloudy water
Because I was pressed by thirst

No one tell me arrogantly
That this water is not to drink
No one tell me arrogantly
That this water is not to drink

I went searching for the lyrics and found a book of couplets from the Pacific coast, including one that's almost exactly this:

Yo bebí del agua turbia
Porque me apuro la sed;
Nadie diga con soberbia
Que esta agua no es de beber

("Soberbia" also means pride, arrogance) I've asked for the book on interlibrary loan because I liked what I saw along with this one on the Google Books page result.

I heard this song last Saturday, during the 3:00–5:00 Portuguese radio program on WTCC, Springfield Technical Community College's radio station. I liked the melancholy air, I liked that I could understand snatches of it, even though it was Portuguese Portuguese instead of Brazilian Portuguese, which is what Duolingo teaches. It's got the sort of melancholy abandon that really speaks to me right now (Nossa vida é bem curta e um dia se vai "Our life is very short and one day is gone"--so you might as well be dancing kizomba.)

"Africana Vem Dançar"

On a more amusing note, Duolingo has been feeding me some interesting sentences in Portuguese. First there was this:



Like whoa! What happens next??

And then this:



(The unused words add to the story: I imagine that the place she's being asked to wear that dress is maybe called "Sunny Beer Today")

And then, ominously... this:



Perhaps that's the threat the owner of Sunny Beer Today issued--the protagonist's mother maybe works at the establishment as a cleaner or something, and if the protagonist won't put on the skimpy dress, the boss may fire the mother. What an asshole! I agree, unused words, pleasure nothing at view!

But how does the affair fit in? The unused words tell us that within the thin walls of the lovers' chilly rendezvous spot there's only banana heating--I mean that's somewhere between charcoal and propane, right? Questions, questions. Maybe tonight's lessons will provide some answers.

Here's something you can play while you do whatever you do during the next, oh, let's say a week? That's probably optimistic...



( cut for politics )

I discovered this song by chance on YouTube and was captured by the music, the lyrics, and the video:



I ended up listening to the rest of the songs on the album that one comes from and ultimately bought the album from Bandcamp.

Here's another that in addition to being a great song has a gorgeous video: "Eso Que Tu Haces".