Fun With Foreign Language Textbook Cartoons

I may be going out on a limb here, but I think the foreign-language-textbook-cartoon is one of the most underrated art forms. Just look at the examples below – the options for what these people could be saying are just endless.

Each vingnette featuring some aspect of the lives of these fictional foreign-language speakers is just begging for some obnoxious caption or subtitle. Knock yourself out and see how much fun you can have.



















































On the other hand, some images are just scary. Who wants to learn the words for body parts from a demonic baby? Run away!

Living in "Sim City"

One thing I forgot to mention in the last entry is that I left for the weekend living on a dirt road and returned Sunday night to a paved one. The upside is that I’m no longer greeted by huge street-level dust clouds when I leave the house to walk to school, and this is a very good thing. New paved roads are coming online so fast I feel like I’m living in a real-life version of Sim City…

Apparently this love affair with asphalt is related to the upcoming elections on September 5. Most expats I know are mysteriously planning trips to be out of the country that day, except for yours truly and my colleagues at CAE. Most of the Angolans I have spoken to don’t expect trouble, however. I’ve managed to see campaign posters for at least 3 different political parties, but the MPLA (the party in power) is clearly the most organized. Some people think the spending on infrastructure development will subside after the MPLA (most likely) wins the elections, hence the rush to pave everything in sight leading up to September 5. We’ll see.

The odd thing is that even though the roads are being paved in most areas the sidewalks are still uneven mounds of fine dirt. In residential areas most people walk on the streets now, myself included. And another thing - there is no drainage! The paving company paves right over the previous drains and apparently a separate company has to come in and re-open the drains. Good thing it doesn't rain much here. Imperfections in the system aside, for now I’ll enjoy the smooth and newly dust-free walk to school…


Before:














After:

















Road to school in process:

August Weekend #2 (The Midadventures of Burch)

Our day of sightseeing took us to a lake on the outskirts of town. The area included hills sprinkled with giant boulders that were just waiting to be climbed, and it wasn’t long before Burch and I were leading an expedition to the top of the most prominent one. At some point along the way I lost burch, cut myself, started bleeding, and decided it was best to forgo my illusions of grandeur and stay below to await the more successful climbers in our group. At about the time I found my way back to a shady place to rest Burch was yelling from the top of the highest boulder and asked me to take a picture, a request which I dutifully obliged.

Burch, triumphant:

















It turns out after about another half hour of rest word came that Burch could not get down. To make matters more interesting a wildfire that we noticed in the distance before had suddenly started to approach with discomforting speed. My attempts to help weren’t very fruitful – by the time I got to the base of the boulder where Burch was stuck (after falling twice myself) two others of our group had already arrived and were helping him down. This freed me to take some photos, which I did with gusto. Luckily the fire waited long enough for us to evacuate in the car, although we did find out it was indeed wild after the park guards asked us if we had any information about who set it. So much for a nice hike in the park…

Burch, the comeuppance:


















The intrepid hiking gang:

August Weekend #2: Huambo (The War)

Reminders of the civil war were everywhere in Huambo, which happened to be a major center of control for the opposition party, UNITA. Bombed-out buildings were common, and even park statues did not escape becoming targets. That said, there is a lot of fast-pased reconstruction going on in the city, and it’s interesting how easy it was to tour the bombed-out former house of the opposition leader (Savimbi) formerly known as the “White House.” There is absolutely nothing stopping anyone from walking right into the ruins and even walking up the exposed concrete stairwell. So we did, of course.

View from the second floor of Savimbi's house:



Front view of Savimbi´s house, with UNITA flags:



Building apparently used for target practice:



Hint of happier times at the New York Social Club:



Bombed-out high rise:


While waiting to see if Burch could figure out how to get down from the rock he had so victoriously climbed, Emilio, Chinho, Rebecca found a shady place to rest. Emilio started telling a story about what life was like during the war in very graphic detail (I have to warn the rest of this entry is pretty macabre…proceed at your own risk).

He told stories of soldiers killing babies and, when their parents were found, they would chop up the body parts and make a stew which the soldiers would then force the parents to eat. “Isto aconteceu aqui em Huambo” he kept repeating…”This happened here in Huambo.” This kind of story might seem familiar to someone who has ready about intimidation tactics in other wars throughout history, but the chilling part is that this kind of stuff was going on only six years ago. In other words, while I was running financial models in my company’s grand effort to sell more jeans in San Francisco, parents in Angola were being forced to eat their offspring. More chilling still is the fact that this kind of stuff is probably happening as we speak in Darfur. It’s not fun to think about.

August Weekend #2: Huambo (The Journey)

Our first chance for a weekend roadtrip came with an offer to visit Angola’s second-largest city, Huambo. In theory it is a 6 hour drive into the interior and involves a decent elevation change. In reality our fearless leader “forgot” that there were two routes to reach Huambo from Benguela, and we chose the path less traveled. That normally wouldn’t be a problem, except that the reason it was less traveled is that the road is potholed so badly (or simply not paved) that we averaged about 20km per hour and the journey ended up taking 10 hours instead of 6. The scenery was gorgeous though, passing through baobab forests, mountains, and hot springs before continuing the bumpy journey at night (with varying musical accompaniment ranging from Rhiannon to the Backstreet Boys). A particular highlight was a stop at sunset where some of our traveling companions enjoyed a brief kizumba dance break in the middle of the road.

Kizumba Dance Break:

















Still Some Work Left on the Regional Highway System:

















Sunset on the return to Benguela:

















Volcanic Remnants:


















As a fan of roadtrips in the states the following 3 things stood out the most:

1. There are no animals and hence no roadkill. Apparently all the animals (even the small ones) were killed and eaten during the war. I hear there's a repopulation effort going on in some areas, but since the war only ended in 2002, populations haven’t had time to recover yet.

2. There are no roadside services. If you run out of gas or need a place to sleep, you are out of luck. The few towns you pass through are just not set up to accommodate leisure road traffic. The only food we found were some roadside vendors – our favoriate vendor turned out to be the lady selling chicken pieces on the bone for 50 kwanzas each (about 80 cents).

Angola Fast Food:


















3. Most of the towns we passed through consisted of mud-brick buildings with thatched roofs that did not have electricity. Plenty of families were eating dinner by candlelight, as we did on Saturday night once we got to Huambo.

Rural Villages Along the Way:

August Weekend #1: What did you just say?

The first weekend in August was an entertaining one. It started by meeting a cheery local named Pashú at the gym on Friday night – he jumped in on a leg workout with Burch and I and after changing numbers I felt like I was getting somewhere with forming something of a local group of friends. Friday night was mostly spent in Lolita’s car while we toured the city for no apparent reason, except that Lolita had put in a dance music CD and she wanted to listen to it, entirely, before stopping. Thus we passed the better part of an hour circling the same part of town. She made an excuse that she wanted to show us exactly where a concert for which we had tickets was going to be held the following night. We got it after the first time, but by drive-by number four I think we finally convinced her we could find it on our own. (Nevermind the fact that Benguela is nearly a perfect grid and everything is walking distance anyway.)

After a leisurely morning (is there a better kind?) the next day we joined Nancy (the American expat who runs our language school) and two others for a tour of the area in her Ford truck. I was riding in the middle in the back for a few uncomforable hours, but we did get to explore some of the area, which is what central Nevada would look like if it had a coast.

Coastal Shots South of Benguela:


































At one point the lady accompanying our group and sitting to my right decided it would be a good idea to pull my armhair suddenly and without warning. I gave her a dirty look and pulled away. She managed to call me a “macaco” after that, giving me yet new reasons not to like her. These feelings changed after she told me that she was part man and part woman. I thought maybe this statement had some kind of figurative meaning in Portuguese until she proceeded to lower her shirt to expose a hairy chest between her breasts. I don’t mean a little bit hairy either – she could have given me a run for the money. I was dumbstruck. What on earth do you say in that situation? I responded with what I hoped was a respectful silence and erased my previous negative thoughts about this woman. You can’t make this stuff up.

We said goodbye to the two ladies back in Benguela and headed north to the cities of Catumbela and Lobito. Catumbela I had visited before with my host sister the previous weekend, but this time we stopped for ice cream at a popular café (the peanut flavor was the best). You get a sense of the agricultural potential of the country in this area, which has been replanted with all sorts of crops mostly along the river bed.

View of Catumbela River:


















Lobito is just a few miles farther north and was my favorite, mostly because we stopped for a pizza dinner at a quiet oceanside restaurant at sunset. After nonstop rice and beans it’s amazing how exotic pizza can seem. I actually don’t mind the rice and beans, but it’s nice to be reminded that other food forms exist.

California Dreamin' in Lobito:























Back in Benguela that night Burch and I went to a concert – Paulo Flores was the featured artist and he turned out to be a great performer. At one point I ended up dancing with a drunken male patron sitting behind me (at his request, incidentally). This turned out to be the only dancing going on for either Burch or I that night – our foray to the disco afterwards was a bust when they kept playing the local “kizumba” music. Nothing is wrong with the music, but it’s sort of for couples. More importantly it’s sort of for people who know how to do the dance. Which we don't. Thus, at the early-by-Benguela-standards hour of 3am we walked home. I wasn’t complaining…

Crazy Rock-Throwing Man

Imagine you’re cruising down the highway at 65 miles per hour and suddenly a man jumps into the middle of the road directly in your path. The man has a crazed, possessed look in his eyes and he is wielding a large stone. He is yelling uncontrollably at you and staring at you with an intense fury. You swerve to avoid hitting him, but as you pass he hurls the stone into your windshield.

This happened yesterday on the road between Benguela and Lobito. Fortunately the crazy man wasn’t such a great aim, and the stone mostly hit the sidebar on the passenger side and leaving only a minor series of windshield cracks. I didn’t get a good look at what happened to the guy after we passed, but he could have easily been killed by a less attentive driver. I have to give Nancy (whose truck we were in) credit for her cool navigation through that situation, but I think all of our hearts were beating a little faster for the rest of the night.

Forget the potholes, add angry rock-wielding crazy people to the list of roadside hazards in Angola…

Smile!

Kids love having their picture taken here, and I'm all to eager to oblige.

These are the kids in the neighborhood:

#1: The "fun with tin cans" gang in Benguela


















#2: Group photo frenzy in Baia Azul


















#3: Getting pensive at sunset in Lobito



















#4: You go girl