Freedom House ALA

To introduce my post’s theme, I need to briefly explain Freedom House. Freedom House is a website that publishes annual ratings on liberty in every country in the world. It gives each nation a number between 1 and 7 for Civil Liberties (1 is the best), another one for Political Rights, and then averages them out. Depending on its score, each nation is given a tag of “Free”, “Partly Free”, or “Not Free”. For example, Somalia and North Korea are “not free”, but Mali is “free”. Way to be Mali! North Korea, step it up.

www.freedomhouse.org

All of that might not seem very relevant to my life, but I believe that it is possible to apply similar ratings to this school. To do that, I would like to take a look at the library during prep time. For those of you who are American, prep is homework.


Mr. O’s Watch: Free

When Mr. O is on duty, he spends very little time actually inside of the library. He strolls in, looking like an absolute bro in his fantastically dapper cap and some sort of excellent sweater, surveys the room from the door, and then does one circuit of it, briefcase in hand. When that is done, he takes another quick scan, and strides off, probably to go laugh at people with bad fashion sense. Half an hour later, he returns and does another circuit. Under Mr. O’s watch, students in the library enjoy the occasional side conversation, travel freely and breathe lightly.

Below, is a simplified map of the library during prep time under Mr. O. The red crosses are students.


Civil Liberties: 1
Political Rights: 1


Mr. Gyampo’s Watch: Partly Free

Mr. Gyampo exudes respectability and quiet discipline. I cannot even begin to count the number of times I’ve heard him say, “No you cannot, I’m afraid prep time is for private study”. Then he nods sagely and interlocks his fingers, and the student in front of him feels a profound, semi-religious guilt. I once watched Mr. Gyampo kick five consecutive students off of the same computer for going on Facebook. If they were dogs, they would have walked away with their tails between their legs. Under Mr. Gyampo’s watch, students can travel freely, but they need to focus on their work all of the time.


Civil Liberties: 3
Political Rights: 4


Ms. Gater’s Watch: Not Free

Julia Paolillo is a confident young woman, born and raised in Connecticut, and when she’s in the zone, she could probably intimidate a blind man into buying wallpaper. Ms. Gater scares the bejesus out of her.

When Ms. Gater is on duty, the library is more efficient than a Soviet Era steel factory. Absolute quiet reigns, students sweat profusely when they drop their pencils, and the mere sight of blonde hair triggers a mass trembling that vibrates the entire building. Woe betides you if you’re caught interacting with your surroundings, because you’ll be subject to a terrifyingly frosty: “How many times do I have to tell you?? Do you think I want to spend my entire evening telling people to do their prep?! Jesus.”

“No Ms. Gater, we know you don’t, PLEASE DON’T EAT MEEE.”


Civil Liberties: 7
Political Rights: 6


In the interests of balanced reporting, I would like to acknowledge the massive academic benefits to library tyranny. Also, Ms. Gater is English, which makes everything okay. Rule Britannia!

The Pen Are Pure Gold

So I’m just going to post seven weird and wacky facts today:

1) One of my teacher’s thought that Mohammed’s name was Nohammed. I don’t actually have anything to say about that, but it’s hilarious.

2) The weather here is bizarre! It hailed today, and it was probably 80˚ at the time. It’s really warm down here, but it must be pretty cold up there.

3) 100% of West Africans can dance better than me. I know that because I watched them in yesterday’s cultural show. I gave a stupid slideshow about the U.K., and all of them rocked out on the stage.

4) In the same cultural show, I also wore a football jersey to present the US, and I discovered that Patriots jerseys (or at least the ones sold to fans) are made in Russia! I think Bill Belichik has been outsourcing. Or the Cold War is still on and they've got us where it really matters.

5) I’ve been looking at student feedback on the Leadership and Entrepreneurship curriculum as part of my job, and there is a mass epidemic sweeping across this continent. Yes, I am talking about the widespread misspelling of “Integrity”. Students of ALA! It is not “Intergrity”. INTEGRITY.

6) Also, since you’ve been taking it as a class for a full 13 months, you should all be able to spell the word “Entrepreneurship” by now! A truly woeful number of you add a superfluous u’s and r’s. ENTREPRENEURSHIP.

7) Somewhere on campus, there’s someone who does a lot of eavesdropping, because they take the interesting things that they hear and post them on the notice boards. Sometimes I think they get desperate, but on the whole it’s a very interesting part of my day. Wherever you are, Mr./Mrs. “Amaricop”, I regret to tell you that you missed some fantastic words of wisdom from my roommate the other day. Here’s what he had to say:



Grammatically imperfect though that sentence may be it, is one of the purest truths I’ve heard all year. As Boubacar went on to elaborate, “You write a lot, but you have only one pen.” He’s right; ALA biro-hunger is at an all time high. Four different people have tried to pilfer my pens this term. One individual in particular was not even content to stop at the first one, which I actually gave him out of kindness (and a lack of mental fortitude to withstand his almost daily pestering). Are some people never content with a simple gift? As they say in Senegal:

Idea and Image of Anglophone Vocabulary

Annnnd after a short break, we’re back. The Internet over here in Jo’burg has been a little shaky, and I was also lazy. But more posts to come regularly, I hope.

In other news, we just finished a project in African Studies about the Idea and Image of Africa. My group concluded that the global image of Africa is mostly one of god-awful governance, gore, and giraffes. Okay so that’s not true, but I had a hard time with the alliteration. All that having been said, I have some choice observations on the African reality that we didn’t include in our presentation:

First, as you may have gathered from the first sentence of this post, utilities such as power and Internet can be shaky even in South Africa, which is one of this continent’s more developed countries. The water cut out a few weeks ago and no one so much as batted and eyelid. Everyone just said, “TIA. It’ll come back eventually. Eat fruit.”

Yet there is one detail that I find weird: In South Africa, the cold water runs out first. For the love of God, WHY?! Every morning I get out of bed, try to find my glasses, give up because I need them to find stuff in the first place, and then crawl blindly back under the covers. Then I get up again and take a shower a few minutes later. And for no discernable reason, only the hot water tap works. Five scalding minutes later, the cold water comes back on…but only to taunt me, because it leaves almost immediately. Showers here swap between “kettle” and “glacial”, and I think Twoface is manning the switch.


Some of you may be under the impression that what we have is better than feeling like an icicle whenever the hot water runs out, but none of you have ever had to chose between feeling clean and being boiled like egg.

Second, forget warthogs and hippopotami; the Jacaranda trees here are gorgeous. Africa is not about savannah animals; it’s about beautiful purple trees. Honeydew is full of them, and they are my new favorite plant. You’ve not lived until you’ve seen one.

Right, so now for the African view of the US. For this, I will call on my primary case study, Mr. Boubacar Diao Diallo. Boubacar basically thinks that Americans live in a mixture of a Captain America comic, MTV, and the last page of The Sneetches, by Dr. Seuss. To him, America is a land of acceptance and baggy pants. And for no obvious reason, he loves The Star Spangled Banner. He’s working on memorizing the song’s lyrics, and frequently makes me put it on repeat. And then he sits on my bed, conducting and humming to his heart’s content. It’s the stuff of legend; Uncle Sam would have been proud.

I also think Boubacar has an inaccurate view of how eloquent Americans are. I’m not sure who’s been writing the vocabulary list for his writing class, but they definitely skipped over some of the more obvious options. Most American’s can’t spell “armchair”, but Boubacar can already use “grandiloquence”, “flabbergasted”, and “fungible“. I’m Anglophone, and I thought that fungible was an adjectival form of the word "mushroom”! But no, it actually means mutually interchangeable.

Needless to say, this sort of thing happens often:

A Better Food Pyramid

If you ask any ALA student what they think is the biggest problem on this campus is, they’ll give you one of two answers. Some of the ones who don’t own laptops would say it’s that they don’t have a laptop. But the vast majority of them would answer that it’s the meals.

But I am not here to whine; although the food could be more varied, it could also be much worse. For one, it could be what about a third of the students here seem to desire, which is a diet based almost entirely on steak and burgers. Nor do I care about the much hated “Vegetarian Mondays”, partially because I’m a rabbit and love vegetables, and partially because meat is terrible for the earth - its production is responsible for 18% of global greenhouse emissions.

My treehugging aside, it’s important to realize there are some unavoidable realities to a boarding school diet. To describe what the typical ALA student eats, I have drawn a food pyramid. For those of you who have never seen one before, this is a standard one that all British schoolchildren see at one point or another:

The idea is that you eat more of the stuff at the bottom of the pyramid, because it’s good for you. Yes, I am well aware that “Wilderbeast” is spelt “Wildebeast”; I didn’t want to do the whole drawing again.

Now for ALA’s! (It’s largely based on my own experience, but I think it holds true for the broader community in many cases):

1. Bread. ALA has seven core values: Integrity, Curiosity, Excellence, Diversity, Humility, Compassion, and Bread. Bread is an absolutely essential part of any ALA student’s routine; it is the air we breathe in between meals. Dimeji told me that he didn’t like bread last week, and I was so overcome with a sympathy that I almost fell to my knees. Life would have been easier for him if were born a vampire and couldn’t go in the sunlight.

I’ve already mentioned our “PB&J, All, Every Day” motto, but there is a dark side to our bread-heavy diet: addiction. Snack time has conditioned me to want a cheese sandwich every day at the 9 o’clock p.m. Nothing gives me greater pleasure than seeing a two small triangles of low quality white bread with grated cheddar and butter in between them. They put out chicken salad sandwiches instead of the usual cheese the other day, and Akan (a fellow addict) and I were on the verge of tears.

2. Chicken. I don’t really like red meat, so I always take the chicken option at both lunch and dinner. Chicken here comes in all shapes and sizes: drumsticks, medium sizes chunks with sauce, filets, drumsticks, small chunks, and drumsticks. It’s also useful as artillery ammo; Madia likes to fling the bones at Mohamadou.

3. Chutney, Ketchup, and Salt. No ALA student worth his salt (ha) goes a day without adding flavors his meal. House favorites include: chicken with chutney, rice with ketchup, and anything with salt. Adventurous individuals add pepper, but it’s not necessary. As a rule, you eat about as much ketchup as you do meat.

4. Chicken Triple Decker. Lets be honest, you cannot live off a diet of bread, cheese and chicken. You need to melt the cheese, add barbeque sauce, sour cream, ricotta and tomato sauce, chop the chicken up, put it all onto three calorific pizzas, all layered on top of each other. Now THAT’S a diet. Thank God for Debonairs Pizza and all that it has done for my body mass index.

5. Vegetables. Vegetables are good for you.

6. Lays. Lays are provided at snack time and also sold at the tuck shop, which is why we eat more of them than any other junk food. As a side note, the crisps here have a much stronger kick than in the US; cheese and onion genuinely tastes like raw onions, and I feel like I’m drinking acid whenever I eat salt and vinegar.

7. Apples with Peanut Butter. Africans love to take bits of Western culture, from hip-hop to high tops, but this snack could be America’s greatest contribution yet. If you haven’t tried it, it’s not disgusting. In fact, the gap years have a 100% success rate with converts so far. Apples with peanut butter are also a brilliant use of limited culinary resources; few people would think to put sandwich spreads on fruit. But most importantly, they are scrumptious. Don’t be shy and give them a try!

8. Bovril/Marmite. These two condiments are on the food pyramid, but only so I can say that I see no reason for them to be on our dining room tables. Bovril is basically beef extract tar, and marmite is mildew jam. If you ask me, both of them smell and taste awful. Bovril used to be put in hot water and drunk as “beef tea” in the trenches during WWI, but I think the threat of being machine-gunned gave the soldiers an exaggerated appreciation for it. At ALA, nobody eats the bloody Bovril. The Bovril jars sit on the table, sullen, lonely, and as untouched as Mr. O's hoodie drawer.

Mythbusters, Mary Antoinette, and Money

For those of you who do not enjoy the wonders of The Discovery Channel at home, it broadcasts a show called Mythbusters, which takes popular ‘facts’ and tests how true they are. The program is hosted by two men called Jamie and Adam, who wear an awesome combination of farmer’s caps, glasses, and beards. I’m still working on the beard, but I do wear glasses sometimes. So…..Welcome to Liam’s version of Mythbusters!

1) “Let them eat cake.” Madame G mentioned the following well-known allegory a couple days ago: Marie Antoinette heard about how all of the French peasantry were starving and remarked, stupidly, “Let them eat cake.” I did some research though, and it turns out that there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support that story. Some bloke called Rousseau did attribute the phrase to a princess in his memoirs in 1767, but Marie Antoinette was still growing up in Austria at the time.



2) “One Nation, One Meal”: Nigeria made a cake big enough to feed the entire country. “Let them eat cake” is not an exclusively French philosophy though; the Nigerians also adopted it for their fiftieth anniversary ceremony. During the event's build up, newspapers reported that the celebratory gateau would be 100ft long, 65 tons, feed the whole population, and set a Guinness World Record. The articles were accompanied by a picture of the empty football field that was going to be the plate. Oh Lordy.

Let’s back up though…65 tons?!?! That’s a lot of hens, working very hard to make a lot of eggs. Does Nigeria have no poultry labour laws? And just how much of the area’s milk and sugar supply had to be diverted to create this baking monstrosity? Tea in West Africa probably sucked for the entire month of September.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find a picture or an article about the cake’s unveiling. There was one image of Jonathan Goodluck cutting a moderately large pudding, but it was neither in a football field nor 100ft long. I have devised two possible two conclusions: 1) Mr. Goodluck was especially hungry that day and ate 61 tons of dessert before the press could get a picture of the whole thing, or 2) The cake was never made.



3) Two-rand coins are worth two rand. Before I came to ALA, I assumed that the number on a coin indicates its worth. For instance, a £2 coin is more valuable than a £1 coin, which is in turn more valuable than a tuppence. But it turns out that sort of logic was for innocent simpletons.

At ALA, the clothes dryers only work if we put in two-rand coins. That would probably be alright in the real world, but since we aren’t really allowed leave campus, we can’t go to stores very often, and that means that we don’t have too much loose change. The end result is that an absolutely vital function of my life requires something that I have very little of; massive demand, low supply -> high value. Students at ALA prize two rand coins like they would prize diamond encrusted MacBooks, Sauron’s ring, or a whole case of Kit Kats.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and since I’m not actually willing to trade my laptop for dry laundry, I’ve only been able to find one solution:




Two rand coins are not worth two rand, they’re worth about one hundred. MYTH BUSTED.

Where is the Roommate Love? Right here.

Understanding the end of this post requires a passing knowledge of Islam and The Black Eyed Peas

This post is going to be dedicated to my roommate, Boubacar Diao Diallo, or Boubs, as he hates to be called.

Emmanuel told me that “There will be two dates on your tombstone, and the only thing that matters is the dash in between them.” Boubacar embodies that ideal; he attacks life in the same way that I attack chocolate cupcakes: positively. Speaking of assaulting edibles, Boubacar also eats twice his weight in food every day, a feat made all the more impressive when one realizes how small the portions are here. Let’s just say that he is as surreptitious as he is friendly.

Since Boubacar told me that one of his goals in learning English is to be able to read my blog, I’m not going to go into too much more detail in describing him. But I will draw him! When Boubacar relaxes all of the muscles in his body, this is what he looks like:


Boubacar and I get along very well, partially because it’s impossible to not get along with him, and partially because I help him with English. In fact, I have already taught him some absolutely vital vocabulary. Examples include: “practice what you preach”, “she cleans up well” and “peanut butter”. At the time, I didn’t realize that he’d worked on a peanut farm for a whole summer, and in hindsight that would have helped get the message across. In any case, we do get lost in translation occasionally. Yesterday, I told Boubacar that it was Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, and he apparently only heard one syllable because he replied, “Why are you hot?”

Boubacar is also the only Muslim I have ever lived with. The first time he prayed while I was in the room, I sat completely still and busied myself by adjusting my watch. But about two weeks later, I realized just how little he cared about distractions. The other day, Boubacar turned on “Where is the Love” (by the Black Eyed Peas) and then immediately started praying. I could only imagine what was happening in his head. So I did:

“Allaaahu Akbar…Islam means to surrender, but I’m going to surrender to Will.i.am’s greatness first. After all, I gotta keep my faith alive ‘till love is found. That’s why I’m praying! Ashhadu Allah ilaaha illa-Lah…I bear witness that there is none worthy of worship except God. Send some guidance from above! Yes, that makes sense in this context, well said Justin Timberlake! Hayya’ alas Salaah. Where is the love? Surah 12, that’s where it is.”

(For the record, Surah 12 does mention love.)

As you may have noticed by now, Boubacar loves “Where is The Love”. As a matter of fact, it is one his twelve favorite songs. That is because he listens to music from his phone…which has twelve songs. I like eleven of them. Boubacar is positive, focused, and considerate; he shares everything, from lamps to adaptors to chocolate. But there is one drawback to having him as a roommate: the sentence “a diva is a female version of a hustler” now sends me into uncontrollable fits of rage. For God’s sake, if Beyoncé is so good at singing, why can’t she just sing that line? It sounds horrible, and it’s not even true! A diva is a female version of Freddy Mercury.

Phillips Exeter Academy vs. ALA vs. Ukraine

I went to a rich New England prep school called Phillips Exeter Academy for four years. We had a nine-storey library, over 450 courses, and around 4000 polo shirts (at a conservative average of four per student). Preppy since 1781!

Contrastingly, ALA is very new, and has some catching up to do in the ostentation department. Its crest has yet to be printed onto a hardwood floor, a donor hasn’t been found for a piano, and none of the classes take place above ground level (although the entire campus is at an oxygen-deprived 2200 ft). Worst of all, it hasn’t been able to afford strings for its teabags or corners for its “quad”, which is circular. One day, we hope that the funding will come through to make it a true quadrangle, with right angles and everything.

On the other hand, ALA crushes Exeter at diversity. Although all of its students are African, (with three glaring exceptions), very few of them are even vaguely local. Each student is very different from the next one, and all of us speak at least two or three languages fluently. And there isn’t much overlap; at ALA, every one is a minority. Phillips Exeter Academy, eat your heart out.

Switching topics, I learned today that in July 2009, only 4% of Ukrainians approved of their country’s leadership. Predictably, it was the lowest recorded rating in any nation, ever. That having been said, most of Ukraine’s main contenders for civilian dissatisfaction, such as Cambodia under Pol Pot, England during the 2010 World Cup and France on Bastille Day, did not waste their time holding polls.

I love ALA, but there have been two moments when my contentment definitely dipped below 4%:

First, Louis Pasteur went to a lot of effort to develop pasteurization in the early 1860’s, and ALA is ignoring all of his sterling work. Yesterday, I was just about to tuck into an almost perfect snack of milk and donuts when I was unpleasantly surprised. It’s only happened once, but donuts and sour milk do not complement well. And once again, Gaciru was told that in Africa people just deal with inadequate beverages. She was not amused.

Second, the school’s internet frequently redirects me from Facebook to the Cambridge International Examinations homepage. I would rather be Rick Rolled (sorry if you don’t get the reference) than look at site reminding me that the A-levels are approaching. In fact, as a matter of principle, I would rather be swarmed by rabid bats and then beaten with a broomstick than lose any more of my internet privileges.

Finally, I owe an apology to Senegal, who do have cinemas, despite what I said. Malick informed me that they have “thrrrrrrrrree!!” Roll the ‘r for authenticity. If you ask me, they do have an over-simplified calendar system though. I was helping Linda with her CV yesterday, and this is the conversation we had (click on the picture to enlarge):