ALA Fairy Tale Tidbits

Cleaning up the dregs at the bottom of my ideas pot:

Chapter One: Mohamadou’s Adventures in Birthday Land
Not many weeks ago it was Mohamadou’s birthday, and we had surprise party for him. Nothing new there. What was new was the way that we got him to turn up. Somehow, Madia, convinced him that the Ambassador of Senegal was visiting to meet all of his country’s students in the side dining room at 7:30pm. Dutifully, Mohamadou cleaned up. He shaved his head, and put on his nicest, whitest shirt and his swankiest shoes. When he arrived looking very dapper, he found a cake and candles instead of a diplomat.

Chapter Two: The Amazing Mohamadou Part II, Return of the Scudder
Some of you may also know Mohamadou as ALA’s resident human flea. He can touch the lights hanging from the dining hall ceiling from a standing start. I’m serious. Whenever we play frisbee, he catches anything within a 10m radius.

This is a cartoon I’ve wanted to draw from a while, but, ladles and gentlespoons, please welcome The Amazing Mohamadou!!

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I have no idea how to get rid of the html script in the middle of the comic. It's likely that even Mohamadou's inexorable powers couldn't help me to overcome Google's bewildering linguistic underbelly.

Chapter Three: Lucky Teboho
Have you ever wondered how student government officials get their names?





Chapter Four: Mr. O has a Bee in His Bonnet
While we were at Kruger National Park, Mr. O performed one of the most thorough bee-killings I have ever seen. After circumnavigating his head for five torturous minutes, the insect made a fatal mistake and flew right into his Sprite can. It most likely drowned instantly, but Mr. O wanted revenge. He stopped squawking in fear, bellowed in masculine triumph, put his hand on top of the can, and shook vigorously. The bee's dead body was pummeled in a sea of carbonated lemon-froth.

Final Score: Mr. O: 1, Bee: 0



The End.

L. I. Am says…Bring Back Axl Rose!

The first time I saw I saw the Superbowl I was fourteen, and it didn’t really count. American football is incalculably difficult to watch when you don’t know the rules, and even once I got over the sheer foolishness of the sport’s name (honestly, they might as well have named croquet “football” as well), I was mystified. All the commentators did was spew random combinations of numbers separated by the word “in”. 1st in 10, 1st in 4, 4th in 1, 2nd in 9… Tutankhamen would have had an easier time with Linux.

Somewhat inevitably, I fell asleep early on. The sport’s players might have been the scariest behemoths I’d ever set eyes on, but they took way too many breaks. It was baffling to me that someone had taken rugby, chess, batman’s suit, and Hagrid’s naptime, and slammed them all together into one three hour activity. I woke up to see one of the Mannings lifting a massive trophy.

As time went on though, I grew to love the Superbowl. After learning the rules, I realized football is very cool. Of course, there was also something much bigger at hand: the ads. The Superbowl had brilliant and funny promotions, and like millions of Americans, I preferred them over the actual sport.

Unfortunately, ESPN does not extend the commercials to South Africa. So this year, we had to watch this:

NBA All Star Game
Self explanatory.

ESPN Sports Center
Man wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey dragging people into a parking lot during a fire drill as a bizarre group of individuals, including a dwarf and a Viking, watched on. Eh?

The Daytona 500
I have a theory on how NASCAR started. Basically, there were loads of people in the 1940s who made really fast cars to smuggle alcohol past the police, and then one day, they decided to race. Unfortunately, all that booze had given them this rare disease that erased their ability to turn right. It was horrible; every time they wanted to do it, they had to rotate 270˚ in the other direction. So they designed a track that even non ambi-turners could manage; they created a massive oval to drive around for hours at a time (anti-clockwise, of course). Thus, NASCAR was born.

Today, it is amazingly popular, including with some students at ALA. When I found that out, I was mortified.

Tim Richmond to The Limit
NASCAR does have one excellent element though: its drivers. They have elegant handlebar moustaches and daredevil courage, “because life doesn’t have a warning flag”, and they sweat beads of godly nectar. Tim Richmond was one such man. It wasn’t really clear what he did, but he it was clearly awesome. The highlight of the commercial was him pouring a small paper cup of water on his face. Get in there!

ESPN’s Logo
Naaaaaah nahnahnah. Nah!!

ESPNsoccernet press pass
Annoying British man named Adrian Healey with an ugly tie sitting at a desk and promoting a press pass to some event. I couldn’t understand him, but he might as well have been saying, “Haha Liam! Look at me, I’m boring, and you have to watch me, even though I am not a 2011 Superbowl ad! Which, by the way, you will never see, because your school doesn’t even allow Youtube! Muahahahaha!!”

By the end of the night, we had seen all of the advertisements about six times each, and I hated Adrian Healey.


Fortuitously, the Superbowl has one other bonus that we did not miss out on: the half time show. This year it was the Black Eyed Peas. The performance was essentially a fluorescent version of the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, and it was quite entertaining, especially the two guest appearances. One was Usher, who jumped over Will. I. Am. and landed in the splits (!!!), and the other was Slash, the former Guns N’ Roses member and probably the second best electric guitarist of time after Jimmy Hendrix. Interesting African fact: he is also half Nigerian.

Unfortunately, there was one major drawback: Fergie. Not only did she ruin her own songs, but she butchered absolute classic, “Sweet Child of Mine”. She sounded like seasick bagpipes. She was also dressed like the world’s most top-heavy prostitute; glittery football pads and a leather mini skirt did not suit her, especially when she started grinding on Slash. I felt for him.

Artist's impression of popular reaction to Fergie's performance

All in all though, the game itself was exciting, and it was an excellent Superbowl, even if I was rooting for the Steelers.

Vlad the Impala

Okay, alright, I shall now try to up my post rate. Things have been lagging recently, but lots to write about now.

Yesterday, Julia, Tim, Luisa and I returned from Kruger National Park with our intrepid guide, Mr. O. And how awesome was he! Not only did he show exemplary choice in picking which roads to go down (he managed to drive us past a leopard in broad daylight, even though they’re nocturnal), but he even bought us food, and kept us happy by rapping sporadically. He also learned to drift while we were in the car, but that’s by the by.

Kruger National Park is South Africa’s flagship game reserve and safari. It houses 8 million plus impala, and over two thousand shirtless, middle aged Afrikaaners, all in their natural habitat, the braai. Braais are South African barbeques, and more streamlined than their American counterparts. For instance, they leave out superfluous additions such as vitamins and carbohydrates. Braais are 100% red meat. Republicans would love them.

I also made that impala number up, but there might as well have been that many. Impala are medium sized antelope, and they were absolutely everywhere. If you ever go on a safari, you’ll quickly experience The Law of Waning Interest, which basically says that one gets very picky, very fast. By the third day, the impala were about as interesting as washing machine lint. As a matter of fact, even the elephants and rhinos weren't that captivating. That wasn't always true though...

Our first activity was the “morning walk”, which was so early it should have been called the “yesterday night walk”. In retrospect however, I have never woken up at 3:45am for anything so worth it. We were the only five people who had signed up and had two guides to ourselves: Jacob, and “Talkative Man” (I can’t remember his name). They took us through the bush, pointing at giant spiders, “massage trees” (where pachyderms go to scratch themselves), and dung. We also went to the top of a hill, where the view was unbelievable.

As we descended, we crept up to a large rock, and were told to hide behind a tree about 20m away from it. Then the rock stood up, and looked at us with beady eyes and a massive horn; it was a pregnant white rhino and her calf. The species have horrendous eyesight, so it couldn’t really see us, but it suspected something. It lurched towards us, covering ground very quickly considering it was basically a blind, 5-ton tank. Julia thought we were going to kebabed, took ten steps back, and leapt into Mr. O’s big strong arms. It’s worth noting that she ignored two important arguments for staying put: one, remaining close to the guides meant remaining close to the shotguns, and two, it was unlikely she cold outrun a rhinoceros anyway. Meanwhile, Talkative Man threw a rock in front of the advancing beast, which decided enough was enough, and stomped away with its calf. It was clearly not that fussed.





That turned out to be the high point of the trip, but many awesome memories followed. That night, we rode a souped-up Toyota Hilux with six lager chugging locals. We saw a herd of buffalo, elephants, another rhino (which was subject to The Law of Waning Interest), and about four hundred copies of the word “Amarula”. I always thought Amarula was type of tree, but apparently it’s also a sort of creamy liqueur that sponsored everything in Kruger, including all of the spare tires.

The excellent moments continued. We saw all of the “big five”: elephant, rhino, buffalo, lion, and leopard. The leopard almost gave Luisa an aneurism; whoever proposes to her is going to have a lot to live up to. We went swimming, tried to teach Mr. O to kick more efficiently, got sunburned, and had our own braai, turning the sausages with a Leatherman and chopsticks. Julia changed under the covers and in the parking lot, and Tim took over 800 pictures, often while pushing the “remain in your car” rule right to the limit.



And all of us lost all feeling in our bottoms. Ten hours in a car will do that to you. But during those ten hours I realized that the animals around us were genuinely wild. We were visiting on their terms, and not vice versa. The best reminder came when we saw an impala carcass in a tree. I had to go to Kruger to realize just how different it was to a zoo.

It was an overall amazing experience. Thank you so much to Mr. O for driving us and putting up with our long conversations about prep school. We cannot express our gratitude enough (although we might clean your car), and we do realize we had abnormal, slightly spoiled high school experiences.

Moral of the story: it’s a good thing rhinos can’t wear glasses.

Piano is for Babies.

Aaannddd now, it is my great pleasure to bring back one of Ingvar in Africa’s regulars: Boubacar Diao Diallo

I’ve taught Boubacar many things, mostly about the differences between his image of America and reality. Boubacar has also given me many lessons in his country, Senegal, the most striking of which concerned their communal eating habits. Apparently, life in the “Peanut Basin” (the name of Boubacar’s region) is one big circuit-system potluck. On local feast days, which are both frequent and anticipated, Boubacar takes his trusty spoon, goes next door, and has a huge plateful of his neighbour’s best fare. When that’s done, he takes the same spoon, goes to the next house, and eats an equally gigantic meal. And so the routine continues until he and his spoon have completed their rounds, at which point he goes home and collapses on his bed, felled by the mother of all food comas. Now that is community.

It sounds like Boubacar just hoovers everything he sees in a fit of unstoppable gluttony, but it’s worth noting that every family gives as much as it gets. So actually, it's a brilliant system. When everybody donates 60% of his or her food to the neighbours, everybody gets full on a very diverse dinner.

At ALA, I do a lot of peer editing, so I see how a fair few students develop linguistically over their time here. Boubacar has quite possibly come the furthest. I put this down to both his work ethic, and his desire to practice through every possible medium. Recently, he started listening to English songs, and, astonishingly, Martin Luther King, Jr. I have heard the “I Have A Dream Speech” every night for the past ten days. When I asked Boubacar about his sudden passion for civil rights, he gave me a gorgeously logical answer: MLK spoke slowly. Ah yes, Mr. King might have focussed on the red hills of Georgia back in 1963, but little did he know just how instrumental he would be to the Anglophone development of one Senegalese man, 48 years later. It is also unlikely that he knew how much impact he would have on my sleep schedule, because Boubacar likes his daily dose of self-evident truths at about 11pm. Martin Luther King, Jr. might have had a dream, but he delays mine almost every day.

Boubacar and I also had a great moment of cultural bonding when he heard that I’d once been on a swim team (albeit a very slow one), and tried to tell me about his favorite swimmer, “Yantop”. Before you continue, try to guess who “Yantop” is.



Points for everyone who guessed “Ian Thorpe”!

Lastly (and unfortunately), there is one area in which I fear Boubacar and I may never see eye to eye: music. I think the chasm between us can be summarized with one sentence: “Liam, piano is for babies.”

Granted, Boubacar meant it as a joke, but classical music is definitely lost on him. He listens to hip-hop, rap, and R&B for variety. 50 Cent’s face is on his belt. In Boubacar’s opinion, if it can’t be blasted through a subwoofer and breakdanced to, it’s not music.

I live at the other end of the scale. I went to an Anglican music school for most of my childhood, and Schubert is my favorite composer. I gave a one-hour piano recital last spring. In fact, much of my iTunes library was written before Senegal’s president was even born, back in 1832 (okay that’s an exaggeration…more like 1895).

Just as I grew tired of Boubacar’s music at the beginning of the year, he frequently tells me to replace my “noise” with “real music”. The first time he told me that Akon was one thousand times better than Mozart, I was deeply affronted; I didn’t even consider them a part of the same species. It was like comparing pigeons to peregrine falcons, or Sodexo to Gordon Ramsay.

I have since learned to the see the funny side of it all though. As much as I love Rachmaninov, I also like rap. Plus, Boubacar and his music did something truly hilarious. I often have to work to find the comedy in ALA, but not this time. My roommate is funny enough.





All I will say is that Boubacar clearly started listening to the Black Eyed Peas before his English vocabularly had reached its current and expanded glory.