kano.car problems, sharia, talking to people

well once we got one of our two cars to start working i got out of the house with my mom. first we had to do the shopping, meaning go to the local out door market and buy vegetables. mostly the meat and fish comes knocking on our door. someone somehow hears that we're back in town and comes to the house with the fish we probably need. so the other day we got an 8kg fish still gasping for air. we had to bargain the price, clean the fish, take the insides out and cut it into pieces. anyway shopping at the market always reminds me that i'm back home. i'm greeted there with either one of two phrases. some say "good morning doctor" while the most say "hello baby" since they've known me from times when my mom use to take me there in a baby pram.
kano became a sharia state a in 2001, meaning that the state is under islamic law while the country itself has it's own law system. it has caused a few problems that most of the world has heard of. right in the beginning when the sharia was enforced a man was found guilty on the charge of stealing a cow, the punishment was having his right hand chopped off. after they went through with the amputation the man went to court and got recompensed from the nigerian government for his material loss. two women were also found guilty on the charge of adultery and were to be stoned. the whole world started writing petitions to save them.
on the other side of the medal the side that us insiders see, sharia had not changed much in town.(actually i believe it didn't change much for most people.) during the first months most restaurants stopped selling alcohol and most muslim women started covering themselves. at a certain point a sharia police was called to order. one of their most "admired" deed was pulling off women from motorbike taxies, or so called achaba's. it didn't last long since the police was found to be illegal and had to be recalled. as for the other things. alcohol is still sold in all of the restaurants. once the owners realized that sharia was not for real they brought it back. the old town still sells all the types of alcohol you could want. sharia was just a way for some people to make money. in other words just another african scenario.

one of my favorites and a good description of what today has brought

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

-William Butler Yeats

kano; first impresions

the flight home was full. there might have been two empty seats on a plane that could carry up to 250 people. i was surprised that i only knew one person on that flight. usually i would drop into old friends, but i guess the middle of the summer holidays is not the best time for people to be coming to kano. we had an interlanding in abuja, the new nigerian capital, during which the passengers that were flying to abuja would get of the plane and the ones flying to kano would be moved for a few hours into a waiting room while the plane was cleaned and the crew was change, fresh and rested ready for another trip to amsterdam. only a handful of 30-35 people filled the waiting room and i started to wonder if in the years to come klm would still be flying to kano if such a small % of people went flew there. the trip from abuja to kano takes 45 minutes by plane.
i arrived at the small ruined aminu kano airport that hasn't changed during the time i can remember it.(i've been flying into it for 22-23 years) only the arrival times have changed. as i took the first steps off the plane to the metal transportable stairs that lead onto the runway i was astonished that it was actually cooler then both poland and holland have been in the past few days. soon i was among the scattered herd of a handful of people rushing to get to the passport control. i guess we all remembered what it use to be like when all the passengers would get off in kano, and only the fastest runners, or those with a special agent would get out of the airport in a bearable time. the special agents were people that you would pay to do all of the formalities at the airport for you. if you were lucky someone would get your passport from you right as you got of the plane, and you would leave the runway through a back gate. usually though they would meet you right before the passport control take your documents, and get everything done for you. all you had to do was wait at home for your luggage. only one such agent was there this time, and i'm happy that he was there cause he's a friend of mine that i was glad to see.
the drive back home made me realize that there are no street lamps anywhere in the town. the only lights on the roads come from the houses that line them. it's funny how we forget things that are so obvious in one place but not so obvious in another. the first thing that hit me when being back home was air conditioning in every room, no water in the pipes, no light other then the one we were creating in our very own generator, no telephone cause it got switched off, no food in the fridge, and no car because it stopped working when no one used it. but i am home. no where else do i find so much peace. i attach a few pictures of normal creatures i find on my front porch.

the trip; amsterdam

the trip went unbelievably well. no luggage got lost, there was no delay, and no problems at the nigerian airport with the customs officers. the only thing that i would have wished to change was the sprained ankle i got while carrying a suitcase down the stairs. it sort of spoiled my plans of running around amsterdam for the whole day. amsterdam is one of my favorite cities in europe. i spent some time there every year since i was little and until i moved to poland i could have said that i knew it better then lodz, my parents home town. that's the town where i ate my first oyster. i don't remember the incident because i was around five. in the past, klm would offer a free hotel and meal to all it's passengers that could catch a connecting flight the same day, which meant that we qualified for a free vacation every year cause there was no way we could get from poland to amsterdam early enough to catch the flight to nigeria. well during one of the trips my mother listened to a waiter in a restaurant and ordered me a grilled steak instead of kiddy food. the steak had a succulent fresh oyster on top. the waiter regretted his kind advice cause the moment i had the oyster in my mouth i sent it flying through the table straight at him. that was my first experience with those salt water creatures but not the last. A few years later I repeated the try, in Antibe, but that’s a story for another day.

A few other things have changed since the beginning of my flying days. I remember when smoking was allowed onboard. The tail end of the plane was reserved for smokers but the smoking section and the non smoking section were never divided in any way to block the smoke from crawling into the front. Another thing that I remember and in a way miss was the tradition of clapping after every landing. It was a way for the passengers to express their thanks to the pilot for a good landing. Nobody does that anymore and it’s a pity.

polish politics, b day salads, and others

i'm counting down the days till the beggining of my summer vacation. i'm at 4 days and 22h till departure. every time i watch the news it makes me all the happier to be leaving and motivates me more to try to get out of the country as soon as possible. in the shadows of major conflicts in the middle east we're going through political so called progress (in my view it's degression). old veterans of polish politics, living or spending time abroad, are being called immoral by the present government for their criticizm of the head of the country's decisions and resolutions of certain situations, while other old veterans (or should i say old criminals) are comming back to power, though the heads of state denied such a possibility mere hours ago and no sane mind would have thought it possible. this is the country i will not choose to live in, at least not for now.
on a brighter note here's a recipy that a galician friend asked me for yesterday and that i thought might find other people interested in. i made it for my b day and on one other occasion i can't remember.

chicken curry salad
1. boil two chicken breast, and a few eggs (they don't add much taste but they do add volume). when boiled cut the eggs and chicken into small pieces
2. add a can of corn and a few slices of pinapple cut into small pieces.
3. add cheese cut into small cubes or if you're lazy grated.
4. + mayonase and a lot of curry.

and a certain tiger from the praha zoo.
p.s to answer a few people's question; no we do not have tigers in africa. (only in certain zoo's)

Hermelin: the czech way to make cheese taste better

the last few days have been a bit hectic. i'm leaving for nigeria in about ten days and i need to get the last things settled. for that reason i've been going to warsaw this week to get my visa and ticket. but it's nothing interesting to write home about. anyway here are a few pictures of poland.
on the other hand i've been in the kitchen quite a lot, taking advantage of the summer vacation and my parents filling the fridge. i can't say that i miss the food from prague. the czech cuisine is really filled with dishes like the "wiepro-knedlo-zelo" meaning fatty pork piecies with oily saurkraut and the knedliki ( long dumplings cut into slices). every main dish is covered with a sauce. some of their appetizers weren't that bad though. one of my favorites was their pickled stuffed hermelin. so here's the recipe for everyone who misses it.

1. take an onion cut it up into mush (or just really small pieces) mix it with a few mashed cloves of garlic add black pepper and a red chilli pepper or some red chilli.
2. take a camembert cheese. cut it into half put the previosly prepared mix in between the two halves.
3. place the camembert into a small jar and cover it with olive oil.
4. leave out for at least three days. if you like stronger tastes and it's not too warm you can leave it out for a week or more.

crash! bum!! bang!!!

a single e mail today send me off into a reminicing trip. millions of thought and memories going through my head while staticity surounds me. no perspectives for change, no perspectives for adventure and excitement await me in poland yet i'm here without a real good reason while i know what awaits me elsewhere. this was the reason i was looking sceptically at an erasmus year in prague. i didn't want to go cause finally, after those hard moments that followed leaving home and leaving vichy, i managed to hibernate half of myself and live as a partial me in this little world were NOTHING comes my way. where i'm just a shadow of a person to others because no body here is a friend. i stopped worrying about the fact that everyday looks like the one before. that year in prague could declench everything from the beggining. the year was amazing, like life should be, and like life was not taking into account the 3 years in poland. suprisingly the avalanche didn't directly start because of prague. all that prague did was reawake the other half, make me want again and make me sit down and write all those e mails i should have written years before to keep in touch with those people who have meant so much. todays e mail was an awakening that i needed and am very thankful for.

standby

lodz has always been a "standby" station for me. other then studying there is nothing i can do here. it drives me nuts especially during the summer time. anyway i have 18 more days to go and i'm going back home. so far there are no new pictures so here are a few older one, again from prague, but this time my friends that i miss and think of.
thanks to you guys i will have beatifull memories. it's great that you were all there almost from the beggining (in tomeks case from his beggining)

and once again...

ok one of my last tributes
to the beautiful city
of prague

belated mini guide to prague part 1

well it's a bit late but just for the pictures
Mini guide to prague. part 1.
My little guide to prague is not going to be the most helpful when going to prague but it is about a few places that I liked.
nr 1. the charles bridge. especially late at night or very early in the morning. it was started by karol IV. at present it joins two very interesting districts of prague, the old city with it’s many bars pubs and staromestkiej namesti (where you could watch the world cup) and mala strana, a beautiful older part of prague, unfortunatly infiltered with tourists and special prices made for them. The bridge is filled with musicians and little souvenir shops. if you’re as lucky as I was you might meet the politechnic students running across the bridge naked.
nr 2. mala strana was founded in 1257 by Otakar II. it was meant to be settled by german colonialists, but during the reign of karol IV the area started to develop and mala strana developed into an exclusive living quarter. right now it’s a magicle tangle of brock roads. the pubs, bars and jazz clubs have a specific charm that can not be found anywhere else.

16/6/2006 23rd b day

it was one of the best birth days that i have ever had, even thought the most important people could not be there. (two of them suprised me big time. one called me and the other one organized a suprise delivery of his present.) it was great because i was able to spend it with my friends. it's something that i haven't been able to do for a very long time. mostly because i've either been on the road the day of my b day or i have been studying for an exam the next day. two of my birthdays stand out in my memories. the first one i spent somewhere between lodz, poland and yalta, ukraine. yalta was a popular holiday resort with many sanatorias where the solviet elite spent their holidays. only a handfull of these were open to foreigners. after the collapse of the solviet union in 1991 yalta has lost a lot of it's popularity. anyway we decided to follow in the footsteps of Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, and we bought a two week vacation in one of the resorts. little did we know about what awaited us. the malfortune started from the very beginning. we were suppose to be flown straight to the town. instead we were put on a train and told that we were just being transported to the airport. on our way to yalta we never did arrive to an airport. instead we spent the next two days on trains and buses. at one point, in brest, belarus our guide abandoned us we were a group of about 30 polish stuck without any help. we finnally got hold of the agency that was in charge of the trip and we were given a hotel for the night. the hotel was dirty and creepy, we had insects everywhere in the room. the next day we moved on towards yalta. the rest of the trip was no less exciting from the beggining but that's a story for another day. the second one was on my 19th b day. that was the day i left france for good. i finished packing, drove with david lf to paris, and found myself in poland.

14/6/2006 poland vs germany

so we're out. but it was a great game. i even came back home with a polish flag which is quite unexpected taking into account my love for poland. staromiejskie namesti was packed with people. there was no sitting space, the quie for beer was long and filled with germans as was the whole square. mosty germans were cheering for germans, but the polish had a very heterogenouse group of supporters. americans mexicans nigerians were wearing polish shirts. the loudest cheers came from a small group of spanish erasmus students. and up till the end we had hope that it might not be over

first family meeting

i usually try to avoid occasions such as today's because nothing good ever happens when i meet up with my family, but i was tempted this time. first of all we were meeting only with one part of the family. secondly we were going outdoors for a grill which meant there would always be some place were i could hide. and thirdly i haven't seen them in a long while. we went to a little bar beside a forest. the house that it was in had an interesting history and it looked amazing. before the war it was a wozownica. later there it was used as a greenhouse.
this part of the family consists of two kids who are absolute devils. they probably inherited their incredible ability of being a nuasance from their father whose legends are still told today by everyone who remembers him as a kid. one of my favorites includes his 10 year younger sister. when she was still walking around in pampers he was suppose to babysit her and clean the house quit often, and those were two activities he did not enjoy doing. to enrich his time at home he decided to run after his sister with the vaccum cleaner and suck on her pampers with it, she would get scared to death by it and hide under the coach only to come out when their mom got home. his two children are no better. the older one, a girl, went to summer camp. one boring evening, together with her friend, she went into one of the bed rooms, grabbed some boys jeans and started to stick chewing gum on the back, efficiently pressing it into the material. half way through the action it dawned on the two that it might not have been the best idea, so they tried to get the gum of. unfortunatly the gum didn't have the slightest intention of comming off, but they couldn't leave the gum there as evidence. they found a pair scissors and cut of the piece with the gum on it, meaning both of the back pockets. just as they were finishing someone came into the room and caught them.

the youger devil, who's picture i attach (don't be fooled by his innocent blond hair) always manages to somehow put a coin so far up his nose that only a surgen can get it out, or manages to hide himself in a closed washing machine, or throws a rock and breaks the front screan of the neighbors car. last year though, the family went on a vacation to a farm. it's the ideal place for two such devils. theoretically there's not much harm that they can do there. well this little guy, at the age of 5 managed to climb a tractor, start it, and make it drive all the way across the whole field straight into a barn. :) you gotta love them.

13/6/2006

staromiejskie namesti the very heart of prague

Change

so i'm moving from the first blog here cause i couldn't sign into blogomonster for about a week now. i'll be moving all the entries.