Third world product reviews: Brousse Wine

Today's special edition of TWPR (yeah, I know there are only two) is dedicated to one Kris Webb, brewer par excellence, who helped me with the logistics of this whole affair. Using a very marketable talent honed in the breweries of New Mexico, he has taken the formerly savage PCV custom of making homemade hibiscus wine (hereforth known as "brousse wine") out of the desert, taught it how to speak and act properly, and reintroduced it to high society as a cultivated art form. Kind of like a shitty version of "My Fair Lady." This is the go-to product for those looking to kill the pain of living in a dry country among goats and donkeys and that one person per day who thinks that you came over here solely to dole out visas to the person who lays it on thickest.

Until this past weekend, I had yet to indulge in PC Mauritania's most clandestine custom. The taste? Surprisingly, it's pretty good. Depending on how much sugar gets transmuted into the sweet nectar of deadened feelings, you'll be drinking anything from sugar water to Kool-Aid with a kick. This batch featured a mixture of younger and older vintages, leaning towards youth, and remained somewhat sweet. While you can't taste the yeast (at least, I don't think you can - I have no frame of reference), it will give you a mean case of the runs if you don't let it ferment completely. Be warned.

And just so you can have the whole "African armchair experience," I am providing the recipe below. Not that I expect anyone to really go through with it, but if you do, please let me know how it goes.

Ingredients:

• 20 liters of water
• 1 kilogram of hibiscus leaves
• 3.5 kilograms of sugar
• 4 tablespoons of baker's yeast

The process:

1. Soak the hibiscus leaves in the 20 liters of water overnight. Strain to remove the foliage.
2. Add the sugar.
3. Boil the water for about 10 minutes (this kills any critters that may have wandered in with the hibiscus leaves or sugar, and reportedly improves the taste).
4. Let the water cool, and place it in a gerrycan. Think 20 liter gasoline canister.
5. Boil a small amount of water separately, and let it cool (again, this is a sterility issue).
6. Sprinkle the yeast on top of the cooled water (this rehydrates and essentially preps the yeast to work at maximum efficiency once submerged in the wine-to-be).
7. Let the yeast soak for about 10 minutes.
8. Add the yeast to the gerrycan (you can just dump the water in with it, which is why you only want to use a small amount).
9. Slap a condom over the opening, and place the gerrycan somewhere cool (not your fridge - your goal is to keep the fermentation from topping 75 degree F).
10. If you've done everything properly (which isn't difficult), within 24 hours that condom will be fully inflated with the resulting gases of fermentation. Let the gerrycan sit for about 4 weeks, and you've got yourself 20 liters of palatable homemade wine.

Note:

• Sterility is key. Clean everything that will come into contact with the wine with bleach, and rinse thoroughly, because bleach kills yeast.

Personally, I'm picturing whole families gathered in a Christmas setting (soft-focus camera shot), with small children handling large pots of bleach and boiling water while mom and dad continue to swig their homemade booze, telling the kids that they're just "making sure" the last batch came out well. Happy holidays.

Ends to be tied, because, whether you realized it or not, they were, in fact, loose

Well, as should have been expected, I was wrong about the outcome of the mayoral elections. Apparently, NDB's top municipal spot is mired in controversy (and I always thought being "mired" required some amount of humidity), as the leading candidate failed to gain a majority of staggering enough proportions to claim uncontested victory in the elections. The runner-up, losing by only a paltry few electoral votes, is claiming that number one has no right to the throne. The solution? What the fuck, let's make them both mayor!

Clearly, this answer is totally unsatisfactory (though nevertheless in effect at the moment). Here's where it gets mucky: these two mayors are members of the same coalition. Apparently, with 30+ parties vying for political dominance, some decided that, in order to maximize votes among other things, they would form coalitions. So down in NKT, the coalition leaders are refusing to make a choice between the two, garnering all kinds of invective from the individual supporters and people who, while not actually taking sides, think that the whole thing is a bit ridiculous and embarrassing. Further voting with the next round of elections promises, if not to solve the problem, at least to offer the opportunity for further voting. Still, daily life on the streets of NDB remains the same: dusty.

In the personal arena, I was promoted to head of the English department in a staff meeting about two weeks ago. It was an elected position that I neither campaigned for, nor really knew even existed. It's not much more work, and no more privilege, but the recognition is nice. Of course, being the only English teacher who can speak English might have had something to do with it.

Oh yeah, and someone requested I post a Christmas list. So, this is what would be nice to have, most likely for Easter:

• Flash drive.
• Voice recorder. (small, preferably digital)
  
• Good books.
• Beef jerky.
  

And that's about all I can think of.

Also, the email subscription box on the right, if you haven't figured it out, appears to be working. Let me know if there are any issues with the email you receive. The same goes for feeds.

And finally, I have decided that donkeys, which once occupied only the highest sphere of humor (I believe that I'm not alone on that one), are in fact the most profoundly sad and depressing animal on the face of the earth. I am convinced that the worst of karmic outcomes is to be reincarnated as one of these creatures, and I am dunked in a veritable septic tank of catharsis every time I see one, which is about every 20 meters.

So that's that. We're reformatting the office computer, so it's up in the air as to whether I'll be on in the next couple of days. But there's a fresh Third World Product Review in the pipe, and this time you'll be able to experience the magic at home. Suspense...

PS: Get the votes in on that survey, because it's going to end in the next couple of days in favor of another questionnaire of slightly more significance. The heated arms race between Omar and Spaghetti continues, and I for one am utterly crushed that Yasmine Bleeth is only a very distant third. Get your act together, people.

Re: Overreaction

"The politician, for example, would never have us think that it is love of office, the desire for the notorious elevation of public place, that drives him on. No, the thing that governs him is his pure devotion to the common weal, his selfless and high-minded statesmanship, his love of his fellow man, and his burning idealism to turn out the rascal who usurps the office and betrays the public trust which he himself, as he assures us, would so gloriously and devotedly maintain."

"So, too, the soldier. It is never love of glory that inspires him to his profession. It is never love of battle, love of war, love of all the resounding titles and the proud emoluments of the heroic conqueror. Oh, no. It is devotion to duty that makes him a soldier. There is no personal motive in it. He is inspired simply by the selfless ardor of his patriotic abnegation. He regrets he has but one life to give for his country."

"So it goes through every walk of life. The lawyer assures us that he is the defender of the weak, the guardian of the oppressed, that champion of the rights of defrauded widows and beleaguered orphanism, the upholder of justice, the unrelenting enemy, at no matter what the cost to himself, of all forms of chicanery, fraud, theft, violence, and crime. Even the businessman will not admit to selfish motive in his money-getting. On the contrary, he is a developer of the nation's resources. He is the benevolent employer of thousands of working men who would be lost and on the dole without the organizing genius of his great intelligence. He is the defender of the American ideal of rugged individualism, the shining exemplar to youth of what a poor country boy may achieve in this nation through a devotion to the national virtues of thrift, industry, obedience to duty, and business integrity. He is, he assures us, the backbone of the country, the man who makes the wheels go round, the leading citizen, Public Friend No. 1."

-Thomas Wolfe, You Can't Go Home Again

Why take myself down a notch when Thomas Wolfe (not to be confused with our markedly less talented contemporary, Tom) does it so much more eloquently?

Um, patience, again

Fixing some coding bugs with that email subscription box on the right. Until then, I suggest Valium and a few Miller High Lifes.

Third world product reviews: Millac

Welcome to the first installment of what will hopefully become a semi-regular feature on this digital monument to spare time. To further acquaint the reader with the mind-numbing minutia of existence without a TV, I have decided to begin a chronicle of the various goods and services that I have occasion to use. Basically anything that I spend money on is subject to inclusion, so if anyone has any particular questions/suggestions, just comment them on over. In a year and a half, maybe we'll even have a budget Gridskipper (Marcin, allow me to direct your attention to the middle of today's front page) or Superfuture on our hands. Ahh, irony.

On to the goods. What is there to be said about a product whose name so perfectly embodies the very essence of its being? Say it aloud: Mil-lac. As your tongue rolls into the second syllable, you can almost feel the thick, white, mucusy whole-milk saliva collecting in the soft, fleshy back section of the roof of your mouth. Mil-lac. Spit bubbles fortified with lactic enzymes, grown up and capable of life independent from the lips. Mil-lac. Taste the resultant bubble born of overeager pronunciation immediately post-libation.

I remember one early afternoon, sitting with the Miller family around Kyle's couch, pounding McDonald's, in which Katie turned to me and asked (to paraphrase), "John, why are you drinking a half-gallon of milk?" and Kyle immediately interjected, "John always drinks milk." From that statement was born a golden glow in my heart of hearts, as I knew that with this acknowledgment milk and I had created a bond, inseparable, undeniable, forever tied in a holy matrimony that even a move to the Dark Continent couldn't tempt with divorce.

Inland, electricity is often far from reliable, and refrigeration is an unfathomable luxury. Hence, in Kaedi dairy products were limited to the long-life variety. The ol' pasteurized, homogenized variety would arrive steaming in the back of a pickup, in a consistency whose only defining feature could be described as "unpourable." Faced with hardcore dairy cravings and a total lack of options, and after much thought, I lowered my standards and accepted my new milk. And she grew on me. Oh Rose milk, the times we shared...

Nouadhibou being a cosmopolitan epicenter, not only is fresh cow's milk available, but there is camel's milk as well (stay-tuned). At the earliest chance I quickly re-embraced my former lover, and it was good. We shared a passionate honeymoon, tacitly intensified by the unutterable knowledge that the magic couldn't last. Then the rolling blackouts commenced. I continued to purchase the "fresh" milk in frenzied self-denial, flinging money at the cashier with the contumacious air of one who could not be bested by the city's ailing power grid. But the end was nigh, and I knew it. I would open each carton breathless, and as I took the first tentative sip the sickly sweet smell of death would rush my nostrils before the liquid even touched my lips. Sometimes I'd continue to drink, hoping beyond hope, and the chunks would lumber across my tongue like pallbearers under the weight of a wasted existence. And finally, after days of the same, twisted waltz, emotionally exhausted, I decided that continuing to sleep in the same bed as the corpse of your dead lover just isn't healthy.

Now I drink Millac. Soccer moms could leave this stuff in the back of their Plymouths until the little ones have a B.A., and still serve it at the graduation party. Of course I didn't wander pell-mell into another heartrending relationship; I shopped around for a variety of long-life milks, and decided that Millac tasted least like its chemical life-support system. Also, according to the box (proudly stated directly below the picture of two ridiculously Aryan children), it's good for the heart, which I think is important in these trying days. With time, maybe it will make good on its claim and begin to repair mine.

Overreaction

I feel a response is necessary to the Chomsky-esque comment posted yesterday. I want to make the following very clear.

I did quite a bit of self-examination, soul searching, etc. before I decided to go ahead and work for the organization that I work for. Not only is the role and utility of development subject to arguments at every extreme, but Western interest in the third world should also be closely examined. As a citizen of the world's richest, most powerful, and most aggressive nation, I had to determine whether I was comfortable representing said force, and to what ends I would be doing so.

My organization goes out of its way from the very commencement of the application process to screen out individuals who have ever been/ever intend to be part of the intelligence community. As I recall, at least two pages of the 16 or so page application concerned personal and familial three-letter affiliations, and simply stated that, depending on the level of involvement, it is necessary to wait for anywhere between 10 years and eternity for acceptance. In addition to asking my recruiter why this was so (and receiving the expected answer of "because we don't want people to think that we're all a bunch of CIA hacks"), I discussed this once with a man who had been in army intelligence during Vietnam and had subsequently turned to aid work. He went through the application process twice but never ended up joining, and now works for Ashoka. He explained that there is likely some legitimacy to claims that individuals in my organization were involved in intelligence gathering during its infancy. Somewhere along the line, however, there was a very concrete decision to completely disconnect any ties between us and the three-letter community.

Budgetary information also indicates how ridiculous the suggestion of intelligence operations is. I'm too busy wondering why I have to pay for my own poor ass to join, literally, six other Mauritanians in a circa-1983 sedan for a five and a half hour drive to Nouakchott in early January to even take the time to report to my superiors at the CIA. The $344 million in budgetary resources available for FY 2006 (to the whole organization, not Mauritania) gets spread transparently thin just about as quickly as you'd imagine.

Hot topics in US intelligence gathering in Mauritania likely center around 1) the shifting government, and 2) Algerian terrorists, who have a tendency to leak across the border. 1: If anyone would like a copy of any of the various emails admonishing the volunteers to do everything in their power to stay away from polling stations, to refrain from all political and religious conversation with locals, and to by absolutely no means show any support for any of the parties operating in their locales (violators subject to termination), I will make it available. 2: NDB is the northernmost posting, hundreds of kilometers south of the more conservative and potentially volatile areas that would be of interest to the US intelligence community. Anything that smells of interest to the three-letter agencies generally smells like endangerment to my organization, and volunteers are yanked before they even discover a threat.

The organization does provide a reason to place US citizens into small communities it would not otherwise have a reason to "infiltrate." I know people who are convinced that there is a black helicopter following my every step, and that's fine. It probably keeps me safer anyway. But it's as far from the truth as one could get. The fact of the matter is, management is extremely laissez-faire, and as the administrative go-to guy for NDB, my rare conversations with the higher-ups consist entirely of me bitching at them to send us our mail.

There is a distrust of Western, and especially US, involvement in Africa. It's healthy, and completely understandable. First colonialism saw Europe raping the third world, and then we took our turn during the Cold War. Some of the people we supported (and subsequently, governments, policies, and actions) in an effort to stymie the spread of Communism were out and out criminals - thieves, murderers, and rapists - and people have every right to harbor reservations about our intentions. However, unsubstantiated rumor is also a way of life in the absence of credible sources of information. Having dinner with an educated neighbor the other night, he looked me level in the eyes and told me that eating the skin of a chicken will give you cancer. Right buddy, find that one in The Lancet?

But what disturbs me is that someone who does have access to the available information could actually make that statement in all seriousness.

I resent being in any way regarded as an ignorant pawn in some kind of global spygame. I spent (and still spend) a large amount of time considering my involvement here. Yes, anything is possible. Maybe the NSA planted bugs in all my clothes and listens to the political conversations I have with locals despite the emails, but I'm not willing to take such a cynical standpoint. I have all the tolerance in the world for cynical jocularity, but if I couldn't believe that some people were genuinely interested in the well-being of others, I would have killed myself years ago.

Duly noted

Had breakfast with the acting ambassador this morning (Dawn Liberi awaits Congressional approval). Yet another perk of living in Nouadhibou is that, in addition to being to my knowledge the only Americans up here, we are living in a city that actually garners direct US attention. Thus, when the official US convoy rolls north, we get a few stolen rays of State department sunshine to make us feel a little more important than our village counterparts (psshaw, my Rolodex is full of presidential appointees). Ambassador Twining (link should be a photo) was, well, a man who seemed to retain a surprising and refreshing amount of Kennedy-era idealism. While, for reasons that I have yet to really articulate to myself, I will refrain from completely recounting our conversation here (believe me, there was nothing said that would qualify as profound and/or unprintable - just going with a gut feeling), I will say that he was pleasantly straightforward with my questions and our conversation. Details available to those curious enough to email me. I will say this: incredibly nice guy; he struck me as the product of a substantially different era.

Additionally, number two in charge seemed to take an interest in my labors at the Lycee Nouadhibou, and will be coming up in about a week with an unverified number of English novels and texts to start an English section of their library. He also asked me to scout around for potential homes and staff for an NDB branch of an American Center (computers and books and general information about the pastoral glory of America), and we will be meeting next Friday.

In other news, the misspelling on the survey submission redirect page has been, ahem, "duely" noted. Also duely noted is Sam's egregious flaunting of a spell checker. Because I felt that my voice in the survey is irrelevant (I do wield the power, of course, to toss the votes entirely and decide to name the little bastard "Steven," should I so choose to abuse the democratic process), I had yet to actually check what the voter was presented with upon successful submission of his/her vote. Lo, I will henceforth trust all copyediting to myself. Please reinstate me in your collective mind as the infallible example of proper syntax that you know I am.