More points of note, and a mystery

1. There was an article on BBC a couple of weeks ago about a clandestine meteorite trade right here in NDB (if I find one, I'm buying, much to the chagrin of scientists everywhere). The article itself was of moderate interest, but the most interesting thing I noticed was that the writer called my fair city "lawless." I scoffed at the idea. I see police everywhere, though admittedly, a few of those times involved them demanding bribes from some unsuspecting immigrant. But that's standard operating procedure for Africa, and I shrugged it off as just part of having a police presence in the city.

Well I scoffed a bit too soon, because the latest buzz about town is talking about the plane that stopped at the airport 5 minutes from my apartment last Wednesday on a massive heroin run, with the consent of higher-ups in the police and several patron businessmen here in NDB. According to my reporter friend and the Moor guy that eats dinner at the same restaurant as me, a policeman came to the control tower and told them to allow the plane to land. The pilots waited for a contact at the airport for about half an hour, while someone else employed there thought that the plane had landed unannounced because there was some sort of emergency. So said random worker called the hospital, which sent a couple of ambulances. The sirens frightened the pilots, who promptly reboarded their aircraft and flew straight into the desert. They abandoned the plane, chock full of millions upon millions of dollars of heroin and disappeared into the ether. Supposedly the police are going to bring the drugs back to NDB and burn them, but all parties consulted seemed fairly certain that much of those drugs will disappear again. And to add to it all, the son of one of the presidential candidates was implicated in the whole matter. Excitement!

2. When I lived in Paris and people would ask where I'm from, I'd get this little ball of awkward shame in the back of my throat as I feebly said "the U.S." and immediately followed with an apology. All but one time it didn't really generate a negative reaction, and in retrospect, I'm slightly annoyed that I felt so timid about my origin. It's not my fault the administration follows each terrible idea with something inconceivably worse, and actually, I'm kind of happy to be from the States. It beats being from 97% of the rest of the world. But French people still shit all over Sarkozy because he envisions a decent relationship with the States. I say, he may actually do you some good.

3. So now, when I'm eating dinner, and the nice Moor guy next to me starts telling me about how much he doesn't like any English speakers, I smile until I taste bile. And when he tells me that he supports bin Laden (though the September thing was terrible), because Bush responded by murdering far more people than "the terrorists" ever could, I actually empathize a bit. But then he checks my empathy by making blanket claims that all Americans only care about money, that we're withholding a cure for AIDS from Africa because we want to see people die, and that we hate Islam, and I refrain from saying, "You know, that sounds an awful lot like me telling you that all Muslims are terrorists." But the fact of the matter remains, there is a ridiculous number of people in the world that hate us, and those numbers are in direct correlation to the foreign policy of the Bush administration. So somehow, I come out feeling proud and defensive of my country, and hating the people in power with a previously unknown passion, because their actions are indefensible.

4. We got animals. Tons of them. Everywhere. Goats, donkeys, cats, children, dogs, mice, chickens, cows. I can't leave my apartment without seeing some pathetic procession of creatures down my street, chewing on whatever plastic bags they can find. And I've been witness to some miracles of mother nature (have you ever sat and watched a goat give birth? 'cause I have, and it's disgusting), and I've seen her savage cruelty. I've seen cute baby animals playing with each other, and I've seen them lying dead on the side of the road. I've seen a dog eat a kitten. But what I've never seen, and at this point it's such a mystery that I'm hyperaware of the situation wherever I go, is a baby donkey. They're all exactly the same size, and they all look haggard. Maybe they just kind of sprout, full-sized, out of the ubiquitous mounds of donkey poop, or maybe all the animals got together and agreed to stop breeding because their lives were just so miserable, but whatever it is, baby donkeys elude me and everyone I know. Figure that one out.