http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmN0mFHDH2w

check this out.

Currently in Free Town Sierra Leone. Beautiful Coast Line as it is settled between some smaller mountains and the Pacific Ocean. Freetown is a city of about 5 million people according to some locals. The country is still recovering from the war which officially ended in 2002 or 2003. It was a brutal brutal war filled with amputations and child soldiers and then some. I am staying at the Bintumani Hotel which during the war was the headquarters of the "Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) who was a group of Sierra Leone soldiers that allied itself with the rebel Revolutionary United Front in the late 1990s. While the AFRC briefly controlled the country in 1998, it was driven from the capital by a coalition of West African troops."

The country is still recovering but there is a sense of peace here now.

Funny stuff!
Could you say "pardon my French"? ;)

"Are you kind?"

Anyway i was told this by a friend in Mali who is from Mali and during this moment there was another friend from France on hand.

"You may be Arab, Chinese, White, Russian or even American, if you talk bad French its called Parler petit Negre aka; Little "bla bla " talking, so that makes you a "bla bla " too."

If i remember correctly this was the conversation that i had with this African and French guy while discussing West Africa and a book called "Allah is not Obliged" by Ahmadou Kourouma who is a famous African writer and who uses this terminology throughout his book.

He also sites the Laroussse and the Petit Robert and the Glossary of French lexical particularities in Black Africa as sitting this phrase and hence what i am referring to above. I have not personally checked into this but i have taken it at face value.

so, i'll tell the story of my wife. She does not know who her birth father was - but she found her birth mother a few years back - who was surprised and reluctant to talk with her - see, my wife was born 1/11/1963 in Rowanda (now Zimbabwe), and given up for adoption. Her adoptive parents (wonderful people) adopted her as an infant while living in South Africa. They also adopted another baby, which became her brother (not by blood - but by adoption). Her adotpted father was the military atache to South Africa & they lived i south Africa until she was 3 - then they returned to the states & settled in Virginia. They tell the story of being places, like the grocery store, and she would throw a tantrum, screaming " I WANT TO GO BACK TO AFRICA" - In Africa, they had hired help (all native) - George, the butler, Johanna, the child caregiver, and several others - and they have lots of great stories & pictures about that time. They eventually moved to San Francisco, and she pretty much spent her teenage years there - first living on Fort Mason, but later, moving to a house in the Marina district & attending St. Bridget's. Eventually, they moved back east, which is where I met her - i was "babysitting" a friend of the family - who had an alcohol problem, and we went to a bar - but she ditched me & instead of getting pissed off, I brought her her drink (in the midst of like 5 guys that were crowded around) and went off by myself to see what would happen. This friend I was babysitting was older than me by about 6 years and statuesque - beautiful on the outside, but very troubled. Anyway, I saw this table of girls being bothered by a group of guys who were buying them drinks -but coming on very heavily, so i started talking to them - and told them my story & I pointed out my friend on the dancefloor. They thought it was funny - and one of them said - hey, this guy is from up where you live (to my future wife). Later, there was some discussion about whether she had "stolen" me, because I originally was talking to the girl that introduced me to my future wife. Anyway, we talked & danced (the song was "Boom Boom Boom Lets Go Up to MY Room") and had a good time & made plans to see each other next week-end. meanwhile, I had to collect my baggage & get her home - which was a trip in itself - but it all worked out - so Next week-end, I'm getting ready for the date, and i figure i should take all my dead tapes out of the car - and pack it with "conventional" music - and when I pick her up, the first thing she says, after lookign at the music selection is "Oh - you don't have any Dead" - I was shocked - I had like 5000 hours of bootleg tapes at the time - so we go to dinner & then a movie - and then out to a bar -and I actually run out of money - I wasn't expecting to do all that - but it's cool, she has money -and then we wind up back at her place - where her brother is supposed to be keeping an eye on her because her parents are out of town - but he's out too - so we sit & talk - and i start to see this halo over her head - and i can't stop looking at it. Somehow, I figure it must be an optical illusion - but there it is -and it's not going away, no matter what I do - so i'm not even listening to what she's saying at this point - I'm figuring this is a sign from heaven - and I start to daydream about - maybe she's the one. To make a long story short, she was the one, and still is. We've been together 20 years (as of november 2009) and have 3 wonderful kids. She did adoption research on the web & found her mother in Pretoria, but unfortunately, she died recently (before telling her too much). She did find that she has a half sister, who is now married and living in Australia, whom she keeps in touch with - but her mother had adopted a boy, who was very unreceptive to my wife finding her birth mother. Her adoptive parents (who are the only parents she's ever known - and so are her "real" parents) are wonderful people & have a wealth of knowledge & experience to offer and we love and treasure them as do our kids. My wife still wants to get back to South Africa some day, but I'm not so sure, with the way things have unfolded politically over there, if that is a wise thing to do. Maybe after the kids are grown & off on their own, we'll venture down there, but it kind of scares me. anyway, that's my south africa story. Take care & write more soon.