More African Beer Labels

Proving that I really can take this blog just about anywhere, I thought I'd share with you the rest of my West African beer label collection. As I revealed in the last post, these are souvenirs of my trip through West Africa in autumn 1994. None of them top the Mamba label for excitement, but they're cool in their own right.

First, Castel beer, which we drank in Mali. I believe it's available in other West African countries, too. I think a lot of these beer brands were licensed by various local brewers from one country to another.

So. B. Bra was a beer from Burkina Faso. Although it touts itself as "Bière de Qualité," in my journal I proclaimed it "really nasty."

Another Burkinabe beer. I don't remember anything about this one.

Flag is another common multinational brand -- in fact, we had Flag beer in Morocco, though with a different label. This one was from Burkina Faso and must be brewed by the same company as the one above -- they share the same yin/yang trademark.

I bought Star beer in northern Ghana, but I think -- based on what I've only now seen online -- it may be a Nigerian brand. I remember being amused by the little expiration dates at the bottom of the labels. Does beer really ever expire?

I think Gulder is Nigerian, too, though I got it in Kumasi, Ghana. From my journal entry of Oct. 15: "Then we went drinking – stopped at a bar and had Gulder beer, and then another – by the middle of the second one we were toasted. These 66 cl beers are not to be believed."

(Many African beers come in big bottles. These were roughly 22 ounces, with alcohol at 5 percent.)

I got Club and Club Dark in Accra. Again, I made no mention of it in my journal, so I have no memory of whether it was any good or not.

And now, for no particular reason:

Here's a picture of my friends Pam, Kelly and Carolyn in front of the New York Cafeteria in Banfora, Burkina Faso -- a little town in the southwest corner of the country, near the border with Cote d'Ivoire. I just thought it was funny that we were in such a remote location -- and back in those pre-Internet days, it felt really remote -- yet we found traces of the Big Apple!

West African Memories

Well, it's certainly wintry here in London. Yesterday the gray sky was spitting hard pellets of snow/ice, and today we'll have a high of 38º F with rain and snow tonight. Time to stay indoors! (I realize 38º is downright balmy to some of my Canadian readers, but here it's cold!)

In my mind, though, I am in the tropics. I've been having the best time transcribing my journals from my trip through West Africa in 1994. I traveled through Mali, Burkina Faso, Ghana and Cote d'Ivoire with some friends from the Peace Corps, and we had some amazing adventures.

Like the time we went to church in Kumasi, Ghana: "We sought out an English church, and landed at Grace Outreach Church. Oh my – it was a sizzler – a hotbed of loud music and evangelism! It was a big building with pink interior walls, and banners reading 'Jesus is Lord' and 'This is the time of our destiny,' and purple and white streamers overhead. At first we all felt pretty silly, but the music was so raucous that eventually we just got carried away. It was crazy. All those incredibly well-dressed people were literally dancing in the aisles – and not in place, either – they were ALL OVER. There was maximum emphasis on the music and minimum on the preaching, which was fine – I felt like I was at a gospel concert. It wasn’t cheesy like gospel in the states, either – it was fun, and the people just glowed as they sang. Then, in the middle of all this, Victor and Olivia got married – these two complete strangers (to us) whose wedding we stumbled into. There was a procession, an exchange of vows, rings, all the trappings of a slightly scaled-back American wedding. Someone was wandering around with a video camera – Victor and Olivia will spend the next 60 years wondering who the four white people in the audience are!"

Or the time I went to a Ghanaian barber: "Got my hair cut last night in Accra at Kennedy’s Hair Salon – a roadside shed where I bargained the price of my cut down to 1,000 cedis, then walked in and saw '500 FLAT' painted on the wall. I told Kennedy he should paint over that, and paid 1,000 anyway."

Or a memorable meal in Ghana: "We went out to dinner last night at a place called the Pearl of the East, reputed to be one of the best Chinese restaurants in Ghana. For $5 or so I had corn chicken broth soup, vegetable mix with rice and red wine and coffee. This place was fancy, too – we had impeccable service and hot napkins, heated plates, all the little touches. We also got the benefit of a hilarious menu, with items such as 'shredded sea blubber,' 'shark lips in cream sauce,' 'three kinds meat in clear soup' and 'fry duck balls.' We were in hysterics! I couldn’t speak, I was laughing so hard."

Or our long bus ride from Bamako to Mopti, Mali: "The landscape was green and lush all the way here, though once we got up to Mopti I could tell that in dry season there’s probably nothing around but red earth. Near Bamako it was dense and shrubby, but as we traveled the shrubs thinned out to green grass. There were occasional cabbage palms, huge baobabs (how exciting!) bearing pendulous green fruit, and villages filled with conical mud buildings. Women pounding millet – and every once in a while the bus would stop and people (mostly kids) would swarm around with unidentifiable food. There were oranges (green and tart), soft peanuts, little sweet cakes, and all kinds of fibrous, root-like things – I have no idea what they were. We finally got to Mopti about 10 p.m. or so, and a local guy showed us the Peace Corps house. You can tell this is a tourist town – we were swarmed by guides! We were also swarmed by thick clouds of insects – when we ate dinner last night, little flies kept landing in my beer and locusts 1 ½ inches long were crawling up and across the tablecloth."

Throughout the trip I collected beer labels. Each country had its "local" brews, and fortunately, when condensation gathered on the bottles, it was usually pretty easy to slip off the labels. Here's my favorite, from Cote d'Ivoire:

I remember that one was really hard to peel off. I've never understood why Mamba beer had an alligator on the label -- isn't a mamba a snake?

Anyway, it was truly an amazing trip, though I got ill several times -- once pretty dramatically, with a fever that made me hallucinate. I'm still working my way up to that point in the journal. Crazy times!

(Photo: A schoolyard near our lodge in Kumasi, Ghana, October 1994.)

A Crocus in the Driveway

As I was walking Olga yesterday morning I noticed this little crocus -- the first I've seen this year, I believe -- blooming between the paving stones of my neighbor's driveway. I wonder how on earth it got there? It must have seeded itself. Persistent, like Elizabeth Warren!

Here's another tiny bulb, a snowdrop in our back garden. I don't recall ever finding snowdrops here before, so where it came from I'm not sure! I have a feeling not every bulb blooms every year -- wouldn't it make sense that they might take a year or two off?

Dave feels better today. His fever was gone yesterday afternoon, so he's headed back to work. Last night he called someone to come and clean our oven. That's one job neither he nor I have the energy to tackle!

Wonder Woman Stands Guard

I saw these kids on their way to a birthday party (or some kind of party) when I was walking Olga a couple of weeks ago. The boy's Spider Man suit cracked me up. I wish I'd been closer to get a better shot, but c'est la vie.

Yesterday morning was devoted to decorating the library for Valentine's Day. Now it's decked out in hearts and all our "Blind Date with a Book" volumes are wrapped and ready. The kids will come in later this week to select their choices. My boss, coworkers and I plan to choose one too, so I'll be reading something entirely random in a week or so. Meanwhile I'm about to start "When Breath Becomes Air," a doctor's memoir of his fight against a cancer that ultimately kills him. I hear it's terrific, although not exactly uplifting.

When I checked the Olga Cam in the morning, this is the view that greeted me -- Olga peeking out from behind Dave's "Wonder Woman" mug. It's good to know Wonder Woman's super powers are guarding our household, but I wish she'd make Dave well. His fever continued yesterday afternoon and he's staying home from work again today.

Yesterday he texted me a blurry iPhone photo of our goldfinch feeder, which had two goldfinches on it! This is the first evidence I've seen that they know it exists. That feeder has been hanging out there, apparently lifeless, since I bought it last September. I wish I'd been home to see them, armed with my camera and zoom lens, but I'm sure they'll come around again, now that they know where to find food.

Elastic Bands

The other day one of my commenters mentioned that she picks up rubber bands (or elastic bands, as they're often called here in Britain) when she takes walks. Otherwise, she said, birds could mistake them for worms and eat them, with fatal results.

I'd heard of sea turtles mistakenly eating balloons, thinking they were jellyfish, but I'd never heard of this rubber band phenomenon. It filled me with dread because I see rubber bands all the time when I'm out walking the dog. I thought I'd pick some up, too.

(Coincidentally, I needed some rubber bands at work, so I could also put the ones I collected to use!)

On Sunday alone, I collected 32 of them. I think the mail carriers just toss them on the ground as they distribute the mail, which is banded together in the sorting process. I had so many that eventually I stopped picking them up, but I saw at least a dozen more. It's like trying to hold back the tides!

I have to hope that in London, our birds are smarter. Maybe they've evolved to differentiate between rubber bands and worms. Let's hope. Because this problem is beyond me.

On another ecological front, we are putting our new food recycling bin to use. It's not grossing me out so far.

Dave is sick again. The poor guy just cannot catch a break. I really think his surgery last year knocked his immune system out of whack. He's sniffling and has a fever of about 101º F. He called in a substitute teacher today -- he's staying in bed.

(Photo: Someone's tower of recycling, in West Hampstead.)

Foggy Sunday, with Lingering Visitor

Dave went to meet an old acquaintance for dinner on Saturday night -- someone he went to culinary school with in New York, seven or eight years ago. I stayed home and watched some favorite movies, "The Ice Storm" and "Tony Rome," relaxing with the dog.

I went to bed about 10 p.m. and was surprised when Dave showed up a few hours later with his friend in tow. Turns out she didn't have anywhere to stay the night (she was visiting London this weekend from Cambridge, where she's working for a few months) and Dave offered our couch. My impression, in my half-sleepy haze, was that she was quite chatty -- but they'd had wine, so that wasn't surprising.

The next morning, though, she was still chatty. And she stayed. And stayed. I eventually bailed, taking the dog to Hampstead Heath around 10 a.m. She talked Dave's ear off for a while longer, apparently.

Olga and I found peace and quiet on the Heath, where a layer of fog turned the trees into ghostly dancers.

Here's a little history lesson: Apparently a previous owner of Sandy Heath, back in the 1860s, got miffed when he was prevented from building on the land and decided to mine it for sand instead. He sold cartloads of it to the railroad for construction of a railway line, and left behind Sandy Heath's distinctive rolling, hilly landscape. Much of the forest that blankets that tract today has grown up in the years since, but the two trees on the right in the photo above -- surrounded by the low wooden railing -- predate the mining.

A rugby match was underway on Hampstead Heath Extension, but we didn't linger to watch. I don't know a thing about rugby and I can't think of anything more miserable than having to scramble around in wet, cold mud on a February morning.

We came back home, where the dog got a bath and then snoozed away the afternoon on the couch. I, meanwhile, finally finished "Telegraph Avenue," and I did laundry and changed the bedsheets and thus ended the day on a note of accomplishment! (It doesn't take much.)

Garden Update, with Shopping Trip

Things are beginning to come alive out in our garden. The camellia has a few early flowers (above), and the winter aconite is bearing bright yellow buds. I filled up the bird feeders yesterday morning.

This poor pigeon just could not figure out how to get at those peanuts. I felt pity for him (her?) and took a handful of nuts out to set on top of the fencepost, but the pigeon panicked when I appeared and flew away. I left the nuts anyway, and watched them get eaten by tits and possibly a dunnock.

Then Dave and I decided to brighten things up with a run to Homebase. We bought some hellebores for the flowerpots on our front steps, and some primroses for a hanging basket in the back. There were six little primrose plants and the basket only accommodated four, so I put these two in a pot on the ground. I took a photo because they are sure to be destroyed by squirrels in the not-too-distant future.

Dave also had a bizarre mission -- to buy clay flowerpots that would produce certain musical notes when struck. (This is for a piece his students are performing.) So we walked around the garden center at Homebase rapping flowerpots with our knuckles, and measuring the tones they produced with an iPhone tuner app. Dave wanted an E, a D and a G sharp, but we couldn't be that precise in the end -- we just picked four pots that sounded nice. (Even crazier, these flowerpots will have to be toted to Luxembourg for a concert!)

Homebase is the land of the impulse buy. In addition to our garden plants and more bird food, we bought a few more orchids because they looked sort of forlorn. One had been discounted to £2.50, the poor thing was in such bad shape. Oh, and I also bought an anti-fungal spray to combat the rust on our pelargoniums.

After we got home and planted our new plants, Dave gave the roses their spring pruning. As you can see, they're little more than a forest of sticks at this time of year. And as you can also see, our friend the pigeon (or one of his/her nearly identical cousins) finally got some bird seed!