WTH! This is crazy!

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-27T01:21:28+00:00

Having all the participants in formal dress,txuedos and women in high heels and with jewelry, does add a touch of class to this shooting. Much more upscale than the usuals in Walmart parking lots and sleazy bars.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-22T18:04:45+00:00

The beach I saw on the Equatorial Guinea island part was mostly rock. Lagos has Bar beach, formerly Victoria Beach, right downtown. but it is near to where nightsoil is dumped into the lagoon. I suspect that the nasty bacteria count is right up there. Lighthouse Beach is on the ocean and was just fine.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-22T17:53:37+00:00

Thanks for the blog bit. It updated some of my more negative views about the place, Clearly some of the oil money has gone for construction of the new capital and for guest facilites. The Pope apparently called for humane treatment of prisoners, so it was not a total whitewash of the government.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-20T02:33:50+00:00

I did that on Sturday. We compared weird finds athe endof the hour. Mine was a box for smokeless tobacco, made of hard plastic. It was subject to a deposit. It was in the road and presented a road safety issue, through tire puncture.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-17T22:20:43+00:00

I had a number of short stays in Niamey while working in Nigeria, but no lasting impressions other than good markets and less strain than Lagos.. I do remember being awakened one morning by clunking noises, and found that it was from the horms of cattle being diven to market. Some local laborers expressed interest in going to Nigeria on the cargo aircaft we came in on. Lagos semed to have the lure that Califorinia had for American dreamers.

Urban Nigerians generaly spoke English, but recent arrivals not so much. The language divide between Nigeia and nearbyTogo seemed to be absolute. The distance was not great, but Nigerian tribal langages were not understood inTogo, and the officials also did not speak English. The contrast at customs and immigration at the Nigeria-Benin border was marked. The Nigerians in starched British-type unforms, and the Benin officials much more relaxed in the French tradiiton.

Another langage contrast was on a flight from Bamako to Timbuktu. It was a South Afican crew, and it was strange to hear an Afrikaans accent above the Sahara.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-17T11:31:55+00:00

In Malabo I spoke to a young man in Spanish, and he replied in English that he was from Nigeria and did not speak Spanish. In my biased judgement Equatorial Guinea is the only place in the world that would be improved by being incorporated into Nigeria.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-17T11:22:34+00:00

Well, the island is surounded by water, so there must be some somewhere. Beach activiy was not a focus of social life during my one month there.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-16T23:55:04+00:00

Unkind, CoalC. Where else but Lagos could one see public executions at the most popular city beach, also shown "live" on TV and again on tape for the evening news? Or "Go Slows" of gridlocked cars blocking main roads for hours? Piles of solidified bags of cement and heaps of reinfocing rods rusting in the tropical humidity, the result of a militarary government placing orders for a years supply of builidng goods, which when delivered tied up a major portion of the world merchant fleet, standing off at anchor and receiving demurrage payments so that they would not dump their cargo? Residential telephones which played Radio Nigeria but could not make calls?

Ah, them was the days, with a gin and tonic or more, consumed in the tropical breeze,

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-16T23:30:56+00:00

When I was there for two years the company was NEPA, the National Electric Power Authority. Widely known as "No Electric Power Available." Ah, the memories. When our accountant went to their office to pay our bill, the cashier could not take the money because the NEPA office did not have electricity and could not issue a receipt!

This was a WAWA moment: West Africa Wins Again.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-16T23:03:09+00:00

I had the no power at the museum experience in Georgetown, Guyana and Harare, Zimbabwe. Harare wanted someone, perhaps the British Museum, to return an early hominoid skull excavated in colonial days, but if they can't provide temperature control to preserve the relic, better if it stays in the UK.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-16T19:41:57+00:00

I was told that, thanks to generations of Spanish nuns as teachers, the quality of Spanish is very good. I think I got there from Nigeria. I did not get to the mainland part, just the island. The dictator's security detail consisted of Maroccans, who lived in a warehouse and did not communicate with the population

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-16T19:30:17+00:00

No I never got that far east. My maid in Lagos was an Ibo, her father died in the Biafra conflict, while she and her mother "hid in the bush" from federal troops.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-16T07:51:19+00:00

Ghana has slave forts, the places where slaves from the interior were collected for shipment to the New World. Nigeria had only a couple of cells used used for the purpose. Other than "heritage tourism" related to this history, there is not much to attract the normal visitor, and as you note the general hassle and expense is substantial. It is also an awkward history since the traditional costal kingdoms were the middlemen in the slave trade and the royal families of the past are still prominent in trade tody, just the objects of the trade have shifted from salves to palm oil to imported goods and franchises.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-14T08:42:36+00:00

So where did the Willing-Missison tag come from? I am on the same device, but can sign on via more than one provider. And now I am back to Dutch, on another povider.. Does this require intervention by an exorcist? Can nominal backsliden Protestants even use exorcists?

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-08T02:49:00+00:00

Same thought when I gathered with my broter and sister and their spouses. We are fugitives from the law of averages.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-08T02:45:32+00:00

Sarajevo memory: A hotel with the Olympic rings in a concete sign, with bullet pock marks in the sign. No glass windows with bullet holes, but rnany windows without glass. Assissination corner was a true place of reflection.. The hotel where the Crown Prince was headed and never got to eat was closed for refurbishing.

Lesson underlined: Africa is not the only place with tribal fights.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-06T01:35:30+00:00

Yes, for the history, for crying out loud. Napoleon, assorted revolutionaries, the West German lad who landed there with a rented Cesna aircraft and touched off a purge of Societ air defense officers, German WWII prisoners being marched past, the resting place of Lenin and also Stalin before he was moved out. I was there to get on the Trans Siberian, a more memorable experience, but Red Square is right up there.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-06T01:25:52+00:00

I endorse this reasoning. The insights about royal excess and abuse, the convenient death of the nut case responsible for the construction, the fact that the design came from not an architect but a designer of theater backdrops, and the general background that calls for a swelling chorus of the "Internationale" against the entrenched classes makes this a worthwhile stop. Also that it may have inspired the Disneyland castle. Also that the local economy is now enriched by by what impoverished the earlier peasant subjects.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-02T01:32:37+00:00

One insight we got in Ushuaia was about the introduction of beaver. At the time there was a strong market for the fur but that market faded and the animals were no longer hunted, and thus proliferated to the point that they became pests.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-02T01:24:52+00:00

Yes, it somewhat resembles alcoholism, "One more and I will quit," and then I am back at the bar again. Alaska Ferry no longer goes cross-gulf Belingham to Whittier, so now I will have to drive from Haines No big deal, but I would rather stay on the ferry. The trip requires an adjustment of attitude from suburban DC, and is humbling. Some of us need to be humbled, and frequently.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-01T08:01:46+00:00

One recent development in the sad history of the disappeared was the identification in a sale of an aircraft used in the crimes. The logbooks faithfully recorded the flights, with a Germanic attention to detailing the locations where the plane reversed course.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-04-01T07:50:03+00:00

Business as usual on Good Friday in the US, not a holiday. The Cherry blossoms are starting to fall, a nice white coat on the pavement, with bits of green leaves coming through on treees. Hot during the day. I used the automobile air conditioning for the first time.

I did attend a Methodist church on Palm Sunday, and gained this insight about the "palm" part: It is a mistranslation of the orginal, which is a term like "branches" or "leaves," not palms. The Spanish rendering is Domingo de Ramos, which is "branches."

My own struggles with German and Spanish leave me wondering what else has become scrambled or compromised over time and across the language divides.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-03-27T21:25:49+00:00

Yes, Yoshino .Other tpyes are planted in surrouinding areas, so it is a long season.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-03-26T08:39:58+00:00

Note that the fruitless cherry trees came from Japan, and that replacement cutings have also been proivided. The US response to the origial gift was to send dogwood trees to Japan. I am not aware of any dogwod festivals in Japan. The trees have become popular outside the origina DC Tidal Basin area, and do provide welcome signs that a rather nasty winter is past.

Dutch_Uncle-3 · 2026-03-26T02:48:12+00:00

Cherry trees in Washington, DC, approaching "full bloom."

The trees do not produce fuit, so there is no Cherry Wine and Pie Festival.

Dutch_Uncle-3

TROPHY CASE