VERY SHORT BIO

 

Zé do Rock was born a damd long time ago in Brazil, livd 6570 days, drank 1357 liters of alcohol, playd 940 ours of flute and 648 of soccer, hichhiked 200.000 km in 1457 cars, planes, ships, tranes, ox carts and tracters, visited 116 cuntrys and 16 prisons, fell in love 8 times, made a film, invented an artificial languej, created simplified spellings for sevral languejes, rote 3 books, didnt studdy eny enything and he’s stil alive, spending moast of his time in Munic, Germany.

 

In case this is tu short, reed the folloing pajes.


 

SYNOPSIS OF THE AUTOBIOGRAFY AND

BIBLIOGRAFY OF ZÉ DO ROCK

 

 

BEFOR BIRTH

 

The father of my fathers father came to Brazil as a baptist pastor from Lithuania. My fathers mother was a grandauter of german immigrants. My mothers parents came from Russia. All my granparents wer farmers, my father was an acountant and my mother a housewife. On my mothers side of the family, my great-granfather was stabd to deth in Russia, my granfather died of cirrhosis, an uncle was kild wile hunting by a frend who said he didnt see him, another uncle died wen he was six, playing with a gun, and my mother was kild in a hold up. Brazil isnt less dangerous than the US, but such a family history isnt normal even in Brazil. In Europe thay ar atacking foreners, in Brazil there is no discrimination, thay atac foreners and nationals regardless.

 

0-5 yeers – YUNG KID

 

I was born and ferst lernd seeing, smelling, eeting, walking and speeking, aultho i’v never really managed to speek properly.

 

5- 10 yeers – OLD KID

 

I went to scool, lernd piano, playd soccer, etc, and later forgot it all.

 

10 - 20 yeers - YUNG YUNG

 

I kept going to scool and then i finished it. In my free time i was quite a rowdy, i did a lot of shop lifting, left bars and resterants without paying, threw stones on cars from bridges. At the age of 15 i could stil walk reasonably after drinking a liter rum with 50% alcohol in 10 minutes. I also tried a lot of drugs, but like President Clinton i never inhaled. Thay arested me sometimes, and sometimes i went voluntarily into prisons because i was travling and didnt hav the money for a hotel. In between i werkd in offices: personel department, travel agency, perchasing department, and as encyclopedia salesman. I studied theater, body expression, english, dance, german, russian, flute, chello. Wen i was 17 i left my pairents house and my cuntry. I wanted to hichhike around the werld to be shure that the werld is really round, but after a yeer i was robd in Ecuador and lost my passport, so that i had to come bak to Brazil. In the Amazon i was arested for 2 months, because the military suspected me of being a spy or a terrerist.

 

20 - 30 yeers – OLD YUNG 

 

I made a mistake and married. I werkd for a wile as translater for german and english and then i went with my wife to see the big werld. Of corse we just hichhiked. On cars, truks, ox carts, bikes, tranes and eeven planes. We had some littel jobs in the US, in Germany, France, Norway, and in Europe my wife got fed up with travling, so i went alone to Africa. In Africa sometimes i had to walk hundreds of miles without a lift, because thair was no trafic. I was in prison quite offen, for nothing. After a yeer i got a leter from my wife telling me that she had fallen in love with an austrian gy. So i was forsed to fly bak and try to save the marrej and the onner, altho i didnt hav the money for the flite. In Germany där vas nott mutsch tu save ennymohr, butt ennywäi wie still livt tugedzer für 2 Monaths, der austrian Gei und me. Up to this Point i had werkd as a masheen washer, asembly line werker, truk driver, mooving company werker, TV-tower assembly cheef in Africa, clerk, coorier driver, jiggolo, gide, kichen helper, film extra, cammera helper, etc

 

30 - 40 yeers – YUNG ADULT

 

In Germany i made a lo budjet film on video with a frend. The titel was NO ELEPHANTS, becauz thair wer no ellefents in the film. It was shoen in one sinnema for a few weeks, had a good public reseption, and later was shoen in festivals. The revews wer good, aultho thay aulways mentiond the bad tecnical quality. No wunder, without money, equipment or cru.

 

I went bak to Africa. I travveld thru Maroc, Mauretanie, Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinee, Guinee-Bissau, Senegal, Gambia, Algerie, Tunisie, Niger, Togo, Benin, Nigeria, Cameroun, Gabon, Congo, Zaire, Zambia, Angola, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Lesotho, Swaziland, Malawi, Tanzania, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Sudan, Egypt. In Djibouti for exampel evrything is imported and thairfor quite expensiv. A littel can of beer cums from Germany and costs 5 dollers. The toilet paper cums from China, and thair u realize that eeven tu produse toilet paper u need sum kno-how, and the chinese dont hav it. The choclat is from Brazil and dusnt taist as good as swiss choclat but much beter than the chinese toilet paper.

 

Then i went on tu Asia and Australia. In Australia i lernd evrything u need tu kno tu servive in this cuntry: hunting boomerangs and throing cangaroos. Hunting boomerangs is easy, especially if thay’r lying around in a corner. Throing cangaroos is a lot harder, especially throing them in a way that thay cum bak agen.

 

Tuvalu, a tiny republic in the South Sees, is 30 km long and 300 m wide. Wen the cuntry has lo tide it is twise as big, because it is twise as wide. Thair is oanly one resterant and wun street, very easy for taxi drivers: the passenjer cums in, the driver asks: for- or bakwerds?

 

I eventually arived bak in Brazil. Aultugether i had had 35 difrent jobs, visited 102 cuntrys (now 116...), hichhiked 200.000 km (the same as 5 times around the werld, duing it at the Equater, wair the Erth has its big belly). The trip took 13 yeers and i had a lot of trubbel with robbers, poleese and wimmen.

 

This is the story of my ferst book ‚fom winde ferfeelt’, wich shood be cauld ‘Eezy Riter’ in english. Or maybe “Pissing in the Rane”, “The last samba in Kyoto” or “Winds up”.

 

I stayd haf yeer in Brazil but ended up going tu Germany agen becauz of a wooman. I rote my ferst book, ‘fom winde ferfeelt’. It was publishd by Edition Diá, Berlin. Thair wer mor than 100 enthuziastic revews and around 40 TV feetures/intervews about it. Insted of selling millions, it sold “just” 30.000 (and is stil selling a few hundreds a munth, after 8 yeers), becauz wen the book was publishd, the publisher had a financial crisis, so that he coodnt aford eny distribution eny mor. Peepel had tu order it and had tu spel the titel the “rite” way (“fom winde ferfeelt” insted of normal german “vom winde verfehlt”). In the middel of the meedia boom the publisher went mor or less bankrupt. Later on an importent publishing house, Gustav Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig, baut the coppyrite and anuther big publishing house, Piper (München) made the paperbak, but the meedia boom was over.

 

By the way, the book ends with a luv story. I didnt get the gerl i wanted, but got anuther wun, hoo was fine tu. Later she gave me a lot of trubbel, wich is wat usually happens wen peepel stay tugether (and we’r stil tugether – a reccord), but thats not in the book eny mor...

 

 

40 - 50 yeers – OLD ADULT

 

My seccond book is cauld ‘UFO in der küche’ (UFO in the kichen) and apeerd 1998 in the Kiepenheuer Verlag, Leipzig. It is an autobiografical siense-fiction. The biggest part of the story happens in the yeer 2019, wich was quite a hard yeer for me. The story is about a kidnaping by a UFO and the kidnaping of the moast famus literary critic in Germany. It is ritten in ‘wunschdeutsch’, wich we cood translate az ‚wish-german’ or ‚faverit german’: in my shoes (shows...) around Germany and the uther german speeking cuntrys i’v askd 18.000 peepel tu vote on spelling chainjes. It has far less chainjes in spelling than ‘ultradoitsh’, but stil 10 consistent chainjes insted of 10 inconsistent chainjes, wich is the case of the reesent german reform. Enyway it is the oanly really democratic reform propozal with consultations far and wide.

 

In 2002 my folloing book was published at Kunstmann Verlag and it was cauld DEUTSCH GUTT SONST GELD ZURUCK (sumthing like ‚german gud, odawize moni bak’). It is a colection of tru and invented storys, made az a teeching and reeding book for SIEGFRIEDISCH and ‘Kauderdeutsh’. Siegfriedisch is a german languej with oanly germanic werds, wich meens that a werd like ‘Tisch’ (tabel) has tu be replased by ‘Essbrett’ (eeting bord), sinse it cums from latin ‘discus’ (az dus english ‘dish’). ‘Zwiebel’ (unnion) cums from latin, so it has tu be replased by ‘Heulgemüse’ (houling vejetable), ‘Bus’ becums ‘Vielwagen’ (Menycar), ‘taxi’ becums ‘Zahlwagen’ (paycar), etc. The uther languej of the book is ‘Kauderdeutsh’ and it is a super internationaliset deutsh, it is a mix de varios linguas, aber meiste wordes come del english.

 

Besides i rote for 11 antholojys, along with Günther Grass, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Stan Nadolny, Patrick Süskind (The Parfume). And i rite for aul majer german newspapers, like Süddeutsche Zeitung, FAZ, Die Zeit.

 

I was aworded the Munic Litrature Award 1996, the Schloss Wiepersdorf Stipendium 1996, the Pfefferbeisser Satirepreis 2001, the Literaturstipendium des Märkischen Kreises 2002, amung uthers. I performd around 300 litrature shoes in majer german opera houses, theaters, TV proagrams, etc.

 

And how wil my ajing continnue?

 

50-70 yeers – YUNG OLD

70 - 80 yeers - OLD OLD

80 - 90 yeers – YUNG AINCIENT

90 - 100 yeers – OLD AINCIENT

Over 100 – THE POPE, MAYBE

 

Wel, i dont beleev that i’l make it that far if i keep this rithm.

 

Zé do Rock


 

 

EXERPTS FROM ‘EEZY RITER’

 

Coppyrite Zé do Rock, coppyrong also Zé do Rock

 

***

 

CHAPTER 1

THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS OF THE MAMAS & THE PAPAS

 

He came, came, and left.  For a long time she stood in the doorway, her eyes still fixed on the spot where the road makes a curve and disappears into the Lithuanian countryside.  Nine months later she realized that he had really come and left something with her.  One day, this little being was to become a big man, get married, and spawn many more little beings. Among them was my great-grandfather, who, in turn, spawned a couple of children of his own. Then he was converted. Before, he had been a Catholic; now he was a faithful Baptist. Without going into the advantages of this decision and the moral preferences that influenced it, I would have to say that this forever altered the course of my life.  It never would have occurred to him otherwise to take a job as a minister in a dinky little burg in southern Brazil; to settle and preach the Gospel in a small town with square garden plots and a neo-Gothic church. If he had stayed in Lithuania, I never would have been born. But if I was born there, I would now be standing in the bread line and complaining about the Russians.  You can do that in Brazil too, but it won't do you much good.  I mean, it's not the Russians' fault that things aren't going well for the Brazilians.

In Brazil he spawned many more children. One of them was my grandfather, who grew up and got married too. My grandmother, like my grandfather, was a little slow, but I just got to know them when they were 80 and maybe they were a bit quicker before. She was Brazilian, but the most she could say in Portuguese was "thank you". Her maiden name was Schmidtke, a very popular Indian name meaning "dances-with-anteeters". Because my grandparents were strictly religious, they neither drank nor smoked on their farm.  Their main crop was tobacco.

         It was in this environment that my father grew up. I don't know too much about my mother's family: her ancestors came from Russia, her great-grandfather was stabbed to death, her father died of natural alcoholic causes, one of my uncles got killed playing with a pistol when he was 6 years old, another uncle bit it when he was out hunting (his friend allegedly confused him with a deer).

 

***

 

In the beginning there was no word. Then a man wanted to sit down on the floor and sat on a hedgehog. He said „shit!“ , language was born and the man couldn’t sit for a few weeks but swore for many years.

There is no record of what the hedgehog said, but it doesn’t matter. For us at least. For us it matters that the languages grew to be very complex systems. At some point in history, as the vocabulary kept growing, the grammar began to get simpler again. In some languages more so, in some less. Some apparently stopped their evolution thousands of years ago, and some others, like English and Chinese, had a very fast development and are almost completely naked of „grammatical clothes“.

Thank God the international language is English and not Chinese, because Chinese has a simple grammar but also a phonetic system that is as easy to learn as martian and a writing system that is probably more difficult than all the other languages of the world put together.

English has been the international language par excellence in this century and will probably remain so for a few centuries to come, even if the main English speaking countries lose their importance. I suppose, as do many people, that Asia will be the central point of the world in the relatively near future. Even if their inhabitants don’t become richer than people in the west, they don’t need to be so rich to be so powerful. Having half of the world’s population would mean that at least half of the world’s wealth will be there. The only country with enough mass to dominate the world economy would be China, but no foreigner can learn the language, not even other Asians, so they will be forced to use a lingua franca to communicate between themselves, and that will be English. This happened to Latin, too, which survived many centuries after the fall of the Roman Empire. I don’t know what this English will sound  when most English speakers are from Asia.

Unlike Latin, English has a very simple grammar, even if there are quite a few tricks to speaking it really well (eg the use of prepositions like in, by, on, etc). Any foreigner can learn enough to make him or herself understood, but it is not so easy for him or her to speak it perfectly, as there are quite a few difficult sounds, eg the th and the many vowel sounds you don’t find in other languages. The greatest problem in this language is the spelling, which also creates problems for pronunciation (for instance I used to pronounce ‘answer’ with ‘w’ until a few years ago, and I know English professors who discover very often that they’ve been pronouncing a word the wrong way their whole lives). No language in the world (except for Chinese and Japanese) needs a spelling reform as urgently as English. Some languages have an almost fully predictable spelling, like Italian, most of them have a few sounds that can be spelled in 2 or 3 different ways, but english has usually more than 10 ways to spell a vowel. Think of the word ‘late’, that could be spelled ‘late, lait, leit, layt, leyt, laight, leight, laet, laot (as in gaol), laut (as in gauge), leat’. A word like ‘anticipate’ has more than 1000 possible ways in which it could be pronounced (you just have to multiply all the ways the single letters can be pronounced). Look at the words weird, their, veil, forfeit, height, heifer; or at the words police, notice, device. If you want more: wore-word-women-woke-won-wolf-womb. One spelling, 7 pronunciations. G. B. Shaw went into a restaurant and wrote what he wanted on a piece of paper: a ‘ghoti’. Of course the waiter didn’t know what that was: he wanted a fish. GH as in ‘laugh’, O as in ‘women’ and TI as in ‘nation’, thus ‘f-i-sh’. No other language in the world has had so many people trying to „repair“ it – even many famous people -  and no language is so difficult to „repair“. There are studies showing that Italian children aged 7 can spell as well as English or American children aged 9. That doesn’t have to do with the teaching quality and it doesn’t mean English speaking children are stupid. It just means that you need much less time to learn 26 information bits than 26,000. Italian is regular, English completely chaotic.


CHAPTER 9

A LITTLE DICTIONRY TO BREAK UP THE MONOTONY OF THIS BOOK

 

baby-sitter - people who hav the bad manners to use small kids as seats

baroque - modern music playd in pubs

beatnik - order to hit Nicolas

belly - with many bels, eg 'this church is quite belly, isnt it?'

blakout - sign at the dors of racist pubs

bodybuilding – hall for corpses

bookkeeper - person who doesn’t like to lend his books

boycott - bed for male children

cannibal – clever globe

caraway – vehicle theft

carnation - USA

carpet - animal that is easy to carry in a motorized vehicle


CHAPTER 10

MISFIRE

 

In my zinglish i proposed that spellings wich corespond to the coloquial language should be at least as oficial as spellings coresponding to the formal language, so i used to spel ‘i wanna’ insted of ‘i want to’. But later in the discussion groups we found out that this would lead to very different spellings in different cuntrys, since slang tends to be regional. English is the oficial language of mor than 40 cuntrys, and it is the great advantage that u can read the same english everywhere in the world. We cant prohibit people to spel acording to coloquial language, but we wont encourage it either. 

 

PHASE 2 – GH/PH – One of the most activ members in the Society, Masha Bell, rote a book shoing where the main problems in english spelling ar: redundant double consonants, long ‘e’ (lead, meet, receive, believe, people, etc), and a few others.

 

But here we wont work by the order of importance, we’l work the sounds alfabetically. The exeption is GH/PH: acording to Masha, corecting the gh/ph-anomalies isnt a big relief for lerners, because gh’s and ph’s ar not very frequent. Stil, it is the first change people think of, since it holds the most absurd spellings, like ‘though, hiccough, rough, plough’, etc.

 

I said it befor: we only change if the resulting word is the final RITE form. But in the case of GH/PH, we change it anyway, and make all the necessary changes to make a RITE form of it: ‘though’ is easy, it becomes ‘tho’. ‘Hiccough’ is speld usually ‘hiccup’ anyway. ‘Eight’ is speld ‘ate’, and ‘right’ becomes ‘rite’. ‘Thought’ becomes ‘thaut’.

 

PH becomes F. We’l spel ‘ruf’ for ‘rough’, but sometimes we’l double the F, as in ‘laffing’ for ‘laughing’. See the ‘a’-change later... or leave it, if u dont care.

 

***

 

At the age of 15 i hichhaik thru Argentina , Chile, and Uruguay. These cuntrys and suthern Brazil constitute european South America. Argentina was one of the welthyest cuntrys in the world, la opera in Buenos Aires was alredy world famosa at the beginning of the 20th century, even then they had a subway sistema. To this day Argentina has a haya per capita número of doctores than almost all cuntrys in the world. In suthern South America la populación is almost exclusivamente wait (white...) and there is hardly any illiteracy, besaids la rate of meat consumo is probablemente la hayest in the world. In Buenos Aires there ar mor people aut on la street at 2 in la nait than there ar in London at 5 in la evening. Argentina and Chile can be as hot as the Sahara and as cold as Escandinavia.

To finance my trips, i hav to work in between. My father doesn’t giv me money for travling around. With 15 i work at a travel agency, with 16 i work in the office of a construction company. One day 3 gys come running in, they hav little pistols and big ies. They want our money, is this a joke? Wel, beter to just do wat they say. I hav 100 dollars in my pants pocket, 10 dollars in my jacket pocket. I giv them the 10 dollars, maybe they'l be happy with that. Evryone put their money on the counter and i hope that they wont serch me, because then they mite get mad. They rummage thru all of the drawers - but miss one of them. It is payday, and in that very drawer ar the pay envelopes for 200 workers. They go to the safe with the boss, there isnt much for the taking there either. We all get forced to squeez into the lumber room and there isnt much room, because there was a lot of people visiting the office. The robbers take off, drive too fast, draw the atention of the police and get chased. By the time the shootout is over, one of the robbers is ded and 2 of them hav been arested.

After that i work as a bying agent, then taking poles for Gallup. Good evening, ma'am, wich do u prefer?  Peca-Cola or Copsi-Cola? - I prefer Poca-Cola. - Wy? - Because it tastes beter. - But wy does it taste beter to u? - Uh, go fuk yurself. Then as an encyclopedia salesman. And i’m constantly spending mor money than i ern. Nevertheless, i want to go from Brazil to Brazil, around the other side. I want to find out if the Erth is really round.

From São Paulo to Campo Grande, about 1000 kilometers, the roads ar good, from Campo Grande to the boliviano border they deterioran to little mor than beaten paths. From the border to Santa Cruz de la Sierra there is no road at all, there is no choice but to take the tren. And thats no great luxury. There’s an enorme número of suitcases, crates, cloth sacos, chickens, and people. U habe to keep yur ies open to make sure that no pig or child pees on yur nek. The landscape of smels is oberwelming, the best plaza is riding on the roof. There is almost no room to sit there either, but at least u ar breathing fresh air.

From Santa Cruz i can start hichhiking again. I stay in a hotel one nite a weec so that i can bathe.  Evry other nite i sleep on the street.  Bolivia is like a staircase, the farther west u travel the hyer up u ar. Santa Cruz is way down in the swamp, Cochabamba is at a middle altitude, and La Paz is way up hy. Hichhiking is a bit complicado there. The few carros that there ar dont stop for me. The truc drivers stop for me, but wont take me along unless i giv them moneda. Yeah, and wat am i supposed to do? If i pay, even if it isnt mucha moneda, then it isnt hichhiking any mor. So wen trucs pull over for me, i asc the driver if they'd take me along for free. Some of them say yes, some of them say no. If they say no, i dont go with them. I dont get upset if they say no. They need to suplement their income with the money they make off hichhikers. And if they take me along for free, then the other pasageros mite complain. Sometimes they let me ride up front in the cabine, other times in bac in the cargo area. I prefiro riding in bac, because i’m usually tired. I’m frecuentemente on the verge of falling asleep, and if i sit up frente i hav to entretener the driver. In Bolivia a lot of truc drivers believe that fatiga is transmissible. If the pasagero falls asleep, then the driver mite fall asleep too. There is a cierta lógica to that, since the driver doesn’t hav anyone to talc to. But these drivers believe that sleep is a condición as infecciosa as the flu.

The villages ar pretty poor. Sometimes u run into turistas, and they speak of these villages as if they wer the only Soud America. Yeah, yeah, Sud America is very primitiva. They could go to Buenos Aires or São Paulo, but they'r not interesados in that. I could sey, in Europa ther is nothing but hard times. The poverty that u see ther is incredible. It gets cold as hel in el winter and the heating doesn’t work. U cant get enything u need. No bred, no meat, no beer, and wen u run out of maches u hav to stand in line for a haf our. Even educados people ern little mor than a pittance, but thats not so bad, since Europa is cheap and there’s nothing to by enyways. And wen i sey Europa, i dont mean that i hav landed in Paris or Berlin.  U can go to suthern or eastern Europa too. Then u can talk about Europa el wey europeos talk about South America after they fly to the Andes and then tel evryone at home wat South America is like.

U mite argue that the cuntryside is mucho bigger than the city. But most people liv in the cities. In Brazil it is around 80%, and the mor populosos cuntrys in South America arnt very diferentes.

The landscape gets mor and mor biutiful, and i become less entusiasmado about riding in bak. The road goes uphil, uphil, and uphil, and it gets awfully cold. It isnt too enjoyable for my nose either, a lot of the time the truks ar fild with fish. It gets so hy up, that dogs and cows hav fur like very wooly sheep. Then u drive for ours along a neverending plateau, with sno-capd mountens on the horizon, and all of a sudden u come to a gigantesca cratera that looks as if a meteoro had smashd into the Erth. Down in the hole lies La Paz, the hyest capital city in the world (minwile, there is nowadays a city on the top too, around the cratera).

La Paz means (the) peace, but unfortunatly there wasnt much peace in La Paz. It's not as if the bolivianos ar constantemente declarando war contra other cuntrys - they'd rather no. They alredy lost a good pieza of land to Paraguay and their accesso to the oceano to Chile. As is often the caso in Latinoamerica, the wars ar not faut between cuntrys but rather internamente. The powerful people contra the resto of the populación or a few powerful people contra a few other powerful people.  Usually the winners ar the ones that hav the CIA on their side. On average, Bolivia jas jad little mor than one presidente por year since it gained independencia in 1825, even tho the presidente is supposed to be electo to a 4-year termo. Good república. Lots of presidentes.

Wel, it’s gon calmer now over there.

Peru. I visito Cuzco and Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu is the moust magnificente inca ruina ever found.  It is at the top of a steep montaña and is a great plaza to cometer suicidio. The clifs ar precarios, deth is garantida, and the landscape is, as i said befor, magnificente. Unlike the hichhiking here. Once i had to ride in the bak of a truk por 3 days, it was like being in a wolk-in freezer with sevral fans blouing. The truk was fild with cacao, so i ate nothing but cacao beans por 3 dias. They taste like chocolate without sucar. Kind of bittersweet, but just entirely without azucar. On this truk i couldn’t shield myself from the wind. Thank God the driver rarely drouv very fast, because the roud was sou bad.

On this viage i soon lern how disapointed people get wen i tel them that i am brazileño. How monotono, he's from a nabering cuntry and wont even be rico (with lots of monedas) like the reales gringos. They want to meet people from far away, from the USA, Europe, or some plaza like that. So i tel them that i am deutsh.  I dont hav any beter idea of wat to tel them. I could say that i am ruso, but then they'd just think i'm a spy. Or i could say i'm  americano. But then a lot of people would be able to tel that english isnt my nativa lengua. Only deutshis would be able to tel that my deutsh isnt the real thing, definitivamente no, but they arnt so many. Befor long a peruano asks me if i was in the war. "Wich war ar u talquing about?" i ask. "About the Segunda World War, naturalmente."  I’m 17 years old, with the face of a 14-year-old, and we ar in the middle of the 70s.  How could i hav possiblemente participado in WWII?  "Wel, i mean, u'r deutsh..."  I find myself having this conversación quite frequentemente, and eventualmente i come up with an anser that is apropriada to the level of the questión.  "Hav u been in the war?"  "Wich war?"  "In the Segunda World War." "No, no, i only faut in the First World War. I was too old for the Segunda."

Evrywhere on the Altiplano there ar coca leaves for sale. The first time i herd someone yelling "coca, coca!" in the plaza del mercado, i was mor than a little shokd. The  leaves ar available in big sacos, by the kilo. I hav tu try it and go up tu a salesman. I by 1 kilo of coca leaves and start chuing away. It's a pretty tiring afair. I chew, and chew, and chew, and nothing happens. It is supposed tu keep u awake, but as tired as i am, i hav no chance tu tel how efectivo it is.

On the costa del Pacífico in the norte the towns consisten almost exclusivamente of villas. Somewhere or other there should be some huts or at least normales houses, but ay dont see any. Ay hed to Guayaquil. During the trip ay'v been eating watever ay could scavenge: warm milk strate from a cow, avocados, carrots that ay stole from fields, crab cakes, patata cakes, meat pockets, melones, chicha (an indefinible pink drink), café, beer, rice with goulash. That evening in Guayaquil, ay feel sik, dam sik. Ay look por a toilet, but there arnt any in Guayaquil. None of the bares or restaurantes has one, and ay cant find a publica toilet to save may life. None of the hoteles let me in unless ay take a room. Absoluto desespero. Ay hav only two opciones: shit or day (die...). In the middle of a boulevard there’s a tráfico isla with a hedge around it that is meybe 30 or 40 centímetros (meybe a little mor than a foot) hay. Ay pley va-banque and relieve mayself of a couple of kilogramas on the spot. People stop to look at me, incluyendo two policías. They come over and ask me wat ay’m doing. "Wy, shitting!"  Of corse they notify me that this isla de tráfico is no a shitter. "Then please, can yu tel me where ay could find a shitter in this town?" They hav as little a clu as ay do and so they leave me alone. Ay think the hole town is a shitter.

From Guayaquil ay meic may wey norte up la costa until ay araib in a godforseiquen plaza cold Esmeralda. La gran mayoría of la populación is of  decendencia africana and la taun jas a respectable amaunt of naitlaif. Ay luc por a hotel, but ol of them ar itha ful or tu expensiv. Ther’s no otha choice for mi but tu slip on la bich. Ay asc a passa-by if ther is a hotel in la vicinidad. Hi cant direct me tu a hotel, but ther’s a neibi bilding just ouber ther. Los oficers ther luc cul and just mait let me spend la nait. Ther’s a couple of drunquen seilas siting in frente of el geit, ay thinc abaut it por a segundo and decido no tu asc - ay'l just slip on la bich after ol. Ay faind mayself a spot and ley daun. Ther’s stil a lot of pipel woquing araund, sou it isnt such a gran plaza tu slip. After a wail ay gou tu a restaurant on la bich tu sit, drinc a bir, and weit until things calman daun.

There’s only 2 people in the restaurant, the waiter and me. We talk a little bit and he offers to let me sleep in the restaurant.  The long benches arnt as soft as the sand, but then again they’r not as sandy either. And it seems a lot safer, since the gy has to stay up all nite.  I sleep like a fallen log. The next day i wake up and soon realize that evrything that was worth anything in my bakpak has vanished. I go to find the waiter, but he’s vanished too. There wasnt much to steal, but my flute and my camra ar gon. The flute was covered by my fathers insurance. My cash reserve was so wel hidden that the thief never found it.

The owner of the restaurant and the police come. The owner tels me that the waiter just has got out of jail 2 weeks befor. The owner wanted to help him get a start on an honest life. It was actually a good thing that i never woke up - not only did the waiter take my stuf, but some of the restaurants stuf too, including the gun.

I send the form that i got from the police bak to Brazil and hav to wait in Ecuador until the money for a new flute arives. So i go to Quito. I thum a ride from an american couple. They invite me to stay with them in their giant villa. The garden is almost as big as Texas, if u'l permit me this exaggeration. I got a bedroom that is as big as a hangar. There is room on the bed for me and 10 women. A bar with evry imaginable kind of bottle is there too, and on the curten there’s a bel that i could ring to call the maid or the butler. Evry meal is a banquet. Sometimes i get bord in my room, so i go downstairs to get something to eat or to chat with my hosts. Wile stil in my underwear and slippers i got to meet some ambassador or maybe the director of United Fruits.  Helo, how ar u doing? Hows business?  The hole thing has just one cach: my hosts ar such radical rite-wingers that Jesse Helms couldn’t see them with a telescope, thats how far to the rite they ar. And it's not like they wer racist or anything like that, they couldn’t care less about race. No, they ar sectarian capitalists. Not only do they make a lot of money logging the ecuadorian jungle, but they belong to an atheist cult that takes capitalism to be the hyest form of morality and ultimat justice. They hav brochures like the Jehovahs Witnesses and ar of the opinion that there’s communist infiltration evrywhere: Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon - evry last one of them a commy in disguise.

O wel, but life is good in this house, i try to enjoy it and just keep my mouth shut. But the arguments start to get nastier and mor frequent, so i end up moving out. From miserable riches to miserable rags. I find the student housing complex, make frends with Ramón, and move into his room. I sleep on the flor. U'r not supposed to stay too long at a frends place without paying, but wat else am i going to do?

I do my eating in the kichen. Unfortunatly i dont hav a meal card, so i hav to make frends with the kichen staf. I dont get anything normal to eat, just watevers left over in the pots. I eat a lot wen there’s a lot left, i eat very little wen there’s very little left. One time i ate 2 kilos (almost 5 pounds) of fruit salad. Then i drank about 2 liters (2 quarts) of strong blak coffee to wash all of it down. U can imagine how that ended up, i wont go into detail in case u'r in the middle of brekfast rite now.

Ramón thinks I'm fun to hav around, but he tels me i should maybe take a shower evry so often.  Wen i come home late, he notices my arival even if he doesn’t hear me or see me come in. Thats a problem. The dormitry doesn’t hav a bath or a shower. U hav to go to the public baths around the corner. And it is fucking cold there. Beter to just be a pig wen the outside air temperature rarely gets abuv 10°C (50 F), i say, and the water isnt much warmer. But eventually the social pressure to bathe becomes too great and i cave in.

One flor above us livs Pablo, a short gy with a dark complexion and a very nasal voice, whose glasses ar so thik that u'd almost think he'd be beter off blind. Together with him and his frend Joaquín, who looks like a skinny viking, we climb Mount Cotopaxi, 6000 meters (20000 feet) hy. At least we intend to. On the second day we ar in the middle of a cloudbank with sno under our feet and we cant tel if we’r going forwards or bakwards. We dont even kno for sure that our next step wont be off a clif. We lose site of each other and stil manage somehow to get down and come bak home. The next day i run into them in town, they act as if nothing happend. Random gys, yes, they ar.

Then we travel north, and on the way bak we run into a police chekpoint. I didnt bring my passport with me, and so it takes me some time befor i can convince the cops that i can be an exemplary citizen even if i dont hav a passport with me.

In Quito i do a couple of translating jobs and become a little bit less poor. Soon after that the insurance money arives from Brazil. I by a used flute, a used camra, and am redy to hit the road. But Ramón wont let me go. He insists that i come with him to visit his parents' farm. I dont want to, i dont want to, i just want to get away, but i end up going with him. This time i’m not stupid, i take my passport along. We take the bus to Riobamba in the south. I lose my passport in a bus where the driver is also the owner. Big businesses ar easy to find, but there ar hundreds of small bus companies with only one bus. My frend doesn’t kno wat kind of bus it was either, but that is no problem, since u’r required to enter yur name on a passenger list. There’s a carbon copy of the passenger list, the original is given to the first police chekpoint wen the bus leaves Quito. The other copy is given to the last police chekpoint, rite befor u get to Riobamba. So all i hav to do is go to the first police chekpoint, find the list, and i'l kno the name of the owner and his adress.

The police sort the stak of lists by date and time. We left on saturday morning, now - the lists for friday evening ar there, so ar the ones for saturday afternoon, but there arnt any for saturday morning. Officer, wats the deal here? Where is the list for saturday morning? The policeman looks thru the pile, doesn’t find it either. This cant be, i mean hundreds of buses hav gon thru the chekpoint on saturday morning! He explains: sometimes they run out of toilet paper. I go to the other police chekpoint in Riobamba, they ar totally disorganized there. I get a big sak cramd full of lists. I dump them all on the ground outside, the police station is too small. After i get thru 1 kilo of lists it starts to rain. By the time i’v gon thru them all, i’m so wet that i could swim in my own skin. I look so desprat that even a little boy comes to me and givs me a sweet. I’l never find my list.

I call the brazilian embassy and tel them that i lost my passport, wat should i do now? The man at the embassy tels me i beter find it. And wat should i do if i cant find it? Then i need to bring them 8 fotocopies of my ID card, 8 copies of my voter registration card, 8 copies of my military ID, 8 copies of my income tax return, 8 copies of my marriage license if i'm married, 8 copies of my deth certificat if i'm ded. Then i'm supposed to pay them a couple hundred dollars and wait 5 months. Nowadays u get yur passport on the same day or the next day, but in the 70s the military was stil in power and they wer pretty paranoid.

I hunt hy and lo thru all of Ecuador, sometimes i think i'v pikd up a hot trail, then it turns out it was the rong bus. It's hard to find a bus in a cuntry about as big as Oregon. Especially wen all i kno about the bus is that it's green with blak stripes. After a week of uninterupted serching, practically without sleep, i giv up. Ramón tels me it was stupid of me to bring my passport along.  They only chek in the north of the cuntry, but never in the south, where Riobamba is. Great, now he told me. Wel, i gess i had never askd befor.

So i could either hang out for 4 or 5 months or go bak to Brazil and get myself a new passport in much less time. I arive at the final decision: bak to Brazil, get a passport, work a little bit, and hit the road again. The only problem is that Ecuador is one of the 2 cuntrys in South America that dont border on Brazil. I hav to go thru either Peru or Colombia illegally. I call the embassy and ask them if they cant giv me temporary papers, a laisser-passer. No dice. We brazilis ar kind to one another and ar always redy to help a cuntryman in need.

If i had found a hotel in Esmeralda, i wouldn’t hav had to sleep on the beach. If i had decided to spend the nite with the navy, i wouldn’t hav slept on the beach either. If i hadnt decided to drink one mor beer at the restraurant, i wouldn’t hav gotten robd. If i hadnt been robd, i wouldn’t hav stayd so long in Quito to wait for the insurance money to arive. If i hadnt stayd so long in Quito, i wouldn’t hav gon to the north without my passport, i would hav been travling alone with my baggage in the direction of Colombia. If i hadnt gon to the north, i wouldn’t hav gotten chekd. If the police hadnt happend to chek me, i wouldn’t hav had the unpleasant experience of landing in a police chekpoint without a passport. If i hadnt told Ramón that i was just going to take off, i would never hav gon to the south of Ecuador. If i hadnt travelled to the north without my passport and gotten chekd, i wouldn’t hav taken my passport with me to the south either. If we had taken a bus belonging to a bigger company, i would hav found the bus and probably my passport too.  If the policeman hadnt wanted to take a shit and used my list for toilet paper, i would hav also found the bus. So now i had to go bak to Brazil, where my life had taken a sharp u-turn.  The probability of evrything happening just as it did is rufly a million to one. So mor likely than hitting six numbers in the lottery. But not much mor likely. And that happens all the time. To many people.

I hav to get thru Colombia illegally, get into a shared taxi, and hope. Most of the people in the shared taxis ar people who liv on the border, so they probably wont get chekd too intensely.  My baggage is in the trunk, so by myself i'm not too conspicuous.

Peris and ecuadoris always warned me: wach out that u dont get mugd or pikpocketed wen u'r in Colombia. I hav a lot of paranoia. Even the dogs ar looking at me in a funny way, as if they wer just waiting for me to turn my bak on them so that they could quietly naw open my ruksak and make off with my jewels and credit cards. In Cali i figure it's beter to be safe than sorry. Befor anyone gets the chance to steal my hole bakpak, i leave it at the luggage chek at the train station. Later on i pik it up, leave town and realize that my camra is gon. They stole it at the luggage chek. The road goes down, down, down to Puerto Asis, on the banks of the Putumayo. The Putumayo is one of the major sources of the Amazon. From Puerto Asis quite a few boats go down to Brazil. But it is a fairly dry season, the river isnt navigable. There isnt enuf water, so there’s nothing to do but drink tea and wait.

I meet 2 USis (u can say it az the plural of ‘use’), who ar also waiting or who ar just hanging out there. The one of them has a glass ie and wil cach a flite soon. The other one, with whom I spend quite a wile, is named Ken. He doesn’t hav a glass ie. This is where i become aquainted with magic mushrooms. The area is ideal for them: humid, warm, and full of cows. The fungi gro in cow shit. They told me that 3 big ones ar enuf for a trip to cloudcuckooland. Wat they didnt tel me is how long it takes to feel the efect. I eat 3 and dont feel anything. 10 minutes later i eat a couple mor, and a couple mor, until i hav eaten 12. I keep waiting until i finally notice that i hav wings. I never had noticed i had those befor. Wel then, if i’v got wings, i’d just fly a little. The planet becomes too boring and i fly further away. I fly faster than the lite, leaving the Erths surface, i look at the lite coming from the Erth and follo its histry bakwards, until i see mammoths peacefully grazing, a pterodactyl, and stone-age birds squawking madly. Later on i come bak and meet Ken on the paddle boat. He just returnd from a stroll around the Andromeda galaxy. In the here-and-now it is time for a movie. The screen is 360 degrees around us, the sound isnt too loud, but all the mor impressiv. The projectionist is God, just like the movie. The world is intelligent, the world is concius.

This hik town in the colombian primordial rain forest is pure sience fiction. It's going great for us. But sometime in the evening i want to get some sleep and i cant. All these questions ar being askd of me, but i cant anser so many questions, even in a state of hyer conciusness. At nite the questions keep coming, i dont even make an effort to anser them any mor. Wy am i lying there at all, with this body that ways tons? The next day i’m redy to finally fall asleep, but the sho must go on. Another day goes by, the pictures and questions keep on coming. I'd like to go chek on Ken, but it is impossible for me to put this armored shel, my body, into motion. Ken doesn’t come to me either, it doesn’t seem to be going much beter for him. On the third day things calm down a bit and i start to get hungry.

"Some food?" "Yeah." We cruise over to the pub.  "Some smoke?" "Yeah."  We cruise a couple hundred meters away from the village and twist ourselves up some. "Some beer?" "Yeah." Bak to the pub. "Some mushrooms?" "Yeah." We go to the meadow and get some. But no mor than 3. "Some beer?" "Yeah." same procedure. "Some pussy?" "Yeah." And we cruise over to the brothel. In the brothel nothing is aroused in me, as loaded as i am. The room, altho primitive, is majestic. Under ordinary circumstances i would describe the flor as solid gray, now i notice how colorful it is. It is not that i’m having a hallucination. I dont think that it's colorful, i notice it. And there ar so many intresting shades of gray. The girl is lying there not fully comprehending wats going on with me. She is a miracle of nature, a double miracle even. First of all, she's an insanely complex life form, and second of all she's a woman, wich means even mor complex. She blooms forth like a plant in the springtime, wich shows off her genitals for all the world to see. It may be that men do not reincarnate, but women do for sure. They carry so much wisdom in them. The hor is glad to ern her money without doing any work. Ken is waiting outside and asks me wy i took so long. "Some food?" "Yeah."

         Colombia is like a gigantic Rio de Janeiro, the hole cuntry is hy life. And by hy life i mean really hy. The famly that smokes together stays together. A 14-year-old boy makes frends with me. He proposes we hav a joint together. "Okay," i say, "where?" At his house, he says. His famly livs there and i think we’l about to disapear into his room or into the basement, but no. The hole famly smokes with us. Practically evry business in the village is a front. Dope is the main export of the cuntry. Altho i bet that no mor than 10 percent of the colombian population has anything to do with dope, after all.

Pedro is colombo and is frequently acompanying us. He's the kind of yung gy who doesn’t work and is always on the lookout for some kind of deal. He talks and smokes a lot. He wants to smuggle cocain to Brazil with the two of us. Ken is supposed to provide the venture capital, Pedro the kno-how, and i’m supposed to translate, since Ken only speaks english and Pedro only speaks espanian.  Pedro is ded certain that we'l be able to pull this deal off. U send the package over, riding along in the ship. The parcel is adressd to a non-existent person. If evrything goes acording to plan, u get a fake ID made and go to pik up the stuf. But if Pedro is ded certain we'd be able to pull off this deal, i keep thinking mor about the "ded" part than about the ‘certain’. I stay out of it, even if i stood to make 10,000 dollars. I value my time far too much. I can always make money one way or another, and if i lose it, i can always try again. Money loses value with inflation, but time doesn’t. The time i hav left to liv cant be extended with money, exept maybe in a good hospital, where they can keep you alive for years, but then a life in hospital isnt the big hit, is it. I'd rather be out 10,000 dollars than 10 years. All the same, i translate. One time we’r walking down the street, i'm walking sloer than the others.  Ken is having an animated conversation with Pedro, sometimes they slap each other on the bak, they’r getting along famusly and i think to myself: wy the hel do i need to translate anyway? They dont need my translation at all! With a bit of good wil u can make yurself understood anywhere at all in the world. But then i come nearer. One of them is talking about the deal in Colombia, the other is talking about his family in Oregon.

In Puerto Asis i want to resolve my illegal situation. I go to the mayor and tel him that all of my papers hav been stolen, would he be so kind as to giv me a statement confirming the theft, so that i could at least make it to the brazilian border? He directs his secretary to issue me a permit that would get me to São Paulo. He mite as wel hav given me a permit to cross the United States to New York, i just dont kno if a cop in Philadelphia would accept a permit given by a mayor of a colombian town, insted of a visa.

Evry day i go to the harbor to try and find out wen the next ship is leaving. Nothing. A couple of weeks later i'm walking along the bank of the river and i see a ship disappear around the bend. I run to the hotel, get my gear, and run thru the jungle after the ship. I'm in luk - the ship stops 1 or 2 kilometers farther down to load a couple of cows on. I’m perfectly willing to pay, but no one asks me for money. Not even the capten, who must hav seen me bording the ship in among the cows.  They think i borded later so i wouldn’t want to pay. Wel, i wont pay if no one asks me to. At one point the capten says i could at least help out in the kichen, if i'm not paying anyway. Okay, capten, no problem.

On the ship they get their meat by either hunting or fishing. Monkeys, piranhas, turtles, one time even a crocodile. There’s a blak gy who does most of the hunting. He has a rifle that looks like it must hav come from the conquistadores in the 16th century, heavy as a cannon and loud like a King-Kong fart. He got a flamingo in his sites, shoots, the bird falls over, and we go to get it with the dingy. It is stil breathing and doesn’t hav any bullet wounds. It just fainted from the shok the noise gave it. The blak gy rings the flamingos nek, breaks off its leg at the nee and pulls the tendon bak and forth. The birds foot opens and closes and he lafs: "o-ho! o-ho!"

The water is very shallo and the ship gets stuk in the sand a lot of the time. We tie one end of a rope around the mast, the other end around a tree on the shor, and pull the ‘propellers’ around the mast, so we turn around the mast. We’r making the chain shorter, and since the tree cant come to the boat, the boat goes to the tree, out of the sand. I’m tuf going, i join in and put some rhythm into it:

"Uno! dos! tres! HAAAA! uno! dos! tres! HAAAA!" 

From now on they call me "El Tigre". And not for no reason. I mean, i look like a tiger. Yello skin and spots all over. The comparison falls short wen it comes to my speed, tho. In that department i'm mor like a duk out of water. Now, after all these years, i discover my tru calling: slave driver. Altho i hav to push tu.

Up until then we havnt been travling at nite, the capten doesn’t feel at ease about the shallo water. Now the river is getting wider and deeper. We’r redy to giv it a try. The wonderful sunset is over, now we’r enveloped by a peaceful darkness. I sit all the way up front and we can see 20 meters in front of us with the spotlite. Suddenly a giant tree comes at me out of nowhere. I jump bak and there’s a loud crash. The tree sweeps a couple of tons of frate into the river and then it’s behind us. Or we’r in front of the tree. Wat was a giant tree doing in the middle of the river anyways - now there’s a hole in the ships hul, it's sinking fast. The lifeboat only has room for 100 people, apocalypse now, the piranhas ar tying on their bibs alredy, some of the passengers ar singing "Hallelujah" or "A strong fortress is our God", others ar singing "But it's aaaaalll rite...." No, no, this isnt the Titanic in the North Atlantic, just an anonymous boat on the Amazon. A little bit of panic breaks out, but the crew is litening quik to pach the hul with cement.  Good work boys.

A few days later it’s late at nite, the capten is having a look around and sees a blak hed swim past in the water. Was that a mirage or reality? So as not to take any chances, he cheks with the blak famly on bord. The mother notices that one of her kids is missing. So the rescue team goes out into the nite with the motorboat. Now finding a blak gy in the river in the middle of the nite is dificult to start with. On top of that, the 8-year-old boy cant swim and there ar piranhas.  After a length of time passes, the boat comes bak, no blak kid in the boat, the mother colapses with sorro. The boat pulls up to the side of the ship, there he is, lying on the flor of the boat. Not in tip-top shape but stil breathing.

One nite 2 gys invite me to join them for a beer. There’s no bar or canteen on bord, but there ar plenty of cases of beer, wich u'r not supposed to help yurself to but can anyways. One nite a group of gys from the crew invites me to join them, we steal some bottles and drink. A few days later evryone is agenst me. I’m  accused of drinking a couple cases of beer, and they want to deliver me to the police at the border. The timing couldn’t be worse, especially since i hav no passport. I discover a few inconsistencies in their story and provide an alibi to defend myself with, playing the star attorney. I prove that it couldn’t hav been me who drank all of those beers, until the capten interupts me. He decides in my favor and wants me to shut up. Good. I'm shutting up. It was a plot on the part of the crew, who wanted to make a scapegoat out of me. So they hav to come up with another story to explain the disappearance of the bottles.

At the border town u'r supposed to report to imigration, i quikly transfer to a smaller boat and disappear over the border insted.


CHAPTER 11

FLYING AND SITTING

 

FAZE 3 - /ae/ - ‘a’ as in ‘cat’ is speld ‘a’: the man with the plad hit the bad cat with the bat.

 

***

 

I’m very glad to hav made it thru Colombia without a passport, and now i’m bak in the cuntry where i dont need one.  Wonderful.  But things dont go as i expected.

I want to surprise my famly.  Now i’m in a bit of a hurry, since i havnt ritten in almost 2 months.  They'l start to get worried.  The brazilian border town really only consists of a barracs and a couple of stors that ar there to supply the barracs.  Supposedly an air force airplane ocasionally lands in this town that takes people along for free.  I go to the comanding officer and ask him if i can fly on the next plane.  "Yes," he says, "next tuesday." We chat, i tel him a little about my trip, we hav a couple cups of coffee together. Then i bid him farewel.  Befor i made it outside, a soldier comes in and makes a comment about how full my ruksak is. "Yeah," i say, "clothes, books, stuf like that."  The comander perks up his ears wen he hears the word "books", he wants to hav a look in my bakpak. He finds an english translation of "Das Kapital" by Marx.  I baut it in São Paulo, in english so that i could practice my english. Now it turns out not to hav been such a good by, especially because i cant prove that i baut the book in São Paulo. And there ar sevral books from other authors that the comander isnt familiar with, all of them in foren languages. Then he finds my notes about my language. He asks wat thats all about. I can only tel him the truth: it's a language i invented that could be a world language someday. Bad news. He thinks it’s a code.  People who invent their own languages must seem pretty fishy to a military officer in the Amazon region.  Plus i hav leters from not altogether normal frends of mine, like Ski, who talks about the Kabala or quotes Wagner in his original language. This is also completely incomprehensible to the comander. And to top it all off, after spending almost a year in espanian-speaking cuntrys i cant speak proper brazilian any mor.  And i dont hav a passport. I explain wy that is, he doesn’t believe me. We ar in the Amazon region, where a handful of gerillas is stil activ, since 1968. The military is especially afraid that the jungle wil be captured by other cuntrys, their motto is INTEGRATE IT SO WE DONT SURENDER IT.  The comander makes his decision: "I dont kno wat we should do with u, because from out here i dont hav many ways of finding anything out about u. Next tuesday u'l fly along to Tabatinga. Thats where the hedquarters for the region ar, they'l chek u out and let u go if u'r innocent."

They place me under arest and on the next tuesday, i fly in a Catalina, a seaplane that is almost as old as Abraham. The plane flies very lo and slo. There is a link between the airplane body and the wings on the top, the navigator sits there usually but there is no navigator, so i sit there. I can open the windows, and so a lot of the time i’m able to stik my hed out the windo. One of the soldiers who is riding along makes a comment about how old the airplane is. The pilot givs some words of encouragement: "Last week it was a close call. One of the engins conkd out. We had to thro all of our baggage out to liten the load. But then the other engin gave up too. We wer just about to start praying, wen both engins started working agen." The soldier is thrild.  I am too.

In Tabatinga i’m detained for a couple of days and interrogated.  The sergeant looks like he has a case of Down's syndrome.  "I see in the report that u wer travling for almost a year. A long time. Wy?" 

"Wel, i wanted to see cuntrys and people with a different cultur."  He doesn’t say anything, so i keep talking. 

"Thru getting to kno other people, I can understand myself beter." 

"How come? Dont u kno yurself? Dont u kno wat u want? Yur abilities?" 

"Yes, of corse. But as Einstein once said, we only use 10 percent of our brains capacity."

"Wel Einstein mite, but i use 100 percent of mine." 

Yes, that seems altogether possible in this situation. My 10% tel me I'd beter not continue the discussion with this sergeants 100%.  I’m not in a cel, just an open room that has a bedframe but no matress. For 3 days and 3 nites i hav to sit. There’s always a soldier at the dor. On sunday there’s one there who’s constantly fumbling with his nitestik and complaining about me and how i spoild his weekend.

The military men cant prove anything against me, but they also cant find anything that speaks in my favor. This time they send me to Manaus. I got lodging, transportation, and escorts, all paid for by the brazilian government. In Manaus i’m put up in a jail belonging to the military police. A cooly smiling gy interrogates me and givs me food to eat at the same time. He usually asks wen my mouth is full, he’s really only trying to get me to break down. He fires unrelated questions at me about my trip, about my frends, about my relatives, and is constantly telling me how i tangled myself up in contradictions, and wen i try to contradict his telling me that i had contradicted myself, he goes bak to my invented language. After 2 ours of this he dismisses me with the warning that the interogation wil be resumed tomorro. Only without the good service and not so nice this time.  Because he’s not going to stand for any mor of my lies.

The next day, no one comes, nor does anyone come on the day after that. The days go by and the only people who visit me ar the gys who bring me my meals. I ask wats up with the boss. They tel me he’s gon. The next time i ask wen he’s coming bak. They tel me he hasnt come bak yet. I wanna talk to the boss, dammit! They cant just leave me here to rot! After 2 weeks of this i’m almost at the end of my rope. By now the rite time for me to let my parents kno that i'm OK has come and gon. My mother has a hart condition, surely this wont be good for her. I rote them a leter, but i hav no idea if it is even going to get mailed by this people. I take constantly cold showers to keep my hed and my body cool. I get closer to insanity and start a hunger strike. Maybe something wil happen then. Nothing happens, exept i’m really at the end of my rope. It hurts me to the bottom of my soul to turn down good food. And that is the only diversion that there is. After 5 days i giv it up. But i dont stop being a nuisance to the people who bring me food. At some point they get sik of it and take me to the fedral police. New interogation, i spil my guts to them. "U hav to listen, i’v done nothing, really nothing, i mean, i kno i hav a couple of things with me that mite hav seemd suspicius, but i can explain evrything. I alredy did explain evrything sevral times, but it seems to be that evryone thinks they can put a gy behind bars, wile no one has the authority or the guts to set him free." The gy from the fedral police is fatherly and tels me: "U wil hav to explain evrything all over again. Dont try any dirty triks, we'l chek up on evrything.  I'm going to send inquiries to all of the proper authorities in Brazil, until we find out if u'r wanted for anything. If yur record is clean, u'l go free."

There i hav roommates and i’m not completely isolated. But then it is really a hygienic disaster. It’s not a prison, but rather a holding cel in the basement of the fedral police station. Directly above us is the toilet, and the drainage pipe goes down thru our room. The pipe has a leak, and so wen someone flushes the toilet, we get a minor flood. Nothing solid comes out, to be sure, but it is stil pretty unpleasant, especially since we dont hav any beds, only ripd-up matresses. There is no cleaning lady and no wisky. The food is bad, and the one-ied atendant who brings it tel us idiotic stories that spoil our appetite.

At least there ar three of us to comfort each other. There is a blak gy from Guyana who has been strugling as a musician in Brazil, and we hav a blond perian (peruvian...) hippy who grew up in Alaska, and there is me. Both of them ar being held until their deportation, because their visas hav run out. We make music, i lern a hole lot of different caribean rhythms, and not even the brazilian national anthem is spared. At that point we hear from upstairs wat a crisis of nationalism that is.

To wile away the time, i invent a kind of superchess.  Modern and megalomaniacal.  With 400 houses, airplanes, tanks, bommers, missiles, soldiers, spies, ministers and presidents. One round takes at least 2 days. But we hav the time.

One day, after many translations, explanations, and inquiries with the proper authorities, i’m freed.  Befor leaving, i’m permited to take a proper shower first (the tap in the cel wasnt much), and i realize my hole tan is not a suntan but rather a dirt-tan.  I’m suddenly wite like a mozzarella cheese.

I go bak to the air force, maybe i can stil get a flite to São Paulo for free.  Somehow i hav a rite to one, after being held for so long. Completely by chance i run into the gy from the military police who interrogated me and then disappeared.  Wy didnt he take any action on my behaf, wy did he leave me to rot?  I want to ask him, but he just says helo and disappears behind a dor.

The air force cant or doesn’t want to giv me a lift.  All the same, in the end it was a luxury stay.  Not even 2 months in jail, wen some people in this world spend their hole lives in jail for no reason at all (in some cuntrys, like the US, sometimes they'r executed...).  I also never got beaten and didnt get tortured.  I’m in luk that by 1975, the truly repressiv time in Brazil is over.  Torture is no longer sanctiond.  There ar isolated cases of torture even in todays democracy, just as there ar stil unexplained deths in prisons, but it is not the system behind it. And keep in mind that Brazil was one of the first cuntrys in the world to abolish the deth penalty, in the 19th century. It is also to my advantage that my brown skin came from the sun (and later from the dirt), and not from my genes. Most of the time in this cuntry, race is equated with class, skin color with social standing. To be sure, some blak people ar rich (one soccer player, Pelé, and one singer, Milton Nascimento), and some slum dwellers ar blond (i dont kno any of their names), but as a rule of thum, the liter the color, the hyer the class and the fatter the pocketbook. U hav to giv a middle- or upper-class kid some respect, who knows if he doesn’t kno good lawyers, who knows who his parents kno at all.

Onward to São Paulo.  A truk brings me as far as Porto Velho in the state of Rondônia. The next driver is a neffew of the president of Parlement in Brasília.  He drives me to Brasília, 2000 kilometers to the southeast. This strech of road starts in the jungle and ends in the savanna. Sometimes u see indians on the side of the road selling souvenirs. The driver suffers greatly on my acount. Ever since i got out of jail, it has been going badly for my digestive tract. It is an endless burpery, and the gases ar absolutely inhumane.  Evry time i burp, he wants to die: "God dammit, Zé!  U just farted again!  Roll down the windo!" "Dude, i didnt fart at all, i just burpd.  U dont wanna kno wat it's like wen i fart."

We stop at restaurants along the hyway, the gy only orders the best and lots of it.  At long last i could hav some decent food, but i cant keep one bit down. Evrything putrifies in my stomach. I think i hav malaria. He thinks so too. In Brasília the gy bys me a bus ticket to São Paulo (1000 kilometers). Thank u kindly.

Once i arived in São Paulo i take the subway.  I get off the train and see my sister, who is just getting on. I get bak on, she sits down, and i sit down next to her. She hasnt noticed me yet. I come on to her in a sleazy voice. "Hey baby, how about it? Do u hav anything goin' on this evening? Hey baby, i'm not wat u think, but i’v got wat u like..." At some point she has to turn around to face me and tel me off, she sees me and is mor than a little surprised. With good reason. They suspected that i had been either swalloed up by the colombian jungle or made into goulash by the indians, and suddenly i'm sitting there rite next to her.

Wen i get home my father is pulling the car out of the garage. I’m wearing an eskimo parka that i can hide my face in, only my ies ar visible. The parka looks a little out of place with the 30 (86) degrees and the humidity, i walk up to the car and my father is wondering wat this wacko wants from him. I sloly pull down the zipper and on his face i see a smile that i wil never forget. He  baut a plane ticket for the next day, so that he can try to trak me down in Colombia. He would hav to look for quite a wile.  My mother cries a lot, but wat can be mor butiful than tears of joy?


Author travling

 

New York is very racially mixd. Blaks, puertorikis, vietnamis, iris, blaks. Hichhiking is a complicated afair. If u want to leave a big city, u hav to find out where the hyways begin and how u get there. If u leave New York on foot, u hav to walk for 2 ours befor u can hich a ride.  Once upon a time i did that, nowadays i take a bus or a trane to the next smaller city, in this case New Jersey.

Now i'm not of the opinion that drivers who dont giv me a ride ar assholes. Of corse i prefer drivers who giv me a ride, but on the other hand, it is an entirely personal decision. Evry person has the rite not to trust a stranger or just to want to be by himself. Hichhiking is an oportunity for me to come into contact with people. It's only cheap if u liv cheaply, since in general u take a lot longer to get where u'r going. U hav to sleep in a tent or a sleeping bag and eat sparingly. That is no longer the case for me, i sleep in hotels and eat like a normal human being. In the US that means hamburgers, cheeseburgers, double cheeseburgers, woppers, and double woppers. In short, evrything that the diverse american cuisine has to offer.

I used to go up to people wen they’r filling their gas tanks. Not any mor. Forget about the fact that most people simply ignor u, others discourage u with a hate-fild look, and most of them just lie ("i'm only going a couple of miles" or "it's not my car, i'm not alowd to giv anyone a ride") - going up to people like that misses the point. I want to ride with people who want to giv me a ride, not with people who giv me a ride because they cant say no or because they’r not quik enuf to think of a lie. I dont even feel like hichhiking nowadays. But it is my goal to hichhike around the world, and i wil see it thru to the end. I could take a bus or fly, but that would be as if u ar climing a mountain and after putting in a weeks effort to do it, u let yurself be carried by a helicopter for the last 20 meters.

I go to Washington, DC. Here liv only blak people. Statistics say that blak people make up only 10 percent of the american population. But wen u ar walking around in a city, especially at nite, that statistic strikes u as inaccurat. They say of the US that the wite people liv in the suburbs. I only see blak people in the suburbs too.

Today i go siteseeing in the government district. The americans hav delusions of grandeur. I look for the Wite House and find many wite houses. Unfortunatly none of them is the rite one, but then each one is even bigger than the one that comes befor it. The National Art Gallery is bigger than Nederland and Belgie put together. The Capitol is about as big as the EU plus Jugoslavija, if u alow me that little exaggeration. The sole exeption is the Wite House, wich is not much bigger than a modest villa. Even here they offer tours, as is the custom in the US. No wonder the americans hav such bad governments (altho not worse than ours...). How ar u supposed to get any work done, wat with all those scoolchildren and japanese tourists standing around gigling in the hallways? The Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI, until now only abstract concepts for me, become bildings that u can visit in tourist groups. The subway stations ar named acordingly: Pentagon Station, CIA, etc.


Author travling

 

The day befor yesterday i hichhiked 1000 miles, from a northern snostorm to a suthern springtime in full bloom, wich mite as wel be summer. Yesterday 70 miles, today 400 miles thru Florida. The Florida section of the I-10, the suthernmost east-west freeway, is simply swarming with queer retirees who hav nothing beter to do than to drive up and down the hyway on the lookout for willing hichhikers. Many of them ar shy and/or prefer indirect come-ons. If someone pays me mor than 2 compliments in less than 10 minutes, it's clear wats going on. Others look between my legs, stil others ar direct: "How's about we pull over up there by those bushes?" Wat they all hav in common is that not a single one of them wil clearly tel u where he's hedded. They just keep driving until it dawns on them that they dont stand a chance. Or until their target warms up to them, asuming the target can be warmed up. The one driver must hav taken me at least 150 miles. Then he drove bak home to Jacksonville.


Author travling

 

A blak gy asks me if i wouldn’t like to stop off for a refreshment at his house befor we get bak on the road. Later on he gets mor to the point: he’s wondering if i happend to hav a sperm clog that mite need to be cleard? Later stil he apologizes for making such a crude proposal. He explanes that his mother died 2 months ago, and now he feels so alone. Oh, now i got it. And here i'd been thinking he’s up to no good at all.

For 2 days it's been pouring rane without an interuption. Today i abandond my principles and started aproaching drivers personally. I cant take it any mor. First victim is a gy from Switz, his wife, and his mobile home. He couldn’t think of a suitable excuse fast enuf. U cant say no to a haf-cuntryman in distress, he thinks i'm deutsh. He lets me off at the middle beltway of Houston and i fite my way thru the rane until i make it into the city. Then this gy brakes rite in front of my nose. Like, tires squealing to a stop. Policeman? Hyway robber? Wy is he staring at me so intensely? He must way at least 450 pounds and is wearing a hedband with corian riting on it. A ninja? A dangerous samurai looking for innocent victims? My bak is cold from the rane and from his gaze. He hollers: "D’u wan a ride?" I tel him, it's all rite, i'm just hedding around the blok to a cheap hotel, he shouldn’t worry about me. He tels me that he knows of a cheap hotel, and can drive me there.  Wel, all rite, then... i get in the car, no time for a quik hale Mary, he tels me how to get bak to the hyway from the hotel and asks me if i'm a cristian. "No, not exactly... yurself?"  "I'm a cristian, but the churches ar full of shit. They tel u cant smoke. And meanwile u cant find anything in the Bible that says u cant smoke. If living an unhelthy life was a sin, then we'd all be damd to hel." He givs me a pamflet that tels of a minelayer who died, experienced a fiery hel and the devil incarnate, came bak to this life and became a cristian. Then he lets me out in front of the hotel.


Author travling

 

U can alredy start to get acustomd to Mexico wen u make it to Texas. Houston is bilingual, after driving south for an our it gets monolingual again, because english is a foren language here. I want to speak espanian with them, but they’r the only USis who kno that brazilis dont speak espanian and speak english with me.

Say wat u wil of the USis, they hav an inexaustable creativity with names. U can visit towns called Alexander, Alfred, Anton, Carlos, Charlie, Claude, Fred, Helena, Irene, Jean, Joaquin, Katy, Louise, Lucas, Natalia, Patricia, Ricardo, Sebastian or Vera. The only one i havnt seen yet is Zé.  U can travvel the globe in a day, as long as u stay in Texas: there ar towns called Athens, China, Edinburgh, Egypt, Geneva, Holland, Ireland, Italy, Liverpool, London, Malta, Milano, Moscow, Münster, Nederland, New Baden, New Ulm, Oldenburg, Paris (ahh, u kno it?), Sebastopol, Sydney,  or Sudan. Texas has simply evrything: if u'v got small shoes, drive to Bigfoot. If u'r in the womb and someone wont let u get out, try Birthrite. If u'r a racist, take yur pik, u can go to Blak or to Blanco. If u'r tired, try Blanket or Goodnite. If yur travlers cheks hav run out, chek out Cash or Dinero. Thirsty? Coke is it. If u'r bord, go to Impact or strate to Cut and Shoot. If u'r late, rush to Erly. If evryone around u is speaking nothing but espanian, go to English. If it's monday, try Friday. Feeling down or depressd, then get to Energy, Joy, Smily, or just Happy. Hungry? Oatmeal is wat u need. Gotta get out of the city? Then how about Pampa or Paradise? Maybe Tarzan is in the naberhood. If yur car brakes down on the road, theres Tool, and then u make it to Mercedes, so u can vote for Reagan. But maybe u'r not sure and want to try Uncertain? Or far, far away, to Venus. But Venus is hot and u come bak to Erth. Erth is stil too big a place, so u go bak to Sweet Home. But first to Telephone to let them kno u'r coming. By Telegraph u find out that Unity has arived at home. And u thaut Utopia is far off?!? Anyway there's stil time for a hedline in the paper, since there is a town called Fertile and another one called Climax: FERTILE WOMAN DIES IN CLIMAX.

At the border i’m confronted with bitter disapointment: the mexikis wont let me in. I hav to get a visa, today is sunday, the embassy is closed. The USis stole haf of Mexico, marchd into the rest of it a couple of times, make mexikis get visas to come over, and hav thousands of police posted along the border to hunt down mexikis. The mexikis say that they feel nothing but hate for the gringos. But the gringos can cross the border into Mexico without paying 1 cent. The brazilis havnt helpd mexikis out that much, tru, but they never occupied it either, Brazil would never make mexikis get a visa (they just ask visa from cuntrys that ask visa from brazilis), and to top it all off we call each other brothers. And wat do we get? I hav to shel out 25 dollars. The rich get by for free, the poor hav to pay up. Third world cuntrys discriminating against third world cuntrys.


author travling

In Mexico at long last. The border gards ar very unfrendly. The cars ar bigger than in the US, ocasionally a little bit older too. The food taists beter in the mexican restaurants in the USA than it does here. The hotels ar a bit cheaper, but much mor expensiv than in a typical third-world cuntry. Mexicanos look like Sancho Panza: short, fat, dark-skind, and with mustashes. But there ar also mexicanos who look different: no mustash, tall, thin, and lite-skind. The only thing mexicanos dont hav is sombreros, at least not in the english sense. In the mexican sense they do, since in espanian the word simply means hat. All mexicanos hav one: a cowboy hat. One mite be tempted to conclude that USis, for their part, wear mexican sombreros; not so. The yanquis wear baseball caps. Sometimes mexicanos wear baseball caps too. It is very intresting to be able to report on the cultures of other cuntrys.
         Hichhiking is easy in Mexico. I start off at the border in Matamoros— thats Killer Of Moors in english. In Swits there used to be candies named “moors heds” and “nigger kisses”, but nowadays they call them something like “choclat drops” and “cream fluffies” in order to avoid any potential acusation of racism. If this city was in Swits, its name would hav to be changed to El Choco.
         Farther south evrything becomes mor normal. The cars ar a normal size, the people ar normally frendly, even the food gets beter. I’m talking with one of the drivers about famly. I ask him if his parents ar religious. “No,” he says, “they're catholic.”
         Guanajuato is a butiful city surounded by steep mountains. There is an up-and-down here like i hav rarely experienced befor and wich reminds me of towns in Italia. Evrywhere there ar very cute tunnels, if u can call them that. Many of them ar actually underground streets with benches and entrances to houses. The tunnels ar not really all that old, but they look very old. They go very wel with their suroundings. There ar sevral mines, including one with a café on the 13th flor belo ground.
         Something really unusual about Guanajuato ar the mummies. OK, so there ar mummies in lots of cuntrys, at least in museums. But brand spanking new ones? The city had no cemetery plots left. The city government had no choice but to remove the skeletons whose relativs cant pay rent. Wen they went to dig them up, tho, they didnt find skeletons but mummified corpses insted. They hav been preserved by the good air. So the city government had an original idea. How beter to pay for the cemetery than with corpses? So the mummies wer put on display. It’s easy to see them - just take the Mummy Bus Line. The road that leads to the cemetery is Mummy Street. U cant miss it— to yur rite is the cemetery, to yur left is the Dulceria La Momia, The Mummy Candy Company. There they sel taisty treats, perfect copies of the mummies. Bon appetit.
         U cannot deny that the mexikis hav a real apreciation for the macabre. Most of the mummies ar from the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th. A lot of the time there wil be a fotograf of the departed, so u can see how they've changed: BEFOR — AFTER. Lots of yung people who no longer look so yung as mummies, even if they stil hav hair. Some of them ar dressd, with others their clothes seem to hav evaprated. A lot of them even stil hav their pubic hair. And others ar in perfect condition. They lie there quietly, arms folded neatly across their chests, doing the best they can. Others ar lying in the most outrageus positions, on their sides, legs spred, legs crossd, and look rather like they’r scared to deth. I’v got to wonder if they laid the people in their graves in those kinds of positions and with such unusual facial expressions, or if the people get into a beter position post mortem? Do ded people hav nitemares? A dozen mummies of children ar there too, and look! It’s the littlest mummy in the world. Not much bigger than an open hand. Looks like a mini-E.T. Must be a mummy of an embryo.


hero travling

At the venezuelan border town we ar 7 people now: an USian couple from Seattle, 2 fransos, an australo and we both. We go to the barracs and tel the comandant that we hav to move on but we cant because the migración-oficials ar on vacation rite now. Cant he giv us a permit to get to the next big city, and then we can get an entry stamp there? He givs us a permit to get to Ciudad Bolívar. The problem is that we only get one permit for all of us. The USis that he issued the permit to want to fly, we want to hichhike. Bak to the comandant, who tels us to go to hel. So we hav to tag along with the USis if we dont want to spend the rest of our lives in this helhole.
         The airplane is due to take off on the next day. At the reception desk of the hotel the USis sho their passports and complane to the ladies behind the desk about the hassle at the border. The ladies explane that it’s all thanks to the brazilis who ar constantly sneaking over the border ilegally to look for gold in Venezuela (at the brazilian side it is almost evrything indian reservation), wat a problem it is. Those bloody brazilis. The fransos and the australo get to the front of the line, the ladies keep on complaning about the brazilis. Then we get to the front of the line and giv them our passports. U should see the look on the ladies faces.
         We fly from Santa Elena on the border to Ciudad Bolívar, the big city in the jungle. One of the few flites that is worth the price. The airplane has to fly under the clouds, so between the mountens, and these ar no ordinry mountens. We ar in La Gran Sabana, with one of the most astounding landscapes in the world. Here it looks mor like a wiches kichen than a mounten range. Amazingly symmetrical roks groing out of altar-shaped mountens. From these stone blok summits there ar tons of waterfalls plunging into the abyss. I wonder how waterfalls can get started at the summit of a mounten, since there cant be sources of water there. The waterfalls, i later lern, ar fed exclusively by the rane, wich there is tons and tons of.
         The airplane is not large, u can always wach the pilot and his accomplice. They'r not all that serius. They never stop talking, always with gum in their mouths. They dont talk about taking off or landing, only about women and soccer. And so it comes to pass that wen we’r taking off after one stop, the airplane veers completely off the runway and jets along thru the bushes. No problem for the pilots, they hang a curve and up we go. This happens quite often. We stop off in 5 indian villages. The landing strips ar mostly muddy clearings with about as much water as there is in the Pacific. Last stop is Ciudad Bolívar, where we ar finally supposed to be able to get our entry stamp.
         We go to the barracs. The comandant tels us that we need to make an appearance at la migración. But it’s friday evening, it's pretty definitely alredy closed. No worries, says he, we can go there tomorro. Yeah, but wil they be open tomorro? On saturday? Of corse they wil be, says he. On saturday we go there and they’r closed. We dont want to wate around all weekend. We get the fone number of the boss and call him up. We tel him that we'v got a visa but no entry stamp. He says we need no entry stamp if we alredy hav a visa. Now the big question is: did he just say that to get rid of us, or is it the truth? We go to the Federal Police to make sure and ask them. They look at our passports, yes yes, there’s yur visa. Of corse we’r alowd to go on.
         We hichhike further on with the australo. I think his name was Stuart, maybe John Stuart, or was Stuart the forname? He has the tiniest luggage that we'v ever seen. A shopping bag with a pair of underwear, a toothbrush, and an umbrella. His pants and his shirt ar so big that they dont stik to his body. We hav evry kind of clothing, a tent, sleeping bags, a stove, books, riting materials, and evrything else that our household requires. We’r pretty new at this, after all.
         In Caracas we go to the airport. We want to hichhike to the USA with an airplane, since Central America is too hot for us. War in Nicaragua, gerillas in El Salvador. The Caracas airport is a big airport for little airplanes. One is landing just about evry minute. We dont stand on the runways sticking our thums out but rather go up to the pilots and ask them. Ar u flying to Miami? The anser is usually no, sometimes even yes. But they'r not alowd to take anyone along. And so we wile away our days. At some point the police takes an intrest in an indian musical instrument that the australo has been carrying around with him. It is a 1-meter-long instrument that u can lay down a rhythm with. They serch him and open up the instrument. It is fild with wite sand, for the astute cops it’s a clear case of the smuggler’s blues. They consider us accessories and drag us along. In the police station at the airport evrything is thuraly serched. They find all kinds of tea on us, wich also makes them rather suspicius. Tamu has to explane evrything: tea for an upset stomach, tea for the kidnys, tea for the sniffles, good thing there is no tea for the brane on us. Evrything is exammind by experts and they find that evrything really is harmless. Sand and tea. Then we hav to sho them our passports. “Aaaaaah! U hav no entry stamps, u ar in this cuntry illegally!” “Now hang on just a minute. We alredy inquired with the hed Migración gy and the Fedral Police. All of them told us we dont need one. U can ask them yurself!” “U can save yur fairy tales for my granma. Clearly u ar illegal aliens.” They want to send us to the slammer and start making all the necessary fone calls. The only problem is, there’s no jale where we ar. It just happens to be the thursday befor easter. Most of the officers ar on vacation, some ar just getting redy to take off. Our investigating officer is not exactly welcome. Locking someone up means work, and no one wants to work during their vacation time. Finally he has to giv up. Not without warning us that we need to go get our entry stamps next tuesday.
         We giv up trying to hichhike by plane, leave Caracas and the australo and start hedding in the direction of Maracaibo, where lots of ships ar hed in the direction of the USA. We walk along the freeway and try to get somewhere. A big car with air conditioning piks us up, 2 gys ar sitting up front talking and we sit in bak surounded by the music of Jean Michel Jarre, wich so fils the car that we imagine ourselvs to be in an orbiting space cathedral. We reach Barquisimeto. The driver is an english teacher who only speaks english with us, even tho i can speak reasonably good espanian and Tamu has lernd to get along in this funny language. He invites us to stay with him as long as we like. He has a big house and is an adherent of the cult of the guru Maharaj Ji, a guru who was alredy a guru wen he was 10 years old and is stil a guru today, altho much fatter and richer. In his past lives he was alredy Buddha, Jesus, Krishna, and wil probably be Frank Sinatra soon too. His pictures hang evrywhere in the house, even wen u'r taking a shit u cant escape his grin.
         The next morning the gy’s not there, only a note on the table. “I went out, i come bak tomorro. Please feed the fish.” My english is not yet 100%, but i understood evrything: he's gon, wil come bak tomorro and we can eat the fish. The word feed is not familiar to me, but it must hav something to do with food. Therefore, feed must mean eat. So nice of him, and i was just thinking i could go for some fish. Open up the refrigerator, wel, where’s the fish? No fish there. We look evrywhere, no fish to be found far and wide. The dude must'v eaten the fish himself. OK then. We’l eat something else. Later on we find a fish in the aquarium. Wat the...? Ar we supposed to eat that fish?
         In Maracaibo we alredy hav an adress, also folloers of the guru Maharaj Ji. Very nice, cool people. A franso who was born in Marocco, grew up in Uruguay, and who now plays the basoon in the Maracaibo city orchestra. His wife, a tiny woman from Uruguay, plays the contrabasoon, wich is 2 times as big as a regular basoon and 3 times as tall as she is. They ar vegetarians (like evryone in this cult) but they liv wel. A very creamy cup of coffee in the morning (wich they make in the blender), ratatouille for lunch, and dozens of mangos, wich they pik from trees on the street on their way home, for dinner. The only thing i dont especially like is their guru.
         One time we ar spending the nite with some frends of our frends. Their apartment is on the tenth flor. We ar standing in the kichen havving a conversation, i want to lean against the dor but it wobbles. I lean against the wall, but it’s not particularly stable either. Wat? A wall that wobbles? I must be drunk. I stand stil without leaning against anything. The flor doesn’t want to stand stil either. I look at my conversational partners, they look at me, as if they wanted to kno wat i think about this wobbly flor. In the kichen sink there ar waves. That can only mean that we’r havving an erthquake. From downstairs we hear the noise of a gigantic tractor or a giant jakhammer. I suggest that we run downstairs really quik, but there ar children. I dont get how they can be so chil about this. One kid stil has to put on his shoes, the other one needs a sweter. We go downstairs and the erthquake is over. Evrything is stil standing. We wer a bit far away from the epicenter.
         Evry day we go to the harbor and talk to the ship captens. All of them say categorically: no way. The company wont alow it. Not as a saler, not as a passenger. They'r always nice to us, we’r a welcome distraction for them. But not one of them wil take us along. Those days ar long gon. If we want to, we can sign up at an agency. We mite get a job. And get stuk on a ship to Australia or Madagascar.
         We giv up on shipping, want to go bak to Caracas and try our luk with the airplanes once mor. Maybe one wil fly there from here. We go to the airport at the crak of dawn. Just then there’s a gy pulling his airplane out of the hangar. I go up to him and ask: “excuse me, ar u flying to Caracas?” “Yes.” “Can u take me and my frend along?” “Yes.” “Wat???” I run bak, we grab our bags and fly away.
         In Caracas we cant stay in hotels any mor, we only hav 400 buks left. As it is, we’r worried the USis wont let us in with so little money, so we hav to pinch evry penny. We sleep on fire escapes, in parking garages, in old cars. Tamu doesn’t complane, as long as she can sleep. And she can sleep anywhere. She makes herself comfortable wherever she is, all thats missing is her PJs. The woman's admirable to start with. She’s actually a hole lot mor organized too, she has a beter time, and no matter how lo the budget is, she’s a beter travler than me. The only problem is that she's not really all that into travling.
         Venezuela is relatively rich, the richest cuntry in Latin America (now, wen i rite this, it’s not anymor, but it was), stil not perfect. Altho the government has alredy made atempts to free the cuntry from its petroleum adiction and to industrialize it, it only goes in fits and starts. Venezuela is a first world cuntry in terms of its consumption but a third world cuntry in terms of its mentality. It hasnt succeeded in the relm of social justice. Altho most venezuelis liv wel or semi-wel, there ar also very poor people. Sevral car companies bild cars in Venezuela, but most of the cars ar imported from the USA. The cuntry has a grater proportion of road boats than the USA does. And it's no wonder wy with these gas prices: not even 25 cents a gallon. Caracas is a modern city and a living paradise for drivers. For pedestrians it’s a living nitemare.
         Again we go to the airport evry day. From 6 in the morning til 6 in the evening. We notice one gy who is constantly going from one area of the airport to another. One day we ask him if he mite happen to be flying to Miami anytime. He says he’s not planning to, but he has frends that go there a lot and so he can ask around. Later on he comes bak and tels us that a frend of his is flying tomorro. The only thing is, he cant take us along for free, we'v gotta pony up a little for the fuel. He wants 150 dollars. We consider it. It would get us out of this city and it’s a hel of a lot cheaper than an airline. Okay, say we. He says there’s just one problem— we'v got to pay in advance, rite now. The hole thing sounds kind of fishy, but this gy cant be a con man, evryone knows him here. We giv him the money and ar supposed to come bak at this time tomorro, he’l come with the pilot and off we go.
         The next day we’r there at the rite time, but he's not. Nor is he one our after that. He doesn’t sho up all day. We hav to admit we'v gotten ripd off. But that just cant be, the gy spends all of his time at the airport. We go to all the different divisions of the airport and ask around. A blond gy with kind of an afro, u’v gotta hav seen him. Yeah, he always just sat there. Never said a word. We sit on the stairs and dont kno wat to do any mor. We’r not feeling too good. We ask around with the pilots, the pilots get all worked up about it and start looking for the gy themselvs. Turns out he’s the airport directors son. We end up finding the director and his son. He tries to deny evrything we say about him, the father biches him out and thanks us for handling the hole thing so discretely. We get our cash bak. Then we find a pilot who is flying to Puerto Rico and who would giv us a ride. We think about it quikly: Puerto Rico is hafway and then we’d finally be thru US imigration. OK, it’s now or never. We get a hotel room and wash our things. We’d beter be clean wen we arive in the USA. Time to go, only my pants arnt dry yet and the cabbin pressurizer is broken on the airplane. It’s cold, especially if u hav wet pants. The outside temperature is the same as the inside temperature. Good thing we’r flying at 10000 feet and not at 30000.
         At the beginning evrythings grate, the sky is clear. After a haf our we hav a wall of clouds in front of us blocking our entire field of vew. We plunge into this soup and see absolutely nothing at all. I’m sitting next to the pilot, and Tamu’s in the bak seat. The pilot says i should let him kno if i see an airplane coming from the rite. Not much to see, tho, the other airplane would hav to be 10 feet in front of my nose. And i dont kno if it would help things if i told the pilot then. The airplane shakes, rattles, and sometimes feels like it’s in free fall for an eternity. We lose radio contact and the pilot doesn’t look so chil any mor. To top it all off, we’r in the vicinity of the Bermuda Triangle. I ask the pilot if this plane wil float on the water in case we cant stay in the air. He thinks, on average probably one minute if it’s a soft landing. And do we hav a lifeboat here? Nope, no boat, no swim vests. Good. Just checking. The only calm one in the hole story is Tamu, who is wondering if she should take her shoes off or leave them on if we’r gonna crash. I’m feeling sik and i cant do anything. Nothing for my nausea, nothing, to help the pilot. He's trying to calculate the routes, but because of our unstable situation he doesn’t kno where to start. 2 ours this torture lasts. Then the pilot comes into contact with the airport, we see the iland of Puerto Rico from an altitude of 300 feet and we can land. The pilot tels us that this was his ruffest flite in 16 years of flying a plane.


Author travling

 

         I go to Colón and get all uneasy. I dont want to walk one meter in this town. I keep taking taxis in the hope that the taxi driver wont want to jak me. At the harbor i ask around evrywhere, just as i’m about to giv up i find a boat. It’s going to Puerto Obaldia, on the border to Colombia.
         10 pm is the departure time. I go bak to my hotel, the taxi driver is a colombo from Barranquilla. I ask him if he isnt afrade to drive a taxi here. How come, he asks. This city is a church by comparison to Barranquilla. That makes me glad, since i'm going to Barranquilla. Maybe then i wil meet a brazili who tels me that Barranquilla is a church by comparison to Rio. At 10 pm they tel us that the boat isnt departing until 3 am. On the boat there ar 20 indian crew members, 3 mulatto passengers, and me. It’s thursday, one of them tels me we wil arive tomorro. Later on, that we wil arive on monday. Shit. If i’m not in Caracas soon, the post wil return my male to sender. And male is to the travler wat air is to the human being. In the beginning we hav normal waves, in the vicinity of the first of the San Blás Ilands the sea becomes very stil. The water is smooth like jel-o, the boat is just suspended in it. Wen u aproach an iland and the water is less than 10 meters deep, u can see the ocean flor. Good diving for sure. The first iland is the cappital of the San Blás Archipelago. One somewat larger, a haf dozen smaller houses, and a hole lot of coconut trees. The man who is there to greet us wants to see my passport, just because i’m wite. Yet another case of race discrimination. All the same, it’s the first time a governor wants to chek my passport. This is a proper caribbean paradise. Sun, sand, palm trees, bacardi rum. The ilands ar exclusivly inhabbited by the kuna indians. They used to liv in the panamian interior, that is until the mosquitos braut them yello fever and the espanis braut them sifilization and drove them to the coast. On the coast they stil didnt feel safe, so they resettled on the ilands. They liv on the ilands, fish around them, and the land is used for agriculture and hunting. The kuna ar self-assertive indians who achieved autonomy a couple of years ago. They’r very activ against the celebration of the 500th anniversary of the “discovery” of America— they ar of the opinion that the “discovery” was, nicely put, a meeting of 2 cultures, not so nicely put, it was a massacre. On one wall in the harbor there hangs a picture where u see a couple of indians and Columbus, who has just stepd off his ship. One indian says to the other, “he says his name is Columbus and he’s come to ‘discover’ us.
Ha ha ha ha ha!”
        
The kunas bury their ded in a bowling-pin shaped grave, wide end down. On top there’s a thin opening that u can get thru, if u'r not a sumo fiter. On top of the opening they lay a lite slab of wood so that the ded can get bak out, in case they'r not quite ded.


hero travling

Miami. The english that my english teachers spoke is decidedly easier to understand than the english that the bus driver is speaking. “Is this bus going to town?” “Ar whrifhwam bluam bluam rr r tchvonfoidmmmnn j’d ride!
Ha ha ha ha ha!” “Sorry, i dont understand. Is this bus going to town? “ “Ar whrifhwam bluam bluam rr r tchvonfoidmmmnn j’d ride! Ha ha ha ha ha!” “Sorry, i didn’t understand again. Is this bus going to town?” “Yes.”
         In central Florida we visit 2 uncles. Both pure WASPs. Not entirely anglo-saxon, but so much the mor wite and protestant. 2 baptist ministers. Totally in favor of the deth penalty. We visit Disneyworld. Very USian. But evrything in the US is just very USian. They cant help it. Here i find work as a truk driver and a lawn moer operator. I can only deal with that for one day, too much dust and stress, and then i dont like the boss.
         We hed north to Chattahoochee, swing past Tallahassee, and finally reach the I-10 all the way to California. The only people who stop ar drunks, hermits, queers, and blaks. Under ordinry circumstances, the USi is quite disciplined in trafic, the people who giv us lifts, on the other hand, ar the exact opposite. They drive thru woods, over fields, up mountens, and bakwards on the freeway. Of all the drivers that pik us up, one third hav a case of beer next to them. We get in and 3 cans ar opend. One for me, one for u, one for u. Another third wil immediately take out a joint and there wil be a session. The rest hav a case of beer and a joint. Hichhiking is easy. The lifts ar seldom long, but then again people stop in droves for us, even if we dont want them to. In Mobile, Alabama, we cach a lift all the way to New Orleans, Louisiana. The gy talks like a real sutherner, like a frog.
Ribbit ribbit ribbit. The car is big, but constantly braking down. First a flat tire, then the motor wont start. It starts to rane and the windshield wipers stop working. We go on for a bit until we’r driving blind, and the driver pulls over. I joke that we should take off our shoelaces and tie the wipers. He’d pull one way and then i’d pull the other way. Being an USo, he finds this to be a cappital idea. The going is a bit ruf, but we manage to drive 60 miles in this manner. In the vicinity of New Orleans he lets us off. We’r standing on the freeway at nite. 2 shitfaced drunk gys giv us a ride. They drive on the left, on the rite, on the curb, in the grass. They take us strate to a bar in a blak naberhood of New Orleans thats pakd full, where us and the 2 shitfaced gys ar the only wite people in the hole place. They all kno the driver and his friend, and evryone is euforic. Not becoz thay came, but just because thay’r euforic. We get introduced to each and every one of them. A few days later we go on to Texas. A woman givs us a lift in her old scool bus, wich she and her 6-year-old son live in. Clean and neat as a pin. She’s been travling the cuntry for years and home scooling her son. Really funny cuntry.
         In Texas we do as the tourists do and visit NASA. Then we go from Houston to San Antonio. We spred out our sleeping quarters on the benches behind a McDonalds, but dont want to go to sleep until the store has closed. Sometime after midnite it’s quiet, all the munchers hav gon home, we get in bed, the crew comes out and givs us the leftover hamburgers. 7 big macs and a couple apple pies. It’s mor than a funny cuntry.
         We get one of the longest lifts that we'v ever gotten. All the way to Los Angeles. The driver just got out of jale and wants to settle an old scor in California. We make it almost 1200 miles without stopping. We swich off at the steering weel, there’s no time to eat. And wat for, there’s plenty of beer in the car. In West Texas he has to shel out some buks for getting caut speeding, they even take us to the police station. In Arizona it’s my turn. It is nite and i find it funny that these mountens around us get blu evry 2 seconds or so, until i realize after a few minutes that it is a police car behind us. Good thing that both times, we get away without the cops caching a wif of our breth.
         California is simply swarming with hermits. They'r coming bak from going shopping and giv us a lift on the way. They'r USian hermits, of corse they all hav cars and hav to go stok up on their hamburgers. It’s not like the stuf grows in the field, u kno.

author travling

Today a reef ran into us. The ships propeller is broken, but it keeps running, just mor sloly. This trip is taking longer than i would prefer. The boat is a floating supermarket, it suplies a dozen ilands. If we had gon directly to our destination, we would hav been there a long time ago, but sometimes we hang around on one iland for a hole day. These people arnt in any grate hurry. How many miles did we loop bak to pik up a sak of sugar that we forgot?
         The ilands ar all very different. Some of them ar gigantic with just a few inhabbitants, wile others ar very small and completely bilt up. Wat they all hav in common is a basketball cort. I mean, wats an indian without basketball? On all the ilands u see blond indians. They ar wite blond with red skin. These ar the real redskins. They ar so numerus because evryone is related to evryone else. Albinos ar named sipu here. I tel them i’m not an USo but rather a sipu. The regular indians always laf, wether the sipus themselvs would find that funny i dont kno.
         It’s starting to be a problem for me that the other passengers and me ar now an inseprable group. We’r the only ones that arnt working. My new frends ar all rite, but they dont hav any money. Wat little they do hav, they dont want to spend, in the hope that i mite finance them. I’m in the same boat as them, so to speak, so i just eat on the ship. The food is a giant plate of rice twice a day with a little spoonful of cand sardines each time. I can barely stomach the site of it any mor. I hav money left but it’s running out, and it’s certainly no simple matter to cash a travlers chek on these ilands.
         Speaking of wich, Panama does not hav pesos.  All business is done strictly in US dollars.  The national currency of Panama is the dollar, the government calls it the Balboa, but the people call it the dollar, probably because thats wat it is. 
         We want to get a good nites sleep. A hotel is not an option, because there isnt one. Maybe the scool? We go to the chief and explane that the ship is so full of hammocs that there’s no room left for us, considring that we hav no hammocs of our own. The chief promises to put our request on the agenda of the daily village meeting that evening. We wate and wate. Then we go to the meeting and wach from outside. My frends can understand a little kuna, the local language, and someone is giving a speech condemming the invasion of outsiders. Thats us. We go bak to the warf and wate. And wate. Then i lie down on the quay and fall asleep. The others sleep on the ship. The next morning they tel me that a gay indian kissd me. There’s definitely a gay indian, i’v seen him. Wether or not he actually kissd me, i dont kno. In any case, he didnt get anything mor from me. Nothing ever happens with me wen i’m asleep. Not actively, at least. Nothing happend passivly either, i slept on my bak. Yet again u dont believe me.
         Fulo has left us. His name is not even Fulo, thats just a term for a coffee-colored gy. Or a coco-colored gy. He is a mormon and he is on a mission to bild a temple in a village. All the bilding materials hav to be gotten piecemeal from one iland to the next. He has no one to help him. So it ends up being our job. I wonder if it’s the rite thing to do, helping out a frend who is doing the rong thing. At least as far as i’m concerned, it’s rong to bild a mormon temple on an indian iland. Wat it is as far as u'r concernd, i dont kno. Even if the indians can then play ping-pong and the mormons belong to a religion that says that the hole story of the Bible took place in the America, in paralel. Wen i say ‘America’, i mean the continent, because this is the way the continent is called. Watever the case, we help him load, unload, and reload from one iland to bring it to another iland. Scool motorboat warf ship, from one iland to another. Once we cant dok to unload because there’s no place to hich to, and besides there ar cases of cholera on the iland. First one canoe comes, but thats definitely not enuf. Then one of the people on the beach shouts, and suddenly here comes a hole flood of canoes rushing toward us. With a grate deal of effort and caos all the stuf is transferred. U go, Fulo. Bild yur temple.
         In a stor in another of the larger villages i see a butiful wite woman. She looks like an engla from the beginning of the 20th century. She looks me over intently and leaves. I ask the proprietor where she's from. She is a persa, an irana, a missionry of the Bahai cult. The proprietor is also a member of the cult and says that it’s not a cult. Thats wat evryone says about their own cult. And wat else does he hav to say? The bahais worship a guru who livs in Persia, and if thay dont worship him, they at leest follo him. The religion has 4 temples spred in the world, one of them in Panama. The bahai says u hav to gro in evry direction and become a beter person. Materially, socially, spiritually. He says that it must be lernd and that u shouldn’t take his word for it, but rather u should look within yurself and in the world. Yes, sir, in that case i too am a bahai. At least in principle. And i dont even need to follo this guru. The proprietor thinks i’m rite.
         An old indian with a suit, tie, and walking stik is chatting with me in english. He asks me a lot of questions, our exchange is very lively. Then it’s time for me to go and i ask him his name. Charles Smith, he says. On a panamian indian iland.
         There ar butiful indian women in abundance here. U start to think nauty thauts, especially with those shorts, wich ar very short and tite. Stay cool, man. This is apache territory.
         To keep the ship running, u'v gotta fuel it evry once in a wile. There’s no filling station for boats in the San Blás Ilands, fuel has to be pumpd from reserve barrels into the tank. There’s no pump either, someone sifons the fuel over by sucking on the hose. Today one of the salers had a little too much of the stuf to drink and had to go to the infirmary. Again we wate. I ask the capten if we cant just leave the gy at the infirmary and they can pik him up on the way bak. No, he says. No. As to wy not, he doesn’t kno or doesn’t want to explane to me. He has time. I dont. Unfortunatly i am not the capten. Much mor lively is the pace of the dolfins that come up to us. First they giv us a circus number without us even paying for it. Haf a dozen of them fly hy and wen they hav almost come down again, there go the others, all in perfect symmetry. All together they look like a wandring water weel. They come, encircle us, do a couple of somersalts, and then swim in front of us, leading the way. Wats up with that? We kno where we’r hedded. Most of the time, at least.
         The toilets on the ilands ar really something. Little cabbins on the water. The flor consists of a couple of bamboo stiks and holes between them. U hav to wach out that u dont fall thru. Down belo is the water, as u would expect it’s pretty unsannitry and not someplace u'd want to swim. Tonite i used one of them. Dark and thrilling.
         On the one warf there’s a little boy fishing. He throws his line way out. Some pretty blu shiny long fishes ar swimming happily around. They ar elegant and ar named tabu. The tabu is just merrily swimming along, wen he comes upon a wonderful looking erthworm stake. He digs in and discovers that there’s a cach to it. The hook sinks into his pallat and wont let him go. It pulls him in one direction, and he feels that the other direction would be beter. He pulls the hook and line in the other direction and the boy lets him rage for a bit. The tabu has no hands, he does the only thing he can, wich is move his hole body and try to free himself. His girlfrend is waching the tragedy. She can do nothing but swim around him despratly in the hope that he wil free himself that way. After an unequal struggle between hand and pallat he is yankd out of the water. The boy pulls the hook out of the fish and throws the fishing line rite bak into the water. The tabuess realizes that it’s over with her boyfrend, senses that it’s a precarius situation for her too, knows that the stake is a murderous trap, and hy-tales it out of there. The tabufish is now lying in the hot sun in this terrible world where he cant even breathe, and he has to look at this laffing crowd standing around him. Then the primary intrest of the crowd shifts to ms. tabufish, and mr. tabufish feels like shit. He has to die but he cant. One minute, two minutes, and he doesn’t die. I jump out of the ship and giv him a good kik. Now it’s over. The crowd looks at me with astonishment.
         Altho the villages hav motorboats, each inhabbitant has at least a canoe and the ilands arnt far apart from each other, there ar stil major cultural differences. Some ar open to the world, “westernized”, others ar closed and conservative. The big hit with the kids on one of the ilands is the handstand. They get around almost exclusively upside-down. But it’s only that way on one iland, the others havnt ever seen it.
         Of the passengers, now there ar only 2 left, me and Bunga. Thats not his name, but i'v got to call the gy something. He calls me Brazil. To me he says he’s a fisherman. Then he tels the next gy, within earshot of me, that he owns a stereo stor in Panama City. And the next gy, that he's in the military. Evry time he asks someone for something, he garnishes it with a mile-long story. He is a compulsiv liar, like so many that this continent is richly blessd with. We reach Tubuala, the home port of our ship, the last iland befor Puerto Obaldia. The inhabbitants of this iland ar the shareholders of the ship. Now we ar told that this is the last stop. The ships propeller is haf broken and there ar cases of cholera in Puerto Obaldia. I can only get there with a small motor boat. That costs 40 dollars, 20 for each of us. I demand 20 dollars bak from the ship company, they ar only willing to giv me 8 dollars, the price of the last leg of the trip. I explane that i cant just take another ship the rest of the way, they sold me a ticket to Obaldia and so they hav to make sure i get there for the agreed-upon price. Nothing works with them. Indians hav no concept of customer service. As a brazili i would protest once and then take my business someplace else. But i hav become somewat deutsher, make a big scene and argue with the crew and the assembled shareholders. To no avale.
         The boatsman isnt alowd to pilot us, the chief wont alow it because of the reported cholera. We explane to the chief how u get infected with cholera, that u dont get it because u spent 5 minutes at the harbor. He sends us bak to another iland where a doctor livs. If the doctor thinks it’s all rite, he should rite a confirmation. We go and find another boat insted of a doctor.
         In Obaldia there ar no indians. There ar wites, blaks, browns. The boatsman promises to start in 5 minuts and stays 5 ours. I go to the police to notify them of my departure. The officer is mad: “U cant just walk into this cuntry like that, u need a visa for Panama!” “The visa is there, look. And besides, i want out, not in.” “Oh, i see.”
         I reach Colombia. Brazil isnt much farther. Colombia is cool and causes no visa problems for me. Venezuela takes 4 days and a lot of nervs to issue a visa. I hate this cuntry.
Mathilda dont run Venezuela. Now i am with Peter, an easy-going austro, in the Gran Sabana.

author at rest

I changed my shirt. Hands in the air, electric fan down belo. But i stil hav my fingers.

hero at rest

Los Angeles has a lousy downtown, compared to New York or São Paulo.  But it is the center of a gigantic conglomeration of cities, practically all of suthern California.  Wat other city has suburbs like Hollywood or Disneyland?  If California wer independent, it would hav the 7th biggest gross domestic product in the world, bigger than China.
         Uncle and antie ar nice and helpful. They tel us that u ar supposed to say excuse me wenever u leave the table. In their evryday life they speak english, with us they speak americatarinian, a deutsh-brazilian-american mixture: er is über die fencen gejumpt um rápido in die cidade zu kommen (he jumpd over the fence to come quikly to the city). Evry day they stik us in tour buses, the drivers ar constantly trying to be funny, and we get to kno Hollywood Disneyland Beverly Hills San Diego. They get us a job. Tamu packages lenses, i scrub machines. One day we hav a brazilian party, wat would u expect there? Samba and tanga girls? Corect. Who shows up for the party? A bunch of brazilian sutherners with names like Schmidt, Hofmeister, Blaskowski.
         Not evrything is burgers in the US: now we hav money again and can aford to go to a seafood restaurant. Evrything possible is offerd here: fish and chips, shrimp and chips, oysters and chips. If thats not enuf for u, there’s also fish and oysters, shrimp and oysters, and even the triple combination of fish, shrimp, and oysters. The beverage selection is dizzying: coke, tea, and coffee. Now people hav told me i just go to the rong place, that u really can eat wel in the States. There ar japanian restaurants, chinan, indian, arabian, italian etc. Of corse, and they’r good. But not specially easy to find outside the big cities.

         USian television is not much difrent from brazilian television, lots of entertanement and advertising. The news ar very much concentrated on the US and u hardly hear anything about the rest of the world. In this house we hav to wach TV sermons, wich ar very popular. One time the minister complanes, “i tel u that we need 1 million dollars to bild the church, and wat do we hav altogether now? A measly 700,000! Is that all u hav left over for yur God? If i wer God, i would giv u a kik in the behind!” The operators behind the minister hav to work like mad then, all the lines ar busy, and soon enuf todays million ar in after all. Thank God.
         Regular protestant churches ar somewat unique too. The service begins with the national anthem, then the minister tels a couple jokes to get the ball rolling. Anyway it’s a good way to get the public atention. The US flag stands next to him, the line between religion and nationalism is blurd. They never come rite out and say it, but frequently u get the drift: God’s chosen people used to be the jews, but they kept fucking up, so God went and found himself a new favorit. The USis, who else.
         There ar less religious USis too, but stil many of them believe in good and evil, and wen there is a problem with another cuntry, they think they’r the good ones. Of corse, thats wat evrybody wants to hear, and the media giv them that. I’m not anti-USi, and i think they’r usually very polite, frendly and tend to be helpful.  Politically i dont think they ar the bad ones. But they’r not the good ones either. I think they ar human beings. They ar idealists, and the world needs that. They ar creativ and gave many good things to the world, and they eeven faut some wars that wer “good” and necessary. But not evrything they gave to the world was good, in my opinion. But then u should never confuse the government with the people. Nowhere in the world.

         Sumtimes USis ar just normal people, but often they ar like the cliché of themselvs. They often hav an incredible drive, they’r crazy, sometimes even in a good sense...


hero travling

We visit the Grand Canyon. Quite imposing. We hav no permit to camp at the river, wich means that we hav to go 14 km down, hav a look at it and walk up the 14 km again in the same day. It gets dark, and sometimes we hav a rest and swich on the torch. Then we see a scorpion coming in our direction, but we’r so tired that we’r not hungry any mor.

On to the Grand Canyon Cavverns. There an elevator wil take u 20 stories into the deep. Befor, there wer just stairs, at some point they found 2 bodies on the stairs. The bodies belongd to indian ex-citizens, so the indians declared the cavverns to be cursed. They demanded the closure of the caves, the caves wer sealed. At least at the original entrance. Now we ar in America and tourists hav rites too. So a hole was dug elsewhere for the elevators. Otherwise the tourists would never come.
         Annimals hav no fear of humans at the campgrounds here. Bears dont and neither does the cat that bit one gest. Then the victim wants to get revenge and the hunt begins other gests form a posse it gets louder the cat is nowhere to be found a woman is sleeping in her tent hears the noise and gets uneasy someone in the hunting party has a bb gun someone else shouts “shoot her in the hed” the woman thinks it’s a mass murder grabs her kid and vamooses in a cloud of dust later the hunt is over someone notices that the woman has disappeared evryone serches for her and her kid the woman hears that people ar looking for her that only reinforces her conviction that a band of mass murderers is out to get her and she flees even farther away. They find her a week later, exausted and starving.
         Thru the desert toward Las Vegas. The drivers always ask us where we’r from.
“Brazil.” “Missouri? Really? Grate!” “No, no Missouri. Bra-zil!” “New Zealand? Really? Grate!” “No, no. Brazil! Bra-zziiilll!” “Oh, Brazil? Really? Grate!”
         In Las Vegas there ar a couple casinos, maybe u'v herd of them. The air is very hot, the wind is even hotter, so u immediatly hav to hed into a casino, where the air conditioning wil provide u relief. Soon we discover the coupons that ar being handed out on the street to lure people into the casinos. With these coupons we drink free beer, eat the free or cheap food (to all intents and purposes), call up an uncle in Michigan for free, get free pictures taken of us, and squander our one-armd bandit tokens. Then we get some mor for the next casino. And then we leave befor we hav to leave our pants there. We sleep in the Greyhound Station. As always, i just sit around, wile Tamu makes herself comfortable in her sleeping bag. She sleeps as if she wer in a dol house. Ma’am, this is no dol house, this is the Greyhound Station.
         On the hyway u see very strange vehicles, even hole houses that ar being transported from one town to another. The best is a DC-3 without wings, but with car tires, wich functions as a mobile home. The hichhikers u see, as a rule, ar not the sharp college students u see in Europe, but usually broken-down outsiders. Sometimes they dont say a single word and leave the car as if they had never been in it. One time we see a hole famly hiching. Father, mother, 2 kids, and a big dog. Never seen this befor. Or after.
         In some states hichhiking is prohibited, wich doesn’t mean that u'r not alowd to stand on the side of the road. U'r just not alowd to stik yur thum out. U hav to just stand there and smile at the drivers, or, depending on yur mood, do a couple of clown routines. Once we see a Rolls-Royce, and we kid each other that our further passage is garanteed. The car actually stops. No sooner hav we gotten into the car than the gy, who is dressd in a suit and tie, offers us a joint. Like i said, USis ar always very polite. Later on a funny-looking and -acting gy stops for us. The hole way, the car is fild with smoke. We take a brake at a rest stop, he drinks a beer and we eat cookies. The gy goes to the bathroom and is taking a long time in there. Little by little we start to get worried, even if in theory, nothing can really happen. He cant go bak to the car without us seeing him, Tamu is suspicius anyway and goes for a chek. Turns out there is another exit from the bathroom, the gy’s alredy sitting in the car and starting the motor, Tamu runs over, opens the dor, pulls out our bakpaks as he’s alredy driving away. 2 seconds later and it would hav been too late. Good thing i'v got a woman by my side. The USA hav two sides to it: the one side has the penetrating aroma of detergent, the other side reeks like the gutter.  Nowhere is the contrast as extreme as it is in this cuntry.
         San Francisco, unlike Los Angeles, is a real city and not a giant colection of little cities like LA. It reminds me a lot of São Paulo, especially because of the steep streets and the varius modes of transport such as subway, streetcar, cable car, trolly bus, and bus. In LA u see nothing but cars, cars, and cars. San Francisco is full of queers and junkies. U can get evrything that yur hart desires. Cocaine, acid, weed, h, o, and all the other leters of the alfabet. In this city, 30 percent of the population is blak, 30 percent is asi, and 40 percent ar wackos.
         On the way to Seattle we visit a comune. At the entrance we ar haf expecting a bus where the driver wil start rite off with: “Ladies and gentlemen, good morning! My name is Gordon and this is a comunity.” Nothing of the sort. No one shows us around, no one looks after us.  Not that people ar rude to us, they'r just cool. Lots of yung people, but old people and children too. The people here dont sit around theorizing the way people do in most european comunes, they just want to get away from the city, liv a helthy life, and be able to hav some weed without any hassle. Some ar naked, some ar clothed, evrybody does wat suits them in a way that suits them.  There ar no bosses, just weekly assemblies where evrything is decided colectivly and where people take turns being “administrator” for a week. Some liv and work there, some ar constant visitors, some liv there but work in the outside world. All very peaceful and americanly uncomplicated.


 hero travling

Oregon. Washington. Idaho. In Utah almost the entire population is mormon, as a result some things get mor complicated. Cigarets can only be obtaned from vending machines, people under 20 ar not alowd to by cigarets. So that the law wil be obeyd, the cigaret machines ar lokd. If u want cigarets, u hav to find the manager (wich is not always easy) and sho yur papers. Then the manager comes and unloks the machine for u. Then u can insert yur coins. A very modern system. All the same, this state is only haf as puritanical as u would expect a mormon state to be. Wherever a religion becomes the majority, it no longer gets taken very seriously.  A large portion of the mormons in Utah ar jakmormons, that is, lapsd mormons.  I dont kno if u can call lapsd catholics jakcatholics too, since this prefix jak- seems to hav varying meanings.  Jak- can mean fake, sudo-, lapsd, ex-, exept for wen it doesn’t really seem to mean anything.  A jakass is not a sudo-ass, just a regular ass u can make of yurself.  Speaking of ass, i keep seeing bumper stickers saying:

GAS, GRASS, or ASS - NOBODY RIDES FOR FREE

But thats not the same kind of ass i was just talking about.

         Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa. Up til now desert, from here on out cornfields. From Iowa i try to fone Brazil. The operator asks me wich Brazil i want, the one in South America or... “Of corse South America!” I cant believe my ears. How can anyone be so stupid? As if there wer other Brazils somewhere. Later on i find out that there is in fact a town in Iowa called Brazil. Not far from the town of Cuba.
         Canadis dont like it one bit wen people mix them up with USis. There’s almost no visible difrence (at least not in ‘english’ Canada), but the canadis dont try to act like the worlds sherif, and they wish their naber wouldnt either, and if they did, they should at least respect the law too. Itl be a little wile befor that happens. In Quebec evrything gets rather francian.  The quebekis ar much mor intrested in world politics than the USis or english canadis ar. Montreal is butiful, lively, and the subway tranes hav tires like cars.
         Now our heroes make it to New York, the imposingest, second-dirtiest (after Lagos), and second-rowdiest (after Rio) city in the world. And one of the riskiest, noisiest, craziest, and a hole lot of other -ests too. I would never want to liv in a city like this, but u'v gotta hav experienced it, at least for a couple of weeks or months. New York is completely difrent from the rest of the US, and u can even get good food here. See, there ar 4 zones in North America: Mexico and some suthern parts of the US, where they speak espanian, Angloamerica, where they speak english, Quebec, where they think they speak francian, and New York, where they speak bad espanian and bad english.
         Our heroes hav to make the leap over to Europe. One quik look at the New York harbor and its sheer size, and our heroes forget about trying to hit up all 500 ship captens for a lift. They hav to fly, as much as it panes our hero.

(from heer on it is me translating, so be prepared...)

 

KAPITTEL 16

KRAUT TERRITORIUM

 

Die Heros pass die deutsche border und reach Köln (Cologne). At a Gas Station in den outskirts we ask den attendant how we get to dem City Zentrum. We speak some Deutsch. Der attendant is freundlich und explanes it to uns. We’r relieved that he didnt bawl at uns. We kno that many dings they say about die Deutschen ar Klischees, but where u seh so much smoke there muss be ein Feuer. We herd yu cant spit on die street, und if yu do it, a Policist will immediately appear from a Gully und giv yu an astronomische fine, if he doesn’t take yu with ihm. Besides, we herd Deutsche ar rude und unfreundlich, but der attendant at least wasnt.

Wie take a Bus at the Endstation. The driver is rieding a Papier, then he startet the Bus als if hie wer starting a Jumbojet. Wie dont understand: the driver didnt ask für payment und it looks that nobody wants uns to pay. Pieple get in the Bus und dont pay either. Ar Busse frei in Deutschland? Wie seh a sign saying that we hav to ‘entwerten’ the Ticket. ‘Ent-‘ would bie the same als in Englisch ‘de-‘, or ‘in-‘, and ‘wert’ means ‘worth’: “deworth”, “devalue”, invalidate. How can wie invalidate a Ticket wie dont hav? Und wat should wie by a Ticket für if wie hav to invalidate it? The Bus stops in a Garage, the driver lieves the Bus, talks to another driver, who resumes the journey. Maybie the other driver told the neu driver about uns, maybie a plot? The Bus arives at the Endstation. Evrybody gets out, wie prefer not to take any Risiko, maybie all Alarms will sound wenn wie lieve the Bus. Wie go to the driver und tell ihm that wie didnt pay. Hie says: ‘Yu didnt pay? Wel... pay next time, then.’ Funny pieple.

Ve vant to werk hier, ve’r broke. My Bruder und his wife werkten hier a Weile ago. Altho ve’r not Studenten ve hav Studentenkarten, even für the next years. That is the advantage of havving Freunde in the Computer section of the Universität. But in the Employment Office they say ve need an ‘Aufenthaltserlaubnis’. Vat the Hölle is that? If ve look für the englischen Cousins of the Worte that form that Wort, it would be ‘On-de-hold-allowness’. Seems someding like a stay permit. Und where do ve get that? In a deutschen embassy abroad or at the Registerbüro of the City, but in yor case it should be quite impossible.

No way tu get a Job in this City. The river Rhein luks nice, the Kathedrale luks nice und the Atmosphäre is cheerful. Ve hav tu try somewhere els, ve go tu Hamburg. On the way tu Hamburg a driver from Köln tells uns that people in Hamburg ar opener und freundlicher than in Köln. In Hamburg ve dont find any Job, so ve go back tu Köln. On the way there a driver from Hamburg tells uns that people ar much freundlicher in Köln.

On the freivays many Mercedes und BMW’s givv uns a ride. Many execkutives ar interessiert in vat people say, ve havv oft quite interessante Konversationen. This happens oft in England too, but rarely in the US or in any other Länder, since people vith Moneten dont vant to mix upp with the Mob. Maybe this is one of the secrets of the deutschen Mirakel, that the executives kno besser vat people like. It is supposedly also one of the secrets of the japanischen Mirakel. Und on the deutschen freivays it seems that the Deutschen vant to keep the japanische Kamikaze-Tradition. The nativs, who usually ar afrade of the Past, the Präsens und the Futur, suddenly lose alle their fears und drive like unpayd Formel-1 Piloten. I gess that the average speed on an Autobahn is 160 km (100 Meilen) per our, butt sometimes u’r driving 180 km p/h on the left lane und there u seh in the mirror how a Porsche or BMW comes quickly und startet making signs that a snail like u should only drive in the rite lane. These deutschen just expect that their branes, their cars, the branes of the other drivers und the other cars werk alle perfekt als in a gigantischen computer-kontrollierten Pinnballmaschine.

Anyvay ve trry again in Köln, it doesn’t werk und ve go to München (Munic), vhere my Bruder und his wife werkten. On the vay a drriver tells uns that people in München ar opener, freundlicher. So vat now? In Bayern (Bavaria) they speak Bayrisch, a differrent Dialekt, und it real sounds differrent. Not ‘ein, zwei, drei’ (for 1, 2, 3) but ‘oan, zwoa, drei’ (and für ‚one eg’, wich is ‚ein ei’ in Deutsch, they say ‚oa oa’). Again ve go to the Employment Office, und again they vant this komische ‚Aufenthalterlaubnis’. Ve dont kno any mor vat to do. O, ve didnt get any Entrystempel at the border, maybe thats our Problem! Und the solution of the Problem! So ve hich to Österreich (Austria) und come back via another landstreet after an our. At der border ve ask the Policist für an Entrystempel. The Polizist sendet uns to the Büro. An Entrystempel please. This Polizist looks at uns als if ve had askd für a Pomade against foot fungi. Entrystempel? Well, he hat to finden it ferst. He opens a drrawer, closes it, opens another vun, findet a Stempel, trries it on the Papier, no good, trries another one. After a few drrawers und a few Stempel he findet it und stempel our passports. Ve go back to the Employment Office, they tell uns that an Entrystempel doesn’t hab anyding to do vith an Aufenthalterlaubnis. But meanvile ve got a Letter frrom my Bruder, und in this Letter he gave the Adresse of the Platz vhere they werkten. Ve go there, sho our Internationalen Studentenkarts, prromis to werken hart und get the Jobb.

 

***

 

The deutsh language is the complicated cousin of the english language. The spelling is the only feature that is easier in deutsh. It is far from being perfect, there ar quite a few sounds u can spell in sevral ways: im See sah sie so super aus (she lookd so good in the lake (See means ‘sea’ and ‘lake’, but in this case it is masculin, and wen it is masculin it is the lake...)), but actually u could also spel ‘im se sa si so super aus’. So they hav 4 ways to spel long vouls. Tal, Zahl and Saal ar perfect rhymes, but hav difrent spellings. U can spel the sound /f/ with F, PH and V. On the other hand the V can be pronounced /f/ or /v/, depending on the word and on the region. Thay invented an extra leter (ä) for a sound thay cant pronounce: thay say the word ‘jäh’ should be pronounced /IE:/ (as in english ‘yeah’), wich is difrent from ‘je’, wich would be pronounced /Ie:/ (like english ‘yay’ but without the second ‘y’), but then thay pronounce it /Ie:/ all the same. The sound /aI/ (as in english ‘my’) is usually speld ‘ei’, but sometimes ‘ai’. ‘Papa’ and ‘vater’ hav the same final vouls. U can spel /ks/ as ‘x’, as ‘ks’, ‘cks’ and ‘chs’. Stil, all these problems ar peanuts wen compared with the english or the francian spellings.

But then deutsh has hundreds of punctuation rules. There was a spelling conference in 1901, thay oficialized some reforms and told the public that in case of dout the Duden (the deutsh Oxford or Webster dictionry) is the decisive instance. The Duden had a popular version for the general public and a version for publishers, experts, proofreaders, etc. In 1915 the Duden just decided to hav one version, the one for publishers and revisors, wich means that little scool children ar theoretically supposed to lern all those things that wer actually intended for experts. Since thay start evry noun with a cappital and sometimes words in other gramatical classes ar used as nouns (she liked the Rich), there ar a few pages of rules just dedicated to the cappital/loer case rules. There wer 54 rules on how to use the comma (after the recent reform stil 9...).

The pronunciation doesn’t hav as many dificult sounds as english, but deutsh is probably the only language that has syllables with 10 leters (du schleichst, du schmauchst (‘u creep’, ‘u smoke (comfortably)’ – re ‘thou smokest’). And the grammar is terrible: 3 genders, masculin, neutral and feminine, but there is no logic in it. The Computer is a ‘he’, the Zigarette is a ‘she’, the Sonne (sun) is a ‘she’, the Mond (moon) is a ‘he’. The germanic word for feminine is weiblich (‘womanly’, “wifely”), the germanic word for neutral is sächlich (‘thingly’), but the weib (‘woman’ (re ‘wife’) is not weiblich, not feminine, it is “thingly”, wile the sache, the thing, is not ‘thingly’, it is ‘womanly’. So u hav 3 articles. But then there ar the 4 cases (declensions), wich means that u say ‘Der Hund biss den Mann’ (the dog bit the man), but ‘Der Mann biss den Hund’ (the man bit the dog), and then there is the plural, wich means that deutsh has 16 words for english ‘the’, and 9 words for english ‘a’. They ar often the same, stil u hav to lern wich article u take in those 16 cases. The adjectivs hav different endings depending on the gender and number of the noun and depending on wat comes befor them (ein blaues Haus (a blu house), das blaue haus (the blu house), in einem blauen Haus (in a blu house), blaue Häuser (blu houses), die blauen Häuser (the blu houses), etc. The Sentenceconstruction is absolutely misleading:

 

Ich sah die Katze. Ich gab ihr Milch.

I saw the cat. I gave her milk.

 

Ich habe die Katze gesehen. Ich habe ihr Milch gegeben.

I hav the cat seen. I hav her milk given.

 

Da ich die Katze gesehen habe, habe ich ihr Milch gegeben.

Because i the cat seen hav, have i her milk given.

 

Nachdem man ihm sagte, dass Banken an den Sonntagen zu sind, und er nur an diesen Tagen frei hatte, gab er seinen Plan, die Bank auszurauben, nach einigen Erwägungen auf.

Afterthat thay him said, that banks on the sundays closed ar, and he only on these days free had, gave he his plan, the bank offtorob, after some “beweighings” (considerations) up.

 

So ‘gave’ and ‘up’, wich ar together a single idea, ar seprated by 9 words.

 

The deutshis like to say that their language is dificult but exact. And i like to say that it is dificult but totally caotic. In a sentence like ‘Die Kuh, die die Maus biss, war dick’ (the cow, that that mouse bit, was fat), u dont kno who bit who: the cow the mouse or the mouse the cow? Is it ‘the cow that bit the mouse was fat’ or ‘the cow the mouse bit was fat’?

Sometimes deutsh sounds mor exact, but it is actually just redundant, as wen they say sometimes ‘Speiserestaurant’, wich means ‘Eating restaurant’ – hav u ever seen a restaurant where u dont eat? For ‘shark’ u can say ‘hai’ (as english ‘high’), but offen u hear or reed ‘haifisch’, wich meens ‘sharkfish’. As if there wer a shark that wasnt a fish.

Deutshis often tend to be mor exact, but this is not the language itself. Once i was on a ferry-boat to Iceland, and there was a sign in english, danish and deutsh. The deutsh version was much longer than the english one, so i thaut, i kno deutsh words tend to be longer than english words (wich ar usually quite short anyway), but is the difrense that big? Then i red the deutsh version, that said mor or less:

 

‘Falls Sie siebenmal die Sirene in gleichbleibender Tonfolge hören, begeben Sie sich bitte unverzüglich an das Deck 8a (backbord, neben dem Restaurant Viking), dort, wo sich die Rettungsboote und -ringe befinden. Da warten Sie bitte auf die Anweisungen des Kapitäns oder der Crew.’

 

Wich means:

 

‘If u seventimes the alarm in equalstaying toneorder hear, move yorself please immediately to the deck 8a (bakbord, beside the restaurant Viking), there, where ar the salvationsboats and –rings located. There wait u please for the captens or the crews instructions.

 

And then i red the english version: ‘If u hear the alarm whistle, go to the boats and wait for the captens instructions.’ So the anglis wil alredy be in the boats wile the deutshis ar stil reading the instructions.


CAPITOLO 18

I MACCARONI

 

Wi meike good frends with a clique of 7 persone, wi parti a lot, but after a fiw months wi just want to live for Italia. To go to Italia u hav to go thru Austria. There is not much differenza to Germania, except for the facto that it is not so isi to hichhaik, but Germania is quait good at that.

Venezia is butiful butta colda. Firenze (Florence) is butiful butta stil to colda.

Sicilia is worm enuf anda the sun shines. Mani grechi templi, in the storia of Sicilia u see how this continente is mixed uppa. Ciclopi, den sicani, siculi, grichi, cartaginesi, romani, bizantini, arabi, normani, iberi, gali, burgundi hava settled on the isola, until it became a parte of Italia.

In Roma we visitiamo il Papa, il capo of i catolici. We hava to do thatta. Wel, atta this tima we stil donta kno much abouta him, how mani problemi he stil wil causare. We visitiamo il Vaticano and i millioni turisti. Everiwhere lini of several kilometri, like in a communista cuntri. We see all wat il travela guida tels us to visitare anda hitta la road again. La Leaning Torre of Pisa is veri disapointing: it is lop-sideda! In Brasile we wud immediatamente demolire it anda construire a new anda moderna torre. Butta gli italiani are too lazi. Even their torri are leaning, probabilmente because dei are too tireda. On l’other handa, popolo still speak sometimes of la miseria italiana, but Italia has il sama grosso nazionale prodotto as Inglanda, anda more freeways than Inglanda, Francia anda Spagna togetha. Il worst is la burocrazia, atta lista in la posta. If u wanna send a lettera, u go to la posta and il clerka rites something on itta. U keep wating for him to putta la stampa, butta no way. U musta by la stampa in a kiosco or ani shoppa. Then u go backa to la post anda putta la lettera in la lettera-boxa.

Once ai made a gama with mai brotha-in-law, who liveda for a wail in Germania witha me. Since we neva gotta posta, we hava decidato to send each otha lettere. Butta there wudda be no fun if we gave to the otha the lettera in the handa. So we preferimo to senda the lettere to assurde (absurd) adressi in the worlda: Joe Takatuka, rue du Shit 137593745, Fiji. Or: Hee Ting No Go, Pepsi Street 2,35 – Omsk – Russia. As the senda we giva the adrezo of the otha. So if ai wanna senda him a lettera, ai send it to veri far away anda then the lettera come to him. We senta lettere to Madagascar, Tonga, Siberia, Nord-Alasca, Lesotho, Saint Vincent and Italia, among otheri. All the lettere cama backa, onli the lettera to Italia neva made its way backa homa. A lettera to Italia takes lunga then a lettera to the Antarctis.

Before ju go to Svizzera, the nord of Italia become quita svizzo. Svizzera italiana is veri svizzera too. The roadi are clean and all is mor organizzato than Stocolmo in Svezia. Anda mind ju, popolo speak italiano here! Svizzera is veri expensiva. Liechtenstein is small – and expensiva. The birra is ol righta. 


CHAPITRE 22

GOÛD WINE AND OLD CHEESE

 

I’m bak in München, my sister goes bak to Brazil and now i want to go to the southwest with Tamu, so we go first to Berlin in the north. In Berlin we take the subway to the north of the city, where the youth hostel is. Ariving there i hav a look at the map. On the left is West Berlin and on the rite is East Berlin. Ay just a moment! If i trust this map, our subway went thru East Berlin! That cant be tru, we cant hav been in another cuntry today without knoing it! A subway trane cant go thru 2 cuntrys! And if, then we’d hav to hav noticed it! Wel, we take the subway tumorro and chek that. Acording to the map there would even hav to be a station there, in the middle of East Berlin.

The next morning we take the same subway trane and now we notice that we pass abandond stations, or not really, there ar a few policemen around. And then we come to an open station, the trane stops, people come in, people go out, as in a normal station. This must be East Berlin, how can people get in and out as if nothing had happend? We hav to chek this, we get out, walk up the stairs and suddenly we hav a counter befor us with border gards. O i see. We can visit this cuntry, but we hav to change 25 marks for each day, wich we wont get bak. On the eastern side we dont hav time for site-seeing, evrything is very cheap and we dont kno how we’r gonna get rid of this money, we hav to eat and drink and do some shopping. In West Berlin the wether was nice and sunny, here it is gray, poor people. In the evening we stil hav some money left, so we go to a supermarket and spend the rest of it. At the border thay want to kno wat we hav in the bags. Bred, lettuce, etc. Thay chek it and it is tru. Thay think it is funny, people bying their bred and their vegetables. Tamu has a deutsh surname, so thay ask wether her parents fled from East Deutshland. Just for fun. Funny people.

I wouldn’t like to liv here, evrywhere u go u end up in front of a wall. If u want to leave the city for a picnic, u hav to cross 8 border stations altogether. West Berlin-East Berlin-East Deutshland-West Deutshland-then bak West Deutshland-East Deutshland-East Berlin-West Berlin.

En then straight toe the Nederlanden. Just after the border we reach Enschede en loek for a hotel, but they ar all toe expensiv. We go toe the station en want to stay overnacht der. At one oclok an officer tels us dat we cannot stay der, he wants to kik us uit. We moan as we can, we can sta nowhere, not even de politie wil let us slaap in a cel. Plies, we maken no nois! De officer sees dat our situatie is fataal. He lievs, komt bak 10 minuten later en bringt us toe a trein. We may slaap in a slaap-wagon. He switches de verwarming of de trein on, it gets nice en kozie. Nice piepel, de nederlanders.

En cosmopolitanis. But they hav kwijt a funny language, someding betwien duits (german) en engels. Jou kan deducere many woorden, but sometimes dat werkt not. Once Ij asked a chauffeur to let us out at de nest exit. But hoe doe Ij say ‘exit’ in nederlands? Is it de engels woord ‘exit’ oor de duits woord ‘ausfahrt’ (“out-way”). Ik dink it is probably de duits woord, so ik just hav to transferere intoe nederlands: ‘uitvaart’. It sounds not bad. De chauffeurs understaan me, but een of them explanes to me dat ‘uitvaart’ meent niet ‘exit’, it meent ‘funeral’. Anyway, nederlands is niet a language, it is a throot dizies, de ‘ch’ is very guturaal en de ‘g’ toe, en de language is fol of them. En dan some nederlanders spreken ieven de ‘r’ als a guturaal sound, zo a woord lijk ‘graag’ has 3 guturale sounds in een roo!

And then we get to Paris, the most beautéfoule flower of the univers. Nowhere else in the world you have so much culture. And i dont want tout complaindre tout much, some frends we made in the Nederlanden lent us the keys for their appartement, but how come there is no bathroom, no shower and only à toilette in the corridor? We are in France, in Paris, the éssence of la haute culture, and i cant wash myself? And then the français are not more polite than the deutshis, but the women are more féminines. Emancipées but féminines, only the français women canne doux that. The langage français has an orthograph wich is as difficile as anglais, and à grammaire wich is more difficile than anglais but easier than german... anyway the orthograph is à catastrophe. You have 32 possibilités tout spel the sound /o/, like au, aux, eau, haut, hauts, hôt, haus, ot, heauz etc. If you count also the variantes inplausibles, like auc, eauf, ault (renault), it is more than 80. So the français need a réforme tout... Or maybe notte. Les français are à bit sensitives à bout dzis point. Once i was having a dîner in thé house of à française famille. At least 20 peuple around, mostly young peuple. Dzère i started making suggestions on how we coud improver la français orthographe. Rite aftaire i said dzat, dzère was à rebellion. Sophie, thé girl juste beside me, asked: ‘WAT did you say?’ ‘Wel, it was juste an idee, we coud make thé orthographe français easière, more logiq –‘ ‘Did you hear wat he said? He wants tout make our sacrée langage plus simple!’ ‘Wel, it was juste an idee...’ I coudnt finir la sentence, she punched me in thé nose, and my nose came out on thé otre side of thé hêdde. I sat dzère and had no idee how i woud be able tout get my nose bac tout la place wère it belongs tout, wen Marc stood up. He held a fourche in thé hand in a way dzat didnt promis anything good. Marc cant eat spaghetti with la fourche in dzat position. And dzen he had a funny shining in his ies and came in my direction, and i started tout get worried. I knew: otre cuntrys, otre coutûmes. But i didnt kno wedzer i woud break eny codex if i stoppé eating my spaguetti, stood up and ran away. Enyway dzat was wat i did, i tried tout échaper. My nabors held mi, beut ma désperation was great and i managed tout flee, an action dzat cost me all les boutons of my shirt. I ran for my life throu le long corridor and arrivé at la dor, wich was unfortunately closé. Thé mob came shouting behind me, dzère were only à few mètres between us, i dzaut with my missing boutons: o manne, if dzey cach you, your date is expirée. Dzey make fondue of you and spred you on one of dzese baguettes horribles. Maybe with an old stinky cheese. I reacté quicly and jumpé throu thé windot. I had à few problèmes with thé glass and i was bleeding à bitte, but i’d radzère bleed dzan serve as fondue. I ran like à berserc, thé mob behind me. I ran so fast dzat i overtooc an 8 year old girl on à bicyclette. Tout mètres feurdzère i dzaut dzat seuch à bicyclette coud be quite usefoule for me, so i ran à bitte slower until she was parallèle tout me, dzen i punché her in thé bêlly. Thé girl didnt feel goûd aftaire dzat. She felle on thé flor and i tooc her bicyclette. Seau i coud augmenter à bitte la distance between me and my persecuteurs. Wen i loocd bac i seaux dzat dzey gotte in tout cars at à gas station wile les drivairs were paying at le countaire. Now dzeir chances tout cach me improved à lotte. I had nô choix, dzère was nô gas station coming ahed, so i had tout gô bac tout, dzey passé me and coudnt make à u-tourn immédiatement. I came tout la gas station and gotte in la first ôpen car i seaux. I wanted tout start, beut seuddenly an unknown bloque sat in le car beside me. I preparé myself tout smash his face and kik him out of le car wen he said: Folleau dzat car! Dzose peuple juste robé my car!’ ‘Sorry, beut i cant chasser dzem, dzey are chassing me!’ He had nô idee wat tout say, sô he said notzing and oui started, thé tout ôtres cars juste one mètre behind us. Seuddenly i heurd à sirène de police, shit manne, somebody had told la police. Now we had tout cars of our “frends” and tout cars from la police chassing us. At thé red lite i was indécisive: ignorer it, drive throu and risc à fine (la police woud be able tout observer le crime from quite near) or stopper and surrender tout my destin? I decidé tout gô for thé first solution. Oui stille drove à fiou kilomètres, who knows how meni? And à fiou hundred mètres feurdzère dzère was à blocade de police, with 3 trucs blocking la route. Dzat was thé end. Beut wait à minute: thé trucs were sô big dzat oui might get throu undair dzême. At least most of le car. I accélléré, thé little Fiat howled wildly like à dog who felle in boiling water, thé bloque beside me shouted ‘You dont really want tout drive undaire dzose trucs? You must be mad! Lette me offe, immédiatement!’ I didnt want tout be responsable for eni injuries. I stoppé le car, lette im offe, 2 cars of my chasseurs crashed intout my bâque, beut le moteur was on le front and i accélléré againe with all wat le moteur gave, straight intoût les trucs, a coûle wind caressé my left ear, i felte à grate peace in my hart. Le car really came throu undaire le truc, onli les windeaux, le rouf and my hêdde staide in la place. Dammitte, i had forgottênne tout duc my hêdde, beut i cante dzinc of evridzing at thé same time. Dzanc God dzère weur ambulances at le site, wich toûc me tout l’hôpital. Feurst onli my hêdde, bécause le car went on widz foul pouver bécause my foût staid fixé on l’accélérateur. Aftaire 7 kilomètres and 3 accidents mineurs, le car was stoppé by à maple trie. Les docteurs tried déspératement tout pach up my hêdde widz my undaire-bôdi, beut dzère was notte meuch dzey coud doux éni more. I died 3 days latère of lac of hêdde. Or, as les docteurs jôked, bécause of lac of corps. You kno how dzis docteurs are. I kno, à bitte long dzis histoire, beut dzis est my boûc, notte your boûc. Hier i rite wat i want.

Oui werc in un aille-glace-factorie againe, dzis time in le Jura, in l’est of thé cuntry. Beut oui canne baire it ônli ouanne day dzère, thé werc est bad and le payment est stille worse. Sô oui gô feurdzère tout le sud. Nimes, Toulouse and Espagne. En France it est spring, thé sun shines, évéridzing fleuri and it est warm. Dzênne oui come tout le tunnel des Pyrénées, wich est 8 kilomètres long. On de espaniol side it is winter, everycing is covered wiz snow. It snows, and de fog is so mucho that u cant see mor dan 5 metros in frente of u. Zaragoza, Barcelona, Madrid, we see museos, go to de muchos bares. Grate nitelife in Espania, grate food. U mite considerar it a bit greasy, but i love it. Den we find out dat we ran out of monedas. Befor we start looking por a job around here, we go bak to Munic.

Andorra, a nais landlet en els Pirineus. Cuait a fiu pueblo lib hir becos dey dont want tu pey taxas. Pueblos dat come hir du it not tu pey tajas. Andorra is no cantri, it is a duti-fri-shop.


CHAPITRE 29

THE LAND OF THE PIGMENTALLY CHALLENGED PEOPLE

 

FAZE 12 - /i:/ az in ‘feet’. Uze only ‘e’ wen TS uzes ‘e’ (be, he, me, she, (the), we), or befor other vowels (real, theory), otherwize ‘ee’. The week bee couldn’t go to the theater because of the fateeg she had in the feet.

 

***

 

One of the two cars dont work that wel eny mor. Vontkomm is afrade the car wont make it to Togo. So we hav to tow one car. He axellerates in the front and i brake in the bak, or vise-versa. Mabon has been arguing with him aul the time and prefers to travvel in „my“ car. We sing a lot together, from flower-power to avangard. The next eevening Mabon doesn’t want to sleep in Vontkomms car eny mor, so she sleeps in my car. I dont do enything, i’m very shy.

We’r running out of food, we ate aul the sardeens and we can hardly “shower” eny mor. And the worst, worse than running out of wauter: we’r running out of sigarets. The scroungers ar getting mor and mor, the givers fewer and fewer, until we hav one giver for 19 scroungers. And then we see after aul that misery a town, and this is not a mirage, it is a real town. Bienvenue à Arlit, cette aimable oase dans le desert. In Arlit thair is plenty of sardeen cans, coffee, omlet, wisky, sigarets and bars.

After u hav travveld thru wite islamic cuntrys, it is a releef to arive in a blak islamic cuntry, Niger. It is stil islamic, but it is a compleetly difrent people. Thair is a huge difrense between USian amish people and crazy jamaikis, aul cristians, and thair is a huge difrense between wite moslems and blak moslems. OK, some “wite” cappital cities ar rellativly libral, but in suthern North Africa u dont see women, just clothes. Thay look thru a little hole in the vale, az observer u cant see a thing. Nowadays i like arabian muzic, especially ‘rai’, the Maghreb pop, but i didnt like it at aul at that time, it made me depressd. Arlit is quite difrent, a town with 10,000 inhabbitants but mor nite life than Manchester and Seattle together, wich doesn’t meen much but givs u an idea. The bars ar open the hole nite, the mob romps, women hit men on thair hed with bottles and evrything is very funny. Thairs plenty of beer and little boys come around aul the time with skewers. We feel like God in Africa. Evrything is so simple, and i begin enjoying Bob Marley, u dont heer something else around heer.

This just proves that religion has less to do with its creator than with the traditions of the people who adopted it. The nigeris ar devout moslems, stil thay think we should enjoy life. It is not ritten in the Coran that we shouldn’t. Women look quite nise, and the curly hair, wich disturbs a bit the esthetic in my ies, ar covered by a scarf. So u just see the butiful fases, and thay giv an impression of purity and piety. If Mary, Jesus mother, wer blak, then she sertenly lookd like the women heer.

The girls in our convoy arnt too prim with thair sannitry nesesitys. In the dezzert thay just pissd wair thay wer, thay didnt cair if 10 people stood around or if thay pissd exactly wair we wanted to prepair our picnic. U had to be cairful. Now in Arlit thay didnt get primmer. Thay ask 3 frends to make a smaul waul, eeven if it is in the middle of the sentral plase. Sometimes thair arnt 3 frends around, thairs only one. Wel, then that one has to make the waul alone, a one-man waul.

Graddually we leev the dezzert. I go for a wauk in the bush with Mabon. I ask her if she never thaut about the risk she’s taking, going for a wauk in the bush with a brazilo. That could be dangerous“, i say. „Really?“, she asks, „and wat do brazilos do wen thay wauk with girls in the bush?“. Shit, it would be my turn now, but i’m so shy. In the nite we’r both in the car, the car is further away from the other cars, evrybody is sleeping. I hav to say it agen: „And dont u get worried, sleeping in the same car with a brazilo?“ „I’v got the impression that brazilos ar quite harmless“. No, man, thats too much. The seet-baks ar down enyway, i turn to her and without saying a word i start taking her nity off, it’s taking too much time and i rip it off. Only tatters of it stay on her skin, i take her from behind and pennetrate her. She can hardly breeth. Her rounded body trembles under my rage and my injured pride. Thats how it could hav been. How it really was, u aulredy kno: i finishd smoking my sigaret and got asleep.

We stop at sevral villages and enjoy the nigeran hospitality. The problem ar the kids: insted of lerning to say ‘mama’ az first word, thay lern ‘cadeau’ (francian for prezzent), and wen thay see a convoy coming, thay start shouting the word frenetically.

In Niamey, the cappital, we hav a brake and go on to the beninian border. At the border the oficials want to see our cholera vaxination sertificat. Funny enuf, this bunch of deutshis and switzis dont hav it wile the brazilo heer has one. Thay aul hav to go bak to Niamey and get one. It’s only a few hundred kilomeeters. I stay at the border and look a bit at life az it is heer. I love the african snaks, the sardeen omlets ar very fine, u wouldn’t beleev it. From now on i’l aulways be a fan of sardeen omlets. My co-travlers aparently too. And the coffee: the deutshis would never drink this stuf at home, but heer thay love it: u boil the wauter, por Nescafé, aulmost a hole can of sweetend condensed milk, then a few cubes sugar and it’s redy. Sure, it is sweet. Thay aulso hav rats on the skewer. Hopefully thay’r wild rats, not city rats, stil thay taist a bit strange. It is like rabbit, but thay hav a funny aftertaist.

A jeografy teecher asks me wair i come from. After i told him, he starts telling me meny things about Brazil. A cuntry full of indians, who cant reed and dont hav electrisity. Funny to heer this in this plase, under a candle lite.

My frends ar bak. Thair wer no cholera vaxins in Niamey, but thay had a stamp at leest. The tourist pays, the oficial stamps. Now we cross the border. We’r stil towing a car aul the time. Mabon and me keep joking and playing. Sometimes a bit too much, so that we end up cauzing an axident with the tow-rope and the lites. Vontkomm is outraged, he cauls us names and tels Mabon she has to go in his car, so that i can consentrate beter. She tels him to fuk off, but he doesn’t agree with that. I propoze her that we get off and hichhike to the cappital. She thinks we should go on in the car and get off at the next town, but i dont agree. I think we should get off now, or go with him to the end. We end up driving to Parakou, wair she gets off. I go on with Vontkomm to the togian border. I dont hav a visa for Togo, we hav to persuade the oficials on both sides of the border to let me thru for haf an our, sinse Vontkomm cant drive the 2 cars at once, and he’s got a visa for only one entry... We sellebrate the end of a 2000 km long towing journey with a beer. He eeven pays me some money for the driving. Then i go bak, wich is not so eezy because at the togian border thay hav other oficials now. But i end up managing it. At the beninian side thay dont want to let me in because i hav a bakpak, and bakpaks ar not alowd in the “socialist” Benin. I cant go bak to Togo because i dont hav a visa, it seems that i’l hav to spend the rest of my life between thees 2 borders. ‘But folks, u let me out and promisd me to let me in agen, and i had a ruksak aulredy!’ ‘Yes, but it was in the car befor, so it wasnt really a bakpak, and it is one now. U can come in, only yur ruksak cant.’ U need some patiense, no dout, and eventually the problem is solvd. I hav to dismantle it, i take evrything off wat makes a bag tu a bakpak, put it inside the bakpak. And i carry it at the belly. Thay let me thru, and 100 meeters after the border i hav a hel of a job to assemble it agen. From Cotonou, the cappital, i go to Naigeria.


CHAPTA 30

DANTES PARADISE

 

FAZE 13 – Oil and royal rhyme, sour and flower too. Is thair a leter too much in royal and flower, or a leter missing in oil and sour? Wel, yes and no. Thair is something thair, but after a difthong (2 vowels together wair one is very short) and befor an L thair is aulways something thair, in english. English speekers cant say it in a difrent way. So should we spel oil and roil or oyal and royal? Wel, lets make it simple: oil and roil. Befor a consonant, we uze ‘i’ and ‘u’, otherwize ‘y’ and ‘w’. Oil and roil, sour and flour. For ‘flour’ and ‘flower’. The poor king doesn’t hav the pour to por the roil wauter in the glass.

 

***

 

From the border to Lagos it is 100 km and 10 poleese cheks. Sometimes thay ar poleesemen, sometimes soldiers, sometimes robbers dressd az poleesemen, sometimes poleesemen dressd az robbers. In Lagos i find a hotel in a suburb for 70 dollars, the cheepest i could find. Thay say i shouldn’t stay outside. I’d hav no chanse to wake up tomorro alive, ded probably either.

In the folloing day i start looking for a cheeper plase to stay. It’s not eezy. Usually evrything is nise and organized in expensiv cities, but nobody can say that about Lagos. It is the dirtiest, the expensivest, the hostilest, the dangerousest, the absurdest gathering of people the plannet has to offer. The cappital of misery, the metropolis of desperation. This is a hot and humid megasewer, a landscape of stenches that change with evry meeter i wauk, actually not a landscape but a stenchscape. On the streets thair ar the cars, and on the sides thair ar open sewage canals. Between the proper road and the sewage canals thair ar no sidewauks, thair is only a trash dune wich goes along with the road. U hav to wauk on this trash dune and take cair that the cars dont take a peese of yor ass with them and at the same time take cair that u dont faul into the sewage canal. Lagos doesn’t hav electrisity quite often, good houses hav usually own generators. In the nite it is quite dark, thair isnt such a thing like street lites.

I meet a deutsho who worked az a saler on a ship wich was stationd neer the port of Lagos. In the middle of the nite 4 pirats borded the ship, the security people of the boat wer quicker and shot them down. Thay caul the poleese, thay come and ask wat happend. “Wel, we kild thees 4 pirats, thay wer trying to atac us.” “So wat? Wy didnt u thro them in the wauter?” “Wel... yes, wy didnt we?” “OK, then lets do it now.” 1, 2, 3, 4, aul the bodies in the wauter. The poleesemen say by by and leev.

Thair ar lots of churches, like in the USA. Baptists, methodists, adventists, dentists and meny other cults i hav never herd from befor. Thair is aulso a mosk on neerly evry corner. Cars and buses aulways hav something ritten on them, either God, who is the god of the anglis, or Allah, who is the god of the arabis. The buses, very often brand new brazilian buses, dont hav dors and windows after a week of use. Thay ar haf distroyd, increddibly full and thay never stop properly, so the quicker and stronger u ar, the beter u can manage to find a plase to put yor feet, at leest one of them, and somewair to hold fast. It is a kind of natural selection. I usually manage to get a plase outside too, and the naigeris ar quite amazed seeing a wite man doing that. Thay thaut evry wite man gets lots of money and has a nise car. Inside the buses it is not less caotic. In evry journey thair ar sevral quarrels, thay tend to escalate until evrybody is shouting. Usually the discussions stop abruptly, 10 minutes later or so a new discussion begins. It is no surprise that thay ar so agressiv. If i had to liv in this city, i’d probably run amok after a week.

I wauk around in the city senter, thair ar lots of hy rizes, banks and insurance companies, but not a single bar. I feel miserable, i’v been wauking for 4 ours without finding a plase wair i could sit down, relax and hav a beer. Thair ar kiosks wair u can eet sardeen omlets and if u want a beer thay organize one for u, but thay ar between the cars and the sewage canals, on the trash dunes. I feel alone, i like to be alone but being alone among such a mass of people in thees conditions isnt nise, really. I end up finding a chinan restaurant, it is in the seccond flor. Thair is a blak bloke sitting at the entranse and he tels me that the restaurant is clozed. I sit down beside him and i cant stop my ies from letting out 2 or 3 teers. But the fite has to go on, i stand up and leev, the blak bloke ses to me, ‘take cair, man’. The first frendly words sinse days. This givs me new courage and i keep serching, until i find a bar in the Hotel Bristol. Ise cold beer, ise cold air conditioned, life starts filling my body agen.

This city has only one advantage: wen u leev it, evrywair else seems to be a paradise, no matter wair u go. I go to the Poste Restante to get my male. The clerk throws a bundle of leters on the counter. Thair ar no leters to me among thees. I look at the dates, the leters wer ritten one yeer ago. I tel that to the clerk, who throws another bundle of leters on the counter. Thees leters ar just haf a yeer old, but thats not good enuf for me. I complane agen and now i get a fresh bundle, and find my leters.

I stay for a wile in the Salvation Army, wich is a hole like evrything else in Lagos (OK, thair ar a few rich districts but thay dont invite me thair). The cheef tries to persuade me to axept Jesus az my savior, but aul i can do is to say ‘Jesus Christ, wair did i land heer?’ I feel tempted to say ‘Thank God i’m an aitheist’, but i dont kno if he likes this kind of humor. I’m broke and i’v tried to find a job in one of the 60 brazilian companies heer, but thair is a big crisis in the cuntry and meny companies want to close down thair naigerian branches. I finally giv up, because after aul i mite find a job, and i’d probably regret it. I leev.

In Benin City it is much cozyer, and soon i find a bar. I can eeven sit down on a bottle case, i start to chat with the owners, i feel comfortable and stay thair, until thay end up inviting me to stay in thair plase. It is a cozy hut, with lots of carpets and red and blu lites gloing day and nite. I stay for a few days. My best frends ar Orji and Silvanus. Orji has a very honest aura, so much that i’l remember him later az having blu ies. Then i’l look at his picture and hav to conseed that his ies ar az blak az his skin. Wat do blu ies hav to do with honesty? I dont kno, but the asosiation exists, somewair in my hed. I come from a cuntry wair not most blaks ar criminals, but most criminals ar blaks, or at leest non wites. This is a long story and i wont try to explane it heer. I’m quite sure that Africa is much safer than most cuntrys in the american continent, exepting Lagos and a few other big cities. Enyway i feel grate heer but hav to go on, i’m running out of money. Lucky that Silvanus is going to Cameroon, and he has a car he wants to sel thair.

His pik-up truk has blu lite and siren, so wen he sees a poleese chek he swiches evrything on and thay let us thru. One thing in this story is rather unplezzant: no matter who is driving the car, people think i’m the car owner. At the gas stations thay aulways ask me how much gassolin thay should put in the tank. Wen people want a lift, thay aulways ask me. Wen he drives, thay think he’s my chauffeur. Then he tels me to drive, and thay think i’m giving him a lift or he’s my employee. In Africa the wite man is the milionair, he’s the massa. I hav much less money than a normal tourist, but stil mor than most of the people heer. Stil, i cant aford to be az poor az thay ar. I run out of money much quicker than them, because i’m travling. If an african doesn’t hav a job, life goes on az usual, thay hav a famly, frends and he doesn’t pay rent for his hut. And if he had to sleep on the street, that wouldn’t be a big afair either. If i did it, thay’d mug me imeediatly, and thay’d get really mad if thay didnt find money on me, thay wouldn’t just beleev me that i dont hav money. Wen a wite man sleeps on the street, he can be crazy but not poor. Enyway we drive for a week, a quite long week sinse he’s got a single tape and it is Julio Iglesias. If u dont kno wat kind of muzic he makes, fil a plate with honey and put lots of sugar on it, and then think of the muzical equivalent to it.


CHAPITRE 32

THE BRED WAS NO GOOD

 

FAZE 15 - /3r/ az in ‘verb, bird, turn’, and /@r/ az in ‘leter’. We spel ‘ur’ wen the sound is stressd and not in the ferst syllable (ocur, prefur), and wen we’d hav to change a TS ‘c’ to ‘k’ (curnel, curv, not kernel, kerv). Aulso we keep the suffixes with ‘ure’, like lesure, pressure, and the werd yur (wich is yor in the UK), because of the root werd you. Otherwize we spel ‘er’ (in the grate majority of cases). In the ferst werld peepel dont like curnels, and wen we askd peepel in the therd werld thair wer never eny ansers.

 

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Az opozed to the british colonies, the francian prezzense in its old colonies is unoverlookable. U see francian teechers, businessmen and military. Libreville, the cappital of Gabon, is one of thoze plases wair u see the most of them. The francis hav a life heer az Gods life in France, but with sun. Thay hav thair hypermarchés az in evry parisian suburb, thay eet, drink and fuk exactly the same way az wen thay’r at home. Once i askd a franso who’s been living heer the last yeer. How do u like the cuntry? Wel i like it, he sed, u’v got wat u need, including sun, and peepel ar cooler,  mor relaxd. OK, thay’r cooler, i say, but it is hard to tauk to them somehow, u hav to explane so much befor finishing a sentense. It’s tru, thay hav an extreem lak of information down heer. OK, maybe it is only the lak of information i consider important and thay dont. He doesn’t agree and finds my comment funny. At the end we find out that he was tauking about the francis living heer wile i was tauking about the gabonis. I meen the blak gabonis. He sed: “O i see, u meen the blaks. Sure, then i agree. I thaut u wer tauking about the normal peepel.” And he ses this in the middel of Africa. The francis hav heer thair own bakeries, bars and districts, eeven an own poleese (oficially for foreners). In a gabonian bar u pay one doller for a bottel Regab (REgie GABonaise) beer, in the francian bars the cheepest (and usually the onliest) u can get is a Heineken can for 4 dollers.

The ignorense, or tu be politically corect, “lak of information” the afrikis suffer from is sometimes exelent for a good laf and a smiling day. Once i met an africo who werkd az computer sientist and was intrested in it. I gave him the adress of my chinan-brazilian frend in Seattle, who has a quite good brane for this. I rote the adress, Seattle/Washington/USA. He red the adress aloud, and ariving at USA he sed, “USA, Union Soviétique d’Amérique’. I lafd, but he was seerius. But then u dont hav to go far to see such cases. I get thoze e-male reports with sentenses from students in Brazil or elsewair. A student in the US sed that aincient Egypt was inhabbited by mummies and thay aul rote in hydraulics. Thay livd in the Sarah Dessert and travveld by Camelot. The climat of the Sarah is such that the inhabbitants hav to liv elsewair.

Libreville is a modern city and freequently it is on the top of the list of expensiv cities, in front of Zurich, London or Tokio. I spend the ferst nite in a cathlic senter. On the folloing day the preest kiks me out, aultho thair ar 50 free beds. It’s a matter of prinsipel. The protestents on the other hand giv evryone a shelter, without discrimination of sex, color, age or religion. For 50 dollers the nite. I cant stay, heer the poor ar discriminated. I’m really bankrupt now, i dont hav a peny in my pocket. It is finished, mista. I sleep on the beech, eet coconuts and pinch some banannas on the feelds. In Africa u dont die because of that. Soon 2 zairis (yes, sentral congis or watever) invite me to stay with them. We like eech other and can comunicate. We tauk about God and the werld. Thay go around with open ies. The hut has one room with 2 thin beds, 2 zairis and one brazilo. Very narro and hot. Of corse it is in a slum, az the rest of the city exepting the city senter and the francian districts. This doesn’t meen that thay’r poor. Thay dont ern bad for africa standerds. At leest 100 dollers and sometimes 500, 600 dollers a month, and thay’r stil not the boss. Thay liv in the slum because thay cant think of something difrent. It was aulways like that, so it remanes. If u hav some money left, u spend it for the car, for the clothes or for the beer. Who thinks of investing in a house? The hut is perfect, it has a bed and a roof, wat do u want from a plase u just uze to sleep? On the way to my hut i hav to go thru a dozen of other huts. Peepel sleep or shag or cook and dont notis wen peepel go thru thair houses. By the way, my frends hav double names. Thay wer cristiand and got the names Thadee and Polydor. Thay grew up with thoze names. But then Mobutu had another eskimus idea (agen, i dont think eskimoes or az thay like it, inuits, ar stupid – i just wanted to say something like very outlandish), he wanted his underdones to hav zairian names. So thay say thay ar Thadee and Polydor, but in thair passports thair names ar Ungwala and Molenga, or something like that.

Heer in Gabon the prezzident came to pour az Albert Bongo. Now his name is El-Hadji Omar Bongo. He convurted to Islam, like Cat Stevens. Funny religion, u can hav 4 women, but u cant see them befor u marry them. So maybe it is beter to hav one u can chek befor. Bongo spends 2/3 of his time in front of TV camras, otherwize he’s moving from one plase to another. U notis it because the mane road is blokd for 10 minutes and u can heer the poleese howling from wairever u ar in city. The area of his pallas is mor or less haf of the city senter. He didnt kik the wites out like Mobutu, he eeven makes an effert to keep them heer, and has francian advizers.

It is a long way from the slum to the brazilian embasy and i hichhike. The driver asks me wair i come from. “Brazil? Aha. I dont kno the ambassader, but i kno the ambassaders dauter.” In the consulat i ask them if thay hav a job for me or if thay can help me to find a plase to stay. “The ambassader isnt heer, but i dont think he’l be keen in helping u. U beter try with his dauter, Lulu.” Aha, agen this dauter. Thay giv me her number, i caul her but she isnt thair. At home, i meen, at hut i tel Thadee that i’m looking for the brazilian ambassaders dauter. “O, u’r looking for Lulu? She went to Cameroon with a japano. With her motorbike.” Jesus, she seems to be really wel known. Next day i hich downtown and end up telling the driver that i’m brazilian, he knows her too. It seems that she drives her motorbike like a kamikaze. After a wile i get hold of her at the fone, she tels me to go to frends of her. I meet her thair, with 2 fransos and a deutsho. Thay’r aul lying around, quite stoned, a huge caos in the house. She looks good. Rather smaul, suntand, blak hair, nise fase. U just see that she’s not “normal” wen she stands up. She moves much mor her sholders than her hips, and she tauks like a man. It does look a bit funny in her. Enyway i stay with thees peepel. It is mor comfortable and fresher than in the hut. Sometimes we go to parties or to bars, Lulu likes to tauk to me: “Look at the chiks over thair. Not bad, ay?” “Yeah, not bad.” Later wen i introduse her to other peepel i’l say that we hav quite a few things in common, for exampel both of us dont like men.

After a long long serch i find werk. It is a company that asembels TV-towers in the jungel. The 2 bosses ar fransos, of corse. It was hard to find the job, because thay just employ wites az bosses. A wite man, werking az werker or driver, no, u cant do that, wat wil the blaks think? This would be the same az if a Jupiter stattue cofd. Now i’m a boss too, a littel teem boss. We’r prepairing the construction of new towers in the jungel but hav to stay most of the time in town. I’m happy about it, the bush is hard, millions of moskeetoes and an unbairable close heet. U just want to stay on the top of the towers, most bugs dont like to go so hy, and the air is fresher. It is not a job without problems. I hav the mecanical intelligence of a chimpanzee, and the werkers under me kno mor about the job than me. And then i’m supozed to make thees peepel werk like slaves, wair thair is hardly werk, at the moment. I suggest to the big bosses that we leev them alone wen thair is not enuf werk, so thay werk beter wen thay really hav werk, because thay can see the sense of thair werk then. No way. The bosses want to see them werking nonstop. And then i should make good frends with the werkers and would hav to pay them some beers, thats quite normal heer. But i dont hav the dough for that. Enyway thair is at leest one werker who knows wy the north is so rich and the south so poor: “No wonder! The wites hav aul the money-making machines!”

After a long long time without seeing eny tourists i meet one at the post offis. He’s from Deutshland, we speek deutsh with eech other, he soon notises that my axent is not perfect and asks me wair i come from. I tel him and he starts a lafter. Wat was that? He pulls a brazilian passport from the pocket. He was born in South Brazil, but the pairents wer deutsh and he grew up in Deutshland. But we end up being good frends. And we visit the zairis, in the eevening we go out, Thadee forgot something and has to go bak, so we wate for him at the corner. Two gys aproach us and want to chek our passports. “Wy should we sho u our passports?” “Because we ar from the poleese.” “Can u identify yurself?” “We dont hav them with us heer, thay’r at home, just 100 meeters from heer.” “Wel, then go and get them. We dont sho our passports to enyone who asks it from us.” But now Thadee arives agen, we’r discussing and he ses that we can sho our passports, it is aul rite. Wel, he knows how things werk heer, so the 4 of us sho our passports and documents. Thay chek it and want to sho thair poleese document now. It’s aulrite, we dont need to see them. But Thadee ses it is beter if we go, so we go. We go with them and look at thair poleese ID’s. Wonderful. Meny leters and thair is eeven a picture. But now we want to go. No, thay say, we hav to follo them. Wair to? To the poleese station. Wat the hel ar we supozed to do in the poleese station? Thay can chek if we’r OK. Wat do u meen, u chekd aulredy! In the poleese station thay hav beter ways to chek. We hav to go with them. In the poleese station thay exchange some words with the offiser in charge and leev. We hav to stay. The offiser pozes us some ruteen questions. Who ar we, wy, wair we come from and wair do we go. Then he leevs. A few gards take cair of us. After a wile another offiser comes around and asks us wat we’r doing heer. “Thats wat WE would like to kno! Wat ar we doing heer?” “Dont play the innosents! If u’r heer, thair must be a reezon for it. Nobody is arested for nothing!” We argue bak but he’s not intrested. He pozes us the same questions and leev. We wate for an our, a therd offiser comes and starts aul over from the beginning. We protest energically. He leevs, an our later a forth offiser comes around, and this one holds a speech about the bloody foreners. After a wile thay take us to the Sentral Poleese Station. The passport control was at 7 in the eevening, now it is 11. It is a scandal how long thay need to transport us away.

It is sunday eevening, nobody at the sentral poleese station has the authority to releez us. We hav to take our clothes off, we can only keep our underpants. The prison is in the seller and cant be confuzed with a Hilton Hotel. The sel is maybe 5 meeters x 5 meeters, aulmost 6 yards, inside the sel thair ar maybe 60 gests. The yungest one is 12 yeers old, the oldest over 60. The sel has a toilet but it doesn’t werk, so the flor has a laer of maybe 1 or 2 cm of piss. Not nise to sleep on it, and of corse none of us sleeps, at leest not the ferst nite. We’r not tired enuf. We stand around. Most gests hav no idea wy thay ar thair, or at leest thats wat thay tel us, and sertenly quite a few of them ar telling the truth.

In the next morning thair is a termoil, peepel fite for the bred thay thro in, but the bred doesn’t look that good and we dont try to get eny. Thay caul out some names, we pray to the gods that our names ar among them. And really, after a few ours thay caul Wolfgang, my deutsh brazilian frend, and me. We hav to wate in the yard until the comander arives. Thay bring us to him, he’s sitting at the tabel and an offiser stands beside him. He asks us wy we’r thair, and we tel him our story. He looks at my passport, ses to the offiser: “Son passeport est valide?!” “Oui, Monsieur.” He cheks my visa. “Son visa est valide?! » « Oui, Monsieur. » He givs me my passport. He takes Wolfs passport in his hands. “Son passeport est valide!?» «Oui, Monsieur.» «Et son visa est valide?!» «Oui, Monsieur.» He givs Wolf his passport. We put on our clothes and leev.

We’r quite happy that we’r out. Jesus. But we hav to do something for our zairian frends. Thay’r stil inside thair. We go to the zairian embasy and tel them wat happend to us and to the zairian citizens. The oficial tels us thay wil take cair of it, but he eeven didnt ask for thair names. I hav a frend in the foreners poleese, a franso who livd in Brazil for a wile, but he’s il and left the city. In the folloing day we’r wauking on the street and who do we see? Thadee. O thats nise. “Did thay releez u?” “No, i fled.” “How do u meen, u fled?” “Thay cauld me, i went to the comanders room, but he wasnt thair, i had to wate. Then i saw my clothes in the ajoining room, i went thair, put my clothes on and left.” “Jesus! But wont thay make much mor problems to Polydor? Thay mite torture him to get the information from him wair u ar!” “I dont beleev that. Or at leest i hope it doesn’t happen.” In the folloing day we wauk in the city and who do we see coming thair? Polydor. Funny. “Did thay releez u?” “No, i fled.” “How did u manage?” “Thay cauld me to the comanders room, i came thair but he wasnt thair, i saw my clothes in the ajoining room...”

By the way: az in aul West Africa, the bred is quite good. Just around the corner i could hav francian bagets, but i prefur to wauk one kilomeeter to get the african baget. I dont kno how thay make it, and i hope it is nothing unhelthy, enyway it taists beter and fresher after three days than a fresh francian baget.

Wolf leevs, he wants to go to South Africa, he wants to meet anti-apartheid-peepel thair. By by Wolf, we wont see eech other eny mor, at leest not in this life.

My trial peeriod in the company expires and thay fire me. Enyway it was the best wage i had in my life, it wood be maybe 7,000 dollers nowadays. And then the house owners kik us out, so it is time to go. Tamu rites that evrything is aulrite with her. Evryday she goes to parties and discos. Often with Suley, one of his fello occupents. OK OK, i didnt want to kno it with so meny deetales. It is time to breeth new air. It is stil a long way to the Cape of Good Hope.  


CHAPITRE 34

WAUKING TAUKING

 

FAZE 17 - /aI/ az in ‘bike’ is speld ‘i’: dial, mity. If there is nothing folloing the folloing consonant, we ad an ‘e’: I’d like to hav a life in wich i’m on the rite side wen the nite comes. Unstressd /aI/ is speld ‘i’: dinamic. For /aI/ befor 2 or mor consonants or at the end of the root werd see next chapters.

 

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Wen u cross the Congo/Zaire rivver, u leev the CFA-Zone of West and Sentral Africa. Until now i didnt hav to change money because aul the francofone cuntrys hav the same Franc-CFA az currensy, this makes life quite eezy. Heer in Congo-Zaire the money is cauld zaire and has no vallue but a good wate. Wen u change 50 dollers u need aul the pockets in the pants and shert u can get to keep the money. Meny peepel go with big money bundles around, the biggest bil has the werth of 50 US sents.

         The boss is (was) Mobutu Sese Seko and he’s known az the Ali Baba of Africa, the blak Al Capone or the Terrible Beegel Boy of the South. The situation in Zaire is quite bad, but the cuntry has meny diamonds and thats wy Mobutu is one of the richest men of the werld. His pallas in Kinshasa is bigger than a few sittys in the werld, and to protect aul this he needs a privat army of 2000 eleet soldiers. And he’s not only a crimminal, he’s aulso a stupid crimminal, who kikd the belgis out of the cuntry. Now thair is nobody thair to repair the mixer, the tiperiter or the factory.

         From far Kinshasa looks like Manhattan. wen u come neerer it stil look a bit like Manhattan, at leest thair is a lot of criminality too. The sitty has a lot of green airias, meny streets ar nise allys with meny trees. U dont find the nise sardeen omlets eny mor, and the times of the good bred ar over. On the other hand the sigaret sellers with thair littel tabels on the road side offer mor than normal sigaret sellers offer. “Wat sigarets do u hav?” “Marlboro normal and Marlboro special.” “Wat ar the normal Marlboros?” “Thay’r normal Marlboros.” “How much do thay cost?” “2 dollers.” “And wat ar the special Marlboros?” “20 reddy-made joints in the package.” “How much do thay cost?” “50 sents.” So eeven if u dont smoke a joint for fun, u should maybe smoke it heer to save money. The joints ar really perfectly rolled, best african handicraft.

         I stay at Thadees famly, 15 peepel in a house. In this sitty most peepel liv in houses insted of huts. The famly sits the hole day in front of the TV, az evry other famly heer, and wach a program that never changes. Day and nite some bands make zairian muzic, not the werst but the most boring muzic i’v ever herd. The groops look aul the same and sing the same thing. I like african muzic, i love it, but it is a muzic rich in vairiation. This is not the case heer. Soon i find a plase in an evangelical hostel, my room mate is Gerhard from Deutshland.

         Once we go to the canteen and sit down beside a blak famly. Father, mother and a few kids. The father ses to one of his kids, ‘Peter, gibst du mir die butter rüber?’ (translating litraly: Peter, do u giv me the butter over?) The kid ansers ‘Ja, papa’. Wy not. We keep chatting in deutsh and now thay’r shokd that thair ar wites speeking deutsh heer. Thay feel embarrassd and swich to an african language. Peta, gidu mi butabuta rumba? Ya, mpapa.

         Heer i take the final desision: i go to a hair dresser and let him cut aul my hair. I want to hav a free hed agen, like a baby. I look at myself in the mirrer, Jesus, i cant look at it, but my african frends tel me that i finally look deesent.

         I wanted to go to Angola, but the cuntry is closed, at leest for the moment. I go to the eest, the direction is Zambia. The ferst few hundred kilomeeters ar paved, then the pavement gets werse and werse, until it disapeers. The road becomes a path in the jungel. The trafic becomes thinner and thinner, i hav to wauk mor and mor. Meny passers-by ask me aulways the same questions. Excusez-moi, Monsieur, ar u a touriste? Wair do u come from? Wair ar u going to? Wats the perpos of yur trip? I cant heer thees questions eny mor. I’v herd them in the hole continent, but heer, wair i hav to wauk so much, it is becoming a torture. Maybe 30 times in a day. And wat am i supozed to say? The ferst question is eezy to anser, with a truth wich is actually a lie. Yes. The seccond question, wair i come from, is rellativ: originally from Brazil, today from the village X. Wair i’m going to? My next goal is the town Y, my final goal is Brazil. The perpos of my trip is to kno the werld. In an eevening i rite it aul down on a paper. 4 questions and 4 ansers. Wen a passer-by comes in my direction, i giv him the paper befor he can open his mouth. I gess i wont hav to anser his questions agen, but then he asks me something like “Yeah, but wat is the perpos of knoing the werld?” Wel at leest the comunication is eezy, if u speek francian. Evry villager speeks francian. If u speek both english and francian (and maybe portugalian), Africa is the eeziest continent to travvel, at leest linguistically. Much eezier than Europe or Asia.

         The road is a sandy path now, and this is cauld the Transafricana. In average one truk comes by evry 2 days, and thats it. The drivers aulways want money, but sometimes thay stil take me with them. If not, i just keep wauking. Wen it gets dark i stop wauking, once i waukd in the dark and aulmoast stepd on a snake. So i stop at a village. Thair i tel the peepel about the wide werld, and thay could lissen the hole nite. I’m like a martian for them. Heer u’r really in the ass of the werld, i’v never seen such an isolated region. Thair is nothing heer, neither radio nor TV nor newspapers. But at leest thair is me, a wite man who loves thair palm wine above evrything and doesn’t hav problems eeting thair fufu.

         Once a jeep stops, the driver is wite and the 20 other peepel ar blak. He givs me a lift, we tauk francian for a wile until we found out that we’r from the same cuntry. He’s a missionry heer, and i stay a few days in his mission.

         The ferther eest, the drier. The jungel becomes a savanna, the rivers and creeks become rairer and rairer until thay disapeer compleetly. I wauk an average of 50 kilometers per day, from sunrize to sunset, with one or two short brakes for some food and some palm wine.

         Once 2 wimmen accompany me a hole day. Thay offer me to carry my bakpak. I hav to refuze that, of corse. But in Africa it is normal that men do nothing. Wat do we hav the wimmen and the kids for? In the house africos dont move a finger. Eeven if he would just hav to stand up and make a singel step, he wont do it. He’l caul a kid and tel him to “bring” him the ashtray or watever. And if no kid is around, the woman has to do it. Wel, thees wimmen keep asking me to carry my ruksak, til i giv in. Thay carry it on the hed, so my bakpak becomes a hedpak. The way afrikis do it. Good for the spine. Of corse, to say that ‘afrikis do this, afrikis do that’ is a meen generalization. I crittisize riters for generalizing but i do the same. It would be beter if i sed that meny west and sentral africanas i’v seen do it. If i had to take off aul generalizations found in this book, it would be a hel of a job. On the other hand, most opinnions we hav about cuntrys ar generalizations. And if u’r very corect, u wont be very spontaneus.

         Sentral Zaire is quite poor and primmitiv, but thair is no mizzery. The inhabbitants only eet casava-fufu with a sause made of casava leevs. Very simpel, aul made from a singel plant. And stil it taists quite good. And wen thay need fire, thay fech it from another fire. U dont see meny maches around, and wen thay see my liter thay get impressd. Of corse thay kno wat a liter is, but i hav one.

         One day i cach an old truk. Maybe from the WW II, maybe from the WW I. On a good road this wouldn’t be too much of a trouble, but heer it is awful. We rairly go for mor than a few hundred meeters without getting stuk in the sand. Evrybody get out or down, some dig around the tires, some fech wood and stones to put around the tires, and evrybody pushes. Actually the truk doesn’t carry us ferther, it is we who carry the truk ferther. In the late afternoon the passengers, or should we say the pushers, ar quite tired. We got stuk in the sand agen, just in the middel of a village. The driver shouts: “Ay kids, whoever helps us to get out of heer can hav a ride with us for a few kilomeeters.” Suddenly thair is a big termoil. Fifty kids dig, seek, bring, push, and we’r off in a few minnuts. Aul the kids clime on the truk, and we wernt few on the truk befor. Now u couldn’t get an ant on it. The truk starts and the kids start singing. I cant trust my eers. It is a cannon with a dozen parts, i’m fully out of the houselet. Wich is how deutshis say wen thay get into a flap. Heer, on this jam-pakd truk in the middel of the bush i suddenly feel like in a catheedral. In Europa a directer would need 20 yeers with top muzicians to acheev this perfection, this magniffisense. Thees kids heer in the crossroads wair no-wair meets no-way do it just because thay hav nothing else to do. Enyway, from 6 AM to 6 PM, in 12 ours we made 15 kilometers, 9 miles, aultogether. This must be a new sloness reckerd. We sleep in the village, in the next morning the truk starts moving and i start wauking. Soon i leev it behind and never see it agen.

         Once peepel ar eeting raw termites. And then it’s my tern and i cant flee. Gotta eet it, noblesse oblige. The raw termites taist like raw termites, how else should thay taist? In one village thay sel sweet juicy pineappels on a stik, like ise creem. I eet a haf, the other haf fauls on the ground. Shit, such a good pineappel. I take it from the flor and ask the peepel wair i can find some wauter. Wat for, thay ask. To wash the pineappel. The hole village brakes out in a lafter, and somebody brings me a new pineappel for free. Now i understand: thay hav lots of pineappels, but just a plip wauter. To waist wauter to wash a pineappel would be the same for them az for me uzing a 100 doller bil to make fire.

         I hav a bakpak, wornd out boots, wornd out shorts, a beerd and a bauld hed. I wouldn’t be a normal apeerense in eny cuntry, but heer it is werse. A wauking wite man. Az the deutshis say, it is strong tobacco. Thair is a cherch in Zaire cauld mor or less ‘The Cherch of Jesus Christ on Erth in the Person of the Proffet Muala Lumbu’. Evrywair in this cuntry u find cherches of this cult. Once i’m wauking on the “road” and see suddenly such a cherch a few hundred meeters ahed, i wil pass it in a few minnuts. The cult freeks sit outside on benches and sing thair lungs out, wel az thay uze to sing. I come neerer, now it is maybe 100 meeters. A singing woman sees me and stops singing imeediatly. She just stairs at me. Her naber notises her astonishment, sees me and stops singing too. Then the next, and the next, the singing dies down until the quire becomes compleetly silent. By the time i pass the cherch, thair ies ar aulmost bersting out of thair holes. I can imagine that if i went thair now and told them that i’m the new Messiah, thay’d beleev me. I could tel them that the new Muala Lumbu is wite. But i wouldn’t get rich with that, i gess. Not a good plase to get rich heer.

         In another village a gy tels me that he’d like to send me a leter and asks me for my adress. He piks up a peese of paper and starts riting. Nil three, dot, nil six, dot, he’s riting a date. But this is my berthday, how can he kno my berthday? But then he rites the current yeer and i understand, he was just riting the date. Aha. It is my berthday tuday! I had no idea i had berthday today, i had no idea of the date. And how can i sellebrate it? Thay wont hav champagne heer, maybe a beer? Thay dont hav a beer either. The next beer is 100 km from heer, 2 days later i drink the beer.

         Wen u reech Kananga, u hav the werst behind u. West and Eest Zaire ar mor or less sivvilized, the problem is the middel. Heer u can take a trane to the southeest and i thair is a good road too. Meenwile i’m quite in a hurry, Tamu could come to Zambia and i wouldn’t be thair. I get a ride on a trane, i go in the front in the locomotiv and the engine driver is happy to hav somebody to tauk to. In the nite it gets quite cool and for the ferst time after the Sahara, aulmost a yeer ago, i freez agen.

         I move ferther on a truk full of oil and sugar. I was in the front, the bakpak

in the cargo airia. We drive thru the hole nite, in the next morning we arive and now i notis that thair wer liks in the oil cans and holes in the sugar saks. Aul my clothes, evrything in my ruksak is full of oil and sugar. Shit! I stand alone thair on the side of the road and shout and kik the trees around me. Then i notis that a few yards inside the bush thair is a smaul village, and the hole population is waching me. I cool down. Wat do i need? Wauter, to cleen my stuf. I go to the village, evrybody disapeer in thair hut. Jesus, thats wat i was needing. I shout frendly that i just need some wauter, but in Eest Zaire very few peepel speek francian, thay aulmost only speek swahili. I ask for wauter in swahili, it is neerly the only werd i kno in this language. Eventually a dor opens quikly and a hand puts a bowl with wauter outside, the dor is imeediatly closed after that. Thanks.

         In Lubumbashi, not far from the zambian border, i vizzit a deutsh couple who werk for a deutsh ade agency, thay’r Gerhards frends. Now i can take a bath agen (and i gess thay cauld the disinfection servis after that), and thay put my clothes in the washing machine, aultho it is thair opinnion that i should by new clothes.

         In this cuntry i waukd 500 km, something like 300 miles. Neer to the zambian border i thum my 1000th ride. I want to pay the driver a beer, but he’s got mor important things to do.


SLEEPING IN NO CUNTRY

 

And down tu Zambia. Sloly we desend from the platto and it gets hot. And hotter. We hav 42°C (107° F) and the driver ses: “Heer it is quite aul rite, but wate until we come down. It is hel.” And thats wat we du, we drive down tu the Zambezi dam, one of the biggest in the werld. I cross the zimbabwan border, wich is maybe 500 meeters from the dam. It goes down, over the dam and a kilomeeter uphil tu the zambian border. The oficial thair tels me that i cant enter Zambia tuday. How so, i ask. “Coz u hav tu pay an entry tax.” “And wats the problem? I can pay the entry tax.” “No, u cant pay the entry tax becoz u hav tu get a reseet.” “And wats the problem? Giv me a reseet!” “It’s not possable, becoz the reseet blok is in that drawer thair.” “So?” “The drawer is lokd.” “And wy dont u unlok it?” “I dont hav the kee.” “And wair is the kee?” “It’s with the officer hoo left aulredy.” “And wen is he coming bak?” “Tumorro.” “...look, u must be kidding me. I cant enter Zambia becoz u cant open that drawer? Becoz i need a reseet? Dont giv me a reseet, then.” “I’m not alowd tu stamp yor passport without giving u a reseet, just look at that sine at the waul, it’s aul ritten thair.” I must be crazy. I try tu persuade him, i try tu by him, no way. He sends me bak. But it is just a few minnuts befor 6 PM, and until i cross the dam and get tu the zimbabwan side, thay’r closed tu. So i go bak tu the brij and thair comes the soldier asking me wat i’m duing heer. I tel him that i can neither go tu Zambia nor tu Zimbabwe, so i wil sleep in no land tuday, for a chainj. He tels me that i cant stay thair, so i ask him if i shood beem myself tu another plannet. He realizes after a wile that thair isnt much i can or he can du, and i sleep on the brij. The next day i try agen: the oficial has the reseet blok now, i hav no zambian money, oanly Zimbabwe dollers. No coins. The oficial is “not alowd” tu chainj foren money, so i hav tu pay 10 dollers for a tax of 20 sents. And then i wauk, wauk, wauk. It is mor than 45°C, sinse yesterday i dont hav enything tu drink, i feel terrably dry, and then a car full of sverigis comes by and saves me from perdission. In case u forgot hoo the sverigis ar, thay ar the swedes.


CHAPTER 47

RUN BABY RUN

 

FAZE 28 - /^/ az in ‘but’: we uze ‘u’. Between a short stressd ‘u’ and anuther voul the consonant has tu be dubbeld. Just befor the milionair met his sudden deth, he wanted tu by anuther munth of life with aul his munny, but nobody was selling it.

 

***

 

The zambian econnomy is havving a hard time. Prezzident Kaundas guvverment is neether cappitalist nor communist, it’s humanist. I dont kno wat this meens but it’s cleer that it dusnt du eny good tu the cuntry. Thair is a lak of evrything heer. In the resterants thair isnt enything tu eet or tu drink. No coke, no beer, oanly wauter. Eeven so thay’r open, coz the oner and the waters (waiters, not wauters...) dont hav enything else tu du.

I go tu the Yeelding Tree Farm, wair i’v been a wile ago. Wun day i’m riting leters, run out of maches and hav tu go tu the sitty, nobody is at the farm. The sitty is 13 km away, i by maches thair and start wauking bak tu my plase. I pass a resterant, 50 meeters later i feel that a cup of wauter for the long wauk woodnt du me eny harm. So i go bak and see that it’s clozed. It’s sunday. I tern bak twards the farm, soon a truk stops beside me. 3 blokes sit inside, thay ask me wy i’m wauking up and down the rode like that. Wat du thay meen, up and doun the rode? I passd the resterant, then i rememberd that i’m thersty and went bak, but it is clozed. „Exactly! The resterant is clozed, so wy did u go bak?“ „Coz i didnt kno it is clozed, thats wy.“ „Now giv a beter explanation, man: wy did u go bak, if the resterant was clozed?“ „I sed it aulredy. I cant kno that the resterant is clozed on sundays.“ Thay repeet the question and i dont see eny sense in repeeting the anser. Thay wanna see my passport, i ask them if thay’r the resterants oners or if thay’r poleesemen. Thay repeet that thay wanna see my passport and i get fed up with the silly game. I start wauking, thay cum out of the truk and try tu stop me. I push them tu the side and make my way free, thay try tu hold me, and wen i count them agen thay’r not 3 eny mor, thay’r 6, and 2 hav stones in thair hands. This story dusnt look good eny mor, i run away and thay start chasing me. I’m faster than them, but thairs mor and mor of them, wile i stay in the singuler. Now thairs about 30 peepel, running and shouting „Cach him! Stop him!“ I begin tu get tired of the rase, i pass a factery, the dorman asks me wats happening. I tel him a groop of crazy or drunk peepel is chasing me and want my scalp. He ses i can go intu the factery, i’m safe thair. Then cums the mob and the dorman lets them all cum in. Oh yes, that makes me realy happy.

Thay suround me, sum of them yel „Bern him! Shoot him! South-african spy!“ I dont feel wel eny mor. Then a soldier arives and saves me. But then: “Thank God u came, thees peepel must be crazy!” “U shut up!” He wants tu see my passport and i sho it tu him, i want tu tel the story but he dusnt want tu heer it. After a few minnuts a truk arives and a duzzen soldiers get out and suround me, the rifels pointed at me. Just cool down, fokes! Thay take me away in the truk, the mob cums with us tu the sentral poleese station, but oanly the poleeseman at the entrense is thair. It is sunday, we kno it aulredy. Nobody thair tu investigate my case, the oanly thing he can du is thro me in a jale. No, ses the “leeder” of the mob, thay want my case tu be investigated. Thay complane that nobody with authority is werking in the Sentral Poleese Station. Thay take me tu anuther poleese station. Enyway thair ar sum poleesemen heer. The comander lissens tu the “leeder”: “We wer neer this man and wachd how he went up and down the rode in a very suspect way. We stopd him and askd him wy he was duing that and he coodnt giv eny satisfactery anser. We wanted tu see his passport and he refuzed. And werse than that, he fled, but we chased him and caut him.” Aul the uthers tel thair story, at the end i can tel my vertion of the story tu. And i really hav tu giv my best, utherwize i’l hav a really bad time agen. I kno how african prizzons look like. I tel them that i cum from a cuntry wair nobody is chased becoz he has a difrent skin culler (tu ly or tu dy!). “I like Africa very much, i hav meny frends heer and i dont understand at aul wats happening heer. I just wanted tu by maches in town, heer thay ar. Then i came by a resterant, wanted tu drink a cup of wauter, went bak and saw that the resterant was clozed. Then thees jentelmen apeerd, thay lookd very agressiv and threttening, i became really afrade, etc etc bla bla.” The comander givs me a lesson: “I kno about Brazil: the 3 rases liv peesefully with eech uther, the american indians, the europis and the afrikis. Now u made 2 big mistakes: u shood kno that Zambia is a democrasy, so if a zambian sittizen wants tu see yor passport, u hav tu sho it! And then u ran away, and u shood never du that! Oanly the gilty run away! Now we hav yor passport but we dont kno if it is authentic. Nowadays evrybody can fake a passport. We’l caul yur embassader, and if he tels us that u’r OK, we’l releez u.”

Thay caul the embassader, and it would hav been dificult tu fynd him on werking days, let alone at weekends. Thay want tu caul in the Yeelding Tree Farm, unfortunatly i just hav the old number, so thay must fynd it out from the zambian “telecom”. Asking the zambian telecom about a fone number must be mor or less like asking a 5 yeer old tu explane in deetale the quantum theory. It cant werk, so thay tel me that i’l hav tu wate til tumorro. O no. I cant beleev this. In my desperation i hav a simpel idea: thay cood take me in the car tu the farm and ask the farmers personally. Thay agree that this is a good idea, but thay dont hav eny transport. I think quikly: we cood go thair with a taxi, i pay the trip thair and bak. Agen thay think it is a good idea. The comander and 2 uther cops prepair tu go with me, unfortunatly anuther comander arives, and this comander seems tu be hyer than the comander we had so far. He scolds around and ses nobody is going enywair. The plase of a poleeseman is in the poleese station, thay’r not payd tu strole around. He scold for at leest an our. Meenwile i’v been 4 ours in the station and i’m not supozed tu moov at aul. My hopes dwindel, and i start prepairing sicolojically tu stay for a nite or for a yeer heer. But then a cop arives with a car and brings me tu the farm. On the way tu the farm i tel him my situation. He looks a bit mor intellijent than the uthers, and i tel him that. I’d really like him tu like me, if he cums tu the farm and sees my old passport on the tabel with the south african vizza, wel, i dont kno wat cood happen. We arive at the gate of the farm, thair is a sine saying BEWAIR OF THE DOG. He dusnt like that at aul. Dogs dont like blaks, and the dogs of wite peepel hate blaks. He reeds the sentense aloud and sounds wurryd. I hav tu be quik now: “Wel, u dont hav tu take me inside thair, i can wauk the last few meeters.” “Really?”, he ses releevd, “OK”. He lets me off and is away.


CHAPTER 50

THE THIN PEEPELS REPUBLIC OF SOMALIA

 

FAZE 32 - /yu:/ at the end of a root werd az in ‘new’ is speld ‘ew’: Dew tu the lak of dew in the last nite, a few peepel had tu kew for the wauter tuday, and mite be intervewd by newspaper reporters tu say sumthing about the wauter shortej and wether thay want tu sew the guvverment. At the end of a root werd after CH, L and R we spel ‘u’, befor suffixes an ‘e’ is insurted: blu, blues, bru, brues, glu, glues, chu, chues.

 

***

 

Wen u cum tu Somalia, u hav a lot of trubbel at the beginning. Later, wen u kno the cuntry and the peepel beter, u hav mor trubbel. At the border thay try by aul meens tu fynd sumthing rong in my papers. Thay dont fynd enything, so thay charj a special tax for the extra-ours thay hav werkd for me on a friday afternoon. I tel them that thair wer at leest 50 peepel crossing the border and not wun of them had tu pay an extra tax, besides it’s not friday afternoon, it is wensday morning. Thay get stil angryer.

         I cross the Equater. On the suthern hemmisfere it was summer, in the north it is winter. In the south it was 37°C, in the north it is 38°C. Somalia is anuther werld, u cum from the cuntry of the lions and ellefents tu the cuntry of the cammels, big ostriches and ugly vultures, of the sand and the dust. I red wunse in a book that the somalis ar the moast butiful peepel in the werld. Wel, this is a matter of taist. The wimmen hav butiful fases indeed, and u can considder this length and this thinness  butiful, if u like. The somalis ar blaks but arnt neegroes, thay’r a rase for itself, thay hav a copper culler, curly hair and fine fase feetures. Sum somalis look like ethiopis, like wite peepel hoo cum bak from a dusty wor. Wimmen and men wair a bath toul. U think aul the time that thay’ going tu a bath or cumming from a bath. The rode tu Mogadishu goes thru a quite barren airia, and sumtimes i see shepperds. The peepel in the truks stop tu giv them sum wauter, and i take a real plesure seeing thair plesure from poring wauter on thair one dry and dusty fases and heds. It is aulmoast mor lust then plesure. And i ask myself how peepel can liv heer. Thay cood go tu the sitty, wair thair is wauter evrywair, but thay dont du it. “Wy du u stay in such an inhospittable corner of the werld?” “I liv heer, i’v aulways livd heer. But wy did u cum from so far tu be in an inhospittable corner of the werld?”

         I arive in Mogadishu very hungry and thersty. I eet 3 mane dishes, spagetty, fish and anuther spagetty, and then 2 dezurts. And 4 beers pleez.

         Somalia is ugly, but i like it sumhow. It’s charming uglyness, a raw uglyness, it is special. In the south the quite dry savanna streches along the coast, huje sand dunes, but swimming isnt recomended becoz of the meny sharks. In the middel it becums tropical and lushy green. In the north it is dry agen. The south and the middel ar az flat az the fase of a japani, the horizon is endless. The north is mountenus. Unplezzent ar the meny rode bloks of the poleese and millitry. I counted them, thair wer 200 controles on 2000 km of rodes, and thair ar no toorists on the rodes. I’v seen a singel toorist in Somalia, and oanly in Mogadishu. Theoretically the trafic is on the rite side, not on the rong side, but in practis peepel drive wair thay can, wair the potholes arnt tu deep and no poes ly around.

         The old somalis keep a serten distense and hav dignity, the yung somalis ask ‘signore, sigaar!” and the kids “Signore, bakshish!”. Of corse, thay want sumthing from me, dont think thay’r ofring it. And somalos ar tuf men, evry somalo carrys a machetty. Wunse i get a lift in a truk, at the rode blok thay stop us and a soldier anoys the driver, thay begin a discussion and the driver pulls out his machetty, thay shout at eech uther, the driver with the machetty and the soldier with the masheen gun. I’d really like tu be sumwair else. And u see this kynd of confruntation aulmoast evryday.

         The languej is stil harder than the men. It has the rufness of arabian and the speed of espanian. It is the machoest languej i kno, oanly for real men. If a somalo  makes a declaration of luv tu a non somala, the wooman runs away coz she thinks he wants tu rape her. Until the 70s of the 20th sentury the somalis didnt hav a ritten languej. Wen thay rote, thay did it in english or italian. English and italian ar the 2 languejes the somalis kno sumthing about. Thay cant speek much of thees languejes, but thats thair werld: somalian, english and italian. Thay’r aulways a bit serprized that i cant speek somalian. How cum that i oanly speek english and no somalian? Or du thay speek italian in Brazil? And thay aulways ask my relijon: “U cristian or moslem?” “Bad cristian.” “Cristian is bad? Moslem good? O thank u!” Thats wat i caul wishfull heering.

         Thay aulways try tu convurt me. It wood be dificult tu explane tu them wat i think if thay cood speek propper english or propper italian, but in this linguistic caos i dont hav a chanse. I cood say i’m neither cristian nor moslem. Thay wil ask wat am i then. U cant tel them u dont beleev in God, this is really hard for a moslem. Say this in a groop and u’l heer the silense. Az if sumbody had dyd. I gess it is beter tu say u’r a chyld merderer. Enyway this sort of definission is aulways rellativ, i woodnt say that i dont beleev in God or in aul thoze beings and things we cant see and cant proov, i just dont kno. So usually i just say i’m cristian, thay dont kno wat that is either. In this case i just meen that i cum from anuther culture. Thay axept that. Thay axept the Bibel, and thay beleev Jesus was a grate proffet, so wy cant we axept Mohammed tu?

         And comunication problems arnt oanly about relijon, it is moastly just a lak of vocabbulary. “How ar u Mogadishu?” “Yes, i’m going tu Mogadishu.” “How ar u english italiani?” “I cum from Brazil.” “How ar u toorist?” “Yes, i’m a toorist.” “How ar u somali?” “No, i dont speek somali.” Mogadishu is the best plase tu obzurv the linguistic caos. Wun food shop has the sine imporio, anuther cauls itself an emporium, a therd wun is cauld machmaakanta, or rugdunta, or watever. Thair ar minny-markets, mini-mercati and uqaraxuraddax (dont trust my somali knollej). In Mogadishu i stay for a few days in the house of an italo, he’s got a delly. He was born and razed heer, and wun day he went tu Italy tu see how his “fatherland” looks like. But he coodnt stay thair for long, the climat and the peepel wer tu cold for him. And the oanly toorist i’v seen in Somalia is a yung englo hoo was in Nairobi and wanted tu hav a glimpse of Somalia. He took the plane, it was full of minnisters, and at the arival thay found out that thay had forgotten or lost the kee tu open the luggej section. The plane had tu go bak with aul the luggej, in Nairobi thay cood open it. And mynd u that the plane was full of minnisters. I gess that such things can happen evrywair, the difrense is that in Africa thay’r the rule.

         The Internassional Airport is a millitry airport at the same time, and this meens that the airport is hy security zone. The planes hedding tu Europe aulways start in the eevening. Wun eevening a plane wants tu start, thay swich on the lites but thair is no lite. Thay go and chek and see that the cabels wer stolen. Sum miles of thik long cabels wer stolen from the hy security zone! Aul the flites ar postponed tu the morning until the new cabels finally arive. And then a few days later a plane wants tu start in the eevening, thay swich on the lites and thair ar no lites...

         This cuntry suffocates in burocrasy. Tu get the vizza u hav tu get a leter from yor embasy confurming that u’r from the cuntry u hav yor passport from. A passport isnt enuf. Lucky for me that thair ar brazilian embasys quite evrywair, but imajin u’r from smaul cuntrys like Honduras or Bosnia. And thay’r not sattisfied that u hav a toorist passport, the leter must confurm that u’r a toorist.

         Sumbody tels me that i need a permit tu go tu the north. I ask sum peepel, sum say u need a permit and sum say u dont need wun. OK, i’l chek this in the Minnistry of the Inteerier. Sum oficials thair tel me that this is rubbish, u dont need a permit, uthers say that if u try tu go tu the north without a permit thay put u in jale for a few yeers. But nobody can giv me this permit, and evrybody sends me tu anuther section, until sumbody sends me tu the Minnistry of Information. Sinse 90% of aul information i get about how tu get tu the Minnistry of Information is rong, it takes me 2 days tu fynd it. Thair thay send me tu the Minnistry of Toorizm. I go tu the Minnistry of Toorizm, but the boss isnt thair now. Wen dus he arive? Dont kno, maybe tuday, maybe tumorro. O Lord. Du i need a permit at aul? Thay say thay can giv me wun. OK, u can giv me wun, but du i need wun at aul? We can giv u wun. Tumorro.

         In the folloing day i get the permit. “So now i can leev tu the north without wurrys?” “U want tu leev? But u need a permit!” “So wat is this in my hand?” “This is oanly a recomendation for the imigration. U hav tu go tu the imigration now, thay giv u a permit thair.” I fynd the imigration eventually. And go thru 6 sections and fynd the rite section. I pay for it and get the permit.

         I leev the sitty, hiching is rellativly eezy, thair is sum trafic, maybe a veickel evry 5 minnuts, and moast veickels stop. For me or becoz thair is anuther rode blok. 9 out of 10 rode bloks dont make problems, offen the cops and soldiers ar quite frendly and offer me coke or tee but considring that thair ar 200 rode bloks on my way, thair is trubbel enuf.

         Anuther problem is therst. U’r not supozed tu trink the wauter, the books say the risk of hepatitis is considrable. Thay dont hav minral wauter and a coke is az expensiv az a nite in a hotel. So i hav tu drink tee the hole day, at 40°C air temprature. I hav a minral wauter bottel and ask them tu fil it. It is very hot at the beginning. It is ritten that worm tee is much helthyer in the heet than ise cold wauter, but i can just say it is not nise. I dreem of green feelds, fresh wauter and few cops. Thank God it is winter heer. In Berbera, in the north, the avrej maximum dayly temprature in julie (winter) is 46°C (114° F). Wich meens that in the coldest munth u hav a maximum temprature of 46° C evryday. Sumtimes a bit less, sumtimes a bit mor.

         Kafka wood be ashamed of his harmless storys if he saw the burocrasy in this cuntry. Thay put me in jale becoz i cum from Brazil, and Brazil is a naber cuntry of Cuba, isnt it? Thay just kikd the cubis out, i must be a spy. I tel them that the distense from Brazil tu Cuba is the same az from Somalia tu Dania, but thay wont beleev me. Anuther time an offiser dusnt trust my passport, the leter from my embasy or the permit from the Minnistry of Inteerier. If thay wer authentic, the Minnistry wood hav sent him a tellex telling him that i’m cumming. Anuther time thay just want tu send me bak tu Mogadishu, and this plase is around 1000 km behynd me.

         At the border the soldier controles my currensy declaration, he starts calculating but he dusnt kno how tu du it, he ads the dollers tu the date and takes the entry our off. I explane him how he has tu du it, but it seems he cant subtract either. And wat for? My declaration is perfect, and it wasnt dificult. Thay had just givven me a blank sheet wair i rote down wat i hav and thay sined it, so aul i had tu du was by anuther blank sheet and riting the rite sum. And hoo sined it? Ahmed Al-Sharif, the comander. I’m the comander.

         I cross the barren feeld, i can see Djibouti. The oanly problem is that the border is clozed. It’s friday, and friday is for the moslems wat the sunday is for the cristians. Werse than that, aulso borders cloze down. O my God, o my Allah.      


THE CULTURE (from A CHAPTER FOR LINGUISTS AND ANTI-REFORMERS)

 

On the other hand, the language is full of cases of wrong etymology. Nephew for example doesn’t come from Grecian, it is a word common to most indo-european languages. Debt came from Francian ‘dette’, but later a scholar wanted to show he could speak good Latin and introduced the B. So there are loads of wrong information in the spelling, and before we start trying to correct those, sometimes causing endless academic discussions, we should give up the idea that the language is teaching us history by its spelling. It does sometimes, sometimes it teaches the wrong story and most of the times it doesn’t tell us anything. If this was the function of the spelling, we should spell in a mix of old indo-european, low german, old norse and non anglo saxon words REALLY as the source language spelled it. This paragraph would be spelled more or less like this (I couldn’t find the sources for all the words, and of course I can’t put the right inflections):

Ana to antero handu, to lingua esti pleno apo casi apo wrong etymologia. ‘Nepot’ per exemplum does nowiht gwem from Graikoi, eis esti oino werdo communis the maista hindi-europaikos linguae. ‘Debitum’ gwem from Frankisk ‘dette’, but later oino scholarius wanted the skauwo he could sprekan goda Latina hanti introducet to B. Swa thaer are lots apo wrong informationes in to spelling, hanti beforan wei start trying the corrigere those, sometimes causing hantlausa akademika discussiones, wei should gefa upo to idéa that to lingua esti teaching unsaz historia mbhi eis’ spelling. Eis does sometimes, sometimes eis teaches to wrong historia hanti maista apo to times eis does nowiht talija unsaz any thenga. Ebho this was to functio apo to spelling, wei should spell in a mixtura apo alda hindi-europaikos, lov german, alda norsk hanti non angel saxon werdos REALLY also to source lingua spelled eis. This paragrafos would bhewe spelled maizon otha lausa (ik couldn’t findan to sources per alla to werdos).


CHAPTA 57

IN DA KINGDOM DE LA RAIZING SOL

 

Wen der is a comon word in al romanic e germanish languages exept inglish, dis (half)-pan-europian word teik la plas ov el inglishe word. Pro exemplo ‘scrib/e’ insted ‘rait’ (eg ‘i scrib a letra’). Wel noun wordes ov otre linguas oso is introdused, laik ‘lingua’ pro ‘language’ or ‘amigo’ pro ‘frend’.  

Wel, actuali dis titlo is no reali justifid.  Kingdom de la Raizing Sol. I sid la sole going daun cuait a fiu tempos in Japan, but neva la raizing sol. Meibi i shud trai tu get up erlia. In el otre hand, wat is la pointo de si la raizing sol in Japan, yu can si la raizing sol in eni land, exept meibi in Ireland. 

Dat was IPI. E dis was la most dificult paragraf de dis buk. Nau wi va chang ov el IPI-flaiu (airplane) tu la RITE-flaiu in da midle de la flai. Wi meik a tub e pas la houl bagage tu la RITE flaiu, wich flai loua. Wi va du dis alfabetikli, starting wid ‘a’, den ‘b’, etc. But if la word is stil not a completo RITE word, wi weit til al otre letras is introdused. And den wi va start la desendasion tu TS, den flai in a super lou altitud, until wi finali land. . 

In Yokohama der is a super tal TV-tawa. I spik wid a japano et ask im hau tal la tawer is. “Hau multi metros?” Hi undastanded no mai cuestion, et as a gude japani hi va never ask bak. But hi undastanded dat i pozed im a cuestion abaut numers, so hi anser iresolut: “2”.

         El imigrasion come tu la ship, dei control ali. La japanis ha no problemas, la rusis ha no problemas, ali get a stamp in half minut. Den it mai turn, e dei wana no let mi in, becauze der is a slopi corexion in mai pasport. It was la faulta de la brazilian ambasi secretara in Zimbabwe, la fema had scribed somu rong, corected it wid tipp-ex e seid it vud bi al rait. Nau la japanian imigrasion ofisis dinke not it al rait. I nid an awa tu explein em dat i OK, ali in da bote ha tu weit til i redi...

         Yu can no change moni in da porto de Yokohama. I com aut de la bilding et a nais biutiful mini japana wid a red ros on her wait dres tel mi tu go intu la bus. La bus is pro turis e fri. La bus start, la japana explein us a fiu dings, wi stop in a shoping sentro et ali can change moni hir. I change moni e siek a bir somewer, den i come bak tu la bus e la bus lieved alredi. Wid mai bagag. Jesus, wat i du in Japan widaut mai bagag? Befor i become reali desperado, la mini japana come rening, reprimand mi amigali pro mai disaparasion e wi ren tugeda tu la bus, dat weit a fiu blokes fara (ferther). Evri gest is bringed tu la plase dat hi ha tu go, la resto tu la trein stasion tu Tokio. La maid, a super amigale maid, explein us hau wi bai a ticket e sei gude bai. Shi wanad no give mi her fone number. Eniwei dis land hav a super gude turistal infrastructur. Stil it cuait dificulte tu finde yur wei hir, spesiali wen yu siek a chiep hotel.

         I wana no put oil in da faya de la prejudisos contra la japanis. Existe such e such japanis. Existe fatis e dinis, minis e stil plus minis, polaitis e stil plus polaitis, existe japanis in gran grupos e japanis in stil grana grupos. La japani is polait et amigal, hi usuali spik not a super gud inglish but hi trai. Wen yu ask im an informasion abaut a plas, hi va no tel yu, hi va teik yu der, wid la car o woking. Eventuali hi va give yu a prezent, oft oso his vizit card. Hi va invite yu tu his haus e wen yu liev, hi va sei dank yu (‘arigato’ in japanian) e bai bai (‘bai bai’ in japanian). Sometempos hi va shou yu la siti, no mater if hi chirpi o dog-fatiged. Hi rarli spik alaud e ha gude maners. I warn yu, if yu blou yur nous in public, pro exemplo at a table, it la same pro a japani as it vud bi pro yu if somi pised on yur table. Super unpolait. On el otre hand hi super laud wen hi iet – in da restaurantes it a hel ov a nois, becaus ali iet as laud as dei can, tu shou dat la fuda teist gud.

         Tokyo is like Sao Paulo, just safer e clina. If yu considder hau multi peepel liv heer, der is probabli no safer e clina siti in da wold. Dis plase is a see de lites, elevated roudes piled up in sevral flos, tunels, publisiti dat lai, hang, flai, spik e sing, voises e muzic (usuali altempo la samu, ‘Pour Elise’, de Beethoven – it come de vendus (vending masheens), buses et eeven toilet paper holdus – I can not imagine Beethoven dinked de dis kaind ov utiliti pro his muzic).

         La subwei trane drivi spik non stop. He tel la publico la 10 o 20 subwei lines dei can change tu in da next stasion, den he sei gude bai, wish la peepel dat leev la trane a gude dei e houp tu see dem agen suun. E den he start la houl stori agen pro la next stasion. La publico transporte sistem is veri wel organized, yu rarli ha tu wate a trane longa dan 3 minutos. Despite dat la tranes is chok-ful, e twise i dinked i vud no servive it. Wans in a trane, dei presed me in a wei dat i dinked i can no get eni er eni plus. Anotre temp a claudberst started autside, evribodi ran intu la stasion, der was miliones peepel traiing tu com aut e noding moved eni plus. I cud not imagine hau dis tragedies hapen in stadiones, etc, but dings develope bai itself, yu stand der trapd, yu can move neida fo- nor bakwerds e heer peepel shauting. La stasiones is gigantal, oft dei in da same tempo huge shoping senters, et oft dei linkd tu otre 5 o 10 stasiones bai pedestrian tuneles ful de shops. Oft der is an inglishe signal pro ‘exit’ beside la japanian sine. But not altemp, et if el inglish signal mis wans, yu mite need half an awa tu find el exit. La bestu yu can du is tu lern cuikli la japanian signal pro ‘exit’.

         Dei ha servises pro forenis, turis, yu vud not eeven dreem of in, sei, Somalia. Pro exampel dei hav a telefon informasion servis in english wer yu can get al sortes of informasion. Wer yu finde “cheep” hotels o jobs, o hau tu get somewer in da siti (or in da land). Dis is cuait importent in dis land becaus exist noding yu can du wid adreses. Usuali yu just get a telefone number, yu cal der e dei explane yu hau tu get der: take subwei line number 10 on platform 8, direxion Akasaka, get aut in da stasion Takabuka, wok in da same direxion as la trane 300 meeters, tern rite e wok 200 meeters til yu see 3 gran trees, der yu see la sters in yur left, wen yu arive in da top tern rite agen e wok 150 meeters til yu see a trash conteinu, tern left e wok til yu see la flawa shop. Dat is la haus, go tu la secondo flo, dird do (door) left. It like a trezor chase but werke wel cuait oft.

         La streets ha no names, onli la bloks ha, aldou noi nou der names. La haus numbers is no based on da geografik orda, dei based on el ano de construxion! La ferst haus bilded in da blok get number 1, la secondu get number 2, etc. Wans i  looked pro a scottish amigo in Kioto, et it tuk me la houl dei, wid la help de la poleese, poast e passis-bai. It was 20 meeters de la poleese stasion! But dei nowed not it eida...

         La fud is la moast butifule de la wold, dei make an art of it. In da restaurante windoes dei put plastico copies de wat yu get inside, so dat yu ha no tu be abel tu reed japanian menus. Yu go aut wid la water (waiter...) e shou him wat yu wan. La taist is sometimes super gud e sometimes a bit monotonos. Oft a taist i neva had befor. In da supermarket i feel like in a marcian supermarket, i can no reccognize multi productos. Yu can spend a lot de moni heer, if yu like. Yu ha no tu spende mucho time tu finde dishes pro a fiu hundred dolas. But yu can eet cheep, tu. Dei ofa richo supas pro 2 dolas, et if yu wan it reali cheep yu can get la sup ov a vendu, it cost yu les dan 2 dolas. Evriding els is terrabli expensiv. Yu get rid de yur moni cuikli, but yu ha yur amuzasion.

         In Turkiye or in Polska a mano widaut a mustash is not a mano. In Japan it is la sute e tai. Becaus a mustash is cuait dificult tu get, pro a japano. Heer a mano widaut a sute is not a mano, it is a pilipino. Some peepel understand no dis werd, so i translate it: filipino. La pilipinis can no pronuns an ‘f’, so dei cal der land erorali (eroniusly) ‘Pilipina’. Naturali el ‘eroniusly’ was a joke. Just tu tis la preests de la politik corectitee.

         Comic is la wei dei shou tu demself. Wen a westi or eni “normal” peepel shou tu demself, dei put der hands on der brests o shou wid el indicatu tu der harts. La japani du no dat, he shou wid his indicatu his nous. Probabli la nous is la senter de la japanian esense. Some forenis went aut in serch de la japanian esense e discovered dat it is like an onion: yu peel, peel e peel, et in da fine der is noding lieved.

         In da yungitee-hostel i meet a deutsha. El only informasion she hav abaut me is dat i brazilo. Wans i ask her de wair abauts she is in Deutshland. “De München.” “Wich strat in München?” „Strat? Ha yu been der?” “Ya.” “It is not a sentral strat, it is caled Hansa Strasse.” “Wich number?” “Number? Wel, 107.” “Dat must be betuin Passauer Strasse e Westpark, no?” Nau i shoed her hu is el informd gai in dis airia. Taxidrivo. O, tu sei it as la nativs, takushi-doraiba. Strate ov el english languej. La fema cari la name Ania, hav a gude nous, gude bodi, a nise charm but la skin is not spesiali gud in da fase. No problem, we make a tur tugeda. We go wid la subwei tu la friwei. It is cuait a wei, but we com aut et alu stil look as bizi as la siti senter. We get aut de Tokio, but get not aut de la siti. We just realize dat dei giv dis erbanized zone anotre name. Dei sei Tokio ha 15, 20, 25 million inhabbitants. Peepel can sei wat dei wan. El administris e planis just tuk a map, drod a line on it e sed: de hir on it is no Tokio eni plus. Yu can du it dat wei tu. But basicali la houl sud coast is un big siti. Sometempos yu see a rise plantasion 100 meeters long e wide betuin un siti et anotre, but dei can no cal dat a separasion. Yu see dat inside la sitis tu. Yu can no grou vejetables on da cuntryside becauze der is no cuntryside in Japan, der is onli siti.

         Dis is a lai, but it sounda gud. Eniwei, la japanis is obsesed bai perfexion. Dei consider dat la deutshis is leizi bunglis. Derfor dei neva giv direxiones wen dei no fuli sur dat dei rite. Dei apollojize douzand tempos pro no nouing exactli wair it is e giv yu prezentes as a mini compensasion. Wen dei giv yu a lift, dei feel responsable pro yu pro la resto de der laifes. Dei take yu exactli tu la plase yu ha tu go, o dei ask otre drivis tu giv yu a ride. It vud just brake der harts tu let yu aut aloun in a rest airia. E dei altemp invite yu tu eet wid dem. Dei invite yu cuait suun afta yu got in da car, wich make me dinke dat dei oso invite yu et eet wen dei ha full belis.

         Uni de la drivis hu giv us a lift hav a Renault wid la steering weel on da left side de la car. I ask him if such a car is mucho chiepa dan a nativo car. No, he sei, his mini Renault is as expensiv as an expensiv Nissan limmuzine. So i ha tu ask him wai la hel he had tu bai a mini Renault. Becauze he laik cars wid la steering weel on da left side. Aldou dei drive on da left side, as in England. Dat is el advantej, if yu bai an imported car, la steering weel is on da left side. It is a mater de status. Not eeven Jaguars o Rolls-Royces ha la steering weel on da rite side in Japan, e dei cars dat ha la steering weel on da rite side in el orijinal version.

         Yu not alaud tu drive fasta dan 80 km an awa. Sinse dei obsesed bai tecnologie, dei hav a gajet dat start peeping imediatli wen yu drive fasta dan 80. So la car is peeping al la temp. On el otre hand moast cars hav a devise dat start peeping wen der is a radar around, a radar-radar-detectu. Den we ha doble peep.

Ania and i sleep offen in da stasion or on da street, becoz la hotels is so expensiv, la parks is clozed and la wales (wauls...) super hai. And den yu va finde benches onli in parks, rarli on da streets. Dis land is no so good tu relax, la sidewoks is made for peepel tu wok, no tu sit. Comic, in multi otre parts of la wold peepel confuze la japanis wid la chinis. Multi peepel sei L for R tu imit (imitate) a japani, but dis is onli rite wen dei trai tu imit a chini. Moast eest-asis can no heer la difrense betuin dis tu sounds, but la chinis usuali sei an L, wile la japanis sei somu much plus like an R. Yu can see dis in werds like harakiri, Hiroshima, karaoke. Onli la car makes hav unjapanian names: no person heer can pronounse Starlet o Corolla, dei sei Sutareto and Korora. Chinan and japanian is as far ov eech otre as dei ov english. La japanian pronunsiasion is izi as a childes languej, la chinan pronunsiasion is supernatural. Wans i askd a chino in Brazil hau long it vud take for me tu lern chinan. He askd me: hau old yu? “18”. “O, den yu can no lern it eni plus...” Chinan ha swinged un-sillable werds, japanian is like a masheen gun. Chinan: zhà pü tóng shâng hóng pèng shî. Japanian: takaruka shikoteko kokakora kamikaze hiroshima harakiri.         

         La japanian grammer, unlike la chinan, is impossable. Yu lern and lern, and yu stil not abel tu sei a singel corect sentense. Spesiali la polaititee forms giv me hedake. Yu can hardli ask a person on da street widout ofending la japanis, becoz so multi ideas is expresed bai so multi difrent werds, depending on hu yu spik wid. In english yu can sei ‘yur fase’ o ‘yur mug’ o ‘yur kissa’, depending on hu yu spik wid. But in japanian it is like dis al la time. It a quite vage languej, it onli exact in da polaititee forms. Dat is wai la japanis ask so offen yur aje, yur profesion and pozision. So dei can nou hau tu adres der werds tu yu and wich werds dei shood uze. In som europian languejes dei hav a yu-werd for respected persons and unu for amigis (dei tel yu no hau tu adres yur in-amigis, ie yur enemis). In japanian yu inflect no yur conversasion partni, yu inflect yurself. Existe 30 werds for la werd ‘i’, but we no dat formal eni plus, and uze onli 6. La japanis rarli uze a werd like ‘yu’ eniwei. So he sei: villa-onnerd-tu-go-invitasion-is-question, hut-humbel-tu-go-invitasion-is-question? He meens naturali dat he’d like tu nou de her if dei shood go tu la nise mansion o tu la smuti hut? In good english: lets go tu yur plase o tu mine, baby?

         Hiroshi, la japano i traveled wid in el Amazon, was from Okinawa. Okinawis ar knoen for being off-hand in Japan, and Hiroshi is knoen for being off-hand in Okinawa. Wans he sed tu me: “Take it izi, mano. O sori, i’m reali sori!” “Wai ar yu seiing yu’r sori?” “Becaus i sed ‘take it izi, mano’. If i sed dis tu Peter, it vud be al rite, becoz Peter is 4 anos yunger dan me. But i can no sei dat tu yu, yu’r 6 anos older!”

         La riting is a nitemair. Or la ritings: dei ha 4 of dem! Kan-ji, hiragana, katagana and roma-ji. Kan-ji is la riting dei imported from la chinis, wich meens a fiu dauzand sines (el orijinal chinan set ha 50 000) dat ha super littel tu du wid la pronunsiasion. Yu ha tu lern dem al bai hart. Hiragana is a silabari, it ha sines for sillables. Yu can lern dem in un dei, dei’r mei-be 80. And for lone werds dei uze katagana, anotre sillable riting. Roma-ji is la riting of la romis, awa roman alfabet. Yu can no swap la ritings as yu need, evri riting has its oun funxiones. Dei imported quite a fiu english werds, but moast of dem vud no be reccognizable wen yu reed katagana for la ferst time. In katagana der ar onli leters for sillables, so yu ha tu rite werds wid sillables. Ba-su meens ‘bus’, to-ra-ku ‘truk’, serufu-sabisu ‘self-servis’, doa ‘dor’, doaman ‘dorman’, gasorin-sutando ‘gas-stasion’, garu-furendo ‘gerlfrend’, boifurendo ‘boyfrend’, miruko ‘milk’, gurepu ‘grape’, biro ‘buro, offis’, biru ‘beer’, supun ‘spoon’, naifu ‘naif’, foku ‘fork’, supa ‘supermarket’, teburu ‘table’.

         Anotre werd from english is ‘rabu hoteru’, wich meens ‘love hotel’. Offen dei look like Disneyland cassels, and so is the furniture inside. Som of them ar fuli automatic, so thair ar no witnesses afterwerds. Alu goes bai pressing a button, the bil com in a tube. And wen the fema groans, thay get disco lite. The louder she groans, the mor lite and mor colores com intu the room. Wen she gets reali loud, a computer voise ses « Grate, boi! Yu made it! And nau du it agen!” If the fema make not eni nois, or the mano is tu ineficient, the mano can become loud himself and get the compliments.

         The japanis cant sei ‘v’, so dei sei ‘b’. Thats wai dei altemp ask us if we ar ‘robbers’. Dei dont want tu kno if we steel moni from the bank, dei want tu kno if we ar ‘lovers’. And un driver told us: ‘Next weeku we hab erections for prime-minista’. Comico peepel.       

         In the trane station of Shimonozeki (the plase wair the feri leeves tu Korea), we ask at the information desk wair we cood find a hotel for a reezonable prise. The 3 madames ar amigal, but get sort of hectic. Dei look for hotels in the tellefone book and in aul cattalogs dei can find, dei caul a fiu plases, without suxess. I dont understand, the japanis ar usuali so wel organized, hau cum that dei cant organize a room for us? After a wile un of them brings us tu a travvel agensi. Dei discuss awa case and finali deside: an employee takes us out of the bilding and points tu the station: “Preez, go tu information desk in the station.” “Wat du yu meen, that is the station?” « Yes. » « So wat is this bilding wair we wer aul the time? » “This is shopping senter, ne?” Nau i understand wai dei coodnt tel us about a hotel room. In Brazil, if yu trai tu get an information about a hotel room at the information desk of a shopping senter, dei va tel yu tu gro potatos.

         Bai the wei, we stei in the bak of the ferry, so we hav a ferry tail for a few ours.


CHAPTER 58

ZÉ DO ROCKS ADVENTURES IN THE LAND OF THE 1000 SLIT IES.

 

         Corea is a land wair the sun aulso rizes, but 10 minnuts later. It’s a sort of slopi Japan. Japan is rich, Corea is so-so. The japanis ar polite, the coris ar normal. The corian languej is masculin, a mix of chinan and arabian. Aultho dei aulso uze the chinan riting, the mane riting is the corian wun. This is fonetic and izi tu lern, eeven if it dusnt look like that at the ferst glanse. Quite a few peepel can speek english wel. The oanly problem dei hav is the pronunsiation of the ‘si’. Dei cant sei ‘si’, dei sei ‘shi’, and dei dont make much distinction between short and long vouls. This is moastly understandable, but it is a problem wen dei invite yu tu take a seet, then dei sei ‘Plis take a shit.” or “Plis shit doun.” Eniwei i cant go tu China bai land, becoz the north coris woodnt let mi thru. Their prezident dont like foreners. So i hav tu flai.

         The airport of Hongkong is in the middel of the siti and the pilot has tu make a few curvs befor landing. Tu land heer, dei hav tu make a special corse. In Hongkong yu can stei in the YMCA. If wimmen ar fed up with men, dei can stei in the YWCA (Yung Wimmen Cristian Asosiation). The adress is 5 Man Fuk Street. This is not a joke. Eniwei, in China i desided tu du it the wei the chinis du it: with the bike. I bai a red mounten bike.

         The border tu China is in the middel of the sitty senter of Macao. U’r thru in 3 minnuts, and it takes so long becaus i hav a bike. In a communist cuntry. In New York, the biggest sitty of the cuntry that wants tu export freedom tu the hole werld, it takes an our. Just after the border hundreds of munny chainjers beseej me. Sinse i dont hav an alturnativ, i chainj it and make a bad deel. Same proseedure evry border. From the border tu Guangzhou (the westeners say ‘Canton’), half the freeway is made for bikes. The streets hav offen as much plase for cars as for bikes. Enyway it is very hot and humid. Heer the ferst 7 days in a short rezumay: 1st day: i sikeld 130 kilomeeters, then i had a sirculatry colapse. 2nd day: ate holes in the frunt weel and wun hole in the bak (of the tire)(now u wer confuzed with the ‘ate’, wernt u?). 3rd day: the chane is broken. 4th day: insted of drinking 10 leeters liquid i drink 15 leeters soya milk. In the eevening i vomit evrything and flud my hotel room. 5th day: ferst contact with the poleese, i get my ferst fine in China. 6th day: evrything broken. On the seventh day i relaxed, thats how we du it in our clan.

         Thair ar meny chinis in this werld, especially in China. Wen u’r on a chinan rode, far away from eny sitty or toun, u lite a sigaret and 2 minnuts later u hav 20 chinese around u, wen u just open yur ies and yu never see fewer than 50 chinese, wen u want tu take a shit and behynd evry bush thair ar 20 chinis lying or werking around, then u kno wat i meen. I just want peese, but how du i say this werd in chinese? I kno the werd ‘tien an’, hevenly peese, becoz of the plase wair thair was so littel peese a littel time ago. So i say ‘tien an’, but nobody understand me. I pronounse evry leter the rong way, not oanly becoz of the fonetics but aulso becoz of the tones. Eeven if i let out the ‚tien’ and oanly say the ‚an’, for ‘peese’, thay dont understand me. ‚An’ dus meen ‘peese’, but it has 200 uther meenings. Yu hav tu say sumthing like ‘an zhi’, wair ‘zhi’ meens ‘silense’. Peese-silense, now thay understand. As if yu say ‚cha’ wen yu want a tee. Eeven if yu pronounse it rite, with the rite tone, the chinese wont understand it becoz ‘cha’ has duzzens uther meenings. So yu say ‘yi bei cha’, wun-cup-tee, and now he understands. Of corse, aulso the werd for ‘wun’ and the werd for ‘cup’ hav meny uther meenings, but the chinis can combine. It is as eezy tu lern as a berd languej, or a marcian languej. Just think: on avrej thair ar 20 meenings for evry sillable. With the tone. If u say a werd without an exact tone, thair ar 4 of them, wich meens 80 meenings per sillable. And eeven wen thay rite with the roman alfabet, the leters hav aulways sum difrense in vallue. The oanly leter wich seems tu hav exactly the same vallue is ‚f’. AND then aul thees nuanses ar difrent from provvinse tu provvinse. Wich meens that offen the chini has tu draw riting sines in the air, wen he tauks tu peepel of uther reejons. Thay’r a big help for the chinis, but not for me. Thay tauk tu me, and wen thay see that i didnt understand eeven ‘dog’, thay rite in chinan on a paper. I stil dont understand. Wel i’l stop complaning. The chinis hav a nise number poem: 4 is not 10, 10 is not 4, 14 is not 40, 40 is not 14. In chinan: shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi shi, shi shi shi shi shi shi. Naturally evry ‘shi’ has a difrent tone, but i forgot them.

         I think thay’r stupid. How cum thay dont understand me? But then i think that i dont understand them either. Wun of them sed tu me: “Toga!” Wat is ‘toga’? “Ying guo hua”, he ses, wich meens that it is english. The oanly thing i can imajin is the old roman dress. But a chinese pezzant cant be tauking about an old roman dress. Or he can, but it is bluddy unlikely. AND then finally he sees an annimal he can point tu. It is a dog. O, that is wat he ment with ‘toga’. For him ‘dog’ and ‘toga’ hav the same sound. AND the comunication dusnt get simpler becoz the chinese caul the cuntrys, the continents, the international prodducts difrently. In neerly evry cuntry, if u want tu smoke u can say Marlboro or Camel. If u meen a car, u can say Cadillac, Mercedes or Mitsubishi. If u want tu describe yur root, u can say America or Africa. U stay a few weeks in Japan and u quikly kno that u hav tu say ‘Borukusuwageng’ for Volkswagen. Not so the chinis. Thair the logic has vacations. Donald Duck is cauld ‘Lao Yang’, the old Yang. Toyota is cauld ‘ching zhou’ or sumthing compleetly difrent. Africa is cauld ‘Fei Zhou’, England is ‘Ying Guo’. But sumtimes u stil can understand it: for exampel ‘pan-tzu’ shood be cleer for evrywun: Mercedes-Benz.

         Az if this wernt enuf, the chinis cant gesticculate. Thay woodnt dreem of it. Becoz thay had never contact with foreners. If u gesticculate yurself, thay’r very serprized and laf. Thats aul. It was a good sho, thank u. For them thair ar tu tipes of comunication: speeking and riting. If u dont speek perfect chinan, thay wont eeven realize that u’r trying tu speek chinan. So thay send u wair thay think u shood go, not wair u want tu go. I ask ‘wair is the rode tu Cheng Du?’ Cheng Du. Rode. Wair. Question werd. Thay aul send me tu the same direction. I ask 3, 4, 5, 6 passers-by, thay hav no dout. Until i stand in frunt of a nassional park. Of corse: toorists go tu the nassional park and not somewair else. Thair is no rode tu Cheng Du around heer, i tel u. I try it with a truk driver. Cheng Du. Rode. Wair. Question. His indicater points automatically tu the nassional park. I tel him i dont want a fucking nassional park, dam it. No good. Nassional park, no! I want the rode tu Cheng Du. I take my dictionry, sho him the werds, sho the rode in the map. Then Cheng-Du. He’s patient. He wates til i finnish and then his finger sho tu the nassional park. I go tu the next driver, same proseedure az befor. I need aultugether 3 ours tu cum out of the sitty.          

         Direction sines dont exist. And wen, thay just say the name of the next sitty. So u leev Los Angeles and want tu go tu San Francisco or Seattle, and thair ar oanly sines for Santa Barbara.

         Tu get information in this cuntry is a tuf biznes. U can never say the name of a plase, u hav tu point tu the plase in the map. Peepel point in an undefined direction and thats it. So it happend that i wunse crossd the sitty Guangzhou and 50 kilomeeters later i realized that i had passd it. I missd a sitty with 6 million inhabbitants becoz i never kno wair it is sitty and wair it is cuntryside becoz the cuntryside is sitty tu and becoz the informations ar so bad. In the big sittys u see billions of bikes, and thay cauz a lot of axidents. Wen u cross a street, u take cair with the bikes, not with the cars.

         The rode trafic in China is an endless caos, with truks, busses, tracters, bikes and pedestrians and and and. AND u must hoot, it is law, the sines tel u tu hoot wen u cross a villej or a sitty. So thay hoot wen thay see a truk, thay hoot wen thay see a bus, a tracter, a bike and thay hoot wen thay see a pedestrian. Of corse thay must hoot especially loud wen thay see nuthing. The chinis ar az camicazzy az the coris, heer eeven an itali wood be shokd. The brazilis drive wel, but fast and indissiplind. The deutshis drive wel and dissiplind, but tu fast. The englis drive wel, dissiplind and not tu fast, but on the rong side of the rode. The japanis drive slo and dissiplind but bad and on the rong side of the rode tu, the italis fast, indissiplind and bad. The coris and the chinis ar the same thing az the italis, but werse. I was lucky, i had oanly wun axident, a bus ran over the 2 big toes of my left foot. Thay’r stil thair, just a bit smauler. In the nite it is mor dainjerus. Tracters and bikes hav no lites, and downhil meny chinis swich off thair moters. And, wel, sinse thay swich off the moter thay hav tu swich off the lites tu. Tu save the batry. U dont see it cumming, u dont heer it cumming. But sumtimes u feel wen it arived.

         I want tu caul Niur in Wien. For that i need the help of a duzzen peepel in the poast offis. How du i say ‘Austria’ in chinan? I yodel like an austrian, i danse a bit waulse, but the chini hav no idea that thay sing that funny way and danse the waulse in Austria. I bet thay cant tel avangard opera from salsa. I shood theorically spel and say Österreich (pronounsed mor o less /ostraish/), but this pronunsiation is stil rong enuf, and evrybody understand Austria, in- and outside the cuntry, dont thay? Wel, after a long fite i fynd out that the chinan name for it is O-di-li. By the way, the USA ar cauld ‘Mei Guo’, the butiful cuntry.

         The chinanas look quite good. Thay hav butiful blak ies in the form of ammonds, nise nozes, fleshy lips, and enuf fat in the rite parts. Thay need longer tu get old (az the africanas), wich meens the wites dont hav the best jeens in this case. In Hongkong the chinanas ar quite sexy, but u cant say that about the wimmen in the communist China, especially becoz of the cloaths. I shoodnt forget tu mention the outlandish habbits. U see sometimes a gorjus gerl sitting on a parkbench. A dreem of woomanhood, and u begin tu dreem. U’r in the middel of yur dreem and suddenly u see how in the real life she spreds her legs, colects aul she can fynd in her mouth, so that peepel can heer it from 200 meeters distense, and then she lets the hole mush go down tu the flor. One end is stil in the mouth, wile the other has aulredy tuchd the flor. Naturally not oanly wimmen du that. Thay hav no idea wat a hankerchif is for. Other lands, other customs. The chinis ar exactly the oppozit of the japanis. Wile the japanis practis an exess of good manners, thanking for haf an our and saying by-by for haf an our, the chinis dont say much, really. Thank u, pleez, by-by – forget it. Thay’l laf at u. U by something in the shop, u pay and thank the shop oner or the atendent. The chinis considder this quite funny. A waist of time. Wy is this gy thanking? He baut something, i sold something, thair is no reezon tu thank in such a case. And now he’s leeving and ses good-by. Wy is he duing that? I kno that he’l leev, wat shood he du heer?

         Enyway u shood leev yur hands off the chinanas, wether thay look good or not. It wil meen oanly trouble for u. U kiss them one day, next day thay’r oanly tauking about marrej. If u marry her or not, it dusnt matter, u’r a case for the poleese.

         In the provvinse Guangdong thay eet evrything that moovs, including snakes, dogs and cats. One dish is cauld draggon-tale with tiger. The draggon tale is the snake and the tiger is the cat. And thay enjoy an eg that has been rotten for yeers. In the market thay slauter the annimals fresh for the client. In the resterant u can never order something orally, u can point tu a werd in the mennu or point at the dishes, moast of them ar a sort of stew. U order something and then u dont kno wat u orderd. U caul the water and ask him: “Muuuu?” “Meyo (no)” “Baaaaa?” “Meyo” “Cok cok cok?” “Meyo.” “So wat is it?” “Bow wow”. The food taists very good, but it is not always good for the stomach. Not eeven for the chinan stomachs. I never saw so meny peepel vommiting from buses, truks and on the street. By the way, no chini has an idea of wat the werd ‘chop suey’ meens. 

         The toilets ar not especially privat. Moastly a few holes in the ground, sometimes 10 or 20 of them. No wauls inbetween. It’s not nise wen u go thair in the morning and aulmoast aul plases ar occupied. Az i sed befor, moast chinese never saw a forener, let alone a forener havving a shit. U’r the big sho. Thay wach u with big ies. Wel, not that big, becoz thay cant. Some of them laf becoz u need so much paper to get yur instalations cleen. The chinis themselvs suport thair boul evacuation with vairius throte and mouth sounds, so evrybody can see that thay’r really werking hard. And then i’m running out of toilet paper, aulso my polsky zlotys ar finnishing. This is wat i caul a crisis.

         Evry eevening it is a fite tu get a hotel room. Az a tourist u’r supozed tu stay in the big tourist hotels, wich ar much mor expensiv and offen just axept payment in the tourist money. I aulways try tu fynd littel privat hotels. In some sittys it’s not a problem, in others     thay dont axept me becoz the cops organize rades sometimes. I aulways take my bike with me intu my room, otherwize it would be gon the next morning. The criminality isnt especially hy in China, but u cant leev yur Rolls-Royce outside. Thay like tu giv me a room in the last flor, so i can trane my muscles. Thanks. It’s not eezy: it’s not oanly carrying it, u hav to push the front down, otherwize the hevy bakside with the fixd bag would push u down. And u never get a kee, u hav tu ask it evrytime from the “flor-made”. So u go to the toilet and then hav to look for her to get yur dor opend agen. That takes haf an our sometimes.

         Thank God not evrything is state-owned, aultho i dont think that has much to do with God. Unlike Russia u can fynd enuf privat resterants, hotels and shops. U can by quite evrything. Thair ar millions of sigaret brands.

         This cuntry is increddibly butiful, it has mountens u wont see enywair else, it has green rivvers, blu rivvers, transparent rivvers, wauterfauls to sel and giv away and eeven thair plantations ar a feest for the ies. Actually i didnt kno that plantations can be so butiful. Peepel heer ar quite dillijent. Wen u think that the chinis ar az dillijent az the japanis, how come the japanis hav 20 000 dollers per cappita income and the chinis only hav 300? Probably becoz the japanis produse mycro-chips wile the chinis produse rise-chips. Wate another 10 or 15 yeers, tho, and u wont make jokes about the chinis publically. 

         In Yangshuo i meet by chanse my frend Sepp, an old frend and naber from München. I didnt kno he was heer and vise-versa. Yeah, nowadays it’s getting eezyer to meet yur naber on the other side of the werld than in the bilding u liv in. Graddualy we come to the mountenus airia, the air isnt that hot eny mor but u get hot from pedling, it goes up and down without interruption. Somehow this up and down isnt werth wile: u can never go down az quikly az u went up sloly. Wen u’r coming down, thair ar potholes, curvs, trafic and men at werk. Once i was coming down on a road full of kervs, on my rite side the abiss. I’m faster than a car, and the curv comes, i hav to brake, one brake shoe flys away. A short time after the other brake shoes fly away too, and i hav to uze my own shoes on the tire. My shoe berns like Rome, wen Rome bernd. Thair wasnt much left from the shoe. I need new shoes, but wair wil i fynd size 46 (or 12/13) in China?

         My chane is broken aulmost evryday. I cant repair it, the bike garages just repair it sometimes, usually the yung mecanics do it, the old ones dont. The yung ones ar curius about this funny red veickel, with geers and thoze thik tires. The old mecanics look at it az if it wer Devils werk.

         Once i hav a brakedown and hich a ride on a truk tu the next sitty. We arive in the eevening, fynd a hotel and the driver looks for the english teecher in town, so we can hav some sort of comunication. The hole sitty population goes to look for this ominous english teecher, wile we wate in the resterant. Ten peepel ar sitting at the tabel, 100 peepel stand around and wach me. I feel like a pink ellefent. And thair comes the english teecher. I ask him if thees peepel hav never seen a forener. “Some hav”, he ses, “some havnt. Thair was an austrian around 3 yeers ago, but not evrybody in the sitty saw him.” And then a cop arives. He cheks my papers and tels me that i’m in a zone wich is prohibbited for tourists. I hav to pay 30 kwai, wich meens 30 yuan, around 7 dollers. This is the same az 10 overnite stays in a cheep hotel. Enyway he givs me a lisense to go aul the way to Tibet. For only 6 yuan. He recomends me to register in evry sitty i want to stay overnite.

         I come to the next sitty in the folloing eevening, find a hotel and go to the poleese station to register. But how do i register in chinan? Nobody in the poleese can understand wat i want. I can only say: “Me be heer. Me be hotel.” Thay don’t kno wat i want, thay fone around to ask for advise. After an our i just leev, i’v done my duty. At 2 oclok in the morning thay nok at the dor of my room, thay’r 3 cops and an english teecher. Thay chek my papers and my bag. Evrything is OK. Thay come agen in the folloing day, the english teecher translates: “We thaut evrything would be OK, but then we askd our boss, he sed this must be OK. But to be sure he cauld his boss in the cappital, and this boss sed it is not OK. The poleeseman in that other sitty doesn’t hav the rite to giv u a permit to travvel around. Only the poleese cheef in Nanning, the provinse cappital, can giv u such a permit. U hav to travvel bak with the bus to Nanning, thair u can get a proper permit. We bring u to the bus tomorro morning.” I dont think travling 300 kilomeeters bak is funny. Then i hav to go bak aul the way agen with the bike, aul for nothing. 600 km. The peepel ar unorganized az in Congo but stubbern az in Japan. No, i can moan and cry, thairs nothing thay can do for me. Thay put me in a bus, i hav to pay for it myself. The bike goes on the roof. The ferst stop comes after 30 km, i get off and try to hich a ride in the direction from wair i just came. I dont want to sikel, somebody could see me. The best is to get a lift on a truk thru the sitty. The bike can go in the cargo airia and i can hide in the cabbin. But the drivers aulways think i’m waving to them because i like them, thay wave bak... Thay cant imagine that i need a ride, i hav a bike. And aul the time poleese cars passing. If one of them tels my frends who expeld me from the sitty that i’m around, i could be in real trouble. Unfortunatly most cars just go to the sitty but dont cross it. But after a wile a truk driver stops. I start stutring in chinan, after a minnut he asks me in good english wat i want. He werkd in a hotel befor. Enyway, he just wants to go to the sitty, but after i explane my problem to him, he doesn’t want to take that risk at aul. He starts agen, after 100 meeters he stops. He desided to take the risk. And he drives thru the sitty and lets me off after the sitty. Thats wy i never say humanity is shit.

         I get quite cautius. I dont sleep in hotels eny mor, i avoid the sittys and the poleese az the devvil avoids the cross. It seems that 90% of the cuntry is forbidden zone for tourists.

         The landscape becomes sort of peculier, evrything becomes peculier. I come thru regions wair u dont find eny chinis, only peepel who look like chinis but arnt chinis. Thay speek languejes that dont hav enything to do with chinan. Thay’d never caul themselvs chinis. The britis wouldn’t say thay’r bulgaris, aultho britis and bulgaris ar wite and hav round ies. To come thru thees cities is uncanny for me, at the same time fassinating. Peepel freek out wen thay see me. It’s a shame i cant obzurv them properly, i hav to hide aul the time. In some regions peepel hav very wether-beeten feetures, the teeth jut out. Like Gengis Khan. Didnt u kno Gengis Khans teeth jut out?

         Kayueng, 10 PM. It’s raning and i deside to look for a hotel, for a change. It’s late and nobody saw me. Befor i get asleep, the poleese noks on my dor. A dozen cops in 3 cars bring me to a big hotel in the city senter. Thay interrogate me, i’m getting really desprat. “This cuntry wil drive me crazy! The chinan tourist information in Hongkong and the poleese in Guangzhou garanteed me that i can sikel evrywair in China, and now i’m treeted like a crimminal aul the time! I cant eeven kno wair it is forbidden for tourists and wair not! Thair ar no sines telling me that and eeven if thair wer i wouldn’t kno because thay sertenly would be ritten in chinan. And the normal poleese doesn’t kno it either, only this sort of forener poleese, and i cant find it, thay aulways find me befor i find them to ask them! How can i kno that this city is clozed for foreners?” “This city isnt forbidden for tourists.” “No?? So wy ar u treeting me like a crimminal?” “If u came heer with yur bike, and u sed u did, then u must hav crossd forbidden airia, becoz aul around us is forbidden.” Of corse, thay dont treet me like a real crimminal, otherwize i wouldn’t liv to tel it. On the folloing day thay bring me to the poleese station and interrogate me. After a few ours the verdict: “We understand that not evrything is werking perfectly in the poleese organization, and we beleev u wen u say u had some trouble. Stil, with yur action u broke our law, and whoever brakes our law must be punishd. A wile ago we had an australian travler heer. He not only broke our law, he was aulso quite unfrendly. So we confiscated his bike. But in yur case i think it wil not be nessesery to confiscate yur bike. U wil just hav to pay a fine of 70 yuan. So, wats yur opinion about this verdict?” I’d love to cut thair throats, but i dont think this is a good anser in this case. “Wel, az u sed befor, the poleese organization isnt perfect yet. On the other hand i hav to admit that the chinan poleese aulways treeted me politely, so i dont want to become unpolite and say my opinion about this proseedure.” The cheef-offiser understood it. I moan and lament a bit mor, i sho him my worn out shoes and aul the poverty i can find on me. The offiser leevs, he has to ask his leeder. He comes bak after a minute and tels me that his boss sed i wont be punishd this time. Not without a speech with simultanius translation: “The rules in our cuntry ar cleer, and u broke it, so u should actually be punished. However it is not our intent to damage the relationship between our cuntry and yurs, so that we took the desision to let u go without punishment.”

         In Kunming, the capittal of the provinse Yunnan, thay tel me that i cant go tu Tibet. I can only do it in tour groups with gide. I’m not supozed eeven to leev the hotel without the gide. And then i hav tu pay 1000 dollars for a 10-day permit. Wich meens that i hav tu make a big detour around Tibet. Ferst north, then west. And mind u, i want tu go southeest to Brazil.

         In Kunming thay forse me agen to stay in a big hotel. For the first time i dont pay the bil. Poleese and hotel belong to the state. The poleese takes the money from me, i take the money from the hotel. It’s eezy: u just dont fite to pay. At the reseption nobody is in charge, and wen the person in charge is thair, she has to tauk to some colleag. Wel, if it is such a werk for them to get the money from thair gests, i wont giv them extra werk. I just leev. So evrybody is happy.

         The mountens ar tormenting me. Sometimes i let myself be towed by a truk going up. It is a relief for the legs but not for the rest of the body. At the first time i grabd the bak of the truk and went with the truk, but my bike stayd bak. U hav tu work with the hole body to stik yur ass to the saddle. U can aulso press with yur legs agenst the handle-bars, this is not such a big effort for the ass and for the body in general, the only problem is that u hav less equilibrium and the bike is haf under the truk. Enyway i uzed this method for maybe 200 km in a total of 3500. The chinis ask me often if i’m an athlete. No, i say, i’m a mazzokist.

         The police doesn’t let up. Aul the time thay keep nocking on my dor in the middle of the nite. Sometimes in forbidden plases, sometimes in alowd plases, thay dont cair. Sometimes it is a forbidden sitty but thay dont hav an english teecher to translate. I pretend to be stupid. Dont understand. Thay tauk to me, rite it down. Eventually thay let me go. I’m definitely fed up of these uniformd rowdies.

         In Cheng Du, in the middle of the Kindgom of the Middle, i meet a scotsman i met befor in Guangzhou. Mure is 18 yeers old, he knows only 2 cuntrys, Scotland and China. But a very intelligent gy. We go evryday to the Flower Garden, a new smaul little resterant for tourists. The plase has been completely empty after the massacre on Tien An Men Squair. The resterant is owned by a famly and thay’r quite funny. We dont giv the owner a tip, he givs us a tip. Did it cost 5 yuan 80? OK, lets make 5! Is it 12 yuan 80? 10 wil do it. Evryday we go thair we get a beter tip, until we end up eating free in thair kichen with them. Wel in this case we hav to do something for them too. We organize disco evenings, we make hand-drawn posters and stik them around. We get some tourists to come, and the chinan crowd waches the sho from outside.

         I want to sel my bike, it’s making problems evryday, the tires ar pachd up like a poor circus and i cant get new ones here. In a few years thay’l sure hav them, but not yet. The problem is that thay rote in my visa that i came in with a bike, so i hav to leave the cuntry with a bike. People ar fascinated by the bike, but nobody wants to by it without papers and without a license plate. I end up selling it to the resterant owner for less than haf the price i baut it for. But at least i had good food. Then i hich with Mure to the north. He’s hichhiking for the first time in his life and is fascinated. This is much easier and cooler than fiting to by a trane ticket! Later he wont do anything else than hichhike thru China and be molested by the police. And for the first time we see one of those “criminal parades”, wair thay transport the criminals on a truk around the city to sho that crime doesn’t pay. Thay hav signs on thair brests and on thair baks telling the population wat thay did rong. The blokes we saw didnt hav a red X on the signs, wich is beter for them. If u hav an X, u’l hav hevenly peace soon. The chinis dont like to waist thair time with criminals. U come to the tribunal one day, next day u hav yur verdict. And u cant appeal.

         We stay in a town on the foothils of the Tibet. To get thair u hav to go along a river with numerus wauterfauls. After a few days i leave alone to the north. Near Lanzhou u notice that the desert is coming. Or that u ar coming to the desert. From touristic atraction to touristic atraction i reach the Grate Waul, and going west i reach Xinjiang, wair many difrent people liv. The most numerus ar the uigurs and i like thair language. Europe is cauld Europa, resterant is cauld restoran, bus is cauld autobus. And not something like gong gong chi che like in chinan. U can tauk to people, provided u can speak some turkish. Thay use the arabian riting, wich means that u shouldn’t hav any problems: if u cant read chinan, u can read the arabian bit. The uigurs look like turkis without mustash, some of them ar blond or hav slit ies, sometimes both. But u see people like that in Turkia too. Anyway i speak a mix of chinan, turkian and ruski. Since thair ar so many languages in Xinjiang, thay gesticulate a lot, here even the chinis lernd to gesticulate.

         By the way, the few hand signs the chinis hav ar also difrent from wat we kno. To sho the number 5, thay put the 5 fingers together to a tip. For 6 thay sho u thair hand baks and strech out the thum and the little finger. For 7 thay ad the ring finger, for 8 the thum and the indicator, for 9 it seems that thay dont hav a sign at all, at leest this was wat people told me, and to sho the 10 thay just sho the indicator. It’s a bit like english spelling.

         Turfan or Turpan is a city 150 meters belo the sea level, but thay dont hav to fear that the sea floods the place, not far from here is the place wich is the farthest point from any ocean in the hole world. In july the average dayly maximum temprature is 47° C (116° F), wile in jannuary the average dayly minimum temprature is –28°C (-18° F). Here i go to the police and tel them that somebody just stole my bike. The policemans english is rather rudimentry, so he doesn’t pose any questions. I get my paper. Thanks.

         After Ürümqi i turn to southwest. Brazil is in the southeast, so it’s getting beter. I hich also rides on bikes and donky carts. Once i sit on the cargo area of a truk, suddenly the driver stops, comes out and gesticulates wildly in my direction. He puts the indicator and the middle finger on the mouth, then he waves with his arm. Then he puts both hands together and suddenly streches the arms to the sides. I look at the boxes i’m sitting on. It’s all ritten in chinan, but the signs ar clear enuf: i’m sitting on dinamite. OK, in this case i’l follo the drivers instructions and put out my cigaret.

         The hole area is just sand and stone, but they dont call it desert. The desert is further east. I’m travling along the desert Taklamakan, wich meens ‘to go and not come bak’. Sometimes i’m lucky and people let me off in the middle of the desert. It’s wonderful. No bird, no tree, no noise and no chini. I love the desert, here i’m free and alone with my loneliness. Me and me, undisturbd. The desert is absolute. It is hostile, on the other hand the enemy of my enemies, wich ar the crowd, must be my frend. Somewhere in the middle of nowhere i arive in a village in a truk. The hotel owner wants to charge 6 times mor money from me than from the other 4 chinos who came with me in the truk, including the truk driver. I protest enerjically and hope my “frends” wil help me. But thay dont. Thay dont think i’m rite. Thay think rich people hav to pay mor. I also think so, unless somebody is considring me rich. She doesn’t change her mind and i leave. I sleep outside. She prefers not to make a deal than to charge less than 6 times the price she charges from the chinis.

         Further west there ar tajikis too. They’r an indo-europian people, wich means that we brazileiros, americans, svenskis can understand them beter than we can the finns. No in their language is ney, i is mey (me, my) and u can recognize most of the numbers. Their national sport is called boskosh, and is a sort of wild USian football on horses. Insted of a ball they use a hedless sheep.

         The next step is from the Sahara to the Antarctis, from 40°C to 10°C minus and lots of sno. The Karakorum Hyway (hiway, i suppose because it is hy in the mountens, not because it is a good rode. It’s a hel of a job, evry 5 minutes the bus threttens to slip down the sand abyss, the road is on sand u kno, and we hav to prevent it to do that. We hav to push. Hard. Cold) is the famus Silk Road and takes me to the Kunjerab Pass.      

        


DOUN UNDER

 

          I fly from Bali to Darwin. Oy come out and go to look for the city center, but after 5 minutes walk u’r out of town. The plice where oy aroivd was the city center. One bank, 2 hotels, 3 bars and 4 people on the street. Two of them aborigenes asking u for booz and cigarets. I’m used to iesian dimensions now! U could put 20, my-be 50 Javas in Australia, but thy hav 5 toims mor people. And if it wasnt for Krakatoa volcano, there would be mor. There ar probably mor people per square kilometer in an iesian desert than in Sydney downtown. In Darwin u can eat also crocodile or cangaroo burgers. Thy tyst loik burgers.

OK, oy come to Kathrin, full of aborigenes. Thy look loik ET’s and sometoims u hav the impression thy really ar extraterestrials. Thy just had a stop here, desending from Dreamtime to get some gas. The wy thru the desert isnt noice. Few people here, but trillions of floys, and then the cangaroos, the snakes. I dont see many cangaroos aloiv, just ded ones, flat loik a carpet on the road. And then thy hav road trines there, truks with a trine behoind. Oy mean, it is called a trine because it is so long behind, my-be 50 meters. It works in strite roads loik that. Any-wy in Australia i lern evrything necessary to survoiv in that cuntry: oy can hunt boomerangs and thro cangaroos. Hunting boomerangs is quoit easy, especially if thy loy around in a corner. Throing cangaroos is a lot harder, especially throing them in a wy that thy come bak.

         After Ayers Rock i come to a hotel in the middle of the desert. I ask the hotel owner if he accepts foren currency. He says: if it is not brazilian money! He didnt kno i’m brazilian. No, no, we brazilis arnt as stupid as to carry brazilian money around the world.

I work picking gripes. Horrible stuf, i just sty a few dies, and go to Sydney. Oy work washing windscreens at street crossings. Very badly pied job. Oy distribute floyers, it is moy first racist job: oy’m not supposed to giv prospects to blaks. Then the solarium closes down and oy’m jobless again. Oy dont hav a penny any mor. Oy go and sel roses. If u want to feel loik an pimple in the ass of a soldier, sel roses. U boy them for 3 dollars and ar supposed to sel them for 10. Who boys roses for 10 dollars? A few toims some drunk people wanted to boy some, but oy didnt hav any money, and he who has no money has no change, and thy didnt want to giv me the money so that i could change it in a bar. Then i stand in front of the Sydney Opera, my-be 2 oclok AM, no roses sold. Two drunk girls come around and tike a few roses from moy basket and walk awy, not without thanking for the noice present. Oy go after them and expline oy cant giv them those roses because oy hav to pie for them and nobody has baut a single fucking rose so far. Thy tel me to cool down and keep walking, until oy lose moy pitience and troy to tike the roses from their hands boy force. One of them punches me in the oy. I dont kno wat happend exactly, but a few seconds liter all the roses and the 2 girls wer on the flor. Oy took moy roses and left. Then i work in the kichen of an italian restaurant, whose owner was argentino, his wife engla, the cook canado and most waiters kiwis. I never herd italian in that restaurant. Stil, the canado was a divine cook, gy of corse, so my-be oy should sy canadi, or even canadana.

         Oy hav some afairs in Sydney and end up going to Brisbane. Oy distribute floyers again... u see, the loif of a travler is very exoiting. Anywy it is an intresting cuntry and a noice plice to be. Noice landskipes, people cool, pleasant wether generally, with a good standard of living. And thy hav as many murders in a year as the US in haf a die (!).

I hich with a norga on a danish ship with danish officers and papu-niuginis as crew thru the South Sea and lern a lot of pidgin english: yumi mit wea? – u + me meet where? = where do we meet? Or: nambaten – number 10 – the worst u can foind. Or: nambawan – number one – the best of the best. Man blong German – man belong Germany – deutshi. Go insait nating – go insoid nothing – free entry. Hat smol smol – warm; pusim – push; puspus – shag. The capten is quite often drunk and the navigator too. The latter brings a woman on bord, the capten doesn’t like the idea, but ends up sleeping with the woman himself. They argue a lot, drink a lot and there is nobody on the navigating bridge. Sometimes i come and look if there arnt any ships around. But u dont see many, really. The waves ar average, says the first officer, wich means that u cant leave a cup on the tabel, it would fly away. Then we see the film about the mutiny on the Bounty. In the film u see a terrible storm, but wen Marlon Brando talks to capten Blyth inside the boat, and stands there as in any good Hollywood studio. No swaying at all.

         The fijanis ar quite frendly people, and in the old times they wer quite polite too. They uzed to cut the prisoners tongue off, fry it and offer a piece to the victim. They cut one third of a womans finger wen one of her kids died (at least in the first years). If 30 of her kids die, she hasnt any hand any mor. I almost end up with an indian fija in the bed, but i didnt and it was good, i found out later that she was a man.

Tuvalu is a very tiny republic in the South Pacific. The iland is 30 km long and 200 m wide. Wen they hav lo tide, the iland is twice as big, because it’s twice as wide. The ilands ar atols, most people hav never seen a street that goes down- or uphil. They’v never seen a hil at all, not even a meter high. The radio in Tuvalu is called TBC, Tuvalu Broadcasting Corporation. The cuntry has one restaurant and one street. The restaurant has a big menu but only one thing they can really offer, a sandwich with 4 ingredients, but now they hav only 2: butter and egs. And having just one street makes it pretty easy for taxi drivers: the passenger gets in, the driver asks: forwards or bakwards?

In Kiribati we go for a swim. There is nobody around, so we shag in the water. We finish and realize that she lost the underpart of her bikini. We cant find it any mor. She has tu cross the street quite naked, but there aint many people around. In the folloing day there is lo tide, we’r walking on the beach and see the bikini in a puddle. We take it home, she washes it and finds a little fish. He doesnt move any mor. Deth by bikini. But i take it to the water, nothing happens for a few seconds but suddenly he wakes up again and swims happily away.


A FEW MOR WERDS...

 

chekmate – rich frend

coreografer – person who studies Corea

chrysanthemum – Christopher and his mother

classick – pupil hu had enuf of scool

coknee – the leg joint of a walking bird

cold turky – middle east cuntry in the winter

condominium – condom factery

congenital – tricky body part

daddicated – a father who dus evrything for his kids

dainty – hot drink made by suthern skandinavis

delight – make it dark

disconcert - the opposite of ‘concert’, very bad music

discuss – bless

emission – electronic task

female – penalty notice received by e-male or snale male

high noon – lunch with drugs

misunderstanding - the most butiful female psychologist

toilet - little toy 

(this list is stil being improovd)