No Snow

Sorry about the break in posts, we haven't had internet connection for days,

But like the title says, there's no snow in Nigeria. Which is expected, of course. It is a tropical climate after all. But you know, whenever it becomes that Christmas time of year in America everyone thinks of snow and snow and snowpeople and all that snow stuff. And then they think of the Santa in the red suit (fun fact: the red suit Santa started when Coca-Cola put Santa in the iconic red suit and hat ensemble; before that, there was no red-wearing Santa! Commercialization man, commercialization.) But here, it's a little different. Even though on all the advertisements and everything with the Santa drinking a Coke bottle and all the snowfIlakes on the edges and all that, there's one small thing. There's no snow here even though snow fills the ads! Quirky, right? It kinda takes some getting used to when you see Christmas decorations up and there's dust from the Sahara blowing across the lawn and the sun is beating down like nobody's business. Maybe it's just me, I don't know. I'm not saying that it snowed every year in Durham, or anything like that. It's just...I can't really explain it...strange. That's the only word I can use for it. Yes, I'm strange.

Signing off,
The Traveler

Pidgin English Words

Okay, yesterday I had promised you guys something,

I would post on my blog a bunch of words from the language Pidgin English, so that you can learn a bit of a new language. So I'll show you interjections, full sentences, everything! Now, I can't take all the credit for this, I had a lot of help getting all this stuff together, so here it is.

A = A was derived from the English "I," and can is used in the same way. For example: A know no say. (I don't know that.) "Ai" is another version of A.

A-AH = A-Ah is derived from Yoruba, and it's a lot like "what in the world?!" It can be used in anger, shock, almost any sort of surprising situation, e.g. A-ah, (laughter), wetin be dis? (A-ah, what on Earth is this?)

BONES = Bones has nothing to do with the bones in your body. It's a derivative of English, and it means a pair of sunglasses. Hey, don't ask me how that came about. That's a weird one.

CROOMA = Crooma is derived from English, and it means a gullible, easily cheated person.

DABARU = A derivative of Yoruba, Dabaru means confusion, and disorganization. For example: Hey - make una no bring dat matter come dabaru dis meeting, o, ehen! (Listen, you guys don't introduce that matter at this meeting, got it?)

GAAN = Gaan is derived from Yoruba. It means precisely, without a doubt. For example, E vex am gaan. (It angered him/her a whole lot.)

IJEBU = Derived from Yoruba, Ijebu means non-authentic, a counterfeit. e.g. Dis na ijebu. (This is not authentic.)

That's all for now.

Signing off,
The Traveller

Language, Nigerian Style

How do you say, "how are you?"

Do you say, "what's up?" Well, however which way you say it, there's a language here in Nigeria called Pidgin English, and it's a language that's a mix of everything. This is how you'd say "how are you" in Pidgin English: "How you dey?" Pretty simple, right? Dey is like "is" and your current state and stuff, it's kinda a hard word to explain, but that's pretty much what it means. The rest is pretty much easy to decipher. Now how would you respond? You could do this in many ways, but one way is to say: "Body dey inside shirt." This is a way of saying, "hey, at least I'm still moving!" Pidgin English is almost like the middle language, one that you can speak in even if you only speak English and another person only speaks Yoruba, because the language has a mixture of a whole bunch of languages. For all you Lord of the Rings fans, it's the Common Tongue for Nigeria. In the Pirates of the Caribbean you'll even hear Jack Sparrow speak some Pidgin, crazy huh? Let me teach you a few words in Pidgin English. "Abi" means "right?" And if you are asking a question, you usually start it off with the word "Se," which is pronounced "Sheh." So "Se you get" means what? "You get it man?" is the English equivalent of "Se you get?" Seriously, this thing is complex, but I don't think that there's an official dictionary of it even though it's been around for hundreds of years. I don't speak it fluently, not even close, but I can understand a lot more than I can speak because it has many English words in it, so I can get the overall message of what someone's saying. Awesome, right? Maybe I'll make a list of words in Pidgin English with their English equals, and I'll post it here, so that all of us can learn something!

Signing off,
The Traveler

Insects in the Yard

We're about to go to a wedding so I have to cut this post pretty short,

But anyway, I just noticed that I've always talked about the animals or plants in the yard but never the bugs. I'm gonna fix that now. I've written enough about soldier ants in the past, so I'm not gonna mention them for now. What I'm focusing on right now are the mini-bees. They're bees, but super-duper small. Like really small like gnats. That's how small they are; they act like bees except they make their home in the door-frame for our back door instead of in trees. They don't make a real hive, cuz the outsides are brown and smooth, and there isn't any shape to them. And if you actually open the hive up, you'll find pretty sweet honey, but because the bees are so small you can get like a spoonful from each hive. And the bees sting, just like their bigger cousins. And they hurt! It's probably worse than a bigger bee's sting, because there are more of them, like hundreds. So it's pretty bad. And the crazy part is that they look like gnats, because they're small and black, so you'll be aggravating them and you'll have no idea what you're messing around with!

Signing off,
The Traveler

Oh Yeah

I switched back to the old template for a reason,

And this is why. The new dynamics view for Blogger doesn't allow small apps and stuff, so you're just stuck with Blogger's basic build. That really has to get rethought. It's a cool system and all, the dynamic views, but they're just not practical yet. I'll wait to they do become completely realistic.

Signing off,
The Traveler

Dust

It's everywhere,

It's on the floors, it's in the hallway, it's all over the air. An orange haze hovers around the town. Why? Well, all of this dust is coming from the Sahara, hundreds of miles away, and settling around here. Again, why? This always happens around Dry Season. Again, WHY? Well, here's my first theory: the dust is blowing over from the Sahara all the time, it's just that in the Rainy Season it gets washed away. My second theory is that maybe since you have the Dry Seasons and Rainy Seasons all over the continent (I think), then maybe the Sahara's dust only blows over in the Dry Season because that's when it's driest. This last theory doesn't make that much sense because deserts don't get much rainfall in the first place, even if it is Rainy Season. So then here's the next question. How does this dust travel from the Sahara all the way to here? It's possible, because I've heard of dust traveling to Florida and stuff from the same desert. And why does the Sahara produce so much dust in the first place? Is it a dust factory or something?

Signing off,
The Traveler

P.S. I think there might be monkeys in the Backyard Backyard.

Brownie's Species!

I think I've figured out what Brownie is!

Yes, of course we all know that she's a goat, but I think I know what type of goat she is. Brownie is..........................a Nigerian Dwarf Goat! Yes, a Nigerian Dwarf Goat. It's a type of goat which originates in West Africa, and it's supposed to be small and have a very mellow, even attitude. Like Brownie. Also, they're supposed to come in all different types of colors, and they can have spots, pretty much anything. Their colors can change over time, kinda like how Blackhorn Jr.'s turning from black to red. So I'm pretty much convinced that most Nigerian goats are Nigerian Dwarf Goats. Maybe that's why they're called Nigerian Dwarf Goats, because they live in Nigeria. :P I checked the Nigerian Dwarf Goat Association website and I think it's ironic that even though they're called Nigerian Dwarf Goats, banners that they have on the site are all red white and blue. Why is this? Well, I did a bit of background research and discovered that Nigerian Dwarf Goats were taken from West Africa in the early 1900s and brought to America for feed for zoos who needed meat for the tigers and such. Disgusting. I know. And then, after a while, they noticed that the goats were actually pretty gentle and kind so they thought, "hey, why don't we stop feeding them to the lions and keep them for milking?" So the Nigerian Dwarf Goat gained it's popularity in the States, that's why there were American flags all over the site. A short little history lesson that will probably never help with any history pop quiz. Well, at least you learned something today.

Signing off,
The Traveler

Looking for Fruit

Remember the last post I did, New Fruit?

I've been eating those things up like no one's business. And boy, now the tree's almost empty of the red cherries! So I went around the yard looking for more fruit to pluck. Guava's? Nope, not ripe yet. They're just small green things right now. Cashews? Nu-uh. Not even thinking about being ready to harvest. Mangoes? Not ready either. Bananas? Well, we had already gotten a few bunches of bananas a few days ago, and besides I can't climb up the trees and cut them down myself. Plantains? You can't eat plantains raw in the first place, so I move past that. Pineapples? I would have to hack them off their stalk-bush thingy. Last was almonds, and there were none that I could see that were ripe. Oh wait, I made a mistake; last was tangellos, and they weren't ripe either. Nothing is ready for my to just take down and eat. Eh, whatever. But I think the reason is because everything's dying right now. Since it's become dry season, almost all the grass in the lawn is yellow and crumbling, and leaves are falling like in Fall. And the heat in the daytime is so dry and...dry, it's completely energy sapping. And then in the nighttime it drops to like 60 degrees farenheit. That's like SUPER cold here. I shouldn't really be complaining; it's pretty chilly up in the States right now, but for Nigeria, that's like freezing snow kinda cold. I really wish I had some fruit....

Signing off,
The Traveler

New Fruit

Remember the list of fruits we had in the yard?

Well there was one that I had missed: it's a type of tropical cherry! It's small and red like a cherry, but that's where the similarity ends. It has this sort of ridge all along it, and there's a huge seed in the middle. It's juicy, and the juice can really stain your clothes. Like I care about that sort of stuff. Anyways, the taste is a little strange. It's like sweet, but peppery tasting afterwards. Yeah I'm not that good at describing stuff like that. It's unbelievably dry and hot and all the plants are dying. Whenever you walk these days the dead leaves on the ground crackle back at you. It's the time of year. We've been waiting for a package full of stuff to arrive here from the States but the shipping company that we used is horrid. It still boggles my mind that even though it's the middle of winter in Durham NC, our hometown, yet right here it's 100 degrees Fahrenheit!

Signing off,
The Traveler