New YouTube Channel

Okay, so at the suggestion of my old newspaper editor, "The Names of Places" has a new YouTube channel.  It is linked to the blog and will be replete with audio posts, slideshows, and Bub songs.  Here's a repeat of a recent Bub song, now available at YouTube.

My favorite Bub song

Perhaps it's a bit sentimental for a half-baked ditty, but what can you do?

You Don't Say

Anyway, there you have it.  Another half-baked Bub ditty.

Insufficient Chairs

Another weird memory.  If anyone can correct or corroborate the details, or add to them, I'd be much obliged.  Chris, Arlen, Primetime Sean; was there anybody else?  Aron, were you there?  Anyway, so as I remember it, we were on a canoe trip down the Sanaga River, in Cameroon.  We were laughing real hard about stuff, like when one of the canoes hit a whirlpool and flipped over.  Then, that night Sean was drying his shorts on the grill and burned a big hole in them.  Man, we laughed so hard.  Arlen kept on yelling: "Prove it!" every time anybody said anything, making some kind of hilarious point about epistemology or something.

After a while we figured out that if we stopped at the riverside villages, the local chief would be obliged to sit down with us in the center of the village and serve us drinks and send us off with armloads of fruit.  As soon as we figured this out, we stopped every time we saw a pirogue tied to the reeds in hopes of coming away with mangoes, guavas, avocados, and lemons.  We'd be paddling away, scanning the forested shoreline for evidence of people, water lapping, long-tailed birds flashing in the green.  When we saw a trail or froth in the water where people washed their clothes or a pirogue, whoever saw it first would shout, and Arlen would yell "Prove it!", then we'd double over laughing as we we made our way cross-current to the shore.

I seem to remember a deserted village.  We wandered up the trail, mouths watering in anticipation of palm wine and fruit.  We came upon a silent cluster of mud houses.  Then a woman scurried into view, waving her arms.  She grabbed us and pulled us around the village, showing us house after house.  "Uncle used to live here.  Brother used to live here.  Cousin used to live here.  Come!  Let me show you!"  She yelled for her son.  A skinny, scared looking boy came into view.  "We have guests!" she said.  "Do you want to see the plantation?"  We followed her at top speed all through the plantation, trees heavy with cocoa pods and oranges.  Then she said, "Come! Let us sit."  So we followed her back to her house and she yelled at her son once again to go find some chairs.

There were not enough chairs.

The Best Company

Listen to Bernardo's story about friendship and fire and what the direction that a house faces can tell you about it's inhabitants.