Friday Cat Blogging

Now, about Vindaloo (I know, I'm doing this backwards-- you'd think I'd start with the older cat first, but you'd be wrong.). A few years ago I volunteered for a short while to teach English to some Somali immigrants in Indianapolis. Despite years of second language acquisition theory study and enough Swahili to communicate with the husband, I proved lousy at this, and on my second try, after putting up with me for a while they politely suggested that it was time for the wife to begin making dinner (at 2pm) and could I please go. So I went, feeling like the biggest loser ever, to hang around in their lawn until my husband, who had gone off to work in a coffee shop during my planned hour of tutoring, came back to pick me up. There was a small herd of kids next door who were luckily very friendly and not too citical of my loitering on the curb, and so I discussed life with them for a while. They invited me over to their place to wait on my ride. They had kittens. Lots and lots of kittens, and they were looking to get rid of them, so when their mother got home, and my philosopher showed up, we had more general discussion of the excess kitten issue, and it was agreed that we would pick one out, and come back in a few weeks when it was old enough to remove.

We went back as planned, and acquired a kitten. I think it was not actually the kitten we had initially chosen, but hey, it was still a kitten. Good enough. She meowed her fool head off all the way home, so we decided to call her Vindaloo for her spiciness. Also because Vinda Lou sounded like it could be a good Southern name.

She lived in the guest bathroom for a few days, acclimating to her new digs. When we finally let her out to meet Ballyhoo, this is how it went:

He was very polite and cautious, and kept his distance so as not to alarm the kitten. Vindaloo, on the other hand, puffed up like a fluffy balloon, scuttled sideways, and hissed. Ballyhoo took this with his usual good humour. Before long, they were (and continue to be) best pals.

I had lunch this week with my friend and former Swahili teacher, who had her bag stuffed full of kangas to lend to a student who was doing a presentation about the kanga later in the day.


The kanga is a popular piece of clothing/all around useful item in Tanzania-- lots of people call it the 'traditional' clothing, but I think that would be stretching it a bit-- as I understand it, it wasn't really introduced until early in the 20th century-- but it is certainly much-loved, both deeply and widely associated with Tanzanian culture. Anyway, it's a colorful cloth featuring bright patterns and a saying of some sort. The saying can be used to give a message to the recipient (if it's a wedding gift, it may have a saying of good wishes for the new household,for example), or the wearer may use the message to communicate with others in the house or neighborhood about something that's been on her mind. Usually the saying is in Swahili (although on Pres. Bush's recent trip to Tanzania, I saw that the commemorative kanga worn by the women greeting him was in English). Swahili these days generally uses Roman script.


Back to my friend's recent kanga acquisition. She had one new kanga that used Arabic script! This is very unusual-- Arabic script was used for writing Swahili for centuries, mainly by poets, but when the British missionaries began their literacy work in East Africa, they went with the Roman script. For various historical reasons, this was the method that stuck. I had heard tell that there were still some poets in the coastal region that preferred Arabic, but hadn't come across it anywhere myself. Now this kanga! Popular culture with Arabicized Swahili! How cool is that?!


I did my best to read it, but frankly, the Arabic writing system really isn't very well suited for Swahili. Granted, my grasp of the Arabic writing system is limited, to put it mildly-- I took a year of the language about 15 years ago and haven't done much with it since-- but I don't think it's all me. There are a few more vowels in Swahili than Arabic, for one thing, and several consonants don't match up well with the letters available. Though I suppose that the same criticisms could be made of the Roman alphabet. But anyway. This one translated roughly as "I will not leave my husband because of rumors in the neighborhood." I don't understand the choice of Arabic script for this, but it's probably meaningful. There's always more than one level of meaning in Swahili.

Yes, I'm still making the recycled paper bangles, thank you for asking. Here's my latest, featuring a Robert Frost poem fragment, the last two lines of "The Black Cottage".

"There are bees in this wall." He struck the clapboards,

Fierce heads looked out; small bodies pivoted.

We rose to go. Sunset blazed on the windows.

The latest dye job

I've been playing in dye again! I can't get over these splotches (for lack of a more alluring word).
My last batch, the red drops, ended up turning into a necklace, a bracelet, several pendants, and a mini-calligraphy piece. I've already started on a new necklace with this blue and brown batch.
In other news, I refreshed the supplies at the Wandering Turtle this week (including leaving the aforementioned red inkdrop necklace with them), so if you're in the Bloomington area, do stop by and take a look! They've got a wonderful exhibit of spring florals up now, including some truly stunning 3-d work by Martina Celerin, who just when you think has produced the most amazing work possible, up and tops herself every time.

Friday Cat Blogging

Boy, have I been slack! My New Month's Resolution is to not be slack, at least in respect to blogging.

Not a good view from the window for Vindaloo. This week Vindaloo has been involved in 1) asking for food, 2) knocking over the turtle food canister, 3) laundry basket surfing, 4) asking for food, 5) stare-downs through the glass door to the deck with the new calico cat next door, 6) virtual bird-hunting, 7) being groomed by Ballyhoo.

Ballyhoo has been working on his novel, enjoying the gradually warming outdoors, asking for food, asking to go out, sitting on people, and grooming Vindaloo.

Currently in my DP proofreading queue:

The Book of Cheese
The Story of the Zulu Campaign [1880]
Comrade Kropotkin
Great Pirate Stories
The Post-Girl

Those who know me well will know that these indicate quite a lot about me.

One title I am not proofreading, but find hilarious is "Nervous Breakdowns and How To Avoid Them". I for one am avoiding them by not proofreading that book!

I've been experimenting with making seed paper lately, and decided that something involving seed paper would be a fun spring freebie. Now, I also have all these odd-sized strips of paper left from various projects that I can't bring myself to throw away. (The ones leftover from making cards out of 8 1/2 x 11 ,for example). Turns out that leftover strips of paper + seed paper + a little bit of linen thread= cute little plantable matchbooks. I'll put a bowl of them out at the Luna Festival on Saturday if I manage to get enough of them made in time.