pandastan

Not much else to report aside from the two new songs I wrote. One of them is called "Bwana." In Malawi, "Bwana" means "Boss." I think it might originally be a Swahili word. The word is also applied to anyone who has a lot of money or is basically a big shot of some kind. In Peace Corps we also use it as an adverb, as in "I think I'll be bwana today and order some pizza. In the context of this song, it refers to the prototype of a useless corrupt person working as a government or NGO bureaucrat. A friend of mine recently had a run-in with an NGO that snookered a group he was working with into buying $4000 of equipment that was useless to them and they couldn't afford, at %15 interest. As soon as they default, the NGO will just repossess the equipment and "sell" it to some other sucker. The word "Bungwe" is a Tumbuka word for "organization" and here refers to any government or NGO service program that is run by some bwanas who don't do a thing except take bribes. Here's the link: http://www.ziddu.com/viewfile/11584876/RaymondThomson-2010-Bwana.mp3.html

I won't post my other song here because it contains profanity. It turns out that I'm still sophomoric enough to write an entire song premised entirely around the repeated use of such uncouth language. If that's the kind of thing that doesn't offend you, you can find a link to it on my Facebook profile.