pandastan

Hello all, as the title of the entry indicates, this will be my last. I don't really like keeping a blog, and this whole thing was conceived mainly as a way to keep people I know in America informed about my life, since communication is so difficult while I'm here. My COS date has been moved one day to July14, after which I'm going to spend a month traveling with some friends on my way back to the US. We'll hit up Dar es Salaam in Tanzania to get our Indian visas, proceed to Delhi from there, take in a few of the sites for a week and a half, then fly to Bangkok, figure out something to do there for another week and a half, then continue on to Portland. (We axed China from the itinerary to cut down on costs).

So, Portland people: I will be flying in to town on August 16! I plan to stay there for a week or two, so I would love to meet up with you all at that time. From there I'll be staying a few weeks with with my Dad in northeast Washington, and then a few weeks with some friends in Couer d'Alene, Idaho. I've got a wedding to go to in Montana in October, and would like to visit some friends in Moscow and Helena. By October or November at the latest I will hopefully have developed my plans for the future a little bit. I am leaning towards setting up shop in Portland again, and then... ? We'll see.



In other news, I found a much better website for posting content online, so I decided to go ahead and repost my songs on it. I put up 16 of them all together. Those are all the original songs I wrote while in Peace Corps, which I think is a pretty good haul. That's five additional ones from the 11 I originally posted links to on this blog. I mentioned three of those in my last entry: “Ladycop,” “Mzungu,” and “I'm Feelin' Fine.” In April I wrote two more: “The Wheels of The World,” and “We Should Bump.” Here's the link if you're interested in taking a listen: http://www.mediafire.com/?sxakt7hje8rlk

I also have a new set of photos up: https://picasaweb.google.com/yenwela/ChitimbaMemories I have had requests before for some more pictures of the village where I live, so these are some photos of the area, and some of my friends who live here. I've resisted taking many photos until now because it makes me stand out as an outsider, but since I'm about to leave, the time was finally right. There are some shots of the lake, the surrounding landscape, the roadblock, Elijah's restaurant and the lodge nearby. That pretty much wraps things up as far as pictures go.

By the way, the guardian shelter is finally complete. (There's a picture of that too.) I closed out the grant on my past trip to Lilongwe, and that was the end of it. The handing over ceremony will be an Saturday. I have also taught my last day of class, so all my projects here are done.

What to do until July 14? Well, I just finished hosting a sort of going away party at my house for Peace Corps friends. My site mate and I decided to go with a Billy Joel theme this time. There were some excellent Billy Joel themed costumes and some inspired sing-alongs. All in all the party was a rousing success. I chose the song . My contribution to the theme was to learn to play “Movin' Out, (Anthony's Song)” on guitar since I will be moving out soon. I replaced the lyrics to reflect my own departure from Peace Corps. The resulting song is called “Movin' Out (Lemondi's Song).” In Malawi, “R”s are more often than not pronounced as “L”s. The people here believe those letters are interchangeable. They also like to put “ee” sounds on the ends of words. Hence, Raymond becomes Lemondi, which is what people usually call me here. Anyway, if you want to hear that song, I posted it too: Movin Out - http://www.mediafire.com/?ez40881y598e5at

Aside from the party, I'll be spending all my time editing my book, Pandastan. I finished writing it a month ago. It finally clocked in at 492 pages. That was a little bit longer than what I was shooting for, but it's a big story, and when I tried to rush the story along to cut down on the length, I would end up rereading what I'd written later, and it came across as (surprise, surprise!) rushed.

Unfortunately, I hit a snag. I had set the margins of my pages along the lines of a few other books I had lying around to come up with a rough idea of how many pages long the book was. But apparently, the books I had lying around were printed on smaller type than is typical. My pages had around 360 words per-page, but after a little internet research, I found that apparently the industry standard is closer to 250. What this means is that instead of 492 pages, Pandastan clocks in at a whopping 715. I did some more research, and found that most publishers are reluctant to produce anything with more than 120,000 words if it comes from a previously unpublished writer. Pandastan contains 179,000 words, so to make a long story short (ha ha) the story was too long for one volume.

By a stroke of good fortune, there was a very clear distinction between the first and second halves of Pandastan. This applies to a lot of things in the book, including the themes, the amount of time that passes, and the characters' concerns and activities. There's also a convenient mini-climax at the end of the first half. Also, lengthwise, the first and second halves really are about identical (89,000-90,000) words apiece. So in order to improve my chances of getting this thing published, I spent the last month converting the it into a two part book: Pandastan, Part One, The War on Pandas, and Part Two, Lewna and the Pandahead. That process is complete now, so all that is left to do is continue with the editing process to try and polish it off and trim off the fat where possible.

On the bright side, if I somehow beat the odds and get that incredible dog published, I'll already have a fully written sequel ready to go if the response to the first one was positive. I enjoy what I've written, but as to whether anyone else in the world will like the book besides me… I have no idea. Well, if nothing comes of it, or something comes of it, I've given it my best.

Aside from all the great life experiences I've been able to have as a Peace Corps volunteer, (including things I've learned about Malawi, Malawians, myself, etc) I'm really grateful that I've been able to spend the last two years in an environment where my creativity could flourish enough to learn to play guitar, write a bunch of my own songs, and write these books. It's been a great gift in my life. I know how few people ever get the chance to break out of the dreary workaday world, even for a just a few years like I have, so like I said, I'm very grateful. I'm grateful to Malawi, and grateful to Peace Corps, and grateful to the people who helped this become a reality for me. So thank you, world! And thanks to everyone who was there for me.

I hope you enjoyed my blog.

So long!