Blog
Tati’s Journey, Part 3: The Grumpus Descends
Written by Tati
Today is an off day (I know, if a Thursday is an off day it’s really cliche now). I usually love Thursdays because they’re almost Friday, but you still have time to get your stuff done before the weekend. Thursday is one of the days of the week to which I have assigned a key; Bb major, because it’s chill, but kind of edgy as well. So today I thought it was Wednesday and I got all confused when I realised it wasn’t, and I had a really long nap over my lunch break because I totally went into hibernation mode, and my hair (which is getting stupidly long now because I want to grow it enough to cut it into a bob) resembles a tousled helmet and I smell really musty even though I showered this morning. And I swear I’ve been having Yakult every day this week but I only just had the third in the pack, and I’m pretty sure I had one this morning already anyway. Weird.
I was kind of pants on the connecting-with-people-and-telling-them-how-great-I-am front today. I found a few people and emailed them, and then startled myself when I realised how completely random they are and got all flustered and wound up and I ended up spinning around in the Internet wondering which door to go through. The Internet is so big. I encountered this kind of problem when I started cataloguing tribes for the Singing Wells music map, but the Internet is even bigger than Africa. I don’t know if I’m supposed to capitalise ‘Internet’ or not. That is so typical of today.
So after my morning connection-based panic, I decided to dedicate the day to doing other useful things, and coming up with a sensible plan of who I should start targeting. I’ve just remembered something my old chemistry teacher used to say; he’d go ‘fail to prepare? PREPARE TO FAIL’, and then he’d do a few James Bond gestures with his hands. He also used to go ‘two H two Oh, the chemistry owl’, and there was a joke about copper nitrate and policemen on the late shift.
I posted a very smug ‘need a job?’ status on Facebook, after which a few proactive types got in touch to help research for the music map, which is brilliant. Good timing, as well, since the catalogue is almost in shape to be passed on. Trying to make a definitive list of (almost) all the tribes in east Africa is tricky for two main reasons:
1) a lot of tribes move around, making it hard to get reliable information on who they are and where they generally live
2) a lot of tribes have about three different name variants. And variants can be things like ‘Tuken/Tugen’, or they can be things like ‘Sakalava/Vezo’. They’re not always obvious, and it’s hard to match up the names. There are also totally unrelated tribes with similar names who live near each other, like the Nsenga and the Senga. Or the Tigre and Tigray people.
I also spent two hours almost finishing the catalogue. I’m going to try and get that totally done tonight. A reminder; Africa is HUGE.
I wrote a long blog on something that will turn up on the blog page in a few days. That took a long time. And now I’m here, feeling like a grumpus because I’ve been feeling really good for a couple of days and now I’m nauseous again and I still don’t have a cat. That’s not really work-related though. I’m going to finish this catalogue, if only for the sheer rush of joy when I realise that Africa and its bigness cannot best me.