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the madina market- vast and wonderful. about a 15min tro-tro ride from campus (though traffic is a serious variable here). all sorts of foodstuffs, plastic items, clothes, etc, but our particular attraction is the block of fabric sellers. $4.50/2 yd. is pretty standard. i cannot wait to receive the clothes i am having made by a local seamstress!

vitamilk soymilk. a different flavour, but i love it!

our most-loved variety of local beer

view of madina from the highest point on campus

goats, sheep, chickens, and stray dogs abound. im pretty sure the campus's shrubs are trimmed by the animals...

...

in my time spent avoiding homework, i've been reading "weird like us: my bohemian america" by ann powers. overall, i'm not totally taken in by the grand sweeping sketch of new bohemia that powers tries to depict, but certain passages certainly ring true. i don't personally agree with all the excesses she and her friends particpate in, but i recognize the value of her anecdotes of the world she comes from, unique and at once visible through small shards of my life.

"I had come to believe that anyone with a little ingenuity could survive in the average American city with virtually no money, through a combination of bartering, gift exchange,recycling, and scavenging...If everyone treated the material world like a harvest or a mine instead of a factory showroom, I thought, we could become free in ways we'd never imagined."

"There's just something fundamentally perverse about arranging society around the buying and selling of human time. We become slaves to a way of life that becomes 'natural' and inevitable. As though everybody's always sold themselves to some stupid-ass job."- author's friend Chris Carlsson, from the particularly good chapter about the battle to not sell out to the menial workplace, and the tension between paying rent and pursuing what's meaningful in life.

"The mainstream has always been more myth than lived experience, and everyone struggles to adjust their imperfectly shaped circumstances to its mold."

In other news, I'm missing choir and singing in general something fierce, and also missing friends and sad to miss fall at Calvin, which I realized is probably the best season in Grand Rapids.
Also, check out this video on dusty dress blog. now that's what I'm talking about! Wonderfully executed, but thrifty, minimalist architectural style.
Our next excursion is to Cape Coast, this upcoming Friday and Saturday, which I'll be greatly looking forward to..

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