GREY NOTEBOOK
1 DEC - 16 DEC 2012
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3 DEC 2012
it's raining. it was 7.54. you were going to sit down and begin
by the time you sit down now it is raining eerily out of a bright blue sky. one cloud must be directly over this tin roof because the surrounding bands of sky are blue with scattered high white clouds. the palm trees stick up into the blue bands glittering and now we can say: scintillating freshly, as Peter said they did, after this small, light, rain. you will know or you can find out about || Ponge's description of the rain sweeping the courtyard || which recalls Tinguely's machines. the rain has finished now and sparse drops from the various eaves, small trickling sounds remind us. in fact what we are seeing all around us is delicate machinery being driven by clumsy operators; therefore we dream repeatedly of situations where we are fumbling, with our big stiff finger to activate some pause mechanism. of course we cannot locate the key combination; we cannot establish any control over the machine's progress. it's not a metaphor. the maintenance systems of Mtwara Tanzania are under threat if not in collapse. it's hard to read a kind of frontier town: with its seemingly ad hoc zones: its long spans [ / spaces ?] of neglect and seeming abandonment interspersed with flurries of new construction. you're sitting in the middle of a newbuild reeking of new concrete. the smell of concrete turns your stomach as the smell of diesel turned the stomach of Mr Petit, he told you one time - the lecturer in agricultural engineering who worked with diesel all his life. or my grandmother and fish. the blades of the palm leaves have dried out now and on the corrugated roofs the last strips of damp are visibly shrinking in the hot troughs of the corrugations. should machines be misused and misapplied? tunajiunga mkono kichwa hicho - we join our hand(s) to that heading of course they should. however
you are thinking of some people
to do:
podcasts + broadcasts
video + audio
shopping + cooking
get 3G router + aerial + set up network
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pillows x 6 mto (mi-)
mosquito net x 6
grater
Cecy [sic]
Jonathan
James
water
fruit mangoes
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kamba string
-funga tie
4 DEC 2012
youre sitting outside on the front of kalilo house eating a piece of bread. you have a cup of coffee. a young woman in a black and white striped top and a black and orange kanga is filling a red bucket and a pink bucket to water the plants which have been planted in Goldstar paint pots. the kanga shows an orange heart insecibed in a larger heart with sharply serrated edges, adjoined to a modified fleur-de-lys with other minor ornamentation.
kalilo arrives to discuss outstanding work on the house. by the time he leaves, after discussing in detail the issues affecting each service, the girl in the kanga with the serrated heart motif has gone. we do not know the marginal text which, in any case, was twisted over at her waist - and partially obscured. meanwhile, a young man or boy in a yellow football jersey has begun brushing down the front of the house with water, on the instructions of Mr Kalilo. you go inside, where the carpenter has begun to hammer. the curtains move in the breeze: one curtain with a kind of hairy applique of foliage on a fine net; the other a translucent cream polymer something like the texture of fine linen. where the cream curtain blows aside, the blue sky with palms on long narrow trunks are seen above the white parapet through the mesh lacunae, which themselves shift, sometimes showing just sky, palms and power line, sometimes the parapet and inset bars with spikes. these spikes, formed by 2 angled cuts at the crushed end of a square tube, are designed to make a fence more dangerous and threatening to climb. in this case their effect is onrnamental or psychological since it is easy to climb the plain metal gate or hop over the block wall to the side. P climbed over the wall with all the shopping. later she discovered the gate was open. you're in a place made turbulent by building. there's relatively little zoning and little homogeneity among the houses. rapid building and dilapidation seem to be proceeding side by side: this new building, eg, beside a traditional thatch-roofed building with wattle and daub on a wicker frame - this houlse set back from the road on a plot of which the front, direclty adjacent to this front street side corner room of the Kalilo house, is occupied by a part-built house of cement blocks on a concrete plinth. a yound man of student age came to visit his family the very first day you were here: you saw his mother come out to greet him, wearing a red floral kanga - he was wearing broad belted trousers and a button-up shirt, with a shoulder bag - you didn't see the moment of contact between them - you took over the bajaj, which was decorated with strings of orange plastic flowers threaded through little chains around the windshield, a bunch of artificial roses on the dashboard and an ornament of curled ribbon hanging from the ceiling. you waved briefly at the yound man as he and his mother passed between the corner of Kalilo house and the incomplete newbuild on his own family's plot, towards the mud-renderd, hairy roofed structure at the rear of the plot, where perhaps he was born.
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things [objects] in the mirror are closer than they appear
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ResourceAfrica.co.uk ? docs on env in africa
• glasses x 12 • thermos big • Axion dishwashing soap • sponges • bowls - plastic x 2 - 1 'small' 1 'med' • squeegee • small knife • dish towel • dustbin [bucket w lid]
WED 5 DEC 2012
you're sitting drinking coffee eating sweet potatoes. S is brushing her hair.
kataupepo wind turbine haridari mustard seed mbegu nyeusi kalonji
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paula pillows x 2 TSH 5000 chandalua x 3 TSH 10000 refreshments TSH 30000 + 4 bajajis TSH 20000 look at transport and food [ie budget]
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sketch of an adaptor plug from 2 to three pin
wakala agent, agency -shika to get, to catch kamba string
strong. stronger. SIMTANK
8 DEC 2012
you're sitting in the yard in the dark at Kalilo house under the tin awning. you're waiting for the rice to cook. a breeze moves the leaves. a man in the house nearby has a cough. his dry coughs punctuate the night over the insects and the leaves. the leaves fluctuate. the insects, seeming steady at first, in fact come and go, dropping to what sounds like a lone individual, then as a chorus. chorusing behaviours have been documented by Geoff Sample. some of these effects are amplifications created by amphibians and others; some are effects of the listener, depending on other elements in the soundscape, your wandering attention and the alternating saturation and re-sensitisation of the aural apparatus, I think.
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9 DEC 2012
you're sitting in your toom in Kalilo House waiting for breakfast. the others are making chapatis and fruit. the fan is blowing a breeze on you. outside it's hot. open the door: go outside. across the road is a thatched house rendered in red clay. the roof is shaggy, recalling the shaggy house ['small hairy house'] or the green roofs at [that artists residence in the west of scotland]. the roof overhangs at the front supported on poles, and a line runs between the poles now hung with fresh washing: children's shirts and patterned cloths. there are more clothes blowing on a line in the back where the yard looks dark and shady with thick small-leaved trees and long-stemmed palms above. it's hot and clear. the sky is blue and hot. sometimes a palm swift will cross quickly. then it is empty. people pass shuffling. [trail] their feet on the dirt road or glide by on bikes.
roosters.
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stafeli (ma-) custard apple
fenesi (ma-) durian
-azima to borrow, to lend
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drawing of a sweet
pipi sweet
ungo rice winnowing basket
-chambua to pick over rice
-pembua to pick over rice
pay: Holly: return Dar - Mtwara Rachel's flights check + pay George's flights check + pay travel for graduates
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10 DEC 2012
you're eating breakfast at the front of Kalilo House you're having bread and honey and coffee. a breeze is blowing in Kianga, the small fishing and farming village on the edge of Mtwara, Tanzania. the honey you are eating is from Tabora. all the honey you eat seems to come from Tabora although you have seen hives hanging in a tree on the road to Lindi and you even saw a single hive yesterday in the mangroves between Kianga and the Vocational Training College - suspended at chest height in the mangrove scrub like a small white coffin. any. [?] it seems that any person who sees an example of: a slight distortion in scale - a shrinkage but equally an enlargement by a factor of say + / - 1/5 - a person things [sic] immediately of Dead Dad, the sculpture by Ron Mueck, which shows the dead dad clearly but somewhat subtly diminished - shrunk - lying face upwards - stiff - of wood or polymer - also tonally diminished: faded, bled out, pale as a ghost [although, coming recently across a photograph of this sculpture it seemed to you that the shrinkage of the dead dad was not consistent: some parts of the party appeared relatively enlarged, and equally the bleaching effect was partial, with parts of the body and face, as it seemed, selectively seeming to retain or even display heightened colour as if flushed, rouged..] - approximately the size of a 10 yr old child? were the implications, we can say, of such a sculpture to be taken on board, we could anticipate a profound transformation in the life of our society, you think, in our person and collective live - however, either the Dead Dad of Ron Mueck is in some was insulated from entering our consciousness, of the presentation of Dead Dad to the public has been so selective, so framed and so, we can say, innoculated against, as to render it innocuous - producing if anything a brief localized discomfort, experienced as a transient minor disease, such as we struggle to differentiate: to recognize, pin, identify, incoprorate: open to - we are tempted to led [sic] down beside Dead Dad - our legs in fact weaken - our knees and the weight of head, like the large brained infant we are - bursting through the pelvic floor - the guards, however, have a close eye out for would-be mourners and exagerated types and reactions - all these exhibits are tagged as likely disturbing to children - of course the exhibits should warn adults about the caesura likely to affect their fellow feelings their so called natural feelings: the chronic and even catastrophic retardation atrophy and cauterization likely to be brought to light in the face of a work such as Dead Dad - a work by an artist or actual - guests arrive
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Mataka [neighbour : taxi driver]
diagram of the layout of the COTC Mtwara computer system, showing cables, switches, access points, etc
WED, THUR, FRI - work on lab
TU - documentation on thin clients
9AM TTCL
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10-12-2012
you're lying in bed. you went to the market and into the butcher. the butcher had big black hooks with pieces of meat on them. you greeted the butcher and he sliced off 2 kilos of meat in pieces and cut them up into the scales, breaking the bones on a block in the corner with an axe. you payed TSH 14000 and went out. the butchers' are identical tiled rooms free standing with a glass door and a porch. sometimes there is a picture of a cow or the head of a cow on the outer side wall. you bought fruit and beans and rice and flour and potatoes. George bought a carton of cigarettes. you and George and Max rode home in a bajaj. on the big road under construction before Kianga you passed a roller going backwards; then at a place where a grader was turning you were diverted from the road . the road was being surveilled by a group of women in scarves and high vis vests. they seemed very beautiful. you turned off the road and came to a herd of cattle coming up the side road in a small cloud of red dust. you are tired after cooking all that food: mchuzi and beans and potatoes and rice. youre tired now lying in the dark under the fan. after you visit that Paris apartment block on the verge of extinction, your fascination for all those objects and spaces and inhabitants will not stop your eyes from closing. the batteries in this torch are running out and the fading yellow light on the yellowish paper will add to the sense of heaviness and your eyelids will close sooner than if the batteries were new and the pages bright white. it's an old book - well it's quite old. the fan is humming and slightly ticking, unless the high pitched ticking is a night insect outside. [maybe you shouldn't mention it if you don't know what it is [?] ] Kianga is quiet. [? ie out in the road ?] humans and companion species are inside. [ok baba]
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11 DEC
the rain is coming down. you're sitting on the front porch of Kalilo house at a white plastic table it's hot. the rain hits the hot ground. the rain is a cooler: it blows in under the overhang onto the tops of your feet. across the road a group of children is sheltering under the front overhang of their house. the chickens are out picking around the rubbish hole. you put out some left over rice and scraps. a black polythene tube sticking out of the front of kalilo house starts spouting then dribbling as the rain eases and sun comes up. all these effects are as operated by sliders. you can see a whitish chicken and a kind of cuckoo pattern with long yellow legs, a small black pullet. the chicks moved off to the right towards the children. now a big red cockerel with black tailfeathers and yellow feet comes running in over the thin grass and rubble on the ark umber ground. from left to right a man in yellow on a bike with an elegant young woman in a dark dress sideways on the carry rack, her back to you, reading a book or checking her messages. [cp the person you say [sic] yesterday in a pencil skirt and faux fur jacket on platform 2 at Denmark Hill texting from inside an open copy of Nausea! [by Jean-Paul Sartre] ] from where you are sitting now, in this modelling light after light rain with the levels down and a diffusing filter of grey-white cloud, you can see 9 piles of graded aggregate from grey sand to large grey-yellow rocks distributed around these lots, including a pile of coral heads almost used up, which a white goat passes from left to right enlarging towards you, inscribes an arc and is obscured left by the angle of the house. the hen with chicks from up the road has arrived at the rubbish pile: a chunky breed, like a sussex? whose are all these chickens roaming in the village and into the centre of town, with the chicks emitting contact calls and the pullets picking here and there, fluttering away from the hens and cockerels over scraps of leftovers? they belong to somebody. everybody knows their own chickens, says Goodluck George: at night they are put away in the coop. a hen coop is a small raised house. chickens live among us in raised houses of similar construction to our own. in the morning when the latch is turned, they are waiting to come down: tumbling or stepping cautiously. there are few papaya trees but many long slender coconut palms, some notched for climbing. they reach up from the surface something like hair folicles: with an enlarged [bulbous] base. they cross in mid air, in different configurations from each sightline. each trunk represents a decisive line, we can say, in time. the sky is darkening. each is topped with animated fronds.
TTCL fibre-optic
speed? variable
1-2 months to installation
quote for 150m btw buildings [ie old and new]
[a table, blank, shows speed, capacity and price, to be complete]
Mr Chande (TTCL)
mtoa donor, taker = lender eg maktaba ya mtoa - a lending library
jiwe stone
-kopesha to loan
daftari (la mazoezi) (exercise) book, ledger, etc
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A Writer's Resource: Maion, Peritz. Yancey, McGraw Hill 2007
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kasuku (n n) parrot
stakabadhi receipt [risiti]
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Swaumu
Suaumu [?] [girl who sometimes sweeps - see above]
jifundishe
map schools and health centres and hospitals
Ligula School - Ligula Hospital
find Ufukoni Health Centre and link (graduates)
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coffee
food
cardboard
spray paint
bank
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spray kinyunyizia (n)
to spray -nyunyizia
paint rangi
cardboard kadibodi
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