This and that

Here is my favorite sign so far at Malapo Crossing:
Elegance R Us
To get it precisely right, turn the R backwards. If I could I would type it in its full glory.

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Sechele Sechele loved hearing the moth story. But he did a verbal double-take when I told him how I had found it in a book in South Africa, its identity finally revealed. It was a blue pansy moth, I told him, indigenous only to southern Africa.
He practically shrieked.
"Blue Panty Moth?!" he asked.
Not exactly.

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Tuesday I was supposed to drop in on the environmental and business reporting class to talk about the profiles the students wrote about me and discuss areas they had deemed problematic: writing leads, structuring stories, choosing quotes, finding a focus. Wanja Njugana, head of the print journalism side of the media studies department, is teaching four classes this semester, advising the one-year-old student newspaper, the UB Horizon, and trying to handle life as a single mom. Her hands are full. She is stressed. I shouldn't be surprised then that she dropped in and out of the class and left me to wing it on Tuesday.
But the start was inauspicious. Remember how I mentioned "wobbly student desks?"
I walked into the classroom and put my backpack on one of those desks near the front of the room and the whole desk collapsed. The wooden part became like a flying kitchen chopping board and then fell in a direct karate chop onto the toes of my right foot. For Pete's sake, do I have to do the pain dance every day in this country? I taught most of the class sitting down and I wondered whether the toes had broken.
Apparently not. At least I'm going to guess not. I hobbled home, acting like the geezer I called myself just the other day.
But the lesson is whenever you see a well-equipped university or classroom, be thankful. UB has some serious challenges, the furniture among them. The worst? The media studies department had only $2,000 this year for books. Next year's budget offers exactly $0.