Winter Is Come

Written June 8, 2012
Fort Dauphin

    I saw my breath this morning.  It’s the first time that’s happened since training up in Mantasoa.
    So it appears that the Malagasy winter has finally arrived in the south.  In the mornings there’s an icy tinge to the air.  The days have gotten cool enough that I’ve taken to wearing long sleeves, and hiking boots instead of my sandals.  And we’ve had several rain squalls, like the usual cloudbursts, but with a vague Antarctic feel to them.
    Of course that could be my imagination, just coming off reading The Birth of the People’s Republic of Antarctica, by John Calvin Batchelor.  It’s an interesting book, confusing at times, but right in the vein of the post-apocalyptic literature that I like.  As it starts off, the apocalypse is already in motion; not for any specific reason, just because a few too many countries in Africa and Eastern Europe have failed to meet their citizens’ needs.  Now political turmoil is spreading, and governments are falling like dominoes.  The protagonist is Grim Fiddle, an American raised in Sweden.
    The story reminded me of Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson at times, especially the parts where refugee life influences people to turn to the eerier aspects of religion.  Although “Grim Fiddle” is a few degrees less silly of a name than Stephenson’s “Hiro Protagonist.”
    After that I got into Morality for Beautiful Girls, one of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency novels.  It’s a relatively lighthearted mystery by the Zimbabwean writer Alexander McCall-Smith, set in Botswana.  The author makes much of the fact that Botswana has the least corruption of any country in Africa.
    I think it goes without saying that in Botswana they have SOMETHING APPROXIMATING DECENT ROADS!
    I haven’t harvested any more rice with Dez, because he says that it’s best to wait until the rain stops.  There are several projects that I should start soon, before they start piling up.  Things might start happening in good order now.