The Harmattan is in

There is a weird orange diffused character to the light. There is dust in the air and on everything else. Add a few drops of rain and you get my neighbors car as shown. If you've lived in southern California it's like the atmosphere during the fires and Santa Ana winds.

Bad weather for flying, the horizon disappears especially when the dust is mixed with the usual humid haze. Commercial flights are canceled and turned back, especially to airports with marginal radar systems. Like Lagos for example. (BTW the rumour that commercial pilots call the LOS tower on their cell phones to get instructions is not true.) Coming in on tuesday night we circled around for about a half hour which is not too bad a price to pay for not crashing.

Slept most of the day on wednesday and still confused about what time it is. Rubbing my eyes right now (about noon thursday) in fact. Will nap soon, maybe after I see what the cook has brought back from shopping. I'm not worried about her accounting for the money spent, she is scrupulously honest, right down to the N30 accounted for the shuttle ride. Just like to see what she gets so I can see what I'll need to fill in when I have a car available on Saturday.

Book report: By some cosmic chance I just finished these two books.

• Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden. A look at the role of the geisha in Japanese culture and the women who were, as well as the destruction of that tradition. Written in the form of a novel.
  
• The Dancing Girls of Lahore - Louise Brown. An academic takes her diary entries and forms a forthright yet sympathetic view of this culture and the women.
  

Interesting the cultural structures we build up around sex. Highly recommended. Next up: Shake Hands with the Devil, Romeo Dallaire.

Update on Tina (the cook). She just arrived with several large bags and has gone to work. I worry about her going shopping, it's hot, and she's pretty small and so I'd hoped to help out by going myself to buy a few things at the local store while she went further afield. The white looking contents of the package labeled "Dal" is actually "black Dal" (lentils), the one my wife doesn't like and isn't suitable for the dishes to be cooked at all. The papaya that I risked my life for crossing the expressway is dismissed as "old".

But Tina is in good spirits, when I told her that I will give her a company calendar, she literally jumped for joy. Cooking sounds now emanating from downstairs.