maybe nothing’s the matter with kansas after all

I admit it: I haven’t been paying much attention to U.S. politics since I left the States (I even had to steal this entry’s title from my friend Jack; the other choice was “Fade to Purple” from my local paper). That said, I’m exceedingly proud that Kansas (my staunchly conservative, heart-of-the-heartland home state) voted resoundingly Democrat in this week’s midterm elections. In celebration of this and of the Dem takeover of both the House and the Senate, I thought I’d avoid any sort of political commentary and post a series of romantically compromising pictures of George Bush instead. Isn’t he just loveable?

Bush and Condi

Bush and Kofi

Bush and Pelosi

Bush and Putin

Bush and Al (Sharpton, not Gore…in case you’re in need of clarification)

do you want an orphan with that?

It’s a horrifically crass thing to joke about, but here at Jackfruity we’re all about crassness (not to mention ending clauses with dangling prepositions), so I’ll go ahead and say it: if I had 100 shillings for every time I’ve been asked to take a Ugandan child back to the States with me, I’d be able to…well, I’d be able to take a Ugandan child back to the States with me.

It’s a request that makes me even more squirmy and uncomfortable than Jay-Z dressed up as a Maasai warrior, and each time I hear it I retreat a little further into my shell of paranoid mzungu-ness, wanting desperately for my skin color not to scream look at me, I’m a FOREIGNER!

Madonna, as you already know if you’ve peeked out from your hermit cave once in the last month, seems to have no qualms about it. Her adoption of a Malawi “orphan” is one of the most-discussed celebrity events of October. Of all the comments I’ve read about this much-debated attempt at charity, Mad Kenyan Woman’s is by far the funniest:

This is a new form of tourism. Visit us! We have teeming wildlife, colourful natives and unspoiled vistas. Further, in your guest suites you will find our complimentary fruit basket, bottle of champagne, box of assorted chocolates, complimentary tickets allowing you to enter the lottery to buy the African country of your choice, your personal slave and of, course, an adoptable infant guaranteed to be cute, black, lovable and incapable of speech and thus at your complete mercy. Should you decide that you wish to adopt, please fill out the form conveniently placed in your bathroom next to our complimentary bottle of Chanel, and drop it off at the reception desk anytime before checkout. Should you be in any way dissatisfied with your infant, we would be happy to make an exchange and to customize an infant for you according to your specifications of age, sex, tint, height and hair growth. (Additional charges may apply if we have to wrest your desired baby away from its parents, but you have our quality guarantee that these charges will NEVER exceed fifty dollars U.S.)

While I don’t come down as harshly on Madonna as she does (the pop star’s also contributing $4 million to a Child Center and other development projects in the country), I do think her criticism of the adoption is worth a read just for the writing. Another good piece on the same topic, written from the point of view of a Malawian, is at Afrika-Aphurika (via Global Voices).

those petty thieves, they can be vicious

Last week someone broke into one of the organizations I work for and stole some random things. I don’t know what the total damage was, but the office doesn’t look any worse for the wear, and the attack doesn’t seem to have been specifically targeted at us.

This morning, one of the staff knocked on my door and handed me an empty jar of peanut butter.

“Someone broke in last week,” he informed me. I thanked him for the news, wondering why I was holding an empty jar of peanut butter.

I only wondered a little bit, though, as this man spends nine hours every weekday doing things like cutting the tops off of coffee filters, endlessly rearranging the two newspapers we keep on the front table (Daily Monitor on top. No, New Vision. No, Daily Monitor.) and painstakingly washing and drying all of the clean dishes in the kitchen.

“I thought they may have poisoned the food, so I threw it all out,” he explained. Oh. Right.

“But I saved your jar for you.”

And then I knew why they hired him: his overwhelmingly thoughtful concern for our safety (I could have died after eating that peanut butter!) plus his immense respect for our personal property (who knows what I would have done without that jar?) make him a truly invaluable employee.

P.S. To the ten people who visited Jackfruity yesterday searching for information about Aga Khan, welcome! Come in and make yourself at home.