Truly enjoyed Dark Side of the Hut, and great closer!
Had a similar epiphany (epiphony?) in 1976. After a late afternoon of tossing frisbees on Red Square to an curious crowd, and sometimes slowing/stopping traffic, several of my buds and I were invited to ‘our place for drinks and getting to know you’ by a similarly student-aged group who had become friendly in the course of the frisbee diplomacy repartee.
We said ‘yeah’ or something equivalent - it was thirsty work.
They had or found a ride, I think, but may well have been public transport.
And during the ensuing evening numbers of their friends squeezed in and out of a cozy dorm like space until the wee hours, sharing beer and vodka and schnapps and cigarettes while we worked on our primitive Russian, and they their English, German, French or whatever lingua was common currency in the moment. Belts were exchanged, hats, shirts, blue jeans, paper money, spare passport photos, all to the tune of their one English record, played over and over: it was MY baptism in Led Zeppelin IV & Stairway to Heaven...!
We finally realized people were trying to sleep all around us, so we stumbled out of the army barracks into the quiet dark of wee hours Moscow and made our way (these were the days of Cyrillic maps on paper!) back to our hotel.
I'm glad you liked it, Mark, and thank you for your great story. I enjoyed that heart performance as well, when Led Zep got the Presidential Medal or whatever it's called. I hope you'll subscribe to Sundman figures it out! if you haven't done so already. Of the 60 or so essays I've written so far, another 4 or 5 touch in one way or another on my experiences in Senegal. I'll provide pointers if you're interested.
Thanks John, expect I may enjoy those specific pointers (and triggers for my own memories of 14 years in Zambia), but am generally happy to browse, too. Once trained as a statistician, and still lean toward a ~ random sampling / sourcing of information.
This was a wonderful read. I felt your joy and amazement in the distant camp. To be honored in the most extraordinary ways. But you probably saved many lives that day with the new well. Such a contrast—a record player with western music when they had little else. How had their economic situation been prior to the drought?
I have had only minor culture shock in my life. Trying to spend a year here and there in my mother’s native Great Britain. It is more different than you would think. Really the Soviet Union under Brezhnev was the weirdest. I went on a language study program while we were boycotting the Olympics. Russia was a bit like a third world country at the time. All water for drinking, brushing teeth, etc. had to be boiled. Yet I happily drank “gassy (fizzy) water” from a communal glass in the park. I had kvass from a vehicle that looked like a truck to remove waste. It was great stuff. Often, if things went wrong, and they did, curtains—ten-feet long—or the radio giving out, I would find them miraculously fixed without ever having reported the problem. Boris had big ears. The White Nights were fantastic, literally and figuratively. No toilet paper. It was stolen (no actor in this sentence) from the local hotel.
Because of the Olympics I forgot see not Moscow and Kiev, but what were then Zaporozhe and Kharkov. I went to a hydroelectric power plant and a kolkhoz.Neither place was prepared for foreigners. We saw a very amateur ballet and later saw the dancers sunbathing by the river. Their costumes and their tans were not aligned. I met the local Komsomol members. They were really fierce.
And I saw Yalta. The meeting of the big three. Fortified wine—oh brother. It is beautiful. But Petersburg is the most beautiful city I have ever seen.
I dream of people I know who speak Russian in real life speaking it in my dreams.
As to how that battery-powered record player, and that particular record, came to be in that tiny village, all I can say is that life is full of surprises. I have no idea. But I will say that people in Fanaye and throughout all parts of Senegal that I visited were very musically inclined with very (lower case) catholic tastes. I heard traditional kora music; afro-latin music (especially from Cuba), Senegal's own Orchestre Boabab-style latin-pop-rock; American motown, High-Life from Nigeria, traditional French crooners — it was all there.
I appreciate your descriptions of Russia and your reaction to it. I knew some people who visited there before the fall of the Berlin Wall and their stories were much like yours.
Thanks for this great comment — and I hope you'll help me spread the word about SFIO!
I am amazed at the diversity of music they knew and better still liked. It would be wonderful to know so much. I feel very insular when it comes to music, but have found a few Substacks that post all sorts of music from around the world. One band was a thunderous crew from Mongolia.
The one thing I didn’t mention about Russia was how kind the people were. I slipped free of my watchers a few times and was treated totally by people who just wanted to show me riches of their country. They were not asking for anything in return.
The cities and the larger towns were where you found that variety of music. Out in the villages like Fanaye, not so much. Remember there was no electricity there, so any recorded music came by way of battery-powered radios or cassette players. And the nearest place to Fanaye where you could even buy a battery was a two hour walk away. So in that village I mostly heard people singing and drumming and sometimes a kora-playing musician would pass through. Out among the nomadic Peulh people, battery-powered anything was rare, as they might be several day's hike, or more, from the nearest place to buy a battery. It was absolutely mind-boggling to discover somebody there with a battery-powered record player. In fact, I had never before seen such a thing.
The most memorable scene in the middle Indiana Jones movie is when Kate Capshaw is repulsed by the villagers' food offering, and Indy tells her "some of these people haven't eaten in days. You are insulting them and embarrassing me. Eat."
I thought those 10 seconds were some of the clearest, simplest moral instruction ever put on film.
What a magnificent story. A lot had changed in the 20 years since you were in West Africa, but I was a PCV in Benin in the mid-90s. My weird-connection-back-home story took place on a long train ride, in a remote rail yard outside Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. We had traveled overnight, either heading to or coming from Victoria Falls on our "close of service" trip, before returning home. A young child was running alongside the train, waiving a newspaper at me that had written in enormous font as the headline "OJ Innocent". It took me a moment to realize this was in reference to OJ Simpson, who was on trial at the time in the US - we later determined that 19 hours had passed since the verdict was issued. The world was already getting smaller!
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I think that that glorious feeling of being totally remote and unfindable is pretty much a thing of the past. My younger daughter lived in Kigali, Rwanda 2012 - 2013 and spoke to us pretty regularly by phone. I made exactly 1 phone call during my 2 years in Peace Corps: I called home from Dakar on Christmas eve. It took about half an hour for the operator to patch through the connection, and it cost me a fortune.
Thanks, John. Don’t think we ever met, but I remember hearing your name often in pcv circles. Brings back memories of well digging projects (did some w Bob McGurn) during la secheresse. But, Pink Floyd, Far side of a the moon, in the bled?
Awesome. - cheers, Frank Donovan (aka Doudou Diallo)
My introduction to that album was a similar revelatory experience, but that was only psychedelics speaking (kidding. At a party at my girlfriend's house, I stopped everything I was doing or saying and listened intently. Her family thought I was nuts).
_Dark Side of the Moon_ was a kick in the head the first time I heard it at Frank's house. I can't imagine what it must have been like in the middle of the desert after months of withdrawal from Western media.
I don't remember anything about the experience of the music. The whole fucking trip was so otherworldly. I know that many people find my living in a mud hut in an African village for nearly 2 years kind of otherworldly, and I suppose it was, but after a while it was just where I happened to live. But that trip into the bled, and a battery-powered record player?????!!!!!!!!!! With a PINK FLOYD ALBUM??!!!!! CALLED DARK SIDE OF THE MOON!!! I kept waiting for Zeus or Apollo or something to step into the scene from a tiny fissure in the universe & explain that the prior 23 years of my life had all just been a set-up for this punchline.
Wonderful story, John! Can’t believe I stumbled across this. Reading it made lots of Sahel memories flood back. I actually met you once in Podor in ‘75 or ‘76. I was the English teacher at the CEG and we must have met on the road as I was walking home past the post office. We were talking and you said something in Pulaar to one of the bystanders and I never heard the end of it because you spoke so well! But it was a good thing because if one American could learn Pulaar, they thought, there was hope for me. Best regards, Karen Fisher aka Coumba Thiam
I'm glad you stumbled upon my story. I do remember meeting you in Podor; you were the next PCV there after Richard Boyum. And what's more, there's a glancing (two -sentence) reference to you (or rather, to a fictional character who was a PCV in Podor) in my first novel Acts of the Apostles. I won't say anything more about that because I'm hoping that you'll read the book & find it yourself. (Send me an email if you'd like a free copy). There are a bunch of us Animateurs from '73 to '76 who get together about once a decade, and other PCVs from that time are always welcome. I believe our next get-together is scheduled for 2024. I'm jsundmanus at the gmail.
Hi John! Oh my goodness... of course now I have to get your book. No need for a free copy. I like the idea of supporting PCV authors. Your book will join the others in a special spot in my library. Would love to attend a future PCV gathering. Will contact you on the outside for info. Take care. Karen aka Coumba Thiam
As I wrote elsewhere, Yes, that was the first time I heard that album, and no, I don't remember a thing about the experience of the music. What I do remember is being so completely astounded at what I was experiencing — the extraordinary generosity in the welcome I was being given by some of the, literally, materially poorest people on Earth, the disconnect between my prior assumptions about what I would find and what I actually did find, and the astounding fact that the music of an avant-guarde British rock group would be the seal on the connection between me and the people of that obscure village of African nomads. That's what I was trying to convey. The music itself, for all its indisputable grandeur, is almost incidental to the story.
Truly enjoyed Dark Side of the Hut, and great closer!
Had a similar epiphany (epiphony?) in 1976. After a late afternoon of tossing frisbees on Red Square to an curious crowd, and sometimes slowing/stopping traffic, several of my buds and I were invited to ‘our place for drinks and getting to know you’ by a similarly student-aged group who had become friendly in the course of the frisbee diplomacy repartee.
We said ‘yeah’ or something equivalent - it was thirsty work.
They had or found a ride, I think, but may well have been public transport.
And during the ensuing evening numbers of their friends squeezed in and out of a cozy dorm like space until the wee hours, sharing beer and vodka and schnapps and cigarettes while we worked on our primitive Russian, and they their English, German, French or whatever lingua was common currency in the moment. Belts were exchanged, hats, shirts, blue jeans, paper money, spare passport photos, all to the tune of their one English record, played over and over: it was MY baptism in Led Zeppelin IV & Stairway to Heaven...!
We finally realized people were trying to sleep all around us, so we stumbled out of the army barracks into the quiet dark of wee hours Moscow and made our way (these were the days of Cyrillic maps on paper!) back to our hotel.
Still listening, 47 years later. Loved the recent tribute by Heart: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUB8kBKAFcg
I'm glad you liked it, Mark, and thank you for your great story. I enjoyed that heart performance as well, when Led Zep got the Presidential Medal or whatever it's called. I hope you'll subscribe to Sundman figures it out! if you haven't done so already. Of the 60 or so essays I've written so far, another 4 or 5 touch in one way or another on my experiences in Senegal. I'll provide pointers if you're interested.
Thanks John, expect I may enjoy those specific pointers (and triggers for my own memories of 14 years in Zambia), but am generally happy to browse, too. Once trained as a statistician, and still lean toward a ~ random sampling / sourcing of information.
This was a wonderful read. I felt your joy and amazement in the distant camp. To be honored in the most extraordinary ways. But you probably saved many lives that day with the new well. Such a contrast—a record player with western music when they had little else. How had their economic situation been prior to the drought?
I have had only minor culture shock in my life. Trying to spend a year here and there in my mother’s native Great Britain. It is more different than you would think. Really the Soviet Union under Brezhnev was the weirdest. I went on a language study program while we were boycotting the Olympics. Russia was a bit like a third world country at the time. All water for drinking, brushing teeth, etc. had to be boiled. Yet I happily drank “gassy (fizzy) water” from a communal glass in the park. I had kvass from a vehicle that looked like a truck to remove waste. It was great stuff. Often, if things went wrong, and they did, curtains—ten-feet long—or the radio giving out, I would find them miraculously fixed without ever having reported the problem. Boris had big ears. The White Nights were fantastic, literally and figuratively. No toilet paper. It was stolen (no actor in this sentence) from the local hotel.
Because of the Olympics I forgot see not Moscow and Kiev, but what were then Zaporozhe and Kharkov. I went to a hydroelectric power plant and a kolkhoz.Neither place was prepared for foreigners. We saw a very amateur ballet and later saw the dancers sunbathing by the river. Their costumes and their tans were not aligned. I met the local Komsomol members. They were really fierce.
And I saw Yalta. The meeting of the big three. Fortified wine—oh brother. It is beautiful. But Petersburg is the most beautiful city I have ever seen.
I dream of people I know who speak Russian in real life speaking it in my dreams.
As to how that battery-powered record player, and that particular record, came to be in that tiny village, all I can say is that life is full of surprises. I have no idea. But I will say that people in Fanaye and throughout all parts of Senegal that I visited were very musically inclined with very (lower case) catholic tastes. I heard traditional kora music; afro-latin music (especially from Cuba), Senegal's own Orchestre Boabab-style latin-pop-rock; American motown, High-Life from Nigeria, traditional French crooners — it was all there.
I appreciate your descriptions of Russia and your reaction to it. I knew some people who visited there before the fall of the Berlin Wall and their stories were much like yours.
Thanks for this great comment — and I hope you'll help me spread the word about SFIO!
I am amazed at the diversity of music they knew and better still liked. It would be wonderful to know so much. I feel very insular when it comes to music, but have found a few Substacks that post all sorts of music from around the world. One band was a thunderous crew from Mongolia.
The one thing I didn’t mention about Russia was how kind the people were. I slipped free of my watchers a few times and was treated totally by people who just wanted to show me riches of their country. They were not asking for anything in return.
The cities and the larger towns were where you found that variety of music. Out in the villages like Fanaye, not so much. Remember there was no electricity there, so any recorded music came by way of battery-powered radios or cassette players. And the nearest place to Fanaye where you could even buy a battery was a two hour walk away. So in that village I mostly heard people singing and drumming and sometimes a kora-playing musician would pass through. Out among the nomadic Peulh people, battery-powered anything was rare, as they might be several day's hike, or more, from the nearest place to buy a battery. It was absolutely mind-boggling to discover somebody there with a battery-powered record player. In fact, I had never before seen such a thing.
The most memorable scene in the middle Indiana Jones movie is when Kate Capshaw is repulsed by the villagers' food offering, and Indy tells her "some of these people haven't eaten in days. You are insulting them and embarrassing me. Eat."
I thought those 10 seconds were some of the clearest, simplest moral instruction ever put on film.
Precisely. Thank you.
What a magnificent story. A lot had changed in the 20 years since you were in West Africa, but I was a PCV in Benin in the mid-90s. My weird-connection-back-home story took place on a long train ride, in a remote rail yard outside Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. We had traveled overnight, either heading to or coming from Victoria Falls on our "close of service" trip, before returning home. A young child was running alongside the train, waiving a newspaper at me that had written in enormous font as the headline "OJ Innocent". It took me a moment to realize this was in reference to OJ Simpson, who was on trial at the time in the US - we later determined that 19 hours had passed since the verdict was issued. The world was already getting smaller!
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I think that that glorious feeling of being totally remote and unfindable is pretty much a thing of the past. My younger daughter lived in Kigali, Rwanda 2012 - 2013 and spoke to us pretty regularly by phone. I made exactly 1 phone call during my 2 years in Peace Corps: I called home from Dakar on Christmas eve. It took about half an hour for the operator to patch through the connection, and it cost me a fortune.
I went to Ireland in 1976.
I called home by asking the hotel operator who called the local exchange who called the overseas operator.
And six hours after I started the process, my call went through.
😁
Now I talk to someone I know in Singapore without a second thought.
My daughter lived in Rwanda 2012 - 2014. She talked to my wife on her cell all the time.
Thanks, John. Don’t think we ever met, but I remember hearing your name often in pcv circles. Brings back memories of well digging projects (did some w Bob McGurn) during la secheresse. But, Pink Floyd, Far side of a the moon, in the bled?
Awesome. - cheers, Frank Donovan (aka Doudou Diallo)
Thanks. Please see email, to follow.
My introduction to that album was a similar revelatory experience, but that was only psychedelics speaking (kidding. At a party at my girlfriend's house, I stopped everything I was doing or saying and listened intently. Her family thought I was nuts).
I loved this story. Thank you, John.
_Dark Side of the Moon_ was a kick in the head the first time I heard it at Frank's house. I can't imagine what it must have been like in the middle of the desert after months of withdrawal from Western media.
I don't remember anything about the experience of the music. The whole fucking trip was so otherworldly. I know that many people find my living in a mud hut in an African village for nearly 2 years kind of otherworldly, and I suppose it was, but after a while it was just where I happened to live. But that trip into the bled, and a battery-powered record player?????!!!!!!!!!! With a PINK FLOYD ALBUM??!!!!! CALLED DARK SIDE OF THE MOON!!! I kept waiting for Zeus or Apollo or something to step into the scene from a tiny fissure in the universe & explain that the prior 23 years of my life had all just been a set-up for this punchline.
Wonderful story, John! Can’t believe I stumbled across this. Reading it made lots of Sahel memories flood back. I actually met you once in Podor in ‘75 or ‘76. I was the English teacher at the CEG and we must have met on the road as I was walking home past the post office. We were talking and you said something in Pulaar to one of the bystanders and I never heard the end of it because you spoke so well! But it was a good thing because if one American could learn Pulaar, they thought, there was hope for me. Best regards, Karen Fisher aka Coumba Thiam
Hello Karen!
I'm glad you stumbled upon my story. I do remember meeting you in Podor; you were the next PCV there after Richard Boyum. And what's more, there's a glancing (two -sentence) reference to you (or rather, to a fictional character who was a PCV in Podor) in my first novel Acts of the Apostles. I won't say anything more about that because I'm hoping that you'll read the book & find it yourself. (Send me an email if you'd like a free copy). There are a bunch of us Animateurs from '73 to '76 who get together about once a decade, and other PCVs from that time are always welcome. I believe our next get-together is scheduled for 2024. I'm jsundmanus at the gmail.
Hi John! Oh my goodness... of course now I have to get your book. No need for a free copy. I like the idea of supporting PCV authors. Your book will join the others in a special spot in my library. Would love to attend a future PCV gathering. Will contact you on the outside for info. Take care. Karen aka Coumba Thiam
Great story!
Two typos, one in the song was / wash
And one in the before last sentence recored / record.
you are fucking kidding me...that's amazing
As I wrote elsewhere, Yes, that was the first time I heard that album, and no, I don't remember a thing about the experience of the music. What I do remember is being so completely astounded at what I was experiencing — the extraordinary generosity in the welcome I was being given by some of the, literally, materially poorest people on Earth, the disconnect between my prior assumptions about what I would find and what I actually did find, and the astounding fact that the music of an avant-guarde British rock group would be the seal on the connection between me and the people of that obscure village of African nomads. That's what I was trying to convey. The music itself, for all its indisputable grandeur, is almost incidental to the story.
Excellent truth. 👍
Also, I hope you'll share a link to the story!