Mr. Jing Has Gone
Antambo, one of the men that works the reception at the The Golden Peacock (GP), talks a lot, but doesn’t speak that much English. He tries his darndest to have conversations with us, but they usually end with our staring confused back at him and his wondering why we don’t understand, both parties then surrendering to the language barrier, smiling and moving on.
One of his favorite things to tell me is that Jing has left the GP. His accent combined with his unique almost-lifetime-smoker-ish voice quality combine in a fantastic: Meestah Jeeng is li-eeeveeng. It doesn’t matter whether or not Jing has actually left to go to town or if he is still in the room sleeping. Mr. Jing has left, or so I am told about 3-4 times a day.
It’s become my favorite inside joke that Jing and I share. It never ceases to make me laugh when we have impersonation sessions in our room. It’s absolutely hysterical.
But Antambo, whether he knew what he was saying or not, was right yesterday when I returned from the airport to his (unexplainably) enthusiastic “Meestah Jeeng is gone FOR FLYYY!!”
Yep, that’s right ladies and gentleman, Mr. Jing left yesterday to head back to Durham and then Chicago to start medical school at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I’ll leave to head back to Phoenix next Sunday. Until then, it’ll be just me, Antambo and Raki holding down the fort as the permanent residents of the GP.
One of his favorite things to tell me is that Jing has left the GP. His accent combined with his unique almost-lifetime-smoker-ish voice quality combine in a fantastic: Meestah Jeeng is li-eeeveeng. It doesn’t matter whether or not Jing has actually left to go to town or if he is still in the room sleeping. Mr. Jing has left, or so I am told about 3-4 times a day.
It’s become my favorite inside joke that Jing and I share. It never ceases to make me laugh when we have impersonation sessions in our room. It’s absolutely hysterical.
But Antambo, whether he knew what he was saying or not, was right yesterday when I returned from the airport to his (unexplainably) enthusiastic “Meestah Jeeng is gone FOR FLYYY!!”
Yep, that’s right ladies and gentleman, Mr. Jing left yesterday to head back to Durham and then Chicago to start medical school at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I’ll leave to head back to Phoenix next Sunday. Until then, it’ll be just me, Antambo and Raki holding down the fort as the permanent residents of the GP.
posted by Dan Englander at
11:47 AM
1 Comments:
I appreciate your efforts in Malawi. You guys sure are the true Dukies. It is good to know that such initiatives are so often taken by the Duke students in the third world countries. I would have loved to participate in such acts to spread greater public awareness amongst my community and world.
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Aniqa Osmani, at 11:33 PM
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