nblinks

[email fragment] I was just now thinking it's been five full years, plus three or four days, since my arrival in Nairobi. In unconscious celebration of that fact (maybe) I've been reading a book by the early-20th-century Kenyan colonist/aviatrix Beryl Markham. I actually read the book ("West With the Night") once before, but this time I found out our local library had a copy of a Spanish translation ("Al oeste con la noche") so I thought I'd give it a go. Even though I know the story and my Spanish comprehension has been getting decent, it's been actually harder than I thought it would be -- could be the translator's fault, or I guess also when I'm reading a South American novel, the sections I don't understand still exude a general atmospheric Spanishness, so when I'm getting nothing I'm still getting something. This works less well when it's a Spanish version of an English version of a memory of a conversation that took place in Swahili.