This morning started off with a nice cool walk down to the corner to buy some bread and donuts for breakfast. As I was buying the bread, which wasn't really quite up to snuff, I told Grace, "Sunday's not going to like this bread..." But it was all there was, so I bought it! It just wasn't quite as fluffy as it normally is. It's not as though we have a lot of choice in the bread that we buy or anything!
We also bough our nice grease balls to sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar and enjoy with our coffee, imported from Uganda.As soon as breakfast was over, we had another meeting to discuss the schedule for the teacher training that I put together yesterday. I really like working as a team, and including everyone's ideas into something... but man, sure does take longer than it would if I did it myself. But with my limited experience in this area, and the Dinka team's vast experience, it would be simply foolish of me to go it alone! So we switched some things around and got a timetable that I think we're all pretty happy with. It will be interesting to see how closely we end up sticking to this timetable... but at least we have something to start with!
For lunch, we had ful beans! A classic Sudanese treat... well, Vicky and Sunday didn't see it as much of a treat, but I sure did! Sunday cooked the beans up on the charcoal stove on back porch, and combined with some tomatoes, onions and jibna (goat cheese), mmmm... it was so delicious! Of course, as I predicted, I didn't hear the end of how terrible the bread was! Vicky told me in no uncertain terms that if the bread is that bad again, I am supposed to wait until she comes and she will go and find good bread in the market!
Following the yummy lunch, which I think I enjoyed most of all, Jackie and I suddenly realized that we didn't have the truck to use to get to our meeting with some folks in the Ministry of Education! Richard was out in the truck, and we hadn't mentioned to him that we were going out. There are certain situations in which we realize just how handicapped we are without any phones or radios or any other means of communication. We DO, however, have the satellite phone sitting here, and since we never use it, we thought we'd try it out. Being from up North, Richard has a cell phone with a SIM card in it! However, just as I was figuring out how to dial his number, he pulled into the parking lot.
Too bad, we didn't get to use the $2 per minute sat phone to see where our truck was...Anyways, off we went to our pre-arranged meeting at the Ministry with three folks there. Since Jackie knew someone in one of the offices there, we didn't have to wait under the tree, but instead sat inside one of thier new pre-fab air conditioned buildings to wait! And good thing we did, since we waited for over an hour! As we sat, we chatted with a woman who is helping with Teacher Training and met up with a few others working in that office, as well. Of course, it seemed that the ones we were supposed to meet were off in a different meeting... so after an hour of enjoying the A/C, we decided it was time to go back home! Next time we go for a meeting, I must remember to bring my book to read :)
And that, my friends, is the play by play of my day so far. It may not seem that I've accomplished much, but actually, it's been quite a successful day as far as things go here in Juba!
No comments:
Post a Comment