Random Happenings today

So today started out fairly typically - I actually don't really like Monday mornings much because it's when everyone comes to ask questions. I'm not really a morning person to begin with, but when people start asking all sorts of questions like, "Where's the toilet paper? The truck doesn't start, how do I fix it? What tone do we need to write on the long vowel?"... It just gets a little too much for me on Monday mornings. Seems all the questions pile up on the weekend and come to me before 8:30 on Mondays. I don't really like it much, so I tend to give Jackie a bigger head start to the office on Monday mornings than I usually do. Normally, since I sit by the door to the office, I'm the one fielding the questions and acting as Jackie's Personal Assistant (in that I can filter some of the questions before they get to her.). But on Monday mornings, she's on her own!

Then we were off to the Ministry of Ed, to see where we were at with our plans for this workshop that's coming up. In theory, we're leading a workshop for 30 participants in a different city, starting in 10 days. Jackie and I are responsible for the material and the teaching, and the folks at the ministry are responsible for the logistics. Seems we'll just show up in that other town and see if anyone else happens to show up at the same time. Well, um, we'll show up, that is, if we actually get any plane tickets! I'm not really a planner, and I'm really quite flexible and spontaneous... but even I found our meeting this morning a little on the exhausting side!

By the time we got back, me and Jacks had to share a Coke as we got on with the rest of our day.

There is a workshop going on here now (for which none of the participants have shown up yet - only 3 American facilitators!), so we have a full time cook for the next few weeks. Unfortunately for me, she cooked liver for lunch today. Ew. Thankfully, I live on the same compound, so I trotted down to my house and made some lovely fried potatoes and had a tomato salad on the side. You really can't go wrong with potatoes.

This afternoon we also had our Arabic lesson, which was good fun! We have such a good teacher, and man, I really hope he doesn't run to find a new job somewhere else. He's a great asset to have around this compound! But of course, we can't pay him all that much, and he's actually quite highly qualified to find a better job somewhere else. So I would be quite happy for him if he could find a place that would pay him more, but we sure would miss him around here. It's tough keeping staff around here - everyone just wants to make a quick buck and go back to wherever they came from :(

During our Arabic lesson, I had to put on my community health nurse hat, and clean and bandage a wound from one of the old guys that's been working on the compound for almost 30 years. These two old men have been working as "carpenters" for so long, and I really have no clue what they do most of the time! They just sort of wander around the compound and pick up a few tools now and again. But they're very friendly and very willing to help fix our door when it falls apart, or strengthen a bookshelf etc. They're due to retire any day now, but I think they see this place as home, so they don't want to leave. Anyways, one of them had a nice infected cut on his finger, so I dabbed it with some antibiotic cream, wrapped a band-aid around it and sent him on his way. Another happy victim... er patient... for my nursing skills.

As soon as we were done our lesson, I was called up to the guesthouse to meet someone that had just arrived in Juba. I had met him at a meeting that I went to last month. Of course, he told me all about his plans to open a vocational college somewhere in this country. He didn't know where yet. But basically, he wanted help to open it. I was glad to have the excuse that I only work with primary schools ... so I could gracefully bow out of helping him set up a college! I hate saying no to people, even when it's a relatively random person off the street who wants me to help him set up a college!

As I was talking with him, Wes and Henry pulled up in the truck... which was riding precariously low to the front wheels. Seems they broke a spring or a coil or something. I know very little about suspension and front ends of trucks. But I do know that these roads are rough, and they can't be easy on the trucks. And I think our one little white truck finally had it. Now without Richard here... could be difficult to get it fixed. Jackie's little car has an irreparable flat battery (seems the heat is really hard on batteries, too!), so we're down to one car for all of us! This could be an interesting week...

So that's a rather boring play by play of my day. I'm going to go scrub my fingernails with a nail brush now. I already scrubbed once today, but since we're now into the dusty season, I seem to get filthy by simply sitting at the computer! Mabruk to those of you who actually kept reading this far!