A successful Christmas

So Christmas and Boxing Day have been successfully celebrated! It was great to be able to spend time with my family and to see some old friends at church, too. I think we did a pretty good job of just enjoying each other and not getting too caught up in all the typical craziness.

I got to play quite a few games over the holidays, which was great! I got my sister and my mom hooked on Dutch Blitz, which I got for Christmas! We spent quite some time on Christmas Day blitzing each other with that. We also played dominoes at the annual extended family dinner shindig, and then the usual game of Carcasonne with my bro-in-law, which he ALWAYS wins.

Now, I'm off to visit my sister and her family in their little house in the big woods to celebrate my nephew's birthday and New Years.

Merry Christmas!

The Internet is fixed, and I didn't do anything :) It sure is good to be home! I'm also enjoying hot showers, coffee from a coffee maker, warm blankets, fuzzy hooded sweaters, bacon, paved roads, 24 hour electricity every day, fire places, and the CLEANLINESS! Why would you even have to take a shower here - I mean, other than the fact that it just feels so wonderful to have hot water cascading down your back... but it does feel odd to have a shower and really feel no cleaner than I did before I got in the shower. I also don't have to wash my hands 20 times a day, nor do my tissues turn brown when I wipe by brow or blow my nose. I also haven't had any dirt under my fingernails since I got home! Amazing.

But of course, it is incredibly good to be back with family and friends. I haven't really done anything all that exciting yet, nor have I seen oodles of friends, but it's been really good to see those that I have managed to see. It's so refreshing to be back in church, and to be gathered with a big group of people to sing with! I'm looking forward to a few more weeks here to catch up with friends and family.

Of course, I haven't gotten around to writing a Christmas letter yet... though I really enjoy reading everyone else's Christmas greetings! Maybe I'll get around to writing a New Year letter...

Have a wonderful Christmas, full of the peace and hope that Christ came to bring.

I thought the internet was fast here...

Seems there's something wrong with our Internet connection here in the house. It's slower than it is in Africa! Difference is, here, I don't have to fix it! Someone's coming tomorrow to jiggle the wires and get it all speeded up again :)

Maybe I'll do some fancy photo album or something like that, or write up some of the stories from Africa that I never had a chance to write up before. But for the past few days, I just don't have the patience to sit and blog 'cause the internet's too slow, and, um, well, er, there are too many good things to watch on that big moving screen in the corner of the room... quite mezmorizing when you haven't watched tv at all for several months!

By the way...

I DID make it home! No problems at all with any flights or travels! Thanks for praying.

But now I'm tired, so I'm off to bed.

More later... though things here in Canada just don't seem all that blog-able...

Almost Home

I'm just taking a short break from wrapping my closet in plastic bags to let you all know that I'm set to leave tomorrow afternoon at 4pm! Please pray that my flight goes well - that all the connections will be smooth, that I won't get too tired and dazed and culture shocked in all the airports and that I'll enjoy the time traveling on my own. I normally enjoy the long trips on my own, since it gives me a lot of time to think and pray and prepare myself for whatever it is that I'm traveling to! But I really don't like the tiredness, the expensive airport food and feeling grimy for hours on end... So pray that those not so pleasant feelings are minimal and that the good things about the travel transition are much more prevalent!

Thanks and I'll see you soon!

(by the way, yes, I am actually wrapping everything in my closet in plastic - dust gets EVERYWHERE, and I'm afraid of what my clothes would look when I get back next month if I left them all open to the elements!)

Traffic Jams?

Today we had our staff Christmas party, which I organized, since I'm the only extrovert and the only one who likes to have any fun on the compound :) I pre-ordered some food from a local restaurant, and bought some bread and had the guesthouse cook/cleaner make some salad and cut some pineapple. I also got some sodas, thought up some silly games, and voila... A Christmas party!

However, today I had to go and pick up the bread from the bakery and the meat from the restaurant. No easy feat in this city. I live in a capital city where there are two main roads. When I say main road, I don't mean a nice paved highway. I mean dirt roads that are passable only with a high-clearance vehicle.

However, they have chosen this month to upgrade and fix the two main roads. Which is great, since they are in serious need of some repair. But why, oh why, do they have to fix BOTH roads at once?! And keep in mind that when they do road work around here, they don't put up all the nice little "detour" signs, post flag-men at every corner and give you any warning about a potential alternate route. Nope. None of that. If you happen to drive where you're not supposed to, someone in a camo outfit will appear out of nowhere and start shouting and waving his arms. That means turn around quick before the guy with the gun comes out!

And it changes really, really quickly. I drove to the bakery today to pick up the bread for the party, and by the time I had chitchatted in Tigrinya with the baker, got my bread and turned around to head for home, they had already closed a new section of the road (of course, they didn't open any section - just closed another section).

At least we're getting nice tours every day of all the backroads of town - places that I normally wouldn't even THINK to drive down. But our high-clearance 4X4 Toyota Hilux is handling the "roads" quite nicely... and I'm not going to know what to do with myself on the weekend when I have to start driving on pavement again! I get excited here when I get up into third gear - the thought of fifth gear is a little frightening...

I'm plagerizing!

Gack! So I went to check African Banter this evening before the lights go out, and I realized that I completely unconsciously STOLE the title of my blog from his. Since African Banter hasn't updated his blog in, oh, well, quite some time now, I guess I've seen the title "Bits and Bobs" enough times for it have seeped into my sub-conscious and I used it without even me realizing where it had come from. I guess that's what you get for not updating your blog more regularly.

Bits and Bobs

Once again, I spent most of the day running around with various bits and bobs. One of the main things on the agenda today was renewing our travel permits so we can come back "home" after spending Christmas outside the country. It was a relatively painless affair, considering what it COULD have been.

Basically, there are two guys sitting in a little pre-fab office across the empty vacant lot from the Legislative Assembly building (which has now been renovated three times in the last two years - that's a whole 'nother story!). They each have a desk. On the desk, they have a little stack of yellow cards, two stamps, a pen, and a glue stick. The stamps are the important part of the equation, 'cause without a stamp, you're nothing around these parts.

Anyways, Jackie went first and explained the situation - our current cards are still valid, but we want to get new ones because they will expire on December 30, while we are both out of the country. And we need these cards so that we will be allowed back INTO the country in January.

No problem. The guy starts writing out Jackie's card. Then the second guy is finished with the Kenyan that he's dealing with, and I pull my plastic lawn chair up to the desk and ask for the same thing. Here is where it gets complicated. Both of these guys suddenly decide that it's not really possible, and that they have to take away the current cards that we have (which are all nicely stamped, proving that we have paid all of our money for the registration fee etc.), and that they will give us these new ones, which will be valid for 6 months from today.

But we don't want them valid 6 months from today, and besides we need our old cards to get out of the country. I tried to explain. The Kenyan chap who was sitting in his plastic chair tried to explain. The other guy (of unknown origin) tried to explain. The two guys with the stamps started trying to explain to each other...

At one point, I was a little worried that I wouldn't get my pass at all!

But in the end, they figured it out, took our $120 USD and filled out the yellow cards for us. I even got the guy to leave the section where it asks for the passport number and date of issue blank for me, since I have to get a new passport when I get home, and I would like to write in my new passport number, rather than my old one.

It was really quite comical to sit there in the ubiquitous plastic chair, watching these guys fill in the cards, then getting out their glue sticks, cutting and pasting our photos on the cards, and the stamping it all with great flourish! It was like arts and crafts day at immigration!

Anyways, the whole ordeal took less than an hour, which is really, truly amazing for this place. It also goes to show how few "systems" are really in place. We have these travel permits now, but no one took any copies of it, no one has any record that they were issued to us. I don't even have a passport number written on mine! And they all had to have quite a lengthy discussion to figure out if they could even give us new passes or not. Imagine an entire country being run like this... no wonder we have to have great flexibility when it comes to living here :)

On a better note - tomorrow we are having a Christmas party for all the translation teams and staff based here. I'm in charge of it all - seems I'm the only one who likes to plan parties no matter where I go! I've got some ideas for some games to play, and I've arranged to get some fried chicken, meat and fish from the restaurant that we always go to. The fridge is stocked with pop, and I'll arrange to get some bread, salad and pineapple tomorrow. So hopefully everyone will have a good time. I think some of the translation teams are thinking that I'm actually going to slaughter a goat or a cow tomorrow and roast it all up. That's THEIR idea of a good party. But I'm more into the take-away fried food, myself.

I also checked the mail box today, and lo and behold there was a little package from a friend of mine from where I used to live. He sent a little bag full of shiro powder (that's ground up chick peas, mixed with spices). You mix it with water and some finely chopped veggies and cook up a nice paste to eat with injera. So this evening, on the way home from the post office, I stopped off at the Ethiopian restaurant, got some injera for take-away, and came home to cook up a pot of shiro! Man, was it ever good! I took a photo of it on my plate to send to my friend, but since I haven't posted many photos for the last few weeks, I'll put a picture here...
Mmmm... shiro and cabbage salad. It doesn't get much better than this!

So long, farewell, auf wiedesien, adiou...

Yeah, I know I'm supposed to be a linguist, but that doesn't mean I can spell in all the languages of the world...

Anyways, today was a day of farewelling. It started off saying good bye to John, Julia and little Isabella. I already miss them, since I spent quite a lot of time with Julia and the baby. It was SO refreshing to have a little one around to hold and play with every day. And John and Julia were really incredibly interesting people to talk to. Good conversationalists and very deep thinkers with some very different perspectives than most people in my world! I know that God's going to use them whereever he brings them next, but I am sorry to see them leave our compound.

I also tried to say goodbye to someone else today. We were driving around for several hours trying to get her a plane ticket out of here today. But alas, we were not successful. She might be on the flight tomorrow morning, but she's not even sure about that!

I also drove another group of people to the airport, in their truck, and then drove it back to park on the compound while they're away. It's always fun to cruise around town in a different truck! This one is an old landcruiser, with power windows and automatic transmission! I almost forgot how to start it, since there was no clutch to hold down!

So in actual fact, I got very little "real" work done today, but spent a lot of time just cruising around town trying to get rid of people!

We did have a great Arabic lesson this evening, though! I love our picture that we're working with - the one with the blue goats and pink birds! Today we added a short woman, a tall woman, a happy man and a sad man. So Jackie and I took turns telling stories with the little paper cut out figures. Somehow, in my stories, the cat always ends up eating the birds... I think I need to think of a new storyline for our next lesson! I'll have one more lesson before I come home for Christmas and forget every word that I've learned!

Workshop

Ok, so, as I sit here in my verandah, listening to a program on BBC about people who use the Internet to worship and sipping my tea, it seems like as good a time as any to type down some highlights of my time away... So, let's see, some of the highlights...

1. It was refreshing to be away in a town that has banned plastic bags! And the children still like to collect the empty plastic water and pop bottles from the streets. And, everyone and their dog has a pit latrine! So it was clean. Dusty, but at least the dust was "clean" dust. It was much less "fragrant" than my usual city. Of course, I was still dirty all the time. Just walking out of the bathroom where you have just bathed makes you dirty. Dirt under my fingernails, dirt under my toenails, and a sheen of red dust covering every inch of exposed skin. Oh well. The guest house that we stayed in didn't have any running water, either. So bucket baths were in order. Jackie and I also got really good at pouring water on each other's hands so we could wash two hands at once :)

2. I ate my entire year's quota of meat in the last few weeks. Because the town is a lot more Muslim, we had to adopt a more Arab sort of eating schedule. We had tea in the morning (but I had to supplement with a piece of bread and jam!), then "breakfast" at 10:30am. That was normally a sandwich filled with fried meat. Unfortunately, the last few days, it was a sandwich filled with liver :( Eeeewwww... I will never understand why people eat liver. Then we had lunch at 2:30 or 3. Again, it was meat, meat and more meat. Only slimy okra for veggies! Then we had our dinner around 8 pm. Again, meat or fish or chicken. And slimy okra.

3. We made friends with the tea lady on the corner near the guesthouse where we stayed. She set up her little charcoal stove and jars full of tea and sugar and spices and milk and coffee on the corner, just as the sun was setting every night. So me and Jackie went every night to sit with her and drink some milky tea or sweet coffee, which was thick enough to be almost a mocha pudding! She didn't speak English, and we hardly speak any Arabic, but we had a great time together :) She was a funny woman, and had quite a personality! It was great practice for us to try out the little Arabic that we know, and she was really very patient in repeating phrases for us over and over again until we figured out what she was saying. It was just so relaxing to sit on the street corner, under the brilliant stars, sipping tea and playing around with Arabic.

4. Oh yeah, the workshop... that actually went quite well, as well! We had 32 participants, and many of them were really quite high up in the state ministries of education. So they were in a position to make some decisions about how to start implementing the language policy here in this country. Of course, there were also some folks there who somehow came along and didn't actually speak any English at all! But they were all very kind and very eager to work. There was a lot of group work and time for people from each state and each language group to work together and do some planning, so even if they didn't catch all the things that Jackie and I were leading from the front, at least the could have some time to help each other out in their groups.

It was also really encouraging to see that some of the people in the States ARE actually using the mother tongue of the people in their states for the first few years of primary school... even though no one is making any textbooks or resources available to them. Some of the teachers took photocopies of some of the textbook samples that we had brought with us, so at least they can be used by a teacher in one school! We pray that the government will get things together enough to actually start printing some of these books and distributing them to the schools, so these children can actually start to learn in a language that they understand.

It was so much fun to be teaching and facilitating a workshop again! Maybe I am more of a performer than I thought I was, but I think it's so much fun to be helping people understand a concept, even if that takes a little song and dance routine up in front of a big group once in a while. I'm convinced that even adults like a little action when they're learning, so I try to do a lot of active sorts of things. It also helps a lot to be a bit dramatic when people are trying to understand some difficult concepts in a second (or third or fourth!) language. I think the participants understood some of the big issues enough to actually go and make some good, informed decisions about the implementation of mother tongue education. So in that respect, I think the workshop was a huge success! Thanks for praying for us.

5. The workshop was closed by our guest of honour - the Bishop of the Catholic Church! Most of the participants who were there are Catholics, so it was a real honour for them to receive their certificates from his Lordship the Bishop. He also made an amazing speech about the role of the mother tongue in finding one's identity in Christ. He was very eloquent and very supportive of the use of local languages, both in education and in people's relationship with Christ.

It was wonderful to be able to mix the work that we're doing with the Ministry of Education with our own Christian faith. Because it was a government sponsored workshop, we weren't planning to do any prayer or devotions or anything like that, but the participants themselves asked us to do some Bible reading and prayer at the start of each day! So I also pray that as these guys go back to their "normal" jobs of teaching and administration in the Ministries of Education, that they will also become advocates for the use of the Scriptures in their own languages, as well. Many of them spoke of the fact that they want children in their communities to learn to read and write in their own language because then they will be able to read the Scriptures and take part in the life of the church!

Phew, this is a lot of text for one night. I think these are the main highlights... there were SO many funny "blog-able" moments throughout the workshop. I mean, nothing is ever really straightforward or "normal" in this country, so some days of the workshop were just a complete comedy in errors, at least, from me and Jackie's point of view! But somehow, through God's grace, we made it through!

Photos

I haven't really felt very "wordy" today, so I didn't actually get around to writing anything about the past couple of weeks in a town that's pronounced like "Wow!". But I have put some photos up on facebook, so if you want to see them... here they are.

Enjoy! We've got city electricity at the moment, but it will probably go off again tomorrow and probably not come back on until Tuesday or Wednesday, but I'm sure I'll have some time during "generator hours" to write down a few of the highlights of the past few weeks!

For now, though, I have a few of my friends' blogs to go and catch up on.

I'm Home!

Ok, well, I'm not home home, but I'm home. We were told to be at the airport this morning at 10:30am. We actually ended up leaving ourselves a lot of time, since logistically, it could have been a nightmare to get all of our stuff and all of our people to the right place at the right time. But as it turned out, things moved very smoothly and we ended up at the airport EARLY. Amazing. Of course, the flight was delayed. And delayed. And delayed some more. Finally, at about 1 pm, Jackie went in search of a snack to put in my poor rumbling tummy (all I'd had all morning was 1/3 of a grapefruit, a very small piece of bread with jam and a cup of tea). But, because so many people were leaving on the UN flights that had been organized for the education meetings we were at, the airport canteen had run out of food! Not even a packet of biscuits to be had. At least they had a warm Coke.

At about 2-ish (I think), we were finally able to board the little plane and make our way back home. It was probably a good thing we didn't have more for lunch, since it was a pretty turbulent flight, and poor Jackie woke me up from my nap, urgently in need of a plastic bag. I will now add an empty plastic bag to my list of "be-prepared-for-everything" travel kit!

Turns out, I did pretty good being prepared for most eventualities on this trip. My Swiss Army knife was in great demand a couple times a day for various tasks, my headlamp served its purpose very well, and my extra mini-light was also used by Moses every night (which reminds me that I forgot to get that back from him!). I also had my amazing "equatorial" sleeping bag from MEC which kept me clean and cool each night. It's a great little sleeping bag, and doubles as a good pillow, as well. I even managed to bring my flip flops with me to use in the bathroom! So I lacked nothing on this trip.

But man, it sure was good to get home this evening. Lynne came and picked us up from the airport, and on the way home, I was amazed to see all the construction and new things that have sprung up, even in less than three weeks of being away. On the airport road, there's a brand new gas station that looks like a "proper" gas station - the pumps aren't housed in a metal shipping container and there's a little shop where, presumably, you could buy sodas and car snacks!

My little cat seemed pretty happy to see me. He's got a pretty nasty infection on his tail - I think he got into one too many scraps with the neighbor cat. But he's already back to his usual self of whining for food every 10 minutes!

I hope that tomorrow I'll be able to condense some of the "journal" that I've been keeping for the past few weeks and post some of the highlights of our trip here. But for now, I'm just so happy to be in my own house, even though we've come back to broken water pipes! No running water for us until Richard comes next week... at least our kind neighbors have put a water barrel in the house and filled it up for us! So we're no worse off than we were at the guesthouse that we've been staying in. And there are plenty of other showers on this compound for us to use when we get stinky!

I'm really tired out now, so I'm going to go have a nice long drink of bore hole water (mmm... salty!) and then go to sleep... in my own little bed.

Still Coping Up!

So we're nearly done the workshop. Phew, it has been a LOT of work. But some very good things have come out of it, I think.

It's Saturday afternoon, and we worked until about 4:30 today. Now we're back in the Internet cafe by the River. Tomorrow we're going to church in the cathedral, then for lunch at the home of the former governor of the state! Should be interesting, anyways...

Monday is our closing ceremony, which should be a good time. Then on Tuesday, some big meetings for planning of the education sector will begin and run until Thursday. There should be almost 200 people there to try to plan education stuff for the next few years. Yikes. I'm not sure what my contribution to that will be... but I'm supposed to go and "network" and advocate for the use of mother tongue in school, as per the official policy here :) Should be fun.

I'm back "home" on Friday, enshallah (God willing!), then Wednesday, I get on a plane to go HOME HOME! I'll be seeing a bunch of you in less than two weeks! Whooo Hooo!