If I were a chicken...

I found the best place for a chicken home in Jb tonight. I went to visit my friends' chickens at their new home this evening. They have a lovely view over the valley on the other side of the mountain! It was gorgeous out there - some trees and plants, a gorgeous view all the way around. A wonderful place for a chicken. Too bad I didn't have my camera.

A public holiday in the life of me...

... consists of the following:

• Sleep in a little, waking up at about 7:45am.
• Heat some water on the gas stove so I can take a bucket bath - it was only about 23C when I woke up this morning - MUCH too cold for a shower with cold water!
• Enjoy some coffee that Jackie made earlier with some bread and peanut butter.
• Hang my laundry, which I washed last night, out on the line to dry in the sun.
• Go to the office, check the email, distribute my powerpoint presentation that I made yesterday about the wonders of literacy work to the team that was leaving today.
• Pose for a few photos with the team that left today, bustle them all in the trucks and off to the airport. Once we got to the airport, I collected their paperwork, and gave the group an orientation to the procedure whilst Richard took care of the check-in etc. I was pretty proud of the way Richard and I handled the group in the airport - it's not an easy task to get a group of 10 people through that airport with all their luggage. I forgot what it's like to have a North American sized luggage allowance to travel with - they had SO much stuff! The procedure here is that you check in at one desk, then you beat your way through the crowd with all your luggage to the other side of the desk, where you pick up your bag and carry it to the security desk, where you open it up so the guys there can look through it all! So while Richard was doing the PR thing, I was handling the crowd and helping them get themselves to the right place at the right time. Thankfully, Richard saw one of his buddies there, and the buddy figured out the crowd was with him, so he let the whole group just put their bags in the pile of stuff going to Nairobi. Next, you take your papers over through the mob to the customs/immigration desk. There, you push your passport through to the guys sitting there, and while they stamp the passport, you sign your name and passport number on a list. Because Richard and I were trying to get them to process 10 passports at once, I just grabbed the list and took it over to a different counter. Richard then passed me each passport one by one and as they were being stamped, I was signing them onto the list (of course, the folks in the group were safely nestled out of the way in a corner!). Me and Richard made quite a good team, and got those folks through the airport in record time, with absolutely no hassle whatsoever! It was great!
• Returned from the airport and started doing some prep work for the Writer's Workshop that we're teaching next week here in Jb.
• Ate an amazing lunch of jacket potatoes, eggplants, tomatoe salad, coleslaw and pineapple!
• Answered some more emails about various bits and pieces, including an email to our friends from another NGO with advice about how to divide up billing for their generator.
• Drove the second truck with Richard to the tire repair place so we could get the new tires put on the old Hilux. Wow, what amazing tires they are! Maybe I'll even have to take a photo of them. Hung out with the Somalis a bit while they changed the tires.
• Drove with Richard in the second truck to the shop where they sell tires so we could buy a new one for our MCC neighbors whilst we were out. I was also in search of some milk. Of course, this being a public holiday, it was hard to find a place open that sold tires, and it was hard to find a place that sold milk (obviously the two items could not be found in the same place! But we finally found the tire, and off we went back to the Somalis who would then fix it to the rim.
  
• Still no milk. So I walked across the street from the tire repair place to look for milk. Yes, they had milk, but were charging 2 1/2 times the normal price! I didn't want milk THAT badly! (by the way, we're talking a tetra box of UHT milk, not nice fresh 1%!).
• Finally, the tires were ready on the Hilux, so I got the honour of taking the new tires on their maiden voyage whilst Richard waited for the MCC tire to get fixed. What a difference a new set of tires can make on a truck! Wow. Smooth ride, let me tell you... well, ok, as smooth as a ride can be on the roads here. You still need to make sure to wear a sports bra if you want to be comfortable... but maybe that's too much information... On the bright side, I DID manage to find some milk at the shop just a few blocks from our house :)
  
• Got back just in time to make use of the remaining hour of generator time to do some month-end admin stuff, as well as making a new ID card for one of our staff.

And that was how I spent my public holiday.

No time for blogging!

Yes, I am home, and no, I don't have time to blog. But there are oh so many bloggable moments. I need mobile blogging so I can blog the moment things happen! Normally, I've been blogging in the evenings, and generally after I turn off the generator, since we have our Internet kit all set up on batteries. But the batteries in our wireless router in our house have failed :( So I can't blog past generator hours. And I've been SO busy during the days and evenings. Some fun, some work. But hopefully I will have a few minutes tomorrow to blog, since it's a holiday tomorrow! Whoo hoo! That means there will be fewer interruptions and I might actually get some work done!

Home safe

Yup. I'm home safe and sound. Exhausted, but safe and sound. I still feel like I'm bumping up and down in the landcruiser, and I have quite the headache. We drove for about 9 hours today and make it home, just in time to be greeted with a group on a short term mission trip, finding office equipment for people, hearing about all the crises of the week, and now, finally at 9:54pm, having just finished an hour long meeting with a visitor about the government's plans for Multilingual Education... I am finally able to sit down and drink a glass of water. Oh yeah, did I mention all of my doxycycline and multivitamins have been eaten by a rat while I was away? I'm a little scared to see what all those antibiotics and vitamins have done to that creature. If you never hear from me again, it's because I've been eaten in my bed by some giant mutant rat...

Anyways, it's good to be home. I think.

Almost finished!

Yup, today was the last full day of workshop. Tomorrow is the complete end of the workshop. We will be driving back to Jb on Saturday, enshallah. If you think of it, could you pray for our trip? It's a 10 hour drive, if all goes well. We are planning to leave early in the morning, but you never know what's going to happen around here.... so please pray for our safe journey on the roads!

Will hopefully have time to post something tomorrow, but am not sure what tomorrow will bring!

Things are going well, though!

Ways in which I am not [yet] an African

1. Greasy plain spaghetti noodles are not breakfast! Stuffing my face with as much carbohydrates and starches as possible, eased down by a lot of oil, is not exactly my idea of a satisfying meal. Fruit? Veggies? Nowhere to be found. At the moment, my tummy is growling because I only had a few slimy noodles for breaky. I’m going to have to eat some biscuits to keep me going. Can’t even count how many biscuits I’ve eaten to keep me going in the past week. But honestly, a girl cannot live on tea and biscuits alone! I also don’t classify milk as “food”. There were a few nights where tehre wasn’t enough supper to go around, and somehow, I was one of the ones who missed supper! Which meant that our dear soldier cum driver went out to get us some supper from the market – what `came back was a box of UHT milk (long-life tetra box milk) and a packet of biscuits. A very satisfying supper to some!
2. I also like a bit of variety in my meals. Chewy chunks of beef in a greasy tomato based sauce, asida (like a very stiff porridge made from maize flour), and a greasy mix of cooked green leaves twice a day does not a happy white girl make. The folks here are quite happy to eat the same thing over and over and over again. Once again, no veggies. No fruit. And most importantly, NO POTATOES! I’m so craving a potato and a nice salad of fresh tomatoes, carrots, green peppers and some cucumber, just like we have every day at home in Jb, all chased down with some pineapple or papaya… mmmm…. Man, how can you tell I’m hungry?!
3. I can’t wait to get to my toilet, shower and running water. I mean, I really like camping, and I’m actually having quite a lot of fun camping here. It’s a beautiful place to be, and I love being outside in the forest and in the fields. Last night, for example, as I was walking through the grass (of course, carefully trodding for fear of any hiding snakes!), I turned off my headlamp and looked up. There was no moon last night, so the stars were absolutely incredible! It really is like camping, and it’s wonderful to be basically living outside. I really miss camping and going to spend time close to nature… but it’s a little different when you can camp and sit around the campfire, and do nothing except go and play in the woods. Here, we have to work all day – teaching, planning classes, answering emails… and don’t have as much time to just sit and enjoy “camping”. So, I must admit that I am really looking forward to getting back to my running water, my sit-down toilet that I can flush, a full-on shower instead of a bucket bath! But I certainly don’t want to complain because, all things considered, it’s really a very pleasant place to stay!
4. I like to plan ahead a little more than most folks around here. If we have to buy water and other supplies for 40 people for a week, I don’t want to go twice a day to the shops to get things that we know we will need – like drinking water! Why not go once and buy a couple of cartons of bottles and enough toilet paper to last for at least a few days, since you know you’re going to need it?! But that would be like planning ahead, rather than taking care of my immediate needs, when the need arises.
5. I don’t like sitting around doing “nothing”. I mean, to them, sitting and drinking their tea with each other and chit chatting is not doing “nothing”. They’re relationship oriented, and aren’t bound by their need to be doing something all the time, or getting their self-worth from how “busy” they are. They’re really negotiating their places in the world and accomplishing quite a lot through their relationships and just talking with each other. In some ways, those of us from the Western world feel we’re somehow not contributing the good of the world if we’re not always busy… and oftern our busy-ness doesn’t really even accomplish that much anyways. But it does still go against my grain to just sit. And sit. And sit. Especially when I see that there are legitimate things to do – like emails to answer, articles and books to read, things to prepare for the next day… (Don’t get me wrong, most of the women around here are doing things while they’re sitting and resting – either braiding each other’s hair, or doing some embroidery, or feeding their babies etc. But many of the men, as well as the women who are somehow “above” all the work, just sit and talk.)
6. Even though I am “the facilitator”, I am certainly not above pitching in, or taking my turn, or waiting in line. Quite often, if a person here has a position of importance, they will spend their days sitting on their duff, giving orders to people. They will go directly to the front of the line when the food comes. They will demand that tea be brought to their chair. They will ignore the people who have been hired to help until they need something. I think I shocked a bunch of our participants the other day because I stood behind them all in line and waited my turn to scoop up my chewy chunks of beef in greasy tomato sauce. After dinner, I saw that there was no water in the heating barrel, so I started filling a bucket with water and carrying the water to the barrel. They were quite amazed that I would cart water around. But why not? Everyone's gotta pull their own weight!

Finally, some photos!

While the participants were doing their group work this afternoon, I was busy posting some photos on facebook of my Addis Ababa Adventures.

Will post some photos of where I am now tomorrow, since the generator is about to shut down here for the day.

Hope all is well in your worlds! I'm doing fine here, but feeling cut off since there are no mobile phone networks! Funny how an extrovert like me needs to feel like she can communicate with people... even though I really don't use the phone all that much...

Me, an African? Yup.

I’m sitting in my little tukel (a thatch roofed house – one little room all to myself!), and thinking that I have really turned into an African in certain respects:

1. It’s about 24C in my room (according to my hand-dandy MEC thermometer which happens to give info about wind chills on the back side of it – something I haven’t had to use here yet!). So even though it’s a warm summer day at home, I’m FREEZING! I didn’t realize it would be so cold here, so I’m not really prepared for it. Thus, I am wearing my pajama bottoms and a t-shirt underneath my tie-dyed mumu. Between the pink t-shirt, the polkadot trousers, the blue and brown tie-dye… I fit right in with the local population! When it gets cold, you basically just put on everything you have, whether it seems to match in our own Western aesthetic or not! I plan to wear this ensemble to bed, when I snuggle into my MEC Equatorial sleeping bag, which is rated to 15C, I think. I might get to try out it’s rating tonight and see if it keeps me warm enough!
2. I handwashed my underwear tonight with way too much soap, and enough bubbling lather to wash a horse. I have noticed that whether people here are washing themselves, their clothes, their cars… they use SO much soap. They think the more bubbles, the cleaner things get. I guess there is some truth to it… but somehow, the amount of bubbles they use is a bit over the top. But here I am, scrubbing out my undies with an incredible amount of while bubbly goodness! Of course, I won’t even think about hanging my undies out on the line for anyone to see – I will discreetly hang them somewhere in my hut. But it doesn’t matter if anyone sees them when they are on me, if I happen to have ill fitting clothes or bend over the wrong way.
3. Speaking of bending over, I am starting to bend at the waist like an African, rather than squatting down to do things on the ground, like a Canadian. Here, squatting is reserved for things like birthin’ babies or, well, squatting in the bush, or in the outhouse. More and more, I find myself bending over to get things from a box on the ground, or to sweep or to pick things up etc. Perhaps this tradition is due to the fact that women generally wear skirts/dresses here. Delicately squatting in a ladylike fashion without showing one’s aforementioned undies is difficult! So bending seems to be a much preferable posture.
4. I take two baths a day, whether I need one or not. The evening bath is a ritual akin to our own morning bath. Granted, in other places in this country, I have two (or sometimes even three!) showers or bucket baths each day because I just get so sweaty and dusty and hot and gross. But here, where it’s COLD, they heat water in a big metal diesel barrel over a wood fire, and everyone, and I mean everyone, takes a bucket bath sometime between the hours of 5:30 and 7pm. And then we will all have a little splash in the water again in the morning when we wake up – but that’s not the main bathing of the day, that’s just a little wake up splish-splash. (Bucket bath = bring your big plastic basin to the barrel, fill it up with water, bring it back to the concrete bathing room, along with a little dipper and splash the water over your body).
5. I eat dinner and then I just want to go to sleep. Dinner happens right before bed. The bath happens. Then dinner happens a few hours later. Then sleep happens. But I must admit, I have to have a bit of a snack of some bananas or a piece of bread or something before the main dinner event (usually before the bathing event) because I just can’t make it from lunch time (1pm) to dinner time (8 or 9pm) without a tasty morsel to satisfy my belly.

From July 16

I'm not as smart as my friend Kendrah, and haven't figured out how to back-date my posts, so you'll just have to bear with me...

Am sitting on my bed in my own private tukle, listening to a little Third Day on my computer, since there is a generator giving us electricity until… well, I have no idea until what time! All I know is that I am not responsible for shutting off the generator J

We got off to a bit of a slow start this morning. We were all ready to leave at the crack of dawn… well, ok, we woke up at the crack of dawn, and were ready to leave at 7am. So we loaded up the landcruiser with all of our luggage, the driver climbed in to start it up… and nothing. Something was wrong with something and the car wouldn’t start! So a bunch of guys got out there and tried to push start it a few times… to no avail.

So they pushed the landcruiser out to the main road, and left me, Jackie and Elizabeth just sitting there at the guesthouse! Eventually, Elizabeth followed the landcruiser out to the main road, leaving me and Jackie. Eventually, I decided to go and load up on water etc. for the day at the corner store at the main road. So that just left Jackie sitting on her little stoop in the guesthouse. Eventually, she also came out to the main road, where we found a nice tea lady to make us some tea with milk.

Of course, you have to be very, very specific in asking for tea in your tea with milk. If you don’t clarify yourself a few times, you’ll end up with milk without tea! It’s not the first time it’s happened to me, even though I’m sure both of us are using the right Arabic words to ask with tea with a bit of milk! But I’ve realized that even Moses often gets his milk without any tea, and has to go back to ask for some tea in the milk! Just another little adventure of living in this country…

Eventually, after a nice cup of hot milk with a bit of tea for breakfast, our truck showed up again. Seems they got the problem fixed, whatever it was. Moses had already given the guys who helped push the car a little “tip”, but of course, once they saw the white girls get into the car, their price for pushing the car skyrocketed! It’s nice to be able to tell people that we have nothing to do with the money for this whole adventure and the car doesn’t belong to us, anyways! But I have to admit, I get frustrated somedays when all people see with my white skin (well, ok, my skin is more pink and blotchy most days!) is a bunch of big dollar signs. Why can’t I just be a normal person?! Anyways, it doesn’t happen all the time, so I shouldn’t complain…

We were just happy to be on our way again! The road was quite something, actually. It’s the major highway, but just wide enough for one landcruiser! On both sides of the dirt track are tall, tall grasses, lots of big trees, and the occasional village. There’s certainly no space for oncoming cars to pass, so you sort of have to negotiate and try to find a little clear place near a tree or something to pull into so the oncoming car or truck can pass!

I really felt like I was in “Africa” today, driving down that road. It was so beautiful – sunny sky, a million shades of green in the trees, grasses and crops surrounding us, women walking down the middle of the road with water on their heads and babies strapped to their backs with colorful swatches of fabric. I know, stereotypical, but that’s exactly what it was today!

There were times when I almost started to feel claustrophobic, though. You really couldn’t see ANYTHING through the grass and foliage! If someone had pushed me into one of those fields of grass, I never would have been able to find my way out again. Somehow, I like to be more out in the wide open spaces, where you can see a little bit of what’s ahead or behind! You could hardly even see the sky in many places, since there were just way too much stuff growing.

One of the things that grows around here are hardwood trees – mahogany and teak, to name a few. They also grow maize and all sorts of vegetables, as well as pineapples (so I’ve been told, but have yet to actually see any with my eyes). The most remarkable thing was that all of the children who were obviously on their way to schoo, with their little UNICEF bags, also carried their hoes for digging in the gardens. All of the schools around here incorporate agriculture into their lessons. They do a bunch of practical work in the school’s gardens, which they then use to feed themselves and the teachers, and at the same time, they learn about agriculture, and science and all that. I think it’s great!

Another thing that is great is the fact that I can go to sleep tonight… so I’m going to do just that. Tomorrow I gotta stay awake during Jackie’s teaching time!

From July 15

Sitting in a little guesthouse in a truck stop, listening to a Nigerian movie playing on the tv across the yard, and praying that I don’t get malaria since there’s not a way to string up a mossy net in my room!

Highlights of the day:

• Section of road where there were more footprints than tire prints! And this is a major “highway” through this country!
• Driver is a tank driver on his holidays from the army! You’d think that might make for a crazy driver, but he’s actually one of the most reasonable, safest drivers I’ve been with in this country. He asked Moses if he wanted him to bring his gun with us (probably a semi-automatic something or other – AK47 or Kalishnokov). Moses declined the offer.
• I was a little frightened when we got picked up from the house, then drove around town, arguing where to buy jerry cans for extra fuel. Don’t think much prep- was done to get the car ready for the drive. But so far, so good. I just pray it stays that way!
• At one pit stop, Elizabeth was too lazy to walk into the bush, so she just squatted behind the Landcruiser, assuming that none of the guys we were travelling with would walk around the car. When there are no toilets or bathrooms for miles around, we have taken to using Moses’ phrase of “pass urine”. Ain’t no dancing around the issue for us. We just tell the driver to stop because we want to “pass urine”!
• There are so few people in this country! You drive for miles and miles and miles, not seeing any villages, any buildings, any animals… and then, suddenly, you’ll come around a corner and see a 10 year old girl with a huge jerry can of water on her head, walking down the road. Where did she come from? Where is she going? Haven’t a clue. But the fact that children can walk down seemingly deserted roads on their own shows that it’s a pretty safe place. On the other hand, the fact that, on a school day, a 10 year old girl is walked down the road carrying 20 litres of water on her head also shows something.
• Why is it that African drivers everywhere listen to reggae? I can’t count the number of road trips I’ve been on on this continent, cruising through the bush to the sounds of Bob Marley and other assorted “wanna-bes”. I must admit, the more bad reggae I have to listen to, the more I appreciate the good old fashioned classic Bob.

Nothing can go wrong-o...

Nothing can go wrong-o, I'm (almost) in the Congo!

Yup, we did indeed leave on Tuesday morning to come to a different town to facilitate our workshop on the "Principles, Practice and Planning for Multilingual Education". How's that for a mouthful?!

We came by road from Jb, which took about a day and a half. 10 hours in the car and we covered less than 200 km! There's a bit of debate about how many kilometers it actually was, but it was probably about 150 - 175 km. 10 hours. Gives you an idea of the state of the road!

But we had a pretty comfortable ride - well, there were three of us squashed in the back seat of a landcruiser (and let's just say that for once, I'm NOT the biggest one who was in the back seat!).

Anyways, we're here. Generator is about to go off, so I'd better post more tomorrow. Just wanted to let you know that I'm here, I'm safe, and we start workshopping tomorrow!

Back home

God showed me these past few weeks that He is absolutely in control of everything in our lives, and that He knows what's best for us, no matter what WE have in mind!

But I had a very wonderful and relaxing holiday in Ethiopia. Didn't turn out anything like I had planned, but that's ok, because I saw God's hand in it all.

I got home yesterday (a few days later than planned), and I leave again (maybe) tomorrow for our next workshop.

Hopefully I'll get some time to post some photos and write a little about my Ethiopian Adventures...

But just wanted to let you know that I'm still here!