Snow in Italy

I haven't blogged much lately because it's been snowing in Italy.

Yes, that's right. I guess we live in a "Global Village" or something (Marshall McLuhan, one of my favorite communications theorists, by the way, was who came up with that term). So anyways, I won't get into the technical details of it (because they're a bit hazy to me anyways!), but when it snow in Italy, I get a flashing orange light on my VSAT modem and I don't get any internet.

But then again, there's not been too much to blog about - I'm just looking forward to going home! I leave in 10 days! Yahoo! But perhaps you might be interested to know what my day was like today...

A few weeks ago, in a meeting with some of the very important people in government, we set up a meeting with a "task force" that was set up to deal with some of the language and education issues in the Ministry of Education here. So this morning was set to be our big inaugural meeting. Jackie and I gathered our bits of paper, my computer on which to take the minutes... and we called up our colleague at the Ministry to confirm the time. Yup, no problem, the meeting was going to happen as scheduled.

Unfortunately, Matt had taken one of the trucks, and Richard needed the other truck to go get some papers stamped at a different Ministry... so we had to beg a ride off of Richard in order to get us to the meeting. We were just like "normal" NGO workers who have a driver to take them everywhere :)

Anyways, we made it to the Ministry only 5 minutes behind schedule.

Unfortunately, only one of our colleagues, Moses, was there. So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. As it turns out, even the guy who was supposed to chair the meeting didn't turn up! So Jackie, me and Moses hashed out a bit of a plan and divided up some of the work amongst ourselves. And I got a Coke to replace the coffee that I didn't have time to finish before running off for the meeting... so the morning wasn't a complete waste of time! But close. I think poor Jackie was so wound up from the frustration of this lack of a meeting that she wanted to walk all the way home - me, being the lazy one, wasn't too keen on carting all our junk through the mid-day sun, even though it's only a couple of kilometers... but I convinced her to wait under a tree with me for our driver/Director of Administration to arrive in the beat up dusty old truck.

The truck, by the way, that's looking so awful that when Richard was locking it in the parking lot this morning, someone called out to him and asked him, "Why are you bothering to lock the doors - no one wants to steal THAT!". I think I need another recreational water-based activity on the weekend... washing the second truck, even though the first one is already dirty again.

Anyways, after a delicious lunch of beans and rice and bananas, Richard and I jumped in the relatively clean truck and went off to town. We had to go get yet another letter stamped in a different Ministry, which was surprisingly quick and easy! As I was waiting for Richard to talk with the man with the stamp in the office with the fabric walls, I noticed a lovely poster about how people should plant trees. And the most amazing and surprising thing is that it was written in both English AND the local dialect of Arabic! That's one of the first posters I've seen written in local Arabic, as it's not normally a written language. But of course, as a literacy specialist, I always like to see things written in a language that people actually know. There are SO many posters and health brochures etc written here in English - a language that only a very small proportion of the elite are literate in! Silly NGOs just keep publishing all their community development materials in English. Sigh... I could go on. But anyways, I was delighted to see this poster printed using the local language.

After our little trip to the Ministry, I went to do some shopping at a little cottage industry shop. There is a group of women who have joined together to make a certain product from local resources, and they sell it here in town now. I've also seen it in some fancy shops in Nairobi, and apparently they're going to start selling it in the US soon. I don't want to give away the secret, as I did quite a bit of my Christmas shopping there :) But it's good stuff, I tell you. You'll like it, I'm sure. It's so much fun going anywhere with Richard, too, because he just loves people - he loves to laugh and make people laugh. A real charmer, that one... but in a good way. So now I'm good friends with the woman who runs the shop, and she will call me when she has a certain product in stock next week, which she didn't have today. Considering how much money I spent there today... I hope she will give me a phone call next week (by the way, I didn't spend all of my own money - I was shopping on behalf of a friend from here who just moved back to Canada, too!).

But of course, no outing with Richard would be complete without a trip to the hardware store! This time we were looking for some chain for Matt to put up some trusses for the new steel tukel that he's building. Yes, tukels are usually made from wood and grass. For some reason, ours is being made from steel. Anyways, he wanted some small chain - 12 meters to be exact. But the price for the chain was going to be over $200.00 US. So we went away without the chain - I had already spent all my money on Christmas presents - besides the bit that I spent wasn't going to even make a dent in $200! Maybe they'll use a rope instead... But stink, I forgot to get the rat glue to finally catch that rat that keeps peeing in my office drawer... I guess tomorrow is another day...

Oh dear me... time goes too quickly. My laptop battery is about to die. I kinda lost track of time tonight, since I didn't actually have to turn off the generator tonight! Yup, for the first time here, I didn't have to go out of my house at 10:30pm to turn off the generator. Richard taught the guards how to switch on and off the generator yesterday, so I'm completely off duty now! Yahoo! What a difference this is going to make... though I'm still staying up way too late tonight...