Addicted

I'm completely addicted to the colours and patterns of the fabric here! I just can't help myself anymore. Jackie and I took ourselves to the market on Saturday afternoon to get the weekly allotment of tomatoes, pineapples, eggs, onions, bananas and limes. And of course, we had to walk down the fabric "aisle". And my addiction proved to be too strong - I just couldn't leave without buying something. In fact, I ended up with two somethings. That new shirt I got made for my birthday is just too amazing - as my fashion-conscious housemate said, it's not at all frumpy, but yet still loose enough to let the air blow through. So I'm all about having another one made! Of course, I've also realized that most of my skirts are patterned, so I don't actually have anything except trousers to wear with my new shirts (and I just don't like wearing trousers on "work" days - skirts are still considered much more appropriate office attire here, even if you wear a skirt with a t-shirt, you're dressed "properly" for the office). So, I had to procure a bit of plain fabric to get a new skirt made up to wear with my new non-frumpy tops.

I'm planning to take it all to the tailor tomorrow or Tuesday and see how he works his magic with it :)

It's funny, because fabric is just about the only thing that's cheaper here than anywhere else in East Africa (maybe it's cheaper in Tanzania, which is where a lot of this stuff comes from in the first place). So as far as addictions go, I guess fabric isn't such a bad one...

And hey, you never know when I'm going to be on TV again, so I gotta put my best foot forward at all times :)

I'm home again...

Yup, safe and sound back in Jb. Zane doesn't look too happy to see me, but I know he's just playing his "I'm too cool to show you how much I missed you" thing. Really, deep down in side, he wants to jump all over me, wag his little tail and lick my face... or have I just been spending too much time with Grace's dogs?

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

I actually had a new, and very exciting experience once we got home. Jackie had arranged with one of our friends here to go walking at the big UN compound. We've never gone before, but I can't believe what I've been missing out on all these years here! It's a HUGE compound, and there's a nice dirt road that you can walk or run on, and it goes on and on and on. And the only people there are UN and other expats who are there for the same purpose. There are playing fields, so people play football and rugby, and there are even tennis courts - but you have to be sorta part of a battalion to use those. Anyways, I felt so safe walking in there, and no children (or adults!) were hollering at us as we walked. Everyone was just there to get some exercize. I didn't have to jump over puddles of sewage, nor dodge the burning piles of trash. I could just walk on a smooth gravel road with my buddies, smiling and waving to others as we walked past. So nice. I could almost get in the habit of this whole exercise thing, if it's going to be like this!

OK, now I'm going to go and shower all that sweat off and finish unpacking...

And maybe tomorrow post some more photos of my trip to the zoo in Entebbe!

So busy!

I came to the office again this morning with Grace so I could poke around on the Internet. Now it's almost time to go home, and I've been so busy doing other stuff that I hardly have any time left to blog! What have I been busy with? Well, I've been catching up on my blog reading (I still can't get enough of Stuff Christians Like and I've been trying my darndest to finish my taxes online. I've run into a bit of a snag on that one and sent an SOS email to my faithful financial advisor (aka "Dad") to see what can be done!). I also read some notes, looked at a bunch of photos, and even uploaded some photos on facebook, until I got an "error" message telling me that my account is temporarily unavailable. Since then, I've been catching up on the news and current events. Amazing how my idea of "vacation" includes half a day of uninterrupted internet time! Not sure what that says about me yet...

Anyways, on to perhaps more interesting things...

We spent the day in Kampala yesterday. Little Ella came into my room and woke me up SO early (like, before 7am!) because we had to get ourselves out the door and to an appointment that Grace and Ella had to get some adoption paper-work sorted out. You never know what the traffic's gonna be like, so we had to give ourselves lots of time. As it turns out, traffic was great.

On the way, I got to amaze Grace with my directional-prowress. Over two years ago, I had visited the Babies' home where Ella used to live with Grace in Kampala. We went there once, and at the time, I was on the back of a boda. I've not been in that part of Kampala since that day. And I recognized the corner and street :) I tell you, I was made to live in the city!

We arrived over an hour early for the appointment, so we just sat in the car for a bit in front of the office. Turns out, the man they were supposed to meet got to the office a bit early, and came and got us out from the car to get the business figured out. And it was quick! Even though Grace had told me their appointment would take 5 minutes, I had brought my book with me, not believing that any sort of bureaucratic office appointment on this continent would only take 5 minutes. I must say, I was completely surprised - this guy was so helpful and nice and wonderful and there weren't a gizillion people sitting around the office that you had to get past in order to see the "big guy". Truly amazing. It took 5 minutes, and most of that was the "good morning, how are you?" thing!

Then we were free - we had the whole day to SHOP! We started out in a fancy coffee shop, where Ella and Grace pigged out on huge chocolate donuts (not quite as good as Tim Hortons, but not bad considering where we are!):


Me, I had a chocolate croissant and a latte. Mmmmm.... so good.

Then it was off to "Game", which is the South African version of Wal-Mart. It was the most amazing place. You can buy everything from the latest dvds and computer equipment to swimming caps to diapers to stationary to hard ware and plastic storage containers. And you can push your little cart full around the huge store, wandering from aisle to aisle!

We loaded up there - Grace was very excited about the dog food she bought there and talked of little else all morning. We also went to the grocery store next door and I got a few little luxury bits like Pringles and Chedder cheese!

Next it was off to Garden City, a real "mall"! I dragged poor Grace all over the mall. Ella seemed happy enough, but Grace isn't much of a shopper. And I was looking all over for fridge magnets and a few other bits and pieces that I had on my list. Grace perked up a bit when we found this miniature motorbike for Ella to ride in the book store, which is also where I found the most perfect magnets (I want to be able to stick stuff to the side of the filing cabinet which sits next to my desk in the office).
Don't ask me why there was a mini motorbike in a book/stationary shop. But anyways, it kept Grace entertained while I got to wander around and smell the books.
Next, it was off to Spurs for lunch! Wow, what a place. First of all, it has these amazing trampoline cages (the cage is made from a nice soft net to keep the jumpers contained!) for kids to jump in while their parents stuff their bellies with American style food!
We started out with this:

Real nachos with tortilla chips, guacamole, lettuce, and tons of melted cheese! So yummy.
Then I had a steak that tastes just like one from home! It was so tender, I could have cut it with a butter knife, and cooked to perfection. Man, it was a good steak, and there was enough for me to take the leftovers home and have a full steak meal for dinner, too! And, let me not harp on the point, but for a fraction of the cost of what it would have cost me back in J.!

Once we were all stuffed, we got back in the car, got on the highway and drove back to Entebbe.



These roads are so unlike our roads back in J.! It was amazing.

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening fixing Ella's hair. The night before we had taken her braids out, and this was the result:

It looked much better once Grace washed it and put a little headband on it for our trip to Kampala yesterday, but Grace was anxious to try a new hairstyle on the little tyke. So we watched movies and Grace braided hair! It's the ultimate African woman's pasttime! But I don't have a photo yet of the new hairstyle... I'm sure that's still to come.

Today, we're off to Ella's ballet lessons, and tomorrow we're going to head to the zoo! I think I'll head home on Friday afternoon, instead of tomorrow morning, as I've been originally booked... I called the airline yesterday to make sure that would be ok, but they never actually took my name down, so I should probably call them again to give them my name and confirm that it's ok :)

A little holiday

My little holiday got off to a bit of a rocky start in that when I arrived at the airport, there were no personnel at all from the airline that I was supposed to be flying on at the airport! So no one to check in with. Thankfully, I happened to have the number for the airline and the phone network actually worked, so I called the airline office to see what was going on. Seems the woman I bought the ticket from didn't know what time the flight actually left, so I arrived at the airport a good 5 hours too early!

So back I went to the office and got in a few more hours of work before it was time to head back to the airport again!

I managed to check in and get my passport stamped with absolutely no problems. I even saw a couple of friends in the airport to chat with as I waited for the plane to leave. We left only 15 minutes late, and arrived safely in Entebbe, Uganda. Grace had to leave her little birthday BBQ to get me, but that turned out to be ok, as well.

Anyways, it was nice to arrive and right away be fed, get this, Teriyaki steak and roasted potatoes from Grace's BBQ! Mmmmm, it was an amazing meal, shared with some old friends and new ones, as well.

We had a little pajama party with Grace and Ella's neighbors - who happen to be a family with a whole flock of little girls! I did bow out of part of the movie to take a long hot shower. Mmmmm, it felt SO amazing to be clean again! I was just sitting there and admiring how clean my fingernails were (and still are!).

The next morning, we all woke up and Ella, who is going to grow up to be a masseuse, I think, slathered me and Grace's feet in lotion and gave us lovely little foot massages! I think even little Ella's four year old hands were shocked at how rough my poor little feet have become during my sojourn in Jb! After the foot massage, little Ella wanted to do my hair so we could have matching pig-tails:

Then we were off to the market in Entebbe town, where we loaded up on a serious amount of fresh fruits and veg for a fraction of the cost of the same stuff in Jb. It was amazing to see all the nice things for so cheap! I wanted to buy so much, just because it was so cheap! Honestly, it really was a fraction of the cost. I didn't get any photos of the market - I always feel a bit like a tourist when I take out my camera in the middle of a market - but I did get a photo of the shops next to the market once we got back to the car:

Isn't it lovely? So green! Pavement! No trash anywhere! Amazing. Maybe this sign is one of the reasons why the "cleanness" is so lovely:

We also hit "John's Shop", which has so many wonderful things, including real Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, yogurt, muesli cereal, bacon, shampoo, toothpaste, bug spray, pringles, Coke, ice cream... mmmm... anything you could every want can be found at John's Shop - all piled high, packed up in this tiny little shop! It's so fun to shop again!

By then, it was time to go home and have a little rest before the next adventure of the day. Unfortunately, I was feeling a bit bad - a serious flu was coming on, I thought. I ran over to the pharmacy and got some cold and flu stuff, which brought down the fever that was coming on and unstuffed my head a bit. Anyways, since it was Ella's naptime, I also crashed on the couch for a few hours. Upon awakening, I stuffed myself with avocado salad, and we were off to the pool for the next few hours!

Ella is an amazing little swimmer for a 4 year old who's never had lessons! Here she is about to fling herself into the pool with Mama Grace waiting to retrieve her. Ella has a bit of a "crash and splash" approach to swimming. But she sure doesn't mind getting her face wet, and she seems to always come up for air when she needs to! Here's the superstar swimmer:

Ella totally outlasted us in the pool. I actually got COLD in the pool- goosebumps and all. Considering it was probably only about 28 or 28C outside, it was really cold in the water! Brrr. But I lasted for a few hours, anyways. Once I got out, I just snuggled in my towel (provided by the hotel!) in our little tent:

It was a lovely afternoon. And it only cost $3.50 per adult to swim here, including the towel, the tent, and a hot shower to rinse the chlorine off. I tell you, I can't get enough of these hot showers...

We then went out to a little restaurant at the golf club (yes, that's right, there's a golf club here!), and feasted on chicken and chips for only $3! Amazing how cheap things are here. Went home, watched a dvd at Grace's house, and went to bed, snuggled under a blanket!

On Sunday, I went with Grace and Ella to their Pentecostal church, which was a good service, though I didn't understand most of the sermon :( It was in English, but it's such a different English here, and most of the funniest jokes were made in the local language, Luganda :( Anyways, the music was good, and it was refreshingly cool in the church itself - I almost wished I'd worn a sweater! Since I didn't really follow the sermon, I must admit I spent a bit of time during the service admiring how clean my fingernails still were, even though I'd had my shower some 4 hours before!

After church, it was back to John's shop to get a few more bits that I didn't think to buy the day before. Then we went back home for yet another birthday party - this time for one of the neighbor's girls! After lunch and birthday cake with strawberry topping, we had our Sunday afternoon naps, played on the swings, and by then, it was time to eat dinner again - this time, I made some bacon sandwiches. Mmmm... bacon.

Today I'm hanging out in Grace's office with her so I can use the internet. I've had a bit of withdrawl, as I haven't even opened my computer since Friday afternoon! So it's good to be able to catch up a little online!

Since Grace only works until 2pm, we're going to eat our lunch here, go home and pick up Ella, and either go swimming (if it seems warm enough!) or go to the zoo. Tomorrow we'll head into the big city of Kampala to do some serious shopping, eat at a nice restaurant, and do some official paperwork for Ella's passport.

So far, it's been a lovely holiday, and I think my cold/flu thing is already passing... I think sleeping in the cool, under a real blanket is helping! It's just so refreshing and wonderful to be clean, to drive on paved roads all the time, to eat what I want to eat, to do everything without breaking a sweat (especially now that I don't have a temperature from that short little cold that hit me!), and to just enjoy the green grass, the flowers, the lake... it's really lovely!

Leaving on a jet plane

I'm off to Entebbe, Uganda tomorrow, to spend a few days with my buddy Grace and her daughter, Ella. I'm sure I'll have lots of adventures to tell you about - but maybe not so many blogs, as I'll have to tag along with Grace to the office in order to use the Internet! I'm sure I'll have a restful time - I'm really looking forward to eating some avocados and passion fruits, walking along the shores of Lake Victoria in the Botanical Gardens and visiting the zoo. I'll try to keep ya'll updated on my resting and relaxation - a much needed break from the heat and dust of this place. But more importantly, it's the last chance I'll have to spend some time with Grace and Ella before they head to the US. I'm sure we'll have a great time together!

Before I sleep, I just wanted to tell you about something funny I saw yesterday in town. When Grace and I first went to Yay, we took a new, fairly posh bus that was newly instated. It was a full size bus, kinda like a Greyhound at home. Well, apparently, this bus is no longer in service for passengers! They have taken the whole top and back off, sealed up the windows with metal panels and are now using it for a garbage truck! There was a whole crew of guys in bright orange overalls running around behind this giant bus full of garbage! A little different than being a passenger bus service, I'd say.

But it did remind me a bit of my sister's family old van named "Alberta", which they had when they lived in the States. After we rolled it, it got a whole new life with out it's top, too!

Anyways, it's time to drink my half-liter of water before I go to sleep (to prevent that inevitable night-time dehydration). I'm not looking forward to Entebbe tomorrow - whenever I go anywhere else, I tend to keep drinking almost as much as I do here, but I don't sweat nearly as much, so I just end up peeing and peeing and peeing :( But you probably didn't need to know that...

My day...

I had a really good quote to blog today - I was composing this post as I sat in a very long meeting today... but now I've completely forgotten it :( But believe me, it was going to be a very good post. Alas. Maybe it will come to me as I sleep tonight, and I can blog it tomorrow. So, I'm afraid I might have a rather boring post tonight...

Jackie and I trucked off to the Ministry of Ed this morning for a 10am meeting. The meeting was supposed to be 10am-noon. Now I hate being late for meetings. Really hate it. Even though I know that meetings always start late. But sometimes, you get surprised by meetings starting on time, and then I just find it so rude to walk in late. So I end up showing up for meetings early all the time - just me and the other few early comers sitting together in the room. But I quite like those times, too, because it's a good chance sometimes to talk with the others before the meetings begin. Sometimes I wish I had brought a book with me, but at least there are always people on the other end of a text message, too :)

Anyways, the meeting was quite good - I didn't get bored. If nothing else, it's always entertaining to watch people's reactions when someone's cell phone rings during a meeting. At the opening of the meeting, the chair specifically asked for people to turn their phones off or put them to silent. Apparently, not everyone took his request to heart, because there were phones going off all over the place for the next few hours. When the phone first rings, it's quite funny to look around at the faces of everyone, as they start to listen to make sure it's not THEIR phone ringing.

Then, when the culprit finally reaches into his pocket or her purse to try to find the phone to turn it off, it's quite fascinating to watch the looks that they get from their fellow meeting members. Sometimes the comments and looks from the on-lookers are more disturbing than the phone ringing was in the first place!

But I did spend some time listening to what was going on in the meeting. It was a meeting of the "partners" (eg, the NGOs who are working in the education sector) to coordinate the work with the government. Most of it was interesting and useful stuff, at least it was nice to have some info shared from the gov't side of things, but some of it got a bit long. As usual, we were served a bottle of water and soda each. So by the time it got to about 12:45 and people were reporting on how many latrine stalls they had built in various schools in various counties... man, I was really wishing someone had built a latrine in that boardroom!

Anyways, the meeting finally concluded at about 1:30, with closing remarks made by His Excellency the Minister of Education, in which he promoted the use of the mother tongue in education. In fact, he went so far as to tell the other organizations that they should give our organization some money so we could do more language development work! But by that time, my eyeballs were floating a bit... As soon as the meeting was out, I went in search of a loo - but they were all locked! So we rushed off to a nearby restaurant with a couple of other "partners" to have lunch, and, more importantly, to use the loo!

Jackie and I had a bit of a cross-cultural communication hiccup then. Apparently, for the Brits, it's quite acceptable to announce to everyone around that you need to run off to quickly use the "toilet". In my mind, that's a bit on the forward side - yes, sure, if you're talking to a bunch of people that you know very well - you just come right out and say, "I'm in a hurry because I really have to pee!". But you don't tell colleagues that you hardly know in the government offices that you're "rushing off because you have to use the toilet"! Is that just me, or is that a cultural thing?

Anyways, we had a quick lunch, then came back to the office where we found two lovely old gentlemen sitting in our office. One of them had written a book in his language, and he was wondering if we could help him print it. Unfortunately, we don't have the facilities to print books here, but we sure did get an earful about his language and the customs of his people, which is what his book was all about.

At first, I was sorta feeling like, Ok, my friend, I've got work to do... but then, as he was talking, I started thinking, man, what an opportunity to get to sit here and hear about a new culture from one of the elders of the community! So I switched my mind-set and just enjoyed listening to him and enjoyed his quirky characteristics. He had this great walking stick with an ivory handle, which he kept shaking at Jackie (in a grandfatherly sort of way!), shiny shoes and a suit and tie! And I had a little moment where I thought about how much I really do love my job!

But now I have a lot of work to do in that job tomorrow... so I'd better get to sleep...

How random?

So I just took a facebook quiz on "Where should you live". A lot of my friends are all coming up with the fact that they should be living in Africa. Me, I should be living in Japan, of all places!

Japan

You belong in Japan, a country that is becoming more and more important, and you want to be a part of it. You love being in busy places and you have a great interest in strange languages. You love the culture, whether that may be the ancient culture or the present culture, things like anime and manga, if its Japanese, you love it. You don't mind crowdy places and you are very interest in the customs of other people and you can easily adapt.

Yeah, 'cause I'm such an anime and manga fan... not! But I do agree that I have a great interest in strange languages. Though I wouldn't try telling anyone in Japan that they have a strange language!

Birthday Weekend!

Yup, it was a hootin' hollerin' birthday weekend! (by the way, I'm writing this to the soundtrack of an East African band covering Kenny Roger's hits at the cultural center auditorium a block away! Just to set the scene a bit...)

Started out on Friday morning when my colleague here baked me a cake, which we shared at tea time with all the translators here. It was good fun - they even sang me happy birthday.

Then, I actually had a night at home alone on Friday night, in which I indulged in back-to-back episodes of the West Wing (I'm only on Season 2, so don't tell me anything that will give anything away!).

On Saturday morning, I had a little adventure - I drove out to a colleagues home to help him bring some old iron sheets to his house near the mountain. It was quite an adventure bouncing over the roads, and snaking our way through the tukels and up and down the little ravines. Good thing it's dry season - I don't think I'll be able to drive to his place during the rains. Once we were there, one of the daughters was sent to the corner store to buy me a soda (it's just normal practice to offer any visitor a bottle of soda when they arrive, and you can't refuse!). While Kabas unloaded the truck, I got to sit on a chair in the shade and cuddle his little baby!
How cute is this baby?! Her sister was pretty cute, too. And the sister was even more fun because I could actually talk to her - she's four, so her Arabic is much better than mine, but we had a little conversation about the goats that were trying to eat their tomatoes. That little girl has a pretty powerful rock throwing arm when it comes to protecting her tomatoes from the goats!

After delivering the sheets, Kabas and I went to a meeting with the elders and pastors in his church. They are interested in starting literacy classes in the church, so I went along to see how we could help them. We've had in our plan for a while to help them do some teacher training and get them some books to use. It was a bit intimidating - me sitting in the church in a circle with 10 elders and pastors from this particular language community. They all spoke in their language, and it was translated for me, and everything I said was translated for them. It was great, because everyone had to have their say, even if they were saying the same thing! I'm getting the hang of the "patter" that you have to do here - there's a lot of flowery words you have to say to people in those situations before you just come right out and make your point. but it turned out to be a really good meeting, and everyone was keen on starting with some teacher training, and they're going to start to find some teachers. And we're going to get ourselves some classes started :) I'm really looking forward to this whole thing.

Once that meeting was over, I got back to the compound, where one of my colleagues from the Ministry of Education was waiting for me - he needed some help on his computer. Unfortunately, I was already a bit late for my birthday lunch, so I just took his computer, stowed it in my room for later, and drove off for my birthday lunch with Annamarie. Annamrie treated me to a lovely t-bone steak dinner! It was really good meat - actually chewable, which is saying a lot!

After our lunch, we were off to... get this... a swimming pool! Of course, the president was also on the move at the same time, which meant we were trapped in the neighborhood for a little while, and ended up driving around in circles for a while trying to get onto the main road, which was all closed up!

But we eventually made it. Annamarie has some friends who are staying at a lovely lodge/hotel a little ways out of the city center, and they have a lovely pool there! And it's not busy at all, because it's basically just for the guests who stay there. So for the first little while, we pretty much had the pool all to ourselves! It was so relaxing to just float around in the cool water, to sit under the shade and read a book... ah... so nice. And my feet finally got clean, too :)

After cooling off in the pool, it was time to come home and get ready for my little birthday shindig. Annamarie made some lovely food, Kristina brought a yummy cake, and we all drank more apple juice than I've ever seen drunk at an adult birthday party!

But the highlight of the evening was my "Happy Birthday" bagpipes! Dear Peter brought his pipes, and after a rendition of Happy Birthday, played some dance tunes, which we clumsily danced to for a few minutes. Our resident Scot came in a bit late, so didn't have much of a chance to teach us enough to redeem our pathetic attempts at highland dancing... but it was definitely enjoyable!

Procrastination

Yes, I procrastinated doing my blogging last night. And I even procrastinated doing my washing. So when the city electricity went off at about 10:40pm, I was caught off guard!

So, I won't go into all the details, but to make a long story short, that which I wanted to blog last night, didn't get blogged because by the time I actually got to sit down to blog, the batteries had died on our Internet. Ooops. So I read my book instead :)

Anyways, I was going to blog about my headache prevention actions yesterday. I've been getting killer headaches every afternoon for the past several days. Does it have something to do with the heat? Probably, I'm thinking. Since the headache usually starts around 4pm, when I've been sitting in my 41C, 42C office for a couple of hours after lunch. And then it usually goes away once I cool down in the evenings (after my cold shower at about 10:30pm).

I also realized that I really haven't been drinking all that much water in the afternoons - I just sorta forget to get out from behind my desk and go and find anything to drink. So yesterday, I remembered the thermos that we've got stashed in the back of the cupboard, and I dug it out at lunch-time. After cleaning the rat footprints off the top (who knew rats could have such cute little footprints?!), I filled it up with ice and water, and trotted back to my office, clutching my prize, hoping to stave off the afternoon headache.

And lo and behold, it almost worked! I only had a minor headache by the end of the afternoon, rather than a terrible headache! I tried the same tactic today, and got away without any headache at all... though today was quite a bit cooler, thanks to the nice cloud cover. In fact, it's only 29C at 11pm tonight! So much cooler.

On a more work-related note, I felt rather relieved today because, with input from a few of my computer geeks scattered around the world, I figured out how to save a dictionary that I thought had been lost from one of the computers here. It would have been a few months of someone's work, and I simply could not figure out how to get back what I thought was lost. One of my colleagues here is a bit "click-happy", clicking through any dialogue box he feels like clicking and doing all sorts of weird and wonderful things on the computer that I can never seem to undo. And he never remembers what he clicked because he doesn't pay much attention to it when he clicks things! I've now made him promise to count to 10 before he clicks any "OK"s.

Anyhow, I'm glad he didn't lose his work, but it took me several hours of fiddling around with things and skyping and emailing to try to figure out how to get his dictionary back! On the bright side, I've also learned a bit more about how this particular dictionary making software works. Not intuitively, that's for sure! But it was satisfying to see if all back to how it should be and to understand a bit more about how the program works so I can help a bit more efficiently next time someone has a problem with it... unless the Lord miraculously sends us a resident computer geek before anyone has any more problems :)

I wish I had something interesting to blog...

But I think my brain needs some refrigeration, as well. Honestly, I could feel my brain liquidizing today, and now that it's slightly cooler, the re-gelling of the grey matter is giving me quite the headache.

On a high note, though, I had some lovely Eritrean food this evening. My buddies at the "Basilico" restaurant always give us a warm welcome and a good price on the food! And on the way, I get to wave at the Eritreans who have opened a little beverage shop on our street. I'm turning into such an African, I tell you. I have to wave and holler out greetings out the window, or even stop and shake hands with the neighbors every time I go past now! But it's fun to know people in the neighborhood, even if they are "transplants" from a different country!

Since it was so sticky and sweaty and hot last night, I didn't sleep very well. So I'm going to attempt to go to bed early tonight - perhaps, just perhaps, I can be asleep before the generator goes off and the fans turn off... Last night was miserable, man. Just miserable. Pray that the rainy season comes soon!

Things that need refrigeration

It's been hot. And I mean hot. In the house the temps are normally in the low 40s (that would be celcius degrees) during the day. That's hot, yeah?

So I've been discovering a few things that need some extra refrigeration around here.

1. We have margarine which normally lives on the counter - if you put it in the fridge, it turns into a really hard block. Normally, it stays just about the right margarine type consistency if you leave it on the counter. But when it gets to be in the 40s... I needed some melted margarine for a quiche that I was making the other day. Of course, we don't have a microwave here, either, so I was starting to get the saucepan out to melt the margarine in... fortunately for me, when I opened the margarine container, it was pre-melted! No saucepan necessary! I just poured the melted margarine into my eggs and saved myself the effort of washing up an extra pan :)
2. After my second of three showers today, I went to put on some deodorant (a very important post-shower step when you sweat as much as I do!), but found that it, too, had melted. So I ended up with a bit of a sticky mess on my armit and my foot (since it sorta dripped... but I'll spare you the details!).
3. Hand lotion. Yup, my shea butter hand lotion completely turns to liquid when it sits on my bed-side table. So that, too, is now living in the fridge.
4. Zane. I opened the fridge to get out some water for a drink (I can't keep up with how much water I have to drink when it's this hot... just a second, let me take a few gulps of water) and Zane jumped right into the fridge! Smart cat, he knows where to go to stay cool! I just wish I also fit inside the fridge... though it won't do much good tonight, as the electricity is off again. And it's still in the mid-30s in the house at 11:15pm.
But let me not complain about the weather - though as a Canadian, it's sorta ingrained in me to talk about the weather - whether it's too hot or too cold, we can always talk about the weather!

... But it wasn't quiet in our house!

All is quiet in town, but this evening we had some friends over for dinner and Jb Ultimate Dutch Blitz :) Because we had some newbies with us, we started with a few rounds of "regular" Blitzing. Then, after some tea and pineapple crumble with custard, it was time to turn up the volume a bit and get down to the Jb Ultimate Blitz rules! Phew, it was exhausting, but so much fun, all the same. It's good to be tired out from laughing and playing with old friends and new ones, too.

But man, even at 10:30pm, a girl can work up a sweat playing Dutch Blitz in this town :( But at least I feel like I've had some exercize... and really, if you saw the way we've, um, well, modified the rules a bit, you'd realize just how much exercize it really is! So on that note, I'd better catch up on my sleep...

All is quiet

So far, so good in this part of the country. No worries here. All is good. But continue to pray, please, especially for those in the other parts of this country where things are a bit more tense.

Feels like a Holiday.

We were advised by the UN and the NGO security folks to send our "non-essential" personnel back to the homes before the big announcement at 4pm today. So they all went home, leaving the five of us who live on the compound all alone on the compound. It was really eerily quiet. There were no cars moving on the streets, no children playing in the empty field across from us, not even a goat baa-ing. There wasn't even any Celine to break the silence.

Everyone was glued to their radios and TVs to see what was going to happen. Me and Jackie even got some cold Cokes with ice and tuned into whatever English station we could find on the radio!

And lo and behold, an announcement was made - one that wasn't surprising, but significant all the same. A couple of hours after the announcement was made, we started hearing bits of life coming back to the neighborhood, but it's definitely still very quiet tonight. I think people are still not quite sure what the official announcement means for this country. I'm certainly not sure what this announcement means for this country!

I have a feeling it will be "business as usual" tomorrow down here in this part of the country. And hopefully things will remain calm in the other parts, too. BUt only time will really tell.

In the meantime, it really does feel like a holiday - so quiet and peaceful! So I'm not complaining about that!

A day in the life...

Nothing really out of the ordinary happened today, I don't think. At least, it didn't seem out of the ordinary, but perhaps I'll describe some of the happenings so you can let me know if it's "normal" or not!

I think I'm getting a bit of a cold, so I slept in a little this morning and didn't get out of bed until 8:30am! Since I have a pretty short commute to the office, it meant I could still have a shower and make it to the office by just after 9am! Of course, it was a little cooler last night, and was only 26C when I woke up... so way too cold to have a cold shower. So I heated up the water in the kettle (amazing to have electricity first thing in the morning still!), and had a little bucket bath with the warm water.

Then I made myself a piece of bread with peanut butter and jam (mmm... imported raspberry jam!), and trotted off to the office. Once there, I did a bit of work before jumping in our Toyota Hilux to pick up someone from his office to meet another guy at his office for our meeting. Of course, they're starting to do some road work on our road, so we had to take the long and winding road through the neighborhood to get to the main paved road. Having one paved road in town makes it pretty easy to give directions (we don't actually have street names or addresses here). You just have to tell people where something is in relation to the tarmac road. Once you get off the tarmac, well, it becomes a bit more complicated. But that's another post...

Anyways, we found the guy at the one Ministry of Education office, and drove off to the main Ministry of Education office, where we had to call our colleague there to find him, as he wasn't actually in his office. Once we called him up and he appeared, the girl with the cold bottled water and cold sodas appeared. So we downed the bottles of water and soda while meeting together about the implementation guidelines for the language and education policy of this country. Once we finished the meeting, we took the one guy back to his office, and then we continued into the "downtown" so Jackie could pay for her plane ticket to Uganda for next week. She's going on a little holiday!

Since we had a little lunch date planned with some education sector folks from UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees), and we had a few minutes before the appointed time, we decided it wasn't worth driving all the way back to the office for 15 minutes, so we went to the posh grocery store downtown. What an amazing place it is - we don't go very often, but it constantly amazes me the sorts of things you can find there and how expensive they are! You can even buy shampoo and badminton racquets here now!

But, we did splurge $3.50 on a loaf of, get this, whole wheat bread! Amazing. The fact that you can now buy an actual loaf of brown bread in this city is truly revolutionary. Ok, it's $3.50 for a loaf. But honestly, for something that has real bits of grains in it, it's so worth it!

By the time we paid for our bread and got out of the shop, it was time to hit the road again to get to one of our favourite restaurants for lunch. It's owned by Eritreans, so I get to go and dredge up some of the Tigrinya I know, which always gets me a good discount on my food :) I really like our little restaurant here, and even without my discount, the prices are very reasonable. And it's just so much fun to be greeted so warmly by the folks in the restaurant. Of course, they have to play a little Celine while I'm enjoying my food... wouldn't be the same without Celine :)

Following lunch, it was time to get back to the office and get some work done! I had a meeting with our literacy "department" (that would be me, Jackie and Peter!), I answered a bunch of emails that piled up last week, and planned for a meeting that I'll have with one of the language teams tomorrow morning. I also worked on a report of the workshop that I facilitated last week.

Around 5pm Jackie and I headed out to the market to get some provisions for the week. We figured it probably wouldn't be a bad thing to have a bit of food on hand in the house, in case we can't get out for the next couple of days. Without revealing too much about my secret location, there is a situation on the International stage which has the potential to affect us over here. Everyone is sort of holding their breath to see what is going to happen tomorrow, but it probably won't affect us much down in this part of the country. But still, it would be good for ya'll to pray for peace for this country, especially tomorrow.

We got what we needed in the market - dried beans, bananas, tomatoes, onions, pineapple, eggs, green pepper, eggplant, milk powder, dish washing soap and tea. There weren't too many other options in terms of fruit or veg, as usual. But it will be enough to get us through a few days, and we're getting a bit more creative these days with the bits that are available!

So that was basically my day - normal or not? Seemed pretty normal to me, but I'll let you be the judge of that!

I'm home and not going anywhere... for a week or two, at least :)

Yup, I made it home from Y. Had a lovely trip back - actually, the trip went so fast! The organization that I was facilitating the workshop for had arranged for a van to bring all the participants from Jb back to Jb yesterday. So I hopped in the van/mini bus with them. It was a much more pleasant trip on the way back than it was on the way there, for some reason!

Well, for one, there weren't nearly as many people in the bus - it's a 15 seater, but we only had 12 people in it - the back three seats were holding all of our luggage. On the way there, we had, well, a few more than that! It was also great because the driver kept having to stop to pee - so I felt free to keep drinking water since I knew we'd stop every hour to stretch and pee, if necessary. So I didn't get dehydrated. And I was with all the participants from the workshop, so I wasn't worried about any of my stuff, or have people talking about me or asking me strange questions or trying to get too friendly with me. It was just so relaxing! Plus, we didn't have to stop to wait for any de-minders, and though he was still driving very safely, the driver was driving faster and we made much better time than we did on the way there. So instead of the 7 - 8 hours that our journey out there took, it only took us 4.5 hours to get to Jb. And that included a stop at the police check point before entering the city.

The police stopped us and asked everyone to get out of the bus, since they wanted to check all of our luggage to see how many guns we were carrying. They started taking out some of our suitcases while everyone was still climbing out of the bus. One of the last people to get out of the bus was one of the priests who was traveling with us. He didn't wear a "collar" or a cross or anything all week - just wore "normal" clothes - but that day, he decked himself out in his clergy gear. And when we got to the police checkpoint, I realized why. As soon as he stepped out of the bus, the police took one look at him, and started putting the suitcases back into the van. The participants explained that we were returning from a church sponsored workshop, so we obviously wouldn't be carrying any weapons with us. It really is amazing how much respect the clergy collar will get you here. In fact, I've heard stories of how busloads of people have avoided certain disaster because of the presence of nuns in their habits in the buses. Even the soldiers with their big guns respect men and women "of the cloth" here.

Once we made it back to Jb, the driver of the bus drove within a few blocks of our compound, on the main road. So rather than have someone drive across town to where the bus was planning to stop, I had the driver stop by the side of the road and I jumped out with my bags to walk the final few blocks home.

The fact that I was first of all taking the bus with the participants and not taking an air conditioned Land Cruiser or flying back to Jb made quite the impression on the participants, and then the fact that I picked up my bag and walked a few blocks to my home instead of being picked up in an air conditioned Land Cruiser, made quite the impression on these guys from the course. Sometimes they have odd notions about white people and our "prestige". Actually, status is a big thing here, so if you're anyone "important", you would never stoop to driving cross-country in a van, drinking water from a bore hole (it must be imported water from a plastic bottle!), or walking a couple of blocks with your bag. And so it's quite a big deal to have had the opportunity to show an example of the white foreign teacher who can join them in the van, drink rain water or water from a bore hole, and walk through the dust home, carrying her own bag! So I'm actually really glad that the Lord worked all of that out, too. And in fact, I quite enjoyed the bus ride back to Jb, as the landscape is really quite beautiful. And, well, I do have to admit that when they all insisted I sit up front in one of the best seats in the bus, well, I didn't argue too hard :) It was really nice to have a little extra space to stretch my legs and the opportunity to put a seatbelt on! Makes for a less stressful drive, that's for sure.

I've spent the rest of the weekend relaxing and resting from the heavy work of last week... and now it's getting rather late so I need to get to sleep so I can look forward to a good week back in the office here!