I had such a typical little walk today. Why do things always happen when I walk to the corner for something simple?! We had a lot of people around from various corners of the country today, so we all walked around the corner to grab a bite to eat. I love that place - the waitress there is so friendly and always greets me with such a nice smile. It's starting to feel quite like home. And when a waitress likes you... well, you can order basically anything you want :)
Anyways, after lunch, since I had invited some people over for dinner, I thought I had better get some ingredients! We don't keep much stock in the house, and it's tough to keep fruits and veg fresh, so we end up buying things basically when we need them. Believe me, when you don't have a Safeway or Superstore around the corner, it's really the only way to do it! So Richard decided to just walk the extra half block with me from the restaurant to the main road whilest the rest of the crew went home.
I'm so glad that he came with me. As soon as we got to the corner, some drunk guy came right up to me and asked me, "Why are you so beautiful?". I didn't really have a good answer to that question. Hoever, he was headed directly for me, so I quickly ducked behind Richard; you never quite know what a drunk man in uniform is going to do in a situation like that. Turns out, he knew Richard! So Richard took his hand and kept the guy away from me while I bought some bananas from the woman sitting at her little banana stand.
As soon as I was finished my buying, Richard deftly put himself between me and the drunk guy again, and we crossed to the other side of the road where the women were sitting in the shade selling tomatoes. After buying my tomatoes, we continued up the main road for half a block, to get back to the other road that goes to our compound. On the way, we passed the bus cum garbage truck, picking up some trash from the Ethiopian restaurant (which, of course, doesn't actually have any food - they only serve beer and other assorted beverages!). I may have blogged about this bus/garbage truck before. But I've never seen it on my street, and I've never seen it close up before. Richard took a couple of photos on his phone of the thing, but I didn't get the photos from him yet. Hopefully tomorrow...
I love the fact that they took the very same bus that I travelled on before, blocked up the windows, cut a big hole in the back, and now it drives around town picking up garbage. Love it.
As soon as we got past the garbage truck, we had to climb over a bit of a cliff in the middle of the road. A few months ago, they started doing some road-works on our main road. Because the President drives down our road to get to his church each week, they are actually in the process of paving our road! However, the company that was doing the paving had some sort of problem with something, and they actually stopped working for a few months. So we were bouncing over a half-finished road for the last several weeks! Now they're finally working on it again. However, that means there's this big cliff smack dab in the middle of the road, and no one seems to know if it's two way traffic or one way, or which side of this cliff is actually the suitable one for driving on.
So just as we got past the garbage truck and I stopped squealing about that, a pick-up truck came along and wanted to go around to the other lane... up and over the cliff, trying to come back down again on the other side. Except that he sorta got himself hung up. Pick-ups are rear-wheel drive, and his back right tire was just spinning free and clear up in the air, while his other tire just kept sinking further and further into the mud as he tried to spin his way out of his little predicament!
Richard went to try to give the guy some help... but it didn't work. They were trying to get the truck into 4WD, but there was some problem with it, it seems. In the meantime, a little herd of cows with their giant horns came rambling by. I think Richard wanted to make sure I didn't get trampled by any stampeding cows (especially since their shepherd was probably from his own tribe!), so he quickly abandoned his quest to get this pick-up unstuck, and came to make sure I didn't get trampled by the cows.
With a quick wave and a "dehaando?" called out to the Eritreans who own the little soda shop halfway up our street, we ended up making it back to our compound with no further incidences!
Now keep in mind, all of this happened within the space of about 10 minutes, within two blocks of our compound! Life truly is an adventure when you live here.
This seems like an appropriate time to share Jackie's new law of Physics that she's discovered (Jackie was actually working as a physicist before joining our organization!). It only applies in Jb. The rule revolves around spontaneous breakage of just about anything that can be broken! From tea cups in the kitchen cupboard to zippers on my shirts, something that could have been "whole" when you put it in its place, can somehow spontaneously destruct by sitting on the shelf or in the closet. It seems that the rule applies most strongly to those things that are not available locally!
I think someone needs to come and do a study on this new law of physics!
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