Still workshopping!

Still workshopping, and still wearing one or two or 12 hats on this compound. I get a bit frazzled sometimes because there's simply too many things going on at one time sometimes! Thankfully, no one's life is on the line (generally speaking), so it's not as if something truly terrible is going to happen if I happen to let something slip out of my brain at any given moment. But it is nice to keep things straight and to be able to have 5 different conversations at once and work on 6 different projects at once, without getting too tense. For a place where time isn't supposed to really be a priority, I was feeling quite a lot of time pressure this afternoon to get everything done that needed to get done!

But I managed. And I don't think I got too upset with people in the process of it all. At least, I hope I didn't sound too impatient with folks when they were asking me questions!

I had quite a nice little foray into the market this afternoon, as well. It was the first time in quite a number of weeks that I've actually been to the market, which is unusual for me, since I normally go at least once a week! It's great because if you don't go very often, everything changes! There were new little "shops" sprouted up everywhere, selling all sorts of things. In the fabric aisle, there's a lovely new 'accessories' shop, as well as a new tailor shop, which looks a step up from some of the other tailors who have their sewing machines set up in the middle of the "aisles"!

The market really is quite a sight to behold. I enjoy the "buzz" of it all - the hustle and the bustle and the constant change! So it was great to have a little while to wander around, just looking at stuff while my friends shopped for fabric (I'm waiting till I get to Tanzania until I buy more fabric!!). But wow, it was humid today! I was one drippy girl by the end of the excursion. My little sweat rag, which I use to mop the sweat from my brow (yes, it's perfectly normal and acceptable for a woman to carry a little hanky, or even a washcloth, around to mop the sweat from her brow!) was soaked by the end of the trip! Ah, but that's life in Jbs.

I went out with some friends for dinner tonight (to have a break from all this workshopping - I had to go out with non-work friends!), and we had such a great time telling each other our favourite Jb stories - all the crazy, unpredictable and odd situations we've found ourselves in! There's no shortage of crazy situations to laugh at around here! I only wish I could write them all down... but I wouldn't want to incriminate the innocent (or make you all start to worry about me!!).

Holiday! Celebrate!

I'm not exactly sure what we're celebrating, but all I know is that today is a holiday :)

Of course, it has slightly complicated things because we're in the middle of a workshop. So instead of spending time with our teams here helping them learn how to become literacy specialists, I slept in, read my book, checked out facebook, drank a leisurely cup of coffee... and we'll have to shift all the material that we were meant to cover today into Saturday's session.

But that's just fine with me! I so much needed a holiday today. It's been a tiring week. I've been wearing too many hats, and I haven't had a day off in a really long time. I was so tired the other night that I was almost in tears - that doesn't happen very often! So yesterday afternoon, when we found out that today was going to be a holiday... ah, the burden lifted. I feel like a have a wonderful respite from the busyness. I still have a lot of work to do, as I have a lesson to plan for Friday, still. So it won't be all play today. But it's just so nice to have had some extra sleep, have the freedom to read a few chapters in my book, and to just relax a bit. This holiday couldn't have come at a better time!

My tiredness aside, the workshop is actually going really well. The participants are really keen to learn, and they're pretty on top of things, too. So it's been fun! And maybe, just maybe, they'll be able to take what we've been teaching them and go and do something with it to actually teach people how to read :)

My Mom's birthday!

Yup, today is my mom's birthday! So congratulate her on the blessing of another year of life if you happen to see her today!

I love my mom; she's really quite an amazing woman. So in honour of my wonderful mom, here's one of my favourite pictures of us, taken at the Annual New Year's Freeze-a-thon this past year:

Aren't we cute? But man, what I wouldn't do for a little bit of that cold tonight. There's not a breath of air moving, no electricity, and it's a balmy 28C in my room at 11:30pm. It was pretty humid today, but so far, no rain. I think I sweated enough to water a bit of the grass, though :( But that's not a very attractive thought - so let me dwell more on the thoughts of hot chocolate, roasted marshmellows and frozen toes with my mom :)

Pictures

I had some lovely conversations with friends today, so I'm feeling a bit word-ed out. So I'll just post a few photos from the last few weeks. And yes, there is a theme running through these photos. Can you see what it is?!
This is my lettuce and bits of chicken tikka from Friday night.

This is the new cafe that just opened a few blocks from my house. If only I can get an antennae for our internet to somehow connect over there... I'd make it my new office!

And this is Jackie and Andrew (my two colleagues) in the cafe yesterday afternoon.

Zane's been eating, too! This is a morsel that he caught in our house. When they're alive, they scutter around too fast to take a picture, so before Zane devoured it, I took the opportunity to get a photo of the little guy. This one is about 6 inches long, from nose to tail. Zane, by the way, likes to eat them tail-first. They really are everywhere in our house. Normally, I don't mind them, but one night I did have one INSIDE my mosquito net on my bed. That wasn't cool.

Because we're on the eating theme (did you guess it?!), I'm posting one more photo. You can just see in the corner the guy making the fried eggs and chapatis (one of the best street snacks money can buy around here!). But I actually took the photo because it's just such a good combination on the sign - get your haircut and charge your mobile phone, all in one convenient location :) And then, on the way out, grab a chapati and egg for lunch. What more could a girl ask for?

Tomorrow we start our "Literacy Specialist Workshop". Pray for us - it's a 10 day workshop that Jackie and I are facilitating to help some of the more advanced teachers in the language projects improve their skills as teachers of the Mother Tongue. It will be interesting, as we've never taught a workshop like this before, and a lot of it is new to us... and new to the teachers, too! We'll have 25 of us there, so pray that things go smoothly and that the participants will really learn a few new things to increase the quality of their teaching, and will encourage them a bit, too.

But quite honestly, I'm really ready for a break, and all I can think about is my upcoming trip to Tanzania!! So pray that I can also stay focused. I know that once we start (in, oh, goodness, um, in 9 hours!), I'll get excited about it, just because I LOVE teaching, but I know it's going to be a bit difficult to concentrate at times because I'm pretty worn out at the moment. Anyway, if it all gets to be too much, I can just run down to the corner cafe and get a macchiato :)

Mmmm.... lettuce

This evening I had a lovely, completely civilized dinner with friends. It was a bit of a different crowd than I'd be going out with on a Friday evening at home, but it was a lovely evening out, all the same.

One of the pioneers of this place, a man older than my father, has come back to fill in a few gaps with his NGO this month. He used to be our neighbor on the compound, and lived here at the very beginnings of the re-development of this compound. But he left over two years ago, and hasn't seen this place since! So it was really nice to sit and chat and do a bit of reminiscing with him about the 'good old days' here.

We also took Wes, who is the same age as my dad, and Jackie, who's also a few years my elder. I started to feel quite old, as well! But we went to our new favorite restaurant, Spice and Herb. Our first choice, the Best Lebanese (yes, that's what it's called) is still closed for some reason. The guy sitting in front of the restaurant and smoking his shisha pipe said that it would open in a few weeks. I'm not holding my breath :(

Anyways, we ended up at Spice and Herb, and it was brilliant, as usual. We sat inside, under the A/C, used cloth napkins and real forks and knives (that is, ones that don't bend when you try to cut your chicken) and drank from glasses, instead of straight from the can. So civilized, I tell you. My favourite waiter also helped us, and he just adds so much to the civility of it all. I think he must be the best waiter in the whole city - he actually seems to want to make you happy, and make your evening a dining experience, rather than just sticking some food and drink in front of you.

My chicken tikka was lovely, but I think the highlight of the meal was the salad that came with it. It was quite a large portion of real iceburg lettuce, cut into shreds with shredded carrot on top! Because carrots are about $1.50 for 3 limp carrots in the market, we don't buy them very often. And iceburg lettuce, well, you simply don't find such a thing in the markets here. Most restaurants and hotels fly veggies like that in from Nairobi. So anytime I get real lettuce, mmm... what a treat!

It was a much better dining experience than we had earlier at an Ethiopian restaurant that used to be one of our favourites. There are often little furry four-legged creatures running around this restaurant, and peering down at us from the rafters. But so far, we've never seen any around the actual food, and we've never actually gotten sick from eating there (and believe me, we have eaten A LOT of meals there). But today when Jackie went to wash her hands after finishing our meal... well, she saw a little four-legged furry creature inside the display case where they keep the little pieces of cake! He was scampering around inside the glass, trying to find his way out, poor little thing. I guess he had had his fill of cake and was trying to go tell his friends where the dessert buffet was.

But hmmm... I'm starting to wonder if it's not such a good idea to eat there anymore. I mean, next thing you know, the little creatures will be swimming in the shiro pot!

And, while on the food front, our neighbourhood seems to be the up and coming neighbourhood in the city. We've been watching a building rise from the garbage pile for the past few months, and rumour had it, it was going to be a cafe, owned by Eritreans. Last week, the bakery opened so we can buy some fresh bread within walking distance now! And today... just today, as I was driving by, I stopped to get some bread, and saw that the door to the cafe was actually opened. So I stepped inside, and lo and behold... it's a real cafe, complete with a real espresso machine, an ice cream machine, a menu without too many spelling mistakes on it, and a rat-free cake display cake with chocolate cake inside!

I didn't have time to sample anything, as I was already running a bit late for my "date" with my elders this evening, but tomorrow morning, I plan on strolling by for a mid-morning macciato!

Typical...

I had another little funny cultural experience today.

An elderly gentleman came into the office this afternoon. He was looking for some fonts so that he could type his language on his computer. Good enough, I'm just the person to talk to about installing programs and fonts on computers around here. Anyways, as I'm working on his computer, he starts talking about "producing". And when someone from his ethnic group starts talking about "producing", he's not talking book production, or oil production or any other kind of production. He's talking about what happens after the cows have exchanged hands and a man and a woman... well... start producing. For some reason, this elderly man decided he needed to explain to me the African concept of birth control (basically, there is none) and how important it is to produce.

So, now I know all there is to know about production. From a random elderly gentleman who asked me for computer help.

At least he didn't offer to help me start producing...

A few pictures from the last little while

Today was a bit of a funny day, as is usual when you're not sure whether it's actually a holiday or not. Believe me, it happens more often than you might think around here! Today was supposed to be a day of "mourning" for a well respected politician who passed away on Monday afternoon. It was also the big announcement day, which I mentioned yesterday.

But so far, all is calm. We were all told to "keep a low profile, lay low" today. So I didn't get to go out and do the shopping for the notebooks and pens and paper that we need for the workshop next week. Lots of other people stayed inside too, as we didn't hear much traffic on the streets. After lunch, everyone on the compound pretty much all went home, because it was supposedly a public holiday. But it took us a while to figure that out! One of my local colleagues here mentioned to me that if the office doesn't "close", it might look like we're not respecting the government, and that could reflect quite badly on us. So between the mourning day, and the announcement day, it was just a funny quiet day.

So it seems a good day to post some photos. One of the consultants who's been visiting here for the last few weeks left today (thankfully he left on the afternoon flight, as the airport was closed this morning because the politician's body was being flown back to his homeland). He left a cd of some of his photos with us. So here are a few photos of what I've been up to for the past few weeks:

Here I am, singing my little heart out at our Sunday evening church service.

And this is me doing a study together with some folks at that same Sunday evening church thing that we do each week.

And this is me and Annamarie playing badminton on our "court" behind the guesthouse. One of my friends had found a net in her house (left by a previous occupant) and passed it on to us, since she doesn't have any space in their compound for it. Richard put some bamboo posts in the ground, and voila! A badminton court!

Hit me with your best shot, Annamarie :)
And it's not all play around here. Here's Jackie and me being literacy specialists, examining a book that someone had brought in. He had put a little booklet together to try to teach his children how to read in their language! It was pretty good!

And last, but not least, here's a great photo of the guesthouse where we spend so much of our time! Want to come and stay? It looks pretty nice during the rainy season, with all this green stuff growing (and making me sneeze!).

Prayer, anyone?

I won't post much tonight, 'cause it's already getting a bit late (I was giving my feet an extra scrub tonight, which took a loooonnnngggg time). But I just wanted to ask some of you prayin' folks out there to pray for this country that I'm in tomorrow. Without going into detail ('cause that would give away my top-secret location in a flash), there's a bit of a big decision being handed down tomorrow. Pray for peace. People are saying that the reaction to this decision could set quite a precedent for some other big political things that are due to happen in the coming few years here. Pray for peace. Pray that people will not react, but will accept the decision and will just move on with the business of developing a country!

(By the way, you don't have to worry about my personal safety - I'm living in a city which is a long way away from the center of this whole thing, but the decision and the reaction could have repercussions for the stability of the whole of this country. But it's not as though I'm in imminent danger or anything... at least no more than usual :) ).

It all comes back to the cows... again...

I went into the office of one the translation teams here today to talk about some literacy issues. We're starting to do our plans for next year already, so I was curious what the education officials in their homeland had been asking for so we can start to plan our next round of teacher training and which books to publish next... but that's beside the point. I interrupted the team members as they were translating a verse from Numbers.

Now, keep in mind, this team comes from a culture that is pretty much completely wrapped up in their cows. Their cows are everything. They name their children after their favourite cows. They live, sleep, breath, eat, together with their cows. They sing about their cows. When they dance, they raise their arms in the pose of the horns of their favourite cows. And they have a gizzilion and one words for the various cows, depending on the age, the sex, the colour, the patter, the size of the horns, the curve of the horns... I'm sure I've heard somewhere just how many words they have for the subtleties in the differences of all these cows, but I can't remember exactly how many. But it's a serious lot of words.

So the team has a few decisions to make when the team comes across the following verse from Numbers 19:
2 "Here is another legal requirement commanded by the LORD: Tell the people of Israel to bring you a red heifer, a perfect animal that has no defects and has never been yoked to a plow..." (NLT)

2 "The people of Israel must bring Moses a reddish-brown cow that has nothing wrong with it and that has never been used for plowing." (CEV)

2 "Tell the People of Israel to get a red cow, a healthy specimen, ritually clean, that has never been in harness." (MSG)

It's pretty specific as to what kind of cow they had to bring, but for these folks here, the colour of the cows are very significant. So they have to figure out what was the significance of a "red" or "reddish-brow" "cow" or "heifer" in the OT, and figure out what colour and type of bovine creature has that same significance in their culture. Not easy, I tell you. And the team was asking me for advice! Um, yeah, me, who really doesn't even know the difference between a "cow" and a "heifer" in my own mother tongue.

Who knew you'd need some sort of degree in ranching to be a translation consultant?

Maybe next time...

So after all that packing, I woke up this morning with a killer headache. So ache-ish that it was making me nauseous. Not cool. And definitely not the way to start out a road trip, bouncing along in the truck in the hot sun. So I decided not to go. I stayed home, read a book, cleaned up my room a bit, answered a few emails, looked at facebook, took a friend out for lunch for her birthday, sewed a curtain for Richard's new tukel (I promise I'll soon have an entire series of blogs on how to build a mud hut soon!), and read a bit more. It turned out to be a lovely day. By about 4 pm my headache was gone, after popping pills all day.

And tomorrow stretched out before me, as well. A whole Sabbath day. I can hardly wait!

I guess I'll have to unpack my bag from today, too :(

oh yeah...

It's only supposed to be a day trip. So I will be home tomorrow evening, enshallah. But it does take an awful lot of packing for a day trip here - snacks (and there's a real dearth of good roadtrip snacks in this country - I'll end up taking peanuts, bread, peanut butter and hard boiled eggs - oh, what I wouldn't do for a bag of Doritos!!), water (ain't no 7-11s on the way to get a cold slurpee!), sunscreen, hat, bug spray, Swiss Army knife, flashlight, matches, satellite phone, water purification tablets, passport, travel permit, sunglasses, eyeglasses and contact lense solution, toilet paper, book... I'm sure I'm forgetting a few things!

Basically, I'm taking a few little essentials that could come in handy if we end up having to sleep overnight on the side of the road. You just never know here. Plus, I've learned from my Dad (and my MedAir friends who take their quick run bags with them everywhere) that you can never be too prepared! In the trucks we've already got first aid kits, ropes, tow ropes, toolbox, spare tire, air compressor...

I'm sure my friends who are coming tomorrow with bring their sweat hankies (the little towels we all carry around to mop the sweat off our brows) and their telephones. I'll show up with a back-pack stuffed to the brim!

Getting out of town!

Yahoo! I'm getting out of town tomorrow. Some folks are going to visit a church in a town about an hour and half drive out of Jb. So I'm going along for the ride. I mean, why not? What do I have to do in the office tomorrow, anyways? I'm always up for an adventure... though sometimes if you take a road trip around here, you might be in for more adventure than you bargained for. Anyways, we're not going far, so if worse comes to worse, I can always just walk home!

Hopefully I'll have some photos tomorrow to post. I'm just looking forward to getting out of the city for the second weekend in a row. Why, it's almost like it's summer-time or something :)

Zane

Zane is doing much better, thank you for asking. He seems to have survived yet another trial in this fair town. Last week, he had a horrible ear infection of some sort. Don't quite know what it was, but, being the good vet that I am, I googled something like "cat ear infection" and put a few recommendations from a few different websites, and he seems to be on the mend. Who knew you could give human antibiotics to a cat? They're just like big furry babies, I guess :)

Anyways, quite religiously, I've been crushing Zane's antibiotic pills with my handy-dandy IKEA garlic crusher, and dissolving them in some milk. And he just laps it all up. Other than that, all I could do was wipe the goo away that was leaking out of his ear (he certainly wasn't cleaning it up himself!), and let him sleep. But he's back to his old ankle biting self now. I'm a little alarmed at the rattle that his ear makes when he shakes his head though. I'm wondering if he's actually got a stone in there or something! Seriously. His head rattles when he shakes it. It just doesn't quite sound right.

Sorry if you're a vet or an animal right's activist and I've completely offended you with this post. But quite frankly, there just aren't exactly a whole lot of choices when it comes to getting veterinary care around here! I live in a country where the vast majority of children don't have access to a clinic or basic antibiotics or other basic life saving drugs. And here I am, feeding antibiotics to my cat! I think I need to go and buy a child some medicine this week just to even it out a bit.

But then, on the other hand, if you've had experience with your own creatures' ear infections and rattling heads, could you let me know if there's some sort of "home remedy" that could help?

The cows rear their ugly heads... again.

So we went for a little meeting at the Ministry this morning. Granted, I looked rather cute in a new dress. But that still doesn't excuse one of the Directors from bypassing the whole, "Good morning" thing to launch right into the "Who do I pay my 300 cows to?" [referring, of course, to the bride price which he would pay for my hand in marriage to become his second (or maybe third or even fourth) wife].

I've asked one of my colleagues about how to deal with this whole situation, because it is constantly coming back to the cows with this guy. It's a bit difficult to be professional with him, and get down to business when I know that the first thing he thinks about whenever he sees me walk into his office is marriage and cows. My colleague advised me to just completely ignore his remarks about cows and marriage. He said don't joke back about being worth more cows, or about how difficult it would be to negotiate with my father... he said just completely ignore it. So that's what I did today. Unfortunately, no one else ignored it! Sigh. It felt really rude to just ignore him while he was talking about me... but then, it's rather rude for him to proposition me each and every time I see him, too.

Anyway, here's a photo of the dress I was wearing today - I guess I can see why he's so dazzled by my beauty :)

Just a note about the little bridge and the tukel in the background... I sort of feel like our compound is turning into a little tourist village. Kinda of like "Disney Africa" or something! The house has been made by "real" Africans (not Americans trying to build something in an African style), and yet it's quite a bit bigger than most local tukels, and also built up on a concrete pad, which has been there for ages. So it's not quite like the local houses, but almost like a caricature of the local houses! And then yesterday, this really cute little bridge sort of sprung up out of nowhere. It's such a cute little bridge, made from the scraps of wood that was found in the junk pile. As I was sitting on the cute little railing, I kept thinking that any minute, a mechanical hippo was going to lunge out of the water.

But it's really a wonderful addition to our compound. It's all been built for one of our colleagues who divides his time between this city and a couple of other places. But he's so far been a bit homeless. So this is going to be his new home. I love it that we have a touch of "the village" on our compound now. Instead of a wild jungle in front of our house, we are taming the forest with a real garden, complete with our own cute little bridge!

At least the bridge will help all those 300 cows keep their feet dry.

The way the expats play

Since Jackie and I had had such a strenuous voyage out to our meeting yesterday morning, we had to do something super relaxing in the afternoon :)

One of my friends is leaving the country this week, since her contract is over on Thursday, so she wanted to take a boat trip out on the River before she left. So yesterday was the day! There's a camp by the river which will take you out for a ride on their motor boat, then drop you at their little island where they do a BBQ and let you lounge around for a few hours, then they come with their boat and take you back to "real" life!

It was such a beautiful day - there were 9 of us all together, from different organizations and different countries, and it was just so relaxing to get out into "nature" (that is, away from the traffic and trash of the city) and spend some time with friends, doing not much of anything except eating and chatting and enjoying the trees and the river!

Our boys. I think both of them were quite relieved to see the other show up - perhaps neither of them was relishing the thought of being trapped on an island in the middle of the River with a bunch of women?!

Annamarie and I were having way too much fun playing "tourist" in our own town!

Fortunately, everyone else on the boat was playing tourist, too, so we fit right in :) Man, who knew my ponytail was getting so long!!

Lori was also having way too much fun on the boat ride!

Once we got to the island, the guys who had gone to set things up before hand had everything all ready! It was amazing - BBQ chicken and lambchops! Yum yum.

And then we did a whole lot of nothing.

And some more of "nothing".

But eventually, it all had to come to an end. The sun started to set, and it was time to head back to the mainland :(

The sun setting was a lovely end to the day!

It really was a most relaxing day!

Dedication

Jackie and I are dedicated to our work, let me tell you! We nearly floated away today because of our commitment to making it to a meeting we had set up with some USAID folks to talk about language and education issues.

Because they have a consultant here who's on a pretty tight schedule, we decided to meet this morning at the lodge where they're staying. It's a pretty posh place - actually, the same place that hosted the Ladies' Coffee thing last weekend by their pool side! It's a lovely place to spend some time, so Jackie and I didn't mind the excuse to go out there on a Saturday morning, even if it was for "business".

It was quite cool this morning, and sprinkling with a bit of rain. But as I was having my shower, getting dressed and making my coffee, it was slowly getting darker and darker. That's not quite supposed to happen as the morning progresses, is it? But we hopped in the truck and started our trek out to the lodge. We had to have quite a long discussion before-hand on which was the best route to take out there - there are two roads, both with their own hazards. One of the roads has some pretty serious mud pits (and it has been raining a bit lately), and the other road is just really, really bumpy and it's quite the experience to wind your way around the maze of cavernous potholes.

We opted to take our chances with the cavernous potholes over the unknown status of the mud pit.

So off we went. And as we went, it kept getting darker and darker. Of course, we don't have a decent truck here that actually has functioning windshield wipers (new ones have been ordered from another city up North, but have not yet arrived). So as the clouds came and the sky kept getting even darker, and the wind started whipping up, it was becoming somewhat difficult to see out the front window. It was all rather eerie - the mud huts and the dirt road took on a rather sinister hue, in fact.

Finally, just as we were rounding the last corner (about 2 km away from the lodge - but keep in mind you can't drive about more than 15 km/hr on the potholed dirt track), the heavens absolutely let loose. It was a storm unlike any that I've been caught in! I think all the rain that hasn't come in the past month fell this morning as we were driving to our meeting.

It just kept coming and coming and coming. So we just kept crawling along the road, praying that we wouldn't get lost in one of the potholes (some of which ARE big enough to swallow a small car - thankfully we were in a pick-up truck!). We eventually made it to our destination, but then had a second challenge: how to get from the truck to the restaurant of the lodge where we were meant to meet our people.

The rain wasn't abating at all, so we decided we just had to run for it. And run for it, we did, splashing through the mud in the flooded parking lot (don't think for one minute that this was a nice paved parking lot!). We arrived in the restaurant absolutely soaked to the skin, splashed with mud up to our knees. We were a pretty pathetic sight - we looked rather a lot like drowned rats. I was wearing a skirt that just goes to my knees, so my skirt wasn't too muddy, except that our truck also leaks, so I had had muddy water leaking down on my skirt whilst still in the truck. Jackie was wearing trouser (for you N. Americans "pants"), which she had rolled up past her knees.

And this is how we arrived to have a meeting with USAID consultants, who are in charge of budgets of millions of dollars in the education sector and get paid big bucks to live in nice sealed, air conditioned containers and drive around in brand new landcruisers with bullet-proof glass in the windows (seriously, they do).

Fortunately, the manager at the hotel took one look at us, had compassion on us and brought us some towels and kikoys so we could dry off a little and wrap a kikoy around our shoulders to keep a little warm during our meeting. We also had some nice hot tea to warm us from the inside.

And we ended up having a pretty good meeting with these two women. They gave us a really good perspective on things, and gave us some things to think about. I hope that we also gave them some things to think about and gave a good argument for why we're doing what we're doing over here in terms of the language policy implementation.

After about an hour and half of rain, things cleared up a bit. The consultants went back to their air conditioned containers, and Jackie and I went and sat by the pool and had a snack before heading back through the mud-pit to our compound. My skirt and sandals were still wet when we got home at 1pm!

Even trying to get to a Saturday morning business meeting around here is definitely not for the faint-hearted!

Lost Blog

I totally blogged the other day about my adventures with poor little Zane. I spent so long composing a good long blog, as I know it's been several days since I've blogged anything... but our internet has been so terrible, that as soon as I went to post it... the internet konked out on me and it was all lost. I thought it got posted, but apparently, now that I'm checking again, it seems it's not there :( Sorry, I've been having a terrible time blogging lately, because each time I come to blog something, the internet is malfunctioning :( Really, it's not because there's been a lack of things to blog about, on the contrary, there has been a lot going on around here! So, I'll post this before I try to compose a longer one about today's adventures...

High praise?!

I got an email today from one of the participants of the workshop that I helped facilitate last week. I think it's the highest praise I've gotten for a workshop that I've facilitated! I don't think all teachers get praise like this on an every day basis:

We really passed it [the workshop] with joy and filled our days with sweet fragrance of happiness. So I wish we will have another day like it.

Not bad, eh? I guess I'd better get to it and organize another day full of the sweet fragrance of happiness. Who knew talking about mother tongue curriculum could bring such joy to a person's heart?

The showdown

The full-grown, stealthy, black as black panther-like feline versus the mosquito net.

Who won?

I'll let you guess.

I have a bit of untangling to do before I climb into bed tonight.

Stuff

Somehow, this town is hard on stuff. Even my dental floss dispenser has kicked the bucket. Makes it a bit difficult to get the floss out of the container, but since I'm such a devoted flosser, I'm going to have to persevere and I will get the floss out. Every day. Like I'm supposed to.

But it's not all bad news on the "stuff" front. Yesterday afternoon, as I was puttering around and getting ready for our friends' visit, I found the most amazing thing on the table - the straw to the Rubbermaid water bottle that I lost months ago! I think I blogged about it, as it was such a traumatic event - I brought this lovely blue water bottle from Canada to sit on my bedside so I could have my drinks in the middle of the night without sloshing water everywhere - and then, a few weeks later, the straw was gone and the bottle was pretty much useless.

When the straw went missing, I asked the woman who helps to keep our house tidy and organized if she had seen it, and she seemed to say that she had thrown it away, thinking it was trash. Of course, the language barrier was a bit much, I mean, how do you say, "the plastic straw to my Rubbermaid bottle, which is really hard to describe because it's really unlike anything you've ever seen before"? But she must have figured out what I was talking about when a new bottle appeared (twice the size, brought to me by some visiting consultants from the US), and she saw the straw part.

Anyways, I really have no clue where this straw appeared from, and in some ways I don't want to know where this straw appeared from! I did give it quite a good bath and a little sanitizing before I started using it again. But it's not every day that something which has been lost in Jb actually resurfaces and returns from the land of the "stuff that grew legs and walked away". It gives me renewed hope that my Dutch Blitz cards might return from that land someday, too.

Stuff. It's so necessary sometimes. And yet, it bothers me that I spend so much time thinking about it. And it causes me a bit of undue grumpiness when it disappears or falls apart (as most things do here, given the heat, the dust and the communal living that we do with rats and other people).

But it's just so nice to have a decent water bottle that works again, one that I can drink water or iced tea out of in a bouncing car or laying in my bed without spilling all over myself. Is it a necessity? Of course not. But that little bit of "stuff" sure is nice to have. Maybe my dental floss holder will fix itself, too, 'cause that kinda IS a necessity (at least, if you ask a dental hygienist, that's what she'd say!).

If any of you have seen my Dutch Blitz cards, please let me know...

Oh happy day!

I got news yesterday that we have a new member of the family! Baby R.L. joined the ranks of the clan at 11:50am, the exact same day that his sister passed away one year ago. What a beautiful baby he is, and I can't wait to get home to hold him and kiss him and feel his beautiful soft baby skin!

It seems hard to believe that exactly one year ago, I was in Ethiopia with Steve and Hiwet, fighting to get through to my sister on the phone, hearing scraps of news of Baby Cora's passing away. And yesterday, I was able to use Skype to call her, on a very clear line, to hear the wonderful news of this healthy baby's arrival. I even heard the little guy gurgle and make a few little baby noises, though he refused to cry for me!

I'm not sure how to put it all into words, so I think I won't even try. But I'm so thankful that this new little life is part of our family, and is here, kicking and crying and doing what babies are supposed to do :) So you can praise the Lord with my family today, as we rejoice over Baby R.L., but also remember Baby Cora.

Happy Canada Day!

I know, I'm a day late. I tried to post about my Canada Day fun and games last night, but it was raining in Italy, so there was nothing I could do...

Anyways, after we closed the workshop yesterday afternoon, I got all ready for my big Canada Day BBQ! A Canadian business owner here in town hosted a BBQ at their compound, which was great. The food was amazing! We had chicken, lamb, and steak with baked potatoes! Though there were no bacon bits or sour cream for the potatoes, there was real Heinz BBQ Sauce! It was amazingly delicious. However, I think the highlight of the meal was the lettuce salad. Real iceburg lettuce, flown in from Nairobi. Amazing. Crispy, cool, delicious! No salad dressing with it, but it was nice to just eat lettuce again. Yum yum.

Because of the set up of the tables, I didn't really mingle or chat with anyone other than the three friends I arrived with. But that's ok, we had a great time together at our table, and I got to know my Canadian friends a bit better. There were probably 25 Canadians at the dinner, and someone there said that there are actually about 55 of us Canadians in town! I had no idea there would be so many - I know about 8, I think! But then, I don't really run in the CIDA or UN type circles much.

Anyway, it was a very nice dinner, and the best part about it, it was all FREE! I didn't even have to pay for my Sprite (the bar had run out of Coke!). Even though it's my third Canada Day in this country, this is the first time I've ever been "home" in Jb to actually celebrate it with fellow Canucks. It does make me wonder, though, where will I be next Canada Day...?

Up to the minute photos

This photo was taken about 25 minutes ago. The participants in our current workshop are filling out the workshop evaluation form (our report card!), so I'm just sitting here looking at the group photo we took.

So these are the folks I've spent my Canada Day with!