Anyways, I've had a really nice weekend. It actually felt like a weekend, unusually. I didn't work on Saturday, since I've been a bit meeting-ed-out lately. Instead, I went with some friends for brunch on Saturday morning! It was really nice - we went and sat in a place with A/C and real coffee (as opposed to Nescafe instant coffee). I drank rather a lot of coffee, which I could feel coursing through my veins by the time we were done! But we had a good time just sitting and chatting and really enjoying the cool, clean surroundings for a few hours before jumping back into "reality"!
In the afternoon, I did some practical work, helping a colleague, Richard, move into his little mud tukel that's been built on the compound. The mud walls were put up a few months ago, but as they dry, they start to crack a little. So someone has to come and smear more mud into the cracks to make the walls all nice and smooth again. It's women's work around here, and I was keen to try. Unfortunately, Richard wouldn't let me try! He kept telling me that the rough mud would hurt my hands... but really, I think he was just afraid a novice like me would ruin his walls! Instead, he got one of the women who works in the guesthouse to help him with it.
So Mary came, dug some dirt from the garden, mixed it with some water and started smearing it on the walls. I just sat and watched as she did it, since I wasn't allowed to get dirty. But I did learn the Arabic word for "smearing". It's a good word around here, as there's a lot of things one can smear - mud and sunscreen are the two most common things "smeared"!
Once Mary was done filling in the cracks, I could finally help - Richard put me to work scraping the mud droppings from the floor! Not too glamorous, and rather dirty, but at least I got to help!
I'm in the process of sewing some curtains for the tukel as well, but progress on those has been hampered by the lack of electricity outside of working hours :( (however, there is a big political conference on here this week, so rumour has it, the powers-that-be are going to turn the electricity on throughout the city for a few days!).
Once it got too dark to work on the tukel, I went home to finish my pot of pumpkin soup. Pressure cookers are amazing - I had spent about half an hour earlier in the day wrestling a very tough pumpkin with a very big knife. Boiled in the pressure cooker for a few minutes, that pumpkin was as soft as my margarine on a hot day! Jackie and I made it into a lovely soup, though, again, we didn't have any electricity to put it through the blender. So we just mashed it instead. It tasted so lovely and pumpkiny, but looked a bit more like pumpkin porridge rather than pumpkin soup! But it was nice to have a bit of time to be able to cook and to spend some time in the kitchen making something other than a peanut butter sandwich and tomato/cucumber salad!
This afternoon we were invited over to one of Annamarie's Eritrean friend's house for lunch! We met him at a hotel which has the fanciest wall in town.
We had to wait for him for a few minutes, so I just happened to snap this photo while waiting. Fancy wall, eh?
He directed us to his house, which is really quite nice - newly built, with nice tiles, big ceiling fans, a kitchen with a sink and tiles. And he made shiro with injera for us for lunch! It was SO tasty! Another Eritrean girl, plus an Ethiopian guy were there, and it was just such a wonderful way to spend a Sunday afternoon. The best part of it was that we sat around the coffee table, on the couch, in front of the TV, munching on shiro and injera and being urged to eat more and more and more! It felt just like a Sunday afternoon back when I lived over in that corner of the world. I've missed that. We had good conversation about a lot of random topics (few of which were work related!), and just enjoyed each other's company, even though I only knew one of them from before a bit.
It was really a great, restful weekend, full of time together with friends and lots of relaxing! And now I'd better get to sleep, because tomorrow morning is coming very, very soon!
1 comment:
So, did you get up and clean the kitchen?? :-) It's gotten a little colder here, and the mice are starting to come in here, too (mice though--no rats!). But I did find and block two potential entrances so I'm hopeful. Amelia and I pray for you regularly and are glad for your blog to get a bit of a glimpse into your life.
--Karen
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