It continues...

Tuesday:

Once again, so many bloggable moments, I hardly know where to start. This is a bit of a funny place – not quite a village, but certainly not a town, either. Ok, maybe more of a town than a village, but still not a modern metropolis! No pavement. No electricity. Some city water coming through some taps. And just a lot of huts and mud. And it’s also nice and clean, like a village. The Commissioner in the area has outlawed plastic bags. And it really makes such a difference to the cleanliness of the place.

Thursday:

Oops, got interrupted by something (don’t even remember what anymore!) on Tuesday. Yesterday I was feeling a bit on the lonely side after the workshop finished, so I went to the Internet place to see if I could connect with someone on the “outside”! Sure enough, a few people were on skype and I read the BBC news and some of the blogs I normally read… and I felt much better! I’m an extrovert, and I have to admit, it’s been a bit difficult to be surrounded by people here, and not really be able to connect very well with them. I mean, they’re nice people, really, all seem very kind and considerate and are very nice. But that being said, they are African men, so there’s only so much time I can spend with them and only so many topics I can discuss with them!

I’ve been trying to make friends a bit with the women who work here. One of them has a little baby who’s been suffering from malaria. She’s carrying the poor little baby around, tied to her back, and this poor little thing is so listless and weak. Today she went to the local clinic with the baby, and she got some medicine and fluids by IV. They will go back tomorrow. I hate to see these little babies like that – way too many of them never recover. Anyway, the mother is very sweet, and speaks some English. But it’s also a really good chance for me to practice the bit of Arabic that I know. Funnily enough, people seem so surprised that I can speak Arabic, and even though I’ve been away for a while, I do feel like I remember enough to communicate passably!

The days here have started to take on a bit of a routine. I wake up with the sun – amazingly enough. By 6:30am, I’ve crawled out of my little cocoon, to face the day. I’ve been trying to make sure I’m in the little bathing room by about 6:40, before the morning “rush”! There are three concrete stalls in which to bathe. Only one of them has a door that latches. Needless to say, I only take the one that latches! Sometimes, there is water coming out of the showerhead at the top of the stall. It was certainly built for the tall people who are local to this area – I have to reach up to turn the tap which turns the water on in there! And I’m a pretty tall girl with quite a long reach! Normal people who are not from this area would have an impossible time turning on the water!

After my cool shower, it’s back to my room to brush my hair and get ready for the day. By 7am, I’ve joined the throngs of waking men, strolling around in their towels and chewing on their sticks. One or two of them have toothbrushes, and everyone sorta finds their own little space and stares off into space while chewing. So I keep my head down and find my own little space to brush my teeth somewhere.

Then it’s time for tea. A little fried dough and some very, very thick hot milk with a little instant coffee powder thrown in is breakfast every morning. 20 of us sit around the compound in the shade on plastic chairs, slurping our tea.

At 8am, we file into the conference room for our devotions. While the workshop we’re doing is co-sponsored by the government and all the teachers are from the formal government schools, there’s an amazing number of pastors among them. Quite a few of them work as teachers during the week, and are pastors on the weekends. So they’re very enthusiastic when it comes to having devotions and praying for the workshop and for each other. It’s really quite a lovely feeling amongst the participants, and it’s nice to have such freedom to talk about the Bible translation work that we’re involved in and to talk about our faith, even in the middle of the workshop.

By 8:30am, we’re done devotions and have started the work for the day. We normally work until about 4 or 4:30pm, when we close our day with prayers and usually a song. These guys have amazing voices, and it’s really something to hear them singing their prayers in their language.

After we finish, I’ve been either going for a bit of a walk in the town – the market is very near by, and it’s been fun to go exploring to see what I can see there. I’ve also been buying some bananas and a few little supplementary bits of food for myself. I just can’t eat the local food three times a day without having some fruit and bread and peanut butter! However, I have been so disappointed with the fruit choices in the market. So far, all I’ve found is a few bananas. No pineapples, no mangos, no papaya… nothing. Just a few bananas. And I’ve only found them at 2 stalls! Back in Jb, pretty much every produce stall in the market has pineapples and bananas, at least. Here, it’s tomatoes, a few potatoes and lots of onions and okra. That’s about it for fresh veggies. I don’t think I could manage living here long-term with those sorts of fresh choices (or lack thereof!).

I have bought a few other little treasures in the market. One of my most beautiful purchases was a bucket. A big blue bucket with a lid. It’s a beautiful bucket. And I didn’t realize how much comfort would be added to my life with the purchase of a simple plastic bucket!

When the water is off (which seems to be the norm, rather than the exception!), you need to fill a basin (or a bucket) with water from the tank with which to wash. The 3 basins that are provided here are quite old, a bit cracked… and more importantly, used by, I’d say, about 40 different people for bathing and laundry. But me, I now have my very own bucket. I’m the only one who uses it. And I know that no one has peed in it! Better yet, it has a lid, which doubles as my “clean surface” in the shower room on which to place my soap and shampoo and washcloth. The only other place to put the soap is on the floor, which is, um, well, shall we say, less than clean. I know that no one has peed on my bucket lid.

I’ve also used my bucket to wash my clothes in. I can fill my bucket with water and use it sort of like a “sink” in my little room. I can even use it as a cooler – filling it with water from the tank and setting my water bottle in it to keep it a bit cool. I even used the lid for the bucket as a tray and a plate to eat my peanut butter and banana sandwich off of in my room. A serious multi-purpose bucket. I’m growing rather attached to my bucket, and I’m starting to hope that I don’t have to leave it behind when I go back home!

So the bucket has a role to play in my daily routine. I haven’t been eating dinner with the group, as I said before, I just can’t wait until 8:30pm to eat more rice, okra and chewy chunks of beef in greasy tomato sauce. Yesterday, I went to the hotel (where the internet is!) and got some take-away chips for dinner. Today, as I said, it was peanut butter sandwiches. I’ve been spending the evenings getting ready for the next days’ lectures and making sure I’m prepared for the coming day. Also, I’ve been reading a really good Maeve Binchy book – I love her books because they’re so long, light and fluffy, and yet quite enthralling.

By about 9:30pm, the rush to the bathing room has lessened, and this time, I carry my beloved bucket over for a hot shower. It’s normally been so hot during the day that the water really does come out hot, even at 9:30pm! Then I tuck myself into my mosquito net, read some more, or maybe watch part of a movie, and then lights out, hopefully before they turn off the generator so I can fall asleep feeling the somewhat cool breeze of my fan. Lately, I’ve been waking up sometime between the hours of 2 – 3am, when it gets hot again in my room. But for the past few days, for some odd reason, they’ve been turning the generator on again! So at 3am, I get a blessed blast of cool breeze from the fan! They turn it off again just as I’m getting up, at about 6:45am. I certainly won’t complain about having the fan on at 3am, but it sure does seem like an odd time to switch on the generator!

So the appointed time has come for my evening shower… tomorrow starts yet a whole ‘nother day!