Simple Pleasures

I was a bit worn out yesterday, so I didn't blog.  I had a tiny unexpected adventure in the afternoon once again!  Unfortunately, one of my colleagues was out driving one of our pick-ups yesterday afternoon to get some supplies for the office.  While he was stopped to make a left turn onto our road, he got hit from behind by a big dump truck!  Thankfully, no one was hurt, but the truck got pretty smashed.

There just happened to be quite a lot of people sitting around on the corner (actually, there are ALWAYS a lot of people just sitting around on street corners here), who saw exactly what happened.  Matt called back to our office and since I was the only person on the compound with a driver's license, I was pressed into service to bring along an Arabic speaking colleague and see how we could help at the scene of the accident. 

It all turned out ok in the end, and the manager of the company was brilliant about it all.  He's a local chap who went to University in Salt Lake City ("but I'm not a Mormon"), and is going to get our truck fixed, in exchange for us not pressing charges and making his driver sit in prison until the court case goes through!  As we sat at the police station, I saw the driver of the dump truck actually get locked into the cell, which was a bit traumatizing, and it took a few hours for R to convince the police that we really didn't want to press charges and that really, it was ok to let the guy out of the cell!  I think the driver was pretty relieved when he got let out - I sure wouldn't want to spend much time locked in a cell here, that's for sure.

Anyway, it was quite interesting sitting in a little plastic chair in the compound of the police station for a few hours.  It's times like that where I can't decide whether or not I wish my Arabic was better!  Do I really want to know what's going on around me, or is it better to be blissfully unaware?  Thankfully, most of the folks around here, if you're really in trouble, and actually hauled into, say, the police station, can either speak enough English to help you out, or find someone who can translate!

But that's not actually what I was going to blog about today :)  I was planning on blogging about a lovely little moment I had this afternoon.  I started cooking my potatoes for supper, and while those were cooking, I wandered over to the garden patch and harvested some leaves with which to make a salad.  There's just something about getting down low to the ground, choosing the best little leaves from the patch, bringing them in to wash the sand off, and then eating them.  From ground to mouth in about 15 minutes.  So simple.  And yet ever so satisfying!  Thank you, little leaves, for growing and filling my belly with lovely nutrients and for tasting oh so delicious!



 

 And this is my pumpkin vine yesterday, after the rain storm.  No pumpkins on it yet, but I'm hopeful!

In a week or so, I'll be eating these ones, too:  (I still haven't a clue what they're called in English - you have to cook them, can't eat them raw)