If you can't say anything nice...

... so I was not going to blog tonight.  Because, well, truthfully, I'm feeling rather grumpy tonight.  As soon as I got back to Jb yesterday afternoon, I started letting all the little things that are really quite inconsequential to life start to bug me.  And some of those things are still bugging me.  Bugging me like these pesky mosquitoes that have magically popped out from nowhere!  But instead of taking the effort to ensconce myself in my mosquito net and feel thankful for the very fact that I have the resources to buy myself a beautiful, treated mosquito net, and, in fact, the resources to be treated for malaria (if those mosquitoes should turn out to be the evil malaria-bearing sort!)... I'm just sitting here, being a bit apathetic and thinking, "Woe is me..."

Not a good attitude.  So, by way of confession and trying to hold myself slightly accountable... I don't want to be grumpy!  I don't want to let all the silly little things that bug me continue to bug me.  Because even though I feel like "taking down the mosquito net" (so to speak) will take too much energy, in fact, I know I will be much happier if I just make a conscious effort to just let the silly little bothersome things stop bothering me!

For example, I will try to look at my nieghbour's nightly loud movies as an opportunity to preview movies which I will (or will not) want to watch myself.  So far, I've heard several movies that I do NOT want to watch.  But at least I know I don't need to bother wasting my time on them.

I will try to see the fact that I have to stand in line to use the bathroom in my house as an opportunity to practice patience (and to strengthen my bladder!).  And in fact, to try to just be thankful that I have running water and a hygenic place to... um... well, do my business.  This is not something to take for granted!

Oh, it's my turn to pee...  gotta go before someone else jumps in ahead of me!

This little piggy...

... went to market.

Today, all ten of my little piggies went for a walk.  First stop was a veterinary office a few blocks away from the guesthouse, so my dear little Zane will have some presents from Nairobi.  I'm not sure if he'll be very happy with the presents, as they involve syringes, stinky pills and ointments!  And I don't think he'll believe me when I try to reason with him and convince him it's all for his own good - getting the worms out of his belly and protecting him from things like rabies, fleas and ticks!  In fact, half the cats in Jb will benefit from the rabies vaccination, because instead of just one dose, the vet had to sell me the entire bottle of 10 doses... and it still only cost about $5!  I did have to do a bit of talking to convince them that there would be someone who could administer the vaccination to the cat, 'cause they didn't want to be held responsible for killing any cats!  They relented a bit when I told them that the cat is in a different country, and it's not exactly possible to bring him into the office!

The vet office was about half-way to the mall, where I went and booked my little piggies into the spa for a pedicure.  I think it was the longest pedicure I've ever had - 1.5 hours!  That probably says something about the sad state of my feet more than anything!

But the result is worth it - soft, uncracked feet once again.  It took some serious elbow grease and some serious tools to get them this way, though.  I will spare you the details of the "before", but they were pretty grim. 

Have you ever been asked by the dental hygienist about your flossing habits?  And then been chided for not being as faithful in flossing as you should be?  You know that slightly guilty feeling you get when you tell her not how much you actually DO floss, but how much you wish you flossed?

Well, as I sat in the chair I had that same feeling.  I'm turning over a new leaf starting today - lotioning and creaming my feet every night before I sleep.  And hopefully next time, I can please the pedicurist and she won't have to work up a sweat trying to correct all the cracks on my feet!

But thanks to Pricsilla,  my feet are all soft and sparkly:

They did, however, get rather dusty again, as I wandered through the streets of the city to a grocery store, to pick up a few bits and pieces to take back home.  Top of the list - cheese, bacon and apples!

Tomorrow, it's back home to Jb!  I hear it's been raining, so my little piggies might be finding their way into my gum boots again!

I think I shall live here...

I've just had tea with a table full of Brits, so the voice in my head is speaking with an accent from Somerset.  Odd how my brain does that.

Anyway, I think I should live in this guesthouse. There is wireless internet, hot showers, beautiful clean floors, windows that close, magazines laying around everywhere, interesting people to talk to, people to wash your clothes, and three meals a day, two of which include dessert!  It's relatively close to a Java House and a mall, and right next door to a nice church.

I woke up this morning, had a nice hot shower, spent the morning writing and sending emails and sitting quietly in my room, getting some work done.  Then I had a fantastic lunch, complete with rhubarb pie!  Got a taxi to our organization's office in the afternoon, where I chatted with some old friends and had a meeting about some really exciting and interesting bits of work with someone who I really quite admire.  Came back, read a recent Newsweek magazine, chatted with a woman who was just doing some medical work in Ethiopia, and then had dinner with these British chaps, who happen to be friends with the chap who was the principal of the Bible College that I went to way back when!  Small world, eh?

I think I just might go and take a hot bath before turning in for the night.  This whole "missionary" thing really is tough.

You know you're in Africa when... part 2

... you find yourself in a guesthouse, with a belly full of lettuce and ice cream, video skyping while playing Carcasonne over the internet with your nephew.

Seriously, how cool is it that I can play games with my family while we're a gijilllion miles away from each other?

I lost big time, but I'm convinced it's because he has a bigger screen than I do, since he's got an iPad 2 and I just have a lowly iPod Touch.  At least that's my excuse for being beaten so soundly!  We'll play again after they finish their brunch...

You know you've been in Africa...

... for (almost) too long when you find yourself in Nairobi, in a convent, wearing plastic shoes with socks, ironing a skirt.

That's where I found myself last night.  It was cold, and I could not believe that I purposefully put on socks with my plastic flip-flop type shoes.  Not a good scene, I tell you.

Anyway, no one here to impress except a bunch of nuns, middle aged married men and single women.

Nice folks, though, and I have to admit, it's sometimes nice to be in company who really don't care (or don't even notice!) that you're wearing socks with your sandals.

But don't worry, I don't plan on making a habit of it.

Rain on a tin roof

There's nothing like waking up on a Saturday morning and hearing the rain falling on your tin roof, knowing that you can snuggle under your sheet for a little while longer and enjoy the coolness of the morning (cool, of course, being 28C!).

I had a lovely Saturday, actually.  Here's a little summary of the day:

• Ate crepes with lime and sugar, made by my housemate this morning
• Visited with friends, and coo-ed at my friend's baby (who happens to have the most amazing chubby legs!  "Scrumptious" is how my other friend described this baby's legs!).  Also enjoyed two cups of amazing coffee, a brownie and a piece of another scrumptious cake (which had nothing to do with Baby's thunder thighs (though unfortunately probably contributed to my own thunder thighs))
• Shopped with my neighbor and took her to places she's never been before.  I was hunting for an Arabic-English dictionary for someone, but couldn't for the life of me find one anywhere!  It's always fun to shop around for something, though, and practice my own bits of Arabic!
•  Guided my neighbors to the plant nursery and bought a basil plant (since mine failed miserably)
• Weeded my garden and whispered sweet nothings to the carrots which are trying to grow
• Shared the bounty of the leaves in my garden with some of the women who work in our guesthouse.  What fun it is to come with my arms full of leaves, that grew from the ground, with a little bit of my sweat and lots of water from the sprinkler, and know that my friends are going home to cook something healthy and delicious - for free!
• Cooked up a pot of weeds (with a white sauce - lovely recipe from "More with Less") and invited a colleague over for dinner.  The cooked leaves were rounded off with a salad of cucumber, rocket leaves and tomatoes, with a dill (from the garden) and olive oil dressing. If I start turning green myself, at least you'll know why!



"Rocket", which we eat raw, like lettuce



Some kind of greens, which you have to cook.  This picture was taken last week, before the rains came.  They look much wilder and more overgrown now!

 

 

The first shower in the new bathroom...

There's a huge work crew here, working on building some new housing for this compound.  They're making some real progress on what I've been referring to as "the Fortress":

"The Fortress" will eventually become a building with four, 1 bed-room apartments.  Each has it's own little sitting room, kitchen and a little bathroom.  As you can see, the walls are coming up, including the inside walls which divide the rooms in each section.

Today, when I got back to my house from the office, I glanced over to see the progress.  I quickly had to avert my eyes because there was one of the workmen, lathering up and having a shower with the hose, inside what will become one of the bathrooms in "The Fortress".  And believe me, the walls aren't THAT high yet...!

At least the bathroom's been christened!

Photos of the celebration

So I did celebrate my birthday, and I have some photos to prove it :)

I came home from the office around 5, and cleaned up and set up the table with everything pretty that I could possibly find in my house:

I don't think I did too badly, actually, considering where I live!  The napkins that my neighbour gave me really brightened the table, too!  And yes, that is a plastic table cloth.  I never thought I would use a plastic table cloth on my table.  But it actually works really well, because you can just wipe the dust off of it every day!  And this one happens to be so pretty - blue gerber daisies!

My neighbour K baked me not one, but TWO cakes!  One was a delicious chocolate layer cake, the likes of which have never before been seen in Jb, and the second was a delicious banana cake with white icing.

And, wonder of wonders, I even had birthday candles in the house!  A new shop opened up a few months ago here, and they had a few packets of birthday candles, so I bought them, because I had never before (and never since!) seen birthday candles in Jb!  Aren't they lovely looking cakes?  Jackie baked cookies for the occasion, as well, but somehow, I don't have a good picture of those.

I got sang to, I blew out the candles, and drank some tea.  My compound mates gathered around and ate cake and enjoyed themselves (at least, I THINK they enjoyed themselves!).

 This is about half of the happy party, but unfortunately, everyone has odd looks on their faces, in various stages of masticating their cakes.

Following the cake (because why wouldn't you eat cake first?!), some of us went out for dinner.  And this is what I shared with my friend Ruth:

Is that not the most amazing looking pizza? Who knew avocado could be so delicious on pizza?!

My buddy, Wes, took some other pictures of me blowing the candles and stuff like that, so there could potentially be more picts to come... if I ever drag him away from his translation work to get me the picts :)

Let the blessings rain down...

In these parts, rain on your birthday is truly a blessing.  I have the feeling the coming year will be doubly blessed, because it rained at the beginning of my birthday (was still raining at midnight last night!) and after a sunny, humid day, at about 9pm, the heavens let loose again!  It's pouring rain again - thunder, lightening, everything!  I'm the coldest I've been since... well... hmmm... probably since last rainy season!  It's currently only 28C in my room, and getting colder!  Even Zane is all snuggled up against my side, trying to stay warm.  He knows I'm a bit of a softy, and there's no way I'm going to chuck him outside for the night in this weather.

My birthday was great today.  I shared sweets with my colleagues at tea time today.  Then after work, everyone from the compound came over for tea and cake and cookies.  My nieghbour made a chocolate layer cake - exactly like the one my mom usually makes for me, except this one had chocolate icing instead of white icing.  And I didn't even make a special request for that cake - she just choose to make one like that!  And she also made a beautiful banana cake, which she decorated with pink and purple flowers for me!  My housemate, Jackie, made really yummy cookies.  And I served tea from my lovely new tea pot :)  It was good fun to have everyone over here for cake.

After Cake, some of us went out for dinner at a nice restaurant.  I had the most perfect pizza - the house special, which includes ground beef, bacon, lettuce and avocado, all smothered in cheese!  Amazing. 

I even got to chat with my parents, my sister and one of my nephews last night, and my little Ugandan niece and nephew called me and sang me happy birthday!  All day, friends were popping up on skype and facebook to wish me a happy day. So it's been a birthday full of good friends and family and special celebrations of the good life that the Lord has given me.  I am already doubly blessed!

Rain!

Amazing.  2 or 3 weeks ago, one of my colleagues told me that the first real rain of the season would come on 14 March.  He was 90 minutes off.  We had a terrific storm tonight - lightening, thunder, wind and rain.  It was great!  Cooled everything off immediately by about 5 degrees.  Of course, the power is off, but it's not even that uncomfortable without the fan, because it got so cool!  So nice.  So, so nice.

And I'm extra blessed because it rained (almost) on my birthday!  This is going to be a very good year!

Lent

So, today starts Lent.  Not sure how I'm going to observe it yet.  But it is a good thing to observe.  So I want to observe it.  But haven't had a chance to think about it yet.

Actually, I have to admit, things have been rather busy around here lately.  Lots of meetings.  Lots of budgets and proposals that I'm putting together, which is not exactly my favourite thing in the world.  But out of this budget and proposal (hopefully!) will come some funding, which will then mean I get to do some fun stuff, like teacher training and helping with production of mother tongue literacy books.  And that will be fun.  No pain, no gain, right?

Plus, it's super hot.  Like, really, super hot.  Even my colleagues who grew up here are starting to mutter about the heat.  It just hasn't gotten cool in several days.  I go to bed hot.  I wake up hot.  I go to the office hot.  Just about the only time I'm cool is when I'm in the car, with the A/C on full blast. So, in fact, running back and forth to these meetings isn't THAT bad, because at least I get my 15 minutes of cool in the LandCruiser!  And when I say hot, I mean, it's hot.  It's 38C right now, at 9:30pm.  I think that qualifies as hot, don't you?

Pretty... something.

My old pastor posted this on his blog today about a "Pretty Dangerous Place".

Made me think, actually.  When I hear about some of the insecurity and violence that happens in the country I'm currently in, I think, hmm... THIS is a pretty dangerous place.

But then, I read something like my Pastor's thoughts about the mall... ah, the mall... being a dangerous place.  And he's certainly got me thinking a bit.  To me, the mall is like, wow, it's wonderful.  The "mall" is about as opposite to this place as you can get.  Here, it's hot, it's sweaty, it's dirty, it's loud, everything is inconvenient, nothing is predictable, nothing (or, very little) is pretty.  There are very few shiny trinkets to catch one's eye as you move around the town.  It's not pretty in any way shape or form.  The "mall" is climate controlled, sparkling with shiny clean tiles, lights, soft music, everything and anything you could ever need within a lovely stroll, passing by windows and kiosks with everything you could ever want, trinkets calling out your name, telling you that you really need them and can't live without them.  Everything, and everyone in the mall is "pretty".

And I have to admit, I sometimes dream about just getting in a car and driving to a mall.  I'm attracted to everything that the mall stands for.

But why?

Reading something like what was posted on Squinch reminds me that actually, living in a place where there is no mall, no siren calling me to measure up to what the "world" calls "pretty" is a pretty great way to live.  Where I am, sweaty, hot, dusty, but running around in my plastic shoes, modest skirts and shirts, or even better, funky African fabrics (fashionably paired with plastic shoes and a backpack!), is a much healthier place to be. 

Even if I didn't know that God put me here for a purpose, and has given me a crazy role to play in his Kingdom, I think I would be pretty happy to just be away from the temptations of the "mall" for a while. When I'm here, my chubby little body doesn't make me feel bad.  My funny hair which is always limp and dull and certainly doesn't look like a Pantene commercial at the best of times doesn't bother me.  The fact that I don't have a handsome man with a 6 (or 8!) pack to wrap myself around doesn't even cross my mind.  It's a pretty darn good existence here, let me tell 'ya! I'd take the dangers of this place any day - they seem much easier to face and stand up to, at least for me!

So why do I have to keep reminding myself of that some days?

My day...

See, I didn't want to start whining and complaining on this blog.  Sorry, no entertaining stories yet.  I felt quite a bit better today, but still woke up a bit on the edge of headachness.  But the work doesn't stop for a headache, and I had eaten all my little tablets yesterday.  I was much too lazy to walk all the way to the pharmacy on the corner (besides, I was working up a nice sweat just walking across the compound!), so I went to visit my doctor neighbour.  He set me up with a couple of nice little blue pills.  Told me to take one, only one, every 12 hours!  So I took one.  And it definitely took the edge off the pain.

The edge was gone enough that I could drive over to the Ministry of Education... and what a drive that turned out to be.  We actually drove around for 2 kilometers, just in the sort of "complex" of all the Ministries, trying to find a way in!  They keep changing the roads, and putting up various roadblocks in seemingly random places.  Not only that, but it was busier than I think I have ever seen it in that whole complex, so there were people driving giant LandCruisers EVERYWHERE, on these tiny little streets that weren't actually designed for anything other than a car the size of a Honda Civic!  We made it without incident, and I even had to back up our own giant LandCruiser into a very tiny little parking spot, which I did without incident :)

Once that adventure was over, it was back to work with our colleagues at the Ministry.  Always an interesting affair!  There's never a shortage of work to be done with those guys, and never a shortage of surprises.  It became clear, yet again, that we have our work cut out for us over here, but it's good to have lots of opportunities and to be able to work with a government that agrees that languages are important in education.  Not everyone in my line of work can say that.

I also may have realized the cause of my headache after lunch today - it started to rain!  Could it be that the rains are going to come early this year?  It would be a welcome respite from the heat of the previous month, that's for sure!  I'm getting tired of my wet-sheet sleep (a few weeks ago, I figured that the sheet on my bed was getting so soaked with sweat, that I might as well just get a sheet wet and sleep with it... and what a difference that makes!  I almost feel cold with a wet sheet on top of me ... until the sheet dries out in an hour...

Sunday

I woke up this morning at 6am to my housemate's alarm.  There's a very, very thin piece of wood between where she keeps her alarm clock and where my head sleeps.  And 6am on a Sunday?! 

And unfortunately, the first thing I noticed at 6am on a Sunday morning was my pounding head.  Don't know why or from what, but I had a killer headache.  One of those headaches that's so bad it makes you nauseous.   And that was pretty much my day :(  Laying on my bed, sweating, trying not to puke and hoping my headache would go away.

A bright spot was when my other housemate offered to make me pancakes for lunch :)  One of the happy things about having housemates is that you sometimes get offered some yummy treats... even if you have to wash the dishes afterwards!

Another bright spot in the day was that my neighbors came home from their travels today!  It was so good to see them, as they've been away since December.  It's just so nice to have good friends back on the compound, and we had so much to catch up on.  I'm sure we'll be having a few more cups of tea together in the coming few days to really catch up on everything. 

Another bright spot of the day was that since I was laying on my bed sweating, I could also manage to read a bit (when it wasn't making me dizzy!).  Through the wonders of technology, I have downloaded an app on my iPod which allows me to check out books from the library at home and read them on my iPod.  My world has just opened up once again. I'm no longer relegated to reading whatever dusty old book I can get my hands on.  Instead, I can download (for FREE!) new books, from all sorts of genres.  One problem, however, is that it seems the thing is so popular, a lot of the books are actually already "checked out" and you have to put your name on a waiting list for a lot of them.  Good thing four years of living in this place has caused me to really not be too picky about what I read, and has also helped with my whole "instant gratification" thing.  Instead of wanting to read something NOW, I think I'm now actually able to wait 15 - 20 minutes for something :)  Or, maybe I'll have to wait a week or two to download a particular book that looks interesting, but in the meantime, there seems to be a few other books that will keep me happily engaged.

On that note, I'm off to do some reading!

I'm back!

Due to demand from my adoring fans... I thought it was about time to start blogging again. Actually, I have started numerous posts in the last few weeks... but before I got two sentences into them, I either got distracted or decided that what I was writing wasn't worth posting about.  So, I guess I've decided that not much of what I've posted so far is really "worth" posting about, but somehow, that's my life!  And at the moment, it just seems to be made up of little bits and pieces that don't seem worth mentioning... and yet when they all come together, they make up my life.  And funnily enough, some folks are actually interested in reading about it :)

It's super hot season here, though, which means I sort of go around in a bit of a perpetual state of heat induced zombi-ism.  Half the time my brain feels like it's simmering in its own juices, which is also not conducive to entertaining blog posts - it mostly means I get a bit grumpy and tired by the end of the day, and I know that anything that comes out of the end of my fingers is likely to sound a bit whiney and negative. 

But I've also realized in the last few days that I don't WANT to have only heat-and-dust-and-other- things induced grumpiness all the time!  So perhaps taking a few minutes each day to blog about something lovely or amusing will also help my simmering brain feel a bit more of a sense of peace :)

So time to get back to "normal"!  Zane just battled with my mosquito net, but seems Team Tanya & Net won, with just one tiny hole in the net and one tiny hole in my finger.  And now he's happily curled up against my legs at the end of my bed, enjoying the breeze from my fan.  That fan was bought almost exactly 4 years ago, when I celebrated the first birthday I had  here in Jb!  So many years ago... and so much has happened since then!  But I'll spare you the nostalgia for tonight!

Anyway, welcome back, if anyone is still there :)