After Thought..

So I did wear an orange (well, ok, it's probably more "coral") dress today, to try to pretend that I was dressing up like a pumpkin for Halloween.  I was hoping someone would notice and give me some candy.  Alas.  Didn't work.  Not a piece of candy in sight, anywhere.  So I broke down and broke into a bag of Doritos that a visiting consultant brought me from the US :)

I did keep on the pumpkin theme tonight, though, and made a crust-less pumpkin pie.  Yum.  Unfortunately, by the time I was getting the thing in the oven, it was getting rather dark, and the generator hadn't been turned on yet.  I was rushing to get it into the oven, so didn't feel like going to track down my headlamp (which is how I do most of my cooking these days - by the light of the headlamp!).  Unfortunately, it meant that there were still a few lumps of flour in the batter, as well as a slight miscalculation on the cinnamon shaking.... but all in all, it actually turned out really tasty and very much satisfied my craving for something creamy, cinnamony and pumpkiny.

And that is my Halloween Holiday After-thought.  Still haven't thought of the original second thought from the weekend...

A little of this and that

I have had a few thoughts running through my little head this weekend... but at the moment, I can only remember one of them.  Hmmm... what happened to the second one?  Anyway, I listened to quite a good sermon yesterday from my home church (I love it that they're online, though, pre-planning doesn't always happen, which means it often comes time to listen to a sermon, but there's no power and hence no internet...).  Anyway, so the sermon I listened to yesterday was a few weeks old by now, but it was about building community through friendship.  My pastor had some good things to say - some things seemed very "basic", like, things we should have learned in kindergarten about what it means to be a friend to someone.  But I really think that somewhere along the way, we (and in this, I include myself!) have forgotten some of the basics of what it means to be a friend.  It's way too easy to just get caught up in our own lives, and not really take the time to share the burdens of a friend.  And he said that when we share the burdens, it means we actually have to share the burden.  That means you might get sweaty and tired, because you're actually working hard to voluntarily take some of the load off someone else. 

So I've been thinking about that a bit lately. Especially around here, where, quite honestly, it's been hard to have friends.  There are people that I work with on my compound, and there are people that I know.  But with all the coming and goings of people from this town, there are actually not that many people around that I would call my "friends".  Yet I currently have 464 people listed as "friends" on my facebook account.  (And no, Sean, I am not finally seeing the light about facebook - that's a whole 'nother conversation!).   So what do I do to be a friend to both those folks who I have a relationship with (even if it's just through facebook!), and the people who I see every day (who, well, um, honestly, not all of whom I would call my "friends"), and the people whom I call "friends" who I see in person much more rarely.

Another point that he brought up in the sermon was the fact that Jesus calls his disciples "friends".  He chose those friends.  They didn't choose him.  He chose them.  So then, if I really believe that God is sovereign and in control of all these things, then, well, I have to believe that he also chose to put the people around me here because he had good reason to put them here.  So maybe I better spend a bit more time working at being a friend and sharing the burdens of those folks that God chose to put around me.

So, that was my take-away from yesterday's sermon.  In the afternoon, I had a wonderful time with some friends here, having a little potluck!  Amazing what people come up with when you potluck!  Good food, and good company, that's for sure.

Now, I still haven't thought of the other thought that was running through my head.  So, I'll leave it at that.  Good night, and have fun with your friends today!

So, being the "professional" that I am, I was reading an article in a new book that I've got called "Dreams and Realities:  Developing Countries and the English Language", which was published by the British Council (who we happen to have some dealings with here, since we're all into teaching language in some form or another!).  The chappy who wrote a chapter on "Language Policy, politics and development in Africa" quoted someone in his chapter.  I quote:
"We should stop teaching children through English right from the start because it is the surest way of imparting inferiority complex in the children and the society. It is poisonous.  It is the surest way of killing African personality and African culture."
And this is from a guy who wants to promote the learning of English!  I love it!

Two Beautiful Things

Yes, I have two beautiful things to show you today:

(Stupid blogspot - I have no idea why it insists on rotating my pictures sometimes, and I can't get it to rotate so my gas cylinder is actually standing on his feet!)

Anyway, this was the first of two beautiful things today.  As my neighbours were doing their shopping today, they noticed someone had a full gas bottle with them.  And lo and behold... instead of coming up the river, the gas bottle company decided to take their empty bottles by road to a neighbouring country to fill 'em up, and truck 'em back here.  So finally, after some months of being completely gas-less in this country... we have two beautiful green gas bottles.  Fully of lovely combustible gas.  Now I have SO many options for cooking, it's not even funny.

So what did I cook this evening?  That leads me to my next photo of beauty:

Isn't she a beauty?  Technically, it's not mine.  But it came from a plant that R planed in the back garden.  And it definitely needed picking the other day.  So it got picked by me, and finally cooked by me (since R didn't have any cooking gas!).  Such a lovely vegetable, isn't it?

With my brand new cooking gas, my first meal was roasted veggies - potatoes, with lots of onions and garlic, some green pepper, and, of course, pumpkin and eggplant from the garden!

Pumpkin Adventures Continue

I went the entire weekend without making anything with pumpkin.  So, today, I had to make up for lost time.

For our main course tonight, we had mashed pumpkin and potatoes.  Yum.  Seriously, yum.  On the side were scrambled eggs - I thought we had some sausage in the freezer, but alas, I remembered that we ate them all up last week when the generator was on the fritz and they were defrosting in the freezer!  So the eggs had to substitute in for tonight's protein.  Of course, a little salad of tomoatoe, cucumber and green pepper rounded out the meal.

It was topped off with tonight's piece de resistance (which I hope you read with a great flourish of French chef-ery!) of chocolate pudding and bananas.  The chocolate pudding, by the way, was thickened with a good dollop of ... you guessed it... pumpkin puree!  It wasn't too bad - I mean, it tasted really good - a nice creamy chocolate pudding taste.  But I don't think I put enough thickener in it.  The recipe called for canned puree, but I used fresh pumpkin puree, which is probably quite a bit more liquidy than the canned stuff.  So probably should have added more cornstarch to make it thicker.  Anyway, it tasted good and was lovely poured over some sweet ripe bananas.  And we could eat lots of it, because it was vegetable and fruit matter!  Have I mentioned that it was yum!

I also found some really yummy sounding recipes on the Internet for stove-top custard (thanks for pointing some out to me, RK!), but some of them were a bit fussier than I had time for tonight.  Perhaps tomorrow... as there's still plenty of pumpkin to go around!

Baby Fun

So yesterday we had a little bit of adventure.  One of the women who works in our guesthouse gave birth to a bouncing baby boy last month.  We went to visit the child already, but yesterday they organized "prayers" for the wee one.  I've never been to "prayers" for a baby, so thought it would be an interesting way to spend an afternoon.

So, off I went with three ladies from the guesthouse, plus D and K, my American buddies here.  The family lives about 10 km out of town, across the River, sort of out in the boonie land.  I was just hoping that I could find the place again!  In the end it was no problem to find the place - thanks, Dad, for passing along a good nose for direction!  It helps when I live in a city where there are no addresses or street names, and in areas like we went yesterday, not even any surveyed roads, just dirt tracks through the mud huts!

The "prayers" were supposed to start at 1:30.  We figured if we left the compound at 2, we would be fine.  As usual, wrangling up everyone to leave at the appointed hour took about 15 minutes, so we left at 2:15pm.  By 2:45pm, we were there, safe and sound, having crossed the mighty River with no problems.

Of course, the prayers hadn't started yet.  There was a tent set up, as well as a sound system, and about 50 plastic chairs.  So something was definitely happening... just not quite yet.  There were 3 people sitting in the chairs, and the rest of Nadia's family and relatives were busy scurrying around doing things, like putting sweets, biscuits and popcorn on individual plates and covering them with plastic wrap.


We sat in our chairs and waited.  And waited. And waited a little more.  We were served cold bottled water, while we sat in the shade and chatted.

It was actually quite pleasant, as I got to know the girls from the guesthouse much better, and it's always good for my Arabic to sit and chat for a while :) 

After a little while, I got tired of sitting in a plastic chair, so I wandered in to see the baby:

He has really grown since last time I saw him, so that's a good thing!

I held the baby for a while, but one of the best parts of being an "auntie" is that once the child starts crying, I can give him back to his mother to soothe :)  I just like to hold them and snuggle with them when they are sleeping or smiling :)

I got a little bored of sitting there, so I also wandered over with one of my friends to visit the neighbouring gardens.  I've grown a bit obsessed with gardens lately, so I had to go check out the ones around us.  I found some nice pumpkins, lots of greens, and some okra growing out there.  I complimented one of the old nieghbour ladies on her nice "korofo" (in Arabic) and she seemed quite interested in the fact that I knew what the leave was.  She was surprised to know that I knew how to cook and eat it!

Meanwhile... time was marching on.  Because there was dinner in the guesthouse that our friends from the guesthouse still had to prepare, we actually had to leave before the prayers even began!  We left at about 4:15pm, and the prayers weren't even close to starting!  We were sent off with a parting gift, though - a cold soda and a plastic plate with some sweets, popcorn and biscuits, which we all happily munched on as we drove home.

I felt bad for leaving before the program even started, but, well, what can you do?  I think it was better to show up for a little while and leave earlier, rather than not show up at all.  Anyway, Nadia can just blame it on her crazy white friends who don't know what's culturally appropriate :)  Maybe people were thinking that we just had no idea there was still some sort of "program" coming!

Actually, I wasn't too sorry to have to leave before they even began. It would have been even more obvious that we left, if we had to leave in the middle of the prayers.  And considering the size of the loudspeakers they had set up out there, there was probably going to be a LOT of shouting into a very loud microphone, for many hours, in a language that I don't fully understand, all under a hot sun.  So, much nicer to make my appearance and take off before all that!  But I am very thankful that little Samuel has come into the world, and that both he and his mom are happy and healthy!  Since I didn't get to pray with them yesterday, join me in giving thanks for little Samuel today, would you?

Um, somehow blogspot likes Sam to be upside down!  Sorry!

A little of this...

So I came home from more heated orthography debate today, just in time to make some supper.  I had some pumpkin puree in my fridge (because, well, as you know, there are one or two pumpkins around my house these days!), so I thought I would try to make a bit of pasta with creamy pumpkin sauce from a recipe I saw online.  The recipe calls for the following ingredients:

• 12 ounces penne rigate (ridged), or other short pasta
• Coarse salt
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 tablespoon fresh rosemary
• 1 can (15 ounces) pure pumpkin puree
• 1 garlic clove, minced
• 1/2 cup half-and-half
• 1/3 cup grated Parmesan
• 1 tablespoon white-wine vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon red-pepper flakes, plus more for garnish (optional)

The actual ingredients that I had on hand are as follows:

• half a package of macaroni noodles
• plain old table salt (course, though, because the humidity makes it stick together)
• mystery "vegetable" cooking oil
• dried Italian seaoning
• a bowl of fresh pumpkin puree
• lots more than 1 clove of garlic (um, er, sorry if you can smell me from where you are!)
• a bit of almost 'off' plain yogurt
• diced onions instead of parmesan.  because, well, no parmesan in these parts, but how can you cook anything without onions?
• a schlooky of leftover white wine
• tabasco sauce (added by the dinner club who I cook for!

But actually, it turned out pretty good, if I do say so myself. And, the best part, is that it was really fast - boiling the water for the noodles took the longest time. And it did turn out nice and creamy and delicious and satisfied a bit of my craving for creamy and delicious carbohydrates!

 

I have also noticed a bit of a pattern.  Last night, after I had done my dance of joy, and neglected to plug in my computer or my iPod (on which I'm reading a really good book at the moment!), the city power left us at midnight.  It didn't come back on until 8pm tonight.  So... if it goes off again at midnight, then I shall know that we've got a pattern starting... why 8pm to midnight, I'm not sure.  But I'm certainly not going to complain, because any city power is better than nothing!

Simple Pleasures

So here I sit in my little verandah, enjoying a fan, a cup of tea and some no-bake chocolate oatmeal "cookies", with some good music, reading some good foodie blogs.  Not a rumble of a generator or a house-mate in sight :)  Not that it's a terrible thing to live with people, but, well, it has been... um... well... longer than I can remember since I've been home in the evening by myself.  It's nice to be able to listen to music without wondering if I'm bothering anyone, and stick my stinky feet up on our little wicker couch without worrying about offending anyone.  Really nice and peaceful tonight.  I got to do my little happy dance for the generator this evening, because at 7:51pm, the city power roared to life!

So all in all, these little things are making me happy tonight.

I also had a surprisingly good day.  There is a visiting linguist here from a university which is not in this country, and he is studying one of the languages in this country.  Speakers of this language have organized themselves into a Language Development Association, and organized themselves to bring this linguist here to give a few lectures and work with them on looking for some ways to improve the writing system.  J and I were invited from our organization, and I had in mind to just go for the opening this morning, just to say we'd been there, done that, since we were invited, after all.  But in fact, once this linguist started talking, I found myself strangely engaged in the day!  He had a lot of really interesting things to say, in general, about morphophonemic orthographies (as that's what he's proposing for this particular language) and gave a lot of interesting examples and data from languages such as Hebrew and Japanese.  And he spoke mainly from a readabilty point of view - trying to convince the gathered crowd that morphophonemics can help speakers of this language read more fluently.

He built a very good case, and I think he's convinced me.  He also had a lot of discussion in his presentation about the differences between spoken and written language and all that sort of thing.  Really good stuff.  I felt like I was back in University again, which was a really nice change of pace from some of the other crazy stuff that's been going on around here lately.

However, I am not the one he's gotta convince of the beauty of a morphophonemic orthography!  He had a tough crowd there today, and he was talking in some serious linguistic terms.  I'm not sure everyone in the room was keeping up with him, either.  Near the end of the day, there was more of a discussion of the specifics of his proposal, and phew, man, tough crowd.  There was some seriously heated debate!  And, well, quite frankly, this linguist has his opinions and is pretty set in his opinions, so he was being pretty tough right back to these big guys from this language community. It was interesting to watch, to say the least....

Anyway, tomorrow there will be more of the same, so I think I will go back for another round.  It's the final day of the workshop with this linguist, so we'll see if they make any progress.  At the very least, the lunch and snacks were pretty good, so at the very least, I'll get a bit of a good snack out of the deal!

6 Minutes

Still no city power, so I have exactly 6 minutes to blog something spectacular.  So... um.. well... hmmm... nothing too spectacular taking place, unfortunately.  I'm still getting a kick out of our "bleak and futile" existence here.  Except, it doesn't really feel so bleak and futile.  All my dear blog readers out there might be suffering because I don't seem to get a chance to do much blogging lately, but otherwise, it's not bad.  The main reason why I want to get some cooking gas someday is because I want to make some pumpkin pie, pumpkin tarts or or even some pumpkin loaf.  I've got a few pumpkins, and no way to make anything except stove-top pumpkin-y things.  Soup, mashed pumpkin... any other grand ideas?  I'm especially craving something creamy and sweet and delicious, like pumpkin pie, but I have no idea how to make anything like that using just a stove top (or a microwave).  So... any ideas?

Anyway, food continues to take up much of my extra time.  Which is fine with me.  Cooking and thinking about how/what to cook is definitely a hobby I enjoy! 

Today, a bit of time was taken up by trying to figure out how to get my phone to work.  Seems this whole "new country" thing comes with a few hiccups.  Today seems to be the "new country code" day for one of the main networks - the network that I've been using for the last 5 years.  I'm rather attached to my little SIM card, but I think I will have to trade it in for a newer model this week if I want to keep making calls :(

Oh, stink.  The guards were right on time with their generator shutting down, so it seems my 6 minutes are up...

Not so bleak and futile...

So it has been an interesting few days here.  No city power, and the generator went on the fritz.  On top of that, the guesthouse (along with the rest of us on the compound!) has run out of cooking gas. 

Oddly enough, our organization's "Communications Director" sent out a prayer request describing our situation here as "bleak and futile" because of these slight challenges.  Really, I don't think it's as bad as all that!  A bit annoying because it means having to think outside of our box a bit, and sure, work has slowed down a little as we can't all be on our computers all the time, but really... it's not bleak and futile!  Our dear cook here will use charcoal to cook lunch tomorrow (which is sorta what normal people around these parts do anyway! (just to clarify, she is NOT our own full time cook - she comes in to cook lunches for the workshop that's going on at the moment!)), and we will run the generator for basic services (like when we need to pump water from the bore hole to the tank) and we will talk to each other instead of emailing each other.  Not so bleak and futile, if you ask me!  So I've had to be a bit more creative in coming up with meals while the generator does happen to be on, so I can use the electric burner.  But if I didn't have any problems to solve around here, I might start to get bored!

So really, "bleak and futile" it is not.  It's just another pretty much normal day here in Jb!

In fact, the first afternoon we had no power, I worked as long as my computer battery let me, then I came home, laid on my bed and fell asleep for an hour and a half!  I'm sure I must have needed some extra sleep, because this week, getting a bit more sleep and having a less frantic work pace has made me feel terrific!  I even woke up this morning feeling, get this, "refreshed"!  Amazing.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It seems I always end up with SOMETHING to do on Thanksgiving here.  I think last year, I had roasted chicken with some Canadians, and I made a real pumpkin pie to go with it.  And the year before that, (and maybe even the year before that?), we hosted some Thanksgivings with a bunch of Canadians (and wanna-bes!) at our house. 

This year, I wasn't sure I was going to go join the "official" Canadian festivities in town, because, well, I was feeling a bit shy about showing up all by myself.  But ended up, two of my friends were interested in going along, too.  So, off we went, to stuff ourselves with turkey!  It was a great meal, actually.  Turkey, with all the trimmings - stuffing, corn, mashed potatoes, beans, carrots, gravy... and even pumpkin pie!  I didn't go with my friends last year to the "official" do, because it cost a lot - 50 SP!  This year, actually, it cost the same 50SP, but because of the exchange rate and the rising prices of EVERYTHING, 50 SP is a steal of a deal.  We pay 20 SP to eat roasted chicken in a plastic chair on the street corner now a days! (50 SP is about $15 US at the moment).  So, we figured it was a pretty good deal.  That included a glass of wine!

Unfortunately, the place where the party was held was rather small, so it was quite packed and really noisy, rendering it a bit difficult to really get to know many people.  But I did a bunch of small talk with a bunch of different people.  Besides the two friends I went with (and their 1 year old son!), I only knew 3 people out of, oh, about 50 who were there!  Most of the folks I met have been here for 6 months or less, and it was quite funny to see their jaws drop when I told them that I've been here for nearly 5 years!

Anyway, we had a lovely meal.  People didn't stick around for that long after the meal, though, and my friends had to go home to put their son to bed.  But they invited me over for some games, so off I went to play Carcasonne with them... of course, I lost every game!  But it wouldn't be Thanksgiving board games if I actually WON anything, would it!?  By the time we'd played a couple of games, our food had settled enough for us to have a little bowl of chocolate ice cream!  Ry is a pilot, and he flew some ice cream in from Nairobi for his lovely wife's recent birthday - and I got to enjoy a few scoops of the leftovers :)  So it was a real treat of a holiday here. 

While we didn't have a big Thanksgiving prayer with all the Canadians over the dinner table, it is a good time to think and be more grateful for the many wonderful things in my life. Really, I do have SO many things to be thankful for, and I need to start remembering those things more when I'm feeling grumpy and sweaty and woeful!

Now that I'm back home, the generator is about to go off, so I should get this posted before it's too late.... though the last time we had the generator on in the evening, the guards fell asleep and forgot to go and turn it off until I went out into the dark of the night and woke them up and reminded them of the time...

A few new things in my life

Just to keep ya'll updated on a few new developments in my life.  I seem to like rice again!  Since spending a couple of months in India in 2003, I have not been a fan of rice.  During that trip, all I ate was rice.  Rice.  Rice.  And more rice.  Ladle on a few spicy (and I do mean SPICY) watery lentils, and you've got basically what I ate every day for a couple of months.  When I got back, every one told me how fantastically skinny I was, which was true, I had lost quite a bit of chub... but honestly, rice every day.  No real nutrients there, at all.

So it's been a LONG while since I've really wanted to eat much rice.  In fact, I hadn't actually cooked rice for myself to eat in several years.  Well, ok, maybe once or twice because company came over for stir fry, and you can't really serve teriyaki stir fry on potatoes, and noodles aren't always available!  But I was not into rice.  Now that I'm living here, though, I've been eating a ton of rice again!  During workshops, we have a cook to cook up a huge pot of something - and that something is usually served over a big bed of rice.  So, no choice but to eat that.

But a few months ago, my little world was revolutionized.  Jackie brought home some brown rice from Nairobi.  Plus, the fact that my buddy R, who lives in the mud hut next door, has a rice cooker that I can borrow... voila. Instant new outlook on rice!

This stuff is amazing! Not only is it choc-a-block full of nutrients like Vitamin Bs and Iron, it has a nice sort of nutti-ness to it (to go along with my "nice sort of nutti-ness", isn't it?).  True loveliness.

So yesterday, on the dinner menu was pumpkin soup, with brown rice mixed in, along with garlic sandwiches (aka, "garlic bread").  And tonight I went all out and made sweet and sour meatballs over brown rice, with pineapple.  Wow.  So tasty!  And a rare treat to have ground beef in the freezer (leftover from the kilo that I bought when I had company over last weekend!).  Since the power's been a bit up and down lately, I figured the sooner we eat the frozen meat, the better!

So, I'm all a fan of brown rice.  AND the best part about it, is that I've never before seen it in this town.  But today, while I was waiting for RM at the bank, I stopped into a little corner "grocery store".  And lo and behold, there was a bag of brown rice, just sitting and waiting for me.  It cost $5/kg, while white rice here is about half the price at the moment.  I guess you've got to pay for all that vitamin-y goodness, eh?  We are not yet out of the rice stocks that we brought from Nairobi, but I bought some of the brown rice that I saw today, because it's such a rarity to find here!  And for items like that, which are rare, it's important to buy it, because it's probably not going to be there tomorrow!

On that same trip, I also got of of my old SIM cards reactivated.  Nearly 5 years ago, when I first came here, this particular network was the ONLY network in town.  It was next to impossible to get a SIM card, meaning if you didn't have one of those SIM cards, you had no way to call anyone.  We had to register with the Ministry of Telecommunications to get one of those SIM cards, and it cost around $100.  Yes, that's right, I did not mistype that.  I remember the day the SIM cards were released - we had been signed up for 3 cards for me, Jackie and R.  R was away, so when the cards were released, my neighbor came and told me, so I jumped in the truck and joined the maddening crowd to get ours.  Honestly, I thought there were going to be riots that day - there were SO many people crowded into various offices, trying to get their hands on a SIM card!  But I prevailed, probably because I was the only white girl down there fighting her way through the hordes to get my hands on a SIM card.


The network company slowly went down hill, as more and more networks came in, and competition got pretty stiff.  However, they have relaunched themselves, with new numbers, and even a new country code!   So I've decided to give it another try.  So, now I have a new number, using a new country code.  I also got a new SIM on the same network for RM.  It cost me $0.75.  Imagine.  A bit of devaluation there, don't you think?

At least I can now say that I'm one of the first ones to be using the new country code, which only this particular network is using YET, so that was worth the trip to the phone network office, and the brown rice find was just an extra bonus on top of it!