It's been a long week. I've been a little sick with some 24 hour thing but, since it's the Eid, everything has pretty much been closed and I haven't had language to worry about. Most of my local friends have all headed out of town for the holiday and so I've stayed close to home...I've definitely watched one too many movies in the past few days. Today we decided to plan an activity, so I went out with some friends down to the biggest river in the world (which, by the way, flows from South to North, not what I expected!) and we had a picnic. It really worked out great because there were tons of people out. Apparently picnicking is the way to go when you want to meet new people, especially on a holiday.
First we had to decide where we wanted to go. None of us have ever really been to picnic by the river so we drove around for a while, even crossed the bridge into a completely different part of town. It was there that we saw this...an Arab man scarecrow. No straw hat or overalls, just a stark white jalabiyya protecting someone's garden!! Actually, the last time I was at the river which was about a month ago, it was higher than it's been in 20 years (or so 'they' say) and everything that you see that is green was totally underwater. It's amazing to see the change in the water level...guess the rainy season really is over!We continued to drive and ended up back on our own side of the river just in front of the palace, kind of like if we'd just gone to hang out on the lawn of the whitehouse or something!
Anyways, we sat and ate lunch and actually had a man who we suspected to be homeless came up and sat fairly close to us. My friends have a 2 yr old daughter who has never met a stranger and she immediately took to him. We sent over a plate of food and he was extremely grateful. My friend's husband talked to him for a very long while and tried to share some important things with him. When the 2 yr old got tired of that, she went and made friends with an Arab family that had just arrived. Before they had even arranged their blankets on the ground she had already sat down right in the middle and was playing with their kids and eating their food. It was pretty funny to just watch her make herself completely comfortable with this family we'd never seen before. But, it gave her mom a great opportunity to go and meet this family.
Imagine going to a picnic dressed like this woman. She was one of the ladies in the family. It might be starting to cool off, but it is by no means cool outside. I was still sweating while sitting. I sure don't understand how the women here can dress like the do. Not everyone dresses like this (we call it 'ninja') but the majority of them do cover their heads.
As people drove by our picnic, they were constantly yelling out their windows 'khawaja, khawaja' which basically means 'white guy, white guy'. I always want to say something smart like 'thanks for the reminder', but I'm not so much advanced in the Arabic, so I just pretend like I have no idea that they're yelling at me and they usually will eventually stop. It's not like there aren't other white people around here because, with all of the aid organizations, there are quite a few. I guess we just stand out a little since, even though we are dressed in a culturally appropriate manner, we're still not dressed like this lady.
