Turkey Sandwiches!!!

I've been in North Africa for almost 11 months now and I think that I've learned quite a bit about myself since I first got here. One big thing I've learned is that I really like sandwiches. I guess I've never really been in an extended situation where sandwiches weren't really an available option so I would have never guessed that the one thing that I would miss the most, the one craving that never ceases to throw me into culture shock, would be turkey sandwiches....Until today. That's right, we now have a store that actually sells sandwich meat. They have a little machine that slices it and you can choose from turkey, chicken or some other really wierd things that you would only find in this part of the world. It's a little pricey (about $15 a lb) but if you only buy 1/4 pound at a time it doesn't seem so expensive. Plus, as a wise friend once told me, an expensive sandwich (or really an expensive anything, just fill in the blank) is much cheaper than a plane ticket home.

The other day I was riding down the street, the same street I drive down every day, only this day there was a huge, billboard sized TV. I never saw anyone building it, it just appeared. I couldn't believe it. In this huge deserted field now stands a gigantic TV that doesn't just play standstill ads, it actually plays moving commercials in the middle of this huge intersection!! Exactly what we need, as if there aren't enough wrecks already! There are beggars everywhere on this intersection and it's really an ironic picture, the poorest of the poor living under this giant TV. It is turned off on Fridays and then at other random times during the week but we have a theory on that. We think that it's not exactly an automatic thing. See, there's this door on the back of it and a ladder leading up to the door. You would think that the ladder would have come down eventually but it hasn't. So our theory is that there's an old guy who sits up there and is responsible for pushing the play button when the DVD is over. He gets Friday off and the random other times are his bathroom breaks. I would like to climb up there and really scope it out but I just have a feeling that I wouldn't be able to do that without being noticed, I mean, a white girl climbing up the tallest billboard in town, kind of an attention grabber. So turkey sandwiches and billboard TVs. K-town is really moving up in the world!

Uh Oh....

Here's another pic of the river I live close to. During the rainy season, around August & September, the river will actually be all the way up and sometimes even over the wall and flooding the city. It's crazy to watch it rise slowly and then to see it fall 6 metres overnight.

Last week I was out close to the river with one of my local friends. As we were walking a kid 'itfadled' us to sit and have tea with him. Normally I would have politely said no and kept walking (we were in the middle of nowhere and I'd never seen this kid in my life, however it is very normal for complete strangers to invite you to share their tea or their meal, pretty much anything that they have) but my friend wanted some tea so we went over. The kid (probably 18 so maybe not so much a kid) actually took a bowl down to the river, scooped out some water, heated it up (but definitely did NOT bring it to a boil) and then made our tea with it. I managed to successfully get the bug out of my glass without him noticing, however, I did not manage to get the mud out....yum. So yeah, I should have another 5 or 6 days of the good life before whatever it is that I drank comes to life in my stomach. I can't take any medicine until I actually get sick but should I go to the pharmacy now so that I have it around or wait and have my roommate do it later? I actually have not been sick yet, 10 months and no problems, I think that might be a record. I hate to sound pessimistic about this sick thing but I think this time it's inevitable!

River Tour

We have some friends with a boat and today we spent the afternoon out on the Nile. I'm not gonna lie, my city is really not all that beautiful but the Nile is great and it was so peaceful out on the water.

These are the ferry boats that take you from the bank to the island that I visited last week. That dirt ramp up the side is the 'dock'. It's difficult to climb in a skirt but the boat ride costs 25 cents and is well worth it.

This is the boat like the one that we were searching for the owner of...not quite sure I have faith in its ability to make it across the river.

Here's the sailing club. It's a highlight on most tours of my city. They dock the boats in an interesting way...there are no docks. You just park it out in the river, throw down the anchor and then wait for the little guy to come and get you in the rowboat and take you to shore.

The Island

Have you ever been stuck on an island searching for the owner of the ricketiest wooden paddle boat you've ever seen in hopes that maybe he will agree to take you across the Nile and save you from that desolate island? Because now I can say that I have.

Broken Camera

My camera broke a back in January. I sent it home so my parents could take care of getting it fixed. PTL I sprung for that extra warranty b/c, turns out, I needed a new one. Now comes the task of actually getting it over here, it's a little harder than it sounds but insha'allah that will happen this week. So I don't have any cool pictures of anything new but I thought I'd give ya a little somthing to look at 'til I get a chance to take some more pictures.

Clear the Bench

Volleyball is relatively new to this country and they have this professional men's league. One of my neighbor friends is a scorekeeper and so we go to the games together on a pretty regular basis. Tuesday night there was an all-out brawl. It started with a bad call, then the fans were messing with the players on the bench, another bad call and all the sudden the benches and stands have cleared and the entire gym floor is covered with men just beating each other. So they paused the game, waited for the riot police to get there, then began again b/c, for some reason, they just had to finish this game. The first set of riot police consisted of one guy with a gun and a tree branch. At first I thought it might be the regular stick thing that police carry but upon closer inspection it did, indeed, have leaves. I leaned over to my friend and pointed out that the he was carrying a tree branch and she just said 'yah, so that he can hit people'. I said 'no, I understand that much, but it's an actual tree branch, from a tree'. She didn't ever really see my point.

After about 30 minutes the floor clears, they don't kick anyone out and they start playing again. Another bad call ends the game and all the sudden people are jumping from the stands onto the coaches and players on the bench. They're throwing chairs and water coolers. They actually knocked the referee off of the stand and started hitting him. Mr. Tree Branch was nowhere to be seen and people were just having at it. Then more riot police showed up and they closed and locked the doors to the gym...b/c that makes sense, people are fighting so instead of splitting them up let's force them to stay in a confined space! After another 30 minutes they TURN OFF the lights!!!! Yep, that's right. They did at least open the doors but, with the lights off, it was a little chaotic...not that it wasn't chaotic already.

So now everyone is in the parking lot but they have that locked too! People are trashing cars and fighting still, it was crazy. Finally after about 30 minutes out there they started letting people go 1 by 1. My friend told me that was so that they could see everyone and catch the bad guys. To that, I responded 'every single man in that gym was fighting, they're all the bad guys'. We finally got to leave.

This sounds like it was a dangerous kind of situation but it wasn't. There were about 10 other girls there and so we just stayed in the stands off to the side and laughed at the situation. Seriously, these old men in jalabiyas and turbans just throwing chairs at each other. It wasn't young guys, it was old men! There were a few guys from some of the other teams and they would have gotten thrown off their teams if they had fought so they 'escorted' us to be sure that we were ok. chivalrous.

I must say that I was a little disappointed in the riot police. Their reputation is that they're ruthless, breaking up peaceful demonstrations by shooting up the crowd, throwing tear gas into church services, etc. There I was standing in the middle of an all out riot and the police just stood there in their helmets and shields and watched it play out! I've heard that the people in the Sandbox are passionate about 2 things and 2 things only....religion and sports. Well, I've seen 'em both now and I must say that they are pretty passionate. Life here seems to be getting more exciting as time goes on!

No Money

Yesterday morning I stopped by the grocery store and had my rickshaw driver wait for me b/c I was planning to be quick. I got my little basket full of stuff and went up to pay. About the time he finished ringing me up I had finished emptying my purse onto the counter and my wallet wasn't there. I knew I'd left it at home so I wasn't worried that I'd lost it, but I don't actually know the word for 'to forget'...I know 'to remember' but that one wasn't coming quick enough and so all I could do was look at the guy and say 'I don't have money'. I think he probably saw that one coming and all he said was 'No problem. Just remember next time' and he gave me my receipt. I had only gotten about $15 worth of stuff but still, I only go to that store about once every 3 weeks so it's not like they know me all that well. I went back and paid my 'bill' about 2 hours later and they were surprised that I came back. How do they make any money if they just give things away?!?

Genius!

On my way to language today my driver told me that I was a genius. We went through the whole negotiating for a price thing and I got in and then he asked me the same questions that every driver always asks like 'Where are you from? Where do you work? Are you married?, etc' and when we finished those he said, in English, 'You're a genius'. What's sad is that it was really a confidence booster on a bad day even though I know that I'm not a genius and I answer those same questions 5 times a day so I pretty much have those answers down. Ask me about the economy and I wouldn't be able to say a word. When I got to language my tutor asked me how was my Arabic today and when I told him about the genius guy he said 'It's not like you invented it'. Thanks buddy!

State Dinners

Last night I went to a fancy dinner that was given by the Minister of Foreign Affairs. I'm not sure what exactly constitutes a state dinner but I would guess that this was one. We got all dressed up, well, as dressed up as you can get when you don't have any dress up clothes and you live in a place where 'dressing up' looks nothing like any clothes you own. We met some ambassadors and some other important people. After visiting for a while we sat down and listened to about 2 hours of speeches, mostly in Arabic so I don't really know what they were talking about. Then my country signed some kinds of agreements with several countries and, again, I don't know anything about the agreements since it was all in Arabic. Basically all night long I didn't really know what was going on, it seemed pretty important but I've never really been interested in playing any type of politcal game.

Before everything started I walked past the 'Saudi' table and accidentally made eye contact with one of them. That became an awkward 'I don't know what to do with male Arab stranger eye contact' kind of moment so I gave him a nod and he nodded back. Later on it turned out that he was important enough to sign one of the agreements! I was hoping to see Jimmy Carter, he's in town this week but he wasn't there. Later I realized that he could have been there and I wouldn't have even known. I wasn't born when he was president and I wouldn't exactly recognize him if I saw him. But still, surely someone would have recognized and pointed him out if he was there! I didn't take my camera because I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I left the house, but maybe there will be a next time.

The 'Mail' Man

I think I've posted before about how we get our phone bills. We don't have mail so, normally when you pay a bill, you just guess at when it's due or wait until they turn off whatever service it is that you subscribe to. The phone company (we only have one) is a step up from everyone else. They have this one guy who hand delivers everyones bills to their doorstep. It's really a non-essential service since we still have to actually go to the office and pay our bill and because they're actually about 2 months behind so, for instance, we just got our November bill. But it's the thought that counts and it's the closest thing to customer service that I've seen around here.

I also have a new roommate. She used to live about 5 streets down from me but her lease was up and she is waiting for permission to move to another city so, until the permission comes through, she's staying with us. She also uses the phone so she also had bills delivered to her in her old apartment. Yesterday we were coming in from somewhere and ran into this guy in the stairwell. We both recognized him from somewhere but couldn't place him and he kept saying 'hey customer' in Arabic and so we figured since he looked familiar and he obviously recognized us we probably didn't need to worry. When we got to our apartment there was a phone bill and then we figured out that he was the phone bill guy. But it wasn't my bill, it was hers. We don't really know how he figured out that she moved or where she moved to so that he could bring her bill, he just showed up. We don't even have addresses here and still this guy can track her down. No wonder we have all kinds of crazy people just showing up. Apparently it's not all that hard to find us!

What's kind of funny is that we don't even actually have a phone in our apartment. These phones are kind of wierd. You can just take them wherever you want and use them as long as there's the right type of wall plug in, although they're not wireless b/c you still have to plug them in but you can get Internet through the phone and you're billed based on the phone that you're using, not the location you're using....innovative technology in an unadvanced world still amazes me. We can't have all paved roads but we can have these magic phones?!? The phone that was in my apartment has never been in my name and we gave it to someone else a couple of months ago. Now my new roommate has hers at the office and uses it there. So at this point we have 2 phone bills being delivered to our apartment but no phones and the phone company has no clue...life is strange here in the Sandbox!

Graduation!!

On Friday our night guard graduated from a special college. He is a refugee from a neighboring country and speaks several languages, I don't know how many but at least more than 5. He has been working for us for 6 months now and we were honored and excited to be invited to attend his graduation.

We were seated right in front behind the speakers and director of the school (not by choice). The entire thing was done in Amharic which is a language not even close to Arabic, meaning that everything took twice as long (when they used an interpreter, sometimes they just stuck with Amharic) and was a little difficult to follow. We were pretty surprised when our friend got up and rendered a fantastic speech as the valedictorian. When it was time for the presentation of the certificates we found that we had forgotten something. You see, none of us have ever been to a graduation like this before and we didn't realize that you were supposed to bring huge fake flower necklaces or tinsel or really anything bright and tacky to hang around their necks. The whole ceremony was really great, everyone clapped through the whole presentation, like 30 minutes straight, and it was truly a celebration. Usually I really dislike graduations; they're long and boring and you go just to see one person walk across the stage for like 15 seconds. But in Africa graduations are a huge celebration and definitely much better than our boring American ones, although they do still wear the same goofy hats.


Really the thing that struck me the most about this graduation was the service that was held before. It was really a privilege to be in a service with people fleeing persecution because of their beliefs. I've gotten used to going to weekly gatherings with Africans. At first it seemed so different; now I love the way that they express their love to God. But there was something so very different about the way these people worshiped and it was really a blessing to experience worship with them. I couldn't understand the words that they were singing but I could feel the passion and love in their hearts and it was pretty much indescribable.

Random

Outside of my friends house there are 3 dogs that live in the street. They named them Princess, Rocky and Al (short for albino) . Princess had puppies about 2 months ago, 8 or so, and they are the cutest little puppies. Wednesday one of the big dogs showed up with a big gash in his side and acting kind of crazy. Then the puppies started dying one by one. Then the big dog attacked a neighbor and that's when they decided that the dog/s probably had rabies. They called the police but they didn't want to do anything so they left all those rabies dogs in the street!?!?! Since my friends had played with the puppies on a regular basis it meant that they had been 'exposed'. (few people may know that you don't actually have to be bitten by a dog to get rabies) Normally you'd just go down to the clinic and get a rabies shot, however, this is the Sandbox and things are never easy. One, there's not exactly just a clinic that we can stop by and, two, they don't have rabies shots here. So the entire family had to be medically evacuated so that they can get their booster shots. I thought it was crazy when I had to get a 3 shot set of rabies shots before I moved here. Now I'm starting to think that maybe it wasn't that crazy after all.

But here's the scary thing. The police didn't get rid of the dogs meaning that there are roughly 10 rabies infested dogs, probably more, just wandering around. I think I'll probably avoid their street for a while, not necessarily because of the dogs but more so b/c the entire neighborhood will be after those dogs and I just don't think it would be safe to have all those people out in the street waving guns around (that they probably bought from the kid on the corner) and shooting at anything that moves.

Plumbers

We've been having some plumbing problems. Pretty much since we moved in one of our toilets hasn't worked (we have 2). Pretty much there's no seal in the tank and water just flows through constantly. We had 4 different plumbers come and none of them could fix it so we just turned it off. Finally, 5 months and one extra roommate later, we have decided that we need to do something about this. Our plumber thinks that we need to redo the entire bathroom and we're all frustrated enough to take our own hammers to the tile but we figured we should check with the landlord first. This is where the good part begins.

We went down to see our landlord on Wednesday night and tell him about the problem. He didn't quite seem to understand but after explaining it 4 times, we think he finally got it. He called his plumber and the guy said he would come on Thursday. So my roommates and I coordinated our schedules so that at least one of us would be home all the time. Thursday night about 10pm we finally resigned ourselves to believe that he wasn't coming. Friday is everyone's off day here and so we went about our lives and were gone all day. That evening about 7 pm the guy calls and says that he came to fix it but we weren't home so he couldn't. It's true that we weren't home but I really don't believe that he actually tried to come and work on a day when absolutely no one works. He said he would come back on Saturday so, naively, my roomates and I once again rearranged our schedules so that someone would be home. Again, he didn't come. Instead he showed up at 6pm on Sunday night when we weren't expecting him. And you thought American plumbers were always late!

So the guy comes in, starts to look at it. We explain the problem 7 times and he finally gets it and then says 'you have had someone work on this before?' 'yes and every time is still breaks.' 'But obviously those people weren't professionals. I am a professional.' hmmmm 'ok, well that's great. We're ready to get this fixed.' 'Do you have any spare tires?' hmmm? 'Spare tires? You need a spare tire?' 'yes, I think that I can make the part I need. If only you have a tire' 'well, we don't have a tire. Now what?' 'We go and find one'. So they guys headed out into the street. I don't really know what all happened but about 15 minutes later they showed up with a tire. Of course the new 'part' didn't work, surprise surprise! So then he says 'well, why don't we just replace the entire top part. You go to the souq and buy all the parts we need. Be sure to not buy Chinese parts b/c they're no good. Spanish or American only. I'll be back next week to put the parts in.' Next week?!?!? And I'm supposed to go and buy parts? Like I can do that, go to the men's souq and buy plumbing parts that I have no idea about? I couldn't do that in English, much less Arabic!

At this point, we've successfully negotiated that he will go and buy the parts and bring them back next Sunday. then he'll put them in. We're pretty much 99% sure that it's not going to work, seeing as how we've already had this exact same thing done before and it broke the next day, but what can you do? The landlord is a little uncomfortable with us taking out our frustrations on the bathroom and wants to be sure that we only do that if it's our last alternative. So, until Sunday, we'll still just have 1 bathroom. Now that we have 3 of us living here we pretty much have to stand in line...it's like I'm living in a dorm again!

Stress Level

So people around me have been getting sick like crazy and just weird things have been happening lately. Yesterday in a meeting someone gave us all this stress test to take. It's basically a questionaire that lists certain life events and then assigns each event an amount of points. The questions are like 'have you moved to a foreign country? Been divorced? Left every family or friend that you've ever had? Changed social activities? Changed workout activities? Had a baby? Changed income level? Changed jobs? etc'. You get the picture. Pretty much you just mark the things that have happened to you in the past year and in the end your score is supposed to tell you, not officially or anything but approximately, if you are stressed. For the average American a score of 200 or higher means that you would be more prone to stress-related medical problems like hypertension, blood pressure issues, etc.

I would say guess what my score was but I don't even think anyone would be close. I got an 812 and that wasn't even the highest score in the room. No one got below a 200, not even close. No wonder everyone is so sick all the time. I've spent weeks trying to figure out why I am exhausted all the time, no matter if I sleep 6 hours or 12 hours a night, everyday I am tired. I've eaten more protein and then no protein, more vegetables and then less. I've changed my sleeping schedule around thinking that maybe if I went to bed earlier or later it might make a difference. I've done everything I could think of to try and figure out what the heck was causing the problems. I thought about the idea of stress but I don't feel stressed at all so I crossed that one off the list of options. Turns out, it is just stress...and it's not even the kind of stress that I can do anything about. Plus I probably made it worse by changing around all those things trying to figure out what was wrong! At least I don't have to keep doing all this crazy stuff trying to figure out the exhaustion thing!