This is the village...pretty remote, huh? It was a good visit. We went to some of the houses to ask the women some questions about their hygiene habits and health education. We met with a 15 yr old woman who had a 2 yr old son, a 20 yr old women with 3 kids, the oldest of which is 6, and a woman who didn't know how old she was but her daughter guessed that she was about 17 and that would make the mom about 35 or 40. It was an interesting time but we had lots of fun.We are required to have a govt escort when we leave town which I didn't understand until today. Apparently in the desert there are these huge sinkholes and if you don't know where they are you'll just disappear into one. Plus we saw this poster at the school and talked with them a little about this problem. Apparently some of the roads have been cleared and our escorts know which ones and then we follow them, I guess just in case we stumble across something. The war may be over but they're definitely still dealing with the repurcussions.
So we had all these local people accompanying us out there and I decided that it was time to play the crazy foreigner card and make them all laugh. They already think we're pretty strange so why not be myself anad prove it for them?!? So I made some sarcastic jokes about how all these kids were crowding around the house we were in b/c they were so amazed to see a group of locals sitting around having tea, that they'd been staring at us all day and so surely they were tired of looking at us. They got a pretty big kick out of that one.
I also told them that I wanted to see our neighbor country. It's only about 15 kilometers away and, while I have no desire to actually cross the border and get arrested, I would like to get close just to say that I've seen this country that is pretty much forbidden to Americans at the moment. They all laughed that it would be a big deal for me to see a place where they go all the time but then about 15 minutes later they were seriously discussing where would be the most beautiful place for them to take me so that I could see it and that we would go the next time we come.
I also wrote one of them a note in Arabic. I know it doesn't sound funny but my grammar and my spelling are horrible, plus written Arabic is totally different than spoken Arabic and I just know spoken. So I wrote out the note in phonetical, spoken Arabic and left it with his secretary...who passed it around the office before we even left. They got a good laugh out of that one too!
So, as you can see, it doesn't take a whole lot to be a comedian in Arabic. They thought I was really funny. Next time we go I'm going to tell our escort's driver that I want to practice my driving and see if he'll slow down and let me follow him in circles around the desert for a while, or even better, teach me!! I already kind of know how to drive and I did drive a little yesterday, but that wasn't in the desert and I still haven't gotten out of 3rd gear. Our escort's driver rarely smiles but I think this just might do it!
As we were parting ways back in the city, our security guy who follows us around got out of the car and said 'see you tonight at 6 at Joe's house!'. How did he know we were going to visit Joe's family tonight? He doesn't speak a word of English and, even if he did, we hadn't mentioned anything about it. I guess it's his job to know things.
So that was the village. Not too exciting but our first real outing from the house in 2 weeks. We've been spending so much time with repairmen, electricians, plumbers, etc that we haven't done a whole lot of getting to know any of the local women. This was just a start but it was a huge encouragement.
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