Kisses

This is my very best friend in the Sandbox...the little girl, not the baby goat. On Christmas Eve she threw her arms around my neck and said 'Aunt Heather, you're my best friend. I love you sooo much'. It was pretty much the sweetest thing.

I'm certain that her mother was really excited when I taught her that when you put your cheek up to a baby goat and make kissy noises it will kiss you back. That's what I do these days...play with the little girls and little goats. It's a rough life!!

Construction

The house next door is no longer in existence. It used to be just an empty lot with about 10 guys living in it. Then one days they brought in a big old claw machine, I don't know what it's called, but y'all know, one of those big yellow construction machines. For 48 hours straight they just dug and now it's this huge hole. Notice the bed in the middle of the hole...every night the 'guard' climbs down there and 'guards' the big hole.
Word on the street, literally haha, is that they're going to build a 9 story apartment building. I just want to know where everyone is going to park. Of course it will take them at least 5 years to build this place and so it doesn't really relate to me, but still, you gotta think about those things.

So in the process of digging this hole they cut the phone lines in several different places. We don't actually have a landline phone so it wouldn't be a big deal except for that our Internet runs through the phone lines and so now we don't have Internet at our house. 10 days ago we asked the workers about it and they just looked at the cut lines and said 'they're broken'. We were like 'exactly...how are we gonna fix this?' and they said 'oh, well the Eed is in 3 days. We'll fix it after that'. What I want to know is what were they doing in the 3 days leading up to the Eed that they couldn't fix them.

Thing is, we got out of all this pretty lucky. Our house is the last house on the street that has water. Apparently they cut the water lines too. We asked if they were going to fix that and they said 'well, the Eed is in 3 days. We'll fix it after that.' So everyone else down the street went without water for a week...I bet they were really wondering what the guys were doing for those 3 days. I guess we can't really complain too much about the phone lines.

Christmas Presents

Some of my best friends here gave me some of the best gifts. I got a bag of Doritos, a bag of tortilla chips, a local coffee pot and some local souvenir type things, a new shirt and a cool ceramic plate with the Lord's prayer written in Arabic.

Although, what do you get when you need to find a 3 year old girl a Christmas present in the Sandbox???

A Muslim Barbie. That's right. No blond headed, scantily clad barbies around here and definitely no Ken dolls!! Although interesting enough she has nothing, absolutely nothing, on under her abaya. Now how is that Muslim, I'm not really sure.

Recent Events

In recent events, Christmas was great. I had ham and lots of time with friends who have become like family over the past year and a half and it was great.

Random thing though, on Christmas Eve a friend came over and we took her home about 10:30 that night. On the drive home we saw a couple of weird things. First there were traffic cops out actually doing their job...I've never seen more organized traffic in my entire time here. Maybe there was some special event that I was not aware of, or maybe they always keep traffic orderly after 10 pm and I'm just not usually out that late so I've been missing it this whole time.

Second, there was a little fake flower market set up in the corner of the graveyard...it was full of Chinese people. We thought that maybe the flowers were real and it was a special market for Christmas Eve but when we got close we could see the glitter and the fake rain drops on each flower. We were really disappointed but I guess it serves us right for getting our hopes up...we should have known better

Third, there was a santa at this outdoor cafe and there was a backdrop and a photographer and people were taking their pictures with him. I know it's probably not weird to all of y'all who have been doing your Christmas shopping in a country where there's a Santa in every mall, but around here we don't have Santa Clauses b/c people don't really celebrate Christmas. Except for on this Christmas Eve there was the real santa claus taking pictures with people and then we also saw 4 life-size, fake ones in shop windows...it was really strange.

Here I am with a new little friend. Baby goats are really pretty cute and I like playing with them. Notice his momma has a bra on in the background?
A friends mom on the first day of the Eed. She sat next to us while we learned how to braid.

The school out in the camp offers women's adult education classes. They teach them how to read and how to sew and other practical things. They also do a tie-dye class, which they call 'tie and dye'. They invited me to their sale/show and tell when the 4 week class was over. Here's a pic of a few of the scarves that my friends made.

Hope everyone had a great Christmas. I'm supposed to plan a New Years Eve party. I've known about it for about 2 weeks but I forgot until a friend last week was like 'hey, we should do something for new year's eve' and I was like 'oh...oh yah, I'm supposed to be planning a party.'

In Arabic they call New Years the 'head of the year'. It's strange to learn things in Arabic that don't translate directly into Arabic...after a while you start to say it in English like it translates into Arabic and things come out weird. For example, last week I asked my roommate where her friends were going on their 'honey month'. She answered and the conversation continued until 5 minutes later when she realized that I said honey month instead of honey moon and she didn't even notice.

So Happy Head of the Year!!!

Cooking Lessons

My intestine braiding teacher, looking lovely. She loved that I was watching and that she was privileged to be teaching me this highly useful skill...she refused to let me touch anything. Sort of like Phoebe when she taught Joey how to play the guitar. I did NOT argue with her!!!

And thank goodness this was on the shelf...it meant that it was not in the lunch!!!

I Am Ready

For all of you who were worried about me, that I might not be ready for marriage I have news for you, I am now officially ready...not that there are many of you, I mean, I'm pretty certain most of y'all are confident I'm old enough, but if there happen to be any who are not...

Yesterday was the first day of the Eed (gross pictures to come and if you didn't catch last year's Eed, go to this link to scope it out: http://heathernafrica.blogspot.com/2006/12/2nd-a9ed.html) and I went to a friend's house and watched them slaughter their sheep. After that I hung out around the kitchen with the women, where they taught me how to cut up a sheep and cook it in some very interesting ways.

At one point one of the ladies called me over and asked 'are you married?' I told her no and she said 'good. Then watch this' and she showed me how to clean out intestines....and then how to braid them so that they will cook up well. After that she stood up and said 'so now you are ready for the marriage'.

Yep. Y'all watch out. I know how to clean and cook intestines. I'm not sure I will ever actually have to apply that talent...I'm pretty sure I hope I NEVER have to apply my skills, but if I do I will know how to do it well!

Driving

People around here always ask their kids if they want to go with us and all the kids start crying because, while they might not be scared of us when their parents are around, they are terrified that we might actually take them with us...except for this little guy.

This is Mary's little boy. His dad said 'you wanna go with them?' and he said 'only if I can drive'. He's 3!!! So my friend gave him the keys and Mohamed was out the door trying to figure out how to get in the car, he was seriously going to drive us.

When it was time for us to go he was so confused as to why he had to get out....we had all told him he could drive us wherever he wanted to go and then we kicked him out, took away the keys and told him he had to stay home. He was so sad but definitely the cutest!!!

Today's Visit

A few highlights from my visit in the village today:
**5 sweet children crowded around me on a bed while I tried to explain freckles and blue eyes in Arabic
**Beans, just beans and bread, for breakfast (no boiled stomach...woohoo!!)
**Asking children, for the very first time in their life, what they want to be when they grow up and then hearing the innocence of their answers
**Giving a child the idea that they can be anything they want to be
**Stopping everything in the middle of breakfast to tell an important story
**Being told that I am their sister and I'm not just welcome in their house but I am a part of it
**Sitting over tea and crying with my new dear friend
**Another story, this one about how we are all alike and in need

People here don't get to be what they want to be. It's all based on how far you go in school and then how you do with grades. For example, the students with the best grades become doctors...they don't get to choose. If they make straight A's they have to be a doctor or nothing. It's all ranked by your grades. So normally when I ask someone what they want to be they don't know what they want to be because they haven't thought about it...it wouldn't matter anyways, right? Today I sat with a 5 yr old future doctor and a 3 yr old future teacher. It was the sweetest thing to see them sitting in deep thought, contemplating on what they would like to do when they got older.

Then I sat with their mom Mary for a while and she was just so grateful. I didn't do anything, didn't bring anything with me or do something special for her that I would think she would be thankful for, I was just there. But she was so amazed that a white girl, especially an American girl, would come to her house and be comfortable with her and her children, not worried about what I am eating or that I might get dirty but just spending time with them. She told me that when she walks down the street Sandbox people see her only for how poor and simple she is, how she doesn't have henna or gold or pretty clothes, and they won't even look at her as they walk by. She thought white people were like that too, but she was wrong. Then she thanked me over and over for telling her stories and for talking to her like she is a normal person. She said 'I'm not educated, I don't deny that. But I'm also not stupid. People just assume that I won't understand things because I can't read, so they talk to me like a child. But you are so different. You see me, you know I am poor and uneducated and you still treat me like we are equal. No one does that.' That's the part where we both started crying.

It's days like today where I know that I am exactly where I need to be and I think I never want to leave. Tomorrow I may want nothing more than to be on the next plane out of here, but today...today was perfect.

Feliz Navidad

Today is Friday but here it's kind of like Saturday for y'all. Everything is closed and no one goes to work. So on Fridays I make it my personal goal to do absolutely nothing. And when I say nothing I mean to not get dressed appropriately and go outside, to stay in my apartment and watch movies or read or do whatever I want but basically to do absolutely nothing productive.

So this morning the weather was cool (about 90) and there was a nice breeze so I figured I'd go lay out on the balcony and read. I dragged the exercise mat out, sunscreened up, and literally laid out on my balcony for an hour or so. I cranked up the satellite radio country music for the neighborhood to hear and pretended that I was laying on the beach in Zanzibar or somewhere else equally amazing.

It wasn't such a stretch to pretend about the beach...I'm not joking when I say I live in a Sandbox, there is actually sand everywhere so the balcony was pretty dirty, hence the exercise mat being put to good use!!

Then Feliz Navidad came on the radio!!! Those Arab guys who run the satellite radio out of Dubai...they really know what makes good Christmas music. I did a little research and saw that today it's supposed to be 83 in the Big D. So really this morning it was just like I was right at home...warm weather, lots of sun and Feliz Navidad on the radio every 5 minutes. You might get a cold front every once in a while, but it always warms back up. For those of you who haven't experienced it, that pretty much sums up Christmas in my part of TX.

There Was A Monkey

There has been this monkey around for the past few months. One day it was at my boss's house sitting on top of a ladder eating a piece of pizze. One day it was in the tree at another friend's house. One day it was sitting on the fence of another friend's house, just swinging it's tail while their huge dog went nuts. This week it showed up at someone else's house.

Several things about this monkey 1) it is really really mean, 2) it has a rope around it's waist like it once belonged to someone, and 3) while I do live in Africa the desert isn't exactly a monkey's natural habitat so where did he come from? Strange.

This week it went to my friends house who have barbed wire along the top of their gate. They also have a 3 month old puppy. Several times now the monkey has gotten it's rope stuck in the barbed wire. Each time all the guys on the street nominate this one guy to help simply because he's a refugee from the west...not really sure what that's all about. The monkey actually bit the guy at one point. Ebola.

Well, probably not, but you really just never know...there is an outbreak in DRC. Monday I got a text message that said 'monkey got the dog...police shot the monkey in the street'. Enough said.

Glad to know that our faithful police force is up for the task of hunting and shooting monkeys in this densely populated urban area. I'm sure that they cleared all the people out of the street, captured the monkey somehow and then shot it from a safe distance b/c I know that they would never just open fire while there were people standing around and the monkey was running down the street...or would they?

How many times do you think a reasonable non-risk-taking person can be exposed to rabies in one week? That makes twice, not for me but for my friend, and the week's not even over!!

New Neighbor

I was at the doukan (little shop that sells cokes) next door to my house one day when this neighbor kid came up. He was about 12 and Arab from the Sandbox and we didn't say anything to each other (cultural norm) until the owner of the doukan says 'hey white girl, this kid's American too.'

We just kind of look at each other and I asked him his name. We'll call him Ali b/c I wouldn't dare call him Mohammed, even if that was his real name...I don't want to go to jail. So Ali was just like 'hey, cool, yah, I'm American too.' in this totally regularly accented English that did not sound like it should be coming out of his mouth. It was weird.

I asked him what state he was from and he said TX and I was like 'me too'. Then I asked him what city and he said DFW and I was like 'me too'. Then he asked 'what suburb?' and when I told him he said 'oh yah, I go to the mosque there.'

Being here and surrounded by mosques I hadn't really given any thought to the fact that there aren't a whole lot of mosques in the states and that my home town actually boasts the largest mosque in America. And then he said it so normally, just like any of us would have said 'oh yah, I went to university there' or 'yah, I go to church there'. I couldn't come up with anything else to say, I was confused and still trying to figure out how he could go to the mosque in my hometown when he said 'well, see ya later' and left.

It's really strange when your two cultures come together like that. I was really speechless...and over something so not that big of a deal. I guess it's a clash of cultures that I'm going to have to get used to, especially since I return to the states soon.

Working Hard

Remember the mud oven thing that my friend makes and sells for making coffee? (see link if you don't remember) http://heathernafrica.blogspot.com/2007/11/coffee.html

I made one!!!!

While I was at my friend's house she kept having to leave me alone while all these women came one after another to buy her ovens. After an hour she had sold about 6 so I suggested that we make more instead of just sitting there wasting time. She kept thanking me for helping her with her work and I kept trying to explain that I was really just playing in the mud and she was doing all the work but she didn't believe me.

All of the neighbors who came over to visit were so worried about me. They kept saying 'what about your pants?!?, What about your clothes?!?!' I kept telling them 'They're just clothes, I can wash them.' Eventually the other ladies who were sitting around watching us started answering for me and saying 'she can wash them' and then just giggling, it was lots of fun! But they just could not believe that this white girl was getting mud on her hands. And being pretty inexperienced at playing in the mud, I ended up with mud all over me, not just on my hands!!!

Of course my friend squatted like this the entire time. I squatted about 2 minutes, then had a seat in the dirt which is just absolutely something you never do...oops, blame it on not knowing the culture (even though I did) or on being the crazy white girl, whatever you want!!

PTL that my friends are sweet sweet women who offer me so much cultural grace it's ridiculous. I've heard that other foreigners here have not been afforded this grace, but don't worry, my friends didn't march through the street waving swords b/c I made a cultural mistake by sitting on the ground...even though I did do it intentionally!

Woah...that is scary!!

So Friday my friends and I started getting calls from all over the world to see if we were ok. We had no idea what was going on (I love it when this happens, it's not the first time!!) and it actually took us a while to figure out that there were some pretty big riots going on.

So there's riots, no big deal, we just stay inside and 'maintain a low profile', I've gotten to be a master at that. Last night was the first time I saw the news footage of what has been going on around here...those guys with all those swords actually did look a little scary!!!

But, more than likely (haha), the media is making a much bigger deal out of this than it really is...and the fact that not even the locals on the ground here knew what was going on but the international media was present at the riots has caused even the locals to think it was all a big show/media event to take attention off of some of the other major issues going on in the Sandbox. Wouldn't be the first time!

So for all of you who are following the news, it's not that big of a deal and everyone I know and everyone they know, we're all just fine. Life is going on like normal, although who knows what could happen tomorrow!!! Thanks for all your thoughts!!

Goats Can Get That?

All this time I've been worried about this hemorrhaegic (sp?) fever outbreak (similar to ebola, no treatment if you get it) that I forgot to watch out for the other normal but random diseases.

Today I spent my entire morning running around town with a possibly rabid goat trying to determine if I had, in fact, been exposed to rabies. Turns out the goat does not have rabies, although goats can get it, who knew?!?

What did you do today?