Just Another Day...

...of firsts in my experience with goats. More vaccines and some toe nail clipping. Can I just say that this is one of the grossest things?!? I even find clipping my own toenails just a little gross but muddy (along with who knows what else) and nasty long goat hooves? Thanks to Mack for bringing a pair of hoof clippers over to us. 10 months later they are finally being put to some good use!! How many guys does it take to clip a goats toenails?? Today...three. Now this is where the hard part of my job comes in...the part where I have a seat, drink tea and play with a bunch of kids b/c clipping goat toenails is 'not women's work'. Hey, I'm not gonna argue with that!

A friend giving a thumbs up to all y'all!

Every time we go into the goat pens to look at the goats it turns into a zoo...literally. People crowd around the door and windows except they're not so much looking at the goats as they are looking at the foreigners who are looking at the goats.

BBC Special

Right now there's a panel discussion on BBC discussing the happenings of my country. Here's a summary...not a personal opinion, a summary:

***The UN is secretly controlled by the US
***The US is partnering with Israel to take over the Arab world
***2 million people are making it all up
***Oh wait...forgot that there aren't 2 million people displaced, just a few hundred thousand
***The International Criminal Court (ICC) is a biased committee
***Any ICC reports filed on war crimes are completely false accusations
***Really any media reports are all lies
***To be a journalist you have to be a liar
***Western countries aren't giving enough aid money
***However, money and verbal encouragement are all that is needed
***How can a government kill it's own people? (rhetorical question)
***Every 1 minute of media time focused on the Sandbox is 2 minutes of media time that are not focused on Iraq (not sure about the math on that one)
***The US also controls the media and the Sandbox has no chance

I really enjoy watching stuff like this. While I don't find the actual situation funny at all I do get a kick out of debates like this. No resolution can come of it. A bunch of men just sit around and 'politely raise their voices' at each other, throwing around ridiculous accusations and getting angry. I must admit that my view is a little partial, but still, on these things no one proves a point and someone always ends up looking like an idiot.

Random story...today I was in the village. My friend has this huge scar from her wrist to above her elbow and I asked her what happened. She told me she used to live in a village in the mountains. One morning she woke up to gunfire and the village was surrounded by men riding camels and shooting anyone and everything that moved. Mass chaos erupted and people scattered. She grabbed her babies and ran. Her grandmother was sitting at the fire making tea...she was old and couldn't move fast and Hailey saw the men on the camels shoot her grandmother. She saw women accidentally drop their babies but they couldn't stop to pick them up or they would be killed...or worse. They had no choice but to run for their lives.

That's a loose translation...and from the look on her face I'm gonna say that she is not one of the 2 million people making it all up.

More Pictures

My favorite little girl. She's the one I would bring home with me if I could.

Some of the girls waving their chips and soap in the air...right before they ate them.

And the boy's side of the room. Notice the ski coats? It was 68 degrees so pretty cold, huh? If you notice in the last post I am also wearing a light jacket. However, only about 3/4s of the kids were at school that day. When we ended up with a ton of bags left we asked what the problem was and the headmaster said 'they don't come to school when it gets too cold'. Hmmm, imagine that!!!

A Few Distribution Pictures

As usual the Internet is working just great and I can load 3 pictures and no more. Maybe more tomorrow.

It's a little blurry but the only picture I have of me doing stuff today.

Long Good Day!!

Had a very long but very good day. I think I'll just make a lot of medium/kind of long posts instead of one really really huge long one. Of course pictures aren't loading right now...I'll try those again tomorrow. There are 4 posts following this so start here and keep reading!

Started off with some fog and really cold wind. We don't have fog here so I woke up thinking that someone was burning trash, then panicked a little thinking that there was a huge fire. After a while I remembered that fog exists in the world and eventually figured things out...in my defense it was early morning and fog really is a novelty around here!

Then we loaded boxes into the cars and took them out to the camp for the distribution. We went to the main school first and it was amazing. All the kids were in their classrooms seated and waiting for us. We just went to each classroom, gave one bag to each kid, then left. Each classroom had at least 60 kids if not more but they were so well behaved...of course their teachers were holding long sticks to whip them with (normal) which might have had something to do with it.

The whole thing went so quickly and smoothly that other people outside the school didn't even realize what was going on until it was over so we weren't completely mobbed by people demanding we give them one too. PTL b/c those situations can turn really ugly really fast.

Even our assigned security guy got in on the action and helped pass things out. Good thing, because he wasn't doing much to keep us 'safe' with that pen and paper he was using to write down every single thing that we said or did...he'll use all that in the report he writes up on us later.

After the main school we went to the kindergarten and passed out more. I love the little kids, they're just so cute! They were so excited and were singing and clapping while they waited for us. When we handed them out at first the teachers told them not to open them so they wouldn't get all their stuff mixed up and lose things but there's really no way you can keep 60 5-yr olds from opening a present and after about 2 minutes they had all dug in.

It was just so amazing, watching this room full of excited little kids opening up what is probably their first surprise present ever. They were holding up each thing, showing each other and laughing...It was like Christmas morning except better! We put chips and cookies and candy in each one but I didn't realize what a luxury all that was until all these little kids started jumping up and down excited about their individual sized bags of chips.

Of course they all ate their candy, chips and cookies before we even left but what was really funny was that some of them also tried to eat their soap. Each bag had a bar of soap in it. I know that they have soap so it's not like they've never seen it before, but I doubt they've ever seen bars of soap in individually wrapped cardboard boxes before. They thought it was candy and quite a few of them were trying to eat it. Even though it tasted kind of gross they are little and just figured it was some kind of strange, special American candy!!!

They sang some songs for us before we left. I made a video of them but there's no way my internet is fast enough to load a video so sorry. Then they all said a huge shukran (thank you) in unison. And those of us working here want to say a huge thank you to all of y'all who were involved in making this project a reality. You brought joy to our hearts and blessed a lot of children today.

Special Order

After the bags were all passed out we went to find some quick food and a truck. There are 2 goats from the project that turned out to not be pregnant and, since the deal said we would give them pregnant goats and since we paid extra to buy pregnant goats, we struck a deal with the farm owner to trade these 2 for 2 more that actually are pregnant. As fun and as clean as goats are, we figured it was best to rent a truck and not put them in the back of the SUV.

We drove about 10 minutes to a little market area and stopped at the only restaurant we saw. The menu consisted of chicken liver, goat liver, lentils, soup and fool (local beans). We were running late and were really looking for something a little more take away than soup. When we asked the guy taking the money if they had anything take away he thought about it for a minute then said 'well, we can put your beans in some bread and make it a sandwich.' We thought about it and, seeing as it was either a bean sandwich or no sandwich at all, we opted for the bean sandwich.

However bean sandwiches weren't on the menu so this was a 'special order'. Even though they already had the beans and they already had the bread and were just putting it all into a different form than usual we actually ended up paying 75 cents for something that should have cost 25 cents...not a big deal but let me point out that it was a 200% markup. Was that because it was a special order or because we are white? Who knows.

Then the man taking the money got up and went behind the counter with the cooks leaving his money station unmanned and a line/group of people pushing to get to the front. Without washing his hands he got us some bread, went to the counter where they had just cut raw meat and hadn't cleaned, put the beans on our bread without salt or tomatoes or any of the normal things and handed them to us.

I guess that's what we get for trying to order take away from a sit down stand...and when I say 'sit down' I mean a bunch of plastic lawn furniture in the dirt next to the street.

Want Some Water?

So we got breakfast and the truck, picked up the two not-pregnant goats and headed out to the next town which is across the Nile. We were thirsty from our bean sandwiches and stopped at a little shop to get some drinks real quick. The truck driver pulled up behind us and he jumped out and seemed to be heading in too.

When I got inside I grabbed some waters and a diet coke, turned to the guy who followed me in the store and said 'I got you a water. If you want anything else just grab it, no problem.' The guy kind of looked at me funny and mumbled something and went to get something else.

We took all of our stuff to the desk and the guy who followed me in the store was right there so I handed him the water I got for him and put everything else in the bag. The guy kind of looked at me strange. The shop owner told us it would cost 6 pounds but I said 'no, 6 1/2 because of his water' and he just looked at me funny but said 'ok, 6 1/2'.

We paid and got outside and the truck driver was sitting in the truck...I'm not sure who I bought water for. I thought that they were all just being weird b/c people here in the Sandbox have this thing where they always buy things for their guests and, even though I've lived here 2 years it, doesn't matter. I will always be a foreigner and, therfore, a guest. So even my really good friends always act kind of strange when I try to pay for things...I just thought he was doing that.

I'm pretty sure that in 50 years he'll be telling his grandkids about the day that he met the white girl in the store and she threw a bottle of water at him and made him take it!!!!

Bridges & Stoplights

After the water we made our trek across town. Got close to the first bridge and ran into completely stopped traffic. Finally after a while we got to where we could see that the bridge was closed, then saw that it was closed b/c a car had driven off of it into the river and they had a crane and people looking for it.

We passed that bridge and went to the next one....and it was closed. Went to the next one and they had it going just one way and it was the wrong way. At this point we had exhausted our choice of bridges across the river we wanted and had to go towards a bridge across another river to another town. Then the roads were closed and traffic was crazy. Finally we got to an open bridge that crossed the wrong river but at least we were crossing a river.

2 hours to make a 30 minute drive, we get where we're going and we get a phone call that there are protests downtown and they're closing the bridges....no wonder all the bridges were closed and the roads downtown were all weird with all kinds of traffic!!!

So then to come home we had to drive all the way to an even farther bridge, along with the rest of the world, because they must have forgotten to close that one.

And, apparently, they have new traffic light budget for 2008 because they are pretty much putting up traffic lights at every intersection. BUT none of them are turned on, they're just put up and they make the traffic 10 times worse than before. Overall we spent 5 hours in the car today b/c of bridges and stoplights.

Free Goats and Little Girls

The owner of the farm where we bought the goats heard that one of the ladies has several blind children and he decided that he was going to give her a free goat and alot of feed to go with it. So we threw that one in with the 2 hopefully pregnant ones and went back to the camp.

When I visit the 'blind lady' as we call her, there are always these two little kids there, a 3 yr old girl and her 2 yr old brother. They have always been scared of us and usually will peak around corners and run away giggling. Just normal stuff like that. Last week I was there and all the sudden the little girl just planted herself in front of me and held up her arms. I picked her up and the next thing I knew her brother was there too so I walked around with a kid on each hip until my arms got too tired.

When her mom came over and saw the little girl being all friendly she asked her 'are you and the white girl friends now?' and the little girl just giggled and snuggled up to me. It was a little different. A lot of the kids are afraid of us. The ones who aren't afraid will usually sit really far from me on the bed and then slowly scoot over until they're close but they never get too close.

Then today we pulled up in front of the blind lady's house and the little boy and girl were about 50 yards away in the street. The minute this little girl saw us she took off running towards us as fast as she could go. I saw her coming and squatted down and held out my hand to shake her hand (strange but normal for a 3 yr old) but instead of shaking my hand she threw her arms around my neck and would not let go.

So I carried her around a while but this time I had tears in my eyes. I guess it doesn't take much for a 3 yr old to touch your heart.

Celebration

We were scheduled to have a celebration today in conjunction with the bags. It was cancelled due to a rather surprising large variety of reasons including but not limited to:

***Security Issues
***An important person who died yesterday in the same neighborhood as the school
***A lack of permissions from people who want us to pay 'extra money'
***New Year's Day
***Miscommunications all around, none of which were due to a language barrier
***There are 'Too many white people running around unsupervised, just coming and going as they please.'

Supposedly the distribution is still on, but who really knows how that will look or when it will actually happen. Hopefully they'll let at least a few white people 'run around and come and go' so that we can be sure that the things actually do get given and that they are given to the right people and so that we can take some pictures.

Today was one of those days where you just want to give up and go home...you feel like anything and everything you have done/are doing here is pointless. Like the minute you finally accomplish something and see some sort of progress they step in with stupid paperwork stuff and stupid reasons and accusations and everyone around you is discouraged and you are discouraged and you just want to quit.

What do you do on a day like this? Go home, stay home and wait for tomorrow to come. Because surely tomorrow will go better than today.

A New President

A conversation I had with a good friend:

Friend: So, I am hearing much about your elections for president this year. It will be difficult to choose, right?
Me: Sure, I guess it will be difficult
Friend: Do you think there can really be a woman or an American African?
Me: I don't really know.
Friend: It is funny. Your elections are coming so soon and you will get to choose the one who will be your next leader. We might or might not have any elections in the next year and we already know who our next president will be!

Just one of the joys of living in a 'democratic' country!

BS Standard

The construction guys next door, well, they're still working. They built half a wall below ground level up to where they were going to start rebuilding our wall that they broke...then their half wall fell down again and they had to start over. The day it fell down my friend went over and asked them how it was going and was giving them a hard time and the guy in charge told him 'Don't worry. We're making it up to BS standard.' My friend was like 'BS standard?' and the head guy said 'yes, British standard...BS standard.' Hmmm.....

Evacuation Planning

Apparently it is time that we make an evacuation plan. We have this whole packet of things telling us of different scenarios that we need to expect so that we won't panic. Here are just a few:

***Consider what you will do if the water and the electricity are cut off...hmm, I can't imagine.
***Consider what you will do if the market is closed...umm, go back after nap/prayer time?
***Consider what you will do if the phone lines are down...again, I just can't imagine
***In the event of an emergency, maintain phone, email or fax contact at all times...b/c they probably won't cut off the phones...and why did you just say to consider it?

I just think it's a little funny/ironic that they're saying to consider these types of scenarios emergency situations and they're even warning us not to panic. I thought all this stuff was just normal!!

The Book Store

In this town there are no book stores outside of downtown. It's strange b/c downtown there are a ton of bookstores. Last week I needed to go to a book store and wandered around town until I made it down town at 4. Apparently all the book stores close at 4pm so we basically got to the front door of about 3 different stores just in time for it to be closed.

This week we left a little bit earlier and went to this huge book store...5 stories!!! Although, imagine Barnes & Noble without the chairs or carpet, without air conditioning or coffee but probably about the same amount of books which is a wonder in itself...this place was huge! We wandered around for an hour and I accumulated a huge load of children's books. Then the lady came and said that it was time to leave...except that it was exactly 4pm, the time they close. I'm not sure that the lights were even on when we got there but they were off at 4. Then we began the checkout process.

First off I'll say that I was very impressed that they even had computers. So on the fifth floor with the lights off the ladies entered my books into the computer, only there were no identifying numbers or bar codes and no prices. They actually typed in the title of each separate book and then in the end printed out a huge long receipt and handed me this arm load of books, then left. I was a little confused when they just got up and left and I was standing there with all those books in the dark but my local friend was like 'I guess we pay downstairs'.

So we walked down 4 flights of stairs in the dark and all the floors on the way down were locked up tight so we didn't see even one person. When we got downstairs where everyone was leaving. We went to the first desk to pay but all their computers were off. After about 5 minutes of heated discussion they decided to just make a note that we paid, hide the money in a drawer and stamp our receipts that we paid.

Then we walked to a desk 5 feet away where they had been standing there, watching the whole money ordeal, and they actually went through our books one by one and checked them off of our receipt. We were the very very last people in the store and these 2 people were taking forever....forever to count our books. I mean, we did have a lot but they were the slowest people I've ever met. And everyone else was just standing around, waiting for us to leave so they could leave. Finally the manager came over and was like 'it's fine, they bought them, let's go.'

I'm sure they have their reasons for doing things the way they do. I just think that there's got to be a better way to purchase books than going to the 3 different desks...especially when the lights are out and the computers are off...Y'all enjoy your Barnes & Noble!!!

Things I Will Not Miss

One of the things I will not miss about the Sandbox is days like this...where the electricity and the water are off all over town. Normally during the winter both electricity and water are pretty good. And even when one is off usually the other is on. We have a generator and turn it on after the power has been out for a few hours and when the water is off you can always drive across town to a friend's house and shower there. But every once in a while you get a day where neither works and what do you do then? I guess I'm just complaining...and dreaming of a place where you don't have to fix dinner with rubber gloves on because you won't be able to wash your hands after you cut the raw chicken.

Sweat Shop

We spent the entire day today packing Christmas bags for a bunch of school kids. It was lots of fun. It's actually a holiday today so everyone's kids were out of school and they came to help too...it was like we had our own little sweat shop going. But once we got a routine down it only took about 5 hours between all of us to get them all done...and of course that includes an hour for lunch, so it really only took more like 4 hours. I didn't want to put up any pictures of my friends since I didn't know if they wanted me to or not, so here's a stack of boxes and just know that there were 8 or so people there too!

We were originally supposed to do things this Saturday but it got postponed (big surprise) to next Saturday. But don't worry. I'll put pictures up soon after! Love y'all!

Thanks A Lot

Since they've been tearing down and building up next door we've had a few 'incidents'. First off, they broke the phone lines that, actually, just got fixed yesterday which was 3 weeks later. On the same day they also broke the water lines. PTL Our water didn't get cut off but now it comes out like this:

What is strange is that I really don't mind. I mean, I stopped brushing my teeth with the tap water and I haven't done a load of white laundry in three weeks, but other than that it's fine. I'm still cleaner when I get out of the shower than when I got in, so it works out fine.

Then today we were driving down the street and we saw the phone line guys. They stopped and asked if the line was working today and we were like 'well, you fixed it yesterday so probably it works.' They just laughed and moved on. Then we got up to the construction site and noticed an abnormally large crowd gathered. As we looked a little harder we noticed this:

Things might not look so bad until you look a little closer. That's my house...and that's the wall surrounding our compound that has fallen into the hole. When they first started digging and the wall started falling little by little we told them about it and they came over, looked at it, laughed at us and patched up the holes with cement. Then the wall kept moving and the tile on the ground started cracking and falling in a little. We told them again and they just laughed. Then today it was 'God's will' that the wall should fall in and there was just absolutely nothing they could have done about it. I guess it's good that none of them got crushed underneath it!

It's not like a thief is going to go down into the pit and then climb up to break in so no big deal there. But there's also a 3 yr old who lives here too and she finds the gap in the wall fascinating...as does her dog that she likes to chase close to the edge. And that's where we park one of the cars so I guess it's a good thing the car didn't fall in with the wall but now where do we park the car?

So thanks guys next door who break everything and knock down our house. I'm not joking when I say that there's never a dull moment around here!!!

2 Day Weekends!!!

As of January 26th the Sandbox will begin observing 2 day weekends!!! Here's the article:

January 6, 2008 – The Sandbox cabinet today has decided to adopt a two-day weekend starting from January 26.
The Council of Ministers on Sunday decided to expand the weekend holiday from the current one day (Friday) to two days (Friday and Saturday) beginning from Saturday January 26, for a period of six month for studying and assessment.
The Council of Ministers called on the Ministry of Labour to adopt the necessary arrangements to implement this decision in a manner that comply with the national and international labour laws and guarantee enhancement of the productivity.
The Cabinet also instructed the Ministry of Education and the Ministries of Education in the states to study the experiment and to determine its impact on the academic year and the education process so as to cope with this situation.

Maybe people are coming around. I especially like that it's only for 6 months for 'study and assessment'. As of now people work between about 9-ish to 2-ish. I wonder how exactly they define 'productivity' because I haven't seen a whole lot of that around here. However I can pretty much guarantee that there will be a 'decline in productivity' if they still work the same hours but 5 days a week instead of 6...problem is, has anyone else thought of that???

These Guys

All four of them are named Mohammed...not hard to remember that one!

This kid never smiles...there's a definite difference between when he's happy or mad, but he really never smiles.