Falling Down

Apparently falling down is just a part of life in the Sandbox. I mean falling down like you're walking along and suddenly you find yourself on the ground. You don't necessarily know what happened, all you know is that at one point you were on your way somewhere and now you're not so much.

This may sound a little odd, but last night I had a falling down experience. I was just walking right outside of my front gate and then I wasn't walking anymore. What can I say, I like to keep the neighborhood entertained.

I had two of my American friends over for dinner tonight. One of them has been here for 4 months, the other for 16 months. Sidenote: there's not much entertainment around here so we pretty much take turns making fun of ourselves for everyone else's benefit. As I started to tell them my falling down story my 4 month friend thought it was just the most absurd thing. Then my 16 month friend chimed in with some of her falling down stories (we all have several) and we laughed pretty hard for a long time. I guess my 4 month friend just hasn't been here long enough but just give it time.

In my defense it is very hard to walk on these dirt roads, they're all uneven and there's holes and big rocks all over. Normally I look at my feet when I'm walking, partly to keep from making 'scandalous' eye contact with any man I don't know and partly to keep from falling down. The roads here are just ridiculous. Even if you're on a paved road or on one of the rare sidewalks you just never know when there's going to be a large hole in the ground that leads to a sewer, you really have to watch out for those. Oddly enough the local women don't seem to have any problems walking. They're wrapped up in a 4 meter long piece of material wearing heels and sometimes balancing things on their heads....and they manage to do it gracefully. Me? I just fall down and laugh about it later. Seriously, we gotta keep the neighbors on their toes....no wonder they think we're crazy!

My house

This is my house. I live on a dirt road, most of the roads here are dirt. We live on the second floor so the yellow wrap around balcony is ours. Notice the goats in the road? They live there. Well, I'm not exactly sure where they sleep or where they come from but they are in the road every day all the time. There are quite a few baby goats and I think that they're really cute when they run. Our neighbors think we're crazy, not because I like to watch the baby goats but just because we're foreigners and we think a little differently than them.

More Graduation

It seems like I can post pictures again so here's some more from the Kindergarten graduation.

Notice the beautiful party tent above us. It is multipurpose, used for both happy parties and funerals. It definitely works to keep the heat and dirt in!

There were tons of people there. These girls couldn't see from underneath the tent so they all piled into this little tiny room and then crowded at the window to see what was going on.

These little kids are just so beautiful and innocent, they have no idea what is going on around them.
And here's some dancing. You pretty much pack a lot of people into a very small space and then do one of three things. 1) lift whatever you are holding in the air and move your hand to the rythem of the music,. 2) raise your hand like before but snap to the music, or 3) just clap. You don't really move much of anything else, I mean, you can move your feet a little but you gotta be careful because you wouldn't want to be as scandalous as to move your hips or anything. Notice that in the background the tent is kind of leaning a little. That's probably because those kids were hanging all over it. I'm not really sure what we would have done if it had fallen down.

118

That was the temperature today...118. People have said that we would know it when summer was here, that all the sudden one day it would just be hot. Well I think that day was yesterday. So much for winter. My local friends are also saying that since we had such a cold winter (in the 80's and 90's every day, real cold huh?) that we will have an extra hot summer. My response is usually 'but I thought that last summer was really hot' and they usually just laugh. I think they laugh partly because I'm a foreigner who just made an attempt at a joke and partly because I probably have no clue what kind of hot we're in for. Oh well. Guess I'll just start drinking 5 liters of water a day again.

Kindergarten Graduation

Yesterday I got to go to a Kindergarten graduation. It was a huge party and so much fun. Traditionally when you throw a party here, you get a big tent and just put it up in the middle of the street (and yes, it is ok if you block the entire street so that no one can even walk down it). When we arrived we were taken to the front row, we were kind of guests of honor. The older kids from the school put on skits and sang songs about the importance of education. There were dance teams and they even had some of the kids get up and do comedy acts, they were really funny. After about 3 hours of that they brought the little kids in and they were all dressed in 'caps & gowns'. It was hilarious because these little kids didn't know what was going on, half of them were crying because they were confused and wanted their moms, the other half were loving it because it was just a big party. They had trumpet players and they played the school song and the national anthem and everyone just got up and danced. It was fun to watch as all these families celebrated the fact that their children had received a Kindergarten education. The school is located in one of the displaced people camps so these people are really the poorest of the poor in the world. Education is such a precious thing and there are so many people who don't have access to schools that it really is a celebration for these kids to have finished a year.

For some reason I can't get many pictures up. Maybe tomorrow.

Our New Pet

This is a picture of our new pet. Actually, it's not, I pretty much hate this thing but it apparently is living in our hoosh now (the little gated in area downstairs that isn't really a yard, it's more like a downstairs balcony without the whole balcony part). Anyways, our neighbors brought him home on Saturday afternoon and said that they were going to kill it Sunday morning, they are celebrating something although I'm not sure what. That's cool. I mean, he's welcome to stay the night. Sunday morning came and went, and then Monday morning came and went. Monday afternoon my roommate (who is an extreme animal lover) went down and took the sheep some vegetables to eat because she was worried that he might be hungry. I told her that his fate had already been decided and that he had sheep food to eat so he probably didn't need real food, but she insisted. This morning (Tuesday) she was talking about going downstairs and cleaning out his water bowl to be sure that he had some clean water to drink. Are they ever going to slaughter this thing? I mean, it's ok if you want to keep him overnight but we're going on 4 days now. The thing smells and I think he's pretty much posessed, if not then he's really really weird. He doesn't say 'baaaa' like a normal sheep. He says 'baeuaauagh', kind of like a game show buzzer only a little more disturbing. When I come in the front gate he gets up and comes towards me and like he's coming after me or something, all the while making that terrible buzzer noise. It's really kind of freaky, especially in the dark. Good thing he's tied up.

Last night the 2 yr old next door (who is terrified of this thing) asked me if I knew the lamp. I wasn't really sure what she meant by 'lamp' so she made this terrible 'baeuaaugh' sound and I knew exactly what she was talking about. She's going to grow up thinking that sheep aren't white and fluffy and that they don't say 'baaa' real cute. She will always remember this terrible thing that stayed in our hoosh forever.

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.