Little Known Facts

Here a few facts about America that y'all might not know:
** Braham Lineekal was the celebrator of slavery
** Benhameed Franleen had polio
** Vancouver is a city in the states, along with Ontario
** ALL of our petroleum comes from TX
** ALL of our animal resources come from Chicago
** I must be a republican b/c ONLY Republicans are allowed to live in TX
** and ONLY Democrats are allowed to live in Pennsylvania
** Ban Ki Moon is now an American b/c he is in charge of the UN and, of course, the UN is the same as the US

I learned all of this in a 10 minute amjad ride today. My driver was pretty astounding in his knowledge about America. Although I really stumped him when I asked what George Bush was doing now that Ban Ki Moon is in charge of the UN/US. He couldn't figure it out and I didn't explain. Was that mean?

1 Year

Today marks my one year anniversary in the Sandbox. Exactly one year ago today I left everyone and everything that I've ever known and moved to the most random place in the world. It's so crazy to think that I have spent an entire year here. It's also weird to think that so many odd things have become so normal that I couldn't even make a fun list. I wanted to make a list of lots of strange things but I couldn't even come up with any strange things because they're all so normal!

I have learned so much this year, about myself, about culture and life overseas, about reaching out to people who are in need. It feels like I've been here forever and at the same time it's like time is flying by. I hope that I haven't weirded anyone out with my strange experiences and gross pictures. Thank you to all of you who have been keeping up with what's going on over here in the Sandbox and for thinking about me.

Easter

Easter was good this year. I took the day off, which wouldn't normally be weird except for that it's been a while since I did that. I was really excited because some of my local friends had asked if they could come to celebrate with us but then their cousin's car got hit by a piece of shrap metal and exploded so they couldn't come. (that might sound like a fake excuse but it's pretty believeable. yah, it's been a seriously long week) About 5pm the electricity went off, it was 125 outside and 95 in our apartment but what can you do?

We had already cooked the ham and stuff and at 6 did a little service. By the time we were ready to eat it was dark. We lit about 15 candles and had a candlight dinner, although can I just say that candlelight dinners don't really work out all that well without some kind of soft backlighting. Just imagine trying to mash potatoes, fix a plate, eat, clean up leftovers, rearrange the fridge to fit the leftovers, etc in the dark. It was...fun...I guess. We had to leave dishes all over the kitchen since we couldn't see to clean them and then sat and stared at each other for a few hours. What else can you do in the dark? Eventually after they messed with the generator for a while it finally started and we had lights and fans, but that was about 10 and it was time to go to bed. At some point the power came back on in the night.

So I guess Easter wasn't really all that exciting, but it's amazing how the simplicity of life over here really helps us to focus on the real reason for celebrating.

Homework

Here's a picture of my arabic homework from the other day. I know it's kind of boring for y'all but I can actually read this and kind of understand what it says...of course that's only after reading it about 10 times and having my tutor tell me over and over the meaning of the words, but still, I feel like I've accomplished something.

The Stationery Store

I went to the stationery store to pick up a few things yesterday and was surprised by the plethora of choices I had. First off, let me defined a stationery store. There's no such thing as pretty paper in my country so the stationery store is more like office supplies. Imagine Office Depot but the size of 7-11...probably smaller. Lost of notebooks, pens, paper, etc...you get the idea.

Some of the things they had yesterday included:

**blow up arm floaties for when kids go swimming

(wanna guess how many swimming pools we have here?)

**neon bouncy balls with bugs inside

**whistles in the shape of soccer balls

**hairties

**stickers

**snorkels and masks

**keychains

and last but not least

**fireworks and sparklers

When the owner saw me give the fireworks a questioning look he gave me a demonstration of the sparklers....inside the store right next to a big stack of paper...smart thinking, huh?

A few more pictures of the kids from the distributions last week.

Are You Calling Me Crazy?!?!?

One day last week while we were out at the camp we ran out of water. Instead of drinking the local tap we thought it might be better to track down some bottled water. The camp we were in is huge, over 600,000 people and I can pretty much guarantee you that my friend and I were the only white girls there at the moment, making us the focus of attention.

We stopped at a little shop and got some water. As we were trying to count out the change to pay for it this hand all the sudden appears and tries to take the money right out of my hand. I knew we had drawn quite a crowd but didn't think someone would actually try to take the equivalent of pennies out of my hand. I looked up to see this really tall guy in a felt cowboy hat reaching. I of course said (all this in Arabic) 'No' and he replies 'but you're white. You owe me money'. 'Why do I owe you money?' 'Because you're white and you have it. I'm poor and you should give me some.' So I just said 'I'm poor too'. 'My name is John Michael. What is yours?' 'I just said 'thank you'. At this point my friend chimes in with 'we're working and so we can't give out any money. Those are the rules.' Then he comes back yelling 'you think I'm crazy?!?!?'.

Talk about causing a scene. Obviously he was a little crazy and, judging from the crowd's response of absolute laughter, they already knew it and were just hanging around to see what the white girls would do. At this point he turns around and actually goes crazy, yelling into the crowd something about westerners and how we are all that is evil in the world. Meanwhile my friend and I hightail it out the 'back door' thinking it might be best to leave before we caused even more of a scene. He tried to follow us but some men stepped in and wouldn't let him.

What's really funny is that, in Arabic, the word for rules and the word for crazy aren't really that close. My friend is fluent in Arabic and she said the right word for rules so we're not really sure where he got crazy from except that he already was crazy and was just hearing things.

So that's our encounter with John Michael. Too bad his name wasn't Michael Bolton....or Michael Jackson!!! If I was going to make up a fake name I would have at least picked a good one!

Distributions

The NGO that I'm working for did some distributions out in an IDP (internally displaced people) camp just outside of town this week.

The kids were so happy to be there. They were very cute!

Some of them were too cool to talk to us but very proud of their bike.

There isn't running water in the camps so the people buy all of their water from these donkey carts. The guy just rides around and taps his stick on the barrel and the people come wave him down and buy it by whatever size container that they have.

These neighbor kids wanted to see what all the excitement was about. They are on top of a wall about 8 ft tall.

This little boy played with us all afternoon even though his mom kept calling him to go home. He is adorable!

We went to play volleyball by the Nile maybe a week ago or so. It was lots of fun and very beautiful.
I would imagine that it's hard to play in a jalabiya (kind of like a long sleeve man-dress with pants, more like pajamas)

No More Volleyball

Last night I was supposed to meet my volleyball friend for a game. She was actually keeping score so I was really going to watch. It was supposed to be a big game, this week there's this big all-Africa tournament with teams from all over.

The game started at 5 so I showed up a little after 5. When I arrived there were riot police all over so my first thought was 'good, this time we have pre-emptive riot police protection'. Then I noticed several ambulences and thought '...or maybe they decided to fight before the game and get it over with'. The riot police weren't letting anyone in but, for some reason, waved me to go in. Maybe b/c I was the only white girl in the middle of all these men outside the gate and I was 'unattended'. I decided that instead of going in I would call my friend who was already inside the compound. She said that the ceiling had collapsed at 4:30 but that she was fine. I just turned around and went home, there wasn't a whole lot I could do to help.

PTL that it happened before the game and the gym wasn't full of people. The weird thing is that it doesn't even seem all that strange to me. Around here buildings aren't exactly built according to any type of safety standard and sometimes they fall down. But what can you do, not go into buildings?

The Dam

My country is doing some major development in the north and today I had the opportunity to go up and check it out with a group of foreign doctors in a sort of VIP entourage. Long story. So we flew on one of these little charter planes. When we arrived there was no runway and, amazingly, it was one of the smoothest landings I've ever experienced.

I've always heard people talk about the Nile River Valley and I do live in it but I've never actually seen the contrast between where the Valley ends and the desert begins until today.

There were camels everywhere. Living in the desert and seeing camels more often than the sporadic zoo visit has kind of caused them to lose their novelty, although I still love the baby ones. (notice the two little ones running to catch up to the group)

We also stopped to look at some pyramids. These aren't the same ones I attempted to see a few months back but apparently they are the 'oldest in the world'. I'm not so sure I believe that although they are older than the ones in Egypt. It's kind of odd b/c you can just go and climb on these, I mean there are no barriers, no entrance fees. To the left of me in the picture (which you can't see, sorry) are these huge sand hills that are actually more pyramids that have just had sand blown over them.

Here are some local girls riding their donkeys bringing back feed for their other animals.

Now here's the dam. It's the biggest project ever attempted in my country. This picture is of the dam and is taken from this huge fancy complex that they built to house all the foreign engineers that they hired to build this thing. So I'm standing in front of this air conditioned movie theater looking out over this tiny village that has no electricity or running water and looking at this dam that will, alone, produce twice as much electricity than the entire country is producing at the moment. Behind the dam they will build a reservoire and displace a couple thousand people. They say that they are giving lots of money towards relocating people but yet they can't hook up the neighbor village less than 20 feet away with electricity. Sorry to share my pessimistic attitude. Maybe when they finally get this thing up and running they will stop cutting our power every other day!

And this last one is a picture of my city. I do live in the capitol city of my country, but it's really more like a very large village than it is like a city. Although it is getting more modern every day it is still definitely third world. Recently there has been a influx of money into the economy here and they are projecting huge growth. I personally am hoping that they will spread the money out and work on development all over the country, not just in the capitol.