Trials of Life

No we haven't died. Last monday morning we woke up to find our phone not working. Usually this is how the phone company tells you it's time to pay your bill. I knew this wasn't the problem since I just paid it. So I went to the company to complain and they said it was just a technical problem and they would send someone out the next day. This is normal since no one works in the afternoon especially the non-private sector. The next day nobody came to fix it. Yesterday and today were public holidays so no one works. Tomorrow I don't think it will get fixed and we are also going out of town for a while tomorrow... so no phone, no internet. I am currently writing from the university where I teach. It is abandoned for the summer.

I'm not writing on my computer so I don't have a vast array of photos so I thought I would entertain you with this one. It's me at my French class last year in France. There are 8 different nationalities in this photo.

Thanks for reading.

Road Hazards

It is not uncommon to be driving down the road and have to stop for different types of livestock. Goats are the most common but camels sometimes try to push you off the road too. It’s strange to be in the downtown areas and see these kinds of animals.

When we lived south of the border I had car insurance that said that if I hit and killed someone with my car the company would pay up to one hundred camels.

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This is part of our routine every night. If we don’t tape him up, he walks out of his room in the morning in the buck but not before turning the sprinkler on his bed.

Gecko

Here’s a photo of a gecko on the outside of a screened window. We regularly get these in our house. They kind of make me disgusted. Some western people we know tell us not to kill them because they eat mosquitoes and spiders inside the house. The locals tell us not to kill them because they are Shataan, or Satan.

The Brady Bunch Normal Style

Living in a place like we do we are not exposed to the same kind of things and social situations as we would be if we lived in America. For our children this can be a bit tricky. We want them also to be American; thus we like some Americana every now and then… We have the first and fourth seasons of the Brady Bunch on DVD. Our daughter Jane loves them. Every afternoon she begs us to watch them. We have seen every episode over and over. So as you can imagine the Brady influence has penetrated into her understanding of the world as well as her vocabulary. We don’t hear very many “groovy’s” or “far outs” and she hasn’t started to wear bell bottoms and disco pants yet but she has named her favorite stuffed toy dog Tiger and sometimes walks around with a magnifying glass held up to her eye imitating Peter who was pretending to be Sherlock Holmes. She often refers to Benedict Arnold in reference to the episode that Peter received a lot of flack for playing him in the school play. She likes to pretend to be like Cindy when she lost her mother’s earrings. She searches all over the house for them. One day she was worried about getting the “neasles” (a reference to how all six Brady kids got the measles). One day she asked about putting a pay phone in our house. It’s funny.

The National Championship

I played in the national championship tonight. We lost by 2 points to the Port. You may be asking, what happened to the rest of the playoffs, well the team we were suppose to play in the semifinals never showed up so we won by forfeit.

But tonight, I could tell you how I received a mysterious foul after diving for a ball when there were no opposing players around. Or I could tell you how I also mysteriously fouled out going from going from 3 fouls to 5 fouls in one play. Or how I was being pushed all night by their big men and finally in a moment of having enough shoving the opposing player to the floor (that was the 2 foul play). As you can imagine he became unglued and had to be held back from coming after me as I walked over to where the police were standing. It wasn’t my finest moment. I don’t really feel bad about it since they were manhandling me all night. But I do feel a little bad because it was with less than 5 minutes to play and I think it cost us the game.

The Minister of sports was there and the TV station was taking some video of the game. I don’t know what else to say except that I’m a little irritated right now.

The second picture is on my Malagasy friend Fal. He used to play on the national team in Madagascar. He is really good. He won the MVP of the tournament.

Happy Father’s Day

Here’s a photo of my dad claiming responsibility for breaking off the nose of the Sphinx.

Traffic

It’s not strange to see three people on a motorcycle or scooter around here. There are many traffic accidents too. If I am going to die in this country I don’t think it will be by a terrorist or some crazy nomad I’m sure it will be in a traffic accident. It’s every man for himself on the roads. Drivers routinely pass cars when there is on coming traffic. Sometimes a passing car is past by a second passer at the same time. Countless times I have had to swerve off the road just seconds from death. You can’t take your eyes off the other traffic for a moment. Pedestrians will also walk right into traffic with out looking to see if any cars are coming. The few sidewalks that exist are filthy so people walk on edge of the road instead. Add numerous potholes into the mix and you have a formula for a dangerous situation. We know people who have killed pedestrians. Hopefully that will never happen to me.

Juuma

Today is our weekend. Tomorrow we start the work week again. We have a six day working week around here with Friday as the day off. Friday is the holy day like Sunday is in west. I don’t really like this 6 day work week thing. I prefer the 2-day weekend. We usually really lie low on Friday. We either go to the beach, the pool or we stay home and let the kids watch Tom and Jerry cartoons all morning. But don’t be deceived by the 6 day work week. Most people only work from about 8 in the morning to about noon everyday. They don’t usually return to work in the afternoon. So you are looking at about 24 hours a week. This makes it difficult to get things done as you can imagine since there is a lot of pressure during those few hours to accomplish everything. The afternoons are reserved for sleeping and the late afternoons are reserved for chewing khat, a mild narcotic leaf that almost every man in the country chews. See the photo of the khat seller.

A part de la chaleur

Here is a photo I took on a coastal road. In the afternoons there is a sea of people wading in the sea because it is so hot. Most people can’t swim so they don’t go in very far. Notice the lack of swimming apparel on one of the guys. I never ever expected to see so much skin before I came to Africa, especially in an Islamic country. I like to blame it on the French.

Jottings…

In tribute to my close personal friend Sid Hartman I will give you a synopsis of happenings recently since it was impossible to write because the internet was out in the entire country the past couple of days.

On Sunday night I played in what I thought was the championship basketball game versus the Port (the team that beat us earlier in the season). We won by 2 points. It was ugly too. This team never loses so they didn’t know how to do it very gracefully. There was a lot of controversy at the end of the game about how many seconds were left on the clock. The scorer’s table was keeping track of the time and they blew the whistle to end the game but the other team didn’t think that it was right for some reason and a large shouting match broke out against the officials. Eventually they reversed the decision as what commonly happens here when enough people whine and make threats. This didn’t sit well with several members of our team and they decided to enter into the drama too when the officials said we had to play 9 more seconds. Our team refused to return the floor and we left with a victory (I tried to go back on the floor but got scolded by my team). It seems to me that the refs and everyone in this country is afraid to be decisive because they fear protests. As an American, frankly I find this irritating.

One of the players on the Port team was a guy I played against when we lived south of the border. It was fun to see him… and beat him.

The World Cup has begun and there is sort of a festiveness in the air. Every afternoon and evening local out door restaurants are crowded with men watching these soccer matches on television. Also it seems as if more kids are playing soccer in the streets even though it’s well over 100 degrees out. I wanted to schedule an appointment today on a work related issue but it has to wait until tomorrow because France and Brazil both play today. They are the favorite teams of most people around here. Even I have learned to like watching this sport. I never would have admitted that 5 years ago.

Radiators and Grenades

I don’t know why I was worried (Re: the last posting, “Today is just another typical day in Africa”). Everything worked out better than expected tonight. I was supposed to pick up our guests but they found a taxi instead. When they got to our home, I finally heard from Omar my mechanic. He said he would bring the car to me. I was amazed. This kind of thing never happens here.

Even more amazingly he didn’t charge me anything for the repair. This is even more bizarre. Usually we (western people) are nickeled and dimed horribly. Actually it’s more like twentied and fiftied, as in dollars if I can make up a new expression. This guy is a gem. Really he is unparalleled around here in the service he does. Most of his clientele are French soldiers and he knows that if he treats them well they will always come back to him. He is the third different mechanic I’ve used here and I will always go back to him. By the way when I drove our friends home tonight, the temperature gauge came up only a fourth of the way and the air conditioning worked fine. For my friend Omar’s a genius…

After Omar brought the car, he and I chewed the fat a little bit since he speaks English natively after spending many years in Canada and he is a good guy. He always knows what’s going on around the city. He told me that a grenade went off the other day on a street that is always pretty crowded with people. I was shocked. I had not heard this before. I drive on this street a lot. Terrorist activity is not an issue here partly because of the abundance of foreign military. As the rumor goes, it was brought here by someone who “found” this grenade in a city about 3 hours to the north of here. It was left over from the civil war that happened in the early ‘90’s. He was showing it off and pulled the pin and threw it. People started screaming and they scattered. It blew up and injured 9 people, one of which lost his leg. I think Omar said the police caught the guy. Crazy.

Today is just another typical day in Africa

For the past few days we’ve noticed the temperature gauge in our car rising. The hot season has arrived but our car has always handled the heat pretty well in the past. This morning as Roxy was taking Jane to school the car overheated. Jane got to school alright but Roxy had to quickly get the car to the mechanic. She left it there and took a taxi to her office. We’ve been without the car all day. We’ve had to cancel some appointments we had lined up in the afternoon since it is difficult to get a taxi in our neighborhood and we’ve been on “standby” with the mechanic waiting for him to finish. It’s 6:30 right now the mechanic is not answering my calls and we have to pick up some people for dinner tonight. I’m not sure how we will figure this one out. Just another typical day.

Golden Birthday

Happy 5th birthday to our daughter Jane. Here are some quotes that we can see the perspective of a little American growing up in the third world:

“Mommy, is the president of our country missing?”
“No, why do you ask?”
“Well, because there are pictures of him everywhere.”
(His photo is displayed in every establishment)

“Mommy, I know what it’s going to be like in heaven… there is going to be green grass on the ground, the water tank will always be full, and when you go to stores they’re always going to be open.”

“This is the life… no school today, my birthday is tomorrow, and I’m eating ice cream.”

The Evolution of a Signature

Every month I pay Adan, our guard, 18,000 Francs ($103) to look after our house. Before he came to work for us, he was a goat herder in the desert. He doesn’t have the proper papers to be here in this country and is considered illegal. This means that every now and then the police come around and attempt to “round up” guards like him (almost every guard in our neighborhood is here illegally). The only way out if he is caught by the police is to pay a few thousand Francs to “forget about it.” These police come around every now and then and all the guards in the neighborhood go into hiding for a few hours.

By looking at his writing skills I don’t think our guard ever went to school. It’s a common story for many people like him here. He can’t even write his name. Above are the signatures from some of the receipts he has signed for his wages. The first time I asked him to sign the receipt he just made a scribbled line. Not believing he couldn’t write, I told him to try again. He was embarrassed. If you look at the first signature to the last one he might be making some progress. These 4 signatures are probably the only things he has written in the past 4 months. He still gets embarrassed when I ask him to sign his receipt. Maybe I should at least teach him how to write his name.

Prom, P, P, P, Prom...

Last night the first lady hosted a concert/ dinner/ dance party, in honor of a famous singer, originally from here, that had come to visit from Minneapolis. She invited 200 of her closest friends. I guess it goes without saying that I wasn’t in the ‘200’, but I have friends that are, so they were able to get me a ticket.

We all had a great time. The music was great, as was the dancing. It was a ‘who’s who’ sort of event, everyone dressed in their newest and best clothes. At the end of the night, one of the ladies at our table started talking to me. The music was so loud I couldn’t understand anything she was saying. Later one of my friends leaned over and said, “Do you know who you were just talking to?” I said no, and she told me it was the first lady’s daughter!

I was able to connect with the singer (to the right of me, on the photo) after the event about how we’re both from Mpls. Then she agreed to take a picture with me and my friends.

"Except for the heat"

Similar to MN, the weather is the most common topic of conversation here. A common greeting in the local language is “How are you?” “I’m fine, except for the heat.” This year the hot season has arrived early, much to everyone’s dismay.

When I got in our car today at about 11: 15 AM to pick Jane up from school, the temperature inside the car was 131 degrees. I turned on the a/c and by the time I got to Jane’s school to pick her up, the temp. had dropped to 122 degrees. Then the car started overheating, and I had to turn off the a/c and open the windows. When we got home, Jane and I were really hot. I was kind of concerned about Jane because her face was drenched in sweat, so I got her something to drink, put her in the living room, and turned on the a/c, which we normally use sparingly during the day because it’s pretty expensive to run. After about 10 minutes, the power went out, so Joe fired up the generator [the generator can not run the a/c's]. After about 2 minutes, the generator ran out of gas.…

When I told this story to a co-worker he was laughing hysterically because he knows what it’s like here when one thing leads to another. The power goes out and you’re drenched in sweat because the fans aren’t running and you want to take a shower, but the water doesn’t run when the power is out, and on and on.

It’s not like we’re alone in this… the whole country suffers during the hot season and we have the easiest of most of them with a car, generator, and air conditioning. But when, like today, our car and a/c and generator fail us, we find ourselves with the majority of the people here and it’s not a whole lot of fun. -Roxy