Zizou II

I thought this might be the case...

"The Paris-based anti-racism advocacy group SOS-Racism issued a statement Monday
quoting "several very well informed sources from the world of football" as
saying Materazzi called Zidane a "dirty terrorist." It demanded that FIFA,
soccer's world governing body, investigate and take any appropriate action."

-The Zidane Mystery: What Set Him Off? By JEROME PUGMIRE, AP Sports Writer

http://www.comcast.net/sports/index.jsp?cat=SPORTS&fn=/2006/07/10/431039.html&cvqh=itn_zidane

Zizou

I could relate to Zinedane Zidane getting kicked out of the World Cup Final. Of course I’ve never played at that level but my blog entry from June 19th relates to it. http://thenormalfamily.blogspot.com/2006/06/national-championship.html

It’s just a few minutes after the game and we don’t know why he head butted Mario Materazi in the chest but I’m guessing Materazi made a racial slur at Zidane.

Being in France I was pulling for them. If they would have won this place would have gone crazy even more than it did last week when they beat Portugal. But I can hear celebrations going on out my window now from Italian fans. We are close to the border here. Someone just shot off a cannon and there was cheering.
(see http://thenormalfamily.blogspot.com/2006/07/post-script-french-lightning.html)

Geneva, Switzerland

I had a rendezvous at 1400 with Arvin Sloan in Geneva regarding the final piece for the Rambaldi device called the Relic. I was wearing a wire so Marshall from Op-Tech could guide me to the safe behind Mr. Sloan’s Renoir in his office. My iPod was fabriquated to read the Fibonacci sequence for the password. But while I was in the process of cracking the code one of Mr. Sloan’s men, Julian Sark, intercepted the device but my backups Dixon and Bristow were there and took care of Sark.

Afterwards I went swimming with the other Normals and we visited the church where John Calvin took over Switzerland. This panorama photo is from the bell tower from the church building where he preached at. It was Catholic before he and his boys made it Protestant. It was quite interesting.

Post Script: French Lightning

We noticed that the thunder was very loud during thunderstorms. It turns out it wasn’t thunder at all. I found out that when it rains in the valley here in Albertville that some of the grape farmers on the side of the mountains shoot off cannons into the thunderstorm. They do this because they think that the hot air from the cannon will go up into the clouds and warm them up and prevent hail. Hail destroys their vineyards. They make a lot of wine here in this region. Some people say that these guys are crazy and that they know it doesn’t work but just shoot the cannons off for tradition.

Nazis No Longer Welcome

I found this house today as I was walking down the street here in Albertville France, home of the 1992 Winter Olympics. This house was the headquarters of the local Gestapo during World War II. They used to torture people in the basement. Supposedly this region had a strong resistance during the war.

Rumor has it that the family who owns the house has been wanting to sell it for years but every time they put it on the market someone in their family dies, so they are not selling it. These French are a superstitious lot.

French Lightning

Here is some 4th of July lightning in the French Alpes.

Americans in Paris

The Hunchbacks of Notre Dame

Here are Jane, Thor and their grandma Ginger. You can't see their hunched backs in this photo.

Storming the Bastille

217 years and 12 days after the event the changed Western Europe, it was my turn to have a shot at it.

After France's shocking victory versus the heavily favored Brazilians, les Francais took to the streets as only the know how to do and caused a huge ruckus. Many climbed up the statue at Place de la Bastille and went crazy. I thought I should try it too. Quand en France, fait comme les Francais. It was crazy... or I was crazy to do it.

Le Penseur

It's good to be raising "thinking" kids.

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.

~~~~

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

Blackout!

The temperatures these days are getting up to 110 F or more during the day according to my thermometer. The nights don’t cool down very much either. Also mixed into this is a high humidity. It never rains either to take the edge off. The climate here is difficult to deal with from May to October.

Because it is getting so hot people are starting to run their air conditioners more. This means only one thing; it’s power outage season. Today the power went off three times. It usually goes off for an hour at a time but this afternoon it was off for about 2 ½ hours in the heat of the day. The last 3 nights it has gone off in the middle of the night. The temperatures in the house reach the same as those outside since the walls are not insulated. They’re made up of concrete blocks. The sun beats directly on the walls and heats up the house like an oven. We have air conditioners in our bedrooms and one in the living room but we don’t run them very often since electricity is really expensive. We have ceiling fans that make living somewhat tolerable. The fan dries the sweat on you, but when the fans are off, it’s intolerable. We even have to run the ceiling fans with the AC on or it’s too hot.

Electricity is created by large gas run generators and you know gas prices these days. There is too much demand and not enough electricity so we have these blackouts.

There is a local proverb that says that even a camel makes out his will before traveling here.

All's Quiet…

It was another typical security warning from our embassy. There was a lot of hype but nothing of significance happened. A few people got mad somewhere about their chickens being killed but not around here. Us yanks, except for a few of us, are known as being very security conscious and closed of from people here. Everyone says that they are afraid to go out. There is a lot of truth to it.

H5N1

A few weeks ago the Avian Flu was detected here. A girl from a small village about 10 miles from where we live became sick with the virus. Yesterday a security warning was issued by the US embassy for Americans to lay low because today the govt. is going to collect all the chickens in the country and they are not sure how people are going to respond.

This may seem like a big deal but we’re not too concerned about it. We’ve had many security warnings like this in the past for different events such as the cartoons of the prophet and the beginning of the war in Iraq. Really nothing has ever happened here against Americans or westerners in general since we have been here. We generally have good security although I’m a bit more concerned these days after Osama’s threat on individual Americans worldwide rather than just the US govt. on the whole.

Regarding the Bird Flu, we have stopped eating eggs that are laid locally and we have our house help leave their shoes outside the house. I’m not too worried about it since I have never seen any chickens in this country, although there are several crows and pigeons; real exotic African birds I know.

We’ll keep you updated.

I’m back…

Some highlights from the trip…

1. Seeing the beautiful 4 month old twins and of course, our friends, their adoptive parents, Noel and Heidi.

2. Enjoying the cool weather. I got to wear socks!

3. Catching up on life in the US by reading year old magazines in the lounge of the place we stayed at.

4. Eating injera and wat every day, classic Ethiopian fare.

5. Getting blown off by our American ambassador twice on the flight back from Addis Ababa, after trying to make small talk with her.

6. Lots of time to read.

I came back to a calm collected clean house.

-RN

Mr. Mom. Day 4

Roxy comes back tomorrow. Everything has more or less gone okay except for little Thor urinating all over the floor in his bedroom after his bath. It’s okay. Roxy can clean that up when she gets home.

We have had the same lady that cooks and cleans for us in the mornings for the past 3 years. She knows us pretty well. Roxy usually communicates with her about what to do and what to make for lunch. Today for lunch she brought out sloppy joes and her homemade croutons. Later she came back and asked why we didn’t eat the croutons. I told her there wasn’t any lettuce to eat them with. She looked puzzled. Maybe she thought it was coincidental that we always ate lettuce and croutons on the same day.

Joyeux Anniversaire

There is a large French military presence here where we live. Our daughter Jane goes to a preschool with the children of these soldiers. Everything is in French. Over the past two years she has done pretty well and has been learning the language with a pretty nice native accent. In this photo she is at a birthday of one of her classmates.

I hung around the party with a couple of the other parents eating pain au chocolates and foie gras. We talked about our favorite Jerry Lewis movies while listening to the Francois, the birthday girl’s dad playing Edith Piaf songs on the accordion. They loved my beret.

After the party Jane and I left Stereotypeville and went home.

refugees.

If you were to come to our city the first thing you might notice is the poverty. In our neighborhood some people have come recently and set up cardboard and stick houses. They are either refugees or people who have traveled here because there are a few more opportunities to make money. Some of our neighbors give them food and others give them water. Lately we’ve been getting some knocks at our door too for money, medicine or various other items. Roxy mostly has been handling these requests. It sort of drives our guard crazy that all of these people are coming to our door. He often times refuses to let them knock. So like this guy in the above photo they wait in the shade under a tree across the road for us to come out of our house. He came asking for money. They brought him in a wheel barrow because he can not walk. We gave him a few bucks and he was happy. It is not an uncommon sight to see handicapped people like this begging. There are no govt. programs to help these people. They are tolerated but here illegally.

Mr. Mom

Roxy Normal is going to Ethiopia tomorrow to meet some of our friends from the US who are adopting twins this week. Thor, Jane and I will be all alone until Friday. It will be interesting. I might have to sit through Barney a few more times than I would like this week.

Go Clippers

I've been playing in a basketball tournament for the past couple of months. We play once a week in round-robin type of tournament. We have won most of our games (maybe 6) and lost one to the perennial champion, the Port. We only had 6 guys that night, and no big ones and the Port had several big men. We got killed on the boards. We won our game tonight against the university team. The playoffs apparently start next week. I say apparently because maybe 50% of the time the game is actually played and they always start an hour to an hour and a half late.

The teams we play against are made up of local guys representing various neighborhoods, schools or some type of association. My team is multinational. We have some Philippinos, Malagasies (from Madagascar), French, Somali, and me the lone Yank. Our lingua franca is French. The name of our team is Meharie which is Malagasy. I don’t know what it means.

We’re going to win this thing. We’ve got a good team. I’ll keep you updated.

Voila. The Holy Grail according to Dan Brown's little book.

I took this photo last year at the Louvre.

La Vida Loca

The other day our guard was knocking on our door distraught. He told us he was leaving because he was going to kill his cousin, who is the guard of the house next door or his cousin was going to kill him. Living where we do and knowing his tribe and class of people, we believed him. He was very angry pacing around our porch like a caged animal ready to pounce on its prey; it was difficult to keep his attention in order to talk to him. We asked him what the problem was but we never got the story.

We didn’t want to lose him even though he hasn’t exactly done the best job. It’s difficult to find a good guard and one that you can trust somewhat. Plus he knows our kids and likes them.

He was done. He wanted his wages and was going to go back to his nomadic life.

I told him that if he left he couldn’t come back to work later since we would then have to fire his replacement. When he heard that everything changed. He went back out to the street to discuss the new information with the community of guards who were standing around listening in (life is not lived privately here). We heard he use a word that people never use here; he said that he loved our family. He thought that if he left he could come back later if he cousin left or things cooled down. He really didn’t want to lose his job. Jobs are heard to come by here. One of the other guards came over to tell us that things were going to be worked out. The next day everything was apparently fine and no body said anything. It was life as usual. Just another typical, bizarre day living here.

JN

At the Last of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World

It was cold.

Here's a shot of me cliff diving

Yeah Right.

A Minnesota lake in January?

It took no effort to float like this.

My parents visited us in February. Here's a picture of my Dad wearing my Mom's sunglasses and shoes at as salt lake nearby. This shot was taken at 3oo feet below sea level. It was hot.

Interesting Neighbors

Our next door neighbor has an extreme phobia of trees. We noticed a couple weeks ago that one by one all the trees were disappearing from her yard. There was only one left, a beautiful flowering tree that shaded our terrace. I decided to visit her and ask that she please spare her last tree.

During the visit I noted a bit of mental instability. She poured 5 different kinds of perfume all over me, and promised me over and over that she wouldn’t chop down her last tree.

A few days later she chopped it down.

Yesterday my guard told me that she had come to our house and tried to break down our one lone tree that we are attempting to grow for shade. He told me that fought her off with a pole, but she threatened to return with gas and burn it!

-MK

Whale Shark

This is not me but this is what the scene looked like. Rumor has it that Jonah was swallowed by one of these guys.

Swimming with Whale Sharks

Christmas 2005

Yes, I like John Wayne.

He made great American movies.

Congrats Ole & Kim

What are you guys looking at? You know there we are looking at the camera.

igrindel