Brrr....

So, the weather took a turn for the worst this past week.  Meaning my excuse for not blogging is that my fingers have been way too cold!  And I was busy finishing up teaching the Multilingual Education 4 week module - complete with a pool side closing :)  As we all sat and shivered by the pool, drinking our sodas, we crowded around one table for warmth!

But it was a great end to a good course.  Once the course was over, I started helping another teacher with with a course on Language Development and Language Planning.  So far, I haven't had to teach anything in the course, but I've helped with the marking and grading of reading journals (in which I got to read some really interesting articles and learned a lot, too!), and helped with some of the practical details of the execution of a participation-intense class on language revitalization scales :)  So much fun!

Tomorrow starts my last week here at the training program.  The following week will find me in a literacy Conference, where I am presenting a paper... which I have yet to complete writing!  So, I have my work cut out for me this week!

Still teaching...

I know, it's been a while again. But I'm still kicking!  The weather has even gotten warm enough here in Nairobi for me to do a wee bit of swimming!  Yup, swimming in the pool at the conference centre here... when I'm not in class, preparing lessons, teaching lessons, marking homework, or keeping up with the work back in Jbs!

But it's going well.  We are in the final week of the first 4 week module.  That means I'm almost done what I need to do - final exam is this week!  Students are working on their final papers.  And I've been trying to write a final exam all day... when I wasn't teaching or answering questions about aforementioned final project.

So, my brain's been a bit tired.  I don't really get much internet access in my room.  Which all conspires to not much blogging.  Sorry, folks. That's all there is in my brain tonight.

C-c-c-cold!

This is going to be a quick post, because my fingers aren't working properly... toooooo   coooolllddddd!

Obviously, I am not in Jbs anymore, folks!  I'm in Nairobi and freezing my little hiney off!  It is so cold here!  I arrived last night, slept under 3 blankets and haven't taken my sweater off, even in the, um, er, "heat" of the day.  Oh, wait, I did take my sweater off at the salon where I got slightly polished... a haircut and a manicure.  The poor woman truly earned her keep today while fighting the grime under my nails!  I was feeling a bit bad for her, but there was a reason why I had to resort to paying someone to get my fnger nails into decent shape again!

I love my haircut!  Since I was alone, it was hard to get a good picture of it, but this is the best I could manage:

Hello?

So, I don't have much to say, really, but I thought I should blog SOMETHING, just to keep up with, well, I'm not even sure :)  I think I've been reading too many other blogs lately, and there are so many great clever blogs out there.  I feel woefully inadequate, and life seems woefully routine around here... so, that combination does not make for an entertaining blog.  Sorry 'bout that.

But it was Sunday today.  Such a lovely day it was.  I love Sundays!  But lately, it seems a large proportion of my Sundays are spent in my kitchen. Well, actually my house only has 2 rooms - my bedroom, and then a big open space which serves as my kitchen, dining room, living room and home office.  So unless I'm sleeping or showering, I'm pretty much in my kitchen...  but anyway, I have been standing in the kitchen a lot, lately, either cooking something, eating something or cleaning up after cooking and eating something!  Today my craving for salty crunchy things got the better of me, so I spent some time in the kitchen trying my hand at making some salty saltine crackers.  I was surprised by how easy they were to make.  I think dough doesn't scare me as much as it used to.  I have successfully made pizza crust (with yeast and everything!) a few times now, so the cracker dough was simple compared to that!

Some of the highlights of the week's eating included breaded zucchini slices, sweet and sour pineapple stir fry, almond cake, and an epic burger and fries meal.  All made in my very own little kitchen.  And cleaned up in my very own kitchen!  But I have really been enjoying cooking lately!

This week might require a bit of creative cooking, as well, in order to feed my growing belly.  Things were so expensive in the market this weekend!  Pineapples doubled in price since last week, green peppers and papaya all shot up in price.  So I couldn't bring myself to buy the usual produce in the usual quantities.  I have challenged myself to make eggplant in a few different ways and find something new and yummy to make with eggs and tomatoes.  Good thing my neighbor has satellite TV in his mud hut - Master Chef Australia (2012) has been on, so I have a bit of outside inspiration for cooking again!  They did some amazing stuff with chesnuts this afternoon...  At least my vegetable soup was tasty and nourishing, even if it wasn't quite up to the Master Chef's standards!  It did go well with my garlic salted home made saltines, though!

A Quiet Day at Home?

Since I had a bit of a fever and some odd not-very-health-feelings yesterday and in previous days, I decided that I would take it easy today.  So, I'm trying to stay home and just answer the important emails from my chair, sitting under my fan.

Of course, today happens to be the day that the maintenance crew decided to fix the holes in my bathroom wall (which have been there for over a year!)... so my house has been a bit of a revolving door... it just seems rather impossible to have a quiet day at home around here!  While I love the short commute to my office, it also does make it difficult to get away from work.  But I'm feeling much better today, so at least it's not too bad...

Our internet has also been having issues over the past few weeks, so I haven't really had much chance to hang out on the internet... and just as I was wanting to get back to my blogging!  Thankfully, our IT guy came back from being away for a month, so I wasn't on the hook to get everything up and running again.

Things have just been cruising on as usual lately.  Work has been unusually busy, but the generator turning off at 5pm, and our office quickly turning into a little oven shortly thereafter is a great incentive to leaving the office in time to have a few minutes to either exercize or walk to the corner for some shopping, or to read a book before making dinner.  Adds a little balance to life!

We've also had a few visiting consultants lately, and since so many of the other compound residents are away at the moment, I've felt like I've had to do some extra hospitality services lately.  So I've had a few dinner parties... which go along with huge piles of dishes!  But it's good to be able to feed people so that they don't have to continue eating shwarmas from the street corner every evening.


 But there are days when I wonder how a dishwasher would change one's life.  Now that I have a washing machine for my clothes, I'm harking back to thinking about all the conveniences of life back "home"!  

I have had a bit of fun a few weeks ago, floating down the Nile in an inflatable kayak:




Thispicture is from one of the little tributaries that we detoured down.  I would have loved to have taken some photos of the bridge and the town and the port as we floated past... but that probably would have gotten us shot at... and when you are in an inflatable boat in the middle of one of the world's biggest rivers... probably not a good idea!

But it was a very relaxing float down the river, and it was a perfect day for it - cloudy and overcast, so we didn't roast! 

We also got a new intern in the literacy department here.

Little Ginger just can't stay awake long enough to get any projects finished, though!  And we're still working on teaching him how to type... but he's a great asset to the department... at least to the cuteness of the department!  Ginger is my neighbor/colleague's new kitten.  Good thing he's all black, because my own little Zane (who looks like an absolute beast next to this wee kitty!) only seems to like cats that look like him.  Someone accused Zane of being a racist, but I have to admit, Zane really does seem to only like black cats...

Last weekend, I also treated myself to a real meal here.  My favourite restaurant had a steak and potatoes special.  So, um, yum.  It was real steak, like, as in, you could chew it!  And that is gravy on mashed potatoes.  You sure don't find food like this just anywhere in this town!  I think it was the best meal I've had in Jb in the 6 years that I've lived here.  I won't tell you how much it cost, though :(

So, that's life in Jb these days! 

My nice quiet day at home is slipping through my fingers, and the concrete bearers to fix my bathroom holes are coming ... so I think it's time to find another location for my nice quiet day...

Owl-y

I was sitting in the office this afternoon, working on a couple of computers that were donated to some local Bishops in a partner church.  Of course, they needed the correct fonts and keyboards to be able to type their language.  Since our normal computer guy has been away for over a month (by the way, he's never being allowed to leave the gate again!), I ended up having to do it.  Anyway, there I was, scowling over these two computers, when R came into the office holding a ... well... it took me some few minutes to figure out just what he was holding!

It was some sort of creature with pointy cat-like ears, huge black eyes, sharp claws... and a beak!  Did you guess it yet?  Yup.  An OWL!




 (I stole this picture from one of my colleagues... thanks, Ken!)

The poor owl was being picked on by a flock of little birds (who knew little birds would attack an owl?!), so he flew for cover... right into the guesthouse!  So RM to the rescue, as usual!  He just grabbed the owl by the back, secured his wings in his hands, and went office to office, showing off his trophy!  The owl didn't seem to mind, which was the weirdest part.  But it really did take me an inordinate amount of time to figure out what kind of creature he was holding!

The owl spent the rest of the afternoon in RM's thatched roof hut... and was happily released at dark.   

Scratch and Sniff?

It's a good thing they haven't invented scratch and sniff blogs yet.  It's a bit of a stinky one in these parts tonight.  My garbage is smelly (no amount of bleach or dettol seems to get the stench out of the bucket - definitely time to get a new one at the market on Saturday!), my permetherin incense stick is a bit stinky (but it seems to be keeping the mosquitoes at bay), but most of all, I am stinky (haven't had the motivation to shower yet since working all day and then doing some Zumba after work).

It should be raining, but it's not.  It's just humid.  Humid and hot, which means pretty much everything is starting to smolder.  And nothing good happens when things start to smolder in this town, let me tell ya.

But allergy season is also upon me, so the stench doesn't get past the sneezing and snorkling that's going on in my nose!  So, all in all, life ain't bad.

We did have an exciting evening on Monday. It was the first ever Cultural evening here - music, dance and poems, performed by people from several different language communities here.  It was great!  I do hope they do more of it.  Because we walked, though, I didn't want to carry a purse or a camera with me... so... no photos :(  But my friend took his camera, so I will try to get some of his picts, and share a few... but first, I better get my bottom out of this chair and to the shower, or no one is going to want to share anything with me...

Saturdays

I love Saturdays.  As much as I love my job, I really like Saturdays.  But Saturdays always make me realize just how much work it is to have a life outside of work!  Normally, now that I have my own washing machine, Saturdays are laundry and shopping days.  But since the laundry (and other assorted chores) depend on having power, I have to schedule things pretty tightly, and really get my butt moving.

Of course, one has to start the day with a decent breakfast - the one day I get something other than bread and peanut butter and jam!  This morning, since I didn't have any bread in the house for French toast, I made some Dutch pancakes, lightly sprinkled with fresh lime juice and dusted with sugar.  YUM!  Together with a cup of the last of my Starbucks coffee... I was ready to take on the world when the generator came on at 10am.

A load of laundry (which was really, really dirty, so took a few wash cycles for the water to actually start looking clean!) done while washing up the dishes from breakfast, backing up my computer and answering a bunch of work emails that I didn't get to during the week.  But at 11:30am, while my second load of laundry was in the machine, there was some excitement on the compound.  A big crane truck came to lift one of the containers away!  I just get a kick out of watching all the men on the compound try to tell the crews what to do... so I like to go and see how things like that go down.  So I left my wash in the machine, and grabbed my camera to watch the show:

The show did not disappoint!  Everyone has his "baby" that he was looking out for - one man was quite concerned that the crew would drop the container on the septic tank.  One man was worried that the container would hit the rain gutters of the building.  One other man just kept telling them they had to lift it higher so it would land on the bed of the truck.  And the Ugandan crew did a fabulous job of ignoring every one of them and just getting the job done.  And they did it well, too, as the container was in a pretty tight spot, and no damage done to anything!

By the time the container show was over, it was noon, so the generator was off again... time to move onto non-elecricity using activities.  Today, it was a trip to the market to pick up the week's fruits and veg.  Of course, you can't just get your veggies... I also went with my neighbor, so we had to stop in the hardware shop, and look at a few items first.  Then to the market, where I didn't remember to hold my breath while walking past the live chicken cages.  If I die of the bird flu, at least you will all know where I got it.  For half my market trip, I still had the stench of the caged chickens in my nostrils.

But I got all the basics - pineapple, eggs, limes, carrots, green peppers, passion fruits, and I branched out and bought a cabbage today, too.  I got good deals on the cabbage and pineapples, since I bought them straight from the back of the truck - no middle man to deal with :)  The best part of the trip - a lovely bunch of cilantro.  Seems it's growing again now that it's rainy-ish season!  Since lugging all the weeks's fruits and veg around on my shoulder in 40C is a bit of hot, sweat inducing task, I have taken to stopping at a little Eritrean run shop to buy a cold sparkling water on my way back to the car.  I think they're getting used to the sight of a sweaty girl coming in on Satrudays, greeting them in their own language.

The next stop is always for more water from an Eritrean run place.  Just around the corner from the market is the water "factory" which fills up jerry cans with clean, filtered water.  For $3, I get 25L of clean water in a re-useable jerry can.  From there, it was a stop at my friend's half-brother's neighbor's house for some bananas (she is the neighborhood "wholesaler" of the bananas).  Final stop is the bakery (also, incidentally, run by Eritreans).  $1.75 buys a bag of 15 white rolls.  That's really the only type of bread available in town.  Well, at the big supermarket downtown, you can buy a loaf of square bread for $5.  Or you can buy square bread which is imported from Uganda - it's really sweet and my experience is that it gets moldy within a day of buying it.. if it's not already moldy when you bring it home from the shop!

Since I had some fresh bread, it was a quick sandwich for lunch, as the generator had already started, it was a rush to finish the laundry, finish backing up the computer and use a food processor to make some salasa before my cilantro wilted!  Oh, and did I mention that I have to hand all my laundry out to dry on the lines, and soak every single vegetable and leaf in bleachy water before putting them away in the fridge?

Since I had cilantro and fresh salsa, what else could I have for dinner but a Mexican theme once again?  So, first I had to walk to the corner to buy some chapatis to cut up and fry to make "tortilla chips".  Since I was out and about, I went over to the butcher (also run by Eritreans) to pay off my $1 debt.  The price of meat went up from $10/kg to $11/kg last week, so I was $1 short when I walked over there.  They seem to like me over at the butcher (they made me sit down and drink a Coke while they minced my meat for me - knowing that I was $1 short already!), so they didn't mind that I owed them some money. 

Once I had the chapatis, I decided to wait until the generator came on again at 7pm to fry up the "chips", since gas is so expensive these days, I try to do as much as I can on my electric burner!  I still had to make the guacamole, though, so I got that started.  By then it was starting to get dark, so time to go bring in the laundry...

Finally, the generator came on again, so while I fried the chapatis, I put away all the fruits and veggies which had been soaked and dried on the counter.  For a little protein, I asked my neighbor to bring some "falafal" grease balls from the corner, offering some tortilla chips, guacamole and salsa in exchange!  Now, finally, at 10pm, my dishes are washed, the fridge is packed with good fresh food to eat for the week, the laundry is half put away, and I'm tired!

And that, my friends, is what it takes to keep myself clean and fed in these parts.

Not Lost in the Bush

So, I DID get back from my camping trip where teachers were successfully trained and Scripture bits were successfully checked.  A lot has happened since then, but other social media tools have taken over!  Twitter, Instagram, facebook... all allow me to communicate with the masses... um, well, without having to think too much.  So.  That's what I've been doing.  Sorry 'bout that for those of you who don't use other modes of communications.  But really, I am alive and kicking. 

At the moment, I'm sitting in the office checking a book called "Healing the Wounds of Trauma".  They have spent the last, oh, I don't know, maybe 10 years translating this book into their language.  And we finally want to get this book off their computer so it can actually be used by people and the Church.  But wow.  Going through this book word by word, sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph... it's a tough one.  And when the ideas in the book are so anathema to certain aspects of their culture.  The book puts a lot of emphasis on healing through talking about one's feelings ... but this particular culture simply doesn't have a way to talk about "feelings".  We went through a whole chapter on HIV/AIDs, trying to discuss the technicalities of AIDS/HIV and it's transmission.  That was quite a challenge, let me tell ya.

Now at least we have finished that chapter and have moved on to some less awkward topics.  But phew, it's still hard work.  Taxes my brain... but then there is also a lot of down time where the team spends time fixing the spelling and discussing about how to express certain ideas in their language.  So I sit and do other things while they do that.  Normally, I've been doing things like formatting Primers, or catching up on emails... but it's Friday afternoon and my brain doesn't need more taxing in between paragraphs!

This has been a lovely week, though.  Wednesday was a holiday here, and it was raining!  So I didn't feel like I had to be productive.  One of the nice things about this place is that when it rains, everything stops.  So I wanted to stop, too :)  My neighbours and I had a Gilmore Girls marathon, projecting dear Rory and Lorelei up on the wall.  We are only in Season 1, so no spoilers, please!  But really, are Luke and Lorelei ever going to get together?!

Anyway, I will make a renewed effort to do a wee bit of blogging, in case anyone is interested.  That is, if I can pull myself and my neighbours away from Gilmore Girls!  Good thing we have all 7 seasons of it on the compound :)

Camping!

I know I haven't blogged much lately, but I think you will forgive me when you hear that today my friend's thermometer read 50C in the shade.  Yes, you read that right.  50C in the shade.  No wonder I run out of steam by morning tea time, no?

But I am embarking on a camping trip this weekend!  There is a purpose to the camping, though - some teacher training!  We'll be training the teachers from the primary school in the area on how to use their own language more effectively in the classroom.  Should be fun, I hope :)  I had fun last time I went to the area... albeit a very hot, sweaty sort of fun.  And it's even hotter these days than it was then, so really, I just think I might suffer a bit of heatstroke.  So please pray that somehow, the weather miraculously cools a bit for us next week while we try to train these teachers.

Hopefully I'll see you in 11 days' time... hopefully I will still have all my brain cells intact and they won't have sizzled in the heat out there...