American Domestic Travels--killing time in an airport (as usual)

Usually the Nashville airport is bristling with guitars and unrealistic dreams of singer-songwriter glory, but I actually saw my first guitar in Minneapolis.  Maybe it was because I was departing and not paying attention to the arriving flights—the TV was playing CNN and I was reading the subtitles, so maybe that was why I didn’t notice any. But I did notice an unnatural number of people in thin little short-sleeved t-shirts in the dead of winter. I think cohabitating with polar bears has made these people impervious to the cold. They also probably understand about things like slaloming and luging.

Now I’m in the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. When I arrived, I had to walk to the other side of the airport. I think this is because I’m flying to California, and they wanted to cut down on my flight time. Now, instead of a 16-hour flight that I probably would have had, I only have to fly for 4 hours to get there.  I walked in only the sunny spots of the airport to try to warm up because the dang Delta flight opened the door before the tunnel was connected to my plane. My pants froze to my legs. When the pilot said, “It’s 7 degrees outside!” I thought, “No problem. I can do 7 degrees because I’m wearing 2 long-sleeved shirts and a fleece-lined coat.” Then he added, “Fahrenheit.” And I wondered again how this part of the country ever became inhabited. There are places like Hawaii with perfect weather year-round...But still people live here and not there. I don’t understand it.

 

This is a photo of Minneapolis when I arrived.
Ignore that bit about "O Canada photos.com"--Canadians are always
 trying to take credit for everything.

Also, the US is too big. It is annoying to have to fly millions of miles to get to another state. I know that Manifest Destiny was a thing and all, but that’s done. Let’s chop down the US into more manageable chunks and also require my family to live in the same chunk, within an hour’s flight time from each other, because otherwise it’s just too complicated.

And now I will sit here for another 4 hours, waiting for my flight, wishing that I had brought my gloves because my fingers are freezing.  Build a giant fireplace at each gate or turn on your heat, MSP. Also, to the skinny blonde in a tank top walking across the F Concourse: You are an idiot. You deserve to die of frostbite.

Come Fly With Me -- if you have unlimited time and a high tolerance for pain and misery...

If I have internet access or in-flight magazines, I will always read the articles with travel tips or interviews with celebrities giving advice for their airplane must-haves. I was reading this article the other day by some fashion model/designer who name I had never heard before and already forgot, and I remember how she said that she NEVER eats while traveling. She doesn’t eat on the plane or in airports and she won’t bring food with her either. I remember thinking that she must not do too many international trips or else how could she make it that long without eating? And then I remembered that she was in the fashion industry, so she’s probably had a lot of practice abstaining from food. But for me and my most recent international travels, eating has been crucial to survival.

Traveling in SSudan
makes you look like this.

It started in mid-November. I was on my way to Khartoum, and, inspired by Leif, the reason behind most of my recent Sudan travels, I decided to wait until the last minute to buy my ticket to Khartoum from Juba. Unfortunately, this was a time-sensitive trip. I needed to arrive in time to get my passport to the immigration office before the weekend, which begins on Friday in Sudan. This left me with a very small window for traveling there. I called over the South Sudanese weekend (Saturday and Sunday) to buy the ticket for Tuesday or Wednesday, as I planned to leave Mundri for Juba on Monday or Tuesday. I ended up leaving on Tuesday, after assurances of easy ticket purchase for Wednesday. Monday we found out that tickets were not so easily purchased. I called in the big guns, i.e. Leif, to find tickets that got me in to Khartoum on Thursday morning. He obliged. My itinerary—Juba to Entebbe to Addis to Khartoum. Well, when you are desperate… But my dreams of an easy 1 hour trip were dashed into a million pieces and 14 hours and 4 airports. Bonus: I got Mohamed the immigration guy’s phone number because in my sleepless delirium I thought that my visa hadn’t been renewed in time and I flirted recklessly for what turned out to be no reason at all.

Getting off the plane in Juba last week--a self-portrait 

So I can blame Leif, his last-minute trip-planning philosophy and ticket-finding skillz on that trip, but fast forward 10 days, and I am the only one to blame for buying a ticket from Khartoum to Doha to Philly to Bham, with a 9.5 hour layover in Doha and a 10.5 hour layover in Philadelphia. But I did get to see friends and family, and I do remember that was part of my plan. But I think I was on some kind of mind-altering experimental drug when I bought the return ticket. My plan was to stop in Uganda for a day and rest before taking a nice MAF flight back into Mundri. I had some beautiful plans for that day too, involving sleeping and eating candy and charging all of my electrical devices. Instead, my flight schedule took me from Birmingham to Chicago to Frankfurt to Jeddah to Addis to Entebbe to Nairobi to Juba. Then the next day I traveled by car to Mundri—it only took 7.5 hours this time to drive 110 miles. Except for that part when we heard gunshots coming from the bush right next to us, it was a normal bumpy dusty ride. For the gunshots, we killed our headlights, popped into 5^th and hit the gas for about 10 minutes until we were sure that we weren’t the target of those bullets. We left too late and ended up driving a bit after dark—not the best idea, but when you’re desperate…

Then today I wake up early to call MAF at 8am for their ETA (estimated time of arrival) in Mundri. I had to use the sat phone because all of the cell phone networks were down. I called their caring customer service and heard “////////Icanhearyouclearly////” on the other line.

“Please speak slowly and loudly—I’m calling you from a satellite phone!” I yelled into the receiver, with my croaky hoarse cold-voice, while trying to keep the phone antenna pointing straight up into un-impeded sky at all times (not really that easy). In reply I heard “/////////callbacklater///////.” Well, after I got the girl to repeat herself 10 times, I was pretty sure I heard the “callbacklater.” Talking slowly and loudly seems pretty basic, but it is hard for some people. Still, they said they could hear me, so they must have known that I said I was calling from the sat phone and if you don’t know how to talk to people communicating by satellite phone, then you really shouldn’t be working with people in South Sudan.

I called back an hour later to a similar conversation. I said, “OK—I’LL CALL AGAIN IN AN HOUR!!” Then when I called again in an hour, the networks were finally working again and we had the following conversation:

MAF: Hello. Who is calling?

Me: Hi, I’m calling from Mundri again for the ETA.

MAF: From where?

Me: MUNDRI.

MAF: Right, I think that the ETA is 1pm, but if you had called at 10:30 like I told you to (emphasis NOT added by me), then I would be able to give you more accurate timing.

Me: I TOLD you that I couldn’t hear you. Is it more likely that the flight will arrive before or after 1pm?

MAF: *click*

Me: #$%^&@#%^@

Then the flight finally arrived at 1:30pm. I was paranoid at that point that it wasn’t going to come at all and I would be stuck. I hear we are flying straight to Arua (the point of entry in Uganda), and I was quite glad that this meant that we were not going through Juba. However, when we arrived in Juba, I found that MAF had decided to skip over landing at Entebbe International Airport (which was the destination that I had requested when I booked my ticket). No, we were landing in Kajjansi airstrip, about an hour away from the airport. I did not pretend to be happy about this, but my pilot was apologetic and arranged for a taxi to take me to the airport from Kajjansi. I would have been nicer about it, except that I had to pay $50 for a visa and then sit outside waiting to check in.  And there was the time that he turned to the plane and said, “OK-is there anyone else still trying to arrange transportation from Kajjansi?” Like I was some slacker who waited until the last minute to plan for travel arrangements to the airport. I think that he was actually trying to be nice (he was Canadian), but it did not hit me well. I spent the flight planning a speech that would be both apologetic for blaming him for not landing in Entebbe (it was not his fault) while at the same time managing to covertly insult Canadian pop culture (I’ve been oppressed by Bryan Adams music a lot recently and I want to blame SOMEONE for that). But I didn’t get a chance to talk to him after we landed. It is too bad. It was an epic speech.

Anyway, I’m in the Entebbe airport. My flight to Amsterdam is already delayed, but I think I still have time to get to my next flight. But now I’m mad at the stupid lady who checked me in and swore she gave me aisle seats because I’m pretty sure that only one is on an aisle. I was the first person to check in so it shouldn’t have been hard. And she was so smiley and nice and assuring about it. Jerk. I have to remember to double-check when people hand me the boarding passes. It’s just that I get so many of them…

Boarding passes from my last trip

Well, since our flight is delayed, I’m going to go get the complimentary cold beverage I earned. Then I’m going to get some ice cream because the AC is not working in here and I had to change into my “winter clothes” already and I don’t want to get sweaty.  Then I’m going to try to find a KLM representative…I ASKED FOR AN AISLE SEAT. DO NOT MESS WITH ME TODAY. Anymore. Please.

21st Century Fun in a 19th Century World

Technology is fun. Especially for people who don’t see it very much. Yes, it is true that more people in the world have cell phones than toilets. I personally know many people in this category. Though I would rather have a toilet than a telephone, I realize that for many people, that isn’t the obvious choice. Also, playing Angry Birds is hugely entertaining for many people, and in honor of my Angry-Birds-obsessed nephew whose birthday just passed, here are some photos of kids having the best day ever on the khawaja’s ipad.  Note: I more often let kids play on my phone, but then I can’t get photos of them with my phone because they are using my phone.

It’s not just kids that love electronic devices. Repent has gotten really good on the iPad and the computer. He’s started learning Excel, and he’s really loving it. Mostly, he uses their old desktop, but sometimes I let him do stuff on my laptop. Since my version of Excel is later than the one on their computer, and there is no way to update their version with no internet, I don’t do this often, because I don’t want to confuse him. But someday maybe he will have his own laptop.

 One rainy day, Repent and Esther and I were trapped in the house. I had a full battery on my computer and the next day was planned to be a charging day, so I thought it would be fun to watch a movie with them for a bit while we ate lunch. I selected one that I thought would cross language and culture barriers—Animals are Beautiful People, a documentary about wildlife in the Namib Desert, made in 1978, according to the torrent file. I’ve loved this movie since old family friends first showed it to me as a child. With a background of beautiful classical music, including many of my favorites like Beethoven’s Pastorale, Grieg’s Morning Suite from Peer Gynt, The Moldau from Smetana, and more,  while an uppity-sounding Englishman tells the story with moments of dry humor and pathos (the baby pelicans die and it’s sad, OK?). I love that Repent and Esther aren’t self-conscious at all about laughing uproariously at silliness. I know that I am too jaded and cynical and snobby about comedy, so I will give a casual smile at the monkeys somersaulting down the hill, but Repent and Esther laugh til they cry.  I think their favorite part was when the man dressed up as an ostrich to try to get close enough to steal its egg, but the ostrich chased him away anyway. But don’t think that they were feeling superior to the people of the Namib Desert. When the man is hunting and the bird keeps cawing just as he is about to shoot his arrow, effectively scaring away the intended prey, Repent couldn’t take it. “Ter de bataal,” he said, scowling at the computer and shaking his head. “That bird is bad.” He was picturing himself on the hunt with his bow and arrows and if a bird kept messing with him in that way, he’d do the same as the Namibian hunter—roast that bird up for dinner. Repent was very satisfied with that turn of events.

Here’s a photo of Esther and Repent laughing hysterically at the animals after they ate the fermented fruit and being stumbling around drunkenly.

OK-this isn't the photo where they are laughing hysterically,
but that photo was too blurry.

Finally, here is a photo of Repent playing the Strawberry Shortcake game that I downloaded for my niece because South Sudan doesn’t stigmatize grown men who like playing kids’ games on iPads. He got a huge kick out of changing her clothes—just like Evie did.

I Do Not Live in a Cardboard Box (anymore)

Note: Some parts of this post were originally written in various emails to various people, but I realized the eloquence of my writing should be for the masses and not just the one or two people that I occasionally correspond with…and also cut-and-paste is a great time saver. I don’t think the recipients of the emails read my blog, so no one should be offended. But honesty is important, and I don’t plagiarize, even from myself, so this is Me giving credit to Me for my own words written elsewhere.

I have finally moved into my new house, and I love it like I gave birth to it.  It is like a square cake cut into four pieces. The front two pieces are slightly bigger than the back two pieces. (Of course, if it were a chocolate cake, you wouldn’t really need to cut pieces—just grab a fork and go for it.)

All-purpose room. Yes, there is a pile of shoes at the door
because all normal people do that

The front two rooms are the bedroom and the all-purpose room. I’m calling it the all-purpose room because currently it houses a plastic trunk full of miscellaneous items, my bike, the soccer ball that I keep around for entertaining children of all ages, a ripped up poncho that I should throw away, but I keep thinking that I might want to use some of the plastic somewhere later, two buckets of water (for cleaning and flushing), and several bottles of water for drinking. The bucket water is from the storage tank, which has lots of dirt and grunge in it, so I don’t really want to drink it, even if I would probably be fine drinking it (I ate bad rice the other day, knowing it was bad, but I didn’t have any other food. And I was totally fine. And turbid water is often safe to drink if the turbidity isn’t hiding bacteria, protozoa, and/or viruses—a helpful fact from a WASH professional). It has a solar-powered light, but it is not working. But by the time that I actually post this, it might be! We are supposed to be getting more solar panels that will actually work. Of course that was supposed to happen sometime last year, but you never know…

Behind the all-purpose room is the kitchen. I have a table that I stole from the big house and I put my gas stove on top and whatever cooking stuff I need that I can fit on the side (non-flammable closer to the stove because it makes extra-hot fire). I also stacked all my spices and various other things in the windowsill because even though they should be kept in a cool dry place and that is not a cool dry place, they are very convenient there for grabbing and dumping into the food (the hot pepper is in the Blue Band container—must be easily accessible). I also have a small stool that I stole from the big house and am using for storage and a chair that is also for putting stuff on, mostly my lantern because the solar light isn’t working in the kitchen either and I often cook after dark. OK,fine- I make tea a lot at night. Then I have another plastic trunk (teams bring stuff here in them and then leave them and I put them to use) where I store food and tea and stuff that I don’t want rats to eat. As of today, there are no rats in my house, but I want to be prepared. The trunk is not pictured and neither is the large red plastic basin where I wash dishes. We were supposed to put in a kitchen sink, but it didn’t happen, and I’m fine using the basin. But I am hoping to put in a shelf over the trunk where I can store stuff because it is really cramped in there and I’d like to actually get more stuff like pans, bowls, plates, and other modern conveniences. Also, if I get to go to Indonesia next year, I’m getting my mom’s old stove-top oven to use on my stovetop. I don’t know how I’m going to get it to South Sudan, but I will do it because I have the will and I will find the way.

A late-night kitchen visitor

Archie has a cute face
but frogs are loud at night
and jump around a lot,
so I kicked him out.

If you noticed from the photos (maybe you didn’t—photography isn’t one of my skills), there are shutters on the windows in the kitchen and the all purpose room. There aren’t any on the bedroom or bathroom. These shutters are on the market-side of my house and help block the annoying noise of people’s thumping music. But fortunately we have been put under martial law recently. Restrictive political policies can be wonderful. People are required to be off the streets by 10:30. Also there is a blessed diesel shortage, which means that generators can't be fueled, which means that speakers can't be plugged in, and things have mostly been quiet before 11. Still, the other night there was some rocking party that somehow lasted beyond 11. I'm not sure how it did that, but I planned many gruesome deaths for all those involved, and it made me feel better.

My bedroom has curtains but no shutters. I could get shutters, but I don’t really want them. The curtains are made from old bed sheets and I had them in my old cardboard room. I brought them over, but since there are no bars on my window I had to find another method of keeping them out of the window when I want sunlight (previously, I just hooked them over the bars in a very classy way). I remembered later that I had a couple of green ribbons that had been tied on some Christmas present. Though I kept thinking I should just throw them away, I hadn’t yet. And they make perfect curtain ties. Lesson learned: never throw anything away that might possibly be reused at some unknown point in the future (thus the ripped up poncho in my all purpose room).

Note the cheery yellow floor mat-it was originally a
camp towel from Wal-Mart. I went there thinking
"Life in S.Sudan is basically the same as camping,
let's see what I can buy cheaply on the camping aisle."
And it turns out that the camping aisle is Walmart's practical joke
on non-campers. Fortunately, I have a sarong, which is the best
quick-dry towel ever, but my boss (who knows about camping--
he drives a Jeep and probably knows about hunting and stuff too)
brought me a legit camping quick-dry towel from some
store whose name I don't know, but it is one of those
with a logo made out of a combination of mountains and raindrops,
so you know it is for people who are serious about The Outdoors.
I use it as a blanket along with the Ethiopian Airlines blanket that
I snagged in anticipation of a long cold layover.
Seriously, AC doesn't ALWAYS need to be on high!

I spend most of my time in the bedroom, but I also really enjoy my indoor bathroom—it’s so nice not to have to pee in a cup at night and not to worry about whether to wear my boots when hiking through a forest of grass to the outhouse. I also don’t worry about being cornered in my bathroom by drunk men who sneak in through broken fences at night. It’s really great. It’s also convenient that the solar lights in my house that DO work are the ones in the bedroom and the bathroom. Yes, they attract every insect that the screens on the windows can’t keep out, but I can read at night without using my lantern, which I need in the kitchen. And I can’t get decent batteries here, so I try not to use the lantern too much.

My beautiful bathroom! It's actually very clean, but
the guy putting in tiles didn't know how to do it,
and the tiles that he actually got in the floor,
he added extra cement to, to make sure they really stuck in there good.
But I scrub it clean often, and Karioki (Lexon's son and my super-good pal)
came over the other day and said, "Wow! Your house is so clean."
So--proof. From the mouths of babes.
Not pictured: my sarong hanging on the hook beside the shower.

So that’s my beautiful house! There was a medical team here the first week I moved in, and I was able to actually genuinely like everyone who came and enjoy their company, but if I had been sharing a room with them, as I would have done pre-house, and heard them snoring and talking until all hours of the night (people don’t sleep well in strange places when they have jet lag, I’ve noticed), I doubt I would have felt so kindly towards them. So this house is already making a big difference in my life and the lives of others in South Sudan.

My backyard where I hang laundry, and where I've started
digging out the grass so that snakes don't come in and kill me and eat my lizard friends.
Also here you CAN see my red wash basin and mostly empty trunk for food.
(I will replenish you, my friend! Jelly beans and gummy bears, i.e. sustenance, are coming!)

I had a party and invited my pastor and a bunch of friends to come pray over the house and he also prayed that I would get married soon so I don't have to live here alone, so that's been taken care of too now. But I don't actually live here alone. Roger the lizard lives here too and eats all the bugs. I sometimes let him sleep on my pillow, though I did yell at him when he crapped in my bed on my clean sheets. Of course now he's started inviting his friends too, and it's getting a bit crowded. I think I'll have to speak to him about that. We don't want to create a fire hazard in my new beautiful abode of peace and tranquility. Also, Lexon says that if there are lots of lizards, it will attract snakes who like to eat them. I want to keep Roger safe, and also I would rather not die a painful death after a black mamba bite, so we keep alert here.

Friends and pastor dedicating my house on a rainy day.
It started raining right as we began to pray and finished right when we stopped.
I thought that was a little annoying of God, but He is up on his cultural appropriateness,
and everyone else was really excited, "We say that when it rains, it is a blessing from God,
and He is blessing us now!" But seriously, God. It's time for dry season because we need to drill some wells.

You are all welcome to come visit. I’ll make Roger sleep in the floor and you can have his pillow.

This is the best photo I have of Roger--
he is a bit camera-shy.

Bonus photo: here is a shirt that I saw in the
Camping/Hunting section of Walmart.
I am not really a Fashion Queen type of girl
but I'm pretty sure that this pattern would be considered
'camouflage.' I know that fashion doesn't always have a
purpose, but this WAS in the hunting section.
If someone is wearing this shirt while traipsing about the forest,
searching for prey, don't you think Bambi's mother would have seen her
and thereby avoided a lot of heartache for children and small woodland creatures?
Unless maybe the wearer of the shirt was in the forest on a day with an especially pink sunset...