Wednesday, June 18, 2014

Friends Plant Peanuts Together

Siti and me after planting peanuts
When I came to South Sudan, I noticed that, while I got more enthusiastic comments about my foreign-ness than I did in Asia, I got less invitations to be people’s best friends and come to their homes and go to their weddings and spend every free moment hanging out with them. It’s a trade off, I guess. I mean, it can be funny that the same kids get the same amount of excited-out-of-their-minds every morning when I go running by their homes, even though they see me almost every day. Still, I was hoping for a few friends that I could hang out with and share life with and socialize with on days when I realize that I am dangerously close to becoming a hermit, which is my subconscious life goal that my conscious knows should not be achieved for my own good.  It’s taken some time, but I’ve fought my way into the lives of several ladies here. I accost them at their work and show up unannounced at their homes whenever I want to hold their babies or practice speaking Moru. In return, I buy candy for their kids and entertain them with my ignorance of their everyday chores and my inability to carry things on my head (I’m working on it, but I have a really lumpy skull).

Siti's son Simon, though he prefers
"SimonPeter The Rock,"
watching the burning grass we cleared off
One day when I’d just gotten back to Mundri from Khartoum (where I’d been invited to several weddings and several homes by generous Arab-Africans in true Middle East/North Africa style), I went for a run. It was Saturday so I was going later in the day since I sleep in until 7(!) on Saturdays in Mundri, and I had decided to eat a mango before I went (it’s not a great pre-workout food, if you were wondering). Naturally, the combination of hotter weather plus mango made running more difficult than usual.  Half-way through my route, I realized—this is not fun. So I decided just to walk back home and enjoy the sunny day without wanting (but not being able to) barf. While walking home I met a nice lady working in her garden. She said, “Why are you running for exercise? Just come help me in my garden and you’ll get lots of exercise that way.” I said, “Sure. I’ll come next week.” And I genuinely planned to do that, but she never gave me a time, and so I worked in my garden that morning and thought I would go help her in the afternoon. But when I was about to go, Lexon said, “You should probably call her first.” He lives near her and she is one of his wife’s relatives. I did, but I found out that the Bishop of the Catholic Church (she’s a Catholic) was going to be there the next day, and she was helping clean the church. So I didn’t go. She said she would call me later. She never did. I forgot about it and went on hanging out with my other new friends that I have been forcing to love me.

Then, on Pentecost Sunday, my church had a big deal Fun Day. It makes sense—we are the Pentecostals, so naturally we should do something awesome for Pentecost. We also invited everybody, and Siti came as a representative of the Catholic church or maybe she just came for the food, I don’t know, but she was there. I said, “You never called me!” She said, “I did, but I had the wrong number. Come next Saturday and help me plant peanuts.” I said, “What time?” She said, “9am.”


The sign says "don't pass on the shoulder" but that
does not stop my dad.

So at 9:02am, I left my house to walk the 1.5 miles to her house. The 1.5 mile distance is an estimate made by me based on my running time, but it’s probably an over-estimation because I like to think that I’m going faster than I actually am, and I’m not as accurate as my dad at gauging running distances. Seriously, he’s impressive. I’ve measured runs we’ve gone on together on the Internet (source of all accurate information), and he’s been right to the decimal point. “Well, this run took us XX:XX and so that must mean that we went about X.Y miles.” I checked the Internet and lo and behold—X.Y00 miles. It’s his super-power…one of them--the other one might be the ability to memorize completely useless names of various players of various sports or the ability to cook multi-colored food (“Hmm…this stir fry  needs more color—add the yellow peppers and green beans! Do we have any red peppers? Let’s add some beige—bean sprouts!”) or his deep devotion to following Indonesian traffic rules and regulations. So many possibilities… But I made it to Siti’s house before 9:30, which makes my punctuality in Africa—culturally impressive, let’s go with ‘culturally impressive.’

And this is what my feet look like after
working hard all day.
We jumped right in hacking away at the ground with a hoe and a pitchfork. We dug out rocks and chopped up tree roots. Her husband popped over for a quick visit to bring us water and suggest that I become his second wife. I was kind of resentful of that conversation because I really don’t think that’s the best way to cement a new friendship with someone—having her husband hit on you in front of her. Fortunately, I’m excellent at stamping out those kinds of conversations with my natural charm and belligerence.  It didn’t seem to bother her too much (maybe since her husband actually helped for about ten minutes while regaling me with the benefits of polygamy) because nearly 4 hours later when we finished, she still invited me to lunch. After lunch, I ran home for a bit to charge my computer on my new inverter, which the nice khawaja guy who used to live here helped me set up. I clip these things that look like jumper cables on to the bolts on our solar battery, which is mostly not working (there are sparks, it’s cool), and then I can charge my computer on sunny days, during daylight, while it’s off. It has revolutionized my life. I love it so much. I also realize that there are benefits of hanging out with foreigners that include the fact that they do things like kayak down the Mori River—something that people here would never think to do. It was super fun. I have no photos because—I was in a kayak.

After charging the computer for an hour while working a bit in my own garden, I walked back to Siti’s to plant the peanuts, which we didn’t want to do until the sun wasn’t so hot (it’s a gardening thing, you wouldn’t understand). The last time I planted peanuts was in Aceh, post-tsunami, with a group of Indonesian volunteers who were training people who had newly inherited land and needed to learn how to cultivate it. At the time, I remember getting competitive (yeah, that’s what I do) with one of the guys who was this shy macho farmer from Medan.  He would finish his row and then do the end of mine before starting on his next row.  So once I booked it down my row and then finished his for him—it was a hilarious joke, I thought. Well, it made him laugh, and then we became friends so he told me about his girlfriend back home that he was knitting a purse for—he was adorable.  Anyway, apparently planting peanuts is like riding a bike because I am pretty good at it still. It’s a two-man job here—one person hacks the row for dumping in peanuts, the other person drops the peanuts in the ditch. As the next row is hacked, it covers the peanuts in the last row, burying them under a small layer of dirt.  Obviously, the hard part of this is being the one chopping a ditch with the hoe. Siti said, “I’m so tired. I think we should finish this later.” But I was in an American ‘git ‘er done’ mode. And I said, “No. Give me the hoe and we will finish this today before we get soaked in the coming rainstorm.”  And I hacked furiously and we finished planting the entire pot of peanuts. Yes, we did. And then Siti nicely said, “I would never have been able to get all this work finished without you.” Being useful—I kind of like it. And I think it’s a good way to cement a friendship.


Then I walked home as fast as I could because there was a for-real storm brewing. I made it back before it started in earnest. But I did get soaked on my way back to my house from the shower—it was kind of ok, though, because rain keeps you clean. And that’s why I use a sarong as a towel—it dries fast.

To recapitulate: my Dad is a super-hero. Happy Late Father’s Day. This would have been on time if I lived in civilization, but then it would have had to be a completely different story of me planting, say, turnips in Taiwan or something. If we can’t be American-punctual, lets be culturally impressive. Although, I think that you are both actually.







More on my dad--this is the newspaper I used to wrap up
a coffee mug I brought him from India. He spread out
the newspaper so that he could read the stories
from India. Then we had several interesting discussions about
the articles in it. Yup-that's my dad--likes the paper more than the mug.





This face. It's a good one.







Monday, June 2, 2014

Burundi and Other Last Minute Traveling

Burundi--all the photos in this post are from there
I got a new passport while I was in Khartoum. I don’t know if I mentioned it before anywhere, but I got it. I got the extra-large size passport because – of course I did. This is the second passport I’ve gotten on my own from an Embassy (not counting the two temporary ones I had). All other passports in my life have come through the Parents, and I really think they should have kept my old expired passports for memory’s sake and because I now want them for my collection. But they didn’t because they are people who move around to different cities and countries and those people don’t keep extraneous objects—though that may be because they keep all the framed paintings and drawings that the artistic people in the family do and so they don’t have room for travel memories. Don’t even ask—none of the framed paintings or drawings came from me. My art was strictly ‘refrigerator art’ that is sent to the trashcan after an acceptable amount of time has passed and/or someone else needs the refrigerator space.

Lake Tanganyika with Congo mountains in the back
The first passport I got on my own was in China. It had ‘replacement for a stolen passport’ in the back because my old passport was in the bag that was ripped off my shoulder by two motorcyclists when I was walking home late at night from the bus stop after coming back from a trip to Hong Kong to visit an old college friend. I was not happy, but honestly, walking home late at night to avoid taking a taxi whose driver refused to give me a fair price wasn’t my brightest idea. I was trying to make a point—to the taxi driver, but it back-fired on me.  On the bright side, though, I know all the procedures for replacing a stolen passport, and the American Consulate in Guang Zhou is the only US Foreign Service establishment I’ve ever entered where the people working were charming, nice, and extremely helpful. For real, I’ve never felt so patriotic. This is not a feeling I have had in any other embassy around the world. I may have said this before, but I’m pretty sure they go out of their way at American Citizen Services to make you wish you were from somewhere like Denmark. Their embassy called Johanne every day while we were in Yemen and things around us were blowing up, begging her to come home. They were on a first name basis by the end of it all, asking about each other’s respective colds and checking up on mutual family members--ok, maybe they weren’t related, but the point is—he loved helping her. Whenever I try to get to American Citizen Services, I’m told that they’re only open by appointment, if possible, on alternate Tuesdays from 8:47am until 10:43am, and don’t even bother coming if it’s a Bulgarian national holiday because they always must take time off to celebrate Bulgaria.

So, first passport acquired with great fanfare and patriotism, second passport acquired through much finagling and payment of money and time spent sitting in a waiting room reading old Reader’s Digest magazines. But the thing about having a new passport is that, while I’m excited that I finally have a photo that does not make me look like I’m both on drugs and trafficking in them, and I love how shiny and crispy the cover is, I don’t like the emptiness of the pages. Though, I should mention that I feel gipped because I bought the 52-page version, which is marketed as this massive travel doc, but the first 7 pages and the very last 52nd page are taken up by blather about getting vaccinations before you travel and not violating foreign laws. That’s not cool. I need those 8 pages.

But right now my empty passport looks sad, so I knew that I needed to spice it up by a quick trip to Burundi after I saw that I would be stuck in Uganda for a week due to  MAF slackers not flying every day into Mundri and the fact that I needed cash from Ugandan ATMs. Another bonus from this trip is that I memorized all my new passport info so that I can go back to filling in entrance cards while standing in the line for immigration without having to dig out my passport to check numbers.

My attempt at a panorama--how did I miss the lake entirely?

Getting out of Mundri was the first problem. We were at the airstrip a few minutes before the ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival, FYI For Your Information), but it started pouring rain about that time—thunder, lightning, torrents and torrents. Apparently God was answering my prayer for a storm in His time, which I didn’t appreciate because I SPECIFICALLY asked for a storm at night to stop the loud music. Well this storm stopped the MAF flight. And what is up with that? I thought these pilots were supposed to be tough guys, landing in the bush in all kinds of weather. Nope. But our pilot teased us by buzzing the airstrip and then flying off. He told us the next day that he did it because the runway was too muddy to land on. We didn’t know at the time and waited for another 30 minutes or so, hoping he’d come back.

Eventually, have several phone calls between MAF in Uganda and ourselves, we realized that they were not coming back. They said they wouldn’t even guarantee that they’d land there the next day either. “But if you drive to Maridi, we can pick you up from there before 4:00pm.” Sadly, it was already 12 and the drive to Maridi is nearly 5 hours. But we negotiated and said if they promised to pick us up from Maridi the next day, we’d drive down right away and stay over night there. They agreed. We threw our bags in the car and the khawaja guys grabbed pillows to sit on, but Repent and I are tough, and we didn’t need them.

The drive took us 4 and a half hours, but we had to pass by Repent’s mother’s house, so we got out to say ‘hi.’ His niece and nephew pounced on me immediately and asked me if they could play with the iPad. It reminded me of my nieces and nephews…

We made it to Maridi, stopping for a nice dinner in town that the khawajas claimed to like and only ate tiny bits of  (more for me and Repent, who came with us to help the driver). Then we went to go sleep at the diocese guest house because Episcopalians help each other out. It was a super-nice guest house with electricity! But guess what followed us there that night? The Music. I can’t get away from it. Seriously. I’m starting to be a bit terrified that I will never ever sleep at night in South Sudan no matter where I am.

The view from the Stanley-Livingstone Monument
The next day we made it to the airstrip bright and early on a beautiful sunshiney day. We immediately saw how that airstrip is way better than ours and a flight could easily land there no matter what the weather. The pilot popped out and we found that he had been stuck in Yambio because of the weather too, and so I felt a little nicer towards him. But I did tease him a tiny bit about being a pansy who was afraid of a little rain and mud. He defended himself vigorously, because like most MAF pilots, his sense of humor is buried deeply under his perfect white uniform.

There were a couple of elderly Kenyans on the plane who had been trying to get to Mundri the previous day for a conference. I’d spoken to Carol (MAF Uganda contact person) about them driving back to Mundri with our driver. Carol was sincerely grateful to us for inviting them to ride along, and I had hoped to use her gratefulness to our advantage in the future, but the Kenyan couple refused our car. Instead, they asked the pilot to try to fly them to Mundri…(Here is where I sighed and rolled my eyes to the Heavens because REALLY, GOD?!). He agreed to try, without promising to land (I think my teasing struck a nerve).

“I’ll make a pass over to check the conditions of the airstrip, and if I think it’s too dangerous, I won’t land. Then I will just have to take you back to Uganda,” he said.

And they agreed to risk it.

The port on the Lake--you can sail to Tanzania from here
And guess what? It was a beautiful sunny day and he landed the damn plane.  Once again, I was really annoyed to witness someone else’s good fortune. I was only slightly mollified when the pilot told me that we had made the right decision to go to Maridi the night before because there was no guarantee that we could have landed in Mundri. But still, we drove 5 hours to catch a plane that flew us right back to our original destination in less than 30 minutes.  That’s like going to the store to buy a jar of extra-hot salsa, only to come home and find there were already 3 opened jars of it in your grandmother’s refrigerator, they were just buried behind 4 open grape jelly jars and 2 cartons of milk, and 6 jars of pickles (something like this may or may not have happened to me in one of my grandmothers’ houses…If you are wondering which one, it was NOT the proper English one who has a specific place to put cups that can be used in the microwave and another place for cups that cannot. She will also be one of those horrified at the adjective I used to describe the plane in the first sentence of this paragraph, but I try to always use the most fitting word, and, seriously, that plane was from the devil--or I was being oppressed by the devil or something, but there was some fire and brimstone involved).

Anyway, fast-forward: eventually we made it to Uganda, blahblahblah and I decided that I was going to go to Burundi the next day because, to get back to talking about passports, which was what I started out with in the first place, my passport looked too empty, Burundi was just sitting around waiting for me to visit, Burundi has nice lake beaches, and I had time that I was going to be sitting around, so why not go sit around some place I’ve never been and use up some passport pages? And the next day I found myself in Burundi at a lovely little hotel on the shore of Lake Tanganyika.

Burundi is beautiful, the lake is beautiful, and people are nice, but it’s a Francophone country, and my French is mostly non-existent. The Belgian owner of the hotel speaks good English, though, and the first day he was called upon to be the one to talk to me. He said to me, “You don’t speak French? So I have to learn English to speak to you because you don’t learn French?!” This made me feel like a horrible uneducated and ignorant American who expects the world to know English to cater to my monolingual-ism…but actually I speak 5 languages fairly well and a smattering of words in a few other languages, but way to make me feel terrible, French-speaker. And several other Burundians told me that I really should know French because it is the most important language in the world. The thing is, I would actually really like to learn French, but currently I live in South Sudan (a place where the French language is surprisingly useless) and I’m trying to learn to speak some Moru to communicate with non-Arabic speakers and some Somali so I can hang out with the girls in the market near my house. And I don’t have unlimited time or brain space.

A few minutes after berating me for my deficiency in the French language, the Belgian owner of the hotel warned me off swimming in the lake in front of the hotel. There is some sewage that is dumped into the lake near there (nothing too obvious that I could ever see, though) and there are “ee-poes.”

“What is that?” I asked.

Attention all crocodiles: people are coming.
Bon appetite! (See-I speak French!)
“Ee-poes, ee-poes. You know them. They killed a boy just a few days ago right here.”

You’ve probably already figured it out, but remember, I was going on two weeks of inadequate sleep. I was wondering if an ‘ee-poe’ was some kind of eel.

“Ee-poe. You know, Africa’s big 5—lions, elephants, rhinocerous…”

Oh. And then I got it. And then I really really wanted to see some ee-poes.

The next day I called a taxi, driven by a very nice man named Lazaro. He took me to see the hippos in the river that feeds into the lake. We drove out to a fairly remote location to a place where you pay a guide to take you to see the hippos. The best would have been to take a boat, but they were going to charge me $65+ and I couldn’t talk them down and so instead I paid $9 to walk to the view points with a guide.

Hippo mom and baby (behind the grass)
The guide talked non-stop despite a plethora of signs helpfully nailed into exotic jungle trees telling tourists to “Keep silent.” I assume the was so that we wouldn’t disturb crocodiles and hippos who might come and attack us, but we managed to stay safe, in spite of the fact that my guide threw a rock at a baby hippo and its mother to make them turn around so I could get a better photo (No, I did NOT tell him to do that). He then said, “We should probably move on because mother hippos are very dangerous. If they come to attack us, make sure that you don’t run in a straight line. Go back and forth. They can’t catch you very well that way.” Noted.

I didn’t go at a prime time to see lots of hippos, but I saw a few and it was mostly a nice little jaunt. I ended up walking fairly quickly because being in a remote jungle location with a man who keeps lauding all of his marriageable qualities, punctuating his remarks by nudging my arm every few minutes, hippo watching gets less fun. Here were some of his more memorable remarks:
Even taking my photo, he couldn't bare to be apart-
that's my hippo guide's finger in the frame.

“I like American girls.”
“I want a woman who will work so that I don’t have to give her money.”
“If you get fat, your husband will hate you.”
“Don’t marry an African man because they just want to have sex every day, Monday through Friday” (Though this is a paraphrase, as the exact term he used is one I prefer not to.)
“Wow. You can walk very fast. You are not tired? Usually tourists walk very slow.”

At the end of our walk, we were nearing the edge of the clearing, but not within sight of other human beings yet, he said, “So what do you think? You want to be wife?”

I said, “Um, are you asking me to marry you?”

He said, “Yes. So will you marry me?”

I said, “You know, I don’t think it’s really the right time for me to get married yet.” (We were still not out of the jungle yet, so best to be polite.)

He said, “Well, you can think about it.”


And that's the story of this photo as promised

A few seconds later we were out in the open, and I made a beeline for my sweet, polite, elderly taxi man, and we went on to my next destination—the Stanley Livingston Monument.

The Stanley Livingstone Monument is basically a rock and said to be the location where Henry Morton Stanley greeted David Livingstone with the famous line, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?” Though, there is supposed to be somewhere in the Congo that also claims that distinction. At any rate, it’s a rock, but the view is spectacular!






The rock
Lazaro

The rest of my trip was spent enjoying the view, swimming in the Lake, getting sunburnt, eating lots of good Lake fish and Belgian deserts (Speculoos ice cream! The Stillman sisters love speculoos—and these were homemade speculoos cookies.), and getting caught up on computer stuff while sitting in a comfy chair outside on my veranda. It was a really nice break, and if you go to Bujumbura, stay at the Hotel Restaurant Tanganyika, because it’s great, but make sure to learn French first or suffer the consequences.

And one last thing—when I got into Burundi, I noticed that there was an option for a 3 day visa at the cost of $40, as well as a longer visa (can’t remember how long, but it involved months and multiple entries) that cost $90. I showed my return ticket to the visa guys and they said, “OK. Three day visa. Please give $40.” I did. I admired the multi-colored full-page sticker they put in my passport and left, noticing only later in my hotel that the expiration date on my visa was 31 May 2014, and I was leaving on 1 June 2014. I know from experience that immigration people get huffy about these kinds of things, so I asked the hotel manager. He said, “Well, it’s the weekend and the police station will be closed. I don’t think it will be a problem since the visa people told you it would be OK.”


I thought about this on the morning of my departure. I planned several scenarios in my mind, including being forced to pay a large and ridiculous fine or sweet-talking my way out of payment or having no one at all notice the expiration date on the visa. I suddenly realized that if the last scenario happened, I would be a little disappointed, because it is very anticlimactic and I kind of wanted to try my hand at the sweet-talking.  Well, Burundi is a country where all your dreams come true, and I couldn’t even get in the airport without a guard pulling me off to the side to discuss the expiration date.

I went for the head-tilt and the wide-eyed explanation, “I know! I saw the problem and I wanted to go to the police right away to fix it but it was the weekend! The visa people told me to get this one! I still only stayed 3 nights and I was only here for 2 full days and the rest were halves.”

OK, don’t think I used ALL my excuses in one breath, these were scattered into a back-and-forth conversation, but ultimately the wide eyes were successful because he said, “I can let you go in and check in to your flight and then you can pay inside.”

I went in and checked in and was very interested to see what the immigration people would actually say. I walked over to the immigration counter and filed through the line where everyone’s passports were being checked again before immigration, in case something changed in between the moment we walked into the airport and during the check-in process, I guess. When it’s finally my turn, who is checking my passport, but helpful guard from the front door.

“OK. You said you will pay here.”

“But do I really have to pay? I think you should just let me go. I’m only half a day late! I will never get the wrong visa in Burundi again. I promise.”

“But I can’t let you go through. You know, unless you pay.”

“Well how much do you think I should pay? It’s only half a day late!”

“How much money do you have?”

“I have only 20,000 francs left.” (That is about $12.)

“You don’t have anything else?”

“Do you want South Sudanese money? That’s all I can give you if you want more than that. That’s where I live. In South Sudan. You know there’s a war there? And cholera. Don’t you think you should just let me go?”

“OK. Just put the 20,000 here on the counter and then you can walk through.”

I surreptitiously pulled out the bills and laid them on the counter stealthily as the guards nodded me through. The lady at immigration smiled and stamped my passport, barely glancing at it long enough to find a blank place to stamp, which I quickly gathered and headed for the waiting room. Just before I left, another guard came over and said, “Money. I need you give.”

I took advantage of the language barrier between us and said, “Sorry, I gave it all to the other guy.” And left—my passport was already stamped. And no problem—I made it back to Uganda without having to pay anyone else. AND technically, $12 was a discount because if three days are $40, then 1 day is about $13, and I paid $12. That is some good bargaining, if I do say so myself.


The brown is the river, the blue is the lake


Now I’m done telling stories and I realize that this has gotten really long. I thought about breaking it up, but it might mess up the flow of the story-telling. I hate messing up flows. Also, I’m lazy, but now the people asking me to write a book will see the consequences of my long-windedness and change their minds. And nobody said you have to read this whole thing anyway. Unless you are my mother, father, or sisters. Then you have to. I mean, I read your diaries when we were kids and it’s not like they were great literature or anything, but I did it anyway because I cared about you, and I thought it was really funny when you got mad at me, so the least you can do to repay me for years of reading about the boys you had crushes on (Joanna) or how much you hated certain people who allegedly threw your stuffed animals off the balcony after convincing you that they were real and had feelings (Marian) is to read my online blog diary, which I didn’t even lock with a breakable tiny pink lock or hide somewhere up high forgetting that ‘small girls’ can climb.


Wavy-est lake I ever saw--looks like the seaside!









Sunday, June 1, 2014

Pick-up Lines and Proposals in South Sudan--Marriage Never Looked So Possible!

The face of an old lady and Ley
When I first started my solo international travels, I attracted a normal amount of attention from men of a certain age.  I would like to think it is my exotic beauty that draws them, but I know that is more likely the words “Visa to America” tattooed in invisible ink across my forehead. When refusing marriage proposals or answering shocked questions about my lack of a man, I always answered, “I’m too young.” Of course, that didn’t really work for them since many of my friends were married at 16 and many of my suitors had a wife or two who were 17 or 18 when they married. Here in South Sudan I have fewer elderly taxi drivers asking for my hand, and more ambitious young whippersnappers.  Now that I’m 30, I can just say that I’m too old for them—and that can sometimes work. I’ve yet to have anyone here remark on my "good body maintenance," as an immigration officer in India once did, surprised by the combination of my old age and youthful appearance.

Recently, I’ve started to take note of some of the clever pick-up lines being used on me these days to compare with those from other places I've lived. Mostly they haven’t been so original. Once we gave a ride to some soldiers into town, and as we were all standing in the back of the pick-up truck together, we struck up a conversation. Impressed by my Arabic ability and American-visa-like features, he said, “Ana der ita.” Which just means, “I want you.” But I was able to crush him with a “Young man, I am WAY too old for you.”

One morning while off for a lovely jungle bike ride, I nodded at a passerby in casual non-verbal greeting, and he replied verbally, “Hello, my wife!” I thought this was an interesting tactic—try to convince me that we are already together, I just somehow forgot about our wedding.

Actually, Mimi is so cute she can
make this messed up photo look good.
Another time at a Mundri Express bus stop, a man came up to me to have a friendly chat. In spite of the fact that I answered several times in excellent Arabic, he insisted on proving to me that he can speak English: ”I…you…husband or wife…” I answered, “No, thank you.” And he left. Politeness is a virtue. Though, he did give me a choice, and actually, being a South Sudanese husband isn’t a bad gig—you get your meals cooked, your food washed, your gardens tended, your children raised, and even sometimes your house built for you. But I don’t know that I could be the wife that does all that stuff, as we’ve already established my skills in the domestic arts are rather limited, and, last year at least, a casual observer of my garden would perhaps think that he had stumbled upon a patch of jungle in the otherwise well-tended backyard lawn.
I used the wifely deficiency tactic in another recent proposal attempt. One of the guys working on my house very subtly inquired as to my marital status thus:

“So, when we are done with your house, when will your man move in with you? He’ll come here then, right?”

Me: “Um, no. I don’t have a man.”

“Why not?”

You really want to married to this?
Pause for me to think of a good reason, because if this conversation was going the way I thought it was (it was), he really isn’t too young for me, I think we’re about the same age, and I didn’t want to open that door for him. So I went for, “Well, nobody wanted me.” (Let’s make him consider why it is that I’m not married and hopefully realize that he might not want to find that out.)

This has worked for me in the recent past because it takes the conversation to an awkward place that ends it faster. I mean, you can’t just ask someone “Why does nobody want you?” That implies there is something wrong with that person (which, in my case, could possibly be true, but polite people don’t want to imply that). But here in Mundri, I’m going to have to find another way or try to get out of this conversation because in this case, as in another recent case when I was offered 4 potential suitors in the space of five minutes after using that line, my house-builder Lothario said:

“Well, I want you. Marry me.”

There was a tiny brief pause, but you can’t keep me speechless for long—I decided that this conversation was just a hilarious joke between two friends, and I laughed and said, “Oh no, you really don’t want me. I can’t cook. I mean, people don’t like my food. I use too much sheta (hot peppers).”

Cassanova was undeterred by my statement, “No problem, I like sheta. I’ll try your food.”

My garden is going to be way better this year.
Probably. Maybe.
At this point, I realized that this conversation was getting way out of hand.  Fortunately, some other people came over and joined us and we managed to change the subject and put awkwardness behind us. But since then, this guy has been trying to prove to me how much he loves sheta. He came over one day while I was weeding my garden (I’m turning over a new leaf this year, no pun intended, and trying to do gardening things like “weeding” and “watering.” At least this year, I’m pretty sure I know what is grass that can be pulled up and what are the things that I don’t want to pull up). He sauntered over and told me he wanted to try the American sheta I’m growing in my garden. Since I’d only planted it the previous week, I told him he would have to wait, and that, really, there is no guarantee that they will grow here anyway. He swaggered away, glad to see that his potential wife has garden-working tendencies.

But really this is an example of how easy it would be for me to just get married already here. It reminds me of a conversation I had in India about this very subject (“So, what’s wrong with you that you aren’t married already?”).  Rakesh and I had a discussion about what people in our respective cultures think about the ‘unmarried.’ I told him that in my culture, people think you are sad and pathetic because you couldn’t find anyone to love you, and so they feel sorry for you. He said, “Oh. In India people just think you are lazy and don’t want to grow up and start your life as a mature adult.” It seems the latter is more my problem since I technically do have people willing to spend their lives working by my side at a cushy job I'll get them in America.

In a recent conversation with Baby, he said, “You could get a man to marry you easily around here. There are many people available.”

Baby eating honey and
telling me about his girl
I switched the conversation to him and found out he has a potential bride that he is considering right now. He hasn’t spoken to her about marriage or anything yet, but he likes that she is nice, respectful, helpful—a good girl. “Also,” he said, “She has a body. Not like me. I don’t have a body. But if I get married then maybe I can get fatter.” Since he is a scrawny guy in spite of eating everything indiscriminately (a running joke between myself, who won’t eat bananas, Repent, who won’t eat a food we have here called ambata, and Lexon, who won’t eat rice—but Baby will eat anything, even the instant oatmeal the Boss brought me that we all find disgusting), this was a funny thought. He shrugged off my laughter and said, “And whenever YOU find a man, you will get big and fat like the women here.” He puffed out his cheeks, held out his skinny arms indicating the future size of my hips, and gave a shuffling, butt-swinging walk, to show me what I’ll be like once I find my Man.

Well, anyway, I guess I better go out and try to find that guy who passed me on the street the other day and said, “Wo-man, how is it?” Because, his pick-up line showed that he probably has the right amount of creativity and aplomb to build a future with me. And of course, then our children will have great skin.


About 20 minutes after this photo with my
hippo guide in Burundi, he proposed marriage.
But that is a story for next time...