O Canada--Why Me? (I thought we were friends.)

Until I was in grade six, I was schooled by Canadians, and I loved it. I didn’t mind spelling things with the extra ‘u’ and I sometimes said ‘sorry’ so that it rhymed with ‘gory’ and that was fine with me too. Once I entered into an in-depth conversation with Mr. Case about Canadian politics and who I would vote for in that election (it was 1992 or some where around then) and I was passionately for the Tories or the Liberal Democrats or whatever political party he was telling me about. I was about 8 years old, and I really didn’t care, but he was getting a kick out of the conversation so I humoUred him because I like to entertain.  I also have a favoUrite book called “I Want to Go Home” by Gordon Korman (I’ve mentioned this before) about 2 Canadian boys trying to escape the funshine camp activities that they are being forced to endure. It inspired me. And finally, I have genuinely liked almost every Canadian I have ever met, but now I have a real grudge against Canada. And not the grudge where we make jokes about Canada because those are funny and coming from a place of love. This is legit.

This is also a good book. About two boys recking
havoc in a Canadian boarding school.

As you know, immigration guys love me, as a general rule. I often get proposals of marriage and offers of citizenship when I’m getting visas or getting my passport stamped. I am good at schmoozing. I use languages, humor, and the head-tilt, and it works.  I have only failed at this twice with two different South Sudanese officials and BOTH TIMES what is the ONE THING that they wanted me to know about them -- the reason why they can never be wrong even though they clearly are? 

They used to work at the embassy in Canada. 

They both wanted to start a rambling and irrelevant story about how “When I was in Canada, I learned everything about this and I know that there is only one way to do this right, and it is the way that I am doing this.” Stories about Canada don’t HAVE to be boring. We know this because Anne of Green Gables. (Also, Gordon, I don’t care that you have an annoying rhyming name, you are the BEST.) But these guys can make even the most ardent lover of maple syrup want to crack the Stanley Cup in two and throw it at a Mountie.

 

A kindred spirit

The first issue I had was in Sudan while I was getting a new visa to South Sudan, and someone had filled the paperwork out for me, in accordance with the word of the slick businessman sitting in front of the embassy who told people that they had to pay him 20 pounds to fill out their paperwork. Most people going into that embassy don’t know much about it, and neither did my lovely colleague who had gone there to pick up the papers for me. Still, that didn’t matter to any of the other Embassy people she met. No, they were fine with her perfectly adequate paperwork until it got to Canada. He called me into his office. “Are you really going to work in South Sudan? Your work permit is finishing. You are lying and I can throw you in jail! I know about this because I worked in Canada!”

“I am applying for this visa so that I can go back and renew the work permit paperwork.”

“You can’t lie on these papers! This is very serious! In Canada we learned that if you lie, we can throw you in jail!”

“I’m not lying. These papers are accurate. I need a visa to get into the country so that I can renew the other paperwork.”

Finally, he agreed to give me the visa, but he marked over the whole paper in red pen, correcting spelling mistakes and ranting about how Canada is the only place where you learn things. “Visas everywhere are always the same in every country. Canada system is the one that everyone uses. You may travel many places, but I also traveled to Canada and I know that all systems are the SAME. They don’t change. And also our system in South Sudan does not change. Because we are like Canada and we stay the same.”

Side note for those who read this who have not had much visa experience (sometimes, especially while sitting for hours in a dimly lit stuffy room, I envy your lives): the visa system in South Sudan has changed each one of the 24 times I have had to renew my visa. If there is one thing you can count on in South Sudan, it is that nothing will stay the same except for that one room you have to sit in for an hour waiting for an Indian tech to fix the computer so that the South Sudanese visa guy can painstakingly type out your name and life story with one finger onto the sticker visa he will put in your passport.

Side note 2: No two visa systems are the same. If Quebec secedes (and in my current state of mind, I would totally get it. You do you, Q), they will most definitely have a different visa system than Canada and what’s more, it would all be in French, and they would laugh in your face if you didn’t understand them and make you sit in a room and listen to Celine Dion songs until you decided to reenact the Titanic and jump onto an iceberg, which would likely be right outside the window because if there is one thing I know about Canada, it is that it is cold there.  Also, visas have been a part of my life since childhood. They are miserable and mystifying Geneva Convention-approved form of torture. They are never fun, but they look cool in your passport.

So I got the visa in Khartoum, in spite of Canada’s best efforts to stop me, and I got a Facebook invite from the guy I met after Canada, who was properly charmed by me (also, I went overboard with the charm and it was Canada’s fault AGAIN, and I can never get a visa to South Sudan from Sudan again because I’m worried about jail time and/or not being able to turn down a marriage proposal from a South Sudanese soldier).

Old passport

Then fast forward a few months to now when I’m in the awkward “carry around 2 passports” stage. This happens when you are from a cool country that lets you do that (Sweden) or you are a cool person with dual citizenship. (I’m not that cool. I could never choose just one extra citizenship anyway.) In my case, I have two passports because one passport got too full, but I have all my visas in it. I had to finish that passport and get a new passport. My new passport is shiny and stiff and empty. My old passport is flabby and shabby and full. But my visas in it are still valid. The nice lady at the US Embassy assured me, even though I knew it was true because I’ve been in this stage before. Once, notably after I had a temporary passport with my China visa after being mugged in China and losing my other passport (the thieves gave it back though—it was nice, but I’d already canceled it. Still—I keep my old passports as souvenirs). I had the China visa in the temporary passport (I had to get it quickly because I was picking up my parents in Hong Kong and taking them to Macau and then the mainland for a visit) and my new passport was the valid passport I was currently using. I was crossing the border from Laos back into China after a sketchy solo backpack trip I’d taken through Southeast Asia, ending up in a van in the middle of nowhere with a few Chinese guys I’d met who agreed to take me back to China. Can I just say, it is a  good thing that no one can travel with 23 year old me anymore? Because I was an idiot.  But somehow I survived that and got to the border, and the Chinese officials looking at my two passports were initially a bit confused. But using my patented method for getting past immigration official—languages, humor, head-tilt, they let me back in. And if they can do it, then so can you, South Sudan! And of course, South Sudan would have, but stupid CANADA got in the way AGAIN!

In Laos before hopping in a white van
with 4 Chinese men I'd never seen before in my life.
Also: "under the clothes" money pouch is not hidden well in this photo-
another poor choice.

“I cannot stamp your passport,” said the immigration guy who had been fawning over me and my wonderful Arabic seconds before.  We argued back and forth a few moments (“Yes, you can—I just did this twice in Chad and once in Kenya.” “I can’t because the computers and I might get in trouble.”) and then he said, “Come here with me and I’ll take you to the boss.”

Let me just tell you something: when someone has your passport, you follow them. That is what you do. And so that is what I did.

I ended up outside of the airport in a trailer converted into an office, where a police was sitting in a fancy chair. They brought another man with me, and they gave his info to the police first. This turned out to be problematic for me because he was trying to come in from Sudan without having followed legal procedures. This is not good because former enemy + outdated legal procedures = really good excuse to get worked up and yell a lot and assert your new-found power.

Then, basking in the glow of his righteous anger, he came to my passport. “Now I know that this is wrong,” he said, “because I was in Canada.”

That is really what my hair looks like when I get off a plane.

And it went down-hill from there.

Here are some things he said to me:

“Your passport is finished. I have to respect the American law and I cannot accept this visa.”

“You are not in America. You have to accept South Sudanese law. American law does not matter here.”

“I know you have been many places, but I have been to Canada.”

“When I went to America from Canada, I had one tiny problem with my passport and they made me wait for 3 hours, and I said, ‘Thank you for following the law.’”

"American police force is very strong. You know that TV series 'bad-boy-bad-boy-what-you-do-the-do'? It is a good series. Very strong police."

“You think this money is going into my pocket? It is for South Sudan.”

“So what age do you think you will retire? 50?”

“Why aren’t you married?”

Ultimately, it was a very important conversation. After I bought the visa and went back and the evil sneaky Sudanese former enemy was gone, he was much more friendly, and that is when he asked the last two questions and told me how we were great friends. And also more about how he learned so much in Canada.

Official uniform of immigration personnel in South Sudan

Another important moment: when I went back in to buy the visa, the immigration guys said, “You didn’t understand. You could have just paid a small amount of money if you didn’t go to the boss.”

“YOU told me to go to the boss,” I said. "And no, I won't marry you, because you did not give me my visa for free."

In the interest of full disclosure, I have paid extra money to get out of Burundi a day past my visa and I paid some baksheesh to a guard in the Valley of the Kings to see Tutankhamen’s tomb without a ticket, but in this case, I didn’t even think about offering a bribe, and I really regret it. Especially earlier today when I tried to get my visa renewed to 6 months multiple entry in accordance with my year-long work permit (ends in 2017)—the main reason for this visit in the first place.

“Oh no,” said my friend at the immigration office. “You have a valid visa. We can’t renew until it is over. But you can talk to the big boss, if you like.”

So we went to the big boss.

“How are you?” he boomed loudly in Arabic, remembering me. “I hope you are 100%” (a classic Sudanese response to that question).

“No,” I said. “Only 90%. I need you to fix my visa problem.”

I explained and he said, “Well, we cannot give you a new visa when you already have a valid visa. But you come back next Tuesday, and I’ll give it to you.”

Why is Tuesday the magic day? I don’t know. But I do know that this man has not been to Canada. So I joked my way out, making him promise me the 6 month visa and South Sudanese nationality in front of 5 other officers who were all laughing and will all remember that he promised the crazy khawaja who speaks Arabic a six month visa. And if I survive the dangerous public transport ride to Yei tomorrow on a road fraught with bandits and gaping holes (which I have to do now since my schedule has changed thanks to CANADA and I couldn’t get an airplane in time), I will be back in his office on Tuesday, and he will remember me, and he will be happy to give me my 6 month visa.

“I’m 98% happy now,” I told him as I was leaving. “I’ll be 100% on Tuesday when you give me that 6 month visa.

Winner of National Geographic's "Capture the Authentic Spirit of a Country" Travel Photography Contest 2016

That Chad is so hot right now (OMG)

When it rains in Chad, you take photos.
This is from last week's trip to Oum Hadjar.
If your car doesn't have a faux-fur dash cover,
you aren't cool.

It’s hot season in Chad. It is the season that is spoken of by natives and foreigners alike in gasped groans. Expats share tips for “making it through” the hot season, and natives constantly ask if you are going to be OK, not being used to the hot season as they are. Years before I ever came to Chad or ever thought about coming to Chad, I heard someone talk about coming home from work while he was living in Chad and wanting to be able to open his head like a Pez candy dispenser in order to re-hydrate himself more quickly and efficiently. I thought it was an evocative image.

I, as you know, like the heat. I genuinely prefer it to the cold. People often say cold is better because you can always put on more clothes, but I don’t mind walking around the house in my underwear. I do, however, hate having to wear socks. They pinch and rub my toes and make my feet feel claustrophobic. But if I don’t wear them in cold weather places, I can never warm up. I especially loathe sunny cold days. It feels like the sun is lying to me, and I don’t like to be lied to. If it looks warm outside, I want it to be.

Post dust-storm clean up

I wasn't the only one in the car taking pictures
Even Chadians marvel.

Here in Chad, there is no deceptive weather. You look outside and it could either be sunny and hot or dusty and hot. It was chilly and dusty back in January, but I still was ok without socks. But I will admit to you that it is hot these days. It is hotter than most other hot places. Outside the sun pounds heat into your houses, turning them into crackling fire pits, without the fun of an actual fire. And we aren’t exactly an air conditioner type of country here. I have fans in my house and fans in the office that supplement our AC, which doesn’t actually work (but we leave it on anyway for morale). Without these fans, I am a sweaty mess. I mean, it takes about 10 seconds away from the fans to start sweating. You feel it first trickling out of the pores under your hair before it slides down the back of your neck and soaks into the back of your shirt . You notice every time you stand up that your skirt is wet and sticking to your legs. Actually, that is true even when you have been sitting in front of a fan, because your butt is blocked from the air by the chair you’re sitting in.

We ate mangos in this garden while visiting project sites.
It's a hard life out here.

Hot season is not all bad. I mean, it is also mango season, which I’ve enjoyed much more now that I figured out I could tell people I prefer the hard mangos to the gushy ones. People are happy about this because they all prefer the gushy ones. Also, I spill things a lot but never worry about slipping on puddles because they dry up in seconds. My hair also dries quickly coming out of the shower (aka bucket bath), which is great because I hate putting up my hair when it’s wet. Someone once told me that if you braid your hair while it’s wet, it will mildew. That really sounds possible to me, so I like to let it dry before I lump it on top of my head in a ball. And speaking of showers (or bucket baths because there is not enough water pressure here to make the shower work), they are always warm. Water that sits in plastic buckets is heated to the temperature of the room, which is usually 90-100 degrees (I’m skipping Celsius right now because let’s be honest: Fahrenheit just sounds hotter). And who doesn’t love a warm shower? 

But without the fans, life is tough.

So imagine my deep distress this week when not only did I lose electricity (which had been amazingly and impressively constant over the weeks since I’ve been Chez Naomi), but I also lost solar power. This means that I no longer had fans or the means to charge my electronic devices—two of the things that are an important part of my good nature.

We slept together.
I only pushed him off the
bed one time.

The first night I made do with the little battery fans, like the ones that I used in Mundri. Fortunately, I’d bought some batteries in Kenya in anticipation of a trip to the field with a Danish man who was worried about temperatures rising above freezing in a desert climate. That trip didn’t happen but the batteries definitely saved lives. I slept at night clutching the fan in front of my face. I still woke up more times than usual, feeling extremely dehydrated on soaking wet sheets. Once I woke up when the cat yowled and I thought he was going to get annoying about going outside, but he just was upset about getting hit in the face by a pillow I threw off the bed in an effort to have less things touching me.

If you are reading this
from your iPhone,
then this photo is
actual size for this fan.

 Without electricity or solar, it is also a lot darker at night, which I do prefer because I sleep better without lights, but it also caused me to be completely disoriented one night when I heard a cat fight that I wanted to break up, fearing the involvement and/or near-death of Felix. Suddenly I found myself walking into a door that I didn’t know was there. I spun around in circles, running into things and trying to figure out which direction I was walking. I had a brief moment of wondering if I could ever make it back to bed or have to sleep on the floor with the cockroaches (though Felix had eaten one earlier that night to prove his merits to me—it is a good merit to eat the roaches). After some time, I found the shelf and realized I was holding the little hippo knick-knack that sits on the book stand in the living room, and then managed to turn myself back into the bedroom where I found the bed and my phone, charged by the beautiful and hardy battery that I’d dropped on the concrete floor earlier and put back together later in the office. (Thanks Cherry for the Christmas present, and Kandos for fixing it, even though I kept gasping and telling him not to break anything whenever he snapped something on the plastic casing.) I flipped the light on my phone and saw Felix limp his way back inside, tail all poofy and bits of white fur stuck to his neck. I did a quick check of the kitchen to make sure that no foreign cats were inside and went back to bed, clutching my fan.

Bedroom solar fan, which
I initially thought didn't work
very well, until I compared
it to the battery fan.

Finally, yesterday, after many attempts, the amazing Rich brought over a new battery and hooked it up. So I had solar power that worked, and this time, it worked all night. Not like the time he’d fixed it and it had worked until 2:23am and then I had to go back to clutching my battery fans. This time I had real lights so that I could cook in the kitchen without a headlamp and see all the places I’d missed trying to shave in the dark for Pool Day at the Hilton N’Djamena (yeah, we’re fancy). And solar-powered 12-volt fans are a step up from battery-fans. But you know what is even way better than 12-volt fans? Actual fans, powered by electricity.

BURN ALL THE FOSSIL FUELS.

Because The Children are smart. They will figure out a way to make more powerful solar-powered fans by the time we have used up all the oil.

In the meantime, I’m sitting on the couch and the beautiful fan is blowing in my face. I’m not sweating. I am thirsty, though. (It takes a long time to rehydrate.) After 5.5 days of fan-clutching and darkness, my power is finally back on. I no longer hate everybody I hated before. Now there are one or two people that I can forgive while basking in the cool fan air.

So, in conclusion, I’d like to thank my fans. None of this would have been possible without you. You really are the best fans in the world. Never forget that. You keep me going every day. Keep it real, fans. Peace and Love.

And to leave you with a sermon, since I skipped church yesterday: my life is fine. It is way easier than most people's. And Antani's electricity STILL isn't back on, but at least we have access to clean water here in N'Djamena, while these kids in Oum Hadjer go out to the river bed to dig holes for water for their families. And it's hot there too. And I bet they don't have fans at home that they can go sit in front of. Tell Neverthirst you want to support a biosand filter project here. If I ever finish the budget for that project, it is coming soon. 

In a few months this will be a river again.
Next year they will find and dig-out these holes again.

Being Not Just One of the Boys

If I had grown up with this kid,
I would have gotten to play
with all of his super-hero dolls.
Here he is suggesting I get bit
by a spider so that I can get super-powers.

I have no brothers. I grew up with dolls and dress-up clothes. This wasn’t really a hardship for me. I mean, Micro Machines were kind of cool, but so was Polly Pocket. I preferred stuffed animals to Barbies anyway.

But in spite of being surrounded by girls at home, I was almost always the only girl in my class at school. Living in the “language school” town of Indonesia, were people would come to study Bahasa before heading out to various other cities and islands, I prayed diligently for another girl to join my class at the beginning of each school year, having already said my tearful goodbyes to the girls who had left at the end of the previous year, most of whom I’ve never seen again in my life.

Being the only girl in elementary school is not easy. Especially if you are a competitive only girl. I felt that the honor of all woman-kind rested on my shoulders. I had no issue with cooties, but I was going to win every dang spelling bee and every mad minute math competition and finish every test before all those other stupid boys or die trying. It was for all Women everywhere. And, I usually did. I also always got picked last by some reluctant boy for any partner work, which didn’t bother me too much, except that it meant that I had to work with a boy who would be unlikely to do his work to my high standards. (These days I don't get picked at all, but at least I don't have to worry about lowering my standards.)

A Facebook conversation about broken compressor parts,
which I mostly faked my way through

Fast forward to my life now. I work with two water organizations. This is typically a male-dominated field where muscular men heave giant equipment around and send each other emails about whether we need more 152mm drill bits or 140mm ones. They are the guys that know how to fix a car when it breaks down by the side of the road. I am the girl sending them emails or calling them and asking them for photos of women drinking water from the well and population data.

 While I never wanted to be a girly girl, I’ve never had dreams of being a car mechanic either. Though, to be honest, it would be really cool if I knew how to fix a car. I took autoshop in high school, but I think I already mentioned on this blog somewhere that I mostly convinced the teacher to let us spend the time watching video tapes of Junk Yard Wars that his family had sent him. Therein lies my talent—convincing other people to do what I want them to do. It’s a talent that is not stereotypically connected to either men or women.

Being the only girl is not such a big deal to me anymore. It comes with perks. I never have to share my hotel room with anyone on group trips. This is nice because I like to be alone and also I always forget my towel and end up walking around naked looking for it. It does mean that I am often left out of conversations centering around sports I don’t care about. And there are the inevitable jokes about male anatomy that they try to make in whispered asides, but they are not great at whispering. So I feel free to talk about tampons and hang my sports bras up to dry over the fire place in the Himalayas because most of them have daughters anyway, and it is good preparation for them.

But I do like hanging out with other women, and I resented friends in high school who told me how much they prefer the company of boys. “They have so much less drama,” they said. Which is complete crap, of course. I know so many dramatic boys. They are just as exhausting as dramatic girls and much more sensitive to being laughed at.  I’ve never understood the attraction of a moody bad boy.

Still, I’m not very good at the girl thing. This was brought to my attention again recently when I showed up to dinner out with friends from the office and a colleague visiting from out of town. The one other girl in the office came a bit late with one of her friends. They were dressed up beautifully in lovely white dresses and make-up, with perfectly braided hair. My hair was also braided—the French braid, which is this white girl’s “I didn’t wash my hair” style. I was wearing the same outfit (a Neverthirst t-shirt, of course, and a cheap skirt from the market in Khartoum) I’d worn all day because why get other clothes dirty at the end of the day? And I was definitely not wearing any make-up because I don’t see the point in applying something that will melt off my face in seconds with the heat of the sun and the sweat of my brow. And I was tired and did not care to make the effort at all. Honestly, and you may not believe me and my teammates here certainly don’t, but there are moments when I do feel inclined to dress nicely. But, also honestly, those days are few and far between and almost never during the hot season in Chad.

Emelie, making me a cake on my bday--
she's beautiful, she bakes, AND she wears makeup.
She is the perfect woman.

And so that night at the dinner table, three men from three different countries, who are all married anyway, gave me lots of grief about my slovenly appearance and “Why can’t you be like Emelie and Mireille?” Obviously none of my defenses about changing clothes or putting on make-up in the heat were valid in the light of Emelie and Mireille who had done both. I took my usual feminist tactic of, “I don’t have to dress up for anyone if I don’t want to.” And they tried to convince me that I want to dress up for me. Actually, I figured out later that Anders thinks I’m suffering some kind of repressed depression from what happened in Mundri last year and that’s why I’m making no effort in my appearance. But he was with me in Kenya when I both dressed up and wore make-up and clearly didn’t notice, so I think it was more the shocking comparison between me and the beautiful Emelie and the stunning Mireille. I mean, really, these are gorgeous ladies. There would be a marked contrast between me and them if we were all dressed in t-shirts and skirts, but I have never seen Emelie in a t-shirt, and I work with her everyday AND we stayed together in Mongo for a week. She gets out of bed looking perfect. Sadly, I don’t think I have a picture of us that night unless Anders posts it on Facebook, and he was mad at me for making an angry face in one of the pictures, so I don’t think he will.

 After taking crap about it from them ALL night (not Emelie and Mireille, they are too classy), I decided I dress up with a vengeance the next night. And the next morning at church when Anders thought I dressed up because I didn’t wear a t-shirt (it was a blouse made out of t-shirt material though…hehe) and I hadn’t put my hair up yet (I was running late of course), I almost un-decided to dress up with a vengeance. Clearly, if it was so easy to please them, why try harder? Because once you set a precedent, you have to keep up with that standard. But I am competitive, as you know, so that evening, I decided to use my minimal time at home to make myself look GOOD. And of course, that takes a lot of work.

And it turns out, I maybe deserved all the criticism. I was hoping to find something tight and low-cut and sparkly in my closet, but it seems that I don’t actually own any clothing like that. I have no dresses (here in Chad anyway) and nothing with sequins.  I have things that are low-cut, but only because they are lose, so they hang low on me.  They are not very sexy but they are so comfortable—like wearing a pillowcase, and really, is there any object that is more comfortable than a pillow?  I had to settle for skinny jeans and a black shirt (black is sophisticated, right?) and the one pair of high heels I have with me for attending weddings in Khartoum (when Zuhoor doesn’t make me borrow hers).

Anders gave me Danish gummy penguins,
so I forgive him for being a jerk
about my "laid back style."

And let me tell you, putting on skinny jeans in a house that is 100/38 degrees with no AC and one fan that does not, unfortunately follow me around the room like a Roomba or a character from Beauty and the Beast, is very difficult. And you should put them on before you paint your nails, but I wanted to wait until the last minute to put on my jeans because I was trying to keep cool while I put on make-up. I do not have a fan in the bathroom where I have a mirror, and I was not feeling motivated to pick up the one I had and drag there and then try to untangle the extension cord enough to make it reach and the fiddle with the plug again to make it turn on (it is finicky), so I just went for it. It was another mistake on my part.

I decided to put my hair in the “fancy ponytail” -where you wrap a section of hair around the rubber band, creating the illusion of having tied your hair with your hair, which is obviously something mermaids would do, not having rubber bands under the sea, and so it is cool. This hairstyle also has the benefit of looking good for about 5 seconds while I’m looking in the mirror. And I only find out at the end of the night that it came unwrapped a few minutes later and curled weirdly over the rest of the ponytail all night long. After I got the pins jammed in right and swished my hair to make sure it would stay in, and then had to do again because it didn’t stay in, I noticed I was sweating profusely. No makeup in the world would stick on that. I tried a few times to dry it off with the towel and then I realized that foundation would not be an option. I went to stand in front of the fan for a few moments. Then I came back in to focus on my eye makeup, which is the only thing that I actually like doing. I have liked it ever since I was a kid stealing my grandmother’s eyeshadow and drawing long curlicues out the sides of my eyes trying to look like Jasmine. My sisters told me I looked like an evil witch, and I thought that was even better. I did not get so creative this time, but I did have to run into the fan in between lining each eye. Then I busted out the mascara, which I only use when I’m really trying (i.e. weddings in Khartoum) because I actually think it makes me look scary—like I have spiders on my eyelids or something because my eyelashes are already long and mostly black. They are my one beauty. Like Jo in Little Women, when she cuts of her hair to sell to buy books or writing paper or something and Amy says, “Oh Jo, your one beauty!” Only, I would never cut off my eyelashes to buy books—I would just find a way to download the pdf of the book for free off the Internet. So I basically never use the mascara, but it turns out, when you don’t use something like that and you live in Chad, it dries up. I didn’t know this was a thing. And if you think that you can pour some water in the tube and make it work again, you are also wrong. So I threw it away. And used the clear stuff I put on my eyebrows to make them stay in one place. And then I was done.

But I had to take some girl mirror selfies to be really official about dressing up and I found out that I am also not good at those. Here are a few that are not as bad as the rest. And I’m sorry for the dirty mirror. The light in my bathroom isn’t really bright, and I never actually saw that dirt until it was on my camera.

The "in the mirror" picture.
Don't you like Naomi's rubber duckies?
Am I making the face right? I feel like I should have
pooched the lips more or something.
It is hard to hold a face AND look for the camera button.

This face is dumber-looking, but at least you
can't see the dirty mirror.
Also, why take the mirror shot at all when you
have the ability to flip the camera to take a mirror
photo when you are not looking in a mirror?
I never understood that but I was trying to be true to
the persona of "The Girl Who Dresses Up to Go Out on the Town."

The shoes, the awkward leg-photo,
the messy house in the background.

Ultimately, the beauty effort was appreciated, though the neighbors might have been scandalized by the skinny jeans, and I proved my point. And today I am wearing a skirt that is too big, a pillow-case t-shirt over a sports bra, dirty flipflops and no makeup. I didn't even wash my hair, just blobbed it up on top of my head. Having had no electricity for 3 of the 5 days that have passed this week, I think that the fact that I haven't melted into a pile of salt (all the liquid would be instantly sucked into the dry air) is enough of an accomplishment. I also translated some French documents into English and some English documents into Arabic and tested the voltage on my solar battery to see why it stops working at 2am even though it supposedly has 12.71 volts going into the system and wrote this blog. So what if don't wear makeup or clothes that fit me?

How cool am I checking the voltage?
Guess what I was wearing.