Field Trips

 The best field trip I ever went on in my life was the chocolate factory in Bandung. It was like Willy Wonka but nobody turned into a blueberry or was humiliated by an Oompa Loompa song. The factory workers made it their mission to stuff our fat foreign fingers with as much chocolate as we could hold. They also gave us plastic bags to hold our loot. And I also used the pristine white cap we were supposed to be wearing to keep our hair out of the vats of melting chocolate as a secondary container. To anyone who found a blonde hair in your Silver Queen circa 1994, I apologize.  Probably most parents, like mine, confiscated those plastic bags from their children’s jittery hands as soon as they picked us up from school, but possibly many children, like myself, had made a significant dent in their contents before handing them over. My ability to consume incredibly large amounts of sugary treats in one go has been with me from childhood.

Silver Queens of the Modern Era

These days, I’m still going on field trips, though they don’t generally involve chocolate anymore, as chocolate here melts as soon as you take it out of the refrigerator. This trip I subsisted on mangos and Smurf gummies that I bought in Modern Market. (I hold on to a secret hope that whenever I check out at Modern Market, the ladies think I’m buying supplies for a birthday party for a six-year-old. I mean, how rude of them to assume that I’m going to eat all of the gummies and chips and cookies myself?!) My most recent trip with the DONG (Direction des Organisations Non-Gouvernementales) was to visit our projects out east to for the DONG to see what we have accomplished. Yes, I did laugh the first time I got the DONG report, because everyone has a little bit of 12 year old boy humor in them, but now I’m starting to get over it. I understand if you have not reached the point of maturity yet, and you need to laugh about my trip with the DONG. Take your time and come back later. Or never. Your choice.

The view on Chadian road trips.

A good portion of this trip was spent in the car. I don’t mind car trips. I like being able to see the people and the scenery. As the sole girl on this excursion (as per usual), I was given the front seat, which I graciously accepted. And then I not-so-graciously accepted for everyone’s bags to sit under and upon my feet. Just like men to not want to carry their stuff so they give it to their ladies to put in their purse. Joke’s on them though: I never carry a purse. I would-I just can’t get around to buying one, so I’ve been carrying a pouch that had socks and toothbrush in it from a trip on Turkish Air a few months ago. Then that ripped, so I found another small wallet, and then that zipper broke, so I fixed it with a paperclip. I have also not been robbed recently, so I think there is a connection with carrying money in shabby pouches and not being mugged.

My friend at the SECADEV lodge in Adré.
He slept outside my bedroom.

Because of how much time we spent in the car, the night we got back I fell asleep to one of the songs we heard multiple times on that journey, as we cycled through all of the music on our driver’s flash drive. The song I fell asleep to had a refrain that said, “Fi Juba, ajmal medina fi duniya.” I was not aware that anyone classified Juba as “the most beautiful city in the world,” but apparently this guy has, and Chadians love this song, probably because none of them has ever been to Juba. Ok, I’ll stop maligning Juba—it’s not bad, and there are lots of lovable people there.

 

A lovable Kenyan driller in Chad, who lived and worked
in South Sudan during the height of the war,
and he can tell stories.

Now I’ll malign Enrique Iglesias. We were assaulted by several of his songs thanks to the flash-drive. I pondered the lyrics to one particular gem of a song, where he laments the fact that he is in love with someone who doesn’t return his love anymore. The line “Do you know what it feels like to be the last one to know the lock on the door has changed?” was particularly telling about his relationship with this woman. If she broke up with him as fast as possible and changed the locks on the door, she doesn’t just not love him anymore: she never wants to see him again and is clearly so afraid of him that she does not want him to be able to have the ability to get into her house anymore. I hope he soon knows what it feels like to be slapped with a restraining order.  Worse even than Enrique, worst boyfriend ever, was the medley of country songs that followed. I don’t know who the singer was because I try to avoid the country music genre at all costs. I know that it is traditionally accepted for many of my generation to despise country music, and I hate to go with the flow, but it really grates on me. I like bluegrass though…so I’m still not like everyone else! Anyway, I want to say this singer was Shania Twain because I find her particularly pernicious, and not just because she is Canadian. With time and distance from South Sudanese immigration officials, my grudge against Canada is easing. Somehow I survived Shania AND South Sudan.

Man and donkey.
Not pictured: Enrique Iglesias

The music selection wasn’t all bad. I found some interesting Congolese singers I didn’t know about before (Koffi Olomide and Cindy le Coeur) that I will be adding to my music collection. After all, it was one such trip where I learned about Magic System, band of cool Ivorian dudes who is a staple on my play lists now and has taught me lots of important French lingo.

The hazards of rainy season road trips.
Note: this is NOT our car, but our car passed through successfully
the previous day. I'm not sure how this happened.

Kandos telling me not to take a picture while I take a picture.
Too late.
We are good friends.

And the driver and I had some good times. One night in the field, I asked to borrow a knife to cut the mangos Kandos bought for me on the way there because I am too sophisticated to chew off the peel with my teeth. And also lazy.  They came back with a huge dagger, which was not actually great for peeling mangos, but would have been good protection if we had been attacked by Robin Hood bandits with bows and arrows or swords or something. As I was joking about protecting the group with my dagger, the driver said to me, “No. You are not holding that right. If you hold it like that, your attacker can take it away from you.” (Clearly, he saw something in me that led him to believe that I have the potential to be a great dagger-fighter.) He then gave me a long lecture about the proper way to use a knife in a fight. “I always have a knife with me,” he said, patting his thigh knowingly. “You have one with you right now?!” I said. “Well, I actually left it back at the lodge while we were eating, but I have it. You never know when you need to protect yourself.” Clearly.

Demonstrating the proper way to hold a knife.
Except that you can't really tell.

Of course, a knife won’t protect you from bad drivers. After a near miss with a bus that was driving straight at us, taking up two lanes, he turned to me and said, “No! You cannot die. You haven’t had children yet! You need to have at least 4- a boy that looks like his father and a girl that looks like her mother and a boy that looks like both parents and a girl that looks like both parents.” I think he has thought through this a lot farther than I have.

The Chef du Canton telling us that IAS
came at the exact moment they needed us.

As I said, most of my trip was spent in the company of other men. This is a male-oriented field, mostly. Since it’s Ramadan, we didn’t have to stop for lunch and I didn’t eat in front of anyone. So we would break fast together every night. It was usually me and 5-11 men. It’s not bad eating with large groups of men because even though at least one of them told me I need to get fatter so that I can be beautiful, they do not pressure you to eat like women do. I think they are actually secretly hoping you don’t eat much. And I don’t worry about not liking some of the food because none of them were the ones who made it. So not bad.

Break fast meal in Abeche

Break fast meal in Adré--each with his own spoon.

But I did jump at the chance to hang out with women at the wells and when visiting the self help groups. They were all really fun to talk to, understanding my Sudanese Arabic, and sensing my need for female companionship. While well drillers tend to be male, well-users tend to be female. So we met plenty of ladies in the field.

Hanging with the ladies. I'm sure you can't tell which is me.
Alifa got some good photos of me talking with them, but
he has not sent them to me yet.

I like the kids too--who get serious when you take a photo,
and then rush over laughing to see themselves.

My favorite photo.
Baby Mohamed kept making hilarious faces at me.
His mom thought it was really funny too.

Our last day was to be all with ladies, many of whom I have met previously on other visits, and I was looking forward to it, but at the last minute the DONG rep decided we would skip this last day and go straight back to N’Djamena that night. So we did, breaking fast on the way by consuming a large goat together. I ate about 5 pieces of that goat. I got way behind because piece number 3 took 15 minutes to chew. 

And who was so happy to see me arrive home? Felix, the cat who did not pee on anything while I was gone because I took precautions:

Bats and Cats

In sixth grade, I found baby bat on the wall at the school. He was alive. I decided I was going to keep him forever as my best friend, but I had to give him to Mr. Clark while we went to P.E. to play some dumb sport like baseball. I’m pretty sure it was baseball because none of my competitive instinct was aroused during that particular P.E. session. Instead I was planning how I was going to feed the bat with an eye dropper. Also, I was plotting how I was going to make sure that Kristen knew that it was going to be MY bat and not hers, because I think she was misunderstanding that fact. After what seemed an interminable amount of time (because baseball time is longer that Earth time—it steals years from your life span while you hang out in left field waiting for no one to hit you the ball because none of the kids in my sixth grade class were really devoted to the sport), we went back to our classroom to find—oh horrors! Mr. Clark had formaldehyde-ed my new best friend.  Permanently petrified in the fetal position, my fuzzy baby bat was now suspended in a jar of opaque liquid. I was devastated and furious, and if my mother only knew how close she came to having to tell me that she would not allow me to bottle feed a baby bat. Or if, on the very off-chance she had let me keep it, how close my father would have come to being the one to have to find a way to dispose of its dead body. Neither of them had to fulfill these parental duties because I was denied my pet bat in the name of Science. But in honor of this event, after I read the Harry Potter books a few years later, I decided that I would have a bat instead of an owl, and he would carry messages for me and be different from all the other boring wizards, and he would be called “Marley” because that is a cool name for a bat.

My dream. Note: Marley was not from "Bob" but from
the ghosts of the bad lawyers in Muppet's Christmas Carol.
"We're Marley and Marley, our hearts are painted black!"
which I thought was a catchy tune, and a great name for a bat.

Fast-forward a few years, decades, and I have done my fair share of disposing of bat bodies. Or unfair share of it. And I have left more to Antani who does not deserve that at all, but she is a mother and is less disgusted by horrible things than I am.  Why am I cleaning up bat bodies? Do I have a child with a desire for strange pets that she will inevitably accidentally kill? No. I have a borrowed cat with the malicious instincts of a hunter. He loves catching bats and frogs and lizards outside and bringing them inside to munch on. He also loves letting them go when they are half-masticated but maintaining a small spark of life and hope for a future free of cats. If he lets them go inside, it is harder for them to get away, but it is possible for them to get caught in the furniture and die. This is what I try to avoid. Also, he has a horrible habit of not finishing his food. Apparently, he’s never heard about starving cats in Africa who would LOVE to eat the rest of that lizard leg he left on the floor. Instead I have to sweep it up. 

Once I saw him chewing on a lizard. It was firmly in his mouth. I yelled at him and picked him up to fling him out the door, and just before he was out, he let go of the lizard so that it ran in the house and behind the kitchen counters. I KNOW he did it on purpose to be mean. But that lizard was stuck and he couldn’t get it,  and he stayed in the kitchen yowling in front of the cabinet for hours until I got tired of it and pushed them out so he could catch the lizard. And I threw them both out again.

 

Three of Antani's kids who came over to hang out while she
working. Sefora (in blue) was terrified of me at first until
I gave her lots of candy. Then we became friends.
The others liked me right away, and I STILL gave them candy.
Except for the baby. She will get hers later though.
Aren't they super-cute???

I really hate it when he catches things and brings them inside because I really don’t like to see animals suffering, and I don’t like to clean up bloody carcasses, and I don’t like the gross crunching sound he makes while he is eating animal bones. The other morning, he came inside with a creature. I was not surprised at this, but I was annoyed.

The previous day my door lock had broken, and instead of calling a professional, we decided (myself, Marie-Françoise, and Narcisse) that we would spend the next two evenings hacking into the door ourselves to fix it. Well, they did. I watched and handed them tools after looking up the French word for those tools on my phone dictionary. We all failed. Except me. I know what a tournevis is now. But the door wouldn’t close. I didn’t worry about that. The cat had been behaving nicely recently and not doing much hunting. I didn’t bother to block the cat flap on the door. When I ignored his 4:45am yowling for food, he took matters into his own claws and went and got his own. Fine. Antani was coming that day, and I figured that she could help me deal with it, but he brought the thing right by my bed and was chewing loudly, and it wasn’t even 5am yet, and I still had another hour to sleep. So I grabbed my pillow and moved into the living room to sleep on the couch. I was not happy with this arrangement, but I didn’t want to fight because fighting wakes you up, and I still wanted to sleep.

I must have had about 5 minutes of shut-eye when suddenly something landed on my head!!! Screaming and jumping up, I dislodged the cat and the Thing from hair. They moved on into the kitchen where I got this photo:

The cat just sat there and looked at it, and it wasn't moving at all.
So you can see how it is impossible to tell if it is alive or dead.

But, as you can see, this bat seems to have no visible injuries, in spite of the horrible noises the cat had been making while chewing on it in my room. And clearly, it had been recently flying. So I stood there a few moments, taking photos for my nephews and nieces (they were impressed) and trying to decide if it really was dead so that I could sweep it out of the kitchen. After a few minutes of internal debating, I decided that I wasn’t brave enough to find out and risk a bat flying in my face. Bats carry rabies, did you know? And I don’t think my rabies vaccination is up-to-date. So I grabbed the keys, which were fortunately on the table in the living room, and exited that middle door (which had been closed) and ran for Narcisse, who I found in the act of rolling up his bed and getting up. Lovely, nice, wonderful hero that he is, he cheerfully agreed to come see if the bat was alive or dead and get him out of my house (dead or alive). He went in the house, walked towards the bat and found that he was very much alive, as he flew at Narcisse’s face (proving that I made the right decision not to test it myself) and then flew around my house making horrible barking noises that I could hear a little bit over my screaming from behind the screen door where I could watch from safety. Narcisse bravely trapped him over the pile of Naomi’s DVDs that people have returned to her and I haven’t put away yet. He held him by the wings and brought him outside of the house to where I was hiding.

“Do you want me to give him to the cat?”

“No!” I said, not wanting the cat to win this dispute after chasing his prey into my hair. MY HAIR. “Just let him go.”

“Well, he’s dead,” said Narcisse. “I’ll just throw him away.” (He did not add “far from here” but I could see that he was feeling concerned for me in my fragile state, and I think he did.)

It was 5:20am. All of this happened so fast. And there was no more sleep for Amanda.

Of course everyone enjoyed this story of my suffering. Look at this message I got from a friend in Sudan after I told him what happened to me:

Also, I don’t know how I got this reputation as being fearless. Sure, I don’t worry too much about driving roads where I may be hijacked, but there are plenty of things that I am afraid of beside being attacked by a bat and a cat in my own house. I’m afraid of dying in an airplane crash. I’m afraid of being invited to dinner at someone’s house and having to eat something horrible like bananas. I'm afraid of calling someone on the phone to make an appointment. I’m afraid of bugs that lay eggs in your body and also getting cut by coral that will take root in your bones and grow into a tree (thanks SO MUCH, Anders for making me watch that youtube video). I’m afraid of losing my hair and going bald. I’m afraid of those people who dress up in cartoon character costumes and try to shake your hand at amusement parks. Also, I am nervous about people who dress in costumes to go to movies or those movie conferences. Basically, anyone over the age of 12 who is wearing a costume at a time other than Halloween concerns me.

Anyway, we all laughed and after the professional came to fix my door (it took him 15 minutes), Marie-Françoise said, “You can close the door and sleep well tonight.”

That was the plan, of course. But at 7:30pm, I had not yet shut that door. I had just brewed a pot of cinnamon tea and was sitting down to watch a TV show marketed to young teenagers that I enjoy because I’m a very sophisticated person, when I noticed some commotion in the corner. Felix had more prey! (He also had food in his bowl, I might add, so there was NO REASON for this other than PURE EVIL.)

I couldn’t tell what it was, but in true Felix style, he let it go and it immediately started flying around the room. I could tell it wasn’t a bat, but I thought it was a small bird. I jumped around screaming, but no one was there to help me catch it, and I had to protect my tea. So eventually I smacked it out of the air with Naomi’s yoga mat, screaming obscenities at the cat, who was doing NOTHING to help me re-catch his prey, which was a giant fat moth the size of the mouse that terrorized me in Mundri.

After I had it trapped under the mat, I knew that I did not want to squish it, but I needed to get it out of the house. So I got the little broom and the dust pan. I thought it was mostly dead, but when I lifted off the mat, it tried to escape, so I slammed the dust pan over it, trapping it with a tiny bit of space under the rim. It was fluttering like crazy, so I thought that if I could kill it with insecticide, that could work and then I could sweep it outside. But I couldn’t find any insecticide. I did, however, find a large pink spray can of some strange perfume, which seemed like the same concept: smelly chemicals in a can that be squirted at offending creatures. If you were wondering, it did not work.

Tools of moth disposal, though I don't
really recommend the perfume because
it was pungent and it was not as effective as I'd hoped.

Eventually, I got brave enough (because I was worried that my tea was getting cold), and I squished the moth between the broom and the dust pan and ran it out of the house before it could wriggle free. I then slammed the door shut, thinking that the cat was outside. And Good Riddance.

But he wasn’t. He was hiding from me under the couch, because I had chased him around the house while the moth was trapped under the mat and I was trying to decide what to do with him.

I left the cat alone for the rest of the night, and shut him outside of the bedroom thinking that I could leave him in there to whine in the wee hours of the morning and sleep past 5 the next day.

It was a beautiful dream. But at 4:30am, I heard a noise that woke me up. Now, I, as you know, would wake up if I heard a butterfly flapping its wings in Hong Kong, but this was a rather emphatic thump. Then another thump. Then a thump and a creak. And then a psychotic MEOW. Felix had made it in the door. So I ended up getting up thirty minutes later to push him outside, where he wanted to go anyway (since he still had plenty of food and water in his bowls).

Felix sleeping on the couch with his butt on my water bottle.
Did I throw a bat at him and jump on his head?
No, because that's frowned upon in polite society.

So I got up at 5am. And then at 11am, Emelie brought in the mail, with a package from the lovely and very contrite owner of Felix who feels terrible about her misbehaving baby. I immediately ate all the “strawberry cables,” which were great—Haribo-level gummy candy. I’ll save the cat food hearts for Felix just before I head out on this trip with the Chadian government officials so that he will have fond memories of me while I’m gone, and not stay at home brooding about how I robbed him of his prey and threw a handful of water from his water dish at him when the spray bottle didn’t soak him as fast as I wanted to after the bat incident (I was a little hysterical, but it gave me the super-power of being able to throw a handful of water at the little miscreant).

Thanks, Naomi, aka the only person who cares enough about me to send me packages.
Also, I know I look crazy. I never sleep anymore.

Sudans Story Time

They say "a picture is worth a thousand words." So how about I give you a thousand pictures and two thousand words--a bonus present! 

South Sudan and Sudan time for me is usually fun, and this trip is no exception. But it is stretching on a bit longer than I'd planned because of visa stuff (this time, surprisingly, not at all related to any Canadian interference), and I'm worried about the revenge that will be meted out upon me by the lonely Felix. I've been told that he has been amazingly mellow since I've been gone, but that makes me wonder if he is saving up all of his malice for me. Baby-sitting this cat has affirmed to me why I do not have pets: my travel life is spontaneous and frequent. Planning for someone to come and make sure the cat stays alive while I'm gone and does not tear the whole house to shreds is not easy. While I do want a pet (preferably a giant cuddly dog), I do not have a stable life. It's also why I cannot adopt any children at the current moment. Fortunately, as you will see, my friends have lots of cute kids that I can use to curb that maternal instinct. 

On to stories:

An Arabish pun. If you speak Arabic, you'll get it.
I thought it was kind of clever, but I am
someone who really appreciates car art and car slogans.

After figuring out a plan to counteract the visa issues caused by Canadians, I had to quickly change all my previous travel engagements, moving everything up a day. This had the unfortunate consequence of making it imperative for me to take public transport from Juba to Yei, a journey of about 5 hours over roads riddled with craters and fraught with armed bandits. For real. My boss called me nearly in tears begging me not to go. He reminded me that at this time last year I was running through the jungle because "I didn't listen to the voices inside my head telling me to leave." That is a paraphrase, not a direct quote. To be fair, I did listen to the voices, and I tried to leave, but MAF couldn't get there before the fighting started. Anyway, he never actually told me that I wasn't allowed to go by road and so we never found out if I would have obeyed his direct order. But I took necessary precautions: I left my expensive and important things in Juba with a friend (it's actually pretty entertaining to think through which of your possessions you would be ok with having robbed from you at gun point), and I wore a tan hat. I theorized that the beige color of the hat would match my skin, making it look like an outfit and not a rich khawaja. It must have worked because we were not hijacked.

The criss-cross of knees in the back of the car.

I climbed into the car, large mostly-empty bag clutched between my knees. I was on the edge, by the door. This is the worst spot for bouncing, but I like to be by the window, so I don't mind it too much. I like to look out and admire the scenery. But no one else seemed intrigued by the green green grass and pretty mud houses. Amazingly, several people actually slept on this ride, heads bobbing around. But I was most impressed by the man who stayed asleep even after we hit one more pronounced bump that sent my butt two feet up in the air. I was weightless for one moment before crashing back down. I looked across the car, and everyone was awake except for that one dude. I mean, seriously. He was that cool. Didn't even open an eye. I, on the other hand, ended up with bruises on my elbow and shoulder from crashing into the door and didn't enjoy the sensation of sitting down for several days after the journey. Did you know, your teeth really can rattle in your skull? I can testify.

And now prepare for photos of Repent's adorable kids because I like them so much. And they LOVE having their picture taken. And also playing with the Guitar Tuner app on my phone.

How cute is Halina? There is no answer.
But her head was covered in ringworm, which I fully
thought I would contract due to proximity and kissing her
all over her little face every day, but so far I'm good.
I got ringworm once from a little boy who
leaned his head on my arm and fell asleep on me
in the Mundri Express a couple years ago, but
this time I seem to come through OK.

Joy told me that the kids were running to every car that
passed by their house for 2 days looking for me. :)

Oliver is not sure he likes how he looks with khawaja hair.

Pulling on my skirt.

I spent too much money on this doll-more than
it was probably worth, anyway. It is all cloth and seems like
someone who knows how to sew (i.e. not me) could easily
make it. But last time I was in SSudan, I was searching for
a doll for Halina, who was rolling up clothes and pretending to
rock them in imitation of her mother with her baby brother.
I didn't even find one of those horrifying white-kid dolls,
but I didn't want to buy that for her anyway. I was happy
to find this doll, which I liked, in the airport in Ethiopia,
and I'm glad I got it. She LOVED it. She carried it
around everywhere and woke everyone up screaming when
she couldn't find it next to her in bed. A toy that one kid
loves that annoys the rest of the family=SUCCESS!

Laundry drying in South Sudan.
I'm going to post lots of photos like this on Neverthirst instagram.
I do not have my own instagram because my life cannot involve
too many social media platforms and I'm already used to Facebook
(I'm old).
But I like to look at the followers for our Neverthirst page, and
I get really competitive about it, so follow Neverthirst on instagram, OK?

Painting Halina's toenails. She is very serious about it.

Gadi and Oliver and the cheap plastic
car I bought the boys in the market in Yei.
I had to buy them something, since I got the doll.
I predicted it would break the first day, but it's still going strong!
Made in China.

Painting Tabu's toenails. I actually brought the
nail polish because I wanted to bond with her.
She works so much, I don't often see her play, and she's only 10!
But this time, she really relaxed around me and we had fun.
She is beautiful, just like her gorgeous mom.

That's the kitchen in the background.
I had some amazing food, cooked by the wonderful Joy.

And then the boys insisted on getting their toenails painted too.
So we did. Because why not?
I can't remember who took this photo, but it's too bad
you can't see that I'm painting Ruben's toes here.

Jungle-running friends!

And sometimes you got to put three people on a motorcycle,
and go to work. We took this motorcycle-selfie, so
you can't tell that we are on a motorcycle at all, but I can testify that
we were, and my butt still has a dent in it from the metal bar
on the back of the bike.

Yes, I took this photo of the chicken with her babies all lined up.
I took it for my nephews and nieces, but I haven't sent it to them.
Maybe my sisters will show their kids this photo on the blog.
Meanwhile, you all can enjoy this photographic masterpiece.

We happened by this flipped over car on the road.
No one was hurt, so I took the photo.
It is a good reminder of why you should always pray
for me when I'm traveling because this could easily happen
to anyone driving too fast over dirt roads.
And of course, everyone drives too fast over dirt roads,
even me.

New baby goat born just an hour before this photo!
(Also intended for the nephews and nieces)

I think Ruben took this beautifully centered photo.
I like it because Tabu and I are bonding while Halina tries
to rub her ring-worm head all over my face.
This is Repent and Joy's room behind me and behind their house,
is the tukel I stay in (mud painted green and blue with grass roof).

Of course Oliver is a happy baby--he's Repent's kid!

Oh I love these crazy boys. I want them to grow up in
a peaceful country, go to university and have happy successful
families--like their own happy family, but without having to
run to the jungle to get away from fighting.
I want them to have a future and a hope.
And I want to buy them lots of candy. I can't help it.

The open road! Isn't this a beautiful country?

I love riding miles into nowhere and suddenly you see some grass roofs
popping up behind the elephant grass, and you know that people are out here,
living and working the land. I want to see development come to South Sudan,
but I hope they don't lose all of their traditions. I don't really like calling these houses
"mud huts" (though I probably have done that before, even here on this blog). They
are beautiful houses, most of them made with care. And they are cool in the summer time,
and the rain falls softly on their grass roofs, not loud and angry like tin roofs (though I also like that),
obscuring conversations. Repent pointed out the rain thing to me--he likes grass roofs too.

I love this photo. Joy is a beautiful and wonderful mother.
I bought that outfit for Oliver. I searched every shop in the
market in Yei to find one selling clothes for babies that
were new and clean. Youngest babies spend most of their lives in hand-me-downs,
but Oliver has a new cute outfit just for him.
And he is too much cute.

Gassing up the motorcycle before our trip from Morobo to Yei
(about 2.5 hours). Just prior to this we were warned that
a motorcycle traveling the same route the previous day
had been hijacked. So we watched the road carefully ahead of us,
and we made it. I wasn't even wearing my hat!
(I learned the hard way that you don't wear hats on motorcycles.)

I got to see my good friend Mary and her new baby in Yei.
We went to church together in Mundri and she was one of the
few who actually came over to my house occasionally to hang out.
She is now living in a refugee camp in Yei. 

"Be at the airstrip at 8:00am" said Momentum Air ticket.
The plane arrived at 1pm. Even with the flight only taking 30 minutes,
I would have arrived in Juba earlier if I had just taken public transport again.
Oh well. Yei is scenic.

Got to hang with this guy in Juba! He is back in South Sudan after spending the last several years studying in
the US. He left behind the good life to go back and help build up his country. I'm proud of him,
but I know that it won't be easy. Once you live somewhere else, it enters your heart, and you change
and your home changes, and you will always miss somewhere you're not. But it's worth it to have a bigger heart.
I think so, anyway.  

After I got back to Juba, I went back to immigration and waited hours in line to finish a bunch of stupid paperwork. But I didn't wait as many hours as the other khawajas who do not know how to cut in line. Suckers. I overheard one guy standing in line quietly like a moron on the phone with someone, "I've been here for hours but I still haven't been able to pay. I can't get to the window and people keep going in front of me." Poor little American boy. He didn't want it enough, I guess.

In the end, a combination of Arabic and mostly non-existant Moru got me through. And many prayers and somehow Badr Airlines got me to Khartoum. Khartoum has been hot, dusty, and often without electricity. But I found gummy bears in the store, so who's complaining?

Also, I've realized that the Asian is strong in me these days. On my way to Morobo in a small taxi sedan, I was sitting up by the driver and I said something about how he must have gotten his car from Uganda because it has a British-side steering wheel, though South Sudan decided to go with the Sudan system, which is American-side. He looked over across the man whom he had sat down on the armrest in the center of the car, between whose legs he was calming shifting gears, and said, "Oh, what side of the road do they drive on in China?"

I was a bit startled because I didn't know that he was aware of the time I had spent in that country, and I didn't want to assume that he assumed I was from China. I said, "It's the same as South Sudan and America. Do you think I am from China?"

"Yes," he said. "How do they drive there?" We continued to have a conversation about China, and I never enlightened him as to my actual origins.

Fast-forward to the shop I was at the other day, talking to the man selling dates that I'm going to have to buy as presents for people in Chad. "So you're Japanese, right?" he said to me, after telling me the price of the dates.

"You think I'm Japanese?" I said, smiling.

"Yes, you look Japanese. You mean you're not?"

To be fair, though, all us Asians look alike. 

Shopping with Abdelrahim. Last time I went shopping  here it was with Abdelmukaram.
Once I went to this souq with Selma.
I don't want to gender-stereotype, but I'm going to.
I have to admit that here, I would much rather shop with men. Selma walked my legs off in this souq.
This is the Selma who collapsed on the floor after 5 minutes of yoga and laid there for 30 minutes.
I thought I'd killed her. But she killed me in the souq.
I am not a huge shopper. I like to know what I want, go in, and get it, and get out.
Shopping with Abdelrahim and Abdelmukaram was great. Once they knew what I wanted,
they helped me find it, helped me bargain down the price, and helped me find my way out because I was
completely lost in the maze of shops.
Look how nonchalantly he stands in this lingerie store where I was buying a jacket.
For real--I was buying a jacket! I don't know why there is also lingerie hanging around.

I have enjoyed screen-shotting the weather here. It's mostly impressive if you look at the time it was when it was 113/45, 106/41, 100/38.

I still managed to buy ice cream and walk home before it melted.
And then eat it for dinner.

And we had no electricity, so no AC or fans.
But it was NOT clear at all--it was a raging dust storm.
Stupid App.

Finally it updated, hours later, to show the dust storm.
It didn't do it justice.

Can you see my footprints?
I took photos once the electricity came back on.

The dust always blows in under the door.

Usually you go to the bathroom to get clean, but not this time.

Should have put a cover on my toothbrush

I told you that I appreciate car art.
This one says: Don't forget to remember God.
Such a grandiose slogan for such a non-descript car.

Zuhoor's beautiful new baby.
She is called Ashaq--starts with an ع ends with a ق,
two of the hardest letters to pronounce for an English speaker.
I was entertained by Paul and Almaz trying to say it.
But more by how patiently Zuhoor repeated and repeated it for them,
as if she expected them to be able to get it right. 

Me and precious Baby.

The beautiful Almaz and baby Ashaq, who is
enamored with Paul, not pictured.
On an unrelated note: Almaz makes amazing Ethiopian/Eritrean food.
Paul just admitted it is how she won his heart. But I mean, he's an Irish guy from
Boston, so it probably wasn't that hard.
In conclusion, I work with interesting people.

It takes a long time to write thousands of words and post thousands of pictures. I'm finally done and I'm going to go eat Cheezballz for dinner. The first day I got here, I was sitting in my room naked (because no electricity and it was 115/46 outside) also eating Cheezballz. The electricity came back on, and I thought, "Should I put on some clothes now? Nah. I'm eating Cheezballz." And the moral of the story is "Eat Cheezballz. Wear clothes if necessary."