She said sure, why not? I've never done that before. Should be fun (or something like that).

This photo is irrelevant. Hervé thought it would be
funny to make me try on his jacket and take photos.

So after hundreds of proposals from men all over the world, most detailed in this blog, I finally picked one. This one doesn’t want a green card, but he also has not offered to buy livestock for my father. My Moru Mama, aka Repent’s mother, has told me to tell him that he should just give the livestock to them—she’s requested some cows, goats, and sheep. After all, she says, I’m in their family, and it’s only right.

Herve says, “I knew it! I told you that this year you would be getting married by the end of the year.” Urbain was impressed by his prophetic abilities until I reminded everyone that he says that every year and I’m not getting married until next year. But he is taking credit anyway.

Really it is Claire who should take credit because she was the one who gave me Tim’s contact information when I remembered he was drilling wells in Burkina Faso back when Neverthirst told me to check out other possible places we could look into doing projects.

But maybe I should credit Neverthirst with letting me do the project out of shame that none of them knew that Burkina Faso existed and I made them feel very stupid about it.

In front of an old well in the ruins of an old city in Cyprus

I knew about it, of course, and here I can give the credit to my maternal grandparents who went on a mission trip there back when it was still called Upper Volta. I heard many stories over the years about my grandmother teaching literacy out in bush schools while my grandfather helped dig a pond for farming because he was the only one who knew how to drive a tractor. I really thought it was common knowledge that Burkina Faso is a small, landlocked country in west Africa, and I wanted to go there while my grandmother was still alive to be excited with me about going there. And I used Tim and Neverthirst and Claire to get me there. That’s how I do. I’m mercenary like that.

But if we go back farther than Claire but after Upper Volta became Burkina Faso, we should credit Les Cedres with being the cheapest option to study French that would accept me on my weird schedule. Because that is where I met Tim and Claire and a bunch of other nice people and acquired a rudimentary knowledge of French that allows me to fake my way through the UNICEF meetings I can’t make Herve go to.

I took this photo of Tim in Burkina because he told me not to,
so I could bring it back to show Naomi.
In spite of this incident, he decided to text me
every day all day until he eventually got in the habit of
talking to me and thought--well, might as well marry her.

Tim and I have talked about the one conversation we remember having with each other while we were there before going our own ways and forgetting about each other. We were in the kitchen, I think because I had clean up duty, which wasn’t fair really since I almost never used the kitchen, being content to acquire my necessary nutrition from gummy bears and French mustard-flavored chips. He was eating or cleaning or making coffee or it clearly didn’t make much of an impression. Someone had told me that the tall guy worked in Burkina Faso doing water projects like I do, so I went over to say hi and discuss drilling in Africa and then considered my social duty for the day done. Looking back on the French school time, it was right after my dramatic escape the fighting to hide in the bush time, and I may have been having a bit of PTSD. I avoided social activities more than usual and spent a lot of time in my room, angry at the world for caring about what happened in South Sudan only as long as I was there, but while my friends were still there, still hiding, still uncertain about their future, no one really cared (so it seemed to me). Plus, as mentioned previously, I ate lots of gummy bears and smurfs and crocodiles from the nearby shop and I never really needed to leave my room for sustenance, only for classes and going for long runs around town on the coulée verte.

In Northern Ireland- after traveling all night from Chad
 to get to his tiny island,
he decided the best thing for us to do is climb the tallest
mountain in NI. Fortunately, N Irish mountains are mostly
glorified hills, but in spite of the fact that I nearly died of frost bite,
it was, of course, a great idea and exactly what I wanted to do.

At any rate, I ended up in Burkina Faso at the end of March this year with strict instructions from Claire to set Tim up with Naomi because they are both tall, close in age, and northern Irish. Clearly I failed in this endeavor, but it is not fair to say that I didn’t give it my best effort, TIM. I really did. I talked about her non-stop. I thought he would start to wonder if I was obsessed with her (I am), but he claims he didn’t notice. Probably because of my heart-stopping beauty and relentless charm. Or because he learned so quickly to ignore what I say. I think his favorite thing to say to me is "you talk such rubbish." It's poetic compliments like this, given in a classic country Northern Irish accent that really made me fall for him. To be fair, I'm just taking Naomi's word for it that it's "country," as I can't really tell the difference (yet), except that I've noticed (with only a tiny bit of sadness) that he doesn't talk like the Leprechaun from the Lucky Charms commercials.

He's a giant!

 Fortunately, neither Claire nor Naomi were upset when they found that the crazy man kept texting me-when he could have had Naomi or possibly Claire (she's basically a doctor-what a catch!!) if he really worked for it. In fact, they have thought it was hilarious good fun from the beginning and told me definitely to keep talking to him. I knew if I did, I’d probably end up marrying the guy, which was a strange thought to me, but I knew it would make Herve very happy and so for his sake, I went along with it. And I will say, the man proved himself because it is not easy for someone well over six feet tall (WELL over) to fold himself up like an accordion in order to fit in an airplane, and for months he followed me around the world—Cyprus, New Zealand, the US (the south no less! the clash of accents and inevitable miscommunications were so fun for me), Senegal (to get the ring), and he even condescended to meet me at the airport in Dublin, though he showed his disapproval by showing up late.  In fact, we have yet to be in the same country together twice (though by the time I get around to publishing this post, that might have changed).

When Micaela told us we look dumb
standing next to each other, but it seems
I am almost to his shoulder.

In conclusion, we are a ridiculous couple. Micaela, when taking a photo of us in New Zealand, burst into laughter at the sight of us standing next to each other and said, “You guys really do look dumb.” (I come up to his elbow, I think.) There are also a few years (or maybe a lot of years) separating us in age. And I think he is secretly disappointed that I’m American, but consoling himself with the fact that it’s only passport deep at best and he's moving me to the UK because he had the foresight to buy a house there and I own--nothing, I own nothing (he's not marrying me for my money and property, I know that). He also thinks it’s hilarious to remind me that he has two passports and I only have one. It’s a sign that he knows me well enough to know that is a cutting insult, as I am actually really jealous of that.  For people who don’t know us, we don’t look like we should be together, but for all the people who do know us, they’ve been 100% on board with us even when we weren’t. We think that’s a pretty good sign. Plans fail for lack of counsel, so says Proverbs, so we made sure we had plenty of counsel, even though we avoided all publicity.

And he loves dogs! OK, he pretends that he just
thinks they're fine, but he goes out of his way to
walk dogs that aren't even his (for real, Emily-he loves Loustic!).
Please enjoy this rare sighting of the top of his head.

For me, I’ve always said that I didn’t want to get married unless my life can be more useful and productive and exciting with the person I marry. (Because what’s the point? I already have an exciting life that is occasionally useful!) And with Tim, I really feel it will be. But maybe that will just be because we won’t be having to spend time and money traveling all over the place to see each other or texting each other all day, so we can get more stuff done. Incidentally, I’m pretty sure he asked me to marry him because he was tired of dealing with unstable Chadian internet while he was trying to talk to me. Anyway, he’s got a few weeks left to change his mind, some of which will even be spent in the same place as me without the mediating help of the internet cutting out when I'm getting annoying. But after that—it will be too late! Stuck with me for the rest of our lives—well, probably at least for the rest of his. Seeing as I’m younger (MUCH younger), I might outlive him, and this is why this is such a crucial decision for him. But then again, I have been living on a steady diet of processed foods, and if the health nuts are right, I’ve only got a few more years left to live, so he could still have another shot after me. The point is—you never know what might happen so we are planning for life.

In case you think I’m being too flippant about the sacred institution of marriage, I have two things to say about that:

1)   Of course I am—that’s how I deal with important life decisions.

2)   I really am thankful to have this very unexpected, undeserved blessing in my life. It really is undeserved--I know so many other single ladies who will be much better wives than I could ever possibly be, and I don't know what Tim did to deserve me, because he's a decent guy who has only ever done maybe 2 or 3 regrettable things in his life, which he will feel badly about forever, I'm sure, which should be punishment enough without him having to share a house with me. I’ve often thought that since God has given me so many other good things, blessing me with someone to share life with seemed almost excessive. But He gave it to me anyway. So I’m looking forward to having someone along for the adventures (he doesn’t have a choice), who can reach the things on the top shelves for me (extra storage space in the kitchen that I could never use before!), who laughs at my jokes (most of them), and makes me laugh (often intentionally!), and who will only be apart from me for shorter periods of time when we both want to be apart and/or we are working, unlike friends and family up to this point who I’m always saying goodbye to for months or more while I pursue my dream of wandering around the world and occasionally doing something nice for other people. I think we make each other better -- and not just because I will make sure that he rinses the soap off after washing dishes and he will make sure that I stop eating gummy bears for breakfast (or I expect him to make a genuine effort on this at least).

He brought me some old gummy candy he found

It had all turned brown

I ate it anyway. It was not too bad.
Yeah, I'll probably die first.

So we’re getting married in February. I wish you all could come, but I also wish I could just sign papers and call it DONE, and that seems unlikely. I’ll try to find ways to video in friends from around the world or Facebook live it or something. I’ve already convinced Joanna to plan everything—if only she would stop asking me my opinion about things (she never used to care about that) and just accept that I don’t have an opinion, but I still want to do that wedding cake tasting thing that people do (or I think people do it because I saw it on a TV show once) because I like cake. And next year we’ll spend a few months in Burkina Faso, a few months in Northern Ireland, and a few months in Chad until we figure out where we want to end up. They say you should try to keep your first year of marriage somewhere familiar to both people and so we decided to spend it in between airports. And we’re happy, and we’re looking forward to the next chapters of our lives after this unexpected plot twist brought us together.

On the back porch at my parents' house in TN

Brace yourself for many more photos of me and Tim (don't act like you didn't want them).

In Cyprus when we were trying to decide if we wanted to like each other.

After climbing around a bunch of rocks in a canyon near Paphos,
we decided we did.

Had already been planning to visit my wonderful friends Micaela and Tim (it's what all the cool guys are called),
and Tim decided to come along. His first 15-17 hour flight as a 6'6"man (as a woman who might be 5'3" but isn't really sure, I've been on many such flights--thanks Mom and Dad for raising me in Indonesia!--and even I don't love them). He got called out by NZ immigration too and lost his driving license in Dubai so I had to drive the rental car.
I only knocked one mirror off driving in Wellington and we found it anyway and put it back on.

On the bridge in Zealandia, showing off how much taller he is

In front of a crater in Rotorua (NZ)

The Parthenon in Nashville makes excellent steps.
Standing on one makes me the same height.

Tim hates this photo because he says he looks like a goofy giant,
but I think we can all agree that my mom is the one who looks like a dork here.
Tim's trying to lean down to make it look like he isn't looming over her, but it didn't work.
I enjoyed listening to them having conversations, knowing that neither had any idea
what the other one had said, but politeness kept the conversation going smoothly.

Senegal selfies

Isn't this a nice photo?
We took it by accident while we were trying to get a ring photo and I kept laughing.
Tim proposed on Facetime without a ring after I specifically told him not to.
I didn't want to go ring shopping! But he made me in Senegal, and I knew
he would be no help, so I just did everything as fast as I could, and we are mad because we probably
could have saved at least 10.000CFA on the stone if we had bargained, but we made that
little old man and his son so happy! And then we had the ring bit made out of bronze, I think,
so that my finger will always be green, and that will remind me of Ireland, but
I won't talk about that because he's from NORTHERN Ireland, and anyway
it is very possible that this ring will break soon, so I'm telling everyone
that we did it on purpose so that our love will last longer than my ring.

We also took this photo of me trying to fix my hair
while Tim moans about how long it's taking.

Family portrait! Joe hasn't met him yet.
I hope he loves him, otherwise we will have to live separate lives.
(Tim and me, I mean--Joe sleeps on my bed. Unless Claire is staying over,
and then he sleeps on hers. Sorry, Claire!)

Travel Update

Herve bought me meds

You never think about the days past when you don’t sneeze until you pass a week full of days, each of which had at least one violent sneezing fit. So this is my life now, I guess. I blame Germany, the sudden drop in temperature that caused me to develop a cold and probably malaria. I’m still recovering. Dr Claire prescribed antibiotics and when I’m miserable enough, I actually follow her advice. For the record, Claire, I usually follow it better when you actually bring me the medicine, but I did go into the pharmacy here and buy meds all by myself. Well, technically I tried to walk in the wrong door in a daze about 10 times before I realized that someone inside was yelling at me and pointing to the other door. The good news is that really proved how sick I was to the people inside and they gave me an antibiotic without evening asking for my prescription. Oh wait-they never ask for it here in the land of freedom, aka Chad. All you suckers in the West with your fancy doctors have to spend a day getting an appointment just to acquire the necessary paperwork to purchase life-saving medication. I just walk in the pharmacy with an illness my friend diagnosed over whatsapp and I’ve got meds!

Malaria test was negative, but malaria meds
stopped my fevers, so who knows what disease I had?

Anyway, I wasn’t intending to write about my illness. I had a few international trips to mention, Thanksgiving Cooking Proof Photos to post, and some news for the interested.

A few blurry weeks of sneezing ago, I was in Germany, staying with the parents of my lovely friend Rhyan, speaking at some German schools and churches and enjoying beautiful fall leaves, courtesy of German Autumn, excellent food courtesy of Marilyn, and exciting tours of Hamburg, Lübeck, and Wismar courtesy of Nils. I’ll post a few photos, but really—you know I’m a terrible photographer. Go online and find good pictures!

A selfie with Nils.
I was laughing because when I told him we
should take a selfie he said, "Ah. Ok. Ja. Zelfie. OK. Zelfie."
This is in Wismar

Another zelfie with Nils (Marilyn doesn't like photos)
at the violin concert they took me to in Hamburg.
It was beautiful.

Enjoying the Autumn colors for the first time in many years.

Shopping in Germany (Ok fine-this is how I always shop)

Pretty

Pretty

Marzipan!

Lantern in the cool old boat restaurant we went to
in Lubeck for Nils birthday.

IAS Germany with Tabea in Stuttgart!

At church with Pastor  Gertrude on the 100th Anniversary of the end of WW1-
very interesting experience. For people whose ancestors fought on
different sides of two wars.

Adorable dogs

Best Christmas decorations ever!
Too bad they weren't edible.

I used some cooking techniques that Marilyn taught me to stuff a chicken for my Thanksgiving party, which I had to have because no Americans invited me to theirs, and I like to eat Thanksgiving food. Even if Americans HAD invited me to their parties, I would have still had to cook my own food because I like my family’s Thanksgiving food, and I wanted to eat it. So in addition to stuffing a chicken, I made the following: dressing (Southern Style-because you can take the girl out of Tennessee but she will still make southern dressing for the children she raises in Indonesia, and after multiple hot and humid Thanksgivings trying to convince one of them to eat things besides the canned no-berry cranberry sauce someone graciously sent to them in Indonesia, said child might realize that she likes the mush in the casserole dish and eventually learn how to make it herself), cornbread, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pecan pie, sausage balls (had to make the sausage and bisquick myself because life overseas!), cream cheese icing for the pumpkin bread, and peas because I thought we should probably have a vegetable and I like peas. Special thanks to Debbie W who brought cranberry sauce (without the annoyance of berries in them—perfect) to make everything that much better. Very special thanks to Claire who made whipped cream for the pie (since she disapproved of my spray whipped cream) and washed all the dishes while I was out walking Joe. She really is the best person in my life right now, without her I would be sad, lonely, sick, and still have a sink full of dishes in my house. She even spent the night with me in spite of the fact that a rat ran right by her mattress after Joe chased it into the bathroom. I then called the guard and had him come in a dispose of the rodent because Joe is not a killer.  Though he does love fighting with goats, even when he gets head butted.

Yeah, that's me cooking!

Chicken turned out GOOD.

Joe watches Claire make whipped cream

He loves to lick the beaters!
But this is me giving him one, and not Claire.

I made all this food!

Went to Bitkine with this cool chick for a couple of days.

I had a Christmas party for Antani's kids. I fed them
tons of sugar and then took them to see Santa at the Hilton.
They looooved him because he gave them candy.
Incidentally, that's also why they love me.

Lastly, I went to Senegal, got stood up for the first two days, but then Tim showed up finally, no thanks to Air Burkina, and now I’m engaged. But I’ll save that story for later because this post is long enough already. 

Reading my giant book on the Balkans,
by myself on Ngor Island

Ngor Island is cool.

Senegalese fisherman

Making fun of a girl who was doing this same
pose for her instagram photo. I did it in one shot.
She was posing and photo-ing for at least 10 minutes.
I just have natural instagram skills without actually having instagram.

Photos we sent to the sisters

If you want to know more, I'll probably write more about the guy later, after I get his express permission to publish all the poems I've written for him and the video he did for me of an Irish Riverdance, the traditional way to propose marriage in his part of Northern Ireland.

Lately

Camel Selfie!

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in its petty pace to the last syllable of recorded time"—the quote is from Shakespeare but the accuracy of the words and punctuation are all that is left in my brain from high school days. You know what else has mostly left my brain since high school? German language. This is inconvenient since I’m going to Germany in a few hours.

At any rate, life is creeping in a petty pace sometimes, but then you blink and October is over. This October has been fairly normal for me-I did some last minute traveling, I had some last minute visitors, I had some visitors I knew were coming, but found out nothing about their plans until the last minute, and I agreed to watch a puppy for Sarah while she was in the States.

Puppy time has been super fun, and also I performed amateur mouth surgery and saved her life. Sarah asked me to watch her because she thought that she wasn’t doing well after her spaying surgery, which Sarah had forced a visiting (people) surgeon to do. Sarah, a classic dog person, believes it is completely normal to ask someone to bring her a puppy from the US or to perform surgery on a dog, and I agree. We bond over discussing tick removal and dog food recipes. Her house is on a large farm with many dogs and puppies everywhere (she breeds and sells German Shepherd puppies) and it is Joe’s favorite place in the world. She lets him crash there when I’m traveling, and I watch her puppies sometimes when she is traveling and feels they are too delicate to leave under the possibly not watchful at all care of her husband who is a people surgeon who isn’t usually the one she asks to chop up her dogs. Maybe he is too close to the situation. Or she is.  At any rate, we have a mutually beneficial relationship, Sarah and I do. Though the first puppy she asked me to watch died under my care. To be fair, he was sick when I got him, but I did cry for two days about it. The neighbor kids were with me when I went up to check on him and found he was dead, and burst into hysterical tears while they grabbed me and yelled, “Tantine, arretez de pleurer!” So this time I was determined to keep the puppy alive.

When I got her, she was listless and very drooly and her breath smelled really bad. I know that some dogs are slobbery and smelly so I tried to love her anyway. But then I worried that she might not be ok, so when my sister told me she was taking her dog to the vet in the states, I convinced her to ask the vet there if this was normal. Against her genteel, delicate sense of propriety, she agreed to ask. She was sure that the vet would be mortally offended by this breach of etiquette, asking about another dog when you’re there with your dog, but I was banking on the fact that most vets tend to like animals and want them to be better. The vet suggested looking at the teeth, saying that the drool and bad smell were not normal.

Before I fixed the puppy.

So I grasped the puppy firmly and gently pried open her jaws to look at her teeth. This was gross and slimy, and initially it yielded nothing. Then I thought I should look for cavities or see if there were any decaying bits in the teeth. The bottom teeth looked fine, so I tipped up her head to see if there were any issues in the upper teeth, which is when I found the stick lodged across the roof of her mouth. I knew the stick came from Sarah’s yard because it is the sticks used for fences around the farm, but I do not have that kind of stick in my house. Conclusion: that stick had been there for a while, hurting poor Princess Fluffy Face, who I will now call PFF (pronounced ‘Puff’).

I didn't get a photo of the stick, so please enjoy this
recreation of the problem.

After the removal of the stick (that’s basically surgery), Puff improved rapidly. She trotted around the house after me everywhere I went, and barely squeaked when I inevitably stepped on her multiple times or kicked her across the room. She did survive her stay at my house and everyone loved her, including Leif and Antani. Everyone gave her a different name in a different language (Djakobi, Ilally, Jeb in Ngambaye, Moukoulu and Amharic to name a few), since she had none when I got her. She was fair-minded though, and responded to none of them. I had just gotten her to stop crapping in the house when Sarah took her back. I miss her and Joe who is with Sarah too until I get back from Germany.

Sad to say goodbye.

Just chilling in the office with Marthe

With Antani who gave her the name Illaly

They loved each other! (sometimes)

Puff trying to copy Joe.

Joe giving me a defiant look during a family conference about
not tracking sand into the house.

Brief intermission for you to look at some photos of Joe:

He's still my best good boy.

I just love his hilarious face.

In a fit of jealousy of the new puppy, Joe peed on the couch.
But we washed it and left it in the sun and it's totally fine now.

He's in charge of making sure everyone in the office
goes home on time whenever he decides to join us at the office.
At 4:15pm he starts barking and jumping on me until I pack up and we leave.

Every morning I open the car door and let Joe decide
if he wants to hop in and spend the day at the office
or stay home and play in the yard. I never know which he will chose.

Besides puppy time, I also had another quick trip to Bol, by Lake Tchad. Unfortunately my team follows rules and due to recent Boko Haram attacks in the islands, I was not able to get on a boat, but we drove around to many villages and got stuck in the sand multiple times, so it was almost as fun. Technically, we didn’t exactly get stuck in the sand so much as take 8-10 tries (while I have been known to exaggerate at times in the interest of telling a good story, I’m not in this case—I counted) to get to the top of various sand dunes. We would get almost to the top and get stuck, reverse to the bottom, rev the engine, make sure 4 wheel drive was in the correct gear and zoom to the top. A few tries and we would drive to another hill that looked smaller and give it another shot. Eventually we would make it up or we would get out and push. After one of our (successful!) pushing attempts, my skirt became covered with burrs (tis the season) and it took another 15 minutes to get them all out. They refused to let me help the next times, but it was their loss because it took them a lot longer to push up the hill without my amazing muscles.

They told us not to take photos from the plane, so I did.
These are the islands in Lake Chad where people live unless Boko Haram is attacking.

Burrs in my skirt. This doesn't give you a good idea
of how painful it is to get them stuck in your fingers as you try to pluck them out
or in between your toes and your sandals.

And that was October! And now I’m off to Deutschland, with a suitcase full of stuff Rhyan wants me to take to her family and a bag full of clothes borrowed just this morning from Marianne, bless her Swiss heart, who insisted I take her woolen socks, feather puff coat (Oh Puff, I miss you!), long underwear, and fleece, which she keeps for her trips home to Switzerland. “Amanda, you must take them or you will freeze to death.” It’s like she knows me.

Upon my return to Chad said suitcase will be full of chocolate and Haribo smurfs (they taste like blue!). Priorities.

Please enjoy the following photos.

Petting a goat. Everyone found this hilarious.

With my peeps in the car.

The busy streets of Bol.

The Chief walking us through the village.

Waiting for the driver to map out another hill
we might be able to get up.

With the literacy class ladies!

I showed off my Arabic reading skills and they loved it.

Family vehicle parked outside the house.

Little girls peeking at the nasara

Tell me that camels aren't cool...

Completely unrelated to this post, but Emelie got her driving license!
I was the first one to teach her how to drive.
After one lesson with me, she decided to go to the professionals at Relax Auto Ecole.
She drives slowly and doesn't swear at anyone, so clearly I had no lasting impact on her driving.

I think Neverthirst posted this like I was having some uplifting spiritual conversation with the camel guy.
I thought I should set the record straight that I was coming back from showing him the photo I took of him.
He thought it was cool. I thought he was cool. Everyone was impressed.

Some men at the local mosque asked me to come talk to them about biosand filters.
They made us sit on the chairs--we weren't trying to be snobby or anything.

The last day before driving back to N'Djamena.
I had slept in a tent for two nights in the heat.
The previous night I'd been attacked by a cockroach. I was pretty tired.
I saw this photo later and I remember that I really thought I was smiling in this photo.
You can see that it is more akin to a grimace.

I am NOT strangling this donkey as has been suggested
by others I sent this photo to. He's clearly smiling.

It's kind of a dramatic photo, but I taught little Aisha how to do
a few rubberband tricks with the rubberbands on her arm.
When I was her age, I also had about 50 rubberbands on my arm, which were
my favorite toys and weapons. I totally get her fashion statement.

With Ketema and Leif at the Greek restaurant run by Syrians in Chad!