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!)

What's in a Name? (Hint: people's opinions about your life choices)

Loved being back with this guy for a few days

I just completed a 10-day trip with the Americans—the boss, a colleague, and two video guys. It has left me considering early retirement on a deserted island in a secret location, but I haven’t even been able to convince myself to take a day off, even though I worked straight through two weeks and technically earned a weekend.

The trip was the first for the Neverthirst team back to Africa since before my dramatic evacuation from South Sudan. Consequently, I really wanted it to go well, and I had grandiose plans for its success. Yes, I had plans. In advance (!). I was uncharacteristically prepared for this trip. Mostly the Chad part, but also the Uganda part.

Ice cream selfie

On my end, the trip started out in the usual way, excessive immigration flirting to score some extra re-entry forms for the team on the return trip earned me a marriage proposal that I pretended not to understand.

Got to see this cool girl since I got to Uganda
before everyone else. We always have fun.

Once I arrived in Addis, made my way to the Silver Lounge, snuck over to the Gold Lounge through an open connecting door to steal diet cokes, and parked myself in a wifi accessible location, the fun started. I had messages from the Americans that their first flight was canceled due to hurricanes and they were driving and hoping their second flight wouldn’t be canceled. I informed them that it was too late for me to back out now, but a small part of me thought it might be nice hang out in the comfortable Entebbe hotel, complete with wifi and hot baths for a few days waiting for them to be re-routed. Then I had a message from Emelie telling me that there was a new immigration officer in Chad who was not giving her the visa she thought she’d have for Emmanuel who was supposed to be arriving from Kenya later that night and could we postpone his flight? Answer: no. He was already flying on that flight… I then spent the rest of the airport time trying to deal with that unsuccessfully and also eating ice cream at 11:30pm because they now have ice cream in the Addis airport! And years of digging out forgotten ice creams from the bottom of my grandparents’ freezer has made me appreciate the delicate cardboard aftertaste of slightly freezer-burnt confections, so I was able to enjoy my midnight snack.

I made him a nice two-layer cake
to celebrate his birthday late, here in NDJ.
It was a really good cake too, though not pretty.
It doesn't make up for all the pain and agony,
but Emmanuel is great and very forgiving.

(In case you are interested in the outcome, Emmanuel arrived in Chad, they sent him back to Douala the next day, but he is Kenyan and didn’t have a visa for Cameroon either and he had to stay in the airport while we waited to see if Emelie got the last signature she needed so he could make the 23:15 flight. She did at the last minute and he made it, but not before I realized that it was his 40^th birthday that day he spent sitting with Douala Airport Security—Amanda=World’s Worst Boss.)

Everyone ended up making it to Uganda for our trip. We were able to ease the Americans into Africa life—Uganda is much more developed than Chad, though we did have to take those vans with the side-bench seats that can be a bit uncomfortable for trips over unpaved roads. The following conversation happened many times:

Mark/John/Kyle/Nathan/Whoever: How far is this next drive?

Local partner: 30-45 minutes.

Reality: 30 minutes to 2 hours drive. But the important thing is that we made it to every village on the list. This would not be the case once we arrived in Chad…

Uganda was particularly memorable for me in that I received two new tribal names and a chicken. After translating interviews for a South Sudanese woman talking about how her biosand filter benefits her family, she pulled me aside and told me that she would like to give me a Kuku name (Kuku being her tribe, no need for “punny” jokes).

“I will called you ‘Kiden,’ “ she said. “It means ‘the one woman with all the men.’” So, basically accurate, though not exactly beneficial to me, as they are all married, but I do like having my own room in hotels when we travel.

Filming the biosand filter bit with Esther,
just before she renamed me "Kiden."

When you carry a baby girl through a warzone,
you have an unbreakable bond.
Love this girlie.

The second new name was one I received after a long grateful ceremony to Neverthirst in thanks for the wells we funded in the area. It’s a good thing that I’m not one of those people who is afraid of public speaking because I made many spur of the moment speeches at various and sundry ceremonies across Uganda and Chad while I was with the Americans. In Chad, I speeched in French and/or Arabic and then translated them back for the monolinguals, but in Uganda I had to work with translators (unless I was with South Sudanese refugees) because I don’t speak those tribal languages. I prefer to do my own translating, but I’ve not gotten the chance to learn Logbara (yet). I did pick up a few useful words to throw in when I am searching for loud applause and laughter (I like to work the crowd). At the end of the last (and longest) ceremony, Mark, John and I were called up to be given our Logbara names. Being Kiden, I was given mine first (chivalry). I had to quickly put down the origami animals I was making for all the kids sitting around me and pretend I’d been paying attention the whole time as I smiled and walked up to the front of the room (where we’d moved when a huge downpour did not, as I’d hoped, finish off the ceremony early).

“Your Logbara name is called ‘Itoru’! This name is the female of the name that means ‘Savior’ in English because you have brought water to our people!”

Ribbon cutting ceremony before the name-giving ceremony

I felt my smile sticking to my face and I begin hoping for a God-sent lightning bolt to zap me off the face of the earth for blasphemy. They literally made me into a White Savior, which is an actual type of person you find out here in the development world, and one I’ve spent my adult life trying to avoid becoming. It’s been a process and it’s involved listening to the superior wisdom of people in whose countries I’ve had the privilege to work and constantly reminding myself that I don’t automatically know better because of my educational background and then apologizing for the times when I thought I knew better and screwed something up. It’s the reason why I like working with Neverthirst and IAS because I rarely even see other white people when I’m working and I know how much more important all my people here are to the success of our work than I am. I’ve met plenty of people with White Savior Complex in my time in Africa and Asia, some I’ve tried to gently steer into reality, others I’ve tried to gently avoid at all costs in conversation and general proximity. And now I am one. Dammit. Well, let me know if you need anything, I guess. Apparently I’m in the business of saving the world. I don’t work week-ends, though. It’s important to have boundaries.

 Here are a few more Uganda Photos:

I'm super proud of this photo. See the billboard advertising "Sky View," Uganda's answer to Mountain Dew, as the
bus with the Mountain Dew advert on the back goes by...I should win the Nobel Photography Prize for this genius shot.

Joy made all my favorites for lunch chez Repent.
Everyone acted like the peanut butter greens were so weird,
and then all the Americans loved them, even
"I'll Just Eat a Power Bar" Mark.

Can you feel the hatred that this child has for me?
I think she heard about the whole "White Savior" thing.
I feel you, kid. I deserve that look.

Repent testing out the virtual reality headset,
which we are using to show Americans a bit about life in Neverthirst countries.
Here is Repent looking at snow. Works both ways.

Day 1: Mark and John twinning.

Day 2: did it again. Two days in a row in the same shirt.
This is the problem when all your clothes are Neverthirst swag.

The Americans have a dedication to getting the perfect shot,
no matter what the cost. Not pictured: Amanda untangling Nathan's foot
from the grass or Amanda walking behind Nathan as he walked backwards,
steering him onto the road. I saved his life so many times.

The lovely long-suffering Safia, allowing Kyle to
strap her to the 3D camera.

There must have been a moment when Safia regretted letting
it slip to me that she speaks Arabic because I made her be the video subject.
It's easier if I translate because I know what the video guys are trying to do.
Safia is a Ugandan who has spent much time with South Sudanese, and so she
speaks Arabic as well as several other tribal languages. She is a genius.
And now she's also a movie star. Coming to a theatre near you in 2018.

Chicken selfie. Yes, the people gave us a live chicken
that then had to ride with us in the car for two days until
Repent took it home for dinner...
(sadly for the chicken, he probably won't get the peanut butter greens)

Here you see him looking calm and quiet under my seat.
That is deceptive. He kept poking at my ankles, making me scream.
Hey-when it's dark and something under your chair touches your feet,
you scream. That is just logical.

Me and Abui in front of the hot air blowing out of the compressor.
I was freezing most of the time. Here I'm wearing John's jacket over Golda's cardigan
and my own sweater--still in imminent danger of hypothermia.

Photo with Loguya and Repent and someone's thumb.
Still wearing John's jacket. Said Kyle or Nathan or someone:
"Of course you need the jacket with a windchill of 90 degrees."
I agree with that.

Peanut butter milkshakes in the Entebbe Airport are the best.
Next post Chadisasters and Chadventures.

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Faking It

So I was in West Darfur this weekend visiting projects and people, eating lots of sand, and collecting stories for this blog. I mentioned before, but for foreigners to be allowed to travel outside of Khartoum, we need special government permission. For the Darfur states, you need permission to travel to the state and then permission to travel around the state. You also need police escorts to travel outside of the main town or you risk being abducted by various peoples with grudges against various other peoples who like to use foreigners as bargaining tools and/or sources of income. As soon as I arrived in Geneina, I dumped off my stuff at the guest house and headed over to the local government office to register my permits and arrange for the police escort, and that's where this story starts...

Geneina--it's a nice little dusty desert down

Note: Words in italics were spoken in Arabic.

In my thobe, ready to Darfur

Majid: When we go inside to talk to the governmental officials, don’t speak any Arabic. Just let them talk to me. If they think you speak Arabic, they will ask lots of questions.

Me: OK. I will only speak English….starting now.

So we went into the tin-walled office/people oven, and sat down in chairs that looked fancy, but had clearly defined butt-imprints from where many people before us had sat and waited for hours until those chairs would never be able to forget them. I will also never be able to forget the chair that I sank into…

Walking in was pretty awkward for me because in Arab culture there are a plethora of greetings that one must give upon entrance, each of which has a specific answer. Allow me to give you some examples that, if you don’t speak Arabic, will mean absolutely nothing to you. But it will be cathartic for me.

Person 1: Salam 3alaykum

Person 2: 3alaykum salam

Person 1: Allah ya5tik al-3afiya

Person 2: Allah ya3fik.

Person 1: Alhamdulilah 3asalama

Person 2: Allah yasalmak

Person 1: Keyf halak?

Clay pots for storing water--they keep it nice and cool

Person 2: Tamam wallah… And then at this point everyone is talking all over each other and it doesn’t matter what you say, but it should probably be a bunch of questions as to the other person’s health and the well-being of his family. You should also be slapping his right shoulder with your left hand while gripping his right hand with your right hand and telling him how great you and your family are—the Sudanese way is to say you are all 100% great (miya-miya).

I wasn’t sure if someone who doesn’t speak Arabic would know those things, so I just decided to completely feign ignorance of the whole ritual. I know that plenty of Arabic-less foreigners at least know “salam 3alaykum,” but if I said that with correct pronunciation, would it give me away? But then it feels bad mispronouncing something when I’m not, say, pretending to be an Australian speaking Indonesian or something like that … And you know how sometimes all you say is two words and then people go off about how well you speak their language—even if all you knew was those two words? I’d just been told by the lady checking me into my WFP flight that morning that my Arabic was really good and she was shocked because none of the Americans she knows who speak any Arabic can pronounce things correctly—which is actually pretty unfair, as I know plenty of Americans who speak excellent Arabic. I could name names, but I don’t want to embarrass them…(one of them, we'll call her "Emily" probably just got advanced-mid on her most recent Arabic test). Of course, the ones who don’t speak it well are often more memorable. I still remember a little blonde southern belle in my Arabic class at the University of Memphis who learned how to say “I eat” in Arabic, and excitedly exclaimed to the rest of the class, “Ya’ll! We’re speakin’ Ay-Rab-Ik!” She was also the one who informed us that her boyfriend, Musa Habibi, should not cause us any undue concern. “Ya’ll, he’s Palestinian, but ya’ll, he’s not a terrorist. I know. I asked him. I said, ‘Musa Habibi, are you a terrorist?’ and he said, ‘No.’” So there was that… and I guess if she’d been my only experience with Americans speaking Arabic, then I can understand the flight attendant’s surprise. I, personally, have no excuse for not speaking Arabic, having lived in 6 Arabic-speaking nations, though I have never had a non-terrorist Palestinian boyfriend either and I feel like that should be an advantage too…

Enjoying the view with Tahany

Pretending not to speak a language that you do speak fairly well, is not as easy as it seems. First, I had to really concentrate and not answer questions about myself that I understood, especially ones where I felt the need to defend myself (i.e. Why didn’t you get your permission renewed? Answer I wanted to give: we did, look at the form, moron!—probably a good thing I wasn’t talking…). The other thing goes back to the Arabic greeting question-and-answer issue, and not giving the answer to the questions feels like singing a song, but leaving out the last note. To relieve my feelings, I spent the rest of our wait-time secretly texting a bunch of my friends in Arabic, carefully hiding my phone from others sitting nearby.

We ended up sitting around for about an hour or so because the guy we needed to talk to wasn’t there. If we left for lunch, there was no guarantee he’d be there when we got back, and the next day was the weekend, and we’d miss them completely if we didn’t finalize our plans that day. When the guy finally got there, he was really polite and friendly and the first thing he asked me was, “Do you speak any Arabic?”

Donkey carrying water-system 1

I said, “Small.” I don’t even think I really perjured myself, because it is a grammatically incorrect not-really-an-answer to his question. It’s like if someone asked you if you like to eat chicken and you said, “Bob.” It’s not lying – it’s just nonsense.

As we walked out the door, I did decide to say, “Shukran.” I thought it would be something that my character (I was playing the part of ‘random foreign girl working for INGO in Sudan’) would actually know. But Majid gave me a look…so maybe I was wrong…

Donkey carrying water-system 2

Anyway, as soon as we walked out the gate, Majid turned to me in great relief (English isn’t his favorite), and started chattering back at me in Arabic about the whole ordeal and about what we were going to eat for lunch when we got back to the office. I was also relieved as I grabbed on to the handle of the truck to heave myself into the cab (all these NGO cars are so dang tall with their four-wheel drive tires). I was thinking that this no-Arabic thing could come back to bite us in our chair-imprinting butts. I mean, what if the nice man in charge asks some other IAS person about me and they talk about how I speak Arabic (it’s my one defining feature)? But then I found out from Majid that another guy from the same office would be joining us on our trips out of town, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep the cat in the bag at that point. I was planning to try to convince the guy that I learned Arabic quickly on Friday during prayer time (a miracle!), but then Majid said it wouldn’t really matter. The main reason he didn’t want me to speak Arabic at the government office was because he thought it would mean that we would get stuck there longer because everyone would want to talk to me. Since we were there for an hour and a half anyway, I don’t know that it would have made much difference, but I do sometimes like to show off, and I usually try to make a point of being extra-charming to security officers because you never know when that will come in handy…and that can be time-consuming.  

The important thing is that we made it out alive, with a police escort lined  up for our next two trips, and no slip-ups from me, the random foreign girl working for an INGO in Sudan who never broke character (until the very end when I said "shukran").

 This may be my favorite awkward photo--the man moved in while I was still talking to the lady.
Does this count as a photo bomb? Technically, I think I was the one not paying attention to the camera man.

Sign at the Khawaja Store: For breakfast, I'd like some sausaga and egges,
and for lunch - a purger and a bottle of carponated water, please.