Extra Time

PCR with Pika

 I mentioned on a self-pitying social media post that I would write about my last trip back from the US, which gave me another good reason for why I have decided to be based here in Chad as no one seems to believe that I just genuinely like it here. My good reason: I have a Covid test guy. He comes to my house. He does the test on my front porch while my dogs look on with moderate  interest. He brings the results back to me later in the evening. I pay him about $20 for his service on top of the money I pay for the covid test (cheaper for me because I’m vaccinated). It’s so easy. I do miss (a tiny bit) the days of going to L’Hôpital Central where everybody knew my name and I sometimes got asked to go back into the booth and help them type stuff in from the passports. The Ethiopian passports I brought to them really confused them because Amharic is not a language they can read here (English is on there too, but Amharic is distractingly cool). And Paul’s New Zealand passport was a first for them too—they were trying to type “NZL” as his surname. But I happily gave up all those fun times when I found my guy. I was reminded of how thankful I am for him when I was told by missionaries that he had stopped working, and I went with a friend of mine to get her test. Now you have to pay in one place, go to another place and wait in line for the test, then go back to the second place at an unspecified time of day (probably after 14:00 they say) to pick up the results. It’s not that bad, but it is not convenient. And I have a new covid guy now, who is great and also comes to my house, so I still get to be a Pandemic Princess. He’s a little more expensive, but totally worth it. 

But in America, in its fastest growing city which still gets called a “village” (by Leif), getting a quick turn around covid test for travel is not easy and almost not even possible. It ended up not being possible for me anyway. But the Google informed me that JFK Airport in the great city of New York has multiple 1-3 hour turn around covid testing centers available in the airport. I decided to change my ticket to give me a day in New York so that I could be tested in the necessary time frame before flying back to Africa. My concern at that point is that I was flying to Egypt, and I was reading that Egypt wanted a certified lab signature and/or a QR code. Alternatively they would accept a vaccination card with a QR code. I and other friends searched to find QR codes for American vaccination cards. I do have an American vaccination card thanks to the military doctor who vaccinated me in a hotel in N’djamena with extra vaccines the American people spent their hard earned money on (thank you, American people, for your donation). But American vaccination cards do not have QR codes. And the internet did not enlighten us as to how to get one. So I figured I would take my chances with the PCR test. 

Dinner on a boat floating in the Nile River--proof I was in Egypt
(for meetings)

Koshari on the balcony

Fortunately, I found a PCR test with a 30 minute result turn around in a spa in JFK before I even got to Baggage Claim. Shout out to the friendly JFK volunteer who told me about it, as I’m not a spa person and wouldn’t naturally notice a PCR test that can be done while getting a hot rock massage and a pedicure. $280 later (and that was without a massage or a pedicure) I had a negative result.

Fast-forward to boarding the next day and they refuse the spa test. Why? Because the paper had the word “positive” written on it. I carefully showed the check in guy that positive was written under “range.” As in “range: positive/negative,” but “result” clearly noted “negative.”

“It doesn’t matter,” the guy said. “The Egyptian airport will see “positive” and immediately deny you.” I said, “Egyptians really aren’t that stupid.” But he, himself an Egyptian, insisted it was not acceptable, and the other test I had taken in Tennessee was too late. “Are you vaccinated and does your vaccination card have a QR code?” I explained that yes I was but no, American cards do not have QR codes. He said, “No problem. Go over to that lady there and she will show you how to get the QR code.” After one minute on a website I had a QR code approved for boarding, meaning I spent about $400 on PCR tests for no reason. It’s really too bad that America is not as civilized as Chad about covid tests.

Some TN fun

I’ve been thinking about this as I work with some of my self-proclaimed diva colleagues (to reiterate: this is description they have given themselves) on a trip to Niger/Chad that has changed multiple times and is even now on the verge of crumbling into dust (but still might turn out to be great!). I have no covid guy in Niger, but I do have one in Chad. I kept thinking—why do we have this PCR house call service in Chad and not in Niger? We are very similar countries. I realized that this house call PCR started after the president was killed last year. Many foreigners decided to leave, anticipating widespread chaos and violence (that did not come, I would like to point this out as I was strongly advised to leave and only after putting my foot down and insinuating that people did not respect my opinion because I’m a woman was I allowed to stay—BUT I WAS RIGHT!!!!!!). Of course in the age of covid, no one can leave without a PCR test, but many people were afraid to go out on the streets in case of being caught in a riot or eaten by a rampaging hippo or I don’t know, but we were all laying low (except for when I had to walk the dogs) and thus the PCR house call service was born. And I’m not sad about it. (If you read my blog post about the president’s death, you will remember that I was sad about that—I’m referring here to the advent of the PCR In-House Test).

Some CA fun

And there is another good thing that came for me out of covid craziness (though it was also testing positive for covid that meant I missed Thanksgiving with my dad’s family in Philadelphia): my extra day in NYC I actually spent in Philly. I knew that my grandparents’ health has been failing, and I wanted to make sure that I took advantage of proximity to go see them. I wasn’t super psyched about driving 3 hours to get there, but I knew that it was important. Then another unexpected pandemic positive: due to high numbers of teachers sick with covid and an impending snow storm, my dad’s school was closed for the week and he decided to come with me to New York, drive with me to Philly and visit his family for a few days. We found cheap tickets, and I was able to get him to drive to PA so that I could see what it was like driving through NYC on double decker bridges and multiple lanes where you don’t have to dodge donkeys or motorcycles but you are expected to follow basic traffic rules. 

Thanks to an American married to a Chadian I was invited to a Thanksgiving party I couldn't attend.
Thanks to a Canadian and a British couple, I got to eat some of the leftovers.

I hadn’t traveled with my dad since I tagged along with him and my mom on a visa run to Singapore in 2015 after I was evacuated from South Sudan. I had just decided to go to Chad, and I was working on French to prove to Leif that it was good idea. Never say no to a trip to Singapore. The food alone is worth the hours on a plane. And it’s not even that long of a trip if you go from Indonesia, which you should visit for the food and the people and the beauty and the surfing and the hiking and the volcanos and culture and the Komodo dragons. 

Ramandan donut with my dad in the background,
annoyed at my expensive eating habits at Soekarno-Hatta Intl Airport.

My dad hadn’t traveled on a plane since my parents moved back to the US to take care of my grandmother (mother’s mother), and they’d been a bit tied down with that. This was immediately obvious as he had packed his scissors in his carryon but neglected to bring his vaccination card. It worked out though because it turns out if scissors are small enough they let you keep them and my sister sent him a photo of his vaccination card, which he was using as a book mark in the book he had left in his office at home and we didn’t end up needing it anyway in spite of the weirdly confusing Delta Airlines announcement saying that we did. Anyway, Dad and I had a great time traveling together, as he waited for me to get my PCR results while antagonizing security guards in the airport because his face mask kept slipping down the large bony nose he inherited from some Jewish ancestors way back in the gene pool. 

I’ve not been back to Philly since grad school, so it was good to see my dad’s family, and I especially had a really good time with my grandparents before driving back to JFK to argue with check in officials about PCR tests and QR codes and board my flight to Egypt. This morning I woke up to a message on the family group chat that my grandfather passed away in the night while I was sleeping. I’m so grateful that I had that last special day with him and my grandmother. 

This has been a season of loss for me. My dear friend lost her mother in August, a woman who had been very kind and lovely to me when I was going through a very tough time. I lost my maternal grandmother while I was in Ethiopia last year. Then an Egyptian friend of mine in the US died of cancer. Over Christmas I heard that a dear missionary uncle of mine was sick and he died just after I got back to Chad. It felt so fast. I wasn’t really prepared for it, and the grief I feel for his family is still heavy with me. Then coming off of that a dear pastor friend of mine in South Sudan who I had just heard was recovering from covid passed away too. It hit me hard, and I spent the night crying with other friends around the world for him, a man who brought everyone who knew him joy. I used to joke that I have never heard anyone who knew him say his name without smiling. It was never “Oh Pastor James Dema” but “OH PASTOR JAMES DEMA!! I LOVE HIM!!!” Friends send me clips of his funeral service, a celebration of his life full of singing and dancing, but the truth is that the world has less joy in it without him. Then last week I hear that little Jonathan, who was just a boy who would come hang out at my house when I was in South Sudan died of cancer in Khartoum, a teenager now, but still so young. Leif’s mother also died last week. She was 93 and it’s easier to celebrate her life as I celebrate my grandfather and my grandmother who passed last year who were also in their 90's. But still I miss them. I do. I missed buying sugar free chocolate for my diabetic grandmother over Christmas and sitting in her steaming room, the only room hot enough for me in American winter, chatting about her past Africa adventures and my current ones while her TV flickered in the background. I will miss having long one-sided conversations about politics with my grandfather (though this last time he listened to me passionately defend Dr Abiy’s policies in Ethiopia and rant about continued French political and economic control in Africa, which I am passionately against, though I can’t be 100% sure he heard what I was saying). 

I was going to try to make a point about something here, but I don’t really feel like being preachy. I’m grieving, people I love are grieving too (more than me even). I’m not at the level of grief where I can’t still enjoy things around me, while I know others are there. I’ve been in that level of grief before and it hurts a lot. There are no sermons I can give or verses I can quote that take away that pain. I wish I could offer something more than the “hug emoji” on facebook to grieving friends or assurances of my prayers, but that’s all I have. I’m thankful that I have hope in the Lord that this isn’t the end for any of my loved ones, but Jesus knew he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead, and He still wept, so I think it’s ok. I’ll still send out my love and prayers and hug emojis and be thankful for little frustrations that gave me a little bit more time with loved ones, though I am not thankful that the last photo I ever took with my grandfather was as bad as the one my dad and uncles took. Come on. 

See how bad this photo is?

This photo is not bad though

The lovely and kind Ms Duff

Me probably complaining that Mama Jewell got more cake than me.

A photo of Leif and Pastor James that Leif sent me while I was in Pakistan last year.
Leif and I and many others are still grieving his loss. We were not ready.

A screenshot from a video of Pastor James talking about his ministry.
I am gutted that I won't get to see that smile again this side of heaven.

Little Jonathan (we called him Jona) on the left there.
He was always such a sweet kid, never rough or selfish or pushy as other kids can be sometimes.

I like this pic of Uncle David, in his element, working to build up the local church.
He leaves behind ministry that will continue because of his faithfulness to prepare others to take over.

Some things in my life that I'm still enjoying

They really wanted some of my nasi goreng,
or they think they do. There is only egg, no meat in this so they would never eat it.

The only way to know if your nasi goreng is hot enough
is to see how much you cough and sneeze while cooking.

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

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

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

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

They used to work at the embassy in Canada. 

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

 

A kindred spirit

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old passport

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And it went down-hill from there.

Here are some things he said to me:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why aren’t you married?”

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

Official uniform of immigration personnel in South Sudan

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

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

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

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

So we went to the big boss.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Burundi and Other Last Minute Traveling

Burundi--all the photos in this post are from there

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

Lake Tanganyika with Congo mountains in the back

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The view from the Stanley-Livingstone Monument

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

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

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

And they agreed to risk it.

The port on the Lake--you can sail to Tanzania from here

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

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

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

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

“What is that?” I asked.

Attention all crocodiles: people are coming.
Bon appetite! (See-I speak French!)

“Ee-poes, ee-poes. You know them. They killed a boy just a few days ago right here.”

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

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

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

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

Hippo mom and baby (behind the grass)

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

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

Even taking my photo, he couldn't bare to be apart-
that's my hippo guide's finger in the frame.

“I like American girls.”

“I want a woman who will work so that I don’t have to give her money.”

“If you get fat, your husband will hate you.”

“Don’t marry an African man because they just want to have sex every day, Monday through Friday” (Though this is a paraphrase, as the exact term he used is one I prefer not to.)

“Wow. You can walk very fast. You are not tired? Usually tourists walk very slow.”

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

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

He said, “Yes. So will you marry me?”

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

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

And that's the story of this photo as promised

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

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

The rock

Lazaro

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

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

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

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

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

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

“OK. You said you will pay here.”

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

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

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

“How much money do you have?”

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

“You don’t have anything else?”

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

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

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

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

The brown is the river, the blue is the lake

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

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