So I'm heading to Gashamo for the week... look it up on a map. It's pretty remote and in the depths of Somali Regional State. I'm looking forward to a nine-plus hour car ride tomorrow on local roads. I'm armed with my camera, Somali dress, and a notepad. Hopefully the reward for a week off the grid are some "success stories", lessons learned and a case study of our various activities in that woreda. It's the heart of pastoralist country, so I'm hoping to get a camel bell or two, too.
Also, in case you were wondering, the infrequency of my updates has more to do with our infrastructure than my drive to share my experiences. The government is blocking access to some sites and blogger.com is one of them. All blog update at the time being are done with the help of my super blog assistant in Canada. Love you lots!
**edit-love you, too!**
Monday, May 31, 2010
Look how cute her markings are, and luckily her paws are pretty small
On Saturday afternoon Kaja and I were heading for a late afternoon coffee before meeting up with friends and colleagues for dinner. Walking down the street where we live, about two blocks from home, Kaja said something along the lines of "look!" pointing ahead of us. At first I didn't see what she was pointing at. But as we got closer, there he was, wandering all alone, a little puppy.
We both crouched down to get a better look. A little skinny and wandering the streets alone, we decided that this wasn't a good situation to be in as a puppy. We looked around for a bit, but no momma dog was in sight. After a discussion of what we should do (let nature take it's course, or rescue her; the sustainability issue when our contracts are up, etc), we decided that we should take him home and give it a shot.
So we picked up the little girl and carried her home to our compound. At home Kaja mixed up some powdered milk. We poured the milk into a saucer and he lapped it up right away. After a few cuddles, we resumed our coffee mission and left the puppy at home, wondering whether he'd survive, and instructing our guard to feed her the rest of the milk in two hours..
After a nice dinner with friends we had a nightcap (g & t) on the way home. After a drink we stopped at the office on the way home to get an old cardboard box for paper to make a little nest for him. When we got home the puppy was sleeping in between my running shoes by the door. Kaja mixed up a bit more milk and fed her again while I looked through my closet for a t-shirt or likewise for his bed. I decided the (white) COP15 polo t-shirt would be perfect, since I'd never wear it again, and I have more than one - should I change my mind. We gave him a few more cuddles before heading to bed, leaving the box beside the front door, hoping he’d make use of it and make it through the night.
At 5 am I woke to the sound of the puppy crying. A relief, since before I was falling asleep my mind had been turning over all the possible ways the puppy could die, including being snatched up by one of the kites that soar in the air around. There are lots in our neighbourhood. I crawled out of bed, threw on my Somali dress, mixed up some milk and went outside to feed the puppy. After about 15 minutes I decided to go back to bed, but back in bed sleep was impossible, so I jumped in the shower, appreciating running water - even if it was cold - after a week of bucket showers.
Kaja returned from a few laps around the stadium and after showering, we went on our mission: morning coffee, cheese at Rita "supermarket" and baby formula. We had decided the night before that maybe we should be feeding the puppy baby milk replacer and not the regular powdered milk. After coffee we walked to the supermarket for cheese and four pharmacies to look for baby milk, all unsuccessfully. We finally found the milk at little kiosk. The town was quite and the polling stations were too, so early in the morning on Election Day.
When we got home the puppy, which was sleeping in the little nest we’d made for him, woke up and looked both hungry and happy to see us. So after mixing up a combination of the powdered milk we’d been using and the new milk replacer let him lap it up, her little puppy belly growing with each gulp.
The rest of the day was spent alternating between the living room and the porch. We made a make-shift gate to block the front door with a sofa cushion and settled in front of the television for some news, lunch and relaxing. When exhausting the news on our four English news channels, I took a sofa cushion outside and cuddled with the puppy, who alternated between sleeping and peeing. Kaja joined the veranda hang out and a bottle of wine, music, books and cleaning up after the puppy were the order of the afternoon.
It’s Monday now and we’ve developed a strategy for breaking the puppy in and a feeding schedule. We’re not really too sure how well it’ll go, but we’re trying to get the puppy to use the toilet only on our little garden area and prevent accidents on the porch, which we’ve washed with a Dettol-rip off to try eliminate any scent.
When we come home we mix up some milk and wake the puppy gently and all cuddly then take him over to his feeding area. Once he’s lapped up the milk, we carry her straight to the garden for some elimination communication. I did feel a little silly crouching at the flowerbed repeating pee and poo to the puppy, and then praising him enthusiastically when she did it, but we’ve got to start somewhere. We had two successful go’s at it during the lunch hour which hopefully is more than coincidence. After eliminating, I take him to a basin with some water and wash her little puppy paws and splash some water on him to get him used to water and play with her on the porch. Hopefully it’s building some positive association.
Our strategy also includes yelping, growling and flipping her on her back when he mouths and “bites” us. It’s normal puppy behaviour but with not mother or littermates to tell him what’s appropriate and what’s too much, I guess it’s our job. And since we’re trying to make him the guest house dog, so he has someone to take care of him when we leave, teaching her good manners is essential, as well as making sure she’s not being aggressive or dominant towards the people she comes in contact with.
Today I enlisted the help of one of our many vets on staff to get some de-worming pills and other parasite control so we can make sure he’s healthy and happy and not sharing his milk with some tapeworm.
Now I’m off to the compound to see if we can repeat the elimination communication success of lunchtime.
Friday, May 21, 2010
Thursday, May 20, 2010
An SMS converation
6:22: Kaja - Hi ladies-running may not be best idea this morning – stadium is already guarded, movements restricted. See you in Office
9:07: Me - I can’t stop yawning
9:09: Kaja - What? You saying elga coffee didn’t do a job? Or CAHWs are that boring?
9:10: Me - Maybe I should have had two, like you. And CAHWs are getting very tedious
10:32: Me - Moo
12:56: Kaja - Still in Paradiso? Going for coffee? I will have a quick bite at corner but happy to join for coffee
13:07: Me - Still at Paradiso but just paid, then chat with Todd
13:08: Kaja - Ok. Good luck!
13:29: Me - It was okay, justing downing my buna to follow todd running down street, there was a camel parked outside here when we arrived though
15:01: Me - I feel like juice or fruit punch later
15:10: Kaja - Yum! Vitamins deficit?
15:11: Me - Think so even though tuna salad for lunch
15:22: Kaja - Rawda’s desk empty!
16:14: Me - Rain?
16:33: Kaja -RAIN!
16:41: Me - Power?
16:42: Kaja - Off!
16:43: Me - Strange! Result of rain/storn? Ots four days be election, this will not keep people happy
9:07: Me - I can’t stop yawning
9:09: Kaja - What? You saying elga coffee didn’t do a job? Or CAHWs are that boring?
9:10: Me - Maybe I should have had two, like you. And CAHWs are getting very tedious
10:32: Me - Moo
12:56: Kaja - Still in Paradiso? Going for coffee? I will have a quick bite at corner but happy to join for coffee
13:07: Me - Still at Paradiso but just paid, then chat with Todd
13:08: Kaja - Ok. Good luck!
13:29: Me - It was okay, justing downing my buna to follow todd running down street, there was a camel parked outside here when we arrived though
15:01: Me - I feel like juice or fruit punch later
15:10: Kaja - Yum! Vitamins deficit?
15:11: Me - Think so even though tuna salad for lunch
15:22: Kaja - Rawda’s desk empty!
16:14: Me - Rain?
16:33: Kaja -RAIN!
16:41: Me - Power?
16:42: Kaja - Off!
16:43: Me - Strange! Result of rain/storn? Ots four days be election, this will not keep people happy
Fly away
That little face-off I had with a butterfly the other day has led me to an "obsession" with the butterflies here. I discovered what I call Butterfly Row, this weekend. It's a little street with flowers planted in a long bed on one side of the street. Here the butterflies congregate in the early mornings.
After spending a little time around 10 am on Saturday morning trying to capture the butterflies for a while, one of the guys I met on the the street gave me this morning tip, so Sunday morning I was there at 7 am to spend sometime with the butterflies. The guys gave me a little metal stool to sit on and I spent a good 45 minutes photographically stalking the black and white butterfly.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Lunch Break
The air is hot and heavy at two in the afternoon. I’m in my three-hour lunch break and walking from home to one of the restaurants we frequent a few blocks away. Kiflu, one of our guards, stands up when I walk out of our gate. I put my hand out to gesture it’s okay, and turn it into a wave. He’s sitting with the guards from the neighbour compounds under the shade of a tree.
“How are you,” they all ask.
“How are you,” asks one of the regulars at the little shop around the corner as I walk by.
“Good, how are you,” I answer. I’m not quite sure who she is, but I see her often, and last night when I was buy cookies to break a larger bill for change, she was also at the shop, and made sure I got what I wanted, a package of Bourbon cookies, communicating with the girl (probably around eight) in the shop in Amharic.
The girl and her mother live inside the shop almost kiddie-corner to my compound. It’s a small metal booth about the four feet wide and six long. A barred window that has a metal flap to close it lets you peek inside at the wares on the shelves along the back wall. They’ve got all sorts of items. Tinned tuna, soap, the glucose biscuits I eat for my mid-morning snack. The woman who said hello was buying one stick of chewing gum in the shape of Juicy Fruit. She’s not very old, maybe in her late teens or early 20s, and speaks fairly good English. She looks familiar and I can’t decide if I recognize her from a restaurant in town where she maybe works or just from the shop. Another girl bought two small paper cones with some mysterious contents. I thought about asking what was in them, but changed my mind.
There’s a random herd of goats on the road too and no herder in sight. They look well fed and the teets of the female goats are heavy with milk even though I don’t see any kids in nearby. The women sitting against the wall on the left side of the street, on the same side as the shop, make a sound that sounds like drawing out the ‘st’ of start when the goats move closer to their little patch of shade. That sends the goats my direction leaving me to devise a strategy for getting past them. I’m not sure why, but goats make me a little uncomfortable, like they’re not to be trusted. Maybe it’s because they eat tin.
Further down the wide road is Peacock Hotel. It’s across from the stadium where we go running some evening under the fluorescent field lights. There’s a football field and a 400 m track. It’s home to Dire Dawa’s premier league team. On one side of the field are the covered bleachers; on the opposing are the uncovered bleachers. A seat under the shade costs 10 birr, and something like 50 cents for the worst seats on the other side.
I pass a man carrying a random selection of goods to sell; pink and green plastic flashlights, costume-gold watches, fly swatters, sunglasses, bangles or key chains or phone toggles. They are draped over his shoulders, arms and filling his hands. I wonder how often he makes a sale, and what people buy.
There are some men shooting pool under a pavilion at Peacock and I hear them saying, “you, you,” to me. I ignore them as I walk by. Sometimes I say, “you, you,” back when people say this, but mostly only to children whose usual response is laughter. Sometimes I say, “me, me,” but I’m not sure they understand.
I cross the main road going to Harar. The street I’ve been walking on is cobblestone until it meets the divided, paved artery. On the other side it turns into dirt, but I’ve never been down it. I take a left toward the restaurant and sigh internally when I recognize a mother and her kids sitting on the sidewalk a few meters from the gate to the restaurant compound.
The mother says “Emma”, and the children jump up, running towards me, saying, “Emma, Emma, Emma.” There are four or five of them, three grab onto my arms and I lift them from my sides, shrugging my shoulders. One of the boys says, “food,” miming bringing his hand to his mouth. I shake my head. They give up quickly and I don’t say, “beqa,” which means enough, like we do when the kids begging or selling chewing gum are too persistent.
Emma is one of my colleagues who used to live her. One of the first things she said when we went to this restaurant was, “don’t tell them your name.” This particular family is almost always perched right around the compound to the restaurant at lunchtime. I haven’t decided if it’s us farenji, foreigners, they’re there for, or everyone. Emma sometimes packs up of leftovers and gives them to the family after we’ve eaten. It seems like a kind gesture, but I have mixed feelings about the practice. The children look healthy and well fed, if a little dirty. Sometimes the mom is chewing tjat, a plant that’s grown all over this region and chewed for its stimulant effects. It’s considered an illegal drug in almost every country but Ethiopia, Great Britain and The Netherlands.
I sit at a table in the courtyard, under the shade of one of the trees. I’m unbelievably hot and can feel the sweat beading between my breasts. It’s days like this that make me wonder whether my mother’s loyalty to unpadded bras might be a result of living in Nigeria for nine years. Not that it does me much good; my undergarment wardrobe is hardly heat-friendly. For a minute my mind wonders whether my favourite online store would ship to Ethiopia. Then I wonder if I dare send them with the mail. My postal experience is limited to receiving one postcard.
The courtyard and restaurant are empty, except one table and it looks like they’ve already paid their bill. Had I come an hour earlier, it would have been packed with the lunch crowd. The waiter finally notices me, as I refuse to clap to get his attention, as is the practice here, and goes to get me a menu. I order a fruit punch without looking at it, it’s the reason I came here.
“One,” he asks.
“One,” I say. I’ve been known to eat two in one sitting, I suppose. Sometimes when we come here for lunch I have a fruit punch while the others have their mains, and then I have another when they have their dessert. The heat does something to the appetite and the sometimes the standard spaghetti and tomato sauce or omelette with no peppers I order at our two usual lunch places, just seems to be too much. The fruit punch comes in a glass bowl on a saucer with a lime and spoon lying on the side. The punch is a fruit salad with mango, papaya, banana, and a few other kinds of fruit. It’s a combination of sliced fruit and some that have the consistency of puree.
While I eat my fruit punch some of the waiters sit at a table on the porch and eat their lunch. They all seem to have changed from their black pants and white shirts to their regular clothes. Unusually I don’t have to ask for my bill, my waiter brings it to me after about 10 minutes.
“Sister,” he says as he hands it to me. I have a 10 birr note in my hand already, and he takes it immediately and returns with change, a 5 birr note — 38 cents or so for one of my favourite dishes. As I leave they start stacking the plastic lawn chairs from the courtyard table. I’m not sure if it’s because it might rain this afternoon, of if it’s a regular practice between their lunch and dinner rushes.
The family is gone when I come out of the gate. I suppose it’s not just farenji they’re after for the lunch rush, but they certainly are more aggressive to us. I cross the Harar road again and take the next street down from the one I came on. The office building is located between the two about four blocks down so I choose to walk back a different way than coming.
I don’t really have to turn to follow the dirt road towards the office as it’s diagonally from the restaurant gate. On the corner of the Harar road and the one I’m heading down is a group of people sitting and lying on a mat, tjat branches spread in front of them.
“I love you so much,” one of the men says to me as I disappear around the corner. I keep walking. Further down the street there’s a group of three boys talking to each other over a fence.
“How are you,” one of them asks as I walk past. I turn my head to look at them
“Fine,” I say. “How are you?”
They look surprised and answer, “Fine.” I smile.
The wide dirt road is speckled with small booths like the ones my neighbours live in and other small stalls that function as both shops and homes to many people. Lined against the walls of the compounds on either side of the street, they seek the shade of orange maringa and fuchsia jacaranda trees. They’re all tended by women, just like at my local.
I quite like the woman and her daughters that live in the one by my house. She’s a slight woman, always smiling. She’s rigged up an old piece of cloth along the side of her booth, using a few wooden posts and the corners of the booth. She has a little metal “stove” that’s the standard cooking appliance here. The design varies but usually there’s a depression on the top for coal. The few metal pans or kettle they use to cook the food are placed directly on top.
Under her tarp, our lady serves local men tjai (tea), buna (coffee), fool (a spicy dish made with lentils), and dinitsh (a dish made with peeled, boiled potatoes in cubes along with chopped fresh tomatoes, onions and spicy green peppers).
She has two daughters, I think; both go to school. Sometimes the younger one tends the shop with the mother sits on a stool on the side with her other daughters, doing what looks like a homework check. The youngest daughter who was tending the shop yesterday is quite good at English, and every time she makes change, she says, “the answer is” and then how ever much change I get, as she hands it me. Yesterday the answer was 42.
Further down dirt road, there’s a tall, thin Somali man wearing a ragged and dirty button-up shirt and the wrap-around “skirt” that men wear. It’s rolled up and I can see his skinny legs and knobby joints. He looks old with whitish hair and a weathered face. He stops and puts his hand out and says something in Somali. I shake my head and keep walking.
I turn the corner to the street our office building is on. It’s paved in the white, greyish, black-blue cobblestones that are a reminder of the Italian occupation under Mussolini. I also live on this street, one block up.
Our office is made up of two compounds. It was just one, but recently we took over the compound next door on the corner, because space was getting a little tight in the original four-floor house-come-office building. Gizaw, one of the office guards is standing outside. He takes his hat off and greets me as I walk through the golden doorway in the gate and into the compound, paved in reddish-stamped concrete tiles.
I’m back at work 2:25 pm, 35 minutes before we reconvene for office hours at 3 pm. Our two kitchen ladies at laying on the sections of green Harari sofa that are in the two office buildings, resting. The air is still hot and heavy, but the sky has turned from blue to grey. I turn on the lights and set the fan to four. I get a glass of water and sit at my desk.
“How are you,” they all ask.
“How are you,” asks one of the regulars at the little shop around the corner as I walk by.
“Good, how are you,” I answer. I’m not quite sure who she is, but I see her often, and last night when I was buy cookies to break a larger bill for change, she was also at the shop, and made sure I got what I wanted, a package of Bourbon cookies, communicating with the girl (probably around eight) in the shop in Amharic.
The girl and her mother live inside the shop almost kiddie-corner to my compound. It’s a small metal booth about the four feet wide and six long. A barred window that has a metal flap to close it lets you peek inside at the wares on the shelves along the back wall. They’ve got all sorts of items. Tinned tuna, soap, the glucose biscuits I eat for my mid-morning snack. The woman who said hello was buying one stick of chewing gum in the shape of Juicy Fruit. She’s not very old, maybe in her late teens or early 20s, and speaks fairly good English. She looks familiar and I can’t decide if I recognize her from a restaurant in town where she maybe works or just from the shop. Another girl bought two small paper cones with some mysterious contents. I thought about asking what was in them, but changed my mind.
There’s a random herd of goats on the road too and no herder in sight. They look well fed and the teets of the female goats are heavy with milk even though I don’t see any kids in nearby. The women sitting against the wall on the left side of the street, on the same side as the shop, make a sound that sounds like drawing out the ‘st’ of start when the goats move closer to their little patch of shade. That sends the goats my direction leaving me to devise a strategy for getting past them. I’m not sure why, but goats make me a little uncomfortable, like they’re not to be trusted. Maybe it’s because they eat tin.
Further down the wide road is Peacock Hotel. It’s across from the stadium where we go running some evening under the fluorescent field lights. There’s a football field and a 400 m track. It’s home to Dire Dawa’s premier league team. On one side of the field are the covered bleachers; on the opposing are the uncovered bleachers. A seat under the shade costs 10 birr, and something like 50 cents for the worst seats on the other side.
I pass a man carrying a random selection of goods to sell; pink and green plastic flashlights, costume-gold watches, fly swatters, sunglasses, bangles or key chains or phone toggles. They are draped over his shoulders, arms and filling his hands. I wonder how often he makes a sale, and what people buy.
There are some men shooting pool under a pavilion at Peacock and I hear them saying, “you, you,” to me. I ignore them as I walk by. Sometimes I say, “you, you,” back when people say this, but mostly only to children whose usual response is laughter. Sometimes I say, “me, me,” but I’m not sure they understand.
I cross the main road going to Harar. The street I’ve been walking on is cobblestone until it meets the divided, paved artery. On the other side it turns into dirt, but I’ve never been down it. I take a left toward the restaurant and sigh internally when I recognize a mother and her kids sitting on the sidewalk a few meters from the gate to the restaurant compound.
The mother says “Emma”, and the children jump up, running towards me, saying, “Emma, Emma, Emma.” There are four or five of them, three grab onto my arms and I lift them from my sides, shrugging my shoulders. One of the boys says, “food,” miming bringing his hand to his mouth. I shake my head. They give up quickly and I don’t say, “beqa,” which means enough, like we do when the kids begging or selling chewing gum are too persistent.
Emma is one of my colleagues who used to live her. One of the first things she said when we went to this restaurant was, “don’t tell them your name.” This particular family is almost always perched right around the compound to the restaurant at lunchtime. I haven’t decided if it’s us farenji, foreigners, they’re there for, or everyone. Emma sometimes packs up of leftovers and gives them to the family after we’ve eaten. It seems like a kind gesture, but I have mixed feelings about the practice. The children look healthy and well fed, if a little dirty. Sometimes the mom is chewing tjat, a plant that’s grown all over this region and chewed for its stimulant effects. It’s considered an illegal drug in almost every country but Ethiopia, Great Britain and The Netherlands.
I sit at a table in the courtyard, under the shade of one of the trees. I’m unbelievably hot and can feel the sweat beading between my breasts. It’s days like this that make me wonder whether my mother’s loyalty to unpadded bras might be a result of living in Nigeria for nine years. Not that it does me much good; my undergarment wardrobe is hardly heat-friendly. For a minute my mind wonders whether my favourite online store would ship to Ethiopia. Then I wonder if I dare send them with the mail. My postal experience is limited to receiving one postcard.
The courtyard and restaurant are empty, except one table and it looks like they’ve already paid their bill. Had I come an hour earlier, it would have been packed with the lunch crowd. The waiter finally notices me, as I refuse to clap to get his attention, as is the practice here, and goes to get me a menu. I order a fruit punch without looking at it, it’s the reason I came here.
“One,” he asks.
“One,” I say. I’ve been known to eat two in one sitting, I suppose. Sometimes when we come here for lunch I have a fruit punch while the others have their mains, and then I have another when they have their dessert. The heat does something to the appetite and the sometimes the standard spaghetti and tomato sauce or omelette with no peppers I order at our two usual lunch places, just seems to be too much. The fruit punch comes in a glass bowl on a saucer with a lime and spoon lying on the side. The punch is a fruit salad with mango, papaya, banana, and a few other kinds of fruit. It’s a combination of sliced fruit and some that have the consistency of puree.
While I eat my fruit punch some of the waiters sit at a table on the porch and eat their lunch. They all seem to have changed from their black pants and white shirts to their regular clothes. Unusually I don’t have to ask for my bill, my waiter brings it to me after about 10 minutes.
“Sister,” he says as he hands it to me. I have a 10 birr note in my hand already, and he takes it immediately and returns with change, a 5 birr note — 38 cents or so for one of my favourite dishes. As I leave they start stacking the plastic lawn chairs from the courtyard table. I’m not sure if it’s because it might rain this afternoon, of if it’s a regular practice between their lunch and dinner rushes.
The family is gone when I come out of the gate. I suppose it’s not just farenji they’re after for the lunch rush, but they certainly are more aggressive to us. I cross the Harar road again and take the next street down from the one I came on. The office building is located between the two about four blocks down so I choose to walk back a different way than coming.
I don’t really have to turn to follow the dirt road towards the office as it’s diagonally from the restaurant gate. On the corner of the Harar road and the one I’m heading down is a group of people sitting and lying on a mat, tjat branches spread in front of them.
“I love you so much,” one of the men says to me as I disappear around the corner. I keep walking. Further down the street there’s a group of three boys talking to each other over a fence.
“How are you,” one of them asks as I walk past. I turn my head to look at them
“Fine,” I say. “How are you?”
They look surprised and answer, “Fine.” I smile.
The wide dirt road is speckled with small booths like the ones my neighbours live in and other small stalls that function as both shops and homes to many people. Lined against the walls of the compounds on either side of the street, they seek the shade of orange maringa and fuchsia jacaranda trees. They’re all tended by women, just like at my local.
I quite like the woman and her daughters that live in the one by my house. She’s a slight woman, always smiling. She’s rigged up an old piece of cloth along the side of her booth, using a few wooden posts and the corners of the booth. She has a little metal “stove” that’s the standard cooking appliance here. The design varies but usually there’s a depression on the top for coal. The few metal pans or kettle they use to cook the food are placed directly on top.
Under her tarp, our lady serves local men tjai (tea), buna (coffee), fool (a spicy dish made with lentils), and dinitsh (a dish made with peeled, boiled potatoes in cubes along with chopped fresh tomatoes, onions and spicy green peppers).
She has two daughters, I think; both go to school. Sometimes the younger one tends the shop with the mother sits on a stool on the side with her other daughters, doing what looks like a homework check. The youngest daughter who was tending the shop yesterday is quite good at English, and every time she makes change, she says, “the answer is” and then how ever much change I get, as she hands it me. Yesterday the answer was 42.
Further down dirt road, there’s a tall, thin Somali man wearing a ragged and dirty button-up shirt and the wrap-around “skirt” that men wear. It’s rolled up and I can see his skinny legs and knobby joints. He looks old with whitish hair and a weathered face. He stops and puts his hand out and says something in Somali. I shake my head and keep walking.
I turn the corner to the street our office building is on. It’s paved in the white, greyish, black-blue cobblestones that are a reminder of the Italian occupation under Mussolini. I also live on this street, one block up.
Our office is made up of two compounds. It was just one, but recently we took over the compound next door on the corner, because space was getting a little tight in the original four-floor house-come-office building. Gizaw, one of the office guards is standing outside. He takes his hat off and greets me as I walk through the golden doorway in the gate and into the compound, paved in reddish-stamped concrete tiles.
I’m back at work 2:25 pm, 35 minutes before we reconvene for office hours at 3 pm. Our two kitchen ladies at laying on the sections of green Harari sofa that are in the two office buildings, resting. The air is still hot and heavy, but the sky has turned from blue to grey. I turn on the lights and set the fan to four. I get a glass of water and sit at my desk.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
The air is hot and heavy at two in the afternoon. I’m in my three-hour lunch break and walking from home to one of the restaurants we frequent a few blocks away. Kiflu, one of our guards, stands up when I walk out of our gate. I put my hand out to gesture it’s okay, and turn it into a wave. He’s sitting with the guards from the neighbour compounds under the shade of a tree.
“How are you,” they all ask.
“How are you,” asks one of the regulars at the little shop around the corner as I walk by.
“Good, how are you,” I answer. I’m not quite sure who she is, but I see her often, and last night when I was buy cookies to break a larger bill for change, she was also at the shop, and made sure I got what I wanted, a package of Bourbon cookies, communicating with the girl (probably around eight) in the shop in Amharic.
The girl and her mother live inside the shop almost kiddie-corner to my compound. It’s a small metal booth about the four feet wide and six long. A barred window that has a metal flap to close it lets you peek inside at the wares on the shelves along the back wall. They’ve got all sorts of items. Tinned tuna, soap, the glucose biscuits I eat for my mid-morning snack. The woman who said hello was buying one stick of chewing gum in the shape of Juicy Fruit. She’s not very old, maybe in her late teens or early 20s, and speaks fairly good English. She looks familiar and I can’t decide if I recognize her from a restaurant in town where she maybe works or just from the shop. Another girl bought two small paper cones with some mysterious contents. I thought about asking what was in them, but changed my mind.
There’s a random herd of goats on the road too and no herder in sight. They look well fed and the teets of the female goats are heavy with milk even though I don’t see any kids in nearby. The women sitting against the wall on the left side of the street, on the same side as the shop, make a sound that sounds like drawing out the ‘st’ of start when the goats move closer to their little patch of shade. That sends the goats my direction leaving me to devise a strategy for getting past them. I’m not sure why, but goats make me a little uncomfortable, like they’re not to be trusted. Maybe it’s because they eat tin.
Further down the wide road is Peacock Hotel. It’s across from the stadium where we go running some evening under the fluorescent field lights. There’s a football field and a 400 m track. It’s home to Dire Dawa’s premier league team. On one side of the field are the covered bleachers; on the opposing are the uncovered bleachers. A seat under the shade costs 10 birr, and something like 50 cents for the worst seats on the other side.
I pass a man carrying a random selection of goods to sell; pink and green plastic flashlights, costume-gold watches, fly swatters, sunglasses, bangles or key chains or phone toggles. They are draped over his shoulders, arms and filling his hands. I wonder how often he makes a sale, and what people buy.
There are some men shooting pool under a pavilion at Peacock and I hear them saying, “you, you,” to me. I ignore them as I walk by. Sometimes I say, “you, you,” back when people say this, but mostly only to children whose usual response is laughter. Sometimes I say, “me, me,” but I’m not sure they understand.
I cross the main road going to Harar. The street I’ve been walking on is cobblestone until it meets the divided, paved artery. On the other side it turns into dirt, but I’ve never been down it. I take a left toward the restaurant and sigh internally when I recognize a mother and her kids sitting on the sidewalk a few meters from the gate to the restaurant compound.
The mother says “Emma”, and the children jump up, running towards me, saying, “Emma, Emma, Emma.” There are four or five of them, three grab onto my arms and I lift them from my sides, shrugging my shoulders. One of the boys says, “food,” miming bringing his hand to his mouth. I shake my head. They give up quickly and I don’t say, “beqa,” which means enough like we do when the kids begging or selling chewing gum are too persistent.
Emma is one of my colleagues who used to live her. One of the first things she said when we went to this restaurant was, “don’t tell them your name.” This particular family is almost always perched right around the compound to the restaurant at lunchtime. I haven’t decided if it’s us farenji, foreigners, their there for, or everyone. Emma sometimes packs up of leftovers and gives them to the family after we’ve eaten. It seems like a kind gesture, but I have mixed feelings about the practice. The children look healthy and well fed, if a little dirty. Sometimes the mom is chewing tjat, a plant that’s grown all over this region and chewed for its stimulant effects. It’s considered an illegal drug in almost every country but Ethiopia, Great Britain and The Netherlands.
I sit at a table in the courtyard, under the shade of one of the trees. I’m unbelievably hot and can feel the sweat beading between my breasts. It’s days like this that make me wonder whether my mother’s loyalty to unpadded bras might be a result of living in Nigeria for nine years. Not that it does me much good; my undergarment wardrobe is hardly heat-friendly. For a minute my mind wonders whether my favourite online store would ship to Ethiopia. Then I wonder if I dare send them with the mail. My postal experience is limited to receiving one postcard.
The courtyard and restaurant are empty, except one table and it looks like they’ve already paid their bill. Had I come an hour earlier, it would have been packed with the lunch crowd. The waiter finally notices me, as I refuse to clap to get this attention, as is the practice here, and goes to get me a menu. I order a fruit punch without looking at it, it’s the reason I came here.
“One,” he asks.
“One,” I say. I’ve been known to eat two in one sitting, I suppose. Sometimes when we come here for lunch I have a fruit punch while the others have their mains, and then I have another when they have their dessert. The heat does something to the appetite and the sometimes the standard spaghetti and tomato sauce or omelette with no peppers I order at our two usual lunch places, just seems to be too much. The fruit punch comes in a glass bowl on a saucer with a lime and spoon lying on the side. The punch itself is a fruit salad with mango, papaya, banana, and a few other kinds of fruit. It’s a combination of sliced fruit and some have the consistency of puree.
While I eat my fruit punch some of the waiters sit at a table on the porch and eat their lunch. They all seem to have changed from their black pants and white shirts to their regular clothes. Unusually, I don’t have to ask for my bill, my waiter brings it to me after about 10 minutes.
“Sister,” he says as he hands it to me. I have a 10 birr note in my hand already, and he takes it immediately and returns with change, a 5 birr note — 38 cents or so for one of my favourite dishes. As I leave they start stacking the plastic lawn chairs from the courtyard table. I’m not sure if it’s because it might rain this afternoon, of if it’s a regular practice between their lunch and dinner rushes.
The family is gone when I come out of the gate. I suppose it’s not just farenji they’re after for the lunch rush, but they certainly are more aggressive to us. I cross the Harar road again and take the next street down from the one I came on. The office building is located between the two about four blocks down so I choose to walk back a different way than coming.
I don’t really have to turn to follow the dirt road towards the office as it’s diagonally from the restaurant gate. On the corner of the Harar road and the one I’m heading down is a group of people sitting and laying on a mat, tjat branches spread in front of them.
“I love you so much,” one of the men says to me as I disappear around the corner. I keep walking. Further down the street there’s a group of three boys talking to each other over a fence.
“How are you,” one of them asks as I walk past. I turn my head to look at them
“Fine,” I say. “How are you?”
They look surprised and answer, “Fine.” I smile.
The wide dirt road is speckled with small booths like the ones my neighbours live in and other small stalls that function as both shops and homes to many people. Lined against the walls of the compounds on either side of the street, they seek the shade of orange maringa and fuchsia jacaranda trees. They’re all tended by women, just like at my local.
I quite like the woman and her daughters that live in the one by my house. She’s a slight woman, always smiling. She’s rigged up an old piece of cloth along the side of her booth, using a few wooden posts and the corners of the booth. She has a little metal “stove” that’s the standard cooking appliance here. The design varies but usually there’s a depression on the top for coal. The few metal pans or kettle they use to cook the food are placed directly on top.
Under her tarp, my lady serves local men tjai (tea), buna (coffee), fool (a spicy dish made with lentils), and dinitsh (a dish made with peeled, boiled potatoes in cubes along with chopped fresh tomatoes, onions and spicy green peppers).
She has two daughters, I think; both go to school. Sometimes the younger one tends the shop with the mother sits on a stool on the side with her other daughters, doing what looks like a homework check. The youngest daughter who was tending the shop yesterday is quite good at English, and every time she makes change, she says, “the answer is” and then how ever much change I get, as she hands it me. Yesterday the answer was 42.
Further down dirt road, there’s a tall, thin Somali man wearing a ragged and dirty button-up shirt and the wrap-around “skirt” that men wear. It’s rolled up and I can see his skinny legs and knobby joints. He looks old with whitish hair and a weathered face. He stops and puts his hand out and says something in Somali. I shake my head and keep walking.
I turn the corner to the street our office building is on. It’s paved in the white and greyish cobblestones that are a reminder of the Italian occupation under Mussolini. I also live on this street, a block up.
Our office is made of two compounds. It was just one, but recently we took over the compound next door on the corner, because space was getting a little tight in the original four-floor house-come-office building. Gizaw, one of the office guards is standing outside. He takes his hat off and greets me as I walk through the golden doorway in the gate and into the compound, paved in reddish-stamped concrete tiles.
I’m back at work 2:25 pm, 35 minutes before we reconvene for office hours at 3 pm. Our two kitchen ladies at laying on the sections of green Harari sofa that are in the two office buildings, resting. The air is still hot and heavy, but the sky has turned from blue to grey. I turn on the lights and set the fan to four. I get a glass of water and sit at my desk.
“How are you,” they all ask.
“How are you,” asks one of the regulars at the little shop around the corner as I walk by.
“Good, how are you,” I answer. I’m not quite sure who she is, but I see her often, and last night when I was buy cookies to break a larger bill for change, she was also at the shop, and made sure I got what I wanted, a package of Bourbon cookies, communicating with the girl (probably around eight) in the shop in Amharic.
The girl and her mother live inside the shop almost kiddie-corner to my compound. It’s a small metal booth about the four feet wide and six long. A barred window that has a metal flap to close it lets you peek inside at the wares on the shelves along the back wall. They’ve got all sorts of items. Tinned tuna, soap, the glucose biscuits I eat for my mid-morning snack. The woman who said hello was buying one stick of chewing gum in the shape of Juicy Fruit. She’s not very old, maybe in her late teens or early 20s, and speaks fairly good English. She looks familiar and I can’t decide if I recognize her from a restaurant in town where she maybe works or just from the shop. Another girl bought two small paper cones with some mysterious contents. I thought about asking what was in them, but changed my mind.
There’s a random herd of goats on the road too and no herder in sight. They look well fed and the teets of the female goats are heavy with milk even though I don’t see any kids in nearby. The women sitting against the wall on the left side of the street, on the same side as the shop, make a sound that sounds like drawing out the ‘st’ of start when the goats move closer to their little patch of shade. That sends the goats my direction leaving me to devise a strategy for getting past them. I’m not sure why, but goats make me a little uncomfortable, like they’re not to be trusted. Maybe it’s because they eat tin.
Further down the wide road is Peacock Hotel. It’s across from the stadium where we go running some evening under the fluorescent field lights. There’s a football field and a 400 m track. It’s home to Dire Dawa’s premier league team. On one side of the field are the covered bleachers; on the opposing are the uncovered bleachers. A seat under the shade costs 10 birr, and something like 50 cents for the worst seats on the other side.
I pass a man carrying a random selection of goods to sell; pink and green plastic flashlights, costume-gold watches, fly swatters, sunglasses, bangles or key chains or phone toggles. They are draped over his shoulders, arms and filling his hands. I wonder how often he makes a sale, and what people buy.
There are some men shooting pool under a pavilion at Peacock and I hear them saying, “you, you,” to me. I ignore them as I walk by. Sometimes I say, “you, you,” back when people say this, but mostly only to children whose usual response is laughter. Sometimes I say, “me, me,” but I’m not sure they understand.
I cross the main road going to Harar. The street I’ve been walking on is cobblestone until it meets the divided, paved artery. On the other side it turns into dirt, but I’ve never been down it. I take a left toward the restaurant and sigh internally when I recognize a mother and her kids sitting on the sidewalk a few meters from the gate to the restaurant compound.
The mother says “Emma”, and the children jump up, running towards me, saying, “Emma, Emma, Emma.” There are four or five of them, three grab onto my arms and I lift them from my sides, shrugging my shoulders. One of the boys says, “food,” miming bringing his hand to his mouth. I shake my head. They give up quickly and I don’t say, “beqa,” which means enough like we do when the kids begging or selling chewing gum are too persistent.
Emma is one of my colleagues who used to live her. One of the first things she said when we went to this restaurant was, “don’t tell them your name.” This particular family is almost always perched right around the compound to the restaurant at lunchtime. I haven’t decided if it’s us farenji, foreigners, their there for, or everyone. Emma sometimes packs up of leftovers and gives them to the family after we’ve eaten. It seems like a kind gesture, but I have mixed feelings about the practice. The children look healthy and well fed, if a little dirty. Sometimes the mom is chewing tjat, a plant that’s grown all over this region and chewed for its stimulant effects. It’s considered an illegal drug in almost every country but Ethiopia, Great Britain and The Netherlands.
I sit at a table in the courtyard, under the shade of one of the trees. I’m unbelievably hot and can feel the sweat beading between my breasts. It’s days like this that make me wonder whether my mother’s loyalty to unpadded bras might be a result of living in Nigeria for nine years. Not that it does me much good; my undergarment wardrobe is hardly heat-friendly. For a minute my mind wonders whether my favourite online store would ship to Ethiopia. Then I wonder if I dare send them with the mail. My postal experience is limited to receiving one postcard.
The courtyard and restaurant are empty, except one table and it looks like they’ve already paid their bill. Had I come an hour earlier, it would have been packed with the lunch crowd. The waiter finally notices me, as I refuse to clap to get this attention, as is the practice here, and goes to get me a menu. I order a fruit punch without looking at it, it’s the reason I came here.
“One,” he asks.
“One,” I say. I’ve been known to eat two in one sitting, I suppose. Sometimes when we come here for lunch I have a fruit punch while the others have their mains, and then I have another when they have their dessert. The heat does something to the appetite and the sometimes the standard spaghetti and tomato sauce or omelette with no peppers I order at our two usual lunch places, just seems to be too much. The fruit punch comes in a glass bowl on a saucer with a lime and spoon lying on the side. The punch itself is a fruit salad with mango, papaya, banana, and a few other kinds of fruit. It’s a combination of sliced fruit and some have the consistency of puree.
While I eat my fruit punch some of the waiters sit at a table on the porch and eat their lunch. They all seem to have changed from their black pants and white shirts to their regular clothes. Unusually, I don’t have to ask for my bill, my waiter brings it to me after about 10 minutes.
“Sister,” he says as he hands it to me. I have a 10 birr note in my hand already, and he takes it immediately and returns with change, a 5 birr note — 38 cents or so for one of my favourite dishes. As I leave they start stacking the plastic lawn chairs from the courtyard table. I’m not sure if it’s because it might rain this afternoon, of if it’s a regular practice between their lunch and dinner rushes.
The family is gone when I come out of the gate. I suppose it’s not just farenji they’re after for the lunch rush, but they certainly are more aggressive to us. I cross the Harar road again and take the next street down from the one I came on. The office building is located between the two about four blocks down so I choose to walk back a different way than coming.
I don’t really have to turn to follow the dirt road towards the office as it’s diagonally from the restaurant gate. On the corner of the Harar road and the one I’m heading down is a group of people sitting and laying on a mat, tjat branches spread in front of them.
“I love you so much,” one of the men says to me as I disappear around the corner. I keep walking. Further down the street there’s a group of three boys talking to each other over a fence.
“How are you,” one of them asks as I walk past. I turn my head to look at them
“Fine,” I say. “How are you?”
They look surprised and answer, “Fine.” I smile.
The wide dirt road is speckled with small booths like the ones my neighbours live in and other small stalls that function as both shops and homes to many people. Lined against the walls of the compounds on either side of the street, they seek the shade of orange maringa and fuchsia jacaranda trees. They’re all tended by women, just like at my local.
I quite like the woman and her daughters that live in the one by my house. She’s a slight woman, always smiling. She’s rigged up an old piece of cloth along the side of her booth, using a few wooden posts and the corners of the booth. She has a little metal “stove” that’s the standard cooking appliance here. The design varies but usually there’s a depression on the top for coal. The few metal pans or kettle they use to cook the food are placed directly on top.
Under her tarp, my lady serves local men tjai (tea), buna (coffee), fool (a spicy dish made with lentils), and dinitsh (a dish made with peeled, boiled potatoes in cubes along with chopped fresh tomatoes, onions and spicy green peppers).
She has two daughters, I think; both go to school. Sometimes the younger one tends the shop with the mother sits on a stool on the side with her other daughters, doing what looks like a homework check. The youngest daughter who was tending the shop yesterday is quite good at English, and every time she makes change, she says, “the answer is” and then how ever much change I get, as she hands it me. Yesterday the answer was 42.
Further down dirt road, there’s a tall, thin Somali man wearing a ragged and dirty button-up shirt and the wrap-around “skirt” that men wear. It’s rolled up and I can see his skinny legs and knobby joints. He looks old with whitish hair and a weathered face. He stops and puts his hand out and says something in Somali. I shake my head and keep walking.
I turn the corner to the street our office building is on. It’s paved in the white and greyish cobblestones that are a reminder of the Italian occupation under Mussolini. I also live on this street, a block up.
Our office is made of two compounds. It was just one, but recently we took over the compound next door on the corner, because space was getting a little tight in the original four-floor house-come-office building. Gizaw, one of the office guards is standing outside. He takes his hat off and greets me as I walk through the golden doorway in the gate and into the compound, paved in reddish-stamped concrete tiles.
I’m back at work 2:25 pm, 35 minutes before we reconvene for office hours at 3 pm. Our two kitchen ladies at laying on the sections of green Harari sofa that are in the two office buildings, resting. The air is still hot and heavy, but the sky has turned from blue to grey. I turn on the lights and set the fan to four. I get a glass of water and sit at my desk.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Fan induced seizures
Here I am, listening to Billie Holiday, frustrated with the internet connection in my little epileptic seizure of an office. Days like this are particularly frustrating. The fan, set on three, is spinning away on its one way track while the cold blue tint of the fluorescent light sends a shadow pulsating around the room like a strobe light. It’s 6:30 pm so sunset is upon us at the equator and the slow darkening outside takes with it any natural light in the office.
It’s enough to make a girl feel like she’s having a seizure. The continuous strobe is barely bearable in the daytime in less so now. Today a maintenance contractor was supposed to move the light so it is no longer mounted just above the fan, but on the furthest wall just below the height of the fan blades. My theory is that if the source of light changes, the shadows disappear. I’ve never really thought over ceiling fan design before, but now I can tell you exactly where not to position them in relation to each other. Well, I would, if the maintenance guy had showed up at 1 pm while I was out to lunch as we agreed upon yesterday. If he ever shows up tomorrow, I’ll let you know how it goes.
It’s enough to make a girl feel like she’s having a seizure. The continuous strobe is barely bearable in the daytime in less so now. Today a maintenance contractor was supposed to move the light so it is no longer mounted just above the fan, but on the furthest wall just below the height of the fan blades. My theory is that if the source of light changes, the shadows disappear. I’ve never really thought over ceiling fan design before, but now I can tell you exactly where not to position them in relation to each other. Well, I would, if the maintenance guy had showed up at 1 pm while I was out to lunch as we agreed upon yesterday. If he ever shows up tomorrow, I’ll let you know how it goes.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Bit of work
Here's a bit of mapping I've been doing for work. I live in that light green patch that's unlabeled, the rest is where we work on this project. The little red dot is Harar, where I'll be going for a weekend trip sometime soon, probably when it gets unbearably hot in Dire Dawa and we just need to get away and feed some hyenas.
In other news, yesterday at around 3pm I slipped out of the office for a bit of a wake-up. I'd been falling asleep at my computer since lunch and concentration was definitely on an all time low for the day. Luckily, the night before I'd been going through my digital photo albums and making a print folder. Armed with my flash drive loaded with 36 favourite photos, my escape yesterday was me walking down the road to a little portrait studio where they also print pictures. I'll save you the long convoluted story about how I ended in a bit of a tiff over price with them when I went back to pick up my pictures in the evening.
Instead, I'll tell you about the fun I had expanding my collage of photos on my bedroom wall. My little picture collection, which I had started when Kaja and I were executing her Easter postcard project, has now grown to a rockin' arrangement of (mostly) family and a few select friends. I had tried to be conscious of getting pictures of all my family up there, but I'm still missing a few siblings. Nick, Ari and Helga, if you're out there, I have no photos of you guys. I've got you in the family photo from the wedding, but no others. This must be remedied.
Funny that it has to take me moving to Ethiopia to start printing all those photos I have stored. This is the thing I miss about film... the downside of the digital revolution of photography. We no longer develop film; have a tangible hardcopy of our photo exploits. Instead we upload and upload and upload creating huge photo libraries, but more often than not those libraries are relegated to digital albums which can't be held in the same way and old album can. Sorry for the bit of the rant, but seriously, I miss the event of taking photos and having them developed. Okay, I'm done.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Tin soldiers
Watched the new today. One of our English-language news channels had coverage of the Victory Day Parade in Moscow – commemorating the Russian soldiers who died in WWII. I’m telling you, no one can march quite like former communists. It’s like watching the Chinese march, or North Koreans, if we ever got video footage of them. Row-on-row their robot legs swing back and forth, every other solider looking forward, their neighbour looking right. Just a thought, anyway.
Saturday, May 8, 2010
Fan police & Bucket showers
Monday was a day full of excitement, at least by standards here. Late Sunday the power had started to wane and I just called out to my roommate something like, “looks like we’re going to loose power” when the lights cut out.
Still in the high 20’s at close to 10 pm, the prospect of sleeping without a fan wasn’t exactly welcomed by either one of us. Kaja turned in for the evening and I played around on my computer for a while, editing photos of my showdown with a butterfly I’d had earlier in the day.
Eventually I dragged myself to my room by candlelight and tried to position the window and curtains for optimal ventilation without pulling the curtains too far back. Half the vehicles park in our compound overnight as in case of early field trips, I didn’t want to be completely exposed in my sleep. After a bit of adjusting, I blew out the candle and climbed under my mosquito net, ready for bed. But the heat was a challenge and after lying awake for a while, I decided to have a shower to cool down.
Cooled down from my cold candlelight shower, I crawled back into bed only to be tormented by the sounds of the taps dripping in the bathroom. I spent a bit of time trying to decide if they were letting up, or I hadn’t turned the taps quite enough. I got up check, but couldn’t tighten them anymore. Back in bed the drip, drip, drip of the showerhead onto the metal floor of our shower continued to tease. I called up all my inner strength to ignore it, counting breaths to force mind over matter.
That’s when the wind started. A welcome breeze made its way through the opening in the carefully positioned curtains. At last, I thought. But then the door to the bathroom started creaking. The wind coming through the open bathroom window in gusts sent the door swaying back and forth ever so slightly, but just enough to set the creaking off.
I debated getting out of bed again to close the window, but during my contemplations, I heard my roommate get up. Finally I drifted off.
Monday morning we woke up without power, still. However, in the morning it’s not a big deal. I grabbed a quick shower and headed to the office where I knew the generators would be running, needing power to re-charge my computer battery if I was to get any work one and to run the fan in the office once the mercury started rising – usually as early at 10 am. The generator was indeed running, and Monday was a scorcher with a relative humidity above 50 per cent. During the course of the day the generator would intermittently cut off, halting the relief of the fan and returning me to battery-power.
To combat the problem of the generator dying, Abdi, one of our logistics/facilities guys, took it upon himself to be the fan-police. Going from office to office with a message of, “I know it is very hot today, but you can not use the ventilator. It uses too much power for the generator.” I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who met Abdi with an incredulous look that read something like, “you’ve got to be kidding.” Really, he should have been going around asking us to turn off our computers, they consume much more energy than the fans!
Despite the heat, our little Dire Dawa running club (consisting of Mark, Kaja and me) decided to meet up at the stadium around 6:30, hoping that sunset would bring some relief to the heat. Now running laps around a track in 30+ weather might seem like a strange activity for someone who can’t sit in an office without a fan, but to counter all the jumbos we’ve been consuming since my return, it’s intended to keep me at least a little in shape. Kaja and I are also in agreement that it’s important for our metal health, even if it is a struggle to change into running gear and lace up the shoes every second night (in theory) – especially on the really hot (and humid) days.
Monday just happened to be one of those days where you feel like you need to shower a few times to cool down. Around 4 pm Kaja had slipped home for a shower. Later, she commented that she hoped we’d still have water later. I said, “especially” if we’re going to run!” We’ve been having trouble with the water tank at the office and also the pump, so hand-washing with done with water from a bucket and a little jug to pour the water over your hands. It’s not terrible, until you have to scoop a worm out of the bucket first. But I suppose the water we have in the taps is probably no better than whatever water the guards are fetching for the hand wash station.
After a painful 10 laps around the stadium in the twilight, Kaja and I agreed to meet Mark in a half hour for street-dinner and went back to the guesthouse to shower. Guessing what happens next isn’t hard. No water. Somehow a bucket shower just isn’t as refreshing as standing under a constant stream of water, even if the water does seem obnoxiously cold. We were both “showered” and ready in now time. My first (and luckily so far, on Friday afternoon) only bucket shower so far.
Still in the high 20’s at close to 10 pm, the prospect of sleeping without a fan wasn’t exactly welcomed by either one of us. Kaja turned in for the evening and I played around on my computer for a while, editing photos of my showdown with a butterfly I’d had earlier in the day.
Eventually I dragged myself to my room by candlelight and tried to position the window and curtains for optimal ventilation without pulling the curtains too far back. Half the vehicles park in our compound overnight as in case of early field trips, I didn’t want to be completely exposed in my sleep. After a bit of adjusting, I blew out the candle and climbed under my mosquito net, ready for bed. But the heat was a challenge and after lying awake for a while, I decided to have a shower to cool down.
Cooled down from my cold candlelight shower, I crawled back into bed only to be tormented by the sounds of the taps dripping in the bathroom. I spent a bit of time trying to decide if they were letting up, or I hadn’t turned the taps quite enough. I got up check, but couldn’t tighten them anymore. Back in bed the drip, drip, drip of the showerhead onto the metal floor of our shower continued to tease. I called up all my inner strength to ignore it, counting breaths to force mind over matter.
That’s when the wind started. A welcome breeze made its way through the opening in the carefully positioned curtains. At last, I thought. But then the door to the bathroom started creaking. The wind coming through the open bathroom window in gusts sent the door swaying back and forth ever so slightly, but just enough to set the creaking off.
I debated getting out of bed again to close the window, but during my contemplations, I heard my roommate get up. Finally I drifted off.
Monday morning we woke up without power, still. However, in the morning it’s not a big deal. I grabbed a quick shower and headed to the office where I knew the generators would be running, needing power to re-charge my computer battery if I was to get any work one and to run the fan in the office once the mercury started rising – usually as early at 10 am. The generator was indeed running, and Monday was a scorcher with a relative humidity above 50 per cent. During the course of the day the generator would intermittently cut off, halting the relief of the fan and returning me to battery-power.
To combat the problem of the generator dying, Abdi, one of our logistics/facilities guys, took it upon himself to be the fan-police. Going from office to office with a message of, “I know it is very hot today, but you can not use the ventilator. It uses too much power for the generator.” I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who met Abdi with an incredulous look that read something like, “you’ve got to be kidding.” Really, he should have been going around asking us to turn off our computers, they consume much more energy than the fans!
Despite the heat, our little Dire Dawa running club (consisting of Mark, Kaja and me) decided to meet up at the stadium around 6:30, hoping that sunset would bring some relief to the heat. Now running laps around a track in 30+ weather might seem like a strange activity for someone who can’t sit in an office without a fan, but to counter all the jumbos we’ve been consuming since my return, it’s intended to keep me at least a little in shape. Kaja and I are also in agreement that it’s important for our metal health, even if it is a struggle to change into running gear and lace up the shoes every second night (in theory) – especially on the really hot (and humid) days.
Monday just happened to be one of those days where you feel like you need to shower a few times to cool down. Around 4 pm Kaja had slipped home for a shower. Later, she commented that she hoped we’d still have water later. I said, “especially” if we’re going to run!” We’ve been having trouble with the water tank at the office and also the pump, so hand-washing with done with water from a bucket and a little jug to pour the water over your hands. It’s not terrible, until you have to scoop a worm out of the bucket first. But I suppose the water we have in the taps is probably no better than whatever water the guards are fetching for the hand wash station.
After a painful 10 laps around the stadium in the twilight, Kaja and I agreed to meet Mark in a half hour for street-dinner and went back to the guesthouse to shower. Guessing what happens next isn’t hard. No water. Somehow a bucket shower just isn’t as refreshing as standing under a constant stream of water, even if the water does seem obnoxiously cold. We were both “showered” and ready in now time. My first (and luckily so far, on Friday afternoon) only bucket shower so far.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Monday, May 3, 2010
Project Postcard
The most exciting thing happened today. I got a postcard! If you know me, you know I love mail.
The funny thing was last night I hatched a plan. Project Postcard, it will be known as from now on. And with the arrival of my first postcard, the timing couldn't be better for this.
In case you can't read the details:
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Project Postcard. This is the interactive bit of Diaries from Dire Dawa where you send me a postcard and I hang it on my wall. Each time a new postcard arrives I'll update my blog with a photo of the growing collage. As a bonus, I'll return as many as possible with a card or photo of my adventures here.
-Miriam
The funny thing was last night I hatched a plan. Project Postcard, it will be known as from now on. And with the arrival of my first postcard, the timing couldn't be better for this.
In case you can't read the details:
Dear Reader,
Welcome to Project Postcard. This is the interactive bit of Diaries from Dire Dawa where you send me a postcard and I hang it on my wall. Each time a new postcard arrives I'll update my blog with a photo of the growing collage. As a bonus, I'll return as many as possible with a card or photo of my adventures here.
-Miriam
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Good Morning Cockroaches, looking a little dead today
This is what I woke up to in my bathroom yesterday morning. I had sprayed for cockroaches the other day, and was greeted by no less than seven dead suckers scattered across the floor. I grabbed my camera and luckily got this shot before my battery died. It had apparently turned on in my backpack some time in Addis Ababa and I had not idea.
When I returned to our compound after work on Friday, I noticed one of our lime trees had dropped a bunch of its fruit in the wind, so I gathered some up, helped by one of our guards, Gilmar. I said to Gilmar that these would be great to have for our water. Love a slice of lime in a glass of water. So he said there were other lime trees in our yard and took me over to tree number three, which is beside our pomegranate tree. I told him I loved the fruits of the pomegranate tree and he make some sort of remark about not good fruit to which I protested. Pomegranates are some of my favourite fruits! But the low hanging fruits were still green so I said to Gilmar I would have to keep and eye on the tree for when the fruit ripens so they don't rot or get eaten by birds before I can get to them. He pointed to the top of the tree on the other side of our shade lattice where there were ripe fruits hanging and told me he would get them for me. Great!
So after a cold shower to rinse the sweat of the day off, I came out to our living room where Gilmar had laid two almost-ripe pomegranates and lit a candle (we had a power cut at 5pm in our area of town - this is the third Friday in a row we've been powerless on a Friday night). Yay! In about a week they'll be ready. This is the bounty of our garden... caputured by candle light and again in the "garden" in the magic-hour light.
Being left without power on a Friday night every greater reduces our chance of staying in. We eat out at least two times everyday. Sometimes its at the 4 star restaurant/hotel, others its from some little street vendors where they cook the fool or dinish over a little charcoal fire while we all sit around on everything from ornately carved wooden stools to empty milk tins, jerry cans and the plastic shell of car batteries. 
Last night we opted for a place with beef burgers and jumbos (large draft beer, preferably locally brewed from Harar). Yum. Followed by a jumbo at the bar Mark and Kaja call "the green house" on the way home.
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