One of My Students...

...has a farm, so we get olive oil and fresh camel milk every week.

...is a tailor, so we get our pants hemmed for free.

...brought me the latest Jackie Chan movie (he's a young Mongolian).

...loves to cook, so I get cooking lessons for free - including Arab meat pie (see picture) and kebabs.

...collects stickers, so I also have a growing collection (she's a primary student!).

...out of respect brings me little treats, like packaged muffins or crackers.

...brought me a Mars bar from Germany (she had to point out it wasn't the locally produced kind when I didn't recognize the import of the gift as I should have).

...brought me a strawberry cream cake (an 8 year old!).

...is making a business trip to Germany, and is promising to bring me back good chocolate.

...owns a car dealership (...maybe for the future!)

Church

When we arrived we decided that we'd like to visit the various churches around our city to see what they're like...turns out there's quite an array.

There are a few churches that have legal status and the accompanying visas for their pastors - in order to serve the expatriate community. The Catholic Church is, I think, the biggest. They maintained their cathedral through some turbulent years, and it is ornately decorated inside with frescoes and mosaics. They hold numerous services each week, in languages from Filipino, Indian, Polish, Korean and Italian to Spanish and French. They also have about 100 nuns here from the same order as Mother Theresa; and they mainly do medical work.

There is a mostly Ghanaian Church that we visited - and it was just like being back in Ghana! The rhythms of the singing were moving - and we aren't that good at moving to them, but the rest of the congregation was! I struggled to even clap in-time to the non-Western beat.
The local Anglican Church has the other cathedral downtown. It is majority Nigerian, with the next population being Indian, and a small minority of Europeans/North Americans/Auzzis/Kiwis. This makes for some very, very interesting cultural dynamics:

Nigerians are the Ushers, and this is a serious position. If you sit too near the back, they will ask you to 'shift' - to move up to the closest seat to the front that's available. The goal being to fill in every seat from front to back. Women sit to the right of the isle, and men on the left side. Secondly, beware of falling asleep during the service or else the usher will walk down the isle and nudge your elbow! Likewise, when the Egyptian Bishop was visiting, he would pause in his preaching to wait for latecomers find their seats!

Even the resident pigeons mind their p's and q's. Usually they restrain themselves to cooing and mild flapping about as they navigate the rafters. Only one time have I seen anything fall -yet that that was not during a service, and only hit an uninhabited side isle. Very impressive.

Three other things I find amusing: 1) The building sports some exceptionally well done paint-by-number religious artwork. 2) The responsive readings become a race, with many reading as fast as they can (to sport their English skills??). And 3) The Nigerians lead their own songs before the main service starts; you have to listen hard to realize that they are singing in English, and sometimes I even have to ask the person next to me what they're saying because the African-English accent is so think.

Btw, it's still a little strange to be with the church on Fridays, and at work on Sundays!

Floored

I've peeled myself up from the tile floor to tell you that today was a hot day. I think it was about 115 degrees, or so. What makes it more hot is the strong, sandy wind. It is strange to get used to wind being hot.

And so, we came home and stripped down to lie on the cool-ish tile floor. I mentioned earlier that we do have air conditioning. Yes, we have the capability. But, unfortunately something about the electric cable not being strong enough means that sometimes there isn't enough juice to go around the building. So at night our lights flicker and go dim, and the microwave doesn't produce heat...and the AC doesn't produce much cold. Not all the time, but usually when we're all trying to use energy - either when it's pretty hot or pretty cold and we turn on the ACs/heaters. Good thing that no one else will be living in our building during the really hot summer months (we're staying longer to teach summer school while everyone else is going on vacation).

Sand is the other part of the equation. As I taught my evening class I watched the wind whip up a massive cloud of sand so that I couldn't see out of my thirdfloor window. It's the North African version of fog. I was praying that we hadn't left our windows opened! The students were asking for the English word for sandy wind - and we don't have one of our own! As Artic-dwellers have multpiple names for snow, they have a more advanced sand vocabulary here.

The BBC describes the situation this way: We are "affected from March to June by very hot, dusty winds from the desert which bring very high temperatures, often exceeding 50°C/122°F for a day or two."

Let's hope it is a only a day or two - and that it doesn't mark the beginning of the real summer heat.

Either way, I think we'll be spending a lot more time on our tile floors.

Farmers’ Markets

One joy of being here is discovering the produce available. We get fruit and vegetables seasonally. I was thrilled with the best oranges I have ever tasted in February/March; but those are long gone now. Presently we’re in heaven with apricots and peaches. We always enjoy olives (because they’re dried) and the best dates on earth. Here are some pictures – check out how ‘straight-from-the-farm’ it is…

...Spinach complete with ladybug; carrots with tops on (normally the produce men cut off the tops before you take them home, same with onions); yolked and feathered eggs; as yet unitentified local fruit, with a large pit inside; and a Barley Loaf.

They get to the vegetable stands via pickups trucks piled high with watermellons or cantelope (currently) coming in from local farms. Once I went to the big wholesale vegetable market. There, a young boy follows you around with a wheelbarrow, toting your produce for a tip.

Malfunction Junction

I think the #1 risk we encounter is road safety. This can be said in many places, but I do think that the driving here can be more dangerous than any other place I’ve encountered. I tend to feel this way when we’re joining a young (testosterone-filled, macho) male in his taxi. These guys bob and weave through traffic like they’re in Hollywood car chases. Unfortunately, the other cars haven't rehearsed the choreography.

The reason I think driving is more dangerous here than elsewhere is that there is enough infrastructure to supports high speeds. Whereas in other parts of Africa potholes, dirt roads, and dilapidated vehicles limit the speed cars can reach, here the main highway is in fairly good shape and newly imported cars can travel at excessive speeds. This is a problem because there is not a long history of driving culture to establish certain life-preserving ‘rules’ of driving, or to facilitate much beyond white-knuckle driving experiences. As you can imagine, driving cars is quite different than driving the camels and horses they are replacing.

That isn't to say that there aren't any road rules. For example, the rule at roundabouts is that you yeild to those entering the roundabout. If you try this, you'll see how difficult it is because it requires the drivers to turn around in their seats and look backwards; further, it encourages those approaching the roundabout to enter it at full speed as though it were just a part of their own road. However, roundabouts are often ignored altogether, with drivers driving "straight" and thus heading into oncoming traffic. At our big intersection there is one lane that was designed to be either and on, or an off ramp to the roundabout. It, however, functions as both, which makes for many near-misses.

These are popular names for a few local traffic points that sum up the situation: "malfunction junction," "death roundabout" and "suicide slipway."