Like Nuns They Cross Themselves Each Day

I used to sing in a couple of school choirs in the Hague, but KAS doesn't have one. Instead, I have resorted to organizing my sometimes reluctant family members into an a cappella group. We have some madrigals written by PDQ Bach (aka Peter Schickele), and they are the embodiment of irreverence.

Sample lyrics: My Bonnie Lass, she smelleth / Making the flowers jealouth / Fa la la la la, fa la la la / My Bonnie Lass she looketh like a jewel / And soundeth like a mule, / My Bonnie Lass, she walketh like a doe / And talketh like a crow . . . etc.

We also have some 3-part rounds by PDQ Bach. My very favorite one is called "Jane", and the 3 parts, sung separately, sound like a traditional love song, very classical, whatever. Together, however, they produce some very creative insults. Ed's favorite is, "And her breath is like down/wind of a compost heap on fire." My favorite is, "With her eyes black as nuns / like nuns they cross themselves each day."

Stand by for concert details.

That Autumnal Air, or When Does Acclimatization Happen?

David and I were at the school playground yesterday, watching Eleanor and Isaac play while we waited for the older kids to get out of school.

Annette: It’s beautiful today!
David: It really is lovely. I think it has cooled off.
Annette: A lot. This is actually pleasant out.
David: It doesn’t seem hot at all. It’s really nice.
Annette: I wonder what the temperature is. (Walks fifteen feet to check the school’s thermometer) 102 degrees.

Safari Babies

(I'm feeling overwhelmed at posting safari pictures, so I thought I'd post just a few at a time. When you see us, we'll be happy to show you the hundreds of photos we have if you still want more!)

Kenya is south of the equator, so we were on safari in the springtime, just in time for a crop of babies.

A tiny new giraffe nursing in the evening.

Our guide, Morrison, thought this zebra foal was about a month old.

Morrison explained to us that we got a good view of this warthog family
because the babies were too tiny to run away from us, and the parents wouldn't abandon them. We were particularly struck by the parallel with our own family and feel certain their oldest warthog must be off at college.


The mother elephant lumbered by very close to us, maybe just fifteen feet away. We all were smitten by the baby. Morrison told us the baby couldn't be more than about a week old.

And of course, we had our own baby along.

Al Amab

I'm a member of the Student Community Service Group at school. (There is general discontent with calling ourselves the SCSG, but nobody can come up with anything better. Our adviser suggested H2O for Humans Helping Others or Hard Hearted Ogres...) We've been collecting donations of money and used clothes from the school community for a couple of months, and working with the Red Crescent to figure out how we can help Nile flooding victims.

It's paid off. Right now we've gathered almost 3000 US dollars, and a high school in Minnesota or somewhere wants to help. A couple of weeks ago, a delegation from the group went out and bought 350 jerry cans, big plastic 20-liter containers that can be used for purifying water and storing it for drinking. They got a great price, because the jerry cans had once held treacle, traces of which fermented into an odorous sludge at the bottom of each can. We got to spend our lunch hours cleaning them out with the school's garden hose.

After some Red Crescent volunteers came and gave a workshop on disaster response, and showed us how to use chlorine tablets to purify water, we set up a day to go distribute the jerry cans and clothes to a particularly needy community close to school. The community is called Al Amab. It takes about 15 minutes to drive there from campus, but in those 15 minutes the buildings go from 5 story brick to 1 story mud, and the number of goats increases tenfold.

Al Amab has about 175 families, so we planned to give each family two jerry cans. When we climbed out of the bus, little kids swarmed around us. Really little kids. Their arms and legs were thin, thin, thin, their hair was rusty, and their stomachs stuck out in front of them. They loved our cameras, posed in huge groups, and when we stepped back to try and fit them all in the frame, they pressed forward. Some of the little girls had baby brothers or sisters on their hips. One of them told me she was seven, then adjusted her shawl so that it protected her charge's head.

The handout was kind of chaotic. The women, who had previously been crouching in what little shade was available, surged forward. Nobody wanted to miss out. Some (drunk) women, apparently from another village, rushed up to the front of the line and yelled at us in some unknown dialect when we didn't give them what they wanted. Everyone shouted and waved their arms and clutched their prizes possessively, while our Red Crescent helpers scolded and directed. When we gave out the used clothes, everyone was picky and annoyed that we didn't have the right sizes. It was a hot, hot day. Our dark hair soaked up sun, and we tried to drink our water surreptitiously, because everyone at Al Amab was fasting for Ramadan.

But there were wonderful moments. I caught the attention of an Al Amab girl my size. We smiled at each other and rolled our eyes at our own overwrought guardians. I saw a little tiny kid wrap his "new" clothes around himself and spin in circles. I watched a little old lady tie colored string around the handles of her two jerry cans so that they wouldn't get lost.

We're going to go back soon, but maybe we'll do something a little more relaxed. Something that won't make us into their saviors, but their friends. Maybe a soccer game.

Pilgrimage to Nairobi

Since there are no LDS congregations (except for our family!) in Sudan, it was a high priority for us to attend church in Kenya. There are several LDS chapels in Nairobi. They are big, new, and gorgeous. The one we attended, in fact, was across the street from a couple of other Protestant churches meeting in dilapidated shacks. Visiting meetings in the developing world, we have become used to seeing North American missionaries directing the fledgling congregation. This branch was markedly different. We were the only non-African faces in the congregation. The three sister missionaries there were from Namibia, Uganda, and Democratic Republic of the Congo. The branch president, a Kenyan, was a remarkable leader. The church in Kenya is obviously in good hands.

I think this picture should be titled "Ed's Talent." Ruth and Lucy are good with small children, but Ed draws them to him, wherever we go.

You can put in the basketball hoop, but can you take the football (soccer) out of the kids? Everywhere we go, there are basketball hoops in church parking lots, and everywhere we go, we see kids playing football underneath them.
These kids had made their own ball out of blue plastic grocery bags. David points out that they could play soccer in the parking lot because there were exactly two cars in the parking lot, despite the fact that the chapel was pretty full.

This beautiful little girl was anxious to have her photo taken. We were happy to oblige.

Africa is a big continent

We learned why so many expats got starry looks in their eyes when we mentioned we were going to Nairobi on vacation and why so many aid workers in Sudan maintain an apartment or house in Nairobi even though they only travel there once every two months. Nairobi is gorgeous. We had thought we were getting an African experience, living in Khartoum, but we realized that Africa is a very big continent, and the Africa of Sudan is very different from the Africa of Kenya.

The weather in Nairobi is balmy—cool at night, warm in the daytime. It reminded me of the San Francisco Bay area. The landscape is lush—the types of plants (bougainvillea, palms, bananas, poinsettia trees, eucalyptus, acacia, jacaranda—in lavender bloom) and their exuberant growth reminded me of Hawaii. The infrastructure is sound—smooth roads, reliable water and electricity (everyone had water tanks on their roofs, but we never lost either water or power while we were there), no open sewers, gleaming skyscrapers, office parks and warehouses, and bustling stores. They had malls (in the plural!). We had the feeling that we could buy anything we could think of there. (Note the gleaming, huge supermarket in which Eleanor found an admirer.)
It reminded me and Ruth of flying into Munich from Sarajevo and feeling staggered by the mile after mile of factories and warehouses. After that trip we started referring to Western Europe as Land of Industry. Nairobi felt much the same to us. Even the poor parts of town we saw were filled with commerce--markets and tiny little shops in shacks. And the cost of living is low—it appears housing prices are about 1/3 the cost in Khartoum and the cost of labor is just as low as it is here. An easy place to live, I think.

Good reads

I just finished Emma's War, by Deborah Scroggins. It's the best Sudan book I've read. (And I recognized one of our play group houses in it!)

The other book doesn't have anything to do with Sudan, except that we checked it out at the Khartoum American School Library. A picture book, The Old Lady Who Named Things, by Cynthia Rylant. The first time I liked it fine, but every time I read it, I like it more and more. The watercolor illustrations are perfect--wryly funny and sweet and poignant--and the text is deceptively simple. A great book (and what else do you expect of Cynthia Rylant?).

We have vacation next week--the conclusion of Ramadan--so we're going to Nairobi. We won't post much for the next week, but maybe we'll have some safari pictures to post when we get back.

I got to bring home my self-portrait yesterday. Isaac laughed when he saw it. He said, "You're so big!" It is pretty big, I guess. I'm just happy that he knew right off it was me.

Did you know that the medieval empires of Western Africa (think serious gold and scholars of Islamic law) are often referred to as the states of Sudan?

Yep, we rock.

Street vendors

Every major street has vendors walking along, hawking their merchandise to passersby and motorists. I have seen vendors selling sunglasses, watches, Kleenex, mirrored bathroom cupboards, toy guns, shirts, socks, pictures of Mecca, plastic shelving units, wicker baskets, and magazines (both English language and Arabic). When I first saw them I was disbelieving--someone expected to make a living doing this? But people actually do buy from them. In fact, I buy from them! I bought David a watch from one of them. We were haggling over the price, and the vendor suggested I should pay more because, look!, it is a Longines! And if you believe that I know a bridge you can buy...

Peanut butter

Actually, this is Ruth, not Annette, posting. Assunta, the woman who cleans our house and sometimes cooks for us, has made us second bucket of peanut butter, and I thought you all needed to see. In a household with 3 teenagers who are always hungry, and 2 kids under the age of 4 (who like to eat the same things all the time), peanut butter is an essential substance. Before we hired Assunta, we got our peanut butter from a street vendor, in a plastic bag. I for one thought it was nasty. Assunta agrees with me. She said there's too much sand in it. So she made us this. It's very smooth and good, but I don't think there's any salt in it. If you leave a knife in, it slowly sinks. We haven't yet had one swallowed completely, but I'm pretty sure it'll happen.

As you can see, we really like the stuff.

Ralph Lauren in embryo?

Isaac has lately become fascinated with the fashion possibilities offered by dish towels. He designed and produced this outfit, even tying the knots by himself. I would not let him wear it out of the house, though, without other clothes on top.

I'm lovin' it

There are no McDonald's in Sudan, but we are not without our own golden arches. According to Ruth's classmates, Lucky Meal is the worst of all the fast food type places around. We used to sometimes get mango drinks there, until they overcharged David, even when he pointed out to them the cheaper price on the menu--ah, the kawaji (foreigner) tax.


After I took this photo, I realized that I had also captured laundry hung out to dry.

Tortoise Photo

The tortoise sanctuary at the school. Goliath (though it is female) is at the left. The new tortoise--the one who visited Ruth's class--has dug itself a mudhole under an overhang.

History!

Today was definitely the most interesting African History class we've had all year. Right now we're learning about medieval Africa, with the class divided up into 3 little groups: one for the Ghana Empire, one for the Mali Empire, and one for the Songhai Empire. I'm on Mali. Each group is in charge of teaching the rest of the class about the group's empire, through countless little projects and educational ploys.

SO. There we were hunched around tables, slaving away over our Ibn Battuta and Mansa Musa, when I looked up (and it WAS me that looked up first) and saw a bull tortoise in the doorway.

Our school has kind of a history with tortoises. I am told that the year before last, tortoises ran wild on campus. Some of them charged hapless students and teachers, and knocked them down, or bruised them. Our tortoises are pretty big. Last year, however, elementary school raised a ton of money and built them a sanctuary (with brick walls that go down for something like a meter underground, so they can't dig out). The idea is that they are safely contained.

So much for that. The tortoise entering our classroom was a new arrival to the school, and the biggest one yet. I don't actually know how big it is. Somebody said 3/4 of a meter squared. It must weigh at least as much as me, if not twice that. It was kind of getting stuck on the doormat, so it waved its flippers around a lot and tried to drag itself through. I said something like, "Oh my GOSH!"

All the other people in my group looked up, too, and must have reacted in an entertaining manner (I almost wish I'd been watching them). We rushed up to the entrance to get a better look, as did most of the rest of the class. One boy claims he thought it was a bird at first. Our teacher, deep in her own thoughts in a dark corner of the classroom, suddenly came to attention, and said in a peeved voice, "What are you all DOING?" (She had spent much of the class exhorting us to focus on our work.) Then she saw the tortoise, too.

Tortoises can't turn around, or at least refuse to do so. This meant that to get it back outside and into the sanctuary, it had to be carried. A couple of students grabbed the shell from either end (the tortoise, not so brave now, hastily pulled in its head) and hoisted it in the air. We all trailed after them as they lugged it across campus, attracting a little parade of maintenance workers, along with the chemistry teacher.

Our history teacher made indignant comments to the maintneance workers ("It was in my ROOM!"), but we could tell she was just as happy to be out of class as we were. Thank goodness for bull tortoises.

Faith

Our housekeeper, Asunta, is one of 7 children, like me, and is about my age. But in some ways her life is very different. She is from south Sudan and is one of the many internally displaced persons here in Khartoum. She would like very much to move back to southern Sudan. Her husband and two of her brothers have died-war casualties and, perhaps (though I'm not sure) AIDS. So she has custody of several (five?) of a brother's children, and she lives with another brother and his family. I think she has no electricity in her home--she always charges her mobile phone at our house. Last week her nine year old niece started complaining of stomachache. It's appendicitis. When she told me about her niece being in the hospital, I told her she should just go home for the day. She insisted on staying and doing some work and explained why. "If there is nothing I can do, there is no purpose in worrying. I just put it in God's hands."

Not ungentle, but how thoroughly departmental

One morning this week while I was teaching Ed and Ruth seminary, a fly kept bugging me. A sluggish, weak fly. So I swatted it with my hand. It crumpled up on the ground, dead. Since I was busy teaching, I left the carcass on the rug. A couple of minutes later, the fly started staggering along the rug. I couldn't believe it! A Lazarus fly? I didn't want it to pester me again, though, so I flicked at it, and as it tumbled to the floor the two ants carrying it from underneath scurried away.

Shoo fly, Part II

Now our house is full of houseflies. We're not sure why. Windows open in the middle of the day? The flies are skinny, little anemic things. I've even managed to swat a few with my bare hands. Which is good since we don't have a flyswatter. David is the best at it. He spent this morning, before his flight left, hunting down houseflies. He managed to smash, with his bare hands, nineteen before he had to leave for the airport. Lots of soap and water to get rid of the fly carnage! Isaac was inspired and found a bunch of ants to smash in the corner of the house.