Four and twenty blackbirds...

When our housekeeper, Asunta, arrived today, she was carrying a plastic grocery bag. "Have you ever had these before?" she asked and pulled out what I at first thought were fake doves like you would buy at a craft store to stick in some flower arrangement. As they started flapping frantically, however, I realized that they were not fake at all. "I can't remember what they're called in English, but they are very delicious in a soup for children." Isaac and Nora were jumping up and down with excitement and one of the birds was relieving itself on our floor.

"Um, pigeons?" I ventured.

"Yes! That's it."

Isaac hoped she would cook one for us. I was glad she didn't. She was taking them on the bus out to another town where she has a sick friend who could use some nourishing...pigeon...broth. So now we know what those women on the bus have in their bags!

Only 27

Today’s the humility list. I was feeling good after I beat a children’s librarian at the 100 Best Children’s Books. Then I found this list at http://chavelaque.blogspot.com/. How did I get a master’s degree in English literature?

The Adventures of Augie March - Saul Bellow
+All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren (I adored this book when I read it as a teenager—very atmospheric)
American Pastoral - Philip Roth
An American Tragedy - Theodore Dreiser
Animal Farm - George Orwell
Appointment in Samarra - John O'Hara
-Are You There God It's Me, Margaret - Judy Blume (I can think of about 30 children’s books I’d put on the list before this one)
The Assistant - Bernard Malamud
At Swim-Two-Birds - Flann O'Brien
Atonement - Ian McEwan
Beloved - Toni Morrison
The Berlin Stories - Christopher Isherwood
The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
The Blind Assassin - Margaret Atwood
Blood Meridian - Cormac McCarthy
Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
-The Bridge of San Luis Rey - Thornton Wilder (I think I missed something; couldn’t figure out why it was so remarkable—and I even read it twice)
Call It Sleep - Henry Roth
Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
The Confessions of Nat Turner - William Styron
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen
The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon
A Dance to the Music of Time - Anthony Powell
The Day of the Locust - Nathanael West
+Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather (lyrical)
A Death in the Family - James Agee
The Death of the Heart - Elizabeth Bowen
Deliverance - James Dickey
Dog Soldiers - Robert Stone
Falconer - John Cheever
The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles
The Golden Notebook - Doris Lessing
Go Tell it on the Mountain - James Baldwin
Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck (not East of Eden?)
Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pynchon
The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
A Handful of Dust - Evelyn Waugh
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers
The Heart of the Matter - Graham Greene
Herzog - Saul Bellow
Housekeeping - Marilynne Robinson
A House for Mr. Biswas - V.S. Naipaul
I, Claudius - Robert Graves
Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
Light in August - William Faulkner
+The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
Lord of the Flies - William Golding
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R. Tolkien (I still prefer The Hobbit)
Loving - Henry Green
-Lucky Jim - Kingsley Amis (THIS is one of the greatest books? I hated it)
The Man Who Loved Children - Christina Stead
Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
Money - Martin Amis
The Moviegoer - Walker Percy
+Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf (Another revelatory book—writing can do this?!)
Naked Lunch - William Burroughs
Native Son - Richard Wright
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
1984 - George Orwell
On the Road - Jack Kerouac
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest - Ken Kesey
The Painted Bird - Jerzy Kosinski
Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov
A Passage to India - E.M. Forster
Play It As It Lays - Joan Didion
Portnoy's Complaint - Philip Roth
Possession - A.S. Byatt
The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie - Muriel Spark
Rabbit, Run - John Updike
Ragtime - E.L. Doctorow
The Recognitions - William Gaddis
Red Harvest - Dashiell Hammett
Revolutionary Road - Richard Yates
The Sheltering Sky - Paul Bowles
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
Snow Crash - Neal Stephenson
The Sot-Weed Factor - John Barth
The Sound and the Fury - William Faulkner
The Sportswriter - Richard Ford
The Spy Who Came in From the Cold - John Le Carre
The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway
Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
+Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe (just reread this with Ruth—remarkable book to discuss with someone while you’re living in Africa!)
+To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
+To the Lighthouse - Virginia Woolf
Tropic of Cancer - Henry Miller
Ubik - Philip K. Dick
Under the Net - Iris Murdoch
Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry
Watchmen - Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons
White Noise - Don DeLillo
White Teeth - Zadie Smith
Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys (Ruth’s classmates at her last school are reading this WITHOUT having read Jane Eyre. Aargh!)

White Guy in Sudan

In the town where David works, he often sees tiny children--one and two year olds--roaming the streets, accompanied only by their older--four and five year old--brothers and sisters. Last week he was striding purposefully into a government building downtown when he passed a little girl no bigger than our one year old Eleanor, though given the likelihood of malnutrition she was probably two. She looked up at him, wrinkled her nose, pointed, and announced, "Khawaja" (white guy).

David understood her Arabic perfectly. He started laughing and said, "Aiwa! Anna khawaja" (Yes! I'm a white guy) and shook her hand.

Happy Day!

Perhaps you have been so busy making pies that it escaped your notice that this week is Bangladesh Armed Services Day as well as Thanksgiving. In the city where he works, David was honored with an invitation to a dinner in honor of the Bangladeshi armed services, who are a major part of the UN peacekeeping contingent in that part of Sudan.

It seems they'd invited everyone of any importance in the area--a gracious gesture by any measure. The food was very good--not so intensely spicy as the last time he ate at the Bangladeshi officers' mess--but the most memorable part of the evening was a video about Bangladesh and its military. It was in the style of a 1950s vintage informational movie--a cheerful, deep voice intoning things like, "The Bangladeshi Army. Bringing progress to Bangladesh" David learned all kinds of fascinating facts about Bangladesh -- it has the longest beach in the world (147 km.); it has a "rapidly growing" tourist industry; it is one of the most densely populated countries in the world, and yet it's agricultural industry produces enough to feed them all; it has a thriving industry exporting "urea," as well as leather goods (including Bata shoes).

But the highlight of the video was the section about all the weapons Bangladeshi army employs: lots footage of various ordnance in action, many explosions. Perhaps the most memorable moment came in the discussion of Bangladeshi military training. The deep voice cheerfully ticked off a list of combat skills every Bangladeshi army officer is trained in, accompanied by video clips of each of these skills in action. If you weren't paying close attention, you might miss the brief mention of "knife-throwing," . . . the quick clip of a uniformed officer flinging a knife, . . . or the particularly graphic one-second shot of the victim convulsing as he took the knife in the neck.

Happy Bangladesh Armed Services Day and Happy Thanksgiving!

Donkey cart ringtones

We were walking on our street near where a donkey cart was bouncing along when I heard a mobile phone start to ring. The driver of the donkey cart, perched there on the front edge of the cart, shifted his whip to his other hand and reached into the pocket of his jalabiyah (white robe), pulled out the phone, and started to chat. Why did it surprise me that a donkey cart driver would have a mobile phone?

Another day, this very kind donkey cart driver saw that Eleanor was fascinated by his animal and stopped so she could pet it.

Balmy

We are hardly running the air conditioners at all now, and the main topic of conversation when expats meet is how lovely the weather is. I checked the school's thermometer at 2:00 today: 96 degrees. Below body temperature!

There are 4 groups of people who ride the bus with us in the morning (We are a group unto ourselves, because we're khawajaat . . . and what are white and-therefore-rich kids like us doing on the bus? Everyone must be thinking that.). They are:

The Athletic Guys: They are going to a compound that appears to be the Sudanese National Athletics Association. They usually wear raggedy track suits and are very tall, probably from the Dinka tribe.

The Guys with Guns: They are going to a compound that appears to be a military school. Or else a police station. Anyway, they have guns.

The Toothless Old Men in Jallabiyas: Self-explanatory (once you know that jallabiyas are long white robes that most Sudani men wear with little white hats). I don't know where they're going. Today one of them set his watch to Edward's.

The Women with Mysterious Packages: It is worth noting that nobody else on the bus is ever carrying anything. (My backpack, which I am more than likely to drop on somebody's lap, must be feared citywide by now.) I suspect these women of transporting live chickens. Or . . . lighter fluid. Or . . . other ideas?

Today a Guy-with-Gun got on the bus when it was mostly full and waved and said, "Salaam a'alaykum," (which essentially means "hello to you all"). And everybody on the bus replied. It was the coolest thing I'd ever seen.

One of our favorite children's literature blogs linked to us! Check it out at http://fusenumber8.blogspot.com/2006/11/coolest-blog-to-link-to-me-ever.html and look at some of her children's book reviews while you're at it--she reviews a book every single day and has a great critical eye for what makes a book engaging.

On Friday I was startled to see our guard, sitting as usual at the edge of the road under the shade tree on his woven mat, surrounded by heaps and piles of...wool? I waved at him and we exchanged our standard Arabic/English greetings (I don't understand his Arabic and he doesn't understand my English) and then he went back to...carding the wool? The next day he spent the whole day, still sitting on the mat under the tree, sewing and stuffing a mattress.

Cross-Curricular Learning, Anyone?

This is an international school post as opposed to a Sudan post...

I had fun at lunch today. I always play badminton with about half a million other kids, 8th grade through seniors. We form random two-person teams, then cycle through, with winners staying on the court (there's only one, and it's actually just an empty spot of sand with a net in it), and new opponents walking on to challenge them. Everybody else watches, waits for their turn, and heckles the people playing.

What's cool is that there are maybe 3 or 4 regular players that speak Chinese, 2 that speak Korean, and 5 or 6 that speak Urdu. Sometimes hecklers who want to needle somebody in particular yell at them in one of those languages. Or else opponents will insult each other in their own private tongues, and the privileged sideline few who understand just bust out laughing. Then we have to ask for translations: "Oh, she just said, 'Who taught you how to serve?'"

Ruth on TV!

Today, at 12:00 GMT, was the launch of Al Jazeera's English language news channel. Some of us at school got together in the staff room to watch the countdown screen disappear and the first broadcast begin. For those of you who don't know, Al Jazeera is the "largest and most controversial" Arab news organization in the world (http://www.allied-media.com/aljazeera/). I've seen part of an excellent documentary about it, Control Room.

Anyway, somebody at school told some Al Jazeera correspondents in Khartoum about our little launch party, and invited them to come over for it. They showed up with video cameras and one of those microphones that has the news organization's label on it. They talked to some of us and filmed me watching a little of the broadcast (I'm guessing I was an interesting target because I'm white American, unlike most of my friends who were in attendance). See us at 5 PM GMT tonight!

95! We're impressed with ourselves!

To return to that library theme:
We got it from http://fusenumber8.blogspot.com/, now we're giving it to you.

Mark the selections you have read in bold. If you really liked it, add a star (*) in front of the title, if you didn't, give it a minus (-). Then, put the total number of books you've read in the subject line.

Charlotte's Web by E. B. White
The Polar Express by Chris Van Allsburg
Green Eggs and Ham by Dr. Seuss
The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss
*Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak
Love You Forever by Robert N. Munsch
The Giving Tree by Shel Silverstein
The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle
Where the Red Fern Grows by Wilson Rawls
*The Mitten by Jan Brett
*Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown
*Hatchet by Gary Paulsen
*The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis
Where the Sidewalk Ends: the Poems and Drawing of Shel Silverstein by Shel Silverstein
*Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
Stellaluna by Janell Cannon
Oh, The Places You'll Go by Dr. Seuss
*Strega Nona by Tomie De Paola
*Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day by Judith Viorst
Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? by Bill Martin, Jr.
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams
A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
*How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
The True Story of the Three Little Pigs by Jon Scieszka
-Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by John Archambault
Little House on the Prarie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
*The Complete Tales of Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne
The Boxcar Children by Gertrude Chandler Warner
*Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan
*Indian in the Cupboard by Lynne Reid Banks
-Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
*Maniac Magee by Jerry Spinelli
The BFG by Roald Dahl
*The Giver by Lois Lowry
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Joffe Numeroff
James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
The Lorax by Dr. Seuss
*Stone Fox by John Reynolds Gardiner
Number the Stars by Lois Lowry
Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh by Robert C. O'Brien
*Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
The Rainbow Fish by Marcus Pfister
Amazing Grace by Mary Hoffman
*The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson
Corduroy by Don Freeman
Jumanji by Chris Van Allsburg
*Math Curse by Jon Scieszka
*Matilda by Roald Dahl
Summer of the Monkeys by Wilson Rawls
*Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume
*Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary
The Trumpet of the Swan by E. B. White
Are You My Mother? by Philip D. Eastman (Eleanor’s VERY favorite… sigh)
The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis
*Make Way for Ducklings by Robert McCloskey
One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish by Dr. Seuss
*The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
*The Snowy Day by Ezra Jack Keats
The Napping House by Audrey Wood
Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
*The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter
Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt
The Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum
*Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Horton Hatches the Egg by Dr. Seuss
Basil of Baker Street, by Eve Titus
The Little Engine That Could by Watty Piper
The Cay by Theodore Taylor
Curious George by Hans Augusto Rey
Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox
-Arthur series by Marc Tolon Brown
The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
*Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse by Kevin Henkes
Little House books by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Little House by Virginia Lee Burton
The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown
*Sideways Stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar
Amelia Bedelia by Peggy Parish
Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh
A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
Mr. Popper's Penguins by Richard Atwater
*My Father's Dragon by Ruth Stiles Gannett
Stuart Little by E. B. White
Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech
The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare
*The Art Lesson by Tomie De Paola (We love this one)
Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
Clifford, the Big Red Dog by Norman Bridwell
*Heidi by Johanna Spyri
Horton Hears a Who by Dr. Seuss
The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare
*The Watsons Go to Birmingham-1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis
Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney
*The Paper Bag Princess by Robert N. Munsch

Living without hot water

This photo is an attempt to show a negative--no hot water tap. Our house has no hot water--not just occasionally, but never. We have no hot water heater. There are houses here that have hot water (though interestingly enough, very seldom in the kitchen), but it didn't occur to us when we were choosing a house that this was something we'd need to make certain of.

We wash our dishes in plain old tap water--not exactly cold since those pipes are in Sudan--but not hot either. We use lots of dish detergent, but every now and then I feel guilty and rinse all the dishes in boiling water.

We shower and bathe in cold water (again, not exactly cold, more slightly chilly or lukewarm water) except that occasionally we boil some water and fill up the washtub and do baths on the floor of the kitchen.

Yay for public libraries!

When we're in the US this Christmas, we 're planning on maxing out all our relatives' library cards. All those books . . . Mom and I are working on a nice, LONG list of titles to look for. I have to say that New York Public Library's "Books for the Teen Age 2006" is a pretty great little (PDF) pamphlet. Oh, to live in New York!

Meanwhile, I study up for African Lit.

This is our semi-automatic washing machine, the standard around here (there's even a picture of a semi-automatic washing machine on the laundry detergent boxes). The first month we were here, I was absolutely horrified by it and certain that I would never be able to keep up with our family's laundry. It holds only tiny batches of clothing and requires me to act at every stage of the washing and rinsing process: turning on
the water, turning off the water, turning on the tub to agitate (it does do the agitating by itself), draining the tub, refilling the tub, moving all the clothes over to the spinning tub, etc. I've come to peace with the thing now and am actually used to it (though I can't tell you how often I've come into the bathroom to discover the washing machine overflowing into the tub because I've forgotten to turn off the tap). I guess you can get used to just about anything.

We hang clothes outside to dry. It seems like they dry almost before I'm done hanging the batch. (That wire snaking across the front of the picture is our phone line--it enters through the balcony window. We have to duck every time we go on the balcony to avoid yanking it out and losing all contact with the world outside Khartoum.)

What we're cooking

Thanks for all the suggestions! I especially loved the idea that we should think about regional cooking instead of national cooking--I may not be able to think of an American dish but I can sure come up with Cajun dishes! Looking at your suggestions, we quickly realized that we were going to be constrained by what ingredients are available here. We were thinking of gumbo for a while but Ruth pointed out that everyone would think it was an African stew (another interesting commentary on America's culinary tradition!), so in the end, we picked macaroni and cheese.

Thanks!

Transportational Peril

Khartoum is not known for good roads. There are always holes. Sometimes the manholes have no covers. Those of us on the bus home from school today were reminded forcibly of that fact.

For me, actually, it was a welcome diversion. The bus ride home is never what you'd call comfortable. The buses are privately owned, and it is in the driver's best interest to cram in as many paying passengers as possible. I was sitting on a 4 foot bench with my backpack on my lap, wedged between two Sudanese men easily twice my weight and volume. I was admiring the deep, decorative scars on the face of the old woman sitting in front of me, when the bus jerked to a stop and the driver started ranting in Sudani.

He revved the engine a couple of times, but the bus didn't move. Swiftly, and without any discussion, everyone on my side of the bus climbed out (except, for some reason, the woman with scars). I thought maybe we were abandoning the bus, trying to find another one that WASN'T stuck in a hole, so I followed them out. It turned out they were just pushing the bus out of the hole, then climbing back on in celebratory moods. It made me laugh.

Help! We have to cook!

The Khartoum American School’s annual International Dinner is this Thursday. We’re supposed to bring two main dishes and one dessert representative of our home country’s cuisine. Dessert is easy. We thought of lots of possibilities—apple pie, pumpkin pie, pecan pie (if we could get pecans), root beer floats (if we could get root beer), brownies, bread pudding. We’re taking chocolate chip cookies (specifically, Ruth’s Chocolate Chocolate Chip Mint Cookies—yum!).

For one of the main dishes, we’re going to take chili, but we’re having a hard time thinking of another dish that represents American food. Lasagne? Enchiladas? Pad Thai? And just what are the Italian, Mexican, and Thai families bringing?

Just like my all-American kids are Portuguese-British-Swedish-Norwegian-German-Dutch-French-Americans, I think that real American cuisine, what people eat every day, is Chinese-Mexican-Italian-Thai-Japanese-British-American food.

In Bosnia, Romania, and here in Sudan, people really do eat their national foods pretty much all the time. You can get stuff to make spaghetti, but it’s a rare day that you do it. (Interestingly, the Dutch, while they have traditional Dutch foods, eat food from lots of different culinary traditions in their everyday meals. But then again, they’ve been world travellers for centuries.)

So what do we take for our second main dish? Give us some ideas, even you who up till now have only lurked on the blog. What’s an all-American main dish?

Giraffe Center

In Nairobi, we visited the Giraffe Center, a gorgeous stone manor house that looks like it was transplanted from rural England, surrounded by endangered Rothschild giraffes. Instead of just watching them, you get to feed and touch them. The big surprises: those little horns on the top of their head are bony--I had always imagined them being squishy or at least cartilaginous--and their ears are velvet soft.

Our Nairobi taxi driver, Anthony, helps Eleanor feed a giraffe.
And a couple more photos of Ruth and David.

We didn't get as close while we were on safari, but the animals were just as beautiful.

Ed got Harry Potter glasses (and wand) for his birthday, symbolizing that Mom and Dad would get him contact lenses when we move somewhere you can get them. The wand turns out to play "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" in squeaky tones when you press a little button. The glasses were very popular.

Yesterday when we were walking down our street, on our way home from school, a walking salesman tried to interest us in his watches. He would give us "a very good price, my friends." We smiled and shook our heads, and he continued his little patter. He said 60,000 dinar (which is 300 dollars), making everyone, the salesman and his friend included, laugh like crazy.

How skinny is skinny?

Ruth and I have both referred on this blog to children who have suffered/are suffering from malnutrition. The thing that staggers you looking at them is how skinny their limbs are--tiny, stick-like--how do you describe it without ending up in cliche? As I was holding a two-year old orphan at hippotherapy, it occured to me to actually measure his leg.

Start by making a circle by putting the tip of your index finger on the tip of your thumb. Now move the tip of your index finger to the first knuckle of your thumb. That's how big around sixteen-month Eleanor's ankle is. Now move the tip of your index finger to the second knuckle of your thumb (where it attaches to your hand). That's how big this two year old's ankle was.

Safari carnivores

On our safari, we saw thirteen lions, four cheetahs, and a leopard (cries out to be set to music, doesn't it?).

The first lion we saw was a big male, asleep. Morrison drove our van right up
next to him, so close we could have petted him (if we'd wanted to risk a bloody stump where a hand belongs). I helped Isaac climb up on the back of a seat so he could get a better view. His excited, high-pitched voice woke up the lion, who rolled over and stared at Isaac. I was instantly transfixed by panic. What was I doing standing next to a lion with my three year old? So even though
Morrison told me that we were perfectly safe, I made Isaac sit down so his head wasn't sticking out of the van.

As it turned out, I needn't have worried. A few minutes later an elephant lumbered by, her tiny baby elephant (whose picture you can see in the earlier post about Safari Babies) walking not ten feet away from the lion, and he just lazily watched as they went by. "He must have just eaten," Morrison said. It struck me that perhaps the difference between the natural world and the manufactured human world--what it means to be human--is the capacity for greed, taking what you can not because you need it but simply because you can. (What a depressing thought.)

On our morning game drive, we found a leopard who had just killed a wildebeest. He was trying to jump into the tree with it in its mouth so he could consume it uninterrupted up there, but the carcass was simply too heavy. He kept grabbing the carcass in his teeth, then trying (and failing) to climb the tree trunk. He'd sit down and gnaw some more off before he tried again. After about half an hour, he gave up and wandered off, probably to find some water, Morrison guessed. Later at breakfast, I overheard someone else who had been there watching express distaste at the sight. I didn't find it distasteful at all--engrossingly fascinating.

A cheetah running is one of the most graceful things I've ever seen.

When we were in Nairobi, we went to Carnivore restaurant where we ate...lots of meat! Ed, in his post-meal stretch, does a good imitation of a sated carnivore.

Who knew poetry happened in real life?

Isaac took me outside this evening to show me the almost-full silver moon shining low in the sky. "If I was a bird, I'd fly up there and grab it and bring it back down here."

"And what would you do with it?" I asked him.

"I think I'd give it to you."

Order in the court

Southern Sudan is attempting to build a judiciary that follows internationally-accepted standards of justice but also respects, values, and maintains traditional tribal methods of meting out justice. David got to visit one of these customary courts. He said we could post his account on the blog.

I got out to watch a customary court in action today. Way too cool. If Jerry Springer saw this, he'd be televising it for the entertainment of the unwashed masses. At least they'd be getting some cultural exposure. Come to think of it, there was a pretty large group of unwashed Jubans there watching the proceedings for sheer entertainment value. Consider the scene: open air setting for the airing of a domestic dispute; the husband was a lush and bum who never helped the wife with
money or anything, even when the baby got really sick; so when the baby died, the wife's family blamed the husband and beat him to a pulp; when he got out of the hospital, he showed up at the baby's funeral only to be beaten to a second bloody pulp; the wife goes home to Ma and Pa's tukul, and six months later marries another guy; the husband feels aggrieved by the bigamy and by the beatings; the wife feels ill-used and justified in finding a man who will be a decent husband to her, etc.; husband complains about all that he's given her; wife counters that he's given precious little, in fact, he still owes 8 goats to his in-laws as part of the "bride price" back from when they were first married (the "dead-beat son-in-law"); wife's mother and two brothers testify against bum son-in-law; husband's father -- obviously a bum himself -- testifies on behalf of his bum son destroying all credibility with the outrageous claim that his son had been giving the wife 30,000 dinar a month; second husband claims to have been unaware that his new wife was married already (despite the fact that she has several children), and says he only married her to help her out of her difficulties (crowd snickers at that); tribal chief asks wife which husband she want's to keep (she says No. 2), chief asks what about the kids (wife says she'll let her two husbands sort that out between them); VERDICT (get this!): 50 lashes for the bum and he's still gotta pay the 8-goat bride price he never made good on; 30 lashes for the second husband for marrying a married woman; woman gets off scott free -- having suffered enough, we suppose. Is this great theater or what? We didn't stick around for the lashes; not sure I've got the stomach for it. We saw the whip, though!

So Archie McPhee is having this Holiday Wish List contest (if you want to enter, check it out at www.mcphee.com). Here's my wish list (with help from Annette and Emma Lucy)!

Bite the Bullet Mints http://www.mcphee.com/items/11619.html
Monkey Shower Curtain http://www.mcphee.com/items/11495.html
Nun Chuck http://www.mcphee.com/items/11580.html
Ninja Bandages http://www.mcphee.com/items/11654.html
Bacon Gift Wrap http://www.mcphee.com/items/11034.html
T-bone Steak Lunchbox http://www.mcphee.com/items/11010.html
6 Little Colorful Devil Duckies http://www.mcphee.com/items/11493.html
Librarian Action Figure http://www.mcphee.com/items/11247.html
Sushi Placemats http://www.mcphee.com/items/11329.html
Sushi Rug http://www.mcphee.com/items/11482.html
Pirate Canvas Bag http://www.mcphee.com/items/11691.html
Nihilist Chewing Gum http://www.mcphee.com/items/11505.html

Happy November!

My friend's guard said to her one morning, "Wintah now, Shaine." (Having a guard live in the courtyard of your house is standard.)
And all these kids at school have started wearing sweaters.
And they insist on turning off the air conditioners in the classrooms, or they get too cold.
I seriously doubt it has gone below 95 degrees this week.

Our school is so very dependent on the US. We seem to run entirely on 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper, which is strange, because Sudan (and Europe, and it seems like everbody else) uses A4. Today we got one of our long-awaited shipments, and all my teachers were thrilled about their new books and stuff. I got my hands on a shiny English Department copy of The Wide Sargasso Sea, which makes me happy.

Safari birds

Secretary bird. Big bird--about four feet tall--so-called because it looks like it has quill pens sprouting from its head. It seldom flies but has very strong legs. In fact, it kills its prey by trampling them to death.

Marabou stork. Often seen with vultures. They are huge (notice that wingspan!).

Weaverbirds' nests. I didn't see any weaverbirds, but we saw trees full of their hanging nests.

And a couple of my chicks.