Merry Christmas!

There's no place like home for the holidays.

the US looks pretty different

.jerry.can.distribution.

We're in Holland now, heading to the US for Christmas, but we have some leftover Sudan posts that we'll be putting up in the next couple of weeks.

We've been talking about what's going to seem different in the First World. "Buying fruits and vegetables inside," said Lucy immediately.

"Oh, yeah," agreed Ruth.

"And no flies on them," said Lucy. "It will seem unnatural."

"Yeah," agreed Ruth. "I'll be thinking, ''WHAT have they done to the fruit and vegetables?""

.sudani.bullies.

We've been talking recently about our favorite Christmas stories (we have to, or else it would be too hard to remember that it's Christmastime . . . Khartoum gives no hints). One we thought of Barbara Robinson's The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, in which a female bully threatens to stick a pussywillow down another girl's ear and let it grow into a tree. When pronounced in the character's voice, it's a pretty good threat.

On my way home from school this week, though, I saw a better one being enacted. One of the local boys' schools (the ones where the uniform is camouflage) had just let out, and so lots of these maybe 12-year-old boys were sauntering along the edge of the road. Through the window of the bus, I saw two big boys dangling a littler boy by his arms, holding him above one of those holes in the sidewalk. The holes usually go down about six feet before hitting a stream of raw sewage. Now THAT'S scary.

I guess it WOULD put a damper on the glory of self-determination

All around Juba, the capital city of southern Sudan, there are banners proclaiming, "Let's work together to make South Sudan free of guinea worm disease so we can prepare for the referendum on self-determination."

David read the banner and started laughing but his driver and language assistant, after chuckling with him to humor him, sobered up and told him it was very serious. "Guinea worm disease is terrible," they told him. They told him that worms get in your body and start eating your internal organs--"your body like a rotten apple"--and the only way to get them out is to catch a bit of one protruding out of your skin and to slowly and oh-so-carefully wind it around a stick, pulling it out bit by bit, day by day. You have to tie the stick with the worm wrapped around it to the affected limb, so we can wind a little more each day. "Oh, yeah," said one of his Ugandan employees. "We have that in Uganda, too." At first David thought they were teasing him, but they were very serious.

"What if the worm breaks off while you're winding it out?" David asked.

"Oh, very, very bad. Then you die."

"The worm dies?"

"No, you die."

.al.amab.kids.

.flood.photos.

One of my friends has taken a bunch of beautiful photographs on our visits to Al Amab, the city that our school is raising money to help. He just gave me permission to share them on this blog.

The Sudanese eat one meal (usually a plate of fuul, which is beans) at about 10:00 AM, then the main meal at about 2:00 PM, then another little meal at about 10:00 PM.
Our school follows the Sudanese model, and gives us a break at 10:00 AM in which a lot of people eat food from home. Recently, however, they've been trying out providing school lunch. Different moms volunteered to cook easy foods for any kids who pre-ordered a month ago. This was what we got the week the Korean mom cooked... only there were about 10 pieces of sushi when I got it. I wanted to save more to make a nice photograph, but they were too good!

While I was paying at the grocery store, Isaac pushed our empty shopping cart over to the cart return. A man was standing right in front of it. Isaac waited a minute and then piped up in his little clear voice, "Afwan!" Who knew he had picked up the Arabic courtesy words, like "Excuse me."

Thanksgiving here in Khartoum

A friend asked how our "African version of Thanksgiving" went. Well, our Thanksgiving this year was African because...um, we had it in Africa? Otherwise, there was no trace of Africa. We took advantage of David’s business trip to the US the week before Thanksgiving, and the good humor of relatives (thanks for shopping Nicole and Stephen!) to supply ourselves with everything we needed for an American Thanksgiving. David put a 14 lb. frozen turkey into his suitcase, and it arrived still frozen solid. Good thing, too, because the special order turkeys at our nearby grocery store cost $200!

I’ve wondered what our kids will tell people our family’s Thanksgiving traditions are. “We always tried to invite Americans to Thanksgiving” sounds odd but is true. Early on in our overseas experience we tried inviting people from other countries, but for them an invitation to Thanksgiving is merely a curiosity while to Americans abroad, an invitation to Thanksgiving is a lifesaver in a sea of otherness. This year we had two American friends over.

And, of course, the tradition (inherited from my dad) of pie for breakfast the next morning continues.

Ozone

One of the really wonderful spots in Khartoum is Ozone, a bakery/patisserie/gelateria that is perched in the center of a major roundabout. Its ice cream and pastries are fine but the real attraction is the garden--a lovely tree and flower filled circle that is kept scrupulously clean. No sign of the omnipresent Khartoum dust here, and nibbling at a chocolate croissant while you sit under the shade of the neem tree, you tend not to notice the city buses and taxis and rickshaws and SUVs roaring past belching exhaust. In hot weather, they turn on misters, an outdoor air-conditioning system that makes the hot weather bearable and even pleasant. Now that the weather has cooled off (only 90 today!) our play group is meeting here so we can enjoy the beautiful weather.

Sudanese Time

A government official passed away, so David tried to go to the funeral today. Its starting time was 3:00, so he had the driver drop him off at 3:00. He found about 300 chairs set up and 9 people sitting in them. He was the tenth. Half an hour later 5 more people had arrived. At 3:45, the people with the sound system arrived and started setting up. At 4:00, about 10 more people arrived, and David's driver returned to pick him up.

Reminded us of the wedding we attended. We arrived a little bit after we had been told it would start, and for about an hour it was just us and the families of the bride and the groom.