If you can't stand the heat...

I've spent a lot of time in the kitchen lately. While Bryan was gone I tended to eat only one full meal a day, and spent the rest of the time just munching on cucumbers and raisins. It's just so hot that my appetite evaporates along with every other vestige of moisture in the air and cooking required more time and energy than I seemed to have. Now that Bryan (who has the metabolism of a race-horse) is back and Dan and Laura are here with him, I have gotten better about having food on the table and they have all been so patient with my experiments. Last week a team of six Americans/South Africans passed through town on their way to work on a project in a neighboring village and they camped out on our compound for a few nights. They were an easy crowd to impress and a loaf of banana bread and pot of stew seemed to go a long way. Even so, the sole woman in the group made a passing comment that was funny to me. Sitting with me in the kitchen as I mixed up the dough for some saltine crackers she said, "Wow. You must really love to cook." And while I certainly don't mind cooking I wanted to laugh out loud. Because it's not that I love cooking. It's that I love eating. Here, if you are at all interested in eating, than you better learn to love cooking (or marry someone who is).
We were vegetarians for the first few months here because I was scared to buy meat at the butcher. Now our iron intake has gone back up and a trip to the butcher is more like a weekly adventure. The bloody cement room plunked in the middle of the market has windows on all sides to which you push your way through the crowd to reach. You shout your order to the man in the bloody apron wielding what might be properly described as a scimitar (the order basically being "red meat" or "regular meat" which includes bone fragments, fat veins and various pieces of unidentifiable organs. I generally opt for "red.") and he hacks off his the preferred amount from the half of a cow hanging from a hook on the ceiling. The whole time he is slicing I am praying the flies swarming the room are not carrying any dreaded diseases this week and that the ash from the cigarette dangling from the butcher's lips doesn't hit my intended supper. He throws it on a scale, tosses it in a plastic sack and hands it out with a friendly smile. I've learned that it's good to have exact change. A ten pound note tends to come back through the window with dark pink fingerprints on it. One time my language lesson failed me and before I could catch myself I asked for "green" meat instead of "red" meat. The sad thing is before I could correct myself I only got a vaguely surprised look from the butcher before he turned to go scrounge some up for me.
We have had a lot more vegetables available lately which is really nice. Carrots and cucumbers have become somewhat regular features in the market and papaya has even graced our breakfast table recently. Bell peppers are also around occasionally, though they tend to be spicy, like chilli peppers. Weird huh? Someone told me it is because they are growing in such a dry climate and not enough water makes them spicy. Does anyone know if that is true?
Tomorrow Laura and I are heading to East Africa for a women's conference. And I have to admit, I am looking forward to a few days out of the kitchen. The thought of milkshakes and hamburgers is almost as enticing as the idea of eating something that I didn't cook. But I know, once our trip is over, I will be glad to get back home and back to experimenting in the kitchen. I've found that there is a certain creative outlet that comes with making new things with new ingredients. I feel a new appreciation for my grandmother's generation not to mention the women all around me here who are doing so much more than I am with so much less. I am so grateful for a lifestyle that makes eating responsibly and simply so much easier than it was in the States.
Even so, I have to admit I'm looking forward to a few days of irresponsible eating of complex food. A few days out of both the heat and the kitchen will do me good.

Rooster and Rice

R.I.P

Our good friends next door called me today to tell me that they found our rooster dead in their hen-house this morning. Now that sounds like a case for CSI, doesn't it? Except, we all knew our rooster had recently abandoned his family of ten (now nine actually after an unfortunate incident involving a hawk) and shacked up with the two single hens next door. This may (or may not) have also had something to do with a incident in which I whacked the poor time-impaired bird off of a chair with a flashlight outside my bedroom window at 4:45 in the morning. Or when Bryan pegged him with a rock at 4:30 am on a separate occasion. (Neither of us actually meant to hit him. It was dark and we were only half conscious. What are the chances?) Nonetheless, I went next door after I got the call and sure enough, there he was, dead as a doornail. The weird thing is, we couldn't figure out what killed him. There were no abrasions or contusions, no signs that he has been sick (not that I would know what those were in the first place), and upon a closer postmortem examination, no fang marks, either insect or reptilian. We all stood around and stared at the rooster in silence for a moment, each with the same burning question:"Is it safe to eat him?" We asked around and the general consensus was a shrug of the shoulders followed by a confidence-evoking, "Sure, why not?"
Before I say what you know I am about to say, let me mention that chicken is not sold anywhere here (at least not in the non-feathered, non-pecking, non-crowing at 4:30 am kind of way) and I haven't eaten poultry in two months. I felt my "Lord of the Flies" side kick in as I carried my once sorta-pet by his feet back to my house, handed him to our Askari and told him if he would do the dirty work, I would cook the bird up for the both of us. Which is exactly what happened. I ate my rooster for supper. And he was delicious!
So the moral of the story is, if I come down with claw-in-mouth disease or poultry flu or something equally terrible, you guys will know why. Really my only concern now is that Asad and Nimir, who thought they had died and gone to heaven when I gave them those chicken bones, will put two and two together and start looking and those little chicken babies running around the yard differently...

And on a much happier note, BRYAN COMES HOME TOMORROW!

Only four more days...

I've realized that I don't write as much when I am unhappy. Which I guess is a good thing considering I generally write a lot - blogs, e-mails, journal entries and other random bits of scribbling I keep to myself. And for the past few days, despite ample time to do all of the above I have hardly written a word, to myself or anyone else. My flu-like symptoms deteriorated into gagging-on-my-tonsils throat infection that had me down for three days. And it was on one of those days that I found there was no room on the incoming flight for Bryan, pushing his homecoming back to Tuesday, two full weeks after he first left. Needless to say I was a little bummed.
BUT, the good thing is a round of antibiotics has me back in the land of the living and, even though Bryan wasn't on the flight today, he was able to smuggle on a box of good stuff for me so tonight I dine on peanut butter and Nutella sandwiches! (And no, I'm not being sarcastic. This is a very good thing!)
Though I would never have wished to be here by myself for this long, I have to admit it has been really good for me. I have had lots of Arabic language practice with only my cat and dog to speak English to and it has been fun to learn new things. I have had to do a lot of those weird things that scare me like rounding up water (you've already heard about that one) changing money, paying construction workers (building a store room/garage for us) etc. All of this has left me feeling just a little more confident if I ever have to be here alone again and that can only be good.
I think those who will have to adjust the most when Bryan comes home are Asad and Nimir. I have found that one of the things I am not brave enough to do is sleep in our tent by myself in these horrific wind storms so I pulled my bed into the kitchen and have been sleeping soundly behind cement walls. This means though that Asad is usually cuddled up under my bed and Nimir cuddled up right beside me. I have had to take back all the bad things I have ever said about sleeping with animals. Lately, I haven't minded all that much...

Filled Up

Yesterday I went to the market to try and round up some water. This is always a little intimidating to me. The water is turned on at four o'clock in the afternoon and dozens of young men and their donkey carts crowd around a small tower where a fat hose pipes out foamy water into their barreled carts. There is always a buzz of adolescent rough housing overlaid with the irritated braying of donkeys as everyone jostles awkwardly for space in the muddy alleyway. Determined not to be easily cowed in such a crowd I walked into the melee more confidently than I felt and asked who could bring a barrel out to my house on the other side of town. I got a lot of "Sorry Lady" looks and a couple of passing "We don't know where you live." When I tried to give directions guys didn't look up and continued their work or just passed me by on the way to sell their water at other people's houses. I persisted for a while but finally, defeated and having exhausted by Arabic, I went on into town for a couple of other errands. I was bugged though.

In town I stopped at the shop of a charming young guy who is sure he is going to marry my youngest sister. His sodas were cold and a Champion eased my frustration about the water situation. However, as I was preparing to pay, a man I have never seen before walked up behind me. I greeted him before realizing that he was in an altered state of mind - either crazy or drunk I wasn't sure. He looked at me harshly and started growling, "You are not welcome here. Go back to your own country Khawaja. We don't want you here!" followed by other words and gestures I didn't understand. I was surprised and unsure of what to say or do when he stepped up on the shop ledge I was standing on and grabbed me roughly by the arm and yanked me closer to him. Startled I stepped back and he let me go but continued muttered unintelligible (to me) angry sounding things. My friend the shopkeeper and a couple of other people nearby looked on with disapproval but didn't do anything. Embarrassed and more shaken than I wanted to be, a stammered a quick goodbye and left. That is the first time in the eight months that we have been here that anything like that has ever happened.

Today I woke up sick. It's just flu like junk but in Bryan's absence and on the heels of a bad day it felt a little worse than it probably is. I stayed in bed reading and sucking throat lozenges most of the morning, willing Thursday afternoon to come quickly. I got a call mid-morning from one of our friends, another shopkeeper in town who has sold us many of our building supplies. He greeted me and told me he was on his way over to check in on me. When he showed up he gave me a phone card (all cell phones are pre-paid here using scratch cards) so that I could fill my phone back up with credit. He said he wanted me to be able to call Bryan whenever I need to. Anything you need, anything at all you just call me, he said. I want to look out for you while he is gone because Bryan is my friend, like this, he said laying his two fingers side by side.

Minutes after I saw our friend off I heard a clanging noise outside. I got back out of bed and went to check on the commotion. A donkey cart, not one I had asked for, was at the gate. He came inside and filled our nearly empty barrel full again.

Home Alone

I feel like I have taken another step this week towards this place actually becoming home to me. Bryan left the day before yesterday to go and pick up our teammates who are flying in to East Africa on Monday. With transportation being as it is in this part of the world he won't be back for ten days, and that's if all goes well. Which puts me here by myself for ten days. Of course, one is never completely by themselves - people are always stopping by to say hello and a guard sleeps on the compound at night - but with both Bryan gone and my good friend Heather out of town for a few weeks too, it feels a lot like "alone".

But, like I said, it feels more like home because it doesn't feel scary to be here by myself. A few months ago I would have been pretty nervous to stay here this long without Bryan. That's not to say I don't still have my moments. The windstorms at night, tracking down water donkeys by day, and managing on-going construction work in Arabic are all still intimidating, but by now they seem a little more natural then they once did. I have my own kitchen, my own bedroom and my own bathroom (now monitor lizard-less) all of which are familiar and comfortable. On top of that Asad (the puppy) and Nimir (the kitten) have been keeping me highly entertained and feeling very loved. Nimir catches massive locusts that fly into the kitchen at night, usually right into my hair and Asad sleeps just outside my tent door so I can hear him all night long snoring or growling at any perceived threats.

So, all that to say, two days in and I am feeling good. We'll just wait and see how I'm feeling by day five...

My ferocious security team

What we recently found in our bathroom...

Re-do

So actually, our puppy's name is now Asad.

We wanted an Arabic name for him and one that was culturally appropriate at that, but after we came up with Zeki, we were told that this was actually the name of a very good and wise man who lived a long time ago and therefore, not a good name for a dog. So we quickly scratched that one and went back to the drawing board. Thankfully, everyone in the neighborhood joined in. I don't know if our Arabic is sad enough that everyone figured we needed a little help, or simply the idea of a Khawaja having a local dog with a local name was funny enough that everyone wanted a part in the process, but everyone from the town carpenter to a guy we just met at the airstrip had a suggestion. People offered to brainstorm overnight and get back to us "with the perfect name" the next day and some were even calling up buddies on the phone for input. It was hilarious. After an increasingly confused nameless puppy and several suggestions of Asad we decided to go with it. "Lion" still seems a little over the top for someone who cries during wind storms but he's working on living up to his name. Stalking our rooster is one of his favorite past-times.

On another happy note we have more good news. Our ATV arrived on the plane yesterday! As much as I have loved riding our motorcycles around, I am really, really excited to have a form of transportation that can haul more than a kilo of tomatoes back from the market at a time. It's somewhere between a really small car and a four wheeler and we turned quite a few grinning heads when we rode into town yesterday - but it will be perfect for the rough roads around here. So when you guys come and visit you won't have to cling to the back of a motorcycle on the way back from the airstrip but will get to cruise to our house in style! (:

And finally, for those of curious about our Valentines Day...We had a happy quiet day at home during which time I convinced Bryan to watch some cheesy chick flicks with me. We contented ourselves with homemade cards (I loved it - it felt like kindergarten again!) and he even surprised me with a plastic heart shaped box full of melty chocolate that he found in the market. But I experienced the full extent of his precious love last night when we ordered a couple of sodas in town. Mine came out fairly cool but his was ice-cold. It was the coldest thing I have ever felt here. My sweet husband took one sip of it and handed it over to me! I never knew brain-freeze could be so romantic. That my friends, is true love!