First time out with our very own car yesterday. I’ve seen people carry all kinds things on motorcyles here, armloads of rebar, jerry cans of water? fuel? I mean any minute of the day you will see someone go down the street with something surprisingly inappropriate on a motorcycle. But yesterday I saw the prize winner: two guys on a motorcycle carrying a sofa on their heads.
Why I’m afraid to drive:
and what does this sign mean? In four minutes you’ll lay an egg?
Wow, thanks for checking back in after I’ve been sitting over here in the dark for so long. Needless to say we are looking for a new internet service provider, but that will take as long as everything else does here. Reminder: 34th least developed country in the world.
We got our stuff! Some of it anyway. After not seeing or hearing about our household effects for FOUR months, Friday I came home, after picking up kids from school, and there was a flatbed truck containing two containers! We have six more to come! We happily unpacked laundry detergent and art supplies and books and our very own dishes and waaaaaaay too many shoes, all of which will be ruined by the sand here, or will fall into comas in the closet, to emerge in two years unworn and out of style. Unpacking our stuff I had the weirdest reaction: homesickness for Portland. While we are just camping in the house it didn’t seem like we really moved here, having cookbooks from the Reed College Place kitchen and paintings show up seems so radical: a misplacement, a "These don’t go here," feeling.
Meanwhile, it’s almost Thanksgiving and we are wearing flip-flops everyday. The kids say the water in the pool is getting cold. The swim instructor said no one really takes lessons until February, when it starts warming up. Babies wear woolen hats now. Today’s high: a chilly 95 degrees.
The marines that work at the embassies are chosen from the top 1% of their class, and the training program to work at an embassy has a 70% attrition rate. The guys who let us through the door into the embassy are literally the few and we are so proud of them, especially since most of them are young enough to be our children. I hate that.
Last night was the Marine Corps Ball–the biggest dress up event for the diplomatic community of the year. The event was at the ambassador’s residence. Sit down dinner for probably 100 of us, then a ceremony to celebrate the Marine Corp’s 231st birthday, with a cake cut with a sword. There are probably not too many places that get to have the event outside, and last night was perfect, balmy, the plumaria trees scenting the air. The haze in the air down by the river at sunset is so atmospheric, with a drink in hand and some funny friends here, we had fun. (Note to friends at home: they are really boring and not really fun at all and the only good thing about them is that they would be the first to admit this. Actuallly, they are adorable, and you would love them too. She’s from Finland, for goodness sake.)
Thanks U.S. Marines and especially the Marine Security Guards Embassy Niamey for a great party.
I think kids had a good time with a kid’s party and being driven from house to house for trick-or-treating. We miss, miss, miss our friends at home, and we are also missing the chill in the air. The thermometer in the outside screened-in porch at the party read 90 something. I was looking at teas for sale online and saw one called Africa Autumn. Um, as far as I can see, Africa doesn’t really have an autumn, but it is a good idea, and should be taken into serious consideration.
Down at the base of the Kennedy bridge you can go buy “les gourdes.” Peter and I got five big ones for $14, and are still talking about it.
Well, it was nice while it lasted. They are coming tomorrow to take the router, an essential part of this connection. They are offering to rent us a $100 router for $60 a week, or sell it to us for $360. Arrrgg. So we are buying a router from the US, but it’ll take at least two weeks to get here.
So it’s back to the clo lounge for my internet activity for a couple weeks.
Camille starts horse back riding lessons tomorrow after school. There is a tree at the equestrian center with four different bird species living in it–some kind of huge herons with nests made of sticks, bright green parrots, some kind of black birds and most amazing: yellow birds that have built hundreds of hanging nests. It’s a marvel. I just quadrupled my life-time bird list.
Meanwhile, where is my mother?
After working all day as a housekeeper/nanny for an American family, and cooking for a couple other people on the weekends, Tina bakes. Someone who works at the embassy and appreciates her dedication and hard work just bought her her first stove with four burners. Everyone thinks she should just bake, she is so good. She makes banana bread, zucchini bread, cookies and all kinds of other baked goods: she is the only source in the whole country for these and many other items, unless you want to make them yourself. Here she is delivering our standing order for tortillas, bagles and whole wheat bread. Pay her $2 taxi fare and she delivers the baked goods to your door. She is 24 years old and has five children. She was married at age 13.
Looks like we may be online from home, after four days of a crew of guys installing a very tall flag pole next to our house, then trying to configure the mac, the first one they’ve ever worked on, I’m sure. One guy laid down and took a nap at one point. I have not been feeling too celebratory because they can’t get our laptop nor our next-door-neighbor’s laptop to respond to the wi-fi signal that is going out for a quarter mile. But I guess I should cheer up: bon arrivé internet.
There’s a little cognitive dissonance when I read about celebrity rubber ducks being auctioned, or even when we go out to dinner, then step outside into sand roads and donkeys and women in headscarves down to their knees. Oh that’s right, we’re still in Niger.
As my first at-home at last project, I posted a batch of pictures to flickr–click on the teeny photos over there >>> and down a bit, and you will be directed and subjected to my photostream thingy. I’m living for your comments, remember.
When Mike and Emily were living in San Francisco they pointed out the frustrating lack of seasons in the land of fog. The seasons are subtle in San Franciso, but they exist: the light changes and there are pumpkins in the stores. In Portland, Oregon, like the east coast, autumn is in your face. Leaves FILLING the streets, the trees blazing with color, and it starts to get cold–our first year there Camille had to wear a sweater (a kid’s cashmere sweater! I had bought it used at the Town School for Boys store on Sactamento Street in San Francisco) under her Halloween costume.
Here there is nothing, season-wise. The land that time forgot. It’s still summer. I head out the door for my little trot around the stadium at 9:15 am and say to myself, wow, it’s 90 degrees. Stefan wants to be a tiger or an elephant for Halloween, and I’m afraid any costume like that will be too hot. The trees are same, the lizards are the same. In Portland, spider webs suddenly appear, like the spiders got the memo about Halloween.
They do have pumpkins here, they are big and green. Unlike the Leshers, Elisabeth’s parents who lived in Cameroon, we won’t get to make a calabash-jack-o-lantern that lasts 40 years.
twenty-something years of "what have you been up to?" 