30 April, 2008

Some Zakayo Pics

We're teaching him how to drive... and he's making progress





Apparently he doesn't like the look of himself in the mirror

Mzee

I now look like a young man of 28.

That’s what our head cook told me in his broken English (which is a lot better now than it was when I first came to Sudan in February of 2007) when I first donned the clean-shaven look. Apparently, with the beard and moustache, Levy thought I appeared to be 42 years old. Glad to know that I now only look 28. Wow. 42!

I hope that I haven’t aged that much in the last year. I used to always be told that I look younger than my actual age, but suddenly it’s a couple years older. I guess I’ve just gotten a lot of life experience in the last couple of years and am maturing. If I start acting 42 years old, someone please hit me really, really hard and tell me to stop it.

A Good Day

Monday was a really good day. It was just one of those days when things seemed to go really well, and it felt nice.

We were planning to send 300 bags of cement to a site first thing in the morning, and that usually doesn’t go all that smooth. But Monday morning was different. Right after devotions, I let everyone know we were going to be sending out the cement, and that everyone would get to help (“get to” is a bit of a misnomer). So, we took tea and then at 8:30 we started loading the trailers. One got loaded and off and then another. We had a bit of a break after the second load, and then got to the third one of 100 bags. It was incredible as we finished by 10am. I wouldn’t have been surprised had it taken until lunch (1pm). So, I ran to town and picked up a crate of Coke and Fanta and we had another bit of a break to share in some drinks.

I spent the rest of the morning getting some paperwork taken care of and email sent, and the rest of the staff got to their business also. We ended up getting having some productive meetings with leaders of a few different communities we’re working with, got transportation for resources at another site, and began transporting at a church site that is quite far away and we’ve had difficulty coordinating with up until now.

We needed some water on the compound around the end of the day as we’re making cement block here right now, and since our driver is at a training right now I took the LandCruiser to the dam to fill up a couple tanks of water. After loading, a couple of the guys wanted to bathe since the area doubles as a nice, big bath tub. So, while they were bathing, I decided to go for a swim in the big reservoir that results from the dam. It was just a nice end to a nice, productive day.
There wasn’t anything big, but a combination of a lot of productive things, a nice Coke, and a dip in the lake made Monday a really good day.

Hope you each have a good day however that might look where you are.

26 April, 2008

My new friend

I’ve gotten the first pet I’ve had since my family had goldfish when I was back in elementary school. I wasn’t even really a fan of the goldfish back then, but I won them at Meijer by throwing a ping pong ball into the little goldfish bowl, so they really meant something to me for those few weeks before they died. Of course, my body has been a host to many parasites over the past year, but I’m not sure that qualifies as animals and I definitely don’t count them as pets.

I must say that my new pet is much cooler than goldfish ever were or will be, and I don’t know that I will ever be able to top Zakayo (the local name for Zacheus). I bought the little monkey two weeks ago now, and although he stayed in my tent with me for the first couple nights, he’s since moved to be a completely outdoor pet. All of our staff love him as he likes to try to fight most of us and it’s always enjoyable to see when the hen that we have gets near him because he actually does fight with her since they’re around the same size.

I don’t know how big he grows to be, but it doesn’t seem like he’s gotten any bigger in the time he’s been with us. It’s not that he doesn’t eat. He loves mango, guava and palm nuts, and we have a tree of each of those on the compound he’s able to get food from. Plus, he enjoys eating ugali, rice, and biscuits which we do give him from our lunch every day. I’m not sure how long it will take to fatten him up to the point where we can eat him. People do eat monkey around here, but I told all our staff that he’s too small right now and that we have to wait until he’s big enough to feed at least 5 people before we can think about cooking him up.

09 April, 2008

April Fools

I've been on a bit of a hiatus from blogging. I've got a few experiences I should have updated about over the past month, but have not. Unfortunately, I've been hooked on Prison Break. When I lived in Anderson with my buddy Nick, he got me interested in the show and I saw several episodes from the first season. After that, though, I never really got a chance to watch more. Then, over Christmas when I was in Nairobi following the elections and limited in ability to move about, I saw the complete first season of the show. I got my hands on the second season a little over 2 weeks ago, and over the last 2 weeks I spent most of my free time watching the 22 episodes of season two (I have also played a good bit of volleyball at a local court with some of the free time also), and so I've allowed communication to slip quite a bit.

But, other than recommending the show Prison Break as an on the edge of your seat thriller (maybe it really is good, maybe I've just been in Sudan too long...), I thought I should inform everyone who's interested of my compliance with the wishes of the voters on the blog. Although I wanted to use the excuse of not having 20 votes as a reason why I didn't have to shave off my moustache, with 11 out of 13 votes being in favor of shaving completely, even had 7 more people voted, it would have been impossible for anything else to win in the voting. So, although I'm not posting any pictures of the new look, I have shaved all my facial hair. It has been a bit odd after having the moustache since December of 2006 to go clean, but I'm getting used to it again. I'm not sure how long I will last, though.

I don't know that I can even end with a nice Joe Dirt quote without any facial hair. Instead, I'll leave you with a word from Michael Scott: "Society teaches us that having feelings and crying is bad and wrong. Well, that's baloney, because grief isn't wrong. There's such a thing as good grief. Just ask Charlie Brown."