I haven't been too up to date on saying:
Congradulations to Mark and Jen! Yeah your married!
And Most Recently to Nick and Amanda on the recent Gerkin addition! Lucky baby!
Let the dotting Aunt and Uncle type stuff begin!
Ok, it only took me about a month and a half, but I finished Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. It is a unique read especially in this kind of society and setting that I am in now. Philosophy quotes like, "Drifters and physical laborers live and plan by the range of a day. The better the mind, the longer the range. A man whose vision extends to a shanty, might continue to build on your quicksands, to grab a fast profit and run. A man who envisions skyscrapers, will not." In relation to daily rural living.
"He thought of all the living species that train their young in the art of survival, the cats who teach their kittens to hunt, the birds who spend such strident effort on teaching their fledglings to fly-yet man, whose tool of survival is the mind, does not merely fail to teach a child to think, but devotes the child's education to the purpose of destroying his brain, of convincing him that thought is futile and evil, before he has started to think." In relation to education
"From the first carch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. "
This in realation to things like the essential conflict between the western style education trying to be pushed here, with even the accompanyment of standardized test that are way beyond their comprehension that are taught in schools where to really know and undestand what they are supposed to know they must be good thinkers, questioners. But when the students go home they are expected never to question, to always obey anyone that is older than them, and to do things the way they have always been done, not because they are necessarily good and could be done no better, but because no one has been allowed to think of how to make it better. Even with Western education they have no hope to actually learn it fully, so they apply the same methods of "learning" as they do to things like memorizing the Koran, repeating anything the teacher, the religious leader says with no understanding of what it means. This can also explain why grown men, men that have been supposidly been practicing their religion for their entire lives since they were old enough to walk with their brothers to the mosque, have to cheat (and get caught) their way through their islamic knowledge test using crypt notes.
Sorry I didn't mean to go on and on about this kind of stuff, I guess once I get going... Though it may sound like it, I am not dissolutioned, but in fact, (with the gift of my strong stubborness) keep pounding away, the only ways I know how. And, by luck, and a mixture of others things, have had great successes so far.
Speaking of which, the library has continued being a draw for the children in our compound. They look forward to it every week. In fact I am sure that word has gotten out to the other kids in the neighborhood, because they have come up to me, and just say, "Borry,.. book!" For now I am adamant that it stay within our compound, for several reasons. I know the people here more personally than anyone (that is especially important when it comes to enforcing the rules with the parents on your side), also because there aren't that many books right now and there are a lot of kids in the neighborhood!, and most strongly, that the kids in this compound through earlier efforts have been sensitized to books before the library started. Not to say that it has all been glorious, there have been a couple of children in particular that have had their priveleges suspended because they let something happen to the book in their possession, but if something has happened to it, they all repeat the consequences for the person because they know what happens,.. "two weeks, two weeks",.. in which they can't have a book.
As soon as I finished Atlas Shrugged, I went on to a less serious, but seriously funny book, I'm A Stranger Here Myself, by Bill Bryson. Short little snippets on funny experiences when he moves back to America after having been in England for a long time. Sometimes when I'm reading them I think,... hmm.. I wonder if we will go on a crazy junk food binge like he did?.. among other things.
Well, I guess that's it for now,.. this weekend I plan to do fun stuff like, clean the water filter, redip the bednets, fill some sandbags... and oh yeah,.. laundry... whoohoo!
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Copied from journal entry Sunday June 29th
Starting Friday night it was an eventful weekend. As I sit here on the front porch, after bathing, feeling nice and clean and comfortable I think about the past few days, feel the weight of my tired body and appreciate the time to relax. I see thousands of flying (termites) fill the compound from the ground up. This is wonderful for the chickens. MoLamin just came to me to say hello and then ran off to join Buba in an attempt to stomp, or catch the flying insects. He runs along in a weird stomping run that seems to take a great deal of effort to do. The sky is wonderfully blue with great white clouds around-the blue sky is always startling and refreshing after a storm. I just now spot a fluffy grey cloud that may bring more rain, but that would not be a particularly good thing for some people right now. That’s because yesterday we had our first day of rain that set off some destruction in some parts of the neighbourhood.
But first back to Friday night in a fairly unrelated story. Lately, the cats that just hang lazily around the door frames of our back latrine area have been accompanied by some kittens again. They all just sleep somewhat precariously during the sweltering heat of the day until evening, when they disappear. The mother must move the kittens back and forth between the back areas of the rows of flats. On Friday morning there was one kitten that I hadn’t seen before up on the roof looking down at me meowing. Meanwhile all of the other cats had already assumed their positions on the door frames and weren’t minding it. So I picked it up and put it on the door frame with the others. Later Friday, Andy alerted me that the kitten was now in the shower area on the ground, cowering behind a bucket. But, believing that the cats would tend to it, I left it alone. In the evening I saw the kitten in the back where we do our gardening projects. When night time came around and it was the only cat there, I was worried that it had been deserted. After some hesitation, I gave it some milk (my basic policy is not to feed the cats there, but they still come), and went to bed. In the middle of the night rain came-not too heavy-just a little-but enough to wet the back shed area with a few puddles. Of course, as always, when the rain started I had to go to the latrine. As I was doing my business I heard a strange mangled cat sound. When I was finished I went to look where the kitten was before and saw it lying in a puddle. I immediately thought it was dead and the strange noise I had heard was its last. But as I stood there it rose like a zombie and made still more strange sounds, all the while shaking throughout it’s body. Andy had gotten up when he heard me call and was standing there sharing in my horror. We then discussed that perhaps the kitten had rabies. After a moment more of watching as the kitten shook and shuttered we decided that we should just let nature take its course and went to get back in bed. I felt unable to sleep and read for a while until my mind stopped going to the place where it was thinking about this poor little creature suffering and dying a few meters from where we slept.
In the morning I got up and fully prepared myself for the fact that I would find the kitten in the place we had left it, dead. But I was astonished to find it still suffered-huddling its body near the wall. We went through our morning routine thinking it was better for it to die in peace back there, away from the small children that would most likely cause it more pain and suffering. The turn to get water fell to me and as I headed to the tap the rain started again, and after filling up only one bucket I was standing out there in the pouring rain. I stopped and waited out on the porch enjoying the first heavy daytime rain. It seems so relaxing when it comes and each family is on their respective porches. We wave to each other, sometimes try to yell though the noise of the rain on corrugate roof, but it’s kind of like we are on our own little island and can see each other but are unwilling to venture out through the compound that becomes our "moat". At one point Aleiu was sent out in the rain to gather a chicken and it’s chick and try to make it go under the porch. It was out running around the compound freakin out from the rain-chickens really don’t like rain. As the compound filled with streams and puddles of water Alieu chased the chicken. Around and around, circling the middle mango tree, getting close, losing it again, stomping through puddles, trying not to slip and fall in his slide sandals.
Meanwhile Jalika is on their “island” laughing and I’m on ours laughing at the spectacle, and at how Alieu is maintaining a straight face for the 3 minutes or so that he is chasing the chicken and it’s chick around. Finally he got it on the porch. After breakfast Andy came out and I joined him on the porch again to enjoy the rain with our cups of tea. We stood at times watching the happenings in the compound and noticed that Sanussi sent Alieu and Alhagie to the compound door-apparently water was gushing in from the street and they were attempting to place cement blocks in front of it on the compound side, essentially barring anyone from opening the door. This, we soon saw, was a good thing, because as Sanussi climbed the rubble pile of cement blocks in the corner of the compound he was able to look out over the street and neighbourhood. Andy and Ndea accompanied him and what they saw was the entire street flooded and moving like a river through it but being blocked somewhere where our street met the main road. This sort of thing had never happened last year to this extent and I was shocked to look and see only about an inch of space left on the external blocks before the water would be able to come in through the spaces in the big compound gate. But hey, I wasn’t really worried yet.
As I was walking back from the rubble pile our neighbours come out with a bucket full of water from their house and dumped it into the compound, next thing I know the people down at the end are doing the same thing, and people are running with pickaxes to the back of their house. Then Sanussi yells to Andy to check to see if water is coming in our back. I walked in the house, went to the door that goes out back in the kitchen and watched in disbelief for a second while water was coming in somehow through the spaces in our metal door and flowing through the screen door. I ran back out and said “yes! Its coming!” then ran back in and started to try to get some things out of the way. At that point I didn’t really realize the extend of the water in the back and was only trying to find a few crucial things from the back rooms into the front living room, just in case. Family members were coming in and out asking “Borry, it’s coming? Water is coming in?” Like they didn’t believe it either even though they were standing there as I am going through the rooms trying to remove things. As more water started to come in and gather in the low points of the back rooms (the bedroom and the kitchen) we all started to get buckets to fill. The entire family was in there helping, from 4 year olds to people I didn’t even know. I grabbed more pots off the shelf in the kitchen and started filling up the bigger buckets. After minutes of shovelling water in the kitchen I went back to the bedroom and realized that it was coming in more there. By that point we had started taken all the things from the front rooms that we had moved first and were putting them on the front porch. At some point it turned into a more dire situation for our possessions and everything in the house started going out front.
It is funny the things that happen in that kind of situation, things that people do or say and things you notice or remember from it. Andy was helping shovel water and then at one point started going around trying to find the camera in the messy jumble of our things but was unable to locate it in the craziness. At another point I just looked at Fatou Matta and started laughing, I guess at the craziness of the situation. We were going back and forth with giant laundry tubs of water, emptying them out into the compound and coming back. Coming back from one of the runs I came into the kitchen and the “linoleum” type floor covering the last volunteer had put down was floating; it was like trying to walk on water trying to step on it. MoLamin is walking around trying to help, seriously concerned for the safety of the toilet paper tubes and boxes he uses as blocks, Molado is in there with her little bucket trying to fill it, the entire compound was in there helping. After a morning of bucket brigade, we started to try to soak of the last of the water with towels and to pull up and roll out the “linoleum”. Ndea was a expert cleaner and whipped the bedroom into shape where Andy and I are still like,.. “How did she do that!?” When we were looking for towels or rags to soak up water MoLamin, who had two shirts on that morning because it got “cold” with the rain, first took off his long sleeve and started to clean up with that, then took off his second one and was pointing out that he looked like Andy who had in the course of things taken off his shirt because of the shear amount of sweat and heat he was producing from filling and carrying buckets.
When we were finally able to get the back doors open. Along with some random things floating there was our poor little sick kitten, “a faata le” (it died). Andy discreetly carried it out in a plastic bag while I was out on the street and put it in a currently unused garden plot nearby.
Now, stop and think a minute about how the back of our house area is situated. There is about 3 feet of space between that area and our house. In the back in one cubby-like space is the pit latrine and separated from that by a wall in another cubby area is the shower area, then under a corrugate roof there is open space where we have some small potted plants that we are working on. When the water came in from the street and the back, it filled the pit latrine, and the water that came out of there and mixed with the other water from the street. Yep…that’s right, we were sloshing through sh%* water. Gross. Luckily the concrete lid kept anything from getting out that was unable to seep out.
The amazing thing is, that this all happened in the morning and by lunch time everything was basically cleaned up, by a little after lunch we brought some things back into the house. And by an hour past lunch we had showered, and Andy and I were on our way, with Ndea, to Fatou Bintou’s end of the year sort of awards ceremony. When we sat down in the chair for the couple of hours of ceremony it was the first time I had sat down all morning, and it was hard to think of all that had just happened in our house just that morning.
The major cause of the flood (that was much worse for some people in the neighbourhood with chest high water) was the lack of good engineering in new structure build by the main street to help with the water retention situation on our street. Some of the men in the neighbourhood had taken to the street by climbing over their fences, waded through the water with pickaxes and shovels and went to the end to try to help the water flow into this idiotically built structure.
Coming back from Fatou Bintou’s ceremony in the evening, we started back on getting the house together again. The great thing about it is, a lot of the things that we had been meaning to get rid of but didn’t have a reason except we just didn’t’ want it anymore, were thrown out because they had gotten soaked with yucky water. Our floors got a good cleaning. We gave away the “linoleum” that Andy hated anyhow. Did a little rearranging and are much happier with our bare concrete floors in all the rooms now. And I pointed out how glad I am that Andy and I are the kind of couple that can clearly communicate with each other even in those kinds of situations. No one was getting frustrated at each other or biting each others head off because of the stress of the situation. We are also thankful for the lack of washers and dryers, major electrical appliances, carpet, etc. Because it made the clean up much easier and with the help of our amazing! family we were completely back to normal in a cleaner house than before on Sunday.
Starting Friday night it was an eventful weekend. As I sit here on the front porch, after bathing, feeling nice and clean and comfortable I think about the past few days, feel the weight of my tired body and appreciate the time to relax. I see thousands of flying (termites) fill the compound from the ground up. This is wonderful for the chickens. MoLamin just came to me to say hello and then ran off to join Buba in an attempt to stomp, or catch the flying insects. He runs along in a weird stomping run that seems to take a great deal of effort to do. The sky is wonderfully blue with great white clouds around-the blue sky is always startling and refreshing after a storm. I just now spot a fluffy grey cloud that may bring more rain, but that would not be a particularly good thing for some people right now. That’s because yesterday we had our first day of rain that set off some destruction in some parts of the neighbourhood.
But first back to Friday night in a fairly unrelated story. Lately, the cats that just hang lazily around the door frames of our back latrine area have been accompanied by some kittens again. They all just sleep somewhat precariously during the sweltering heat of the day until evening, when they disappear. The mother must move the kittens back and forth between the back areas of the rows of flats. On Friday morning there was one kitten that I hadn’t seen before up on the roof looking down at me meowing. Meanwhile all of the other cats had already assumed their positions on the door frames and weren’t minding it. So I picked it up and put it on the door frame with the others. Later Friday, Andy alerted me that the kitten was now in the shower area on the ground, cowering behind a bucket. But, believing that the cats would tend to it, I left it alone. In the evening I saw the kitten in the back where we do our gardening projects. When night time came around and it was the only cat there, I was worried that it had been deserted. After some hesitation, I gave it some milk (my basic policy is not to feed the cats there, but they still come), and went to bed. In the middle of the night rain came-not too heavy-just a little-but enough to wet the back shed area with a few puddles. Of course, as always, when the rain started I had to go to the latrine. As I was doing my business I heard a strange mangled cat sound. When I was finished I went to look where the kitten was before and saw it lying in a puddle. I immediately thought it was dead and the strange noise I had heard was its last. But as I stood there it rose like a zombie and made still more strange sounds, all the while shaking throughout it’s body. Andy had gotten up when he heard me call and was standing there sharing in my horror. We then discussed that perhaps the kitten had rabies. After a moment more of watching as the kitten shook and shuttered we decided that we should just let nature take its course and went to get back in bed. I felt unable to sleep and read for a while until my mind stopped going to the place where it was thinking about this poor little creature suffering and dying a few meters from where we slept.
In the morning I got up and fully prepared myself for the fact that I would find the kitten in the place we had left it, dead. But I was astonished to find it still suffered-huddling its body near the wall. We went through our morning routine thinking it was better for it to die in peace back there, away from the small children that would most likely cause it more pain and suffering. The turn to get water fell to me and as I headed to the tap the rain started again, and after filling up only one bucket I was standing out there in the pouring rain. I stopped and waited out on the porch enjoying the first heavy daytime rain. It seems so relaxing when it comes and each family is on their respective porches. We wave to each other, sometimes try to yell though the noise of the rain on corrugate roof, but it’s kind of like we are on our own little island and can see each other but are unwilling to venture out through the compound that becomes our "moat". At one point Aleiu was sent out in the rain to gather a chicken and it’s chick and try to make it go under the porch. It was out running around the compound freakin out from the rain-chickens really don’t like rain. As the compound filled with streams and puddles of water Alieu chased the chicken. Around and around, circling the middle mango tree, getting close, losing it again, stomping through puddles, trying not to slip and fall in his slide sandals.
Meanwhile Jalika is on their “island” laughing and I’m on ours laughing at the spectacle, and at how Alieu is maintaining a straight face for the 3 minutes or so that he is chasing the chicken and it’s chick around. Finally he got it on the porch. After breakfast Andy came out and I joined him on the porch again to enjoy the rain with our cups of tea. We stood at times watching the happenings in the compound and noticed that Sanussi sent Alieu and Alhagie to the compound door-apparently water was gushing in from the street and they were attempting to place cement blocks in front of it on the compound side, essentially barring anyone from opening the door. This, we soon saw, was a good thing, because as Sanussi climbed the rubble pile of cement blocks in the corner of the compound he was able to look out over the street and neighbourhood. Andy and Ndea accompanied him and what they saw was the entire street flooded and moving like a river through it but being blocked somewhere where our street met the main road. This sort of thing had never happened last year to this extent and I was shocked to look and see only about an inch of space left on the external blocks before the water would be able to come in through the spaces in the big compound gate. But hey, I wasn’t really worried yet.
As I was walking back from the rubble pile our neighbours come out with a bucket full of water from their house and dumped it into the compound, next thing I know the people down at the end are doing the same thing, and people are running with pickaxes to the back of their house. Then Sanussi yells to Andy to check to see if water is coming in our back. I walked in the house, went to the door that goes out back in the kitchen and watched in disbelief for a second while water was coming in somehow through the spaces in our metal door and flowing through the screen door. I ran back out and said “yes! Its coming!” then ran back in and started to try to get some things out of the way. At that point I didn’t really realize the extend of the water in the back and was only trying to find a few crucial things from the back rooms into the front living room, just in case. Family members were coming in and out asking “Borry, it’s coming? Water is coming in?” Like they didn’t believe it either even though they were standing there as I am going through the rooms trying to remove things. As more water started to come in and gather in the low points of the back rooms (the bedroom and the kitchen) we all started to get buckets to fill. The entire family was in there helping, from 4 year olds to people I didn’t even know. I grabbed more pots off the shelf in the kitchen and started filling up the bigger buckets. After minutes of shovelling water in the kitchen I went back to the bedroom and realized that it was coming in more there. By that point we had started taken all the things from the front rooms that we had moved first and were putting them on the front porch. At some point it turned into a more dire situation for our possessions and everything in the house started going out front.
It is funny the things that happen in that kind of situation, things that people do or say and things you notice or remember from it. Andy was helping shovel water and then at one point started going around trying to find the camera in the messy jumble of our things but was unable to locate it in the craziness. At another point I just looked at Fatou Matta and started laughing, I guess at the craziness of the situation. We were going back and forth with giant laundry tubs of water, emptying them out into the compound and coming back. Coming back from one of the runs I came into the kitchen and the “linoleum” type floor covering the last volunteer had put down was floating; it was like trying to walk on water trying to step on it. MoLamin is walking around trying to help, seriously concerned for the safety of the toilet paper tubes and boxes he uses as blocks, Molado is in there with her little bucket trying to fill it, the entire compound was in there helping. After a morning of bucket brigade, we started to try to soak of the last of the water with towels and to pull up and roll out the “linoleum”. Ndea was a expert cleaner and whipped the bedroom into shape where Andy and I are still like,.. “How did she do that!?” When we were looking for towels or rags to soak up water MoLamin, who had two shirts on that morning because it got “cold” with the rain, first took off his long sleeve and started to clean up with that, then took off his second one and was pointing out that he looked like Andy who had in the course of things taken off his shirt because of the shear amount of sweat and heat he was producing from filling and carrying buckets.
When we were finally able to get the back doors open. Along with some random things floating there was our poor little sick kitten, “a faata le” (it died). Andy discreetly carried it out in a plastic bag while I was out on the street and put it in a currently unused garden plot nearby.
Now, stop and think a minute about how the back of our house area is situated. There is about 3 feet of space between that area and our house. In the back in one cubby-like space is the pit latrine and separated from that by a wall in another cubby area is the shower area, then under a corrugate roof there is open space where we have some small potted plants that we are working on. When the water came in from the street and the back, it filled the pit latrine, and the water that came out of there and mixed with the other water from the street. Yep…that’s right, we were sloshing through sh%* water. Gross. Luckily the concrete lid kept anything from getting out that was unable to seep out.
The amazing thing is, that this all happened in the morning and by lunch time everything was basically cleaned up, by a little after lunch we brought some things back into the house. And by an hour past lunch we had showered, and Andy and I were on our way, with Ndea, to Fatou Bintou’s end of the year sort of awards ceremony. When we sat down in the chair for the couple of hours of ceremony it was the first time I had sat down all morning, and it was hard to think of all that had just happened in our house just that morning.
The major cause of the flood (that was much worse for some people in the neighbourhood with chest high water) was the lack of good engineering in new structure build by the main street to help with the water retention situation on our street. Some of the men in the neighbourhood had taken to the street by climbing over their fences, waded through the water with pickaxes and shovels and went to the end to try to help the water flow into this idiotically built structure.
Coming back from Fatou Bintou’s ceremony in the evening, we started back on getting the house together again. The great thing about it is, a lot of the things that we had been meaning to get rid of but didn’t have a reason except we just didn’t’ want it anymore, were thrown out because they had gotten soaked with yucky water. Our floors got a good cleaning. We gave away the “linoleum” that Andy hated anyhow. Did a little rearranging and are much happier with our bare concrete floors in all the rooms now. And I pointed out how glad I am that Andy and I are the kind of couple that can clearly communicate with each other even in those kinds of situations. No one was getting frustrated at each other or biting each others head off because of the stress of the situation. We are also thankful for the lack of washers and dryers, major electrical appliances, carpet, etc. Because it made the clean up much easier and with the help of our amazing! family we were completely back to normal in a cleaner house than before on Sunday.
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