Tomorrow, my roommate and I are moving to another house about two miles away, because the owners of our house are coming home from Germany.
I'm pretty happy about the move, because the new house has a bigger, nicer garden and is a little further out of town. I think it will be peaceful there, but I will miss my first African home.
Sunday evening, Sarah and I ate supper on our back porch and watched the fruit bats fly over the yard one last time. Every night, the bats fly from across the city, headed northeast. I'm not sure where they're going, but it's always interesting to watch them. I have tried to take pictures, in spite of the darkness and the distance. I'll post some if any turn out to be in focus.
I don't know if the bats will fly over the new house. Probably they will at least show up when the mangos ripen. Although I may like them less under those circumstances.
Tuesday, December 22, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
Things that I miss
1. Shredded (not powdered!) parmesan cheese
2. Fall weather
3. Trick-or-treaters crunching through the leaves
4. Ghirardelli chocolate chips
5. Amazon.com (I can look, but...)
6. My car
7. Romano cheese
8. Hagen-Dazs
9. My kitty
10. Fall drives in the mountains. I don't get all worked up about the colors, but it's nice to visit with the people who do.
11. Any kind of halfway decent cheese that costs less than $8--I can get caviar for the same price as cream cheese here.
12. Pizza
13. Crusty French bread
14. Ghirardelli brownie mix
15. Barnes & Noble
16. Wal-Mart
17. And all of you people
Happy Halloween!
2. Fall weather
3. Trick-or-treaters crunching through the leaves
4. Ghirardelli chocolate chips
5. Amazon.com (I can look, but...)
6. My car
7. Romano cheese
8. Hagen-Dazs
9. My kitty
10. Fall drives in the mountains. I don't get all worked up about the colors, but it's nice to visit with the people who do.
11. Any kind of halfway decent cheese that costs less than $8--I can get caviar for the same price as cream cheese here.
12. Pizza
13. Crusty French bread
14. Ghirardelli brownie mix
15. Barnes & Noble
16. Wal-Mart
17. And all of you people
Happy Halloween!
Monday, October 19, 2009
Three weeks in
Amazingly enough, I have been in Africa for nearly a month.
Having gotten past my initial panic, I'm back to being really excited about the time I'm going to spend here, although I'm still a little daunted by how much I have yet to learn. Today I will have my first language lesson in Chichewa--hopefully that will go well.
On Friday, I walked into town to to buy credit for my cell phone from a street vendor and to commission a skirt from a sidewalk tailor. This routine (though not for me) errand was interrupted by an interesting citizens' arrest drama.
Just as my friend Mary and I were leaving the tailor's table, a young man came flying down the hill chased by another man yelling something in Chichewa. He rounded the corner and was kicked by a bystander, nearly falling in the path of a (slow) moving truck. He bounced right back up, but the moment he was on the ground was long enough for two more men to get close enough to grab him. A third man darted across the street from one of the shops on our side and, surprisingly, handcuffed the fugitive.
By this time people were swarming around the kid, all chattering in raised voices, although not exactly shouting. The mob marched him back up the hill, headed who knows where.
Mary asked someone what the shouting people were saying, and learned that the young man was accused of stealing cell phone credit from a vendor. The vendors stand on the corner wearing tunics with the name of the phone company they represent, and they sell little scratch-off tickets with a code that you enter into your phone to add more minutes.
Since he wasn't in uniform, I assume the man with the cuffs was a shop owner who has had occasion to take the law into his own hands before.
Other than that one kick to keep him from getting away, the mob wasn't particularly violent. Hopefully they stayed that way.
Having gotten past my initial panic, I'm back to being really excited about the time I'm going to spend here, although I'm still a little daunted by how much I have yet to learn. Today I will have my first language lesson in Chichewa--hopefully that will go well.
On Friday, I walked into town to to buy credit for my cell phone from a street vendor and to commission a skirt from a sidewalk tailor. This routine (though not for me) errand was interrupted by an interesting citizens' arrest drama.
Just as my friend Mary and I were leaving the tailor's table, a young man came flying down the hill chased by another man yelling something in Chichewa. He rounded the corner and was kicked by a bystander, nearly falling in the path of a (slow) moving truck. He bounced right back up, but the moment he was on the ground was long enough for two more men to get close enough to grab him. A third man darted across the street from one of the shops on our side and, surprisingly, handcuffed the fugitive.
By this time people were swarming around the kid, all chattering in raised voices, although not exactly shouting. The mob marched him back up the hill, headed who knows where.
Mary asked someone what the shouting people were saying, and learned that the young man was accused of stealing cell phone credit from a vendor. The vendors stand on the corner wearing tunics with the name of the phone company they represent, and they sell little scratch-off tickets with a code that you enter into your phone to add more minutes.
Since he wasn't in uniform, I assume the man with the cuffs was a shop owner who has had occasion to take the law into his own hands before.
Other than that one kick to keep him from getting away, the mob wasn't particularly violent. Hopefully they stayed that way.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)