I Got Rabbits!

So, boredom and loneliness have brought me rabbits. My new pets are currently busy nibbling their carrots and recovering from what I'm sure was a terrifying day.

They spent most the day spent cramped up in a small cardboard box alongside four others. I think they traveled pretty far that way. And it was a hot day, so they looked pretty gross when we first met. But, within the last three hours that we've been together, they seem to be adjusting and they're even looking cleaner. I still need to take a close look at them and pick out any bugs stuck in their fur.

The rabbits gave me many errands to busy myself with today. I tracked down a future home for them and found a good plastic orange crate, but my host cousin fell through on his promise of bringing it over this evening. So, their current residence is inside a cardboard box. He also helped me gather some weeds to feed them (we discovered a basil plant together and I forced him to take a bite out of one the leaves...people don't use basil here!), but most of them had these tiny thistles in them, which all got stuck to my clothes, and then I got into a heated discussion with some people outside my house about weeds. I guess rabbits hate weeds. They prefer carrot and mint leaves.

After picking all the thistles off my shirt and pants, I visited the vegetable man to get some carrots. When I asked him if rabbits eat the tops of green onions, he and his son laughed at me for a good five minutes. Apparently, everyone knows what rabbits eat and so it was hilarious that the American girl was asking about this. He then grabbed a handful of carrot tops to give me, but when I got home I discovered he also threw in some garbage as well.

This whole rabbit endeavor was the doing of my friend Kabira. I had been complaining to her earlier today about how I am lonely and will probably end up an old maid, and I guess her solution to this problem was rabbits. This afternoon, her mother arrived with a box full of rabbits and they decided they would make a good gift for me. One would be too cruel, best not to be lonely like me, so two were given to me. I'm not sure if baby bunnies are someday in this pair's future, but I think once they get a little bigger, it should be more clear.

Down Time

So, it seems the entire month of January has been one long vacation for students in Morocco. There was the new year, the Muslim new year, and independence day; all national holidays with no school or work. Then, there was a few days of school, but shortly after came the week-long exams. No school during exam week. The following week the students had off as well, waiting for teachers to correct the exams. Then, yesterday began the 11-day long mid-winter holiday break. Needless to say, when there is no school, there are no kids at Dar Chebab.

Even though I know this is true, I still find myself going to the Dar Chebab every day, hoping that maybe one stray kid will show up and want to hang out with me. I feel so desperate. Yesterday, I waited alone for over an hour, watching a cat clean itself, when a student happened to pass by and I guilted him into playing ping pong with me.

This coming week I won't even bother going to work, because there is no chance of anybody showing up. (Well, I say that now, but I know I will go...hoping...) I'm getting pretty bored. A few days ago I made the mistake of cooking enough flour tortillas and taco meat to last me a week. So, even though I am crazy about tacos, I hit my limit. I baked and ate an entire chocolate cake. I entertained friends. Visited my friends. Visited the farm. Bought some plants. Colored with crayons. Watched the entire season 4 of Gilmore Girls. Reorganized my kitchen. STUDIED MY ARABIC TEXTBOOK. This is how bored I am...I haven't picked up that book since before summer. It's probably not bad to review and learn some new verbs, though.

Today, I colored again and now I am trying to motivate myself to do some laundry. I would even consider going on a bike ride. Bike riding in my town is a joke. I can walk to the edge of town and back in ten minutes, so with a bike, that cuts the time down considerably.

Oh, my god, I just reread this and realized how whiny and pathetic I sound! I'm sorry if you read this post, it was even boring to write!

Recipe Corner in Jenny's Kuzina: Lesson 4

Quiche Florentine

You will need:

1 9" piecrust
3-4 eggs
1 3/4 c. milk
1/2 t salt
1 c. cheese, grated
1/2 c. chopped, drained spinach
pinch of nutmeg and/or cayenne

To prepare:

Bring milk to almost-boiling and let cool. Beat together eggs, spinach, and seasonings. Sprinkle bottom of piecrust with cheese and pour egg mixture on top. Bake for 1 hour or until the egg mixture is set.

Use your own pie crust recipe, or mine:

1 1/4 c. flour
1 T sugar
1/4 t salt
1/2 c butter
1 egg yolk
1/4 c milk

In a med bowl, stir together flour, sugar and salt. Cut in shortening until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Combine the egg yolks and milk; stir into the flour mixture. On a lightly floured surface, roll dough out to the size of pan. Bake according to quiche recipe instructions.

Age

Today I was sitting in the bakery, visiting with my friend Kabira when her mother walked in. Her mother is Berber and much more conservative than her children. She wears what we call a "milhaf," which is like a long sheet that women wrap themselves in from head to foot. Most women cover their faces, too. In my town, I'd say about half the women here wear milhafs, the other half wear jilabas (like a long pajama gown with a hood). Almost all the women wear head scarves. And the school-aged girls wear Western clothes with a white school pinafore over them. And then, there's me...I don't quite fit in with any of them with my loose fitting Western clothes, but that's another story.

Anyway, back to today. In walked, Kabira's mom. Mother of three daughters, oldest daugher around 26 years old. Sick with leg, back, and teeth pain. Walks slowly. Wrinkled. Her age: I'd guess close to 65 or older. All three of my grandparents in America are older than what I assumed to be her age and all three of them look younger and are much healthier.

WRONG! So, so very wrong. Age came up today when she asked if my parents were well, if they weren't sick, if they still had their youth. I said, yes, still young. She asked how old and I told her their ages. She laughed and said, no, they are OLD! She then told me she was 38 years old. I was shocked.

Okay, sidenote: most people in Morocco don't exactly know their age, but more or less guess. Birthdays aren't celebrated here.

I did the math. If Kabira is 25-26 and her mother says she is 38 that means....she was 12 when she gave birth??? No way, I thought. So, later, after her mother had left, I asked Kabira how old her mother was when she married her father. She said 14 years old. And a year later Kabira was born, so that would mean her mother had to have been around 15+26=41 years old now.

I'm not sure what my point is here. I guess, it's that women here age faster than in America. When you get married and have children so young, work outdoors on the farm, tend to the animals, do all the laundry by hand, kill the animals, cook the food, it puts some years on you.

Yesterday I watched the movie "Volunteers" with a group of fellow volunteers here in Morocco. The movie is from 1985 starring Tom Hanks and John Candy who sign up for the Peace Corps and are basically dropped off from a helicopter in Thailand without training, and get into all kinds of trouble. One scene shows Tom Hanks meeting the town elder who looks about 100, but John Candy says to him, "He's probably 30 years old." We all got that joke.

English for Fun

Here is a funny video clip of my friend Kabira, reading an English dialogue.

Recipe Corner in Jenny's Kuzina: Lesson 3

Ok, I decided to branch out from the traditional Moroccan dishes and will now include some of my personal favorites. This next one is super easy to make and really yummy!

Tuna Curry Salad

You will need:

1 can tuna fish
3 T nuts, chopped
2 T mayonnaise
3 T golden raisins
1/2 apple, chopped
4 T plain yogurt
1 T onion, minced
1/2 t curry powder
basil

To prepare:

Mix all ingredients together.

To eat:

On top of a bed of lettuce, on crackers, as a sandwich, or just by itself! Enjoy! I made this one for lunch today!

Recipe Corner in Jenny's Kuzina: Lesson 2

Lemon Chicken

You will need:

1 whole chicken, cleaned
2 cloves garlic
1 T parsley
1 t coriander
1/2 t ginger
1/2 t pepper
1 T butter
1 onion, chopped
1/8 t saffron
1/2 t salt
handful of green or purple olives
1-2 preserved lemons, quartered
4 T oil

To prepare:

Put the chicken in a stewing pan (or tajine if you are lucky) with all other ingredients except for lemons and olives. Heat slightly and coat chicken evenly with ingredients. Add water so chicken is half-covered. Simmer over med flame, turning chicken from time to time to baste it. When chicken is tender, remove and continue cooking sauce until smooth and thick. Return chicken to pan and add olives and lemon wedges and cook for 10 more minutes.

To eat:

Again, usually eaten with the hands. Just tear the meat off the bones and throw the steaming meat into your mouth! Or, carve meat off with knife and eat with fork.

Note: Gone are the days when I could recall what was available at the local HyVee, so its quite possible that preserved lemons are hard to come by. If so, here is a recipe to preserve them yourself:

Preserved Lemons

3 lemons, scrubbed, patted dry, and each cut lengthwise into 6 wedges
1/2 c kosher salt
1/2 c fresh lemon juice
olive oil

In a bowl, toss together lemon wedges and salt, transfer to Mason jar with plastic coated lid, and add lemon juice. Cover jar tightly with lid and let stand in a warm place, shaking jar once a day for 7 days. The lemons may be kept, covered with a layer of oil and the lid, chilled, for up to 6 months. And by chilled, the definition here would be, in the shade.

New York Times Op-ed on Peace Corps

Something to think about:

New York Times
January 9, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor
Too Many Innocents Abroad
By ROBERT L. STRAUSS
Antananarivo, Madagascar

THE Peace Corps recently began a laudable initiative to increase the number of volunteers who are 50 and older. As the Peace Corps’ country director in Cameroon from 2002 until last February, I observed how many older volunteers brought something to their service that most young volunteers could not: extensive professional and life experience and the ability to mentor younger volunteers.

However, even if the Peace Corps reaches its goal of having 15 percent of its volunteers over 50, the overwhelming majority will remain recently minted college graduates. And too often these young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.

This wasn’t the case in 1961 when the Peace Corps sent its first volunteers overseas. Back then, enthusiastic young Americans offered something that many newly independent nations counted in double and even single digits: college graduates. But today, those same nations have millions of well-educated citizens of their own desperately in need of work. So it’s much less clear what inexperienced Americans have to offer.

The Peace Corps has long shipped out well-meaning young people possessing little more than good intentions and a college diploma. What the agency should begin doing is recruiting only the best of recent graduates — as the top professional schools do — and only those older people whose skills and personal characteristics are a solid fit for the needs of the host country.

The Peace Corps has resisted doing this for fear that it would cause the number of volunteers to plummet. The name of the game has been getting volunteers into the field, qualified or not.

In Cameroon, we had many volunteers sent to serve in the agriculture program whose only experience was puttering around in their mom and dad’s backyard during high school. I wrote to our headquarters in Washington to ask if anyone had considered how an American farmer would feel if a fresh-out-of-college Cameroonian with a liberal arts degree who had occasionally visited Grandma’s cassava plot were sent to Iowa to consult on pig-raising techniques learned in a three-month crash course. I’m pretty sure the American farmer would see it as a publicity stunt and a bunch of hooey, but I never heard back from headquarters.

For the Peace Corps, the number of volunteers has always trumped the quality of their work, perhaps because the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries. The agency has no comprehensive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth.

Every few years, the agency polls its volunteers, but in my experience it does not systematically ask the people it is supposedly helping what they think the volunteers have achieved. This is a clear indication of how the Peace Corps neglects its customers; as long as the volunteers are enjoying themselves, it doesn’t matter whether they improve the quality of life in the host countries. Any well-run organization must know what its customers want and then deliver the goods, but this is something the Peace Corps has never learned.

This lack of organizational introspection allows the agency to continue sending, for example, unqualified volunteers to teach English when nearly every developing country could easily find high-caliber English teachers among its own population. Even after Cameroonian teachers and education officials ranked English instruction as their lowest priority (after help with computer literacy, math and science, for example), headquarters in Washington continued to send trainees with little or no classroom experience to teach English in Cameroonian schools. One volunteer told me that the only possible reason he could think of for having been selected was that he was a native English speaker.

The Peace Corps was born during the glory days of the early Kennedy administration. Since then, its leaders and many of the more than 190,000 volunteers who have served have mythologized the agency into something that can never be questioned or improved. The result is an organization that finds itself less and less able to provide what the people of developing countries need — at a time when the United States has never had a greater need for their good will.

Robert L. Strauss has been a Peace Corps volunteer, recruiter and country director. He now heads a management consulting company.

Letters to the Editor:

Who Helps Whom in the Peace Corps?

To the Editor:

In “Too Many Innocents Abroad” (Op-Ed, Jan. 9), Robert L. Strauss criticizes the Peace Corps, saying that often its “young volunteers lack the maturity and professional experience to be effective development workers in the 21st century.”

The agency, he says, “neglects its customers.” In fact, volunteers are trained to integrate into their host communities and listen carefully.

As a volunteer, I spent more than a year in direct dialogue with my Chinese counterparts before helping to set up a weekend program for children. My “customers” — peasant farmers and their children — were immensely grateful.

Mr. Strauss also suggests that the Peace Corps is satisfied if “volunteers are enjoying themselves.” This is, quite frankly, an insult to those who work tirelessly — at great sacrifice and, at times, with little enjoyment — to fulfill their missions.

In applying the metrics of management consulting to the Peace Corps, Mr. Strauss ignores the essence of this marvelous organization: its humanity.

If he wants to deal with “customers,” his matrix for analysis makes sense. The Peace Corps, however, deals with people.

Michael Levy
Northampton, Mass., Jan. 9, 2008

•

To the Editor:

I served in Cameroon as just the kind of agricultural volunteer Robert L. Strauss mentions. As a 20-year-old journalism graduate, I’d grown nary a houseplant before trying to teach farmers how to improve their crops.

The audacity of my arrogance in assuming that this time abroad would do Cameroon any good was apparent on Day 1. I lasted just five months before returning home, frustrated, confused and annoyed that I had put so much thought into a system that failed both the host country and a volunteer with the best of intentions.

The Peace Corps is a great program in true need of reorganization.

Kelli M. Donley
Tempe, Ariz., Jan. 9, 2008

•

To the Editor:

My wife and I were Peace Corps volunteers in India in the 1960s. Since becoming director, I have seen volunteers in action in more than 30 countries, including Cameroon. The quality of the volunteer experience has not changed, nor has the quality of the volunteers who serve. The Peace Corps remains true to President John F. Kennedy’s vision articulated in 1961.

The Peace Corps recruits the best and brightest, and only one out of every three applicants becomes a volunteer. Volunteers provide trained skills at the grass-roots level and promote a better understanding of Americans and our culture. Government officials throughout the world praise the work of volunteers, and the list of countries requesting new programs continues to grow.

The agency’s success is more than anecdotal. Ninety-one percent of volunteers say they feel integrated into their communities, and we have created evaluation plans to better quantify the volunteers’ impact.

We can all be proud of the volunteers serving today. I encourage Americans of all ages and backgrounds to consider serving.

Ronald A. Tschetter
Peace Corps Director
Washington, Jan. 9, 2008

•

To the Editor:

In 2000, when I was a 23-year-old straight out of graduate school, I had very little to offer the Senegalese village I was sent to by the Peace Corps.

Sure, I was the only one in my village with a college degree, but I was in no position to tell the villagers how to run their businesses. Sure, I taught them a little about accounting and some basic math, but my real value was being one extra person to hold a shovel.

The reality was that I was the one who learned the most and got the most from the experience. The Peace Corps is really more of a cultural-exchange program than an international development organization.

Benjamin Y. Clark
Athens, Ga., Jan. 9, 2008

•

To the Editor:

Today, a friend and fellow returned Peace Corps volunteer is being buried in Orchard Park, N.Y. He was murdered while working to end the violence in Sudan.

John Granville was nothing like the ill-prepared young people Robert L. Strauss describes. During his Peace Corps service in Cameroon from 1997 to 1999, he was so successful and well loved by the community that he was given an honorary title by the chief of the village.

He returned to Cameroon as a Fulbright scholar to research culturally appropriate approaches to H.I.V. prevention. When I visited him that year, we took many walks through “his” village. It could take hours — every few houses or so, neighbors waved us over to exchange greetings and news. He was welcomed because he understood something about living and working internationally that Mr. Strauss seems not to have grasped — the value of human relationships and the importance of being willing to learn.

The Peace Corps is not just about what “fresh out of college” Americans can teach citizens of other countries. It is an opportunity for Americans to prove to the world that hubris is not the defining characteristic of our country.

While Mr. Strauss worries about how America can fix other nations, former Peace Corps volunteers like me will be putting to good use the skills we learned during our service. We will be listening, learning and sharing anywhere in the world we’re still welcome.

Karen Greiner
Athens, Ohio, Jan. 9, 2008

•

To the Editor:

Maybe Robert L. Strauss should talk to the average person in the countries the Peace Corps serves. In my work outside the United States, I am always surprised when people ask me questions about things that are taken for granted by Americans.

Why, I’ve been asked, do Americans wear shoes in their houses? What is the Dow Jones (or who is Dow Jones and why is he average)? And is root beer alcoholic?

The value of the Peace Corps is that people in other countries who may never have seen a foreigner are happy for the opportunity to ask questions directly to an American.

Robert Wong
Khartoum, Sudan, Jan. 9, 2008

The writer is deputy political counselor at the United States Embassy in Khartoum.

My response:

I think that Robert L. Strauss greatly underestimates the young people of our time. It's true, volunteers such as he described "fresh-out-of-college" do exist and I fit nicely into that category. But, to label us all as "lacking maturity and professional experience" is a naive generalization at best.

College graduates these days have much more to offer than simply a degree in their chosen fields. Many universities require students to gain work or volunteer experience before graduation. Graduating from college no longer promises a good-paying job. Graduates are finding more employers are looking for something extra in addition to a college degree. Every year, graduates become more competitive as they add more to their resumes in hopes of landing a job.

There's something else that volunteers of today can offer that volunteers of Kennedy's 1961 could not. Diversity. I'm guessing the demographics of volunteers serving in 1961 were fairly uniform. Volunteers today are constantly trying to disprove the stereotype that all Americans are white. The volunteers of the 21st century physically look a lot different then the original volunteers of 1961.

Although I, too, agree with the Peace Corps' initiative to increase its over-50 crowd, there is something to be said for young volunteers. We're fresh, we're enthusiastic, we're willing to take risks, and most importantly, we're eager to find an outlet to meaningfully serve.

-Jenny

Now You Too Can Cook Moroccan Cuisine!

Yes, for those of you who have ever paused and thought to yourselves, "What WILL I make for dinner tonight?" Here's your answer! This January you will get the chance to try out Moroccan recipes in your own homes. You know how most months have national themes, like "Aids Month" or "Black History Month"....well, this month I have decided my blog theme will be "Recipe Corner in Jenny's Kuzina." Or as you call it, The Kitchen.

Today's lesson can be prepared for breakfast, lunch or dinner! How convenient, you might be thinking! And not to worry if you don't have the proper "Moroccan cookware" or "tajine" as they are called here. You can make do with a regular baking dish!

Jenny's Egg Tajine

You will need:

3-4 tomatoes, skin peeled and chopped
4 eggs
olive oil or argan oil (mom and dad, that is the liquid inside the peanut butter jar that is sitting on your kitchen countertop)
3-4 cloves of garlic, chopped
cilantro, chopped finely
cumin
coriander
salt and pepper
peas: optional

To prepare:

Don't forget to peel the skin off and chop the tomatoes on a plate so the juices are retained. Chop the cilantro, or if you prefer, parsley. Chop the garlic and saute it briefly in a fair-sized pool of olive or argan oil. Add the tomatoes, cilantro or parsley, coriander, cumin, salt and pepper. I usually just grab a few pinchfuls of the spices, so don't be shy. Cook until thickened but still saucelike. (Optional: add a handful of peas before adding the eggs.) Carefully break the eggs into the sauce, each egg in its own "corner" of the dish. They might seem to stay liquid a long time, but that's how it cooks. The eggs will be done when the yolks are gelled on the bottom and a little runny on top. Sprinkle the eggs with more cumin and serve!

To eat:

Either with hands or forks. I break up bread and scoop up the food onto the bread, but you could eat it with a fork and have break on the side. Or, figure something else out!

Let me know how this one turns out for you and good luck! Stay tuned for next recipe.

Explaining Santa Claus

**Spoiler Alert: Anyone under 10....this is a fantasy story with no factual basis.

I worked at the Dar Chebab Saturday night and about fifteen kids showed up for Youth Cafe. The new Connect 4 from America was well-received. After the Youth Cafe I went out to Nadia's (my 21 year-old host mom) village. Everyone was really excited to see me and we had a good time looking at my pictures from home. They thought the snow looked beautiful and asked a lot of questions about why my dad drives a pick-up truck. (Apparently only farmers drive them here and that's why there are so many of them in town)

One of the pictures I brought back was of the three stockings hanging by the fireplace. This picture started a very interesting conversation about Santa Claus. Only Nadia knew about Santa Claus because last year when I was living at her house I gave her Christmas stockings and told her about Santa. At the time, she told me maybe Santa would make a stop in Morocco...the next morning there were chocolates in the stockings! Surprise!

This year, as I started talking about Santa, everyone else in the family actually thought that Santa was a REAL MAN who came into people's homes to deliver presents! Nadia's sister was relentless in asking me HOW this man got into everyone's houses? Did he have keys? Did he break-in? How did this work? Then, when I told them he climbed down through the chimney they were SHOCKED. My host grandma kept saying, "Jeenee, don't lie. Are you lying? How does he do that?" I told them all about the cookies and milk and was leading them on for a while, but finally I had to stop and admitted that Santa wasn't a real man, but rather the parents pretended he was and did his dirty work. My grandma was the most shocked and scolded me for lying. But they all laughed and admitted it was a good idea to keep children from misbehaving at Christmastime. Then, like ten minutes later Nadia's brother came into the room and the whole thing was repeated again. His sister tricked him into believing that Santa Claus was real. His mom tried to set him straight, but since he missed the entire explanation I think he still might be a little confused about the whole thing. They really liked the part about how if you're bad you get coal in your stocking. They asked if I'd ever gotten coal, to which I said, "No, I was always a good girl." And they thought that was really funny for some reason.

Happy New Year from Morocco!

How does that olde lange syne long go? "Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind ?" Well, that sums up life pretty well. The last time I posted I was anxiously awaiting my trip home to America. Looking forward to meeting up with those old acquaintances, enjoying all things American, and basically living the good life. And live the good life, I did. Here’s a quick list of things I accomplished while home:

· Spending loads of time with my family

· Eating/drinking the following: Snacks. Mexican food: enchiladas, burritos, Spanish rice, refried beans, chips and salsa. Mom’s cooking: anything. Sandwiches: meat, cheese and veggies on bread, Subway sandwiches. Drinks: lattes, margaritas, pop, cider, wine, beer. Cereal. Ice cream. String cheese. Chocolate chip cookies. Christmas goodies. Buffalo wings. Ham. Salad. (Note: salad almost added as an afterthought)

· Meeting with friends.

· Seeing movies: The Golden Compass and Charlie Wilson’s War.

· Playing games

· Enjoying central heating

· Enjoying cable television with American programs

· Sleeping in my old bed

· Reading newspapers in English

· Driving cars

· Visiting Jane Addams School

· Wearing any clothes I felt like wearing

· Looking at the snow (while enjoying the central heating, of course)

· Christmas with all the family

· Seeing Brayden, Owen, and Otto

· Going to a Christmas play

· Speaking at a women’s group and elementary school about Morocco

· Strolling the aisles of Target and Walmart

· Cooking a Moroccan meal for my family

· Scheming travel plans with friends and family

· Visiting Sara at Gustavus

· Visiting Megan in St. Paul

· Going out at night

I probably forgot a lot of other important things, but you get the point. Now, moving on to things I missed most right away:

· My family

· Central heating

· My luggage (still waiting…..)

· Convenience

Not bad. Excluding a few friends I didn’t get to see, I pretty much accomplished everything on my list of to-dos while home. Coming back “home” to Morocco was easier than I thought. The hardest part has been adjusting to the time difference. The first day I came home, I napped for four hours in the afternoon, woke up, walked outside my house, and was whisked away to a birthday party for some girl in the town garden. We sat outdoors under a tent and waited a long time. There were many cakes and bottles of pop and somebody was working on getting music playing. Then, a wire caught on fire and everybody was screaming and jumping around. Luckily, somebody had the idea to wrap the wire in scotch tape (good idea? Not sure) and soon the dangerous wire was quickly forgotten. I sat for a good three hours and then returned home.

Sleeping and not sleeping for the past two days is all a blur. I slept about twelve hours the first night and the second night I didn’t fall asleep until 4 am (11 pm in Minnesota) and woke up today around 1 pm. Tonight, I plan to take some Benadryl before going to bed.

Waking up this morning still without my luggage and now with my cell phone battery dead, I was determined to find somebody to bring me to the airport to pick up my luggage. Of course, this plan failed. Without any phone numbers, I had to walk around a lot ask around for phone numbers. I had two leads this afternoon but neither panned out. I think tomorrow I will maybe have a chance at going in the morning. For some reason, the weather is a major factor in all this. Today it rained and people were more reluctant to travel. I really could use my luggage about now. I have no warm clothes at my house. Not many toiletries. Not much money. One pair of shoes. And none of my American goodies. And no internet. I need to renew my internet but have been too busy with this luggage debacle to get the recharge card.

It’s cooled off considerably here. Very chilly. I have one blanket in my house that travels with me wherever I go in my house. I make a lot of tea.

In between my sleeping and not-sleeping during the day, I’ve been busy going around town and talking with people. As usual, the whole town knew I had been in America, and was happy to receive me back into the community.

Here is a usual exchange:

Person in my town: May peace be upon you

Me: And peace upon you, too

Person in my town: With God you arrived

Me: God arrived me

Person in my town: How did America find you?

Me: It found me beautiful.

Person in my town: Really?

Me: Yes, really. It was very beautiful.

Person in my town: How is your family? Is everything good to them?

Me: Everything is good to them. Thank God.

Person in my town: Thank God. You didn’t bring them with you?

Me: No, but God willing they will come.

Person in my town: God willing.

Me: May God help you.

Person in my town: May God help you, too.

Me: Goodbye

Person in my town: Goodbye now (just kidding, they don’t have the equivelant of “goodbye now” here, but I may try and introduce it)

And as expected, everyone in town, including the taxi man and strangers, want to know if I brought them back a gift. I laugh, and say to them “God willing.”