My Finest Hour

26 Juilliet 2006

I want guacamole with chips and Mexican beer.

I want seven kinds of pie with French vanilla ice cream.

I want anything that is not rice, cous cous, fish or meat.

I want fat sandwiches of lunchmeat with good bread and cheese. I want
soup.

I want candy.

Last night my toothless Abu took a bath for the first time since I've
been in the village. At least he pranced around naked in the dark, was
led away by his mother, and then returned 3 minutes later, wet. You do
the math.

Speaking of children, the babies here are all tied with a scarf to
their mothers' backs, poking out bobble-headed like tiny monkeys from
atop their mothers' huge rumps. Its sort of amazing that they never
topple out, but they're perfectly content, and never cry.

We've been bringing out my wind-up shortwave radio at night and
listening to local stations, or the BBC or some Reggae on its tinny
speakers under the stars. It makes me miss all my geeky NPR
programming which I love so much.

Yesterday afternoon I came home from class to find that my mother
Sahaba had locked a chicken in my house.

I haven't been locking my door, except that Sahaba told me to give her
a key so that she could lock it whenever necessary. Giving someone
else a key sort of defeats the purpose of having a key, but she seemed
to think it was a grand idea, so no biggee. Anyway, as soon as she
unlocked the door, out comes the squawking chicken, which upon further
inspection of my room, had shat in it several times (of course).
Luckily, as of now, I have yet to come upon any other specimens
unexpectedly. Inshallah.

All the women in the garden seem to get a kick out of me hauling
water - I think its probably considered women's work. At least in the
garden it is, where I am the only man who's ever there. That's
excepting my 18 year old friend Amida who's only ever there
specifically to see me and hang out a little, while trying to look
cool in the decidedly un-cool garden.

And lastly, because the bread that Caleb brought us from Kaedi seemed
about to expire, leaving its canned-tuna partner without a mate, and
because sharing is all but mandatory here, and because I didn't want to
share, yesterday night found me huddled in a dark corner of my room,
flashlight in armpit, shoving bread-scooped tuna into my mouth as fast
as I could chew. Needless to say, it wasn't my finest hour, but such
is life here in the RIM.