After Christmas Ramblings

Dec 28, 2008 – Byron just peed on himself. Not like wet himself, that peeing into the wind thing. He has his favorite spot in our yard to pee, usually at least 3 feet away from anyone else, close to the patio. He just whips his shorts down and releases. It usually goes about as high as his chin. Today he was just unfortunate enough to do it into the wind and catch it on his belly.

Should be a lot of new pictures up, see Pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/MaiersInAfrica

Christmas was fine around here. The power was off most of Christmas Eve day, it came back on about 5 pm, well before it got dark. Since the cooking is done with charcoal stoves, it didn’t hinder the special feast that was prepared. Highlights were mashed potatoes and cheesy hotdogs. The dogs were marginal to begin with, but the injection of cheese sauce with a syringe by Ashley and Nick spiced them a bit. It was only our family and Eli’s female guest Angela. The Christmas Eve Mass was to start at 9pm with a program by the senior youth. But the church has been without power for a few weeks now and the first generator that they had was not working. So they didn’t get to do it before the Mass started at 10pm or so. We entered into a dark church and found a pew that didn’t have someone sleeping on it. Not sure if they were saving spots or had been there waiting so long they fell asleep. The Mass was 3 hours and a lot of the Christians, including myself, used some of the time to catch a few winks. Travis did manage to stay awake through the whole thing as Junior would whack him anytime he fell asleep or even looked like he was nodding off. They had a total of 2 light bulbs to light the church for the service. One at the front of the alter that was only on intermittently. The second about 20 feet back, directly in our line of sight to the front of the church. They also set up a PA system that sounded like they were talking through a kazoo and using ripped tin speakers. Overall it was a pretty rocking service. After the Mass, since the power was available, they had a shortened version of their youth Christmas program. The highlight was Nick accompany a couple of singers to “Labomba”, which he had jokingly asked them if they knew it. They also did a Christmas song. We got to bed by 2am.

None of us made it to the morning mass.

The lake flies have been horrendous the last few nights. We’ve had 1,000s swarming our lights. Nick took the DOOM to them in our place and we got a nice coating of them on our coffee table.

We got to call home for Christmas. We were planning on using the local national carrier who we have calling cards for. But the one phone we know exists in the village has been out of order for a few days. Fortunately our cell phone carrier was running a special and we could make short calls for not too bad a price.

We did get a chance to exchange gifts with each other, just small items. There are pictures of them all. We got Eli a cell phone – see next item on phones in this country. It’s the happiest I’ve seen him and he actually went around the room and gave us all a hug. And he was speechless about the 2,000 shillings of credit we got for him. 2,000 is a tremendous amount as many buy only 20 at a time.

Cell phones are just crazy here. I can’t remember who it is that came up with the hierarchy of needs with food and shelter coming 1 and 2. It seems here that the need for a cell phone comes in at a close 3rd if not even 2nd for some people. People will lie, cheat and still for a phone, and they are not just happy with basic phones, but want the gadgetry just like people in the US do. Cell phone protocol is just about the same as the US – carry it everyplace answer it when it rings no matter where you are or what you are doing and talk louder on it so every knows you have a call. The cost of ownership is not cheap, at least by standards here. A lot of people buy credit (95% of the plans here are prepaid) in 20 shilling ($0.25) increments. A lot of texting is done as it is cheap. One real annoying thing they got going here is ‘flashing’. I heard people talking about it but had to ask what it was. It comes about because you are only charged for connected / answered calls and only for outgoing calls, not received calls. So if someone needs to talk to you, or thinks that the call is for your benefit, they will ring you and after one ring hang up. So you get to call them on your shilling. Of course they won’t always call you back, like us. Unless we recognize the number and want to talk with the person, we don’t call back flashes. If you don’t call back, often the person will try again. If this happens to us, we start trying to answer on the first ½ ring. Occasionally we do catch them, but they usually just hang up on us. Fortunately we only have one between the 6 of us, it is borrowed and off most of the time. Being unconnected is nice sometimes.

Ashley and Travis have been with us 3-1/2 weeks now. It’s nice to have them around. Like Morgan, Ashley is also a animal lover but not with quite the zeal of needed to pet every baby animal that passes her way. She and Morgan do love the puppies and make sure they are taken good care of. FYI – the tick and worm problems have decreased a lot since the puppies got moved into a cage with a solid cement floor. They play with the puppies almost daily and are threatening to both keep one as a pet while we are here and take one home. Three have been given away much to their dismay. Morgan had talked up of setting up a screening process for potential owners complete with application, interviews and home visits to make sure your kids didn’t pick rocks when they saw dogs.

The kids here are like the kids in the US. They seem to deal with the same strife in life, have weaknesses and strengths. Some are more irritating than others and you want to flick them. Some lie, some lie a lot. Some try to get away with anything they can, some are very honest and look out for your best interest. Some have a moral conscience and really feel bad when scolded and apologies later, others don’t. Some are happy most of the time, other not so much. Some are outgoing and talkative, others shy and quiet. A couple traits about kids here that I don’t see as much in the US are they kids seem to be very willing to help, even with the dirty jobs of cleaning up dishes and dirty dorms. Also I have not seen an obese child here and very few I would call chunky.

That’s it for now, battery thing as the power is out because they are still working on running new lines for the compound. At least that’s what I hope it is.

Reporting from Mbita,
Paul