Momentary Light Affliction

Since Monday I have not had lights in my apartment.

Okay, to be completely honest I do have one light that still works, over my bathroom sink. The rest of the apartment, however, starts getting murky at about 7:30 and by 8:00 it's legitimately dark. Fortunately we have some bright lights just outside my apartment, so by pulling back all of my curtains I can get enough light into the place to avoid bruising my shins on the furniture. 

Sound like a pain? I guess it is, especially when I am trying to cook, but I really don't mind. I really don't mind because I am planning to move tomorrow. I can handle packing in the dark because I know that the situation is temporary. I am moving to somewhere where it will be light at night.

This is the power of hope. It doesn't just apply to little things like changing apartments; it also applies to life as a whole. When we have faith that our life here on earth is temporary, our struggles and confusion and discomfort become more bearable and our joys take on a deeper meaning. The best is is still coming! (Ephesians chapter 1)

My kitchen during supper prep. last night

Quasi-local cuisine

Last night one of my african friends came over to visit. Whenever I know he is coming it stresses me out a bit. I wonder what we are going to talk about. I wonder when he will show up. His arrival can vary from time to time by as much as three hours- or sometimes he doesn't show up at all. And I think more than anything else I worry about what I will feed him. He generally arrives around 8:00, which is a good hour before the normal supper time here.  It is expected in this culture that a host will feed his visitors, and usually mine come two at a time. It really should not be that big a deal cooking for three instead of one, but the fact that it is late and unpredictable, and that most of the things I eat do not figure into their menu, causes me to spend the entire afternoon dreading their arrival. The odd thing is, once they are here I enjoy myself. So I just need to learn to trust God with the pre-arrival jitters.

Anyway, that was more than I meant to say on that subject. The point of all of this is that last night I didn't cook at all. My friend did all of the cooking! Furthermore, what he came up with was surprisingly familiar. Instead of a typical rice concoction (which he and I worked on together last time he was over) he opted for potatoes. I'm a fan of that! It turns out the people in his part of the country grow potatoes, unlike everyone who lives in this part of the country, so spuds are a regular part of his diet.

This was his method:

-get a pot of water boiling
-toss in 6 to 8 potatoes, dirt and all.
-in a pan, start frying an onion in oil.
---add a bullion cube, salt, and pepper to the onion. (not healthy, but yummy!)
---add meat or fish. All I had was a can(tin) of sardines, so that's what we added.
---let it simmer until the onion tastes more like the bullion cube and the sardines than like an onion.
-Once the potatoes are done, remove them from the boiling water and plunk them into cold water. Once they are cool enough to hold, peel off the skins with a knife.
Put all of the potatoes into a kitchen-size emortar (every household has one here) and smash them with the pestle, adding a substantial hunk of butter in the process. My apartment doesn't have a mortar so I introduced him to my potato masher. I think a mortar and pestle would have worked better, especially since we weren't patient enough to wait until the potatoes were completely cooked.
-Plop the mashed potato onto a big tray and spread it out
-pour the onion and meat sauce over the top of it

And then, in typical local fashion, we each pulled up a chair, sat on opposite sides of the dish, and dug in.

I ate way more than him. When I asked him why he wasn't very hungry he explained that he eats lunch at 5:00. Yikes! No wonder he eats supper at 9:30. Poor guy; he must get really hungry at work.

After we had eaten our fill we each drank a glass of water. That's the way it is done here- you drink after the meal and you don't generally drink much.

So there you go, if you want to try living in my shoes for an evening you can make that for supper tonight. As for me, I'll probably go back to my standby of macaroni and tomato sauce. My basil bush is taking over the entire garden, so I grab any chance I have to incorporate basil into my meal.

Friday night

Last night was a great night. There were about 50 young people gathered together in an "upper room" and singing worship songs- in English! I don't think I've had that kind of experience in three years. It was truly a blessing.

Something else de très spéciale happened yesterday evening as well. More on that later...

And today I went to watch an international track meet, hoping to spot some potential Olympic competitors. As I was riding over to the stadium my friend, who was already there, texted me to say that the meet wasn't happening after all. I continued to the stadium anyway, figuring it was a good excuse for a long bike ride. When I got there I was pleased to discover that, contrary to my friend's claims, there was a lively competition going on. Here are some pictures of the winners:

100 Centimeter hurdles:

Long jump

Pole vault (though the judges argued about whether or not he ever actually vaulted)

Standing Long Jump (this is the "standing" part)

As you can tell, all of the winners were the same nationality. The judging must have been rigged.

Then, as I was leaving the stadium, look what greeted me in the parking lot:


You never know what kind of excitement can be found on a Saturday afternoon at the stadium!

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I took a video of one of the go-karts doing warm-up laps. You can see it here.

Mami Mia

After frisbee we went to the "Mami Mia" restaurant for supper. Fortunately there was ample seating outdoors for our sweaty mob. Once we had pulled 5 tables together and seated our 20+ selves around them, the ordering ritual began.

My friend "Storm" speaks the local language fluently, and when the waitress discovered this she decided to talk to Storm rather than trying to deal with the varying levels of French spoken by our assortment of Americans. I thought it was a wise choice on her part, as did Storm, but it quickly got complicated. I have learned enough of the local language that I could follow the general gist of what Storm and the waitress were discussing. The conversation went something like this:

Waitress: What would you like?

Storm: I'll have a chicken chawarma.

Waitress: A what?

Storm: A chicken chawarma. It's right here on the menu.

Waitress: (squinting at the menu with a perplexed look on her face) Sorry, we don't have any of those right now.

Storm: Oh. How about a chicken sandwich, then?

Waitress: Yes, we can do four. Does anybody else in your group want a chicken sandwich?

Storm (in English to the huddle masses): Does anybody want a chicken sandwich?

Me: I do.

Waitress: Does anybody else want a chicken sandwich? We have four.
(I wasn't sure whether this meant that they could only make four, that they wouldn't bother killing a chicken unless they got four orders, or whether it meant that four had already been sitting on a shelf for the past half hour and she wanted to get rid of them.)

Storm: Who else wants a chicken sandwich? We need four people.

Random people #1 and #2: I do!

Random person #3: I want a chicken burger!

Random person #2: "Oh wait, I want a chicken burger too."

Storm to waitress: Do you have chicken for chicken burgers too?

Waitress: Yes, four.

Storm: No, I mean for burgers, not for the sandwiches

Random person #4: I want a chicken burger!

Random person #1: Me too!

Storm to random person #1: I thought you wanted a chicken sandwich.

random person #1: Yeah, sorry. I thought they were the same thing.

Storm back to waitress: We want four chicken sandwiches and three chicken burgers.

Random person #5: I want a chicken burger too!

Storm to waitress: four chicken burgers. Do you have enough chicken for all of that?

Waitress: (said something I didn't understand, but she accepted the order)

We then went on to order pizzas, chawarmas, and other items in more or less the same manner. I was astounded when, some time later, the food came and everyone actually got what he or she had wanted. It was tasty, too.

Launch It!

Greetings!

I acknowledge that I have thoroughly neglected my blog. My apologies. To be honest, I think I set too high of a standard for myself. I felt that whatever I wrote needed to be either highly amusing or deeply insightful. The problem is, I rarely have the inspiration for anything insightful or the time and energy for anything highly amusing.

So, I hereby resolve to do a better job of keeping you in touch with my life, even when it seems humdrum.

Last night, for example, was pretty boring. I got soaked in sweat and almost knocked out and today I am walking around with a limp.

"What did you do?"

I played ultimate frisbee, that's what I did! And I played it on REAL GRASS, something which might not impress you but it meant a lot to me. I hadn't walked on grass in more than a year.

We played hard, had a lot of fun, and felt the full effects of nearly 100% humidity.  As for the almost getting knocked out part, that was just me and another guy jumping around too much in the end zone. Neither of us caught the frisbee but I did catch his elbow!

I must add that I also made two glorious dives over the course of the evening. I could take a picture of the green stripe on my shirt as evidence. I almost even caught the frisbee on the second dive. It's all about the effort, not the results!

Our results were pretty good though, come to think of it. We lost a fairly close first game and then easily won the second one. After that we switched teams around. My team started out well but struggled when we lost some players. 9 versus 13 isn't easy!

When we finally got done everyone was soaked with sweat and some of us (well, mainly me) also sported a nice layer of dirt and grass. We then decided to go to a restaurant. I think that experience is worthy of it's own blog post, so I'll leave you in suspense.

Parting tip of the day: If you freeze dish soap in a ziplock bag it makes a great home-made ice pack.