Ramadan

Ramadan started a few days ago. It brings a totally different rhythm to daily life and it is hard to explain to people who haven't been here. This link below was written by a friend who lives in East Africa and she really captures the dual nature of what it feels like as a foreigner living in a country that is celebrating a really really important "event" for a whole month.

http://www.djiboutijones.com/2012/07/loneliness-and-community-during-ramadan.html

A lot of foreigners really can't stand being around for Ramadan because it is very inconvenient to live life on a daily basis as she describes in her blog. Everything is put on the back burner until the month is completed. Work still does continue but it is just so much slower. Hence the comment in my previous post that we are crazy to try and move, clean and repair a house during this month!! Tom has found that fasting along with the locals is very helpful for his time with the men he hangs out with. They are more inclined to invite you to their iftar dinners and really appreciate the show of solidarity.

On the flip side, people really pull inwards to family and their religious community and the fact that we are outsiders is even more pronounced than usual. Folks often get quite fanatical in their conversation topics and feel a need to sort of "make-up" for not being as religious the rest of the year. Sounds familiar....no?

So as Rachel says in her post - this month is filled with moments of feeling very inside a community and very outside a community all at the same time. 

The outside of the new place

    I realized I never posted a picture of the outside of the house. One of the many things we like about this place is that it is not near any major roads. Our current house is next to one of the three biggest roads and town and the young men like to speed at 2am. sigh.

Anyway, this place has a MUCH more neighborly feel to it. It is in the direct center of the picture where the largest tree is.






This shot is a close-up of the house. The only greenery in the whole place are the two trees out front. This is a travesty in my book as things grow SO WELL out here if you just water. We'll soon set that right and get some plants and bushes and trees going. The government subsidises them to encourage people to plant. The white car is parked in front of one "car gate", the dark one is in front of the "people gate" and you can just see the edge of the next "car gate" on the right.

How did THIS happen??

    During Ramadan, we've enjoyed the fact that the border in our little town is easy to cross. No one really goes out until about 9 or 10pm. This afternoon there was a massive and slow-moving line and we finally discovered why.

We have no idea how someone could have enough speed while in line to zoom into these border guard "pods" but this van was going so fast it pushed two of them off their foundations!

We were taking advantage of the fact that the flood of foreigners leaving for their next assignment means there is LOTS of CHEAP furniture etc being sold across the border these days. We feel a bit bad that folks are selling things so cheaply because they are so desperate, but then, if we didn't buy it, someone else would! Tom has been hoping for a man-chair recliner type thing for years and we finally found a DOUBLE one! It smells of smoke so we are currently trying every remedy, but I'm guessing that keeping it outside in 120 degree heat and full sun will eventually air it out. If we can avoid any sandstorms the next few days it would be awesome.....

We move to the new house in one week!

Bring it on little man!

Last week we started this: toilet training!
Ryan turned 2 at the end of May and we thought we'd give it a trial run like we did with Layla. She had her trial run at 18 months and then we did a second attempt at around age 2 and it worked like a charm for the most part. Ryan has been AMAZING from the get go. He's done #1 and #2 in the potty without blinking an eye. The funniest thing is when he accidently poops on the floor (TMI??) and then picks it up with a tissue and brings it to me saying "On No mama! Poopoo!" as if he just inncently found it laying about..... This is one of the many advantages of having a tile floor (= No stress, just a squirt bottle and rolls of papertowels everywhere!

Moving house!

This has come up suddenly for us though the idea has been tossed around for the last two years. We love our home and especially our yard and have put time, effort and money into making it a great place. We were so blessed to find this house our first week of moving here in January of 2006.

We've considered moving to find a slightly larger home so we can actually have a guest room with a real bed to accommodate the many visitors we have. At the moment they either sleep on the floor or at someone else's house (=

So after much thought and prayer and checking of internet speed (a must since Tom would move his office back to the house) we are trying to find the landlord to give our final yes. This is not as easy as you'd think, but we are hopeful (= We already have the keys and hope to manage the cleaners and painters that he promised. There was an American family with seven kids in there before so somethings are well set up and others are just well, dirty and well used (=

In the midst of all the thinking of arranging and sorting out where we'd put stuff, our fridge is acting a bit wonky, our stove was out of gas for two days and Tom had to go to SIX stores to find a tiny rubber piece, our main ac has only worked about 3 days in a row and our washing machine stopped working mid-June. This is the calm BEFORE the storm I keep telling myself (= Tom and I have already had several conversations about trying to seriously lower our expectations of how the move will go. Moving during the summer is bad enough and doing it during Ramadan is really stupid but if we are going to sublet our current house we need to be out in August even though Tom will be for 5 days and then we'll all be gone for 10 days (= Fun fun fun.

Our current plan for "success" will be to only hire people between about 9pm and 1am (= Kids will be sleeping (potentially), it won't be as hot and folks won't be fasting....hence they will actually sort of work.

Outdoor wedding in 120 degree heat....1030pm

We had been trying to connect with one of Layla's school buddies and last night they invited us to a family pre-wedding event. They are Balochi and I had not attended a specific pre-wedding night like this so I had no idea what I was in for. It has also been awhile since I've sat through an outdoor party/wedding held in a home. Usually they are located in hotels and "wedding halls" in recent years. I love the ones in the homes because they are so much more....homey.

This one was unbelievable in terms of its beauty. Ladies in the US, we have NOTHING on the way these ladies dress when they go to wedding events. The amount of gold my friend was wearing was more than I've ever seen on Queen Elizabeth. Her necklace was made of hand-carved square pieces about an inch square and it extended to her belly where a square piece as big as a playing card was suspended. This is a gal that has me drink tea and sit on a plastic mat outside her house (= Oh the differing cultural values of being "rich" and "poor"! I'm betting you that necklace cost as much or more than our first car.

So all these ladies are dressed in the Balochi pants and long dress that goes over the top and then the gorgeous, delicate shawls/shaylas with all sorts of hand-beaded work and embroidery. Then the make-up, and the perfume....on and on. It was just so gorgeous.

We walked through the back entrance of the house because I arrived with the bride's sister. We said our greetings as we breezed through to the front of the house and into the front yard. I was totally clueless who to give what greeting to because no one was introduced. In these situations I just have to flip my personality switch to "fearless and fun-loving" whether I feel like it or not. Fearless because you just can't be intimidated by all that you don't know "Who is the mom? Who is the bride? Where are my friends? Why can't I recognize anyone? Where did layla run off to? Where is the bathroom and how will I ever get there? Can they see how much I am SWEATING? Am I being totally inappropriate here? I've determined it is best to just take my cues from those around me and pretend to be loving everything and having a great time regardless of how badly I mess up or my kids offend. I can only sustain this so long as you can imagine (=

As we exited the house and stood at the top of the stairs, we could see out into the front yard that was covered with a mishmash of rugs and grass mats and lots and lots and lots of ladies sitting around. Some were in the local all black garb, but most were in the intricately beautiful and bright Baloch clothing. Amazing. My friend asked where I wanted to sit and I just kept insisting she show me. I had no idea who was important down there and where I should sit.....no "head table" to make it obvious!

So Layla and I sat down and chatted with the gal next to us in English and I just watched. Most ladies just sat still and unsmiling, but this culture doesn't look kindly upon loud expressions of happiness at weddings. Everyone is stoic and sad about the bride leaving her family's house.

Anyway, beside the shock and awe of color explosions everywhere, I was stunned to see 6 or 7 sheesha pipes! You NEVER see women smoking here and these weren't even the beautiful ones - they looked really tipsy and homemade and very bong-like. Totally out of place! Layla was of course super curious and pointing and asking and I was trying to be all calm and cool and answer her questions like it was no big deal (remember fearless and fun-loving).

There was some super loud music going on and some pre-teen girls doing all the dancing. Layla was dying to join in but at 4.5 years old her shyness outweighs her fearlessness at times (= The music would stop at odd times and it would change totally randomly. At one point two tall, beautiful twin girls danced to half a song and then quit saying they did learn any more of the song (= I love that perfection is NOT a part of this culture as a whole. Certainly in some areas, but not in a lot of areas you would expect.

We sat and sweated and sweated and the dear woman walking around serving water to everyone out of the same glass never.ever.came.close. Dear Layla got up the gumption to chase her down and ask for a glass of water. Sadly she came back to me holding the glass so the lady had to go in again and get another glass to keep serving.

We stayed until about 1145pm and I felt bad at leaving so early. The groom's family hadn't come yet and as we pulled out onto the main street, we saw a big line of cars with their blinkers on blowing their horns and celebrating....mostly likely the groom's family. It was the longest line of cars I'd ever seen and I really regretted leaving early but you never know how long these things will go!

This photo is a random one from the internet as I can't take a photo of my friends let alone post it on a blog. This was what the AVERAGE gal looked like. That means at least half of them had even more gold and impressive looking dresses. See what I mean? Nothing from Nordstrums even comes close. And I was dressed at the "Target" level, shall we say. sigh.

Summer laziness, big city fun and a watery death

I have not had much motivation or much time to post lately - the fires in Colorado took up a bunch of emotional energy and then we left for Dubai for a week and came home with three guests. Then Tom took off for a three-day business trip.

The sad news that I could barely contemplate writing about was that my camera died a very sad and watery death. It drowned in my purse. My brand new super leather purse that was so high quality it held in an entire bottle of water sloshing around with all the contents of my purse floating around inside. I had shopped and shopped for a purse and July in Dubai means HUGE sales. Really. Like things are actually a normal price like you could pay at Target as opposed to the normal Paris, Champs Elysees prices they usually are.  They have to do something to mitigate the weather that makes everyone irritable so slashing prices is a big deal.  So I finally made a decision and then the purse betrays me by doubling as a swimming pool. 

I was really hoping the camera might dry out, but alas, it had been turned on somehow during the sloshing about. It was a wonderful and faithful camera that I would like to have a memorial for and bury in the yard. I used it probably 5 times a day!

so sad.

Canon Powershot, I will miss you.

(Due to the massive sales currently happening, we finally went and got another camera just like it (= why change something that worked so well??)

Incredible video of the fire

I put this link in a previous post but then I found a better way to copy it in. In addition, I actually finished watching it and it was incredible. It is long so only do it when you aren't feeling rushed. It is amazing to feel as if I actually was able to watch the whole thing happen. Minutes 6-10 are the most dramatic but the whole thing is worth your time. It was put together by a private citizen who used footage from his deck and the updates from KOAA to give the date, time and news bytes.

Layla is finished with school!

 

 

 

Love her!! This outfit was borrowed from a friend earlier in the day and despite an offer from me to buy her a new dress for the event, she went with the boots and dress and leggings (=

The men standing to the right are the sponsors of the school and are the symbolic heads of every event.

This totally personifies Layla: purposeful, confident, dressed with careful intention and doing the right thing (=
 

Fire and Family

Most of you who read this blog have been updated already, but I just wanted to say that mom and dad had evacuated but they house is fine.....they have returned. About 370 homes were destroyed all in one neighborhood right next to the Glen Eyrie property where Tom and I got married and have spent a great deal of time. It is very tragic to think about.

About 4 days ago we came up to Dubai and have not been on the internet hardly at all so I was just staying updated through my sister's texts and whatever anyone else was saying. We've had a great week up here seeing some old friends who were perfect holiday companions for every member of our family. I'd love to have a standing family vacation with them every summer!

I head back home tonight and Tom will come tomorrow.

If you want to seem some footage of the fire and have not found it elsewhere on the web, this is a 16 min video that is fairly dramatic. Someone recommended to watch through about 8 mins. You can see where the wind shifted on Tuesday (it is marked with the day and time by a local news station) and came down the mountain.

https://www.youtube.com/v/ZBA7eHY022k?version=3&feature=player_embedded"https://www.youtube.com