The holidays are here

Ha ha ha ha ha at all of you back in the U.S. who have to go grocery shopping today. I don’t envy you in the slightest. It seems like a million years ago -- a totally different life yet only one year ago -- that I was trying to go to the Whole Foods in Walnut Creek on the Monday before Thanksgiving and already, that early in the week, the parking lot was so crowded there was a wait around the block for spaces. (I ended up driving home and BARTing/walking back -- mmm, and stopping for a gingerbread latte at Starbucks for the walk home.)

This year on the Monday before Thanksgiving I went out to see what I could find for Christmas decorations on the local market for my office holiday party. The pickins’ are pretty slim. And weirdly priced. Some strands of lights are 15,000 bufers ($12.50), while others are only 4,000 or 5,000 bufers ($3.33 or $4.17) and I can’t for the life of me figure out why the difference. So far I’ve only found two stores that even carry Christmas lights.

Now, I could use some of the lights I packed up and brought with me, but there’s a slight issue of the power conversion and plug adaptors. Plugging in my American lights would need quite a hefty converter.

Then there’s the issue of the party taking place in the afternoon outdoors. It’s either going to be blindingly bright from the sun or pouring rain. Lights may be a “moo” point.

Glass balls on a palm tree and Vince Guaraldi Trio playing in the background is festive yet tasteful, right?

I also had the idea that the Americans in the office could bake Christmas cookies for the Burundians as a way to share an American aspect of the holiday. That could potentially backfire and leave me up to my elbows in cookie dough if no one else volunteers to help out.

Just for the kitsch value, I did buy a couple strands of lights for my own home and office use. Every package looks like it’s straight out of 1955 and they’re all dusty. It’s a little depressing and Charlie Brown Christmas around here.

It’s a tad early for me, but I started on Christmas music today. My first song of the season? Wham’s “Last Christmas.” Right now the Beach Boys’ “Little Saint Nick” is on. I'll be hunkering down and starting the holiday movie viewing this weekend. My dad likes to watch White Christmas after dinner on Thanksgiving. I'll definitely be watching that first this year.

Take a hike

We are really doing it! We reserved and paid for our Tanzanian vacation in February. Thirteen days of Kilimanjaro and the Serengeti. We’ll be on the mountain on my birthday. (I would love to summit on my birthday, but the schedule didn’t work out that way.)

Now I really have to focus on fitness for the trek. My pack, boots, and poles should be arriving with the rest of our stuff later this week, so I can workout with all my gear. We have a mountain right here in Bujumbura that I can walk up and down all day long to my heart’s content.

Send Kisses

I’ve been talking with some other Americans who arrived in Bujumbura around the same time I did and we agree that we feel like we’re in a time warp. The weather hasn’t changed dramatically since we arrived and without that change of seasons it’s hard to remember that it’s Thanksgiving time. It’s too warm for roasting turkeys and baking pies. If any American football is aired, it will be on in the middle of the night. I certainly have no need for scarves and snow boots.

Without being bombarded by toy commercials and Christmas music, how am I supposed to know what time of year it is? Without those cues to remind me, I just know that I’ll totally forget I should have presents and cards in the mail on December 1 if I have any hope of them getting to their recipients by Christmas Day. Do you know how soon December 1 is? Thanksgiving is this week! My Christmas shopping season is miniscule.

I can’t say I miss the commercialism, but I’m starting to miss some of the coziness that comes with the holiday season. I should be drinking hot chocolate but I have no desire to. Christmas decorations? A tree? I guess I can deck the guava tree next to our terrace. I hope I don’t spill pineapple juice all over the envelopes when I address my holiday cards. That’s just not the way Christmas is supposed to be.

I haven’t felt particularly homesick yet but I think it will happen soon. Mike left for a work trip yesterday and he’ll out of town for a couple weeks. I am in desperate need of my alone-time comfort foods—Hershey’s Kisses and Lay’s Stax. Being home alone here is different than being home alone elsewhere.

D'accord!

I recently read David Sedaris’s new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames. One of his essays is about how he gave up trying to learn French after he learned the magical password that suddenly opened doors for him: d’accord. It’s a term of agreement, “I’m okay with that.” Like David Sedaris, I’ve caught myself saying it a few times and wondering what exactly I’m agreeing to. For him, it once got him a demoral drip at a hospital. But it also got him sitting naked in that same hospital’s waiting room. (You’d have to read his essay to find out exactly how that happened.)

Nothing quite as whacky has happened to me yet. One day I was pretty sure it meant to the maintenance team, “I’m okay with you coming back on another day to work on this.” And while it would have been nice for the project to get started right away it wasn’t the end of the world that it didn’t. (And they did come back! Several times. Over the course of several weeks. Doing a tiny little bit of work each time.)

At a restaurant I was trying to explain my gluten intolerance and ask how a certain dish was prepared. When the waiter said something about pain (bread), I decided to order something else. D’accord? D’accord. I ended up with both dishes in front of me. The waiter refused to take the breaded cutlets away. Since restaurant service is so terrible here, Mike ended up without an entrée, so he ate them and said they were gross. (My meal wasn’t that great either.)

But I also end up on fun, bizarre shopping trips. My assistant is a Rwandan woman who grew up in Bujumbura and she knows everyone in the city and every place to go. She’ll say to me rather ambiguously, “We’ll go to the place where they sell the pottery,” or “the store of the brother of my friend who died,” or “the Chinese furniture place where the artists are.” D’accord. After twisting and turning through some dismal neighborhoods while I’m wondering exactly where I’m going to end up, I always find a pleasant little shop.

Of course, also like David Sedaris, I realize I could be nearly fluent in French by now if I actually spoke it out loud rather than have elaborate imaginary conversations. In my head my French is so witting and charming. But in real life, not only is my French not improving, I think my English is deteriorating!

House sitting

I guest posted at The Mummy Chronicles this morning since Vicky is away from her computer for a few days. Send good thoughts in her direction! She'll be giving birth any minute now.

Milk!

It's been nearly three weeks since we tried to pasteurize our own milk. (See this post.) The last two weeks we've gone back to the secret milk location and bought their pasteurized milk. And you know what? It's pretty tasty. And so far there haven't been any ill effects. (There's been illness and I'll get to that in a future post, but not from the milk.) Milk in my coffee and milk in my cereal. It seems like such a luxury! (Who would consider milk a luxury?)

The first day it tastes a little like cow, butI get used to it. Mike says it tastes just like the bottled milk his family would have delivered when he was a kid. It only stays tasty for a couple days, so we use it up Sunday through Wednesday (it's drinkable for Thursday morning coffee but by Friday it's useless). Since we go for a couple days without it, that's why I have to get used to the cow taste all over again.

For the commenters on my previous milk post: Yes, it should have been 15 seconds. My Belgian nurse co-worker doesn't have a great command of English and often mistranslates. And I took her word for it rather than looking it up online myself, since I have so few precious moments online in a day. What became of the curdled milk? Our cook said he could make yogurt. And one day a strawberry yogurt-like substance appeared. So it didn't totally go to waste (except I didn't finish the yogurt because it just didn't appeal to me, cow-flavored strawberries, and it was runnier than I'm accustomed to yogurt being). I appreciate the effort though.

Witches

I didn’t sleep very well last night. I haven’t been sleeping well since I got here, but usually it’s a few hours of solid sack time followed by an hour of being wide awake, then another hour of dozing before the alarm goes off. Last night though I was tossing and turning and the only reason I know I got any sleep at all is because I remember dreaming about witches. I usually don’t remember my dreams, and I can’t remember exactly what happened with these witches, but I remember dreaming about them.

I’m reading The Heretic’s Daughter, a historical fiction novel about the Salem witch trials. Certainly if were living back in that time, my dreams would signify that the witches have bewitched me or I’m a witch myself. Either way, it wouldn’t be good for me.

Another image that kept popping into my head last night is something that happened to Mike and me a couple weeks ago. We were driving down our road one afternoon and when we paused to turn, the driver of a car turning onto our road flashed his fingers at us. The first thing we both said was, “Did he just cast a spell on us?” That’s not out of the realm of possibility here, as sorcery (or belief in it anyway) is common upcountry, outside of the city. But then I realized that he had also flashed his headlights at us. He was letting us know our headlights were on! That’s a big deal around here, driving with your lights on during the day. Everyone warns you because headlamps and batteries are expensive to replace. But we are having trouble with the car battery. Maybe he did cast a spell on us! Or at least on our car.

Yay Democracy!

Even though I was a little homesick, it was thrilling to be here for the presidential election. I had the opportunity to watch the results early on Wednesday morning with some Burundian university students. They were so inspired. I think they think that if they can get to the United States somehow, then their children could be the president someday, too. They also think this democracy thing is pretty cool. One student told me he thinks it’s great that we can vote for someone based on ideas, not from coercion or who will give you a job or which party you belong to. And they like how we get to know a candidate through the media, all the information about both policy ideas and personal lives. Optimists yearn for Burundi elections to be the same way some day. (Unfortunately it doesn’t look like they’ll adopt the American style before the 2010 election here.)

Oh, and here’s a photo of us from Halloween:

Vote Early, Vote Often

That's what my dad always tells me.

It's strange being outside of the United States on election day. Instead of staying up late on Tuesday night to watch results roll in state by state, I'll be waking up early Wednesday morning. At 8 pm on the East Coast, it's 3 am here. I'll be groggily wondering if my absentee ballot made it into the right hands at the right time to be counted.

It's no secret that most of the continent is thrilled at the possibility of Obama being president. A few weeks ago my cab driver in Nairobi nearly drove off the road, he was so excited talking about him. (Well, he nearly drove off the road several times for various reasons.) I heard of a theater group in Nairobi producing "Obama! The Musical." We see Obama t-shirts here in Bujumbura. I think Wednesday is going to be an exciting day around here.

Some co-workers and I have been planning an election results viewing party for Burundian co-workers and aquaintances. How do you explain the American election process in French? (Oui, nous parlons francais ici! Or we try to, anyway.) With the handy website America.gov en francais, that's how. It's hard enough explaining the electoral college and the popular vote and conventions and primaries in English.

Happy Election Day Eve! Be sure to get out there and vote tomorrow while I'm here practicing how to say "I voted by absentee ballot" in French.