Ellie et le petit serpent maison

We get baby snakes in our house. The first time we saw one, one of our first nights here, we were horrified that we had some sort of worm moving in to infest our food.

But we soon learned that they are snakes. They are babies. And they are harmless, even as adults. They are called house snakes, or serpent maison, and they apparently come in both black and green.

The cats love playing with them and they seem to be in endless supply so we let the cats have them. As long as the snakes stay babies and stay on the floor. I'm dreading the day I find an adult curled up in my t-shirt drawer, as nonvenomous as they are.

Harry Potter and the Land of No Movies

There's one thing I'm really jonsin' about this year. I'm going to miss the new Harry Potter movie this summer. I've seriously been thinking about a July vacation in the United States or Europe just so I can see the movie (we have no other reason to take a vacation in July; in fact, Mike can't take a vacation at all until September). I've loved all the Harry Potter movies and there have been no other films in recent years that I've really wanted to see right away.

But Burundi has one movie theater, and the movies are almost exclusively shown in French. Maybe two or three times a year they'll show an English-language film (and so far they haven't been ones I've wanted to see). Since I really can't afford a vacation just to fly home and watch a movie here's my plan B: Befriend the guy at the theater who orders the films and lobby for an English-language showing of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. 

It's starting to work already! Mike works with the brother of the theater manager. The manager and I have exchanged emails. I just have to convince him that there are enough English-speaking Harry Potter fans here to warrant this being one of his few selections this year.

I have no hips

For want of entertainment around here, when a friend said she’d teach a belly-dancing class, I said I’d attend. I don’t know what I was thinking. On one hand, I like exercising and I’ll try just about any workout. On the other hand, I hate people and organized class-type situations. Plus I have no grace or rhythm and I’m not flexible.

Why not give it a shot?

It was fun. The music was catchy. I got to wear a scarf tied around my hips with little jingly coins on it. And while I found the whole thing enjoyable, I wasn’t overcome with the feminine sensuality that women are supposedly overcome by when they do something like try belly-dancing. (It’s like when I shot a gun. I was like, okay, I shot a gun. I didn’t feel strong or empowered.)

I don’t have hips. I’ve always enjoyed my slim figure and never once wished for a waist or hips or an otherwise hourglass figure. I know that technically I was doing all the moves correctly, but my little coins weren’t jingling as loudly as they should have. I probably looked like a robot. A quiet robot.

But I'm going to go back next week. Now that I've started, I want to finish the whole dance. 

Besides, what else am I going to do with my Tuesday nights?

Hardly Worth Reading

I had a decent post all worked out, done during some slow moments at work, but of course, since this is Burundi, the network went down and I couldn't email my post notes to myself to work on at home. Plus, now, I've been at Book Club and have had a bit of wine, so I can't recraft the post.

I like reading, and I enjoy the people at Book Club, and in theory I enjoy Book Club, but why does it always seem like such a chore? Once I come home I realize I've had a good time, but there's something about the label "book club" that's off-putting.

More on this later. It's time for bed.

Thousands of Burundians turn out for anti-gay demo

BUJUMBURA (AFP) — Thousands of Burundians took part in a government-organised demonstration Friday to demand that homosexuality be criminalised.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 people turned out, according to varying estimates, to protest the senate's decision not to criminalise homosexuality, in the largest demonstration since President Pierre Nkurunziza came to power in 2005.

Read the full AFP article. We were at home having lunch that afternoon while this was going on so we didn't get to see it when it passed by Mike's office. Apparently it was a peaceful demonstration, so despite what they were demonstrating for, it may have been the most peaceful large demonstration in the country's history.

There's been discussion about whether homosexuality should be a crime in Burundi. It's a religious conservative country and many people believe that it's not just a sin, but should be punishable by law. Incidentally, at the same time the homosexuality bill was brought up, the government passed a law abolishing the death penalty. Yay! Look, no death penalty! We'll just try to sneak this anti-human-rights bill through while everyone's distracted by the death penalty abolishment.

One of my worst nightmares

When we returned from vacation, two weeks away, we found that Grendel (a 20-pound Norwegian forest cat) had lost weight. A lot of it. Nearly half of his body weight. We know our housekeeper had been coming to feed the cats while we were gone and the other one was perfectly healthy.

Coming home to a sick pet is traumatic enough, but in Burundi its worse than if our house had been robbed. I felt empty and helpless and incredibly guilty. There's a veterinary clinic here, but it's for livestock. Vet care here consists of knowing when it's time to put down a sick cow or goat so it doesn't infect the rest of the herd. But we know someone who'd taken their dog to the clinic and the dog recovered. What other choice did we have? 

The vet was very nice and everyone in the office told us how "joli" (beautiful) he is. Even with his diminished weight, he's a large, good-looking cat. No one in the office spoke English but Mike managed in French to say how big he'd been before we left for vacation. They couldn't do much for him, but they tried. They took his temperature and tested him for worms. They gave him a deworming pill and an antibiotic shot. They really didn't know what was wrong with him, but that was pretty much all they could do. He had a slight fever, which indicated infection. They asked us to come back the next day for another antibiotic shot.

On that day we came home, our flight was early in the morning and we had that whole day off from work. Mike got called in, but I spent a long afternoon at home worrying over Grendel and observing him. To my relief, around dinner time he got up and ate a little bit and drank some water. His personality was returning, too, and he jumped up onto the couch with me. The next morning, he was eating more food.

We took him back to the vet at lunch time. His temperature had returned to normal. She gave him another antibiotic shot. We didn't have time to bring him back to the house so he hung out in my office for the afternoon. He continued to eat and drink water in near-average quantities.

By that night it seemed like his old self was all the way back. He was even begging for food. We are incredibly lucky that whatever it was appears to have been a simple infection. He's a middle-aged cat and he was slightly overweight. If he has kidney problems or diabetes complications, there's nothing that could be done for him here. 

Now, two weeks later, he's gained some weight back. It will take awhile for him to beef up completely, and it would be better for his health if he stays closer to 17 or 18 pounds rather than 20. He's still so handsome.

(A collection of Grendel pics.)

Dr. Livingstone, I presume?

Yes, that's a cliche title to a post about visiting the Livingstone Monument. Stanley and Livinstone's first meeting wasn't even in Burundi, it was in Tanzania (although many people who don't know that assume it was here when they see there's a monument). 

They traveled through Burundi and spent several hospitable days in Mugure, a village just south of Bujumbura. When we arrived yesterday I could see why they wanted to spend several days there. The view is gorgeous. You've got mountains behind you, a river immediately in front of you and Lake Tanganyika in the distance. Beyond the lake, more mountains from the Congo.

Livingstone carved their names on a large rock overlooking the river. And that's the monument. It's quite simple and I think some people are disappointed by it.

But when I was planning an excursion for some folks at work I needed a way to make it less disappointing. The spot is wonderful for a picnic. There used to be a bar there but it closed down during the war. The buildings were abandoned but still standing. And "buildings" is a generous term. They are huts with short walls and thatched roofs, so you can enjoy the view and be out of the sun. I told people to pack a lunch and I'd provide a cooler of beverages. Primus anyone? We had beers and Cokes and hung out for over an hour just enjoying the view and the breeze. 

There are some children there who will hang around. There's a police post there, and the police will chase the kids away after awhile hoping to get a tip from you for that task. We didn't give anything to the police officers, but when we left we gave lollipops and pencils to the kids.

It was nice to be outside the city for a couple hours.

One More Day

Are you tired of hearing about Tanzania yet? I have one more day to blog about.

The food that Zara Tours provided us was not terrific. Most nights it wasn’t bad and one night it was even pretty good. Some dishes were utterly inedible though, and some of those dishes were served to us at nice hotels, not dinners at high altitude when everything made us feel nauseous. What was annoying was that most of the dishes were local interpretations of Western-style food. Most of the tourists were American or German and they seemed to be okay with pizza topped with sardines and the same vegetable soup every single night. What’s wrong with you people? We had been hoping for some African food. We like it! And we also had our hearts set on amazing coffee, but the coffee served by Zara, even in the hotels, was dishwater.

So on our very last day in Tanzania we went back into Moshi in search of coffee and African food. Our safari guide pointed out a restaurant and we had seen and heard of a couple others we wanted to check out. First, coffee. We had been in search of coffee the last time we were in Moshi but every coffee shop we passed was closed. The same was true on this day. What’s up with that? Finally we were driven inside by thirst, heat, and visions of ice cream at an Indian restaurant called Deli Chez. (Yeah, and remember the Salzburger Café was full of Volkswagen iconography.) First we each ordered a milkshake. Milkshakes! It had been ages since we’d had milkshakes. Mine tasted like strawberry Quick rather than strawberry ice cream, but I didn’t care. I loved it. Then I ordered a hot coffee and Mike ordered an iced coffee. It wasn’t the best Tanzanian coffee I’d ever had, but it was a million times better than what I’d been drinking for the previous two weeks.

Milkshakes at Deli Chez

We still wanted African food, but we were full of beverages so we decided to walk for a bit. We found some relatively quiet and shady roads leading away from the crowded downtown area and just wandered around. When we finally got hungry, we walked back into town to the restaurant our driver had pointed out for local food: Central Garden.


Central Garden

We got the African menu, but the muzungu prices. (It was still pretty cheap, but no matter how much long we live in Burundi, we will never get the local prices.) Mike ordered ugali with beef and I ordered ugali with chicken. (Actually I ordered bananas, but they were out of bananas!) The food was okay. It wasn’t the greatest but it was a nice change from the hotel food we’d been eating. And the mango-passionfruit juice for dessert was yuuuummmmmeeeeee.

Eventually we went back to the hotel for the night. We had to leave at 4 am the next day to make a 6 am flight. We skipped the hotel’s dinner, preferring to snack on Lara bars rather than face that food one last time.

We had an uneventful trip home. And that about brings us up to speed.

Mto Wa Mbu walking tour

21 Feb
Last day of safari, but not last day in Tanzania
Morning on patio at Highview Hotel

Leaving Highview and heading back to Moshi today. Supposed to tour a village for traditional food and drink.


And that’s where my journal ends.

On our last day of safari we actually didn’t go to any of the safari parks. We were a tad animal-ed out and tired of bouncing around in the truck. We had struck a deal with our guide to cut short a Serengeti day in order to spend more time in Ngorongoro Crater but that left us with nothing but a five-hour drive back to the hotel on that last day.

We had been complaining about the lack of Africa culture in our hotels so our guide set us up on one of the Cultural Tourisme Program village walking tours. We stopped at Mto Wa Mbu village just outside the Ngorongoro Conservation Area and were treated to a two-hour walk through this unique village. This is an area where the socialism experiment is working.

Over 100 tribes from Tanzania and other African countries are represented in this farmer and artisan co-op. The land around Ngorongoro is so fertile, due to the volcanic nature of the soil. There’s also plenty of water from the lakes and rainfall.

We learned about the cultivation of the different banana varieties. The bananas can’t be left to ripen on the trees because monkeys will come down and eat them, so they harvest the bananas green and put them in a ripening room with avocados, and the avocados encourage the bananas to ripen. Also, the guide said they can’t tell what kind of banana a plant will yield until it starts to flower. All this time spent in Burundi surrounded by bananas, and we hadn’t yet had the opportunity to see how they grow. Funny that we had to spend two weeks in Tanzania before we found out! We also went to a house that brews and serves banana beer. I like the Burundi banana beer better, but it was cool to see how it’s made. It’s fermented with millet, so it’s a beer I can drink!

Sampling the banana beer

We visited artist communes and were convinced to buy some wood carvings produced by a tribe that fled Mozambique. (We can get the same stuff here in Burundi, but we felt better about paying the carvers directly rather than the myriad middlemen involved with the trading.)

We also learned that the elephants from nearby Lake Manyara have developed a taste for corn, and elephants in your corn patch will obviously destroy your livelihood that season. And apparently the Masai people who raise cattle in Ngorongoro believe that all the cattle on Earth belongs to them and they’ll steal any cows that they see. So the few people in this village that have cows keep them in a spare room off of the house, to keep them hidden.

It was a fascinating tour and just what we needed after all those days of being in the car. Of course, we didn’t do nearly as much shopping and photo-taking as muzungus (white people) should. We already live in Africa and see this stuff all the time so we were bad tourists.

Day 4 of Safari

20 Feb
Day 4 of Safari

Pair of Kirk’s dik-dik on route to SNP, just outside of gate.

On route from SNP to NCA:
cape hare
topi
kori bustard

Ngorongoro Crater
Around water hole
lions – male and female at water hole, then they crossed the street to join another male with females and two more females arrived around the water hole
spotted hyenas
elephant
egrets
yellow-billed stork
hippo ibis
crane


Ngorongoro Crater

Rest of crater
zebras
wildebeest warthog
lesser flamingo
black rhinos – 3, one solitary, then later a mamma and baby
cheetahs – 2 or 3
black kite
small black bird w/ orange shoulders
dark storks
lesser masked weaver
superb starling

Outside of crater just before exiting NCA
waterbuck
cerval

See photos on flickr

I'm typing up my notes from the trip and posting them with just some light editing. Each day will be a new post. (Some of these may not be much more than lists of animals we saw each day.)

Day 3 of Safari

19 Feb
Day 3 of Safari – Ikoma Wildcamp

Drove through Ngorongoro Cons. Area yesterday. Stopped at Olduvai Gorge.

Arrived at Serengeti Nat’l Park after lunch.

Arrived at Ikoma Camp by sunset. Two options—camping and lodging. Lodges are mud huts with thatched roofs. Very cute!

Heard crunching sounds all night long though. Mike thinks it may have been the giant mantis we saw just before bedtime.

Ikoma Wildcamp

At camp, saw a pair of go-away birds. On route to SNP, storks in a tree.

Serengeti National Park
francolin
hartebeest
elephants – the first one of the day trumpeted and false charged for several steps
giraffe
Kirk’s dik-dik
lions – 3 females, one with tracking collar; two cubs
bird – lilac-breasted roller
crocodile
Egyptian geese

buffalo
ox-peckers
warthogs
hooded vulture
2 leopards, mamma with kill and baby
long-crested eagle
white-headed buffalo weaver
waterbuck
topi
hyraxes – rock and tree
tawny eaglewhite crown shrike
lovebirds
red-neck falcon
lanner falcon
common stilt
olive baboon
vervet monkey

Serengeti National Park

See photos on flickr

I'm typing up my notes from the trip and posting them with just some light editing. Each day will be a new post. (Some of these may not be much more than lists of animals we saw each day.)

Just a Quick Note

I debated not doing a NaBloPoMo post today and ruining my streak because some days there are more important things than blog posting. And I'm most likely going to be derailed when I go to Rhode Island later this week anyway. My brain did plenty of work today without crafting a post, thank you very much.

But I have a few minutes to kill while waiting for George's King of Falafel and Cheese Steak to deliver some totally yummy hummus and grape leaves and other tasty treats for dinner. Mike zipped out to find an ATM. I'm about 7 sips into a new gluten-free beer, Green's Endeavour. What else can I do but check out the online world for a bit?

We had another busy day of consumables shopping. We tackled wine and beer, cat stuff, the Asian grocery store, and a few toiletries that we couldn't find at Costco. Plus two trips to the storage unit. We are spent. Toward the end of the outing, as I was wilted and getting close to a meltdown, I reminded myself that in four weeks I'll be a million miles from any suburban shopping center and that will be a great reward if I can just get through it now. I perked up a bit and just kept shopping.

Bookworm -- Summer Reading Meme

So there's this list going around of 100 great books. It's supposedly from the National Endowment for the Arts as part of their Big Read project, encouraging people to read classic literature. It's perfect for people like me who like to show off how many books they've read. :)

(I should mention that I can't actually find this list at the NEA website. I've copied it from other blogs. Seems like a good list though.)

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline the books you LOVE. (I'm going to ** the books I love. Underlining is a PITA on blogger.)
4) Reprint this list on your own blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. **Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. **To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (I own these and haven't gotten around to finishing them.)
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (I've read a good portion of his works, probably more than half.)
15. **Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell (I just received this from PaperBackSwap.)
22. **The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. **The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (I'm surprised this is on the list. One of the worst books I've ever read.)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (I also received this one recently from PaperBackSwap.)
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. **Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce (I read Portrait of an Artist and tried this one, but I'll never finish it.)
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. **The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. **Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. **Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99. **Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I've read almost half the list. I'm secure in my reading confidence to know that I don't have to read some of those that are considered classics or modern classics. Some of the more recently published books on the list, like Da Vinci Code, Memoirs of a Geisha, and The Kite Runner are books that didn't blow me away. I should just face the fact that I'm not a huge fan of popular fiction. I try, but it doesn't always work out for me.

(Um, that last paragraph is kind of a disaster. I'm still taking a low dose of codeine for my tooth.)

Burundi Catches the Exercise Bug

I came across this article today from South Africa's Mail & Guardian Online: Athletic Escapism in Burundi. We've heard that there are walking and hiking clubs for touring the hills around the city. But it sounds amazing to see all these people meeting on the beach for socializing and aerobics.

This particular 2km stretch of beach regularly welcomes hundreds of young and old Burundians who've caught the exercise craze. But the rest of the city will also be buzzing with citizens walking in groups belonging to the 20 or so sport clubs, or with family and friends.

We've also heard of an equestrian club and we're looking forward to learning to ride horses. The hills around the city will be great training for Kilimanjaro. According to the article there's also karate lessons. The city seems to be a workout paradise.

I wonder why that is? Burundians are poor and civil-war weary. You'd think they'd be concerned with survival. But it seems that exercise and socializing has become part of that survival instinct. They are relieving stress and staying healthy. A Bujumbura aerobics instructor theorizes:

"People lacked things to do during the war as all work stopped. A lot of people started to exercise to pass time and when they started to meet regularly, that's when many clubs were formed. This was an activity to rid them of negative thoughts."

In other Burundian athlete news, Burundi sent its first athletes to the Olympics in 1996 and one of their runners won the gold medal in the men's 5,000-meter race (1). What an exciting Olympic debut! Burundi has sent a handful of runners and swimmers to the Summer Olympics ever since (2). They are slated to send some athletes this year but I haven't found any information on which events they'll be competing in. We'll be arriving in Burundi during the first weekend of the Olympics. It should be a lot of fun to watch them there.

(1) Burundi's First Olympics Ends with a Gold Medal
(2) Burundi at the Olympics

Soft Foods

My tooth extraction went better than I expected it to yesterday. After six pokes in five different spots, the doctor finally got the anesthesia IV into me. "That's weird," is not something you want your doctor to say while he's poking you with needles, but that's what he said, several times. Despite my veins being large and close to the surface he just couldn't get the needle in properly. I agreed that that is weird, because no one ever has any trouble drawing blood from me. Eventually he got it though and I dozed off. When I woke up a little while later it was all done. It was apparently a very easy extraction and I was a good patient. I rested for a few minutes, dusted some bloody tooth pieces off my shirt (the nurse acted like that was normal, so I didn't worry), and then Mike appeared to take me home.

They gave me novocain on top of the anesthesia. Luckily the novocain gave Mike plenty of time to get my pain reliever prescription from CVS. The pain reliever is pretty mild, and the pain is milder than I expected. I'm seeping a normal amount of blood, no gushing. I'm not nauseous from any of the drugs. By the time the novocain wore off I was quite hungry. Since I was approved a soft foods diet rather than all liquid I dove into a bowl of hot cereal, then nibbled some cheese. Mike made me a fruit smoothie before I went to bed (and there's enough left over for breakfast this morning).

I certainly feel better than I thought I would. Not great, but not terrible. I slept through one of my pain pills last night and I take it as a good sign that I wasn't in enough pain to wake up for it. I told Mike I feel good enough to probably putter around the house today and return a few work emails. But I'm supposed to get three more vaccinations today and I'm going to put those off until tomorrow or Friday. I'm in no mood to walk around and talk to people and then get stuck with more needles.

No Food for You

I'm getting my wisdom tooth out today instead of later in the month as originally planned. I can't have anything to eat or drink this morning except for some giant pills I need to take an hour before the procedure. I'm usually not that hungry first thing in the morning but of course I am today since I can't have anything.

I've been thinking that it's not fair that we have to choose doctors and procedures based on insurance coverage. Lately I've felt that my teeth are a business opportunity for someone and maybe my health isn't really the issue. I had consultations with two oral surgeons. The one that I liked, who talked to me for a while and whose office staff made me feel comfortable and right at home, is not covered by our insurance. The surgeon who is covered by our insurance... sitting in his waiting room is like being at a cattle auction or something. A bunch of us were herded in and left to sit there and when I was finally called in I was showed a five-minute video about the procedure and then the surgeon talked to me for about two minutes, cramming in a lot of information about everything that could go wrong and not giving a lot of assurance that it will probably be okay. When it comes down to insurance or no insurance, $100 or $1700, I really didn't have a choice.

I just keep telling myself it's a common procedure that happens all the time so the odds of wrong-doing are slim.

We consume.

We started buying our consumables in earnest last week. This is our haul from Costco. We made it through toiletries and some kitchen and cleaning stuff before our cart was too heavy to push and it occurred to us we only have one car and can only carry so much stuff home. We have a list and for the most part we stuck to it. Also we have time to do a bit of comparison shopping and buy some of our preferred brands at other stores if Costco doesn't have them. It's all sort of a puzzle. We need X amount of stuff as cheaply and from as few stores as possible, but for some items we're willing to pay a tad more to get a specific brand.

Aside from the toiletries and cleaning products from Costco we also placed a gigantic order with Amazon.com Groceries. They have bulk discounts on, surprisingly, most of the gluten-free foods I eat on a regular basis. My favorite crackers, cookies, and pasta plus some of the Bob's Red Mill baking mixes are available for much cheaper than specifically gluten-free shopping sites. Who knew that something as mainstream as Amazon.com could be such a gluten-free paradise? If you shop smartly and choose only items from Amazon and not outside sellers, you'll get free shipping on all of it, too.

(And while we were at Amazon we couldn't resist adding a few DVDs to our order.)

We'll have a yard with enough room for a garden, so we ordered seeds for some of our favorite vegetables that we might not be able to buy fresh there. As adults, neither of us have lived in a place where we can have gardens (except for a small patch of tomatoes at one place) and we're looking forward to having one. Apparently the soil is very fertile and any plant that likes sun and water will do well.

We also bought gallons of facial products from The Body Shop and I placed an Arbonne order with Vicky for all the sunblock I'll need.

Next we have to focus on the cats. They, also, need two years' worth of their favorite food and litter. Man, that's going to be heavy.

We know that we have to ignore the current economy and think ahead. All this stuff we're buying is an investment. We'll be happy with our preferred brands and favorite foods and life will be a little bit easier. Life will be different enough, and hard at times, without worrying about running out to CVS for deodorant (and CVS, of course, doesn't exist in Bujumbura). If we were to run out to the European grocery store American brands of cereal could cost upwards of $15 a box, so it's in our best financial interest to bring some with us (local brands have little to no quality control). But with all the rational thought behind it, it's still very weird to be shopping for the future like this.

I Achieve 24 Hours in Nature

We made it! As Mike told my dad, nature threw its shallowest streams and lightest rains at us and we prevailed. It was a hard hike with a heavy pack and using trekking poles for the first time. But all the equipment worked and we stayed warm and dry all night long.

The scenery was gorgeous. I wish I hadn't been so afraid of falling in the river so I could have enjoyed it a bit more. The trail is little-used and not blazed. You basically go upriver to the falls and downriver to the parking lot. The trail goes along the river, then abruptly ends, and you have to wander around in the river a bit, sometimes crossing it, to find the trail again. This happens several times.

Once I got my feet wet and got over not wanting to get them wet, the hike was a bit easier. After a while I figured out how to use the poles to my advantage, too. And while my pack wasn't so uncomfortable that it made me sore, it was heavy enough to change my center of balance and I was still struggling with that on the hike out this morning. Balance isn't my strong point anyway.

Mike has a new camp stove, and it was awesome. We fried potatoes and onions last night and heated up sausage and beans. It was such a good camping dinner. This morning we made hot cereal and Mike tried out a new doodad that turns his waterbottle into a coffeepot. It was great.

Now we are lounging at home, exhausted now that we've had the chance to stop and think about it. But I'm glad I did this night out in the woods. It was a good test of our gear and it made me even more eager to climb Kilimanjaro.

We forgot the battery for the camera, so there's no photographic evidence of our trip, unfortunately.

Off we go

Just a quick cup of joe before we head out to St. Mary's Wilderness in George Washington National Forest. This is my first attempt at backpack camping. My pack's kind of heavy and I haven't even added all my snacks yet. But I have to do this in order to find out if I can do it for Kilimanjaro.

Bad News for Chickens in Burundi

I was ready to take food waste and shortages off my mind and also not worry about Burundi today, but my Google blog searcher was not:

Burundi: Untreatable Disease Kills 1000 Chicken
"The disease has also been reported in other parts of the country but total numbers of dead chickens are not [yet] available," the director of the Animal Health Department in the Ministry of Agriculture and Stockbreeding, Pierre Bukuru, told IRIN.

"With the pandemic among the chickens, the population will face a significant lack of animal proteins and many people will suffer from the shortage, as chicken is widely raised and consumed in Burundi," he added.

Bukuru said the illness, which has similar symptoms to Newcastle Disease, was affecting the economic lives of people raising chickens or trading in meat and eggs.

"Egg production has dropped by 80 percent," he said.

He added that the meat of infected chickens did not pose a threat to human health as long as it was well-cooked.

Obviously this is not good news for Burundians. Their crops are already being destroyed by flooding rains and civil war flare-ups. It's a country that sustains itself on farming, with many families raising their own food and selling what's leftover. But if there's not even enough for themselves to eat, there's going to be very little income coming in from sales.

I asked a colleague who's been in Bujumbura for a few months now what the rising food prices are like. He said it's very hard for average Burundians but prices on staple items like sugar are still quite cheap for Americans. He said Americans there aren't worrying too much about it yet. The best we can do is to keep buying local meats and produce to keep those families in business. (We've heard the meat and fruit are spectacular and we can't wait to get over there and eat some for ourselves.)

(Image from The Poultry Site.)