Third Arabic Language Lesson

Dear Friends,

Greetings! Today was my third tutoring session. I am not tutoring, I am being tutored. I need to make that clear. The words are becoming a little bit less tortuous. I have two more lessons in December, both next week. We will see after that....

I managed to find the right bus going to Khartoum 2 today, and I got my breakfast sandwich ordered as well! Again it was delicious and at one pound (about 40 cents) it is definitely the right price. After the lesson I wasn't able to flag down a Bahri bus and after waiting in the sun for over half an hour I finally gave in and hired a mini van. The driver was a young African (not Arab) man and he must have been impressed by my being an American as he wanted to take my phone number when he dropped me off. Fortunately I don't remember my phones numbers and he assumed that this meant I don't have a phone. I didn't lie, I just didn't volunteer the truth. I had him drop me off at a tiny grocer down the road from me where I frequently go for yogurt, bread, eggs and my poison, Diet Pepsi (although I prefer Diet Coke this store doesn't have it). I had to get yogurt and Diet Pepsi and I figured that way he doesn't actually know where I live. He was nice and had really good English -- I suspect he may have come from Southern Sudan where the language that is spoken is English.

Yesterday I had written quite a bit in the blog and then I must have made an error in saving it because most of what I wrote was no longer there when I posted it. So today I will re-tell some of the content. The residential areas in Khartoum, Bahri, Khartoum 2 and Odurman are streets that have long metal fences with gates in them where the houses are. The gates of course then are opened and lead to the houses, often with some kind of a courtyard surrounding the actual house. I don't think that I have seen any front or back yards per se like those that we have in the states. I have seen one garage. Sometimes the bathrooms are a separate room in the courtyard, sometimes they are a room in the house. In my own apartment I have a bathroom off of the living room in the main body of the house. I have been in several homes where the bathroom is a separate room in the courtyard with a shower and squat toilet, occasionally also a Western type seated toilet.

The stores have the kinds of "doors" that I saw in Jerusalem, Palestine and I believe Kosovo. They are like very heavy metal blinds that move up and down to open and close. They are kind of like old fashioned rolling desktops if any of you, my readers, remember those, except in metal and not wood.

While I waited on the street hoping to catch a bus with the Bahri hand signal there was a man who tried to sell to me and anyone else in sight two adorable twin baby goats. Oh my gosh they were cute! I was praying that they were not headed into someone's soup pot for tonight because I know that goat meat is quite popular here. I don't know if people eat baby or grown up goat meat.

I can tell it is winter here in Khartoum not so much by the temperature, because really this is right now like a really nice Seattle summer, but by the shadows. The shadows are more like fall at home than winter at home, but it is definitely the light that is giving me the clues. So far the whole two months I have been here it gets light around 7:00 a.m. and gets dark around 7:00 p.m. It will be interesting to see what happens in the months to come. Today on the bus at one corner we had quite a bit of a wait and I enjoyed the show of the shadows of leaves on one of the walls which surrounds a house on a street corner. It made me think of Hebrews in the Bible talking of how we are the shadow of the reality.

Again there were many women in burkas and men in the long white garments. One of the men was walking in such a way today with the sun just so that I realized he really needed a slip underneath his! The donkey carts are everywhere, with the little donkeys in the front. At one point today I saw a donkey cart being loaded up with bricks. A few days ago at another location in town I saw bricks being made.

Masalama (Peace be upon you),
Debbie