Today
Today was a bit of a buzz – overstimulated or worn out, I was feeling a bit like I had been in “performance mode” for too long, so here is a series of factoids.
• In the morning was a naming ceremony – nyambo (meaning small, limited ceremony instead of all day party type naming ceremony) – for Ndey Njie’s new baby girl. Her name is Awa, like one of the mothers I live with.
• One of the boys – youngish, maybe six or so – was crying for at least two or three hours straight when Awa Njie – the aforementioned mother, though not his biological mother – left for Kombo around lunchtime. Nobody did anything in particular to comfort him, and people just sort of complained about the noise and his “craziness” as far as I could tell.
• We had a number of beatings in the compound – a toddler was spanked for pooping on a mat, I think because she’s sick, a boy (pre-school age) was beaten with a very thin branch because he didn’t wash himself properly (or something, didn’t quite understand), another boy of perhaps 13 was beaten with a slightly bigger stick for going too far away during the day – they said he traveled out into the bush or something. Two high school boys held him while his mother hit him.
• I had a return of amoebas – I am pretty sure that’s what’s wrong with me – and spent the morning pretty worn out and close to the “backyard”.
• It was “clean the nation day”. I didn’t even leave the compound before dinner, because this day just sort of frustrates me to a degree not justified by the inconvenience of it. Although I had been planning to go to Kaur to visit an environment volunteer who moved in in early December. I’ve been trying to visit him since then, without results. And now tomorrow is out as I prepare to leave for a trip up country.
• I worked on my bike for a long time – it had been needing attention – fixing the front derailleur, cleaning the gears and mechanisms, oiling and cleaning the chain – and generally giving it some loving.
• I took a nap in the morning, when aforementioned amoebas allowed. Deliciously cool morning, irresistible for sleeping a bit.
• It was laundry day – Ami Njie does my washing, and irons shirts and pants. Fresh clothes are great.
• My domain move is complete. This is a big success that resulted in less malfunction than I anticipated, but about the right amount of agony, as we were without internet here for a week or ten days in the middle of the sensitive part of the process. I am putting up a post I wrote at the beginning of that outage that I overlooked last time I was posting. Oddly, the only headache in reality is because I had to reinstall my portable email client after one of the supporting files got corrupted, and then my archive got deleted in the process of setting up the client again. All of which is to say that I made a fairly silly mistake and lost a bunch of email that I had saved. None of it is fatal, just inconvenient and I hope you all will send me mail to make up for the loss.
That’s all for now – they are getting ready to close up shop!
• In the morning was a naming ceremony – nyambo (meaning small, limited ceremony instead of all day party type naming ceremony) – for Ndey Njie’s new baby girl. Her name is Awa, like one of the mothers I live with.
• One of the boys – youngish, maybe six or so – was crying for at least two or three hours straight when Awa Njie – the aforementioned mother, though not his biological mother – left for Kombo around lunchtime. Nobody did anything in particular to comfort him, and people just sort of complained about the noise and his “craziness” as far as I could tell.
• We had a number of beatings in the compound – a toddler was spanked for pooping on a mat, I think because she’s sick, a boy (pre-school age) was beaten with a very thin branch because he didn’t wash himself properly (or something, didn’t quite understand), another boy of perhaps 13 was beaten with a slightly bigger stick for going too far away during the day – they said he traveled out into the bush or something. Two high school boys held him while his mother hit him.
• I had a return of amoebas – I am pretty sure that’s what’s wrong with me – and spent the morning pretty worn out and close to the “backyard”.
• It was “clean the nation day”. I didn’t even leave the compound before dinner, because this day just sort of frustrates me to a degree not justified by the inconvenience of it. Although I had been planning to go to Kaur to visit an environment volunteer who moved in in early December. I’ve been trying to visit him since then, without results. And now tomorrow is out as I prepare to leave for a trip up country.
• I worked on my bike for a long time – it had been needing attention – fixing the front derailleur, cleaning the gears and mechanisms, oiling and cleaning the chain – and generally giving it some loving.
• I took a nap in the morning, when aforementioned amoebas allowed. Deliciously cool morning, irresistible for sleeping a bit.
• It was laundry day – Ami Njie does my washing, and irons shirts and pants. Fresh clothes are great.
• My domain move is complete. This is a big success that resulted in less malfunction than I anticipated, but about the right amount of agony, as we were without internet here for a week or ten days in the middle of the sensitive part of the process. I am putting up a post I wrote at the beginning of that outage that I overlooked last time I was posting. Oddly, the only headache in reality is because I had to reinstall my portable email client after one of the supporting files got corrupted, and then my archive got deleted in the process of setting up the client again. All of which is to say that I made a fairly silly mistake and lost a bunch of email that I had saved. None of it is fatal, just inconvenient and I hope you all will send me mail to make up for the loss.
That’s all for now – they are getting ready to close up shop!
posted by Zac at
5:23 PM
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