Africa: Day 21 (Minutae Rules My Days)

Greetings to all of you out there, wherever you may be as you read this. For myself, it is currently 11:15 PM on the night of July the 29th, 21 days into my second trip to Africa. It is currently the weekend here, though the morrow marks the genesis of a new round of mayhem and days filled with me trying to accomplish too many things in too little time, all while attempting some show of alacrity at the situation. Today finds me again still sans Internet and the phone situation also remains as yet unresolved. Apparently, since we live in a government owned building, the owner himself must present himself before got Gods of Communication and swear the blood of his firstborn on the altar of telephony, while swearing a jihad on the barons of domestic commerce and vowing never to use his phone service except in accordance with the will of Allah. All this must be accomplished under the blood red sky of a harvest moon, on a night when the hyenas lay on their backs and camels walk into coffeeshops to offer their lives in exchange for Nescafe. Only this and the blood of a virgin, sacrificed on an unpainted taxi whose driver is from Syria can grant us access to a PHONE! (My apologies... I'm a little tender on the subject. Actually, Tim is outside stalking hyenas right now while April prepares the foul-smelling brew that I'm going to use to drug the landlord while I carry him bodily to prostrate himself before the telephone company and beg for his life!) Ok. Enough on this matter. Durka Durka, Mohamed Jihad.

Yesterday was the birthday of my daughter, Hannah, for those of you who are interested in knowing. In case she reads this, No Darling, Daddy has not forgotten your birthday. I just have to wait until I get to a place where I can call. I'm writing this now, at home, knowing that I shant get opportunity to post it until at least tomorrow (Sunday). However, my first intention is to call you as soon as it is a biddable time for you on your side of the great pond. And, no, I also did not forget your birthday present... But the camel couldn't carry it ALL the way back home by himself so it seems I will be bringing your gifts in person whence I return. And in answer to your email you sent, yes you may certainly come visit me when I return once again to the Great Land of Pork.

This weekend, for me, has been a mix-and-match of frivolity and desperation. I did get to spend some valued time away from work. I ran across Ali, my old acquaintance from my first trip to tripoli. He recognized me walking down the street on Gregg's first day in-country while I was taking him on a tour of the local places that are in walking distance from the apartment. April has been dying to get a chance to visit the beach and escape from the confines of these thick, drab, manila walls, so we took a cab ride to Tajura and headed for a european beach for a day in the sun. To be more precise, we were seeking a day in the water, for sun is quite easy to locate in this part of the world. I'll update more on the beach trip in the next post, where I'll include the pictures to accompany the dialogue. Upon my return from the salt and sea, I immersed myself completely, to the exclusion of all else, in the creation of a document that my CEO requested of me and which will take most of a week to compile, even if I work every day and night at it and resuse sleep. I was in one of those super-productive moods however and was able to bang out most of 28 pages before calling it a night. Today marked my revisit to the task whence I resumed working on it for most of the day and then travelled to a local internet cafe to send it to my boss for his perusal. That task behind me, at least for the moment, I was able to begin to plan the next week.

This trip has not been the successful task-accomplishing, rapid-deploying, super-job that I had hoped it would be, but I'm going to try to put all that behind me this coming week and push ahead for the remaining 40 days or so that I have left and try to catch up to the pace that Tim and I set for ourselves on the first trip. Of course, for the most part, this means that we will be working days and most of the nights as well if we hope to achieve a level of desired accomplishment before returning to the states.

This evening was a nice break from the previous hours of labor. Tim and Gregg went off in search of undiscovered riches in Tower Fateh while April and I made ourselves busy with the task of preparing dinner for the crew. Tom went in to work today, so he got the well-earned benefit of relaxing on the couch. (Notice, Tom, that I have yet to make mention of your "steely eyes." Oops.. There it is.) Dinner was a resounding success I think. I found some local bread that faintly resembles a fajita shell except that it is cooked in some kind of oil that it retains once baked. Coupling this with some spices brought with us from home, some local chicken, and fresh vegetables, a dinner of Chicken Fajitas and Italian pasta salad were the course for the evening.

Tomorrow marks the beginning of a new day so I will bring this post to a close, having not much else to say worth repeating here at the moment. I will however attempt to begin on the next post, which I think I'll title "Oh My Gosh, a Dish Dosh."