A break

So once again I’ve proved that I really don’t have time to maintain a blog, at least not the way I write. Maybe if I was doing short accounts of my day. But I think you’d be bored with that. My life isn’t all that blog-worthy.

December is once again winding down. What happened this year? We traveled for a month, which is really too long when you have high school seniors, I have to say. The kids did great, even fantastic, but they really needed their mum for things like college apps and planning larger homework assignments and talking to teachers and things like that. It also took a tremendously long time to recover from. I don’t just mean jet-lag; that was normal. Donn and I returned bone-tired from traveling for a month. It took us probably 3 weeks to get over it, and even then I maintained a sort of vagueness, or numbness, that endured into the Christmas season. I just couldn’t get into doing things, and as a result was the most disorganized I’ve ever been. I started Christmas shopping on December 20th. The nice thing about doing that is it enlarges the holiday, as presents arrive in the days following. “On the second day of Christmas my mother gave to me, yet another thing from Amazon.” All together now! “On the third day…”

In retrospect, December seems like a nice month. Elliot came home. We got a large cheap tree which is actually really ugly, with several huge holes, but it’s a 10 foot noble that cost $10 so there.

See? Magical, I tell you. Or at least real. One or the other.

We had our annual party for our Iraqi refugee friends, about 200 of them, and that was crazy but good. I realized that I kind of know how to plan a party for 200 people, a talent that is outside of the rest of my skill set, which mostly involves reading novels really fast and making good pies, not to mention the ability to drink astonishing amounts of coffee.

I tried to gain weight and succeeded! Yaay! I’m not a loser! Of course most people would think I should be, but I decided to enjoy the mince pies guilt-free this time round. January with its cold hard reality of scales and dutifully-eaten veggies will come soon enough, and if I eat enough shortbread I might actually look forward to some austerity.

On December 23rd, Donn and I went downtown. I had to stop by Powell’s to get Ilsa a book she really really wanted, and so we braved the holiday traffic and found parking a mere 7 blocks away. The queue was the longest I’ve ever seen, stretching to the back of the store. I put Donn in line and rushed away to get the book and look for a Dr Who travel mug for Abel (they had nothing!), and by the time I got back he was at the front of the fast-moving, super-organized line. That’s teamwork! Afterwards we walked around, had a slice and a cold IPA, and wonder of wonders, saw the Unipiper in person!

The Unipiper is a Portland institution, a young man who spreads joy throughout our world by riding a unicycle and playing the bagpipes while wearing a kilt and a Darth Vader costume. (He also sometimes dresses as Gandalf. Truly he is a delight) He kind of makes you wonder what you’ve accomplished with your life. We heard the whine of the pipes from a block away and we came with haste to see him. We found him signing an autograph for a young man, and he wrote, “May your side always be dark.” And we put it on Instagram and Facebook.

Christmas Day was quiet, not to mention filled with envelopes of printed pictures to be opened (of the things that had been ordered and not yet been shipped). We ate a lot and lazed around a lot, which is how it should be if at all possible. We are having a LOTR themed Christmas, in which we attempted to see the Hobbit: Bloated Beyond by Peter’s Fan-Fic or whatever it’s called, only to find the cheap seats sold out. (A local chain does $5 Tuesdays, and if we miss we tend to wait for the following week) So we watched the first 2 parts, and then segued into watching the LOTR trilogy. Since I haven’t sat down and watched them in about 10 years, I’m really enjoying them.

And there you are. Caught up. Bored. Whatever. How was your December? What did you do this year?

Continued Desert Adventures; Mor-Maur 14 part 6

It’s snowing on my blog! It’s freezing in my house! The wind is wuthering and banging things and howling down the chimney! And yet I continue to write about my recent trip to the wilds of the Sahara desert.

I’ve been having a lot of fun telling my Iraqi friends about our trip to Oudane and showing them the picture of the toilet. They are amazed beyond. They laugh hysterically as I describe the uneven stairs, but when I explain about balancing on the rafters, they are horrified. “What if you fall in?” I’ve been asked several times. They are shocked to hear of how poor many Mauritanians are, and can’t believe I survived even 3 days in the tiny village. One woman told me of a time she and her family had fled Baghdad during the war to a neighbouring village, and how they didn’t even spend the night because of the primitive toilet. I laugh. “I lived in Oudane for a month once, with little kids, and the whole family had giardia,” I tell her.

This time, we arrived in Oudane on a Monday afternoon. In the morning, we met our driver outside our friend’s business. This friend, Mo, is doing tremendously well in business and is very generous to boot, and he arranged a car to take us the 600 kilometers from Nouakchott to Oudane. I don’t know what he paid but it was a lovely thing for him to do.

We climbed in and the driver took off at a tremendous rate while I bounced around in the back. The sun beat down as we drove through the desert and I kept waiting for it to get pretty. It does, right around Tergit, where the baked plains that surround the city begin to rise into shale plateaus. I sat in the back, wishing the AC could be cranked, bored for hours and hours and hours. We stopped only at police checkpoints, of which there were many. At each they took our passports and laboriously copied down the information. And the day was long and hot and boring, but it was one of those times where I honestly didn’t mind, because I liked that security was tight and that someone pretty much always knew where we are, or could easily find out. The only negative was that the driver only stopped for police checkpoints, where you don’t want to pop out with your camera unless you’re the type of person who enjoys getting yelled at and possibly losing your camera. So I don’t have any pictures of the pretty part.

We only stopped once, just past Atar, for the driver to make tea in the bed of the pickup truck, out of the wind. I snapped a few photos, carefully making sure the nearby policemen could see I wasn’t pointing my camera at them.

We drank the tea, ate some apples we’d brought, and took off again, beginning the climb up the steep, crenelated plateaus. The road is paved intermittently, so sometimes you bump along on gravel, staring down the side of a cliff without a guard rail, but it’s really not bad and we were soon at the top.

Near the beginning of the climb; a blind corner with mirror. Pic taken from moving car

We arrived in Oudane about 4, and met Yahyia walking down the street towards us. He was our first Arabic teacher, and the reason for our visit. We hadn’t seen him in 8 years.

Oudane is not a big place. The population is 2500 or so, and the way of life there has changed very little in the centuries since it was founded as a center for Islamic learning in the area. Ways of the desert die hard. The first time we visited, complete strangers took us into their home, sat us down and fed us, and offered to host us for a week.

 We spent that first evening sitting round the courtyard, meeting Y’s wife and 4 kids, being fed 2 meals since we hadn’t had lunch and couldn’t convince them we weren’t hungry, and wandering round the old city of Oudane, which is gorgeous. It’s a UNESCO site, one of the 4 ancient cities of Mauritania, and finally “they” are getting around to restoring it. Y tells us that various NGOs have participated, making sure the stones are again reset using only the traditional manner. We walk down to the oasis and then wander up along the Route of 40 Scholars to the top, where the modern city begins.

Gateway to ancient city

 Yes, Donn took this one, thanks so much for knowing that right away

As usual I’m getting into too much detail. “Skip a bit,” Donn urges. I will, next time.