Saturday, August 6, 2011

Rainy day.

A quiet day in the world of Anam. The constant rain kept us house-bound for all of Saturday. We found ways to liven things up, though.

It’s entertaining to observe the way other animals cope with the weather. This chicken, for example, took shelter under the cooking table stationed outside the house. He doesn’t look particularly pleased.































Over the past many weekends, I will sometimes kick back to enjoy an episode of This American Life. A favorite side-activity is to make toys and shapes out of colorful pipe cleaners. I now have a large bag filled with assorted fun things, but they’re surprisingly hard to distribute. When we visit a town, we’ll quickly amass a mob of 90+ children. Have you ever tried to distribute toys to that many children? Especially in Nigeria, where the concept of queues is laughable: it’s impossible. You hand out on gift and it’s quickly ripped apart by the tide of grabby hands desperate to acquire the item. And when you don’t speak their language, it’s not exactly easy to convey that there is enough to go around for everyone.

Anyway, I now spring on chances to give away the gifts to smaller groups of kids wandering Ebenebe (the area in which we live). One such opportunity happened today, as a band of four siblings took shelter from the rain on the front porch.
























Yeah, I’m white. Get over it.

(If you’re wondering why I was wearing a headlamp, it’s because the power was out and I had been reading – it was a cloudy afternoon around 4pm.)

The food situation has improved (at last)! After a shopping trip to Onitsha, we are again stocked with bread, peanut butter, vegetables, etc. I think the peanut butter makes a big difference for me: it opens up a lot of options for snacking.

The culinary creativity of the other interns – particularly Julia, Stacy, and Sarah – continues to impress me. Today, Julia and Stacy crafted several batches of bread. This one had orange zest filling. They also made cinnamon rolls, sans buttery cream awesomeness. (It was still delicious. Anything can beat the processed, sugary cake they pass for bread in Nigeria.)
























Mmm. Dough.

Watched three movies today. Yep: highly productive.

1 comment:

Isabel Carreras-Baquer said...

Andrew! These chicken are so ugly! Oh dear! And so skinny! I LOOOVE the chicken picture! hehehee! aaaaaaaa....Tropical memories, sleepless memories, but really good memories after all!
Love!
is