early fall in New England

school

I can tell I'm enmeshed in the semester again when I can't think of anything to post other than work and school. And no one wants to hear about randomized control trials and capacity development and new social movements theory.

Oh, wait, I don't even want to.

But Juma's school is fun. Yesterday Juma and a friend dug up a "dog bone" treasure, and today a butterfly is working its way out of a chrysallis. This morning we drew coconut and banana trees in pastels, fashioned a map to his school out of pegs, and read about apple picking at a local orchard. And he gets two snack times, lunch, and a nap time. I'm jealous!

He's having a little trouble adjusting to full time, though. He has plenty of fun while at school and never acts out, but he hates nap time (because he doesn't nap), and sometimes just can't stand to wait until 4:30 or 5 for pick up time. Every morning he wants to discuss, "Okay, when are you picking me up today? Before second snack time? Can't you come before nap time? Or how about when we're having second outside-play-time?"

Yesterday I picked him up during second outside-play-time, and he actually jumped up and down for joy and said, Yippee! But then he wanted to stay and play for another half hour. So we did. Playing at his school is way more interesting than playing at our house, where I can't help but start thinking about the laundry, the dishes, the homework hiding in my backpack.

another post

Should I really post when I haven't got anything to say?

happy...

Ramadan, (late) Rosh Hoshanah, and (late) first day of fall, and Juma's first swimming lesson!

Strangely enough, all four days fell on the same day this year.

Okay, so Juma's first swimming lesson isn't exactly a big deal, but it did take twenty minutes just to get him to put his feet in the water. And I just had to celebrate that achievement for our hyper-aquaphobic kid. You'd think that living 15 minutes from the Atlantic and, in the summer, 15 mintues from the pleasant, beautiful Indian Ocean, we'd have a swimmer, but no. This kid cries every time he has to take a bath. Every time. Daily.

teaching

You can probably guess which class I'm TAing this semester by the books on the sidebar.

It's called "State, Society and Culture in the Modern Middle East." Although I know next to nothing about the history of the Middle East, I am really looking forward to learning about it along with my students.

The only thing that worries me is how to keep a room full of very opinionated students from each others' throats when the discussion inevitably turns to root causes of the current quagmire in that region.

At least there will be lively debate, right?

my own little victory dance

Juma: "Where's Hamden?"

Me: "Up north--you know, where the pet store and the toy store and Walmart are."

"What's Walnut?"

"Not Walnut, Walmart."

"What's Walmart?"

Whereupon I do a little victory dance and think about how proud our friend and fellow Walmart-boycotter Natalie V. would be to hear that my little boy no longer remembers shopping at the evil empire.

And then I swerve and remember that I'm driving a car and really shouldn't be dancing and driving.

red-eye flights

I just spend a very quick two days in Utah visiting my parents; celebrating my Grandpa Wilson's 90th birthday; giving a lecture at my alma mater; enjoying a Matt Lewis band concert and their newest cd; eating some actual, good Mexican food with Justin's siblings; hanging out with 4 of my 6 siblings and their spouses and children; and meeting my newest niece, Mariah, and nephew, Max.

And all that in less than 48 hours. Despite the whirlwind schedule, the two red-eye flights, the rain and snow (in Utah in September!), missing Juma and Justin, and coming home to find Justin sick as a dog and Juma still in his pajamas at 10am, I had a great weekend.

When I came in through the kitchen door, Juma ran in from the living room and jumped up and down in excitement and did a little victory dance to have his mom back before giving me a big arm-and-leg hug.

It's rather strange to be hanging out in my parents' house one night, and to be 3000 miles away the next morning. It's amazing what cars, trains, and planes have done to our society. My friend in Pemba felt like she was so far away from her mom, and only got to visit her on some weekends. And guess how far away she was? About 2 miles. And since the bus fare was about 20 cents, she probably walked the distance most of the time. I think this friend has never been more than 10 miles from her home.

matt's new cd

I just got the new Matt Lewis Band CD in the mail today and have to say, "Wow, my brother-in-law can rock!" I know I could have scored a free copy from Matt or Andria, but it's always nice to help out a band trying to break into the market.

If you're at all curious, click here to check it out:

http://cdbaby.com/cd/mattlewisband2

You can listen to a few of the songs online to see if it's the kind of stuff you like to listen to.

Hurry up, though, before you end up like this guy:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30646
(Warning: naughty word in link)

Schlaflos in Muenchen podcaster, Annik Rubens, was recently horrified to learn that most people stop trying out new music at age 35. That means I only have five years left....

According to her, I've already passed the tongue-piercing age (23), but still have nine years before I start turning my nose up at new kinds of food (39).

exercise

For exercise and de-stressing this semester I decided to take a couple gym classes, yoga and West African dance. Yoga was just what I look for in yoga--calm, restorative, relaxing, non-competitive, but also challenging.

West African dance was active, aerobic, and fun. Just for the warm-up, the teacher, a man from Guinea, started us right in on a full-blown workout. It was like aerobics and stretching, but with a fast-paced, West African flair. It was a lot of fun, and it felt so good I thought I could run a mile afterward. The teacher's ten-year old son supplied the live drum accompaniment.

West African dance is way more interesting to me than Zanzibari dance, which is very calm and rarely expressive.

did you miss me?

Juma had his first full-length school day yesterday. I left him there at about 8:30am in the company of his new favorite teacher, John, and got back to pick him up at 4:40pm. Half of the kids had already been picked up, so I was a little worried Juma might have been desperately waiting for me to show up.

When he saw me, he had a huge smile on his face and came to give me a big hug. His teacher said he had a good day. On the way home, I asked him, "Were you waiting a long time for me to come?"

"Well," he explained, "the teachers said that mommies and daddies will come at different times today to pick up their kids." Phew, they had prepped him so he wouldn't wonder where his mom was if Simon and Aloni and Eliana had already gone home with their parents.
"Did you miss us while you were at school?" I asked.
He thought for a second. "No," was his answer.
"Not even a little bit?"
He smiled.

pick your own

I took Juma out to a nearby town where an orchard offers pick-your-own fruit. We got apples, pears, peaches, and 8 pounds of raspberries, and the chance to show Juma where fruit actually comes from. Juma helped by adding a total of 20 raspberries to his bucket, then claiming the entire, full bucket was his alone to eat, because, well, it was his bucket.

In the car ride home, he snacked on a few raspberries, and reported, "We picked good raspberries. I mean, these are really good." Then he suddenly let out a blood-curdling scream and started flailing his arms and legs. Since I was driving 65 on the freeway, there wasn't much I could do, but it sounded like he was scared. I tried to get out of him what was wrong between his crying and kicking, and it turns out it was just a little ("medium-sized") spider on his shoe.

on Pemba

Since I didn't get to post nearly as much as I would have liked while we were in Pemba, I'm going to try to post now and then about some of the experiences we had, and throw in some pictures as well. So here's the story of the day:

The day we went scuba diving, we boated out to a island called Misali. To get there, we hopped on a local bus (daladala) the diving company had rented for the day, and arrived at the mini-port about 20 minutes away in a village called Wesha. The problem with ports in Pemba is that most of the coast is choked by mangrove forests, and when the tide is out, the coast is nothing but muddy tidal flats. So our departure was delayed because the tide was so low that the boat sat on the mud, stranded. When it was time to board, we grabbed our gear and waded waist-deep in the murky, salty water to the boat.


At Misali, Juma and I got off and set about exploring the island while the rest of the group did their first dive. The thick, green forest soon surrounded us as we set off to find Turtle Beach.
We soon realized the path didn't get many visitors, because cobwebs stretched across from one side to the other, suprising us in the face a few times. Juma made me walk in front to bear the brunt of the web attacks. Juma cried pretty much the whole stroll, scared of cobwebs, spiders, and walking. At one point we had to crouch down almost to my knees to go under a spider web, and another time I actually totally ruined a web before I realized it and brushed the spider off of my clothes. Not having learned my lesson, I walked my forehead straight into a large spider's web--the same kind of spider we had in our back yard (in the picture), though not as big as that one, thankfully. (Do click on the picture to see a larger version and experience the enormity of the thing. The big one died about a week after I took this picture, and the little one from the left took over its web. Within about 6 weeks, it grew to be almost as big as the one on the right.)


Instead of making it to Turtle Beach, we took a detour to a sacred cave. There are three such caves on Misali, and they are said to be inhabited by jinn (rendered genie in English, but don't think Aladdin) or spirits.
These spirits can help diviner-healers treat illness, when given the proper treatment of sacrifices and gifts. I can see how people would associate ghosts with the caves; they're kind of creepy, and they probably make ooooing and whooooing sounds if there is wind. A sign asks tourists like us to respectfully stay out of the cave, as healers still use them. Though I think I would have needed a climbing rope to get down into it had I wanted to anyway.

snappy

Juma caught a baby snapping turtle at a nearby river-park. We let it go again after a few hours. Juma was so upset to see his new friend go that he cried and cried, "I want to give him a goodbye hug!"

first day of school

Juma had his first day of school at his new preschool. He was nervous leaving the house, but by the time he got to his new classroom and checked out all the great stuff he could do (color, read, dress up, build an airport out of blocks!) he was fine. When it was time to say goodbye, we were more upset than he was.

It's been nice to spend all summer with Juma, but he's happy to be back into the structured play of school. And he even made a new friend, Simon. His teacher tells me they "rebuilt" a whole wooden shed in the playground. "I hammered, I sawed, I measured," Juma reported.

in the water

I was shocked and saddened to find that headlines yesterday about everyone's favorite Aussie, Steve Irwin, aka the Crocodile Hunter. I certainly expected him to somehow survive much longer.
________

Remember back in July I posted about the drownings of three young men in Pemba? I found out later that one of the three had saved eight others before he died--he went back in one last time to find the other two (one of them his cousin), but was overcome himself while looking for them. He died a hero.

more pictures from our trip

As promised, I've posted some more pictures from our trip. Enjoy.




Mount Kilimanjaro from the window of our plane en route to Nairobi, Kenya.




A view from the north. To the left is Uhuru Peak, and the one on the right is the "real" peak, the 19,000+ footer, the tallest in Africa. Justin scaled it in 2001.




My henna tattoos the day I got them. (Don't worry--they are only temporary!) Every bride is tattooed like this the day before her wedding; it's considered the height of feminine beauty.




Neighbor children Yumla, Nassra, and Rahma (sisters) with Juma. He played with them and their brother Ibra almost every day. Ibra was at Quran school at the time of the picture.

the long trip home, or the unhappy birthday

After leaving Pemba, we stayed for four nights in Unguja so we could have a little vacation time, have actual choices about what to eat for our meals, and see friends. It was marvelous to walk around without a buibui, and to stop at different restaurants--Italian, Chinese, Indian.

We even ate Swahili food a couple times (the kind that actual Zanzibaris eat and pay 50 cents for, not the kind that tourist restaurants make for tourists to have a "true Swahili experience" at 8 dollars a plate), and still enjoyed it immensely simply because it was not made by our cook. Don't get me wrong, our cook had been an excellent chef. But she only made about five different dishes, and after two months, we were just too darn sick of it.

___________________

When we left Pemba, we thought we'd be smart and leave some of our things in storage to have for next time so we wouldn't have to pack stuff home only to cart it back again, or give stuff away only to have to buy it again. We debated about putting our giant super-duper world traveler's first aid kit in storage or bringing it to Unguja, to have it for the last week.

"What are the chances that something happens in the last week?"

What are the chances, indeed. On the very last day in Zanzibar, Juma hurt his foot while playing, scraping up the skin on the side and getting a contusion (we even had it X-rayed, but it was not broken). Luckily, bandaids and other needs were available in local pharmacies. While he should have been capable of walking, he isn't used to pain and wanted to be carried everywhere all that day and the next. He's walking on it fine now, but we had to carry him all through the airports.

To top off our four-year-old-turned-baby, I got sick, sick, sick on the airplane ride from Unguja to Kenya, and stayed sick until we were in Amsterdam.

Ever been sick on a 8-hour plane ride? On your birthday? I highly recommend it.

We had hoped to go into downtown Amsterdam, find a little hotel, celebrate my birthday, and look around the next morning while waiting for our afternoon flight. But with Juma in need of a wheelchair and me an invalid, we skipped the city and slept in the airport hotel. (Despite my illness, I did a little victory dance in the hotel to celebrate the absence of mosquito nets!)

Juma refuses to acknowledge that I am now 27 simply because I haven't blown out the candles on my birthday cake yet. That, apparently, is the critical milestone of aging.

Thanks for all the happy birthday wishes. And very happy late birthdays to everyone who had summer birthdays that I missed acknowledging: Kelly, Xander, Rus, new baby Max, Cameron, Aidan, Andria, Ashli, Ethan, Vaun. And happy September birthdays to Rylee, Ammon, Isaac, Rick, and Lance.

I'm still not quite over my little virus, and Justin has it now too, but Juma has been spared. We arrived home safely to find our apartment in order, and Juma has already found some of his old friends to play with. Jet lag, of course, is getting to us. Juma woke up at 3am and hasn't been to sleep since.

I think it's time I take a nap.

We're home!

Well, we made it safely back to Connecticut after a somewhat epic journey. More details later--now it's time to sleep.