Friday, September 19, 2008

The Spoils of a Coup d'Etat

Hey Everyone!

Finally moved into my new home. I don't have electricity, sometimes I get running water, but I do have a house! It's Ramadan right now so there's not a lot of action in town, everyone is fasting and most people are in the countryside.
Work for Mike and I won't start until after Ramadan but remarkably we already have some supplies and a space for our Mentoring Center! The Mayor of the town found us an ideal spot in the school for our GMC and on the same day we received supplies from the Girls Mentoring Center in Nema that was shut down. The Nema site was closed and the PCVs and their projects have been moved because of the coup d'etat that happenened last month (that and becuase of budget cuts). Mike and I clearly benefited from a crappy situation.
Because Ramadan has been slow we've been giving English lessons to the Hakim (step up from the Mayor, escentially the guy who runs the town) and his wife. He is the only guy who has electricity in the town (he gets it from the cell phone company-don't know if they know that) so I get to watch plenty of Al-Gezira news, eat goat and drink a lot of milk (luckily the Hakim's not fasting). He lived in Cincinatti as a cab driver for a few years so I've easily fallen into adopting him and his wife as my second family.
Mike hasn't found a house yet so we've been sharing my house. We built a fence so we can start a garden. The weather and the goats make me think that most of the stuff we plant probably won't grow but it's worth a shot.
I come into my regional capitol once or twice a month to check mail, charge my phone and use the computer so I will be able to write more often. Snail mail works well and I been writing lots of letters so please send me your addresses. My e-mail is Jackeann@gmail.com. I'll put my address here on the blog and a link to Mike's blog since he's much better at updating his.

I love you and miss you! xoxoxoxoxoxo

Jack