bright eyes + blue eyes

The Dog Who Let the Cat out of the Bag

I was keeping a secret when I went on my month-long Grand Tour of Beloved People back in October. My secret survived through a reunion of college roommates and ten days at my sister's house, where I also saw my mother and Khanjoe. It wasn't until the end of my trip that one very large dog let the cat out of the bag.

The last stop on my itinerary was a visit with my brother, Robert, and his family. Allison and "Ebug" picked me up from the airport. We went back to their house - which isn't actually their home, because they've got a long-term house-sitting gig. The house-sitting arrangement also includes pet care, namely dog-sitting for a massive Bernese Mountain Dog.

We had a nice lunch. I was enjoying getting to know my niece at her cute toddler stage, and she was warming up to me. After we finished eating, the three of us went outside for a little walk. Ebugloves to 'go fast' on the sidewalk, and she was showing off her new running skills. Eventually, it was time for Ebug's nap, so we went back inside.

When we walked through the door, Allison noticed a chewed up ziploc bag in the hallway. She wondered out loud what the dog, Albus, had gotten into. I took one look at the bag and knew just what it was. I checked my bag. I had left my suitcase unzipped, and Albus had nosed around in there to find my bag of vitamins. Then he gobbled up the vitamins, along with a healthy dose of plastic bag. I told Allison that my vitamins were missing, and Albus must have eaten a bag full of 15 or 20 vitamins. She was irritated but not surprised. Albus has a reputation for being a bit of a rascal.

We both got to thinking. A few minutes later we were googling 'dog ingested 20 human vitamins' and variants thereof. We found lots of warnings about the toxicity of human vitamins for canines. While Allison put Ebug down for her nap, I called the vet. They looked in their records and found that Albus weighed 145 pounds, and they said that we should call poison control. Given his weight and the exact brand of vitamin, poison control could estimate the toxicity for his size based on the chemical formulation.

When Allison came back downstairs, I told her what the vet had said. And I also told her that it was a bag full of prenatal vitamins because I was pregnant!! I wanted to tell her before she overheard me telling poison control that the dog had eaten 365 Brand Prenatal Vitamins. As it turns out, an XXL dog would have to eat 40 of those prenatal vitamins before he would show any signs of damage.

So that goofball dog blew my secret, but it was SO fun being able to share our happy news with Robert and Allison. When Robert got home that night, we were re-hashing the story. He asked me what kind of vitamins they were. I said, "Prenatal vitamins." And he said, "For just in case?" I replied, "No, prenatal vitamins for being 8 weeks pregnant!" I will never forget the giant, joyful hug that my baby's Uncle Robert gave me (us!)! Over the next few days, Allison and I talked a ton about pregnancy and babies, which was so interesting and enlightening for me. And we took turns taking naps, as good co-pregnant ladies should do. :)

At Thanksgiving, H and I told the rest of my family about our pregnancy when we were all together. We told my parents in the airport parking lot, minutes after H landed. I couldn't keep the secret any longer than absolutely necessary! When we got home, we told the rest of my siblings. I remember that Pumpkin was piddling around in the bathroom, and I went in there and asked her to hurry up and come out because I had a secret to tell everyone. She cocked her ear up at me and said, 'You can just tell me now.' Joe texted Khani the news in record speed. At our Thanksgiving meal, the next day, Abbie wrote (in her beautiful handwriting) everyone's name on their cups as in relation to our baby. The German side of the family found out over Christmas. It was such a treat getting to share such big news in person with all of our family. It feels amazing to think about how many people are eagerly anticipating the arrival of this little baby.

And now I am 21 weeks pregnant, due in late May / early June. I've felt the baby squirming around, and I'm developing the beginnings of a baby bump. All my examinations show that this baby is healthy and growing just as he/she should be. This all just seems like such a dream come true! We are so happy to be expecting a baby and are excited about all the adventures he/she will bring to our life!

Royal Escort

My mom was over to visit last week. One of the things that we did was go to the wedding of a family friend in Ireland. In fact, this time last week, we were taking up the very kind invitation of the parents of the groom to celebrate the happy couple on the eve of their marriage. We dined in a 13th century castle tower. It was every bit as amazing as it sounds.

Because Ireland is the mama and papa of low-cost airlines, we could have just flown to Dublin and back for approximately 2p each. But we wanted to take the scenic route on at least one leg of the journey. We took the train to Wales, then spent the night in Holyhead on Anglesey, where we saw a sunset that was too beautiful to even attempt to capture on a photograph. We crossed the Irish Channel by ferry the next morning.

In my opinion, being on a ferry is fun. (Note: I do, though, have strong caveats about the kind of ferry that is enjoyable.) The ferry we were on was enormous and made me wonder what being on a cruise boat is like. For the two hour crossing, you could entertain yourself by watching a movie, eating at the restaurant, sitting in the sports bar, or watching the boat’s contrails from the back deck. We chose to do the latter as we left Wales.

And then, wait! What’s that zooming over from the Welsh horizon!?

Oh my goodness! It’s Prince William’s helicopter! He is stationed on Anglesey, after all.

Doesn’t this look like the Duke of Cambridge to you?

The helicopter tracked with the boat for about ten minutes.

Then they pulled over directly on top of the ferry and maintained that position for a few minutes before peeling away to return to Anglesey. We asked at the information desk if they knew what was going on. They said that they do this about once a week as a training exercise. Whether it actually was PW or not, we – and the other passengers on that side of the boat – had a lot of fun convincing ourselves that we were being escorted by royalty.

 

November Retrospective

This November I've been meeting project funders, preparing for presentations, and brainstorming essay topics. Those aren’t particularly photogenic events. Things I’ve done in recent Novembers-past have been much more picturesque.

2009 – Sunset in the Serengeti

2008 – Neema’s Wedding

2007 – Knocking on Wittenburg’s Doors

2006 – Wedding Proposal in Rock Creek Park

2005 – Apple Picking in Virginia with my DC Roommates

2004 – Eating Waffles with College Friends

2003 – Visits with Scottish Rotarians

2002 – Schmoozing with My Sister

Maasai Mama

This is a story that I told a lot over the summer, so you may have heard it. But I wanted to put it up here, you know – for posterity.

At the end of our two-year Tanzanian adventure, we built a few days on Zanzibar into our schedule. We had to leave Masasi about a week before our final departure from the country, because we had meetings in Dar es Salaam. We used a few remaining vacation days to tack on a trip to Zanzibar. It gave us a little incentive to look forward to during all the packing, selling, and donating.

So we were going to Zanzibar. Where to stay? In general, we tend to like "authentic" places, with a bit of a local flair. But we wanted to be on the beach, so Zanzibar Coffee House was out. We'd stayed at Robinson's Place on our first trip to Zanzibar, and loved it. It's got a perfect flavor of laid-back authenticity. But it was closed for renovations at the time. So that left us at square one in terms of finding a place to stay.

And actually, when we got down to talking about it, we weren't really all that interested in "going local" this time around. We'd kind of had enough of local. We wanted civilization, pure and simple! Neither of us had ever felt a strong draw to stay at an all-inclusive resort, but now we did. We wanted to be take care of - waffles for breakfast and rooms with A/C…ahh! We decided that we would pick one of the big resorts on the East Coast. A colleague recommended a website, and we picked a three-night vacation package with one of those Thomas Cook-type holidaymaker companies.

I think our reticence about all-inclusive stemmed from a slight fear that the resort would be filled with chirpy Activity Directors bouncing around, calling for "one more game of water polo, guys!!!" In fact, there were very few organized activities, and we pretty much stuck to our habits of using vacation time to catch up on sleep, do a lot of reading, and just hang out together.

The only special event that I remember was on one night, when the resort arranged for a Maasai show to demonstrate the tribal traditions of chanting and jumping. A man from the resort staff introduced the Maasai group, in English, of course. The hilarious thing was that we understood the Swahili that the MC spoke to the Maasai “warriors”.

The script called for the MC to present various members of the Maasai tribe. So, for example, he needed to showcase a Maasai child. Quickly, under his breath, in Swahili he asked, “Where is the child?” The Maasai group answered, “There is no child here today.” MC: “Okay… you. [indicating to one Maasai guy] You’re short. You’re the child today.” The short guy stepped forward, and the MC switched back to English to give a pretty simplified, glossy blurb about the role of children in Maasai society.

As you can imagine, H and I were pretty tickled by the time he got around to introducing Maasai women. And then the MC told the resort guests this:

“And now we have Maasai mama. Maasai mama, she beautiful and wear lots of beads. She try to have lots of children to help with the herds. Maasai they live in Kenya and Tanzania, but they move around. Maasai now also available in Uganda. Everyone, give big round of applause for Maasai Mama!”

We were falling apart with laughter. Now also available in Uganda!!!

So that evening was a delightful night of unintentional comedy in the midst of a very pleasant few days. Overall, we really enjoyed our all-inclusive experience at the PlanHotel Neptune Pwani Beach Resort. The food was really good. The grounds were immaculate. The shoreline was, as always, stunning. And best of all, the staff was very kind, relaxed, and charming… and best of all, funny!!

My 60km Experience

We are phasing out of Tanzania. The biggest thing to get settled before leaving was to sell our car. Since the used car market is very small in the southern part of the country, we needed to take the car up to Dar es Salaam to sell it there. H didn’t have any more vacation leave to take, and we didn’t want to wait until the last few days of our time in Tanzania to sell the car. That left us with one option: I would take the car to Dar and sell it there.

But taking the car to Dar meant driving it there. As I mentioned yesterday, we were aware of the current, sloshy state of the 60 km of unpaved road. I might have considered doing the drive alone if the roads were okay. Maybe. But there was absolutely no way that I would drive that bad road by myself. We came up with the idea that our favorite taxi driver from Dar es Salaam, Matthias, could take the bus down to meet me in the South. Then he could drive the car up to Dar, with me along for the ride. I was apprehensive about the whole thing, but there really didn’t seem to be a better option.

[An aside: One thing that is notable about Tanzanian road etiquette is the use of blinkers. You use your blinkers a lot to signal to oncoming traffic, as well as to communicate with cars that are following behind you. I would say that blinkers mean turning only about 10% of the time. Just FYI in case you ever find yourself driving in Tanzania.]

Back to the trip. All things considered, we actually made decent time on the 60km of bad road and were through it in about 4 hours. That’s four hours for 37 miles.

At the beginning, I was so stressed out I felt like I was about to have an aneurysm. About 3 kilometers in, we came to our first big patch of mud. We drove into it…and got stuck. Matthias put the car in low to get some more power. About 50 villagers descended on the car to offer their “help” in getting us out of the mud. I was offering him my advice about what to do. The villagers were engaged in loud negotiation monologues outside the windows, everyone stating his price for how much he'd need to be paid in order to dig the car out of the mud.

We couldn’t get out to see what the problem was because the mud was up to the doors. Finally, Matthias struck a deal with some of the villagers, and those guys pulled out pangas (large, foot long knives - usually pretty blunt, though) and sticks and started hacking at something under the passenger-side front wheel. They said that we were stuck on a large piece of wood, like the kind of stop that you put behind a big rig’s wheels when it’s parked. Finally, the car got traction, and we were off after we paid 20,000 Shillings to the guys who “helped”. As we drove away, Matthias wondered aloud if the villagers had put the wood in the mud to begin with. Later on, he told me that was the only part of the trip where he was really nervous, especially for our personal safety because there were so many people around and a Mzungu woman is a good target for robbery.

At about this point, I realized that it would be better for me and Matthias if I did my darndest to keep my mouth shut. Back there stuck in the mud, I was giving advice, but I had zero idea what I was talking about. I just felt like I should say something. But nothing I said was productive or helpful, really. It was quite a challenge for me to just hang on and let Matthias do his job, but for the most part, I managed to do just that, and it was undoubtedly for the best.

Our next adventure came when we saw a line of about 40 buses and trucks all parked, engines off, with their drivers and passengers milling around. This didn’t bode well. We could be waiting for the better part of the afternoon. Then two guys ran up to the car and said that a tanker truck was stuck on a bridge, but if we paid 15,000 TSh, we could pass on the path they had created for smaller vehicles (like 4Runners and Land Cruisers). Pretty much, they were Tanzanian mud trolls; you could pass if you could pay. Matthias said we’d have a look at what they’d made. They started running and indicated that we should follow behind in the car. First, we followed them through the bushes and undergrowth for a few hundred meters. Then they ran through a swollen stream, carefully pointing that we shouldn’t go to far to the left or right.

Finally, we came to the extension that they had built onto the bridge. I do not have good spatial reasoning skills, and I thought we’d never fit. But I kept my mouth shut. Matthias looked at it for a few long seconds. Then he drove over it.

This time Matthias laughed when we made it to the other side of the obstacle. He was impressed with the construction that the villagers had thought up to allow personal vehicles pass. These trolls had earned their money.

Every centimeter of the remaining kilometers was completely nerve-wracking, but we got through it with only a couple of other relatively minor incidents. Plus, we saw a skinny baboon walking along the road. I wanted to get out my camera at some of the big lakes that we plowed through. We just drove straight through the middle of these lakes; water was at least up to the top of the wheel wells. I couldn’t think about photography, though. I was too busy concentrating on holding on and shutting up. 

I prayed through most of the trip and am so grateful to God that we arrived in one piece. In the end, we managed the whole 600 km (approx. 375 miles) trip from Masasi to Dar in around 12 hours.

At various points in the trip, Matthias would ask me if I was scared or tired. I’d answer honestly. Sometimes I was both, sometimes I was neither. I always asked Matthias the same questions in return. I was amused by his answer to the question of being tired. He always answered, “I can’t get tired. I am accustomed to being in the car.”

I paid good old Matthias well. He deserved it.

Fast Ferry / Slow Boat

When we were on our way to Stone Town last month, I kept thinking about our trip to Zanzibar in February 2009, when we went with my parents-in-law. 

My in-laws had flown to Tanzania to visit us. We met them in Dar and took the ferry to Zanzibar together. Our outbound journey to Zanzibar was in a first class cabin on a fast ferry. On this big, fancy catamaran everyone had his or her own upholstered swivel chair and a movie was showing on the wall-mounted televisions. I remember being delighted when my mother-in-law pulled out the butter cookies and dried figs that she had stashed in her bag before she left Germany. We had a wonderful breakfast snack and crossed the Zanzibar Channel in about two hours.

Fast forward through a few days of lovely beach vacation. Swimming in the Indian Ocean when the tide was up. Lots of reading. Visiting a village with my father-in-law to buy fruit. A few leisurely strolls on the beach.  A crazy South African lush who invited us to stay in his hotel for free and we accepted the offer [another story altogether].

On the day we were to return to Dar, we took a taxi from our beach hotel to Stone Town. When we got to the ferry port at about 9 am, we found out that we had to make a decision. There were no fast boats going to Dar for a few hours, with the next departure scheduled for 2 pm. There was another boat leaving at 10 am, but we were told it was a slower boat.

We weren’t too enthusiastic about waiting around in Stone Town with all of our luggage, nor did we want to stand in the mid-day heat queuing to board the ferry. The ferry terminal on Zanzibar is a really busy, chaotic place. There are lots of aimless tourists wandering around, and touts jump in the minute any mzungu looks the least bit unsure of where to go. The touts want to carry your bags, get you a taxi, lead you to the ferry ticket agents, book you a hotel, take you on a spice tour, show you where you can swim with the dolphins… Once a tout has picked you up, it can be difficult to shake him.

We were still in our chilled out beach moods and didn’t want to put up with a whole morning of saying ‘no’ to touts. So we opted for the slower boat, thinking ‘How slow can it be? There’s only 45 miles of ocean between Stone Town and Dar es Salaam.’ After buying our tickets, we rounded the corner where the boat was docked and began to have our doubts.

 

The slow boat was not equipped with cabins, much less classes to distinguish amongst them. We found some bench space for ourselves on the top deck. From our seats, we had great views of the chickens and junk refrigerators in the cargo hull. There was nothing to snack on, but that was okay because the diesel fumes acted as an appetite suppressant. About four hours after setting sail, we spotted Dar es Salaam on the horizon. At which point, the waves picked up, and our slow boat capitan apparently decided to react the rougher water by reducing the speed down to about 2 miles an hour. After a while, we noticed a boat coming up behind us. Of course, it was the 2 pm fast ferry, cruising by at a good clip. It overtook us in no time.

We were grateful to eventually make it off of the boat and on to dry land. It’s one of the few times that I was truly happy to arrive in Dar es Salaam! I think I’ll always remember the lesson of the fast ferry / slow boat.

30 and diving...

I turned 30 this week!  My husband woke me up with a snorkel mask on his face because his gift to me is a SCUBA certification course.  He also got me three pretty wooden candlesticks (this area is known for carvings), and assembled some of my favorite things from the shops in town:  Pringles, sparkling apple juice, and Hershey’s cookies (sort of like Oreos). 

So Happy Birthday to me and thanks to all of you who sent me all of your good wishes.  I have such great friends and family!

lucky woman with a small glass of sunshine

I am not much of a morning person.  Even if I have a full eight hours of restful sleep, I always want to stay in bed longer.  I can doze like a champ, and I stay pretty groggy for a while after I make it out of bed. 

Orange juice is one of the things that helps to cut the morning fog in my brain.  Of course, I love hot coffee in the morning, too.  But that comes eventually.  I need a boost before I manage to get going with the coffee-making.  For years, orange juice has been my solution.  I like just a small juice glass, only 3 or 4 ounces.  Almost every time I drink orange juice in the morning, I think, ‘That’s like liquid sunshine.”

In the past few months, I have also had this recurrent thought when drinking my orange juice: ‘I am a lucky woman.’ 

That is because my husband has gotten into the habit of bringing me orange juice in bed.  (He happens to be quite cheerful in the morning and pops right out of bed.)  One of the best things about a good spouse is that they know the areas where you are weak and have some ideas about how to help you to get through them.  Morning grogginess is a trivial example of this.  Nonetheless, it is a true demonstration of building a marriage on understanding and daily kindness. 

I suspect that we will look back on these years together in Africa as a particularly intense and intimate phase of our marriage.  I fully expect that life will get more hectic, and on lot of mornings it won’t be possible for the orange juice delivery service to come by my bed.  That’s just all the more reason to cherish the present. 

I know there will be moments in the future when I close my eyes and smile to myself at the image of a big hand reaching inside the mosquito net to offer me a small glass of liquid sunshine. 

It’s my ideal, perfectly customized picture of a caring act – small, but immensely meaningful.  I am, indeed, a lucky woman.