I like this place, but I’m starting to feel like the freak at the show that people stare at without caring. It seems that pretty much everywhere we go people feel free to have a little gawk. So for this reason, the girls have come up with the little phrase of ‘stupid white people’ (ie us) whenever we do something silly that deserves the odd looks. Some examples of this could be; driving the wrong way down the road (I’m happy to say that wasn’t me but any time yankee doodle cos apparently [imagine the drawl, we got all day ‘round here), me telling the checker at the supermarket that “I don’t want a book” (should’ve been bag…der…) or stalling a jeep in the middle of an intersection (ok, so maybe that was me…).

Let me run you through a bit of how our days are playing out at the moment. Around 9.30/10 we head over to an organisation known as the ‘Environmental Friends Society’ (also seen here stuffing us with food on our first day there) and help them with some translation, design, data files and a website to try and help them in spreading their message of how important it is to take care of the resources that God has given us. This country has lost most of it’s natural greenery in the space of just ten years and they don’t seem to understand the concept of recycling so there’s trash piles all around and all of the water comes from de-salination plants (mental note, always go for the bottled water). But it could be worse of course, the guys currently have the chlorinated water from the pool upstairs running through their pipes to shower and wash with.

The rest of the team started teaching English in a village last week but because I was sick I had to wait until yesterday to start my first class in a village that’s about half an hour away from where we live (but then again everything in this place seems to be about half an hour away). There are 15 girls in my class and they are adorable – I’ll try and take some pictures later on in the week but most women here seem quite reluctant to have their photo taken so I’ll wait until they feel a little bit more comfortable with “Teacher”… apparently when you have a role with a little authority you loose your name and go with a title. I’m surprised at how much I’m enjoying teaching English actually but in the past week or so we’ve found that it’s a great way for opening up relationships and sharing a little (a very little) of who you are. Girls here usually get married (to a cousin) by the ages of 17 or 18 so they can’t understand how I’m not married and don’t have 11 children (that’s the average number of siblings that the girls in my class have – some go up to 20 but that’s do-able when the men can have four wives right?). Anyway, it meant that I was able to share with them my belief of only marrying another Christian, which opened up a couple of avenues for discussion.

So in an effort to keep showing a few pic’s of places we’ve been going to or hanging out in, here’s a shot of my favourite café here.


It’s in a small back street in one of the funkier areas of town (can’t you tell by the bright green walls?) called Café Laviano – sounds Italian, looks Polynesian on the inside and serves the freshest mix of Arabic and Mediterranean food in the country… go figure.