3rd week

I am mindless. I should have known that the winter Olympics wouldn’t start until after Super Bowel Sunday (which, by the way, is “live” here in the morning on cable TV.)  I have to apologize for joking about the Ghanaian winter Olympic team two weeks ago. Ghana actually has a downhill skier entered in the 2010 Winter Olympics. He “learned” skiing eight years ago in Britain. Everyone watch for him. He will probably rise to instant stardom just like Eddie the Eagle did in Ski Jumping a few Olympics ago.  I’ll still hold to my bets, though, that there will be no press coverage about the Olympics here. Sports involving snow are totally foreign to these people. The only way the Olympics would be televised here would be if Snow Soccer had become a new winter Olympics venue. Can you visualize Snow Soccer? I think the Olympic Committee ought to consider it. Can you see all the players wearing soccer shorts, knee high shin guards, and snow shoes? I'm sure it would be a lot more exciting than Curling.

I’m going to describe where we live but I need to start with some of the hilarity for the week. I don’t think I’ve mentioned the motorcyclists before. If I describe the drivers as CRAZY it requires, in fairness to the drivers, that I label the motoryclists as TOTALLY INSANE. Here are some of their rules (as I have observed): don’t wear a helmet, don’t stop at red lights, drive between the lanes of cars, and if that is not feasible, drive on the sidewalks. And the best one: on two lane streets it is easier to drive toward oncoming traffic until the very last minute and then pull back into the proper lane. I’ve had this happen twice, now, and both times I knew for sure that I was going to hit the motorcyclist head on.

Here’s the funny part. On our way home this week I looked in my rear view mirror and saw an upside down swivel desk chair coming up from behind me, in the space between my lane and the adjacent lane. In an instant a motorcyclist passed me, driving full speed and balancing this desk chair on his head. I watched him until he disappeared in the distance. The motorcyclist would lean to the right and left keeping this swivel chair balanced on his head while navigating his motorcycle through the traffic. It was a visual tour de force of athleticism. (and stupidity.)  Oh, to have had a video camera.

Marsha and I live on the third floor, thirty two steps up, in one of four buildings in a gated compound called Alema Court. Our kitchen window faces the east. About every other day, or every third day, we watch through our kitchen window the boys herd the cattle through the field. Normally, this scene would be considered very pastoral, except we are in the middle of a city of 2 million people. There is no pasture anywhere. This is a city. The field is filled with rubbish and trash everywhere. The cattle eat what little grass grows among the trash.

Our west window looks across the parking lot to another building. Just outside the window is a beautiful fan palm. I have observed that the fan palm has twenty four palms and as a new one starts to unfurl its leaves in the center an old one starts dropping off the bottom, on the side opposite to the new one. A new one has been unfurling since we arrived three weeks ago and the one dropping off is just almost to the ground. What a display of symmetry in nature. We have a little balcony off the living room. I’ve taken up jump roping for exercise on the balcony. After two weeks I have decided that jump roping is even more mindless than distance running. It is hard to think of anything while jump roping except when will this stupid exercise end. I’m trying to get a treadmill for our apartment. We’ll see how long it takes to get it here. I need something for exercising other than walking the 32 steps up to the apartment door once a day and jump roping on the balcony. (It is unfortunate that bicycling to/from work is totally out of the question. If the drivers didn’t kill you the motorcyclist probably would.  Killed by a flying swivel desk chair.)

We have a small swimming pool between two of the buildings.

It needs some cosmetic work on broken concrete, missing tiles, etc., but it functions quite well. Marsha is enjoying swimming laps 2 – 3 times a week. I’m trying to join her and swim laps, but as everyone in the family knows I don’t do well in water. It doesn’t come naturally to me. It is a little more cerebrally challenging than jumping rope, however. The nicest part of the pool is the landscaping. The bougainvillea covers the entry and a lot of the fencing. It is always in overwhelming pink and purple colors, just like it looks in Hawaii. There is a little grass area at the end of the pool with a couple of chaise lounges and chairs. There are several palm trees on the periphery of the grass and a lot of interspersed colorful vegetation which I cannot name but nonetheless admire. When lying on the chaise lounges one can watch the vultures flying overhead (from a distance they look like eagles.) I assume they are looking for their next meal. What else do vultures do when circling overhead?

Our apartment has a living room with a table for eating and two bedrooms, the second one serving as “computer central.” The apartment has two bathrooms. Marsha has the east bathroom and I have the west one. Don’t think we are being spoiled; both the bathrooms combined are smaller than our one at home. Were we to have to share one we would probably have to go to counseling to prevent spouse abuse.

The kitchen is small; I’m about two feet short of touching the two walls when I stand in the center and reach for the walls. We have an electric stove/oven and a microwave. We have a small refrigerator. And we have a small washing machine as well. (No dryer; if you want to dry your clothes in a machine you have to take the clothing to the adjacent building and use the one of two dryers which works. We have learned that the clothes dry just as well on a drying rack in the second bedroom.)  Marsha is getting pretty good at using the stove/oven and microwave. She made cookies this week.

We live five kilometers from work. I’ll describe work another time.

I’ve had a couple of challenging medical issues this week. One is a missionary in Nigeria that sounds like he is approaching schizophrenia (major delusions and disordered thinking.) We’re trying to intervene before it becomes a crisis. We’ve also had a missionary who had to be hospitalized for possible meningitis. I love the Africa shotgun treatment for high fever/headache/neckache/can’t touch chin to chest complaints: IV ceftriaxone (for meningitis) and oral artemether/lumefantrine (for malaria.) No lab tests, no spinal tap. And voila, the next day the missionary is better. We’ve been to the hospital two days to see him and take him food. (Food is not provided at hospitals here; families are responsible for feeding patients. Families also have to buy the patient’s medication and give it to the nurses to give to the patients. I think that President Obama should consider this as part of his healthcare reform legislation. It would save a ton of money.)

Love to all.