15 Camel milk, begging children and the dress shop. (11042009)

Wow. Today, I had another incredible day. We'll split it into a few parts: a favorite memory from the day followed by the morning time learning about a project here and the afternoon time in a neighborhood.

Memory:

Shoe-shining is a big deal. No matter your class or status in society, having clean, shiny shoes is important. So, this creates a huge industry for jobs. (Side note: clean cars, shiny shoes and sometimes hair and hands--people will wash in the streets from a bucket--are all important here.) You will very regularly see multiple shoe-shiners on the side of the road. One of my favorite mental pictures for the day was on my way home; I saw a boy, maybe 9-years-old, standing on the sidewalk, wearing a black Donald Duck sweatshirt and shining shoes. He didn't have a customer when we rode by, but he was making a job out of it, for sure.

AM Project:

This morning, I was ready to leave at 8:30 with one of the girls in the house. We walked to the main street near where we live and caught a minibus. After taking it across the city, we met another one of my friends (the one who planned my itinerary). I went with her family to a home of her friends who are working on a project here. First, they told us the story of what has happened since they moved here from the States. While telling the story, they served us the local tea and colo (barley with a few peanuts), a snack often served to munch on while talking or having tea. They moved here with their family of four sons and have dedicated their time to building a soccer team program near where they live. This family has done years of research to find the needs and understand how they can meet those needs. They have found a local coach who will have a team meet and play three days a week, either before or after school. This time will be used for practice and afterwards all of the players will be served a good meal and get to take a shower. To make this happen, the family has acquired a field from the government and is working on leveling it and making it suitable for play. I got to walk with my friend and the family to the field in their neighborhood and see the progress of things. The family has already seen an interest in what they are doing because for awhile, the dad gave away soccer balls. Many children got one and so many heard about it that they had people knocking on their door all day one Saturday until they developed a plan for distributing the soccer balls. I am excited to hear in the future about how things progress here.

Walking back to the house from the field, we stopped by a little place that had about 5-6 people working in it. It was a store that was grinding all sorts of grain for people to buy and eat. We had requested 15 kilo (a kilo is 2.2 lbs.) of wheat flour on the way to the field and now on the way back were picking it up. We watched them sort the bad parts of the wheat from the good and I saw how much of the process seemed tedious, but was worth the good product in the end. The wheat went through the grinder and the people there bagged all of the flour for us. Things here are very fresh... I have never before carried home a WARM, newly-ground bag of flour in my life until today.

A couple other mental pictures:

• A donkey was walking down the road. This is a usual occurrence here, I am finding, and I am learning that they carry a lot of things sometimes. This one was carrying what seemed to be almost a full bale of hay! It was on top of his back and hanging over his sides.

• Stone trenches dug on the side of the road looked like ones in Pompeii. The drainage system looked well thought out in this neighborhood... even though it only rains during one part of the year, they are ready.

• Two young guys walked by carrying home their dinner: a live chicken. If you carry a chicken by its legs, it goes limp, so one carried its legs and the other its wings. It just hung there awaiting impending slaughter. You will often see someone taking home just one animal. If someone is with a lot of animals, they are herding them. If someone has just one, it is dinner.

PM Neighborhood:

For my first time today, I spent some time with a minority people group. Wearing a headscarf and a long skirt, I walked their neighborhood with my friend. This group has all they need, in the community where they live. Many of them have left their country for a time or for good because of the political unrest there. We walked the whole neighborhood, talking about the people and lifting them up. It was a good walk. One very interesting thing happened on our walk that I will tell you... and then I will tell you about the new friends I made in the dress shop.

As we were walking, SEVERAL children flocked to us. These children grabbed onto our skirts and held our hands. One little girl even held my hand and kissed it over and over. They were wanting money or food or anything we would give them. (Beggars here assume foreigners have money so they come to us more so than the local people.) Even though we didn't have food or money with us to give, they wouldn't take no for an answer. They walked around us and held on to us for a very long time. They would do anything to get our attention or to speak to us. We kept walking and they followed us, even after we turned down many streets. I wondered if they had been sent by someone as a group to us, but didn't know for sure until the end of our time in the neighborhood. After our time in the dress shop, we saw the children again, all of them, listening to two women who were caring for and instructing them.

On to the dress shop: my friend has developed friendships with many people in the minority people group. Three of them work in a small dress shop. We peeked into the dress shop and they were glad to see us. They offered us a seat and for a couple hours, we sat and talked. I can't understand the language at all, but was able to figure out what was going on most of the time by my friend's translations and by hand motions, etc. I loved those women. They were so funny and welcoming! They didn't have a care at all that we were taking up so much of their time. We were important to them so they gave us all of their attention. If someone came and needed something at the shop, one of them would get up and take care of things. A couple interesting things happened during my visit. One interesting experience was... hot spiced tea. They served tea to me with CAMEL MILK in it. It was very good, but so sweet that I couldn't even drink it all! With the tea, they gave us hallowhet, a sweet jelly candy that was even sweeter than the tea! All together, our visit with these ladies was so fun and a great experience!

Afterwards, we went back home and I got to eat chocolate pie at our house. A local person made it and it was VERY good. :)

One more observation from my time here: local people taking care of beggars. People respond to beggars differently here than we do in the States. I know that in the States so many of us pass them by and shun them assuming that they are just going to use the money for drugs or alcohol. While that may be the case with some (for how many I do not know), our treatment of beggars is usually pretty terrible. We are scared of them and avoid them on the streets. Here, people don't avoid them and aren't scared of them. They often make the effort to help, even though many of the people helping probably don't have nearly what we have when we pass a beggar in the States. I have seen people walk out of their way to give money to a beggar. I was on a minibus and saw a beggar approach the door. The man was blind and was asking for money. A woman in the very back of the bus started getting out her coin purse. She got money out and passed it through a couple people, including the minibus caller, to the beggar. I feel like people on minibuses don't communicate much with others... but to help someone, they made it happen. When you pass a line of beggars on the street, you'll see that many beggars have a lot of money on their handkerchief or ground near them. It's hard because you know that not one person here could help all of the beggars. However, many people here (not all) put together seem to do pretty well at it.

Sending my love across the great big ocean,

Laura