Halloween

This was a busy week! On Tuesday we went with a group of people to watch the High Heel Drag Race, which is the yearly pre-Halloween Washington, D.C. tradition where a bunch of drag queens get gussied up and run down 17th Street. It's just plain fun! Even though it was pretty cold, all the contestants looked like they were having such a great time playing to the crowd. I felt so boring in my long black coat, especially looking at the picture of me with the Fanta Girls! Those ladies were fabulous. Click on Miss Courtney Love below to see the rest of the evening's pictures. Some of the better ones were taken by my kickball buddy, Jeff, who was using his new SLR camera.


Our other Halloween event this week was my kickball division's end of season Halloween Party. I got a lot of strange looks on the Metro on the way to the party (partly because Zach's costume, the Verizon Guy, basically looked like he wasn't in costume at all). I spent many hours laboring over my costume, dying my leotard, hand-sewing gimping and tulle when my sewing machine started having mechanical difficulties. You can see the results below (click on the picture to see a couple more shots):

I got a lot of compliments and high fives from random people in the bar who weren't part of our costume party. In hindsight, I'm glad I spent as much time as I did on my costume, because it was pretty authentic-looking. Tell me, what are the odds, when you base your costume on a music video from 1993, of someone else showing up at a party in the exact same costume??


It was actually kinda nice, like in the video, to find another Bee Girl who understands what it's like to bee me! Click on the picture to see more pictures from the party. The best costumes by far were James Brown and Nick Nolte, as they looked on the nights they got arrested. **NOTE: I am not liable for parents being offended by the drunkeness and unseemly behaviour of the people I hang out with**

Dakar

I probably appreciated Dakar way more after spending a week in Liberia than if I'd flown directly there from the U.S. It's probably the most metropolitan city in west Africa. Even so, there is still a crazy high unemployment rate (somewhere around 80% is what I heard). When we were walking to and from dinner, child beggars would follow us along with their hands out, palms up, saying "Madam, Madam, s'il vous plait?". That was hard to see. Pickpockets were also very bold near our hotel. Two women in our group were almost pickpocketed on two separate nights. The first, and older woman, hit the would-be criminal in the leg with her cane. The second near-victim knew something was up, because this guy was walking backwards in front of her going on and on about how great her shoes were, trying to get her to look down and take her focus off her belongings. When she felt his accomplice reach in her pocket, she yelled at him, and they backed off.

It was kind of fun to practice my (tres mauvais) French. In meetings, I probably understood about 30% of what was said. At least I could tell what the topic was, if not all the details. Even though I didn't have a very big vocabulary, one Senegalese colleague said my pronunciation was very good. I also got to hear people speaking Wolof, the most prevalent tribal dialect in Senegal. It sure sounded cool, kind of staccato and rapid. It was always a little weird when you'd hear two people talking in French, and then realize that they'd switched over to Wolof. Besides the language, the French colonial period left a legacy of good food. We ate at a French creperie twice. The second time, I decided to skip straight to desert, since it was the desert crepe I really wanted anyway! There's also a sizeable Lebanese population in Dakar, and a Lebanese colleague took us to his favorite Lebanese restaurant.

In Dakar I had my first experience of meeting a Muslim man who couldn't shake my hand due to his religious convictions. I had expected that in Sudan (where I actually didn't encounter it), but it surprised me in Dakar. The Islam just seems less obvious there. After the meeting, the same colleague who complimented my French pronunciation explained why the guy couldn't shake my hand. He also said that while some men wouldn't shake women's hands, he had made the personal decision to shake only women's hands!

Dakar is the western-most African city, and it was a hub of the slave trade. In my pictures, you'll see a few shots of Isle de Goree, which was the point from which slaves were sent to the Americas. If I'd had more time, I would have liked to take a tour, but our schedule was pretty full. We did have time to go to a marketplace. I bought a cool-but-hideous mask. I think I got it for the equivalent of $22 USD. The guy I bought it from told me it was 15 years old--an antique! :) I hung it in the stairwell, right as you enter our front door. Zach doesn't like it there, because it's a bit startling, but I haven't found a better place for it yet. I also got a necklace with a millefiore bead on it. Millefiore beads were made in Italy in the 1800s and early 1900s, and for a time were used as currency in African trade.

Flying home, we connected through Paris. In a funny coincidence, I got in the security line directly behind an electrical engineer I work with, who was returning home from Bamako. I guess now that I'm traveling a lot, and working with others who do too, I'm going to start running into people I know in foreign airports!

Recent Events

Zach and I had what amounted to a house-warming of sorts yesterday (2.5 years late) to wish my friend Anne well as she moves to the left coast. It was also Zach's and my 5th anniversary gift to each other. We spent the day cleaning, making food, and creating a soundtrack. It was kinda fun to finally use my various glassware, cheese dome, cake pedestal, etc. We didn't want to overwhelm ourselves with too many guests, so it was a small affair. Overall, I think it turned out well, and everyone seemed to have a nice time. Talk included the LEED green-building initiative, which led, quite naturally, into discussion of dewatering of sewage. I'm sure our new friends Nancy and James thought that was pretty cool, because who doesn't love going to a party and talking about land-spreading of human waste? As I figured, we bought waaay too much alcohol and food. Not to worry, though, because Zach and I will make quick work of the leftovers! My new favorite song, which was featured on last night's soundtrack is O.A.R.'s "Love and Memories".

The coming weeks should be exciting. Tuesday we're going to watch DC's High Heel Drag Race (it has nothing to do with cars), I have a Halloween party Friday night (I'm furiously procrastinating on finishing my bee costume), and I found out that one of my Krakow teammates is a former-Soviet-state Olympic figure skater.

Krakow! Krakow! Two direct hits!

C: Fearless Spaceman Spiff closes in on the fleeing Zargons! Once again our hero is about to teach vicious alien scum that virtue is it's own reward! He locks onto target!
S: Psst, Calvin! What was the capital of Poland until 1600?
C: Krakow.
S: Thanks.
C: Krakow! Krakow! Two direct hits!

That's pretty much the extent of my knowledge of Krakow, but I guess I'll learn more in a couple weeks!

Monrovia

I've been so bad about keeping this blog updated. I think by now I've lost all my readers (my mom and Zach's mom). I should really make more of an effort to post immediately when I return from a trip, otherwise I lose steam. Case in point: did you ever see my post about Nuremburg or Dachau? No? That's because I never got around to writing them! But, if you depend on my blog for links to my pictures, you can look at the rest of my Germany pictures here. There are some descriptive captions in there.

Anyhoo, Liberia. I've decided that I really like SN Brussels business class, if only because they give you a little box of really awesome chocolate truffels. I ate my whole box in one sitting while waiting at our stopover on the runway in Sierra Leone. I felt like that was a good time to throw away any weight loss I'd achieved in the previous month. I liked that the entrance to the Freetown airport says "Coca-Cola welcomes you to Freetown", like it's a country gas station!

When we arrived at the airport in Monrovia, we had to wait to de-plane because it was pouring. Evidently it does that a lot during the rainy season. I've heard there's only one covered jetway in Africa--in Abdijan. My luggage arrived unmolested. I had outstanding luck with my baggage on this trip--nothing was stolen and all my bags showed up when they were supposed to. I think the key to not losing your luggage in Africa (and thus the things inside your luggage--see my previous post) is to arrange your flights so your luggage never changes planes in Africa. Do your connections in Europe, or some dude in Ghana will be wearing your clothes and using your toothbrush.

My first impression of Monrovia was that it was really dark. Since I arrived after nightfall, I know that sounds really obvious, but I'm referring to the lack of electricity. On the drive between the airport and the city center I was surprised by the total darkness. Sometimes the shanties on the side of the road would have a light or two, but generally it was just blackness. I saw my favorite sign of the whole trip just outside the aiport. It said in big letters, "DO NOT URINATE HERE OK!!!" I hate that I didn't have my camera ready! The ride from the airport took an hour and a half, thanks to potholes and no streetlights to illuminate said potholes. I would say it was the bumpiest ride of my life up to that point (the actual bumpiest ride came the next day). If there was a decent road, I bet the travel time could be cut in half. The trip was in armored vehicles. Kinda cool.

Monrovia was even more depressing in daylight. Everything was destroyed by the civil war that ended in 2005. Even the government buildings are in ruins, as everything that was removable was removed by looters. We held meetings with public officials in buildings that were open to the elements, because the windows had been removed (although our meetings were always in rooms of those buildings that had been finished/fixed). I think the public works building used to be a prison.

I got mildly sick from unsanitary conditions, despite my near-obsessive Purel(TM) use and strict adherence to the unsafe food rules. You can only take so many precautions, and then it's just out of your hands. Fortunately I had packed a self-treatment course of Cipro. It appears the struggle between good and evil in my abdomen has abated, so that's nice. Good times, good times. That's what's awesome about my job--I have the opportunity to get intestinal parasites in places many people have never even heard of!

You can look at my pictures here. Many are bad--keep in mind that I had to take most from a moving vehicle. Crime is pretty bad, so we weren't allowed to just wander around outside.