Eww

Today I left work early for an appointment, so ended up back at my regular Metro station mid-day. I walked to the parking garage, and as I was rounding the corner to enter the stairwell, I heard the sound of water clattering to the concrete. My immediate thought: Uh oh, a water pipe must be leaking! But when I got to the doorway, it wasn't a pipe leaking--it was a person! Some dude with long blond hair and a US flag bandanna was standing at the landing (with his back to me, thankfully) peeing onto the stairs below. At 12:30PM! Who does that?!?! A crazy person, perhaps, so instead of calling him out, I just turned around and walked into the elevator instead. How I would have hated to be coming up the stairs from below! Gross! I had always assumed this stairwell got its perpetual urine smell from someone's late-night bladder urges...guess I was wrong!

Speaking of eww, when I was in N'Djamena the other week, I took a picture of a really awful public art/public service announcement painted on a wall. It warns one to be sanitary, because the Cholera is a killer! Also on the ewww front, we ate lunch at some fairly good places while in N'Djamena, but two of my colleagues got pretty sick after eating lunch at a middle eastern place. The dishes were served with diced tomatoes, onions, and lettuce on top. I scraped the veggies off my falafel, but these two guys didn't. I asked one if the tomatoes were worth it, and his answer was an emphatic "no"! I ended up giving him my last round of Cipro. Which reminds me, I need to get more, but I don't have time to go before I leave for Freetown this weekend. But one of my friends has some slightly-expired Cipro she's offered me. How proud my mom must be--here I am considering taking someone else's expired prescription medication! Haha!

I'd say it was a good trip overall, but I didn't get the impression there was a lot to do there. We stayed at the Meridien, which was alright (not the best place I've stayed, nor the worst). We ate dinner one night at the Kempinski, which seemed realllly nice (for Africa anyway), but is Libyan-owned and possibly for that reason we weren't allowed to stay there. I practiced my French with our drivers and also during meetings. It was great! I understood about 90% of what was said. Our locally-employed colleague didn't interpret everything, but I think that might be because our team leader and I both understood what was going on without it (or, he's crappy at interpreting). But even if that's true, I don't hold it against him, because he was a pretty cool dude. He and his wife are Canadians who have lived in N'Djamena since the late 70s and over the years have adopted 16 children (in addition to their biological children). They're very well-known and popular in the City, because they run a private school. It started out as a tutor for their youngest child, and other people they knew asked if they could have the tutor teach their kids too; now, their enrollment is 600 students at 3 campuses!! Several of the government officials we met with were taught by his wife.

It was really hot there (around 100 F). At one meeting, the building's power had gone out, so we met in a kinda dark and stiflingly hot office. In the middle of our meeting, the power came back on, and the people interrupted the conversation to bring in a fan and get the AC unit started. After the meeting, when we were saying our goodbyes, one guy explained that we had looked so hot, they were trying to cool us down. He pointed to me and said that "la blanche" (the white girl) had become very red! I had honestly tried really hard to make it look like the heat didn't bother me, but I guess I didn't succeed!

Pictures here.