Watch the Walk

My classes do a "graduation" In America expectations are that everyone will graduate high school with only one senior year. Here on Clove Island, expectations are different. Once in high school, each year of school is labeled by the number of years left. The last grade is called “last”, and at the end of the year you have to take a big national exam. Many students will take this final exam several times before passing. After exams finish they announce what day the results will be released. On the appointed day, most radios on the island are tuned to the proper frequency to listen as name after name is read of those who passed. Some pass with high honors, some with honors, some only pass. And then there are those who are allowed to try again with the oral version of the exam. But if your name isn’t read, you’ll have to try again next year. There’s no graduation ceremony. No Pomp and Circumstance with robes and hats and diploma covers for the end of high school. Nope. So what d...

Wedding season is in full swing here. Still. It seems like it never ends. And my neighbors have even started to comment on it. "It's just money, money money. Every night we're giving away $25 and staying up until after midnight. And then we work the next morning." "Maybe when the wedding season is over, I'll be able to study English." "When wedding season is over we should get together and talk again." It seems, the higher in society you are, the more weddings you're invited to and the fancier those weddings tend to be. Some weddings you'll give about $1.50 and that's it, but other weddings are the "high roller" ones and you have to dig deep in your wallet or risk being embarrassed. Wedding favors. We pay the couple, they reward us. Speaking of embarrassed, here's a bit of a funny story for you: weddings consist of multiple events, but there's one climactic event where the bride and groom appear together a...

It's essentially the ends of the earth, the island that I live on. Although you can reach it by plane, the process of getting from home in America to home in Africa is a several-day, several-plane and often several-problems/delays sort of affair. To be fair, the problems normally occur only on the last leg of the journey-- getting from the international airport to my island. Other Africa-based flights are fairly predictable and rarely cause problems. But the islands where I live are plagued by airline issues. -- the government regulates different airlines differently -- airlines refuse to pay taxes or landing fees until they're forcibly grounded -- strikes occur when either government employees or airline employees aren't paid -- maintenance can't be fully done on the islands, so sometimes a plane is out of country for a month at a time, limiting the possible number of flights -- the government doesn't have its own plane, so airline planes are chartered at the last ...

When I think about wedding problems in the US, there are a couple of platitudes that come to mind, "at the end of the day, at least you'll be married." And the second encouraging phrase you often hear is "Nobody will notice. And if they do, they'll forget soon enough anyway." Here on Clove Island it's not so simple. For a lot of people, they're actually already married before the wedding. The big parties and fanfare really is just that-- for some weddings, the bride and groom have been married for several years already. And do people forget what goes wrong? Nope. Everything involved with weddings is recorded: what you donate towards the wedding is written down so they can reciprocate with your wedding. If you come cook at a wedding, then they'll come cook at your family's wedding. But heaven forbid that you should not have enough food at your wedding for all the people who come to help cook it. Or should you fail to... ... give a special gues...

Waiting for the race Sometimes I wonder what percentage of my time here on Clove Island has been spent waiting. Since most times mentioned for events are not exact, I'm often caught waiting. Like the other day when I went to watch a friend run in a relay race. We were told that the race would be a 9 AM. At 8:00 we were told that it was for sure starting soon, maybe even before 9. So I hurried down to the starting point to watch. Well, it didn't start before 9. Soon we found out that our friend was running the first part of the race, so we moved a little ways away to wait, excited to cheer her on at the relay point. Waiting for skits to start Two hours later, we were still waiting and finally they closed the road for the race. Cheers heard, they've started! We waited for the runners but our friend wasn't in the group. No! Her relay point was even earlier than we'd thought and we completely missed watching her run. Two hours of waiting, and then not even seeing what w...

This is my cat, Jack. Jack is a handy name because it's so versatile. Islanders are familiar with Jack Bauer, but there are other famous Jacks in pop culture and history-- Jack the Ripper (appropriate kitten name), Jack Sprat (not so appropriate, my kitty loves eating fat), Jack Sparrow, Captain Jack, etc and so forth. Jack came into my life as a baby kitten. I found him on the street, being shielded from the sun by a banana leaf lovingly placed there by a toddler. After questioning the toddler and other kids who soon arrived about his origins I determined that he'd been dumped intentionally in a graveyard. I also determined that he was not going to survive unless he had a mama. His eyes weren't even fully open and he wasn't very good at walking. How would he survive in the big, bad world? "sleeping in" So I took him home and adopted him. He drank powdered milk from an eye dropper, then a syringe, then eventually he learned to lap up milk and eat eggs. An ador...

It's that time of the year. No, not the season of snow and Christmas carols, although the weather is cooling down considerably. No, it's the month of fasting, that one time of the year that I don't get marriage proposals... well, except for that one.. but really, that's pretty great. Instead, I get another annoying question:  ARE YOU FASTING? This question comes any time I'm out of the house. I go to the neighbor's shop to buy garlic and another neighbor asks "So, are you fasting?" I go to exercise with friends and random people on the street ask as I go "did you fast today?" Or there's my other favorite-- "Are you fasting? You're not able to, are you?" Gosh is it easy to get defensive on that one. But how do you compare fasting for multiple days but still consuming water vs. breaking the fast every night but dehydrating your body every day? Are we racking up points for how "righteous" our fasting is? Father, prote...