Back—In Blue

I'm back, but not in black. I'm wearing a faded blue Kansas shirt. (Faded because my poor *snif* Kansas shirts are slowly deteriorating. That's your cue, Darth Vader: "NOOOOOOOOOO!")

And guess what? It's another update. Not quite as exciting as something like "GET A FREE COPY OF THE WAR HORN!" (although that's coming soon, muahahaha!). However, I hope it proves to be informative, if not entertaining.

Right now, I'm still hard at work with The War Horn.

You see, I lost a day this past week, and I still can't figure it out. All of a sudden, it was Friday, and I didn't even know what had happened. I seriously thought it was Thursday. So that meant that schoolwork went in Blue Overdrive mode and also produced a vial of Stop Writer's Cramp because of some weird chemical reaction. Go figure.

See, that's much more interesting than "I was busy with school so I couldn't revise", wasn't it?

However, sources tell me that I said to my parents, "The War Horn will be finished on Sunday!" so we'll see what happens. If that's true, then the "GET A FREE COPY OF THE WAR HORN" post will be coming soon to a blog near you.

For a more serious update, here's a post-within-the-post in reply to some comments made on my previous post.

Firstly, I do eat one meal a day. And now I can't think of eating three meals a day. Meh. (And, while I'm on that thought, I find it funny that people say "How can you survive on one meal a day?", because it's perfectly normal here.) It's a wonder I didn't swell up and roll around like a soccer ball. Or football, as the locals call it. I think I'll forever eat this much in times to come. In all seriousness, though, our entire family is a lot healthier than we were two months ago because of our change in diet.

However, the conditions we live in are not as healthy. It's almost crazy, what's been happening. My sister, when we first arrived, had an extremely minor case of typhoid. But that was just the beginning, and it centers mostly on our pets. Every single one of our pets has had some sort of accident or sickness that could have proven fatal, or did.

So here it is: we got a dog, it died; we got a mongoose and it temporarily paralyzed itself and couldn't walk for a week; we got two more dogs, and they both died of roundworm; we got another dog, and it got bit by a dog that might have had rabies and is now quarantined; and we got a cat that jumped off a top bunk and had a seizure so bad that we thought it was going to die. It did, however, recover, and continues to attack us in the middle of the night. (There's a reason she's named Ninja.)

That is, in brief summary, some of the weird happenings.

But I digress: back to the questions.

Concerning life-or-death situations...well, I don't think so. We've had some situations that were tense and could have been dangerous (a drunk guy yelling at us, men smoking drugs nearby, a supposed plot to steal our welder), but I have yet to have a life-or-death encounter.

Belly-laugh? Nothing that stands out, although there are little family-related jokes here and there. :) There was that one time that some children were yelling "Chinese man!" at us, peppering it with "Ching change gong gong!". One white person is the same as another, I suppose. ;)

Similarly, I was driving one time with another white person once who had lived here for quite a while, and had married a Liberian. When we passed a group of white people, he leaned out the car window and shouted "White man! White man!" in Liberian English at them. They didn't even look up.

Something that normally wouldn't happen at home? Everything. Heh, it's such a large category. We go to an outdoor market for much of our food, we walk most everywhere we go (or catch a taxi), all of the children wave at us when we pass (oftentimes saying "White man!"); the list goes on. Anything more specific? XD

Oh, and we all (probably) had worms. :P That was fun. Dewormer is cheap here, thankfully. And I think my entire family is just waiting for me to come down with malaria. The mosquitoes like me too much.

As far as I know, there are no elephants. Liberian "bush" is basically a sub-Saharan jungle. There are, however, monkeys, mongooses, genets, various kinds of birds, lizards, and other fauna.

Cassava is one of my favorite Liberian foods. It's a leafy vegetable: cut up, and put with peppers and onions and garlic, and then mixed with the meat and cooked. It has a dark green look to it and is rather oily. (In fact, the first Liberian dish that I ever had was cassava with goat. It was in America, months before I came here, and I thought it rather weird.) I have not, however, heard of it being in cake. O_o

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask! I've got a storehouse of information in my noggin. I haven't even scratched the surface of my life here. Which is why I have trouble writing coherent blog posts. ;)

As for me, folks, I think I'm going to go swimming soon. :D

Au revior!