Food and Pictures

Vendredi…

Today, I decided to accompany JB (imagine a French speaking version of Eddie Murphy and you’ve nailed this guy to the T), Charlotte, and one other monk who’s name evades me, to the market. I was assured that we would be no more than an hour or so on account of we had to be back by 13h for lunch. I also had an agenda with Colin for the afternoon that I didn’t want to miss. We made it to the market were JB and Charlotte left to the car to go buy some food items leaving me with the other guy in the car. We ended up driving around for a little while (by driving I mean moving less than 1 mph while honking at market-goers to get out of the way) before finding a decent parking place. We waited there and chatted, it was a great chance for me to work on my French, for close to an hour before setting out to find our very chatty and friendly friends. We eventually found them with more bags than they could carry and helped them back to the car before departing for another market. How much food did they need to buy? We waited patiently in the car for another hour before deciding to call them and say that we would meet them back at the house. Whew, it was close to 14h30 before we made it back. Colin filled me in that lunch was nothing more than croissants and a single pain au chocolate and that all three left in the box were essentially mine. So I scarffed those down and got ready to set out with Colin.

We were almost out the main door when, JB called us from the kitchen asking if we were ready for lunch! OH shit. I had just filled myself with what I thought was lunch and now I had to sit down in a polite manner to a second lunch no less than five minutes later. Not only that, he thought that Colin and I were starving not having eaten since breakfast more than 4 hours earlier so he made an extra large batch of couscous (one of the fluffiest and most filling types of rice). I wanted to cry.

Colin and I ate all that we could muster in a very polite manner and then bolted out the door as fast as we could with our over laden stomachs. We wanted to make it to a cyber café to check some email and update our statuses online before heading to a soccer match with Kassim and Raouf. I also had to go to the BTC in order to pull out a considerable sum of money since I was not (and still am not) certain of whether or not my Visa would work in Kara.

We ran our errands quickly, feeling as though we were pros at hailing motos and getting around, before heading out to the terrain du foot. The match was just about to begin when we arrived already sweating and panting from our previous errands (it is very stressful to try and compress 2 hours worth of work on a computer into 30 min on our current internet connections). I decided that I was going to sit this match out in order to use it as a photo-taking opportunity in which I took over 800 photos! Thank God for digital cameras. Of the 800, I think I ended up with roughly 10 quality keepers, which will also be up online in time.

The match, which was played in the street this time since all the other terrains had been claimed for the evening, ended when it was too dark to see the ball. We were unaware of this as the other match had a 90 minute time limit as do most matches. So naturally we got caught up in the game and didn’t realize that we were late for the evening mass. Oops! Honest mistake Br. Paul, I swear! Also, since it was a feast day (St. Gregory of all people) we had mass that the morning, which means that you don’t have to cut off my stipend…yet. J

So, yes we made it back towards the end of mass, cleaned up and made it to the garage (the chapel isn’t big enough for large celebrations so mass and supper were held in the garage) just in time for the food to be served! Some timing huh? As it happened, I had just taken my Malaria pill, but forgot to swallow some water afterwards and developed a very severe case of heartburn/acid reflux/hiccups, whatever you will and couldn’t eat for close to an hour. And sadly by this time most of the other people had finished their meals. Luckily for me, Colin and Pierre-Paul managed to save me some food, which wasn’t much more than an over-glorified salad, but still good nonetheless. I was thankful for it and also for my new friends who showed an amazing amount of concern for my health and well-being.