Festival of Sheep

So Tuesday was the Muslim New Year. But the new year for just about every fully grown adult male goat wasn’t exactly what I would call “happy.” Basically the only thing shown on the news that night was Imams sacrificing goats with steak knives. Wait, TV? As in a working television with world news? I guess I should probably start from the beginning…

Colin and I were invited by our friends, Christian and Judith (whom we met in Kara at the mass with the Primate and once again at the Jubilee), to come visit them in Kara on Tuesday since it was a Muslim holiday and there was no school. On a sidenote, it’s nice teaching at a Caltholic school in a Muslim country…more holidays! Anywho Colin and I decided that it would be a worthwhile decision to go in on Tuesday and break from our normal routine although I was a little bummed that I wasn’t going to be able to see the result of the Temple v. Ohio football game. It doesn’t sound like much, but the game was a Tuesday night game and decided who would get to play in the MAC (the same conference where Turner Gill made his name at Buffalo) title game against Northern Illinois. I decided that it was a small sacrifice to pay.

We figured that in order to get the most out of our time with our friends we would call a moto and let him know what time to pick us up at the monastery in the morning so that we could leave right away. We even planned for Africa time and told him to meet us earlier than we wanted to leave. As it turned out, he never showed. Even after I called him two more times…each call was an hour apart. So much for getting in early. Colin and I went off on each other. It was a nice little shouting match that stopped occasionally to say “Bonjour” in cheerful unified voices before going back at it. In the proceeding hour of waiting for our friend and another moto to come from Kara to pick us up we came to our senses and made good. We even drew attention to the fact that the entire time we were arguing we were standing behind (I was grabbing onto) a steel grate window of the monastery looking out over the entrance. We were caged and it finally got to us. That microcosm explains a whole heck of a lot about how we both felt over the past few days (weeks for me).

The motos finally arrived and we sped off to the city hoping to salvage some part of our previously disrupted plan of a day. I had planned to meet with two people (one of whom was a professor who unecessarily canceled his entire morning agenda, which I didn’t know about until after the fact) in order to translate a recommendation for a program that I am applying to. The brilliant minds behind the French Teaching Assistantship make the application in French with an English translation (just so no one screws up), but they make the recommendation forms solely in English (as if they don’t trust the French professors who are supposed to be writing the recommendation to correctly fill out a multiple choice questionnaire on an applicant’s English and French skills). I think for the most part this is just a formality for me as seeing that I am currently teaching English in a francophone country, but a formality that needed to be done none the less. Let’s just say that all said and done it took roughly an hour and a half to finish something that I could have had done in about 2 minutes. In case you didn’t know, computers aren’t exactly a top priority for many people here (including academics). For example, the French professor who is the head of the literature department at the University of Kara can type (through no fault of his own, this is just to show the differences in needed skill-sets for related positions) at roughly the same speed of a middle school student in the states. Typing and using computers just doesn’t carry the same weight here, or better yet, there isn’t enough money in the education system to allow it to carry the same weight as it does elsewhere.

After finishing the translations (for which, if anyone from the Assistantship happens to see this blog, I made sure not to comment on the responses or aid in the decision), I sped off to meet up with the others at the Palais de Congres for a drink before walking through the city. While walking and chatting, we were invited to spend the night at their house and happily obliged thinking that a night away from the monastery would do us some good. It did, let me tell you!

The rest of the night was spent walking, chatting, and meeting the family. And not that I need any extra incentive to go into Kara, but Judith has a rockin body; just throwin it out there. Also father of our friend liked us so much (or maybe just the fact that I had a camera and took a picture of him – never underestimate the power of a camera) that he took us out for drinks…twice (once before lunch and the other after supper)! He is the headmaster of a local public school in which he has roughly 100 students per classroom. Good God, that’s a lot of kids for a grade school class. 3 to a desk if you get to school early enough and standing room in the back if you’re on time…And the girls’ tuition is cheaper in an attempt to encourage them to pursue and education, which I thought was nice.

That night I slept with a fan on, I was cold, and it was glorious.