My Shapala

There are some things that you will remember till you die. I'm not talking about the cliche's like when your children were born, your wedding, or watching the moon landing. I'm talking about those odd events that only happen to you that make for great stories. They won't always be on the tip of your tongue, but as soon as someone mentions it you can recall every single detail in an instant as if it happened yesterday. Ask me sometime about the time I tried sailing across the Hood Canal. Or running from the police after swimming in the Montlake Cut. Or my brother nearly dying from getting electrocuted. That last one is a funny story. If it sounds like a sad memory, I posit that it depends if my brother is telling the story or I am.

For the kids here, a lot of the stories they love to tell happen to revolve around food. I think in the same way that Americans value their vacations and traveling to all sorts of different places and bringing back photos and souvenirs of new and exotic places, so some extent that is the parallel to people's food experiences. All you have to do is mention, "Hey, you remember that one time you ate ______," and their whole face will light up and they'll tell you everything you never wanted to know.

When you live most of your life only eating three or four different dishes (and probably only two at a time depending on what food is in season), what stands out is the new exciting exotic foods that you probably only get once or twice a year or maybe once in your lifetime. In that way it's like a family retreat you take once a year, or the time you visited Disneyland, or places you'll go that you've only read about.

Ask about the time several kids that got invited along to the dessert potluck at the Missionary Fellowship and it was an endless table of brownies, cookies, cakes, and sweets.

Or those that won a contest and TJ took them out for chicken dinner and, as luck would have it, the happy hour special meant that each one got to feast on a half chicken.

Or ask the boy that Victor once took to an all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet: Yogurt, omelets, bacon, sausage, milk, cheeses, imported fruits, the whole works.

Or when TJ picked up a group of kids after school one day in the truck, drove them to town, bought a gallon of ice cream, whipped out spoons, and said, "Let's hurry up before it melts!"

One such boy that had an experience he will never forget was Muaprato. One day last month Victor's brother came to town and a few of the boys talked him into to springing for a car wash. Let's just say that he left a very gratuitous gratuity (yes, the redundancy is redundant). Most of the boys pocketed the money to slowly over time buy snacks and the like. Some bought a few pairs of flip flops, the preferred style of footwear here. Muaprato decided to eat his money.

He didn't literally eat it, of course. I found it strangely funny that, whereas most people in America say that they "spend money", most people here say that they "eat money." Even if they are buying a radio or a t-shirt, the expression remains the same. If you ask what they ate with the money, they just say, "Oh, a new hat, a pair of sandals, a backpack."

But what Muaprato decided to eat was actually food. A lot of it, in fact. This is a boy who is thirteen years old, the size of somebody ten years old, and behaves like he's six years old. I have had folks stop by the orphanage to chat and notice him. On at least three occasions, some version of the following exchange has occurred. My friend will ask, "Oh, how long ago did that boy arrive?" To which I will respond, "Which boy is that?" And then the friend responds, "The one that runs around everywhere making noises like a motorcycle. The one that was eating a crayon, stopped, and then said, 'I like the yellow one better.' The one that tried to to a back-flip and landed on his stomach and hasn't gotten up. The one that ripped off his shirt, ran from one end of the orphanage to the other screaming 'Gonna take a shower! Gonna take a shower!' The one that ripped off his shirt, ran from one end of the orphanage to the other screaming, 'Gonna pee! Gonna pee!' " I then hold my head in my hand and say that he's been here for about seven years.

After Muaprato received his cut of the car washing deal, he asked if he could go down to the market and get a new pair of flip flops. We sent an older, more responsible boy to accompany him.

That night we had chicken for dinner. Muaprato gave his plate away didn't eat a single bite. The next day he stayed home from school sick. The third day, after coming home from school sporting his new flip flops, he was playing in Victor and Christina's house and had to keep leaving to use the bathroom. When Christina asked his friends what the problem, they said he had diarrhea because the cook was doing a bad job and it made him sick.

If you remember from our chickendebacle, the kids are not always the most honest at stating how or why they get stomach aches. In this case, his friends were covering for him. So we got his friends together and Muaprato and asked him what he spent his money on. "Snacks," is what he said. While it was the correct answer, it was not very specific. We asked him to detail exactly what he ate. His face lit up, his demeanor suddenly because very animated, and he accounted for exactly everything he bought as well as the prices he bought if for. He started detailing what he bought.

Three donuts, fryebread, two hush puppies, a chocolate bar, suckers, bread and hard candy.

Just to recap, he ate bread and hard candy. Not bread....and...hard candy. He actually put the suckers in the bread to encounter as he ate. Everybody started laughing, realizing that after eating all this it probably gave his a stomach ache.

But the boy that went with him said he left out one important detail. At being called out, Muaprato put his head down and got embarrased. It turns out that what he left out was buying shapala.

I don't know how to translate shapala. I don't even know how to write it, I'm just guessing. I don't even think other places have it. It's basically dried cowhide, but not leather, but not jerky, and people eat it. Like I said I don't even know where to begin. The whole room busted out laughing.

You see, shapala is something that people sell, and people eat, but the big joke is that people don't actually eat it. In that way, it's kind of like lutefisk. . It's there, and people eat it, but people don't really eat it, or eat a lot of it. If you're Scandinavian, you know what I'm talking about. If you're not Scandinavian, well, too bad for you.

Hearing that he ate shapala, and everything else made him sick going on three days, caused everybody present to erupt into laughter, even Muaprato himself. Then as the story spread, the laughter spread. It will not be a meal that he lives down anytime soon.

Shiver Me Timbers

One of the things that occurs to me as I talk with my folks on Skype is that they usually ask how the weather has been. For much of the year my response is usually, "Ugh. Hot." And then the rest of the year my response is, "Dang, it's cold." And then my parents rhetorically ask, "What's cold over there, like 80?"

And...yes. 80 is cold. Most mornings that I talk to them these months I find myself in a sweatshirt sipping a cup of tea. And then later topping off the tea just to stave off the cold. It's the time of year where there are actually noticeable temperature swings in between dawn (coldest part of the day) and 2pm (hottest part of the day). As opposed to it just always being hot.

Right now in the middle of the afternoon it's 85F (30C). At dawn, the thermometer claims that it is 70F (21C), but I think it's lying just to make me feel better. Where I come from, in cold rainy Seattle, when it hits 60 this time of year you start skipping school and wearing shorts and tank tops. When I was back in the States last year, I spent my first week in L.A. wearing a sweatshirt because the 85 degree afternoons were just too chilly.

That's not to say when it gets hot I do fine. When the mercury pushes 104 (40C) during the summer I refuse to do any physical activity that is not eating food or drinking water. But here when the thermometer drops below 80 it's chilly and anything below 70 (which is most mornings April thru July) are just plain cold.

It's all in the perspective, I guess.

The Pressure Builds

Peer pressure is a great tool if you use it for good, and bad if you use it for bad. If you surround yourself by drug addicts, you're probably gonna get sucked in after a while. If eat out with people who tip well at restaurants, you will probably tip well too just to not be a cheapskate—I prefer to say "spendthrift" but the vocabulary doesn't really matter, you're gonna tip better.

Peer pressure is the same thing that dictates many things in our lives without actually knowing it. How many of you, when walking through a park or public lawn, have seen a sign that says advises you to "keep off the grass"? Or another that says, "Wet paint, do not touch." Or heard requests to limit flash photography in a theater, or turn you cell phone off when you enter church, or to stand for the playing of the national anthem, or to hold a moment of silence?

I'm guessing there are very few of you that stepped on the grass, touched the wet pain, started taking flash pictures at the opera, or answered your phone in the middle of church, or turned your back to the playing of the national anthem, or made obnoxious noises during a moment of silence. Why do you do such things? Is it because you're a mindless lemming? Is it because your mommy and daddy taught you manners? Is it because you are respectful and considerate of others?

It's probably not any of those things. It's probably because you're afraid. Because if there is anything society is good at, it's enforcing its will on those that step outside its' bounds.

If you take a flash picture while at the opera, a team of Special Forces won't paratroop down and arrest you at gun point, you'll just get a lot of leery looks from your fellow patrons. If you continue, they may ask you to stop or even an usher will come talk to you. If you answer your phone during church, the pastor will not halt the service to excommunicate you (usually), but the people sitting around you will probably tell you to turn your phone off because it's inappropriate. Who decided it's inappropriate? We all did.

Whether or not it is right, just, or Biblical, you will pay a price for going against the collective will of and violating the manners of society.

After putting up our schedule for breakfast at the orphanage, our rather rebellious girl was prepared to pay the physical cost of refusing to cook breakfast. What she had failed to anticipate was the social cost as during the next week she had to deal with glares, stares, whispers and slights of the others. When her turn came, she was up early and in the kitchen making porridge for everybody.

What I call the social cost is really the tantamount to peer pressure. This girl that stated her refusal to contribute to cooking porridge could tolerate being withheld breakfast, but couldn't tolerate the hostility that had come between her and literally every other person at the orphanage.

Social costs are often a more effective way at producing results than a financial or physical costs. The best way to get people to practice a certain behavior is convince them that there is a social reward for complying or a social penalty for non-compliance. Towns in America that have tried to cut down on prostitution, for example, have found little success with increased fines or jail terms. However, one effective way many cities have found is publishing the names and pictures of the johns. Want people to buy war bonds? Convince them that it is their moral and patriotic duty, and if they don't they might as well be picking up a gun and joining sides with Tojo.

Here in the orphanage the most effective way to change someones disobedience is not have them do dishes for a week or have a timeout in their room. The girl that refused to cook breakfast, she did not fear the punishment that would come with her disobedience. What she obviously feared was the exclusion and embarrassment from the others.

Once we had a boy we caught stealing food. Being particularly rebellious, we new the only way he would reform was if he was too ashamed or embarrassed socially to continue this behavior. His punishment that day was anytime the girls needed water to carry to the bathroom for showers they would ask him and he would carry it. It was great fun and most the girls took about three showers that day. About three times during the day he came to me asking to end his punishment because he learned his lesson. Good. Now it was time to reinforce it and make sure he remembers the embarrassment next time he wants to steal food, because if there is one thing that society here is good at, it is enforcing it's will on other people and exacting a social cost.

Social costs are a great way to influence good behavior. They are unfortunately a main driver behind bad behavior.

Here in Nampula there is an incredible amount of peer pressure that envelops nearly every aspect of life. Expected behaviors, attitudes, actions, customs, and beliefs are elevated over and above the individual to constitute what we would consider a value system. What people do is derived from their morals, and morals are (rightly or wrongly) derived from the combined will of that people. Therefore going against the customs and morals is not a sin against God, it is against your parents, neighbors, ancestors, and pretty much everybody you know.

This week, there was some truly shocking news out of South Africa (our direct neighbors). A nationwide government survey found that 30% of girls in high school have HIV. Three in ten! This isn't exactly a condition that is going to go away anytime soon. In a few years it will be 30% of young adults and then thirty percent of mothers. The other shocking thing that came out of the survey is that while is the disease is rampant among schoolgirls, the infection rate for boys is only around 4%.

The survey found that these girls are not getting HIV from their peers, they're getting it from older men that the survey referred to as "sugar daddies". Yep, sugar daddies. One of the driving factors they found talking to girls is that they would notice their classmates showing up with new clothes, jewelry, expensive cellphones, all symbols of wealth/status. They girls also verbally encouraged each other that in order to have the same status, they too needed to prostitute themselves. Clearly it's an epidemic driven by the stigma or pressures of not having the same social status as your peers.

That's why when some kids here have families visit them we need to monitor the meetings, otherwise the girls get encouraged to start sleeping with teachers because, "You're clearly not smart, how else are you going to get passing grades?" As if the pressure form classmates wasn't enough, we don't need their mothers telling them this too. And it's equal pressure on the boys too because there are enough girls looking to put out that all you have to do is throw a rock and you'll hit one. Others are encouraged to steal, intimidate teachers, do witchcraft on them, a whole litany of things.

The challenge is that I know that the way things are is not the way they ought to be. The trouble is in convincing others that this too is the case. People in our church stay home Sundays because they'd rather that than be mocked by their neighbors for "wasting their time." People who steal and get away with it should not be incentive for you to steal. Boys who sleep around with any girl they please is not encouragement for you to do likewise.

It is tough though because there are the girls that get diplomas not even knowing how to read from passing around with teachers. Girls that have cellphones and no short supply of fancy clothing. There are the boys that show up with the tales from drinking all weekend or the people they stole from or all the girls they took advantage of all the "favors" they cashed in. It's hard to convince the kids that we reap what we sow.

I have seen the righteous die in his righteousness and the wicked prolong his days in his wickedness... yet I know that it will be well with those who fear God, because they fear before Him.

Under Pressure

It all started with breakfast.

There were several times it started with breakfast, in fact. Breakfast is the meal the that kids themselves are responsible for cooking before the actual cook comes along later in the to make lunch and dinner. It has always been this way and probably always will be because breakfast needs to be started at dawn in order to get everybody fed before they go off to school.

Usually there had been about five or six kids that had made breakfast and just took it upon themselves to get up. I would sometimes if it was particularly cold and I was usually joined by others looking for warmth from the fire. Some days nobody would make breakfast and then there would be no porridge to give out.

However, this last year we went through a month where nobody ate breakfast. This was not our choice, but theirs. You see, they just stopped making breakfast. Since they collectively refused to cook breakfast, they collectively decided to not eat the food they were not cooking. This was rather upsetting to us. It was by most accounts an unsettling combination of laziness and apathy more than a lack of hunger. People still complained of hunger through the morning and we reminded them the easiest solution is to just all pitch in and make breakfast.

After a month we finally came down with an ultimatum. For these kids, them not making breakfast is a huge offense on several levels. First it is insulting to the people who donate to the orphanage, both here in Nampula and abroad. How many of you have told your kids something along the lines of, "Finish your food, there are starving kids in Africa." Second, it is insulting because here all we have to say is, "Finish your food, there are starving kids next door." For our kids to refuse to cook is a huge offense.

As a result of this ultimatum we finally decided to make a schedule of people making breakfast. It works out so that each person has to wake up to boil a pot of water to make porridge, a task taking all of 30 minutes, approximately once a month. That is all it takes if everybody pitches in. Once a month. Boil water.

When we announced the list at a meeting one evening. It was met by groans and whines, but nothing too serious. That was until one girl defiantly raised her hand and announced it would be best to take her of the list because she refuses to cook. This also is a pretty offensive thing to say here, and she said it in on offensive manner to boot. We told her that it meant she would not eat breakfast any of the other morning, a decision she informed everybody she was perfectly fine with.

This girl, to so rudely and publicly announce her decision to not participate in the cooking of breakfast, appeared to be fully prepared to deal with the consequences. It meant she would be going without breakfast the whole month for her refusal to cook it once. It was a choice that apparently would not encumber her that much since she had, after all, been living the last month or so foregoing breakfast the same as everybody else.

What she was completely unprepared for was the tidal wave her decision was about to cause. As happens with with all movements, it really only takes one person to start something. Two years ago a young Tunisian set himself on fire in protest of the government and became the catalyst for the Arab Spring movement. In the south, a young Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a bus, becoming a rallying cry for the civil rights movement of the 1960's. Five hundred years ago monk named Martin Luther once defied the Catholic church, spawning protestantism and an entire religious reformation. Two thousand years ago someone so impacted a group of twelve followers, who themselves so impacted the world that human history is divided into the time of before and after his birth.

So when this girl took a stand and refused to make breakfast (again I stress, only once a month) what resulted was a wave of vitriol against her so great that is caused the same change that so many great movements before it had also affected and caused her to recant. What? You thought there was going to be a mass wave of other kids refusing to cook breakfast? Of course not. This post isn't about great and courageous rebellions. This is about peer pressure.

You see, all it took was one. Not the one that refused to cook breakfast. The one that decided to call her out. One person decided to make their voice heard and declared our young rebel as acting selfish. Then another got the courage to join in. Yes, and she was inconsiderate too. Others added that she is only thinking of herself and not of others. Soon after, it had ballooned in to the whole room rising up against her.

This sounds harsh, but it is. The tough part is that she didn't decide to revoke her decision immediately and let it go several days. They next day she got up like everybody else and went to eat breakfast like everyone else. Unlike everyone else, she was the subject of leers and jeers and anger directed at her being there if she so defiantly refused to cook. Again, I didn't say this was about positive peer pressure.

Peer pressure usually has a negative connotation, but it can be used for good. Are your friends pressuring you clean up your life, get a job, pay the rent on time, stop drinking so much? That's positive peer pressure in my book. Granted, this isn't always brought about the right way. You can negatively pressure people into doing good but in a negative way, like with our reluctant chef. Instead of positively encouraging her to help out and saying how supportive it would be of her, there was nothing bu hate directed at her.

As luck would have it, her slot on the rotation was only three days in. And after three days of literally everybody refusing to talk to her, she had her chance to redeem herself. She woke up, cooked breakfast, and everybody forgave her and all was set right in the world.

This story fortunately has a good ending, but peer pressure is rife here every bit as it is is America. And often it has really negative outcomes. Cliffhanger!!!

My Movies

If you want a movie in Mozambique you can just drive down to the video rental store go to a Redbox machine better hope that it is either an extremely popular title or a straight-to-dvd action piece starring Jean Claude Van Damme.

Piracy and counterfeiting is the name of the game on mainland Africa, and you can thank our friends the Chinese. There's a lot there that I could go in to, but maybe that will be another time. Today, we're talking about a line of work that puts food on the table for hundreds of people in Nampula: Movie salesman.

There is not a single movie store in all of Nampula. That's not to say movies don't exist, or that there aren't hundreds of movie salesmen. The movies exist as the copy somebody took off their video camera while watching the actual movie in a theater somewhere in Russia or China with Russian or Chinese subtitles that are sometimes obscured behind the head of the person that sat in front of the video camera.

These pirated copies are then put into mass production, smuggled into container ships and sent across the world. Then certain enterprising young individuals take these copies and wander the streets selling movies at a tidy little profit. The speed at with which new titles can enter the market is alarming. Folks here were selling copies of the latest James Bond outing before it had even come to theaters in the U.S.

Most of the titles are either blockbusters or absolute crap. There is just no middle ground. The ones that are blockbusters look like somebody filmed the movie from inside a movie theater, took it home, put it in their VCR, pressed play, filmed that, and then sent it to Africa. The ones that are crap titles are copies of movies that went straight to DVD (Universal Soldier 6, Behind Enemy Line 4, MegaPiranha vs Sharktopus 3), and often with a new title that is often more of a description of the picture on the cover. The Avengers was being sold as "Super Team USA Hero". Anything with a picture of a soldier on the front is titled with a combination of the words US, soldier, hero, fighter, commando, super, army, super-army, delta, and operation. It's a little like mad-libs.

And the movies are such bad quality they often put four or five (or ten) on a single disc and sell it as a package deal. They might include all Steven Seagal action flicks, all Chuck Norris action flicks, Sharktopus vs MegaPiranha I, II, III, and IV, or similarly themed groupings.

One I saw the other day definitely caught my eye (and not only because the salesman literally shoved it inches from my face. This one was a religious themed disc, and he was trying to sell it to me because I am white (therefore a missionary) and all the films were dubbed in Portuguese.

The dvd case had, in the upper left corner, a picture of Ben Kingsley starring as what could have been either Abraham or Moses and was titled Abraham and Moses. Not separately, it was as if Abraham and Moses were starring together in a buddy cop film trying to solve a string of camel thefts.

In the other corner was another picture of Ben Kingsley taken from what I assumed to be the same movie, just a different outfit and different desert panorama, and was titled Abraham and Moses 2. The third movie in the bottom left corner was a stereotypically Aryan looking Jesus and thus the movie was appropriately titled Jesus.

What really threw me for a loop was the fourth movie plastered in the lower right corner. It was a poster for the movie 300 with the overlaid text of "Gideon and his 300". The person who made the cover obviously knew enough of his Bible to know who Gideon was, but had neither to time to actually read the story in Judges 7 nor watch the movie. You, at home right now reading this, here is a caution to you: Do not watch the movie 300. It is in no way about Gideon (unless the Bible was WAY wrong AND Gideon ran around in a loin cloth whoring it up in ancient Greece in between bouts of killing absolutely everybody that was not a whore).

I asked the guy if he had seen any of these movies he was trying to sell to me. He muttered in English, "Yes, yes. Good movie. Good movie. Movie of Jesus, yes?" I asked him if he had seen "Gideon". A snicker curled at edge of his mouth and he just repeated his mantra, "Oh, yes yes. Good movie. Very good movie."

My Legume

This is peanut, our newest kid. His real name is Eduil, but I call him peanut. If I'm speaking in English I refer to him as peanut. If I'm speaking in Portuguese I refer to him as the portuguese word for Peanut.

Nicknames here are a very very strange thing. It is very common for people to have a nickname here. Usually they are called "house names" and so many people have them because... I don't know why. These are not abbreviates as nicknames like Katie or Suzy or Johnny or even odd ones like Billy. They are often different, completely normal names that are given in place of a given name.

On a side note, I thank my parents for naming me TJ because I went through school with so many other Tims it would have been an identity crisis. And kids are mean! I remember there were two kids particular I went to school with that had the same name. Using Bill as an example (real name changed to protect the innocent) we called one "cool Bill" and the other "not-cool Bill".

The orphanage has a long history of nicknames due mostly to bad luck. Many of the boys have a nickname that is not their given name. After talking to everybody here, I think I have pieced it together all the way to Joao. When he showed up I think there was another Joao here, so instead of calling them Number 1 and Number 2, or by their last names, they decided to invent a name and call him Carlitos (little Carlos).

This was fine till a real Carlos showed up. Rather than changing Joao aka Carlitos to something new, they changed the real Carlos and called him Zaqueio (like the character Zacceus in the Bible). This boy was not particularly short, nor did he live in a tree, it just was given to him. Then, after bestowing the name Zaqueio, along came a new kid called Zacarias. Deciding these were to similar, Zacarias got called Samito (little Sam). As of yet, there has not been another Samito showing up to throw a bump in the road.

Eduil does not have the problem of sharing his name with anybody else. In fact, nobody here has ever heard of his name before. Supposedly it is Malawian, but he is not. Eduil's nickname comes from that the fact that his BFF can't say his name properly. Eduil is in first grade and the same age as Dorcas, but is attached at the hip to Jose. Due to his speech difficulties, Jose has difficulties speaking Eduil's name properly. Instead of saying "eh-doo-wheel" (emphasis on the wheel) he says "meh-doo-whee". It's a slight difference, but enough to make it sound like Jose is saying the Portuguese for peanut.

And because Jose doesn't do anything less than 110%, he was often heard shouting "Peanut!!! Peanut, where are you," causing everybody to break out in laughter the first several days. After a week everybody just took to calling him peanut. We still laugh. Eduil is young enough to know that his name is not peanut but thinks its funny that everybody calls him peanut. We're not making fun of him. Far from it. We're branding him as part of our family.

Programming Notice

There really is no program so to speak of here on the site.

As for notes, there are lots of them on my desk. Most of them are incoherent and in several different languages. Some make sense. "Check the electric bill," or "buy more detergent". Others are kind of vague, one-word references like "oatmeal" and "technician". One I'm looking at right now is a jumble of fifteen or so numbers and letters that was either a password for something or a code I left myself to break when I had forgotten it's original meaning. Leaving puzzles for my future self. I would do more of that if it weren't so disconcerting. What doe those numbers mean? I'm going to lose sleep over this.

But a "programming note" is different. It is not simply a program and not simply a note. It is more. Here is the programming note:

In the event that things just go silent here for several weeks, you should assume that the apocalypse has started and I have fled to our farm and am living off the land and off the grid.

Mozambique is a large, sparse country. It is not the largest in Africa, nor is is the sparsest. It is almost the size of the west coast of the US and home to 22 million people. And it has exactly ONE SOURCE of electricity: a hydroelectric dam in the westernmost part of the country.

The dam supplies energy for the whole country and even some of our neighbors. This is made possible because only about 40% of Mozambican homes have electricity and, of those that do, a many have only several light-bulbs and perhaps a radio or maybe a television. That is why we can get away with one dam for the whole great big place.

Unfortunately, the technicians for the dam say that the ONLY transmission line leaving the ONLY source of electricity for the entire country is in danger of falling over and needs to be replaced. They said it could fall over at any time and cut electricity to everybody and they estimate at least a week to get things back online. In other words, the government just said that electricity could go at any time and it won't come back.

Things are already pretty close to being like 1913 rather than the 2013. Depending on when it happens the biggest inconvenience may be all the frozen chicken in the freezer we have to eat before they thaw. Oh, and trying to manually outfit our pump rather than rely on the electric motor. There are literally going to be millions of people that won't notice anything if the electricity goes.

It will make international news, but we'll never see it. And they'll probably put it near the end of the broadcast right before the human interest story. "And finally from Africa, the entire country of Mozambique has been without power for the twelfth day as workers there work to replace failing infrastructure. And in local news, Misty the cat has one less life after firefighters spent six hours pulling her out from the toilet she accidentally got flushed down."

Oh, and if it happens during the next round of UEFA Champions League there might be riots.

End Transmission

My Sick Kids

Your terminology probably says a lot about you. Calling it "the youtube" puts you over the age of 50. Tissue versus kleenex it shows your proclivity towards brand recognition. If call it pop rather than soda you are more likely to live on the west coast. If you call everything Coke you live in Atlanta. If refer to coffee as leaded or unleaded rather than regular or decaf you are my grandpa.

If you call a place that houses sick people an infirmary you sound like you are are in rural 19th Century Europe. If you call it a sick bay you are on board a spaceship. A sanatorium makes you sound like you're from New England in the 1900's. When it's name is the sick ward it's because you live in a mental institution or a place that has "non-sick" wards.

Whatever it you you call it by, we are now it. February and March are colloquially known as the months of sickness. There is stagnant water all over the city and with it more disease and mosquitoes. This is the time of year where there are riots over cholera scares. and if I can make it to April without getting sick again it be only because Jesus has got his eye on me. I don't know why Jesus wouldn't have two eyes on me. I suppose Jesus could have been a cyclops (the Bible is technically silent on the subject).

For the month of February we had approximately:

• 12 cases of malaria. This prompted to finally buy new bug nets as the old ones were getting a little beat up.
• 4 cases of the flu. Fever, vomit, headaches, the whole nine yards. It did not start with me, nor did it end with me, but I was firmly in the middle.
• 5 cases of the 24-hour bug. Consisted of stomach aches, dizziness, sweating, general anemia, and lack of appetite.
• 2 flare-ups of asthma.
• 2 cases of the heebie-jeebies as somebody was walking around at night under their old mosquito net and Jose and Eduil mistook it for a ghost and were screaming in terror and refused to go back to the sleep without the light on.

We're a little beat up, and me taking kids to the hospital in the middle of the night disrupts my beauty sleep, so if you could be praying for the health and sanity of all of us here it would be timely and appreciated. Thanks from all of us to all of you. God Bless.