Lost another piercing

This time, from the middle of my head. It got infected. Things are not supposed to get infected in the desert. what's the point in living in a big sandpit if bacteria is going to thrive like it is in the jungle? Anyway it was yucky. Really yucky. it was swollen and red, I started to resemble a unicorn, no not so pretty, more like a rhino. so it had to go. The shame. I loved that piercing, and i know it is really hard to re pierce through scar tissue, so i may not be able to get it back. but i shall always have at least two little scars where it once was. at the moment i have what looks like two zits one above the other between my eyebrows.

So I have started teaching properly now. it has taken a while to bully the teaching assistant into arranging timetables, then attempt to explain that the timetable can not work if students are supposed to be in two different places at the same time. Then just redo the timetables myself. So now i have mostly 3rd-5th year English students discussion class. Yay! and also an independent group of zoology and other science students who want to practice thier English in their spare time. So all really goo. and tomorrow I'm going to work out a full plan of different topics to cover. One of my classes is sort of a left-over class, so I'm just going to use it for games and drama. last time they created a television add from objects in a bag. Today they had to decide on objects to use in a survival scenario.

My flatmate has left. Mick, suppose he wasn't really my flatmate, but we had been hanging out together for a month. He got his motorbike parts, and headed off south-west to Ethiopia. So i now have a big empty house. Sudanese people don't live alone. I'm watching Mick's blog to see how he goes. He actually invited me along to Cape Town. I was tickled pink with the invitation. but I quite like it here. Don't think I'll be able to handle the summer though. The weather here is so much better in just the two weeks i have been here. It is really cool at night. I sleep out on the balcony but now i use my sleeping bag. I have not had any problems with mosquitos but, the ants here bite, and not just once, they continue to bite several times in the same area. at the moment i have bites on my butt from this morning and upper thigh from yesterday... how do they get there.

So I'm settling in. still no sign of my passport, no AIDS test yet, no evidence of a visa extension or residency... yet I am assured it is all in hand, it is just everything takes longer here. So two days over my visa expiry. can't leave Khartoum. I had no intention to anyway but I have always treasured my freedom. I have been also assured that i am not here illegally... but the date stamped in my passport tells me otherwise. so I shall sit it out nervously. I know I can not make things more faster than the volunteer programme.

I have a television in my house. So I'm going to ask my landlady again if she can get it tuned in. there is BBC, and CNN that I might be able to get, and a couple of other English-language channels. and yesterday the big Arab news station Al Jazeeria started to broadcast in English. It will be nice to hear the other side, and maybe even understand it better. http://english.aljazeera.net/News

This is the newspaper i shall proof read for in evenings twice a week: http://www.sudantribune.com/ and this is my university: http://www.uofk.edu/ It was incredible when it was build at the turn of the century, and up till the 1950s it was cutting edge... but nothing seems to have happened since Sudan's independence from British rule in 1954. everything is dilapidated... but it still holds it's reputation. it is a very green campus, and i have been told that there are even monkeys in some of the trees (escaped from a closing zoo a few years ago) .

So to make up for the lack of photos, I shall pop in a couple of the lovely Missy Malone who continues to be my muse and heroine. The first is the cover of The List by photographer Jannica Honey, one of Missy's first but definitely not last covers. And the Bride of Frankenstein photo is from Birmingham's Candybox by Darkstones... everything on www.myspace.com/missy_malone including a couple of videos and pictures with me before i shaved my head and grew a rhino horn.