Holiday Season

I have just changed email addresses. (it's the same as before but I have moved from lycos to myway.com) I had the lycos address for 10 years which is longer than I have ever had a snail mail address. 10 years of collecting email addresses really added up. Far to many names I could not recognise and nicknames that offered no explanation like 'don-det farie' and 'pretty-eyes'. But I have finally moved now and so far have no spam.

Talking about emails thank you all for your lovely emails. Obviously I have been having a stressful time at the moment dealing with the kinds of challenges I knew I would end up facing but not quite knowing how to deal with it when it comes. Your comments have really, really made a difference.

Yesterday was the 25th of December. (I think I cover all bases when I say Blessed Yule, Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, Happy Hogmanay, Seasons Greetings, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa and a Wonderful Eid to you) It is an national holiday here since a peace agreement was signed between the mostly Christian South and the mostly Muslim North. Khartoum is in the north so It's just a day off. A group of us volunteers went on a day trip to seen Sudan's pyramids. So good to get out. We don't need travel permits to travel directly north so I intend to go back in that same direction in the next few days.

I have a wedding to attend here on Wednesday and Thursday (I think it is the brother in law of the aunt of one of my students... can't wait). After the 31st everything shuts down till the 7th of January for Eid; a festival that celebrated the day Allah asked Abraham to kill his son and just as he was about to, then Allah said thanks for your devotion but you really don't need to do that just kill me a sheep instead (I'm paraphrasing). Each family slaughters their own sheep and eats it, there are flocks of sheep dotted throughout the city waiting to be sold.

I have decided to take photos and upload them despite having no permit. So I'll get more up later, but for now here are two of the pyramids. You will notice that I live in a rather sandy part of the world. Khartoum is on the southern edge of the Sahara Desert. It is dry and dusty here. the sand and dirt and grit and dust and filth come in a surprising variety of forms but it's always present, everywhere.

Today I was defrosting my freezer with one half of a broken pair of scissors and managed to puncher a hole in a pipe that released gas. I have jammed a plastic bag into the ice to stop the gas leak. Fortunately I did a class on climate change recently and learnt that African fridges will still use CFCs till 2010 (fortunate that I did the class not fortunate that Africa still used CFCs) and the gas is stable, not flammable, and breathable (crap for the ozone, but at least Anna and I don't have to evacuate). So the fridge is broken, and as the ice melts the plastic bag will slide away. The landlady (our next door neighbour) has arranged for an electrician to come tomorrow to sort it out.