Thankful for Tex Mex

We started having Mexican food for Thanksgiving after we moved here for several reasons. Our community in Africa that really went all-in for Thanksgiving was gone; we weren't in America where Doug's mom made the most divine Thanksgiving feasts; and my kids not growing up with regular access to typical Thanksgiving food meant that it wasn't a big deal for them.

This year we invited three extra people for our Tex Mex Thanksgiving feast, two of which were Americans. We all enjoyed the food, played games, and had a restful day.

The morning started with Doug, Karis, and Caleb joining 20+ Americans for a friendly game of flag football. Keira was at school, and I was cooking. Keira gets out of school at 1pm on Thursdays (our last day of the week), and so we were able to start lunch around 2pm.

After our guests left, our family played a few games of Catan and had a great day all-around.

I also forgot to mention a story from the beginning of November. 

During my time with Covid, we were having some problems with our power. Doug contacted the neighborhood generator man, but he would never come. However, when a neighbor down the street had his fuse affected by our fuse, the generator man got another phone call, and he came right out.  

The neighbor didn't understand why his house and our house were having power issues at the same time until they saw that our fuses had melted together. I'm just glad someone caught it in time. It could have burned up the entire fuse box for quite a few houses. Our power was much better after that until....a month later, and the fuse box inside our house started smoking! 😟

First and Second Days of School

Blog Post About September 2021

September 5th, Keira started the fourth grade...for one day.

Then the internet for the country...the COUNTRY...was shut off for EIGHT mornings in a row so students who didn't pass the government exams last spring could try again. Because of the internet being off, no one went to school.

 (I don't understand the news. I just report it)

September 5, 2021

The government doesn't want cheating to take place, and since students all over the country are taking the test at the same time, they feel like cutting the internet off is the smart thing to do. BUT...they have to actually cut it off a few hours BEFORE the test starts because one year, when the test was posted, employees in the Ministry of EDUCATION copied the test and got it to certain students before they took it.

Corruption, anyone?

Aoife was ready for school, too, however, the second day of school didn't occur until NINE days later on September 14th!

Maybe Aoife wanted to go to school where they have days with full electricity. 

It looks like she's trying to get in front of our swamp coolers to get some air.

Two days before Keira went back to school for her second day, some rockets were targeted at the airport. 

You could tell Karis (17) has lived here awhile and dealt with situations unfamiliar to many, because when we were listening to the rockets going off, and she looks at me and says, "I'm going to bed."

All the adults in our fellowship were texting each other to make sure everyone was okay, and Karis calmly says she's checking out :) Granted, when we first moved here, they did in fact scare her.

The rockets started around 9:30pm, and they were aimed (poorly) at the U.S. base near the airport. Three of the 14 rockets hit the base, but the rest hit residential areas and civilian facilities near the airport. Thirteen people were injured, and two people were killed; one of them was an American. Rockets had not been fired at the airport since April 2021.

We're Leaving on a Jet Plane

Blog Post About January 2021

The morning we were leaving, we got up early to get PCR tests. Everyone was a real trooper except me. One of my children has a video of it, but of course, I will spare you, and it will remain hidden.

Several friends came to pray over us and say goodbye as we were loading the car. For the things that wouldn't fit (see one of the items in this post), a sweet friend mailed them to us.

We made it to the airport with zero positive Covid tests and said our last goodbye to Kylie from the same. time zone.

Keira always has some crazy "arrival eyes."

And when I finally had access to my texts again, we had a sweet text from Kylie ;)

After arriving, we settled in a hotel and Doug got our car from a friend who had been taking care of it. 

After getting some sleep, Doug ran some much-needed errands. 

One of those errands was scheduling for the "generator man" to come and hook our house up to the neighborhood generator.

We went to see the house we had rented 7 months early. It was Keira's first time to see it and mine and Karis' second.

The man that kept our car had some guys clean the house for us before we got there, but unfortunately, they didn't do the most thorough job.

While Doug was unlocking the door for us to go inside, I saw this plug in the outside porch area.

Guess we aren't supposed to use it :)

Thankfully, city power was on, so we had lights. 

You can see where we ran our fingers over the wall in all of the dust the cleaners had left behind.

The "generator man" was late. We waited for TWO hours (cleaning in the meantime), but he never came.

January 14, 2021

The next day, Doug graciously hired the cleaners we've had for our other houses, and they did a fan-tab-u-lous job!

They bring about 12 guys and clean from the roof all the way out the front door.

Yes, they literally mop their way out to the street!!

January 15, 2021

Some dear friends of ours invited us to live with them until we could actually get in our house. The hotel was expensive, so we took them up on their offer. Karis went to live with two single girls, and the other 4 of us moved in with our friends.

This is our luggage as we are leaving the hotel.

Two days later, Doug and I went to a "cabinet" store to order our cabinets. You knew that most houses come without cabinets, right?

Doug had already met the man on a previous day at the house to take measurements.

This is what our cabinets looked like on the man's computer when we finished.

Is this what we got?  No

Did we get them within a month?  No

The saga continues...

One Last Time

While we were looking for a house to move into, this is one of the things that Doug inspects. How much amperage does the house hold and what is the condition of the electrical box?

The one in this picture is a fairly new setup; however, the city is going around to houses and blocking the amount of amps they can run at a time, which greatly reduces the amount of cool and heat you can use when you need it.

Oh well, looking for a house will have to wait.

Kylie needed one last hurrah around town.

Kylie, Karis, and Doug went downtown and had fun acting like tourists for one day just taking pictures, buying last minute things from here that Kylie wanted to take with her, and generally, just enjoying the city one last time.

We hated to leave when it looked like it was going to be such a mild summer. 

These are the actual summers you WANT to be here for, but alas...

First Day of School

Schools start pretty late here, but of course, not as last as December.  This is just me trying to catch up on blogs.

I showed you Keira's new school.  Caleb and Karis attend the same one they did last year.  And Kylie is trying on-line school for the first time.  It was supposed to give her opportunity to get ready for college in a non-rote environment (most subjects here are taught on the basis of memorization, not gaining knowledge or understanding) and still give me freedom to study language. 

However, we chose a challenging curriculum, and she can't keep up with the pace, even working 7-8 hours a day.  Another challenge is the lack of power in the winter.  

Our power goes off around 8am (if it actually is on during the night), and it doesn't come on again until somewhere between 3pm and 5pm.  The internet can stay charged by a battery till around 3pm, but her computer battery starts dying before that.  (Not to mention, it's really cold in our house).

Many days, we head to a coffee shop, and we stay there, plugged in until it's time to go get Keira from school.  After that, we come home for a late lunch and her computer remains charged until power comes back on.

It's not quite the "dance" I want to do every day, but it will have to do until power gets better, which will be around March or April.

A few weeks after school started, Keira turned 5.  We had ordered a few things for her from America that arrived JUST before the airports shut down.  Unfortunately, the gifts from her grandparents' were stuck in a warehouse, waiting for a way to get in.  Someone smart solved the problem, and two months later, during the first week of December, she had another mini-birthday celebration.

On the actual day of her birthday, Kylie made her a giant cookie cake, and our language helper and his wife bought this one for her, pictured below.  It says, "Happy Birthday, I baby."  

When we went to eat at our language helper's house the first time last year, he had a television station on for his younger son.  The station is, in fact, called "IBABY."  It plays nursery rhymes, the alphabet song, counting songs, kids silly songs, etc. all in English, all day long.  Many children here learn English from this channel.

Ever since, our teacher saw Keira enjoying this channel, he has called her "I Baby."

She doesn't seem to mind.

Cooling the House

We had to get serious about cooling the house.  Last summer was do-able, but definitely not pleasant.  

Warning:  This post looks long, but it's mostly a bunch of pictures.

Here's the situation:  City power comes and goes.  When it's on, we can run some air conditioning wall units that we had installed in our house.   We don't know when city power's coming.  For example, it was on one or two hours around lunch today, and last night it came on around midnight and stayed on until around 8am.   

The rest of the day, we rely on the "generator man."  He runs the generator for our neighborhood.  He has a schedule (I'm guessing) of when he is allowed by the government to turn it on.  Thankfully, this summer, he hasn't been letting long stretches of time to go before he turns it on.  

We had an hour this morning with no power, and a couple of different 30-minutes or more periods this afternoon.  The house heats up pretty quickly.  It's off as I write this, and the heat is sweltering.  With generator, we can run fans (we have three in our living room) and our swamp coolers.

Here's a quick example of a couple of hours on a particularly crazy day.

4:!5p City power off

5:00p Generator on

5:07p City power on

5:25p City power off

5:32p City power on

6:03p City power off

6:12p Generator on

6:22p Generator off

6:35p Generator on

7:30p City power on

9:30p City power off/Generator on...

It's not always this crazy, but on and on it goes.

 

These were our landlord's swamp coolers that Doug cleaned at the end of last season and stored for winter.

These are the new ones Doug's purchased for us this year!

Last year, we had to put hay in our swamp cooler.  This new style comes with a thick cardboard-like material that doesn't have to be replaced.








































Now to get it on the roof.

Enter Big Crane.

Funny enough, on the SAME day as the crane, you can see the man with the ladder who was ALSO there to install our internet.  It was a bit crazy!








Some of the neighbors got involved.  It was great excitement for the afternoon.








































As it started off, everyone just stood there.




So Doug went up on the roof to handle things there.

The internet guy came to watch.

In the mean time, our neighbors misunderstood that both units were for us, and they got a dolly and were trying to move our second one down the street to another guy's house.

They also told the crane that he was finished at our house, so he started getting ready to move.

Alas, we stopped them.

The crane re-set its base, and we started all over again.

 Internet guy "helping" again.

The internet guy finally got busy on his own stuff and ended up running a wire from WAY down there to the edge of our roof where he nailed it secure into the cement.  See?

Then he took it from another nail along the ledge and ran it down across our street (hope it's high enough) to a small circus of wires.

Zoomed in.

At least it wasn't to the bigger circus of wires where our breaker box is attached.




Back to the swamp coolers.

They need water to work effectively.

This is our ONE tank...we really need another.



The water drips slowly into the swamp coolers, the motor spins and a fan blows air into an open duct on the roof (that big cement block) and down into our house vents, along with all the dust from the air.

But, remember, I said we needed water.

That's huge!

Three times this summer, our tank has gone dry.  City water is being rationed this summer, and it's been off a lot. 

That one tank you saw was for our showers, our dishes, our clothes, our toilets, and our swamp coolers!  When the water ran out, the swamp coolers just started blowing hot air, so we just turned them off.

For the last two days, Doug and I couldn't shower, wash dishes or wash clothes.  Last night (I'm writing this on August 1st) at 1:30am, the water came in.  I was more than willing to stay up until 4am to get all of our clothes washed.  It was worth it to get rid of all those piles!

Trying to stay cool is a full-time job around here.