The first batch of photos from Nairobi and Juba are finally up. Here is the website for seeing them big:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ekensign
and I'm also going to make a slide show. Enjoy!
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"In the times we need it most, what we need doesn't come in time."
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Grinding Stone, Lafon
7 comments:
i love you so much and am glad to be reading your stories. the awful hotel of steps sounds like the last scene from "labyrinth" with david bowie. it's really great you were able to go to that conference. i leave in two days now, and i'm starting to get incredibly nervous. any packing advice? did you treat your clothes with the permethrin stuff at all? I am but I'm skeptical.
Anyway, I realize this isn't really the place to attempt a long conversation. I love and miss you. Stay safe :)
Meg, this is dad-ster. Emma did not treat her clothing - because we did not get to Bill's Army & Navy until, oh, something like the day before she had to leave. Plus the instructions on the container sounded like you were using something intended for chemical warfare (e.g. "do not touch clothing until completely dry," "avoid breathing fumes... better yet, avoid breathing," "keep away from any pets in the tri-state region"). Plus, each $17.25 container would treat, like, the front side of a t-shirt.
She did get several of those pre-treated shirts, pants, kerchiefs & (I hope I hope) socks. Which must be treated with something different because the safety instructions basically read "suck on this cloth if you want."
And anyway, from previous posts, it appears the bugs are eating her alive regardless. Perhaps, in the Sudan, they grow them tougher. ("Eh? You think we are afraid of a little DEET? You must be a silly American. Your weapons of mass destruction are a source of jest among our kind. See? I bite your ankle with impunity." -- Imagine this quote being spoken by Inspector Cluseau.)
She has multiple bottles of the DEET-FROM-HELL spray and the bugs are still bothering her. If the stuff is somehow proving effective, then I'm scared to think of what they'd be like without it!
Packing advice... those nifty little traveler's packers I sprang mega-bucks for at the Container Store downstairs from the office? Useless. Well, except for the plastic sleeve inserts with the diagrams showing you how to fold shirts, skirts, socks, etc. around it. Amazingly enough - those were priceless. While it strikes me as ironically insane that I paid $12.99 (plus tax) to get a plastic folding template for shirts - it truly does - they ensured that everything was in approximately the same shape and thus went into the suitcase in a well behaved manner.
Those vacuum-packing plastic clothes bags - the ones where you roll it up and squeeze the air out the other end. Fantastically successful. Buy every single one on the display. If they try to do that Walmart - rice bag thing on you ("I'm sorry miss - only one bag of spectacularly useful vacuum clothing bags per incredibly nervous college student about to leave the country for the Heart of Darkness...:") - then just steal the rest. If arrested, tell them I told you to do that. My name is Bob Evans and they can find me down on the farm. Seriously, I got Emma 2? Should have bought 20. Of course, you bag will then weigh more than a truck driver eating chili burgers at Bob's Big-Boy and may well become dense enough to gravitationally collapse into a black hole - but you'll have all the clothing you need when you get to... where the heck are you going again? Mauritania? Guinea? Azerbijan? Doesn't matter. You'll have everything you need.
Except, of course, for shoes. Shoes are the enemies of people packing for a trip. Emma will tell you. I shot evil eye-ball rays at her shoes. Told her that she would not be doing any ball-room dancing on this trip. But would she listen? Noooooo....
Anyhow, hope this has been helpful. Or at least distracting. You'll be fine. And think of the stories you'll all be telling around Smith next year!
/Mr. Ensign/dad
really enjoyed the last couple of posts. pictures are great, especially the ones of food. yum!
seriously this blog is a huge success.
youre welcome.
Ah! Excellent. I see you have the good kind of Land Rover. The one with the snorkel. Very good.
thanks to the dad-ster known as chet! it has been both helpful and wildly distracting/entertaining.
I've been treating my clothing but I'm not too optimistic. My only hope is that Sudanese mosquitoes are more vicious than Tanzanian mosquitoes. Or that Emma's blood is simply more delicious than mine. (This might be true--our last night at Smith she was eaten alive despite her bug spray and I wasn't bitten once, with no bug spray). I don't think I'll be so lucky now. AND I have vacuum bags! They've saved my life before and I hope they'll come through again.
Thanks for the help. I followed Emma's path and made a blog too--though I hope I don't hop in a land rover and accidentally manage to find myself in an SPLA camp like "the team" has. Though I suppose, not being in Sudan, that scenario is a lot less likely.
I feel I am driving into oncoming readers--I'm trying to read from the bottom up since I don't get here everyday--but keep getting glimpses of what's ahead!
Chet: the voice in my head for the ankle biting with impunity line was more Monty Python than Clouseau
Emma: I thought I'd wish you were here, but mostly I wish I was there!
i read the line in a monty python voice too!
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