Choir, taco and mountain-trip

When I haven't written on the blog for quite a long time, it's not because little has happened. It's actually opposite. So much have happened, that I haven't had time to write. But now follows a little update of the last 10 days.

Last Sunday I preformed with the choir Gospel Singers for the first time. Then we sang in a church, called Bethlehem church, and that Sunday they celebrated Thanksgiving there. That means that the service lasted for 5 hours, with singing and dancing, while giving money and vegetables to the church!
 
When the choir sing, they use to wear African dresses (girls) or trousers and T-shirts (boys) made of the same fabric. So we also got African dresses to wear during the performance. And I think it was really nice to participate, but I was also quite tired when we were finished after 5 hours! Then the whole choir was invited to eat dinner in some one's house. We got pasta, rise, fried bananas, fish and meat with sauce! They gave us Norwegians a dish each and cutlery  to eat with, the rest ate with their hands from the same, big dishes, which the food was served on... I guess they didn't have enough dishes to everyone...


Wednesday we grilled in the evening, by the swimming pool! There were the two Norwegian missionary families, the Ethiopian missionary family, some of the Norwegian nurse-students (taking some of their practise in the hospital here), Runar and Kristian (the "NMS one-year-volunteers") and Johanne and me. We had a nice time eating hamburgers and hot dogs. Actually there's a hearth by the swimming pool, so after eating we sat by the hearth, singing songs and talking ;-)

Computer teaching at Centre Socio

Friday evening, after teaching at Centre Socio Ménager, Runar, Kristian, Johanne and me had "taco-kveld" (taco-evening)! Johanne had brought some Norwegian taco-spice. And after Centre Socio Ménanger, we went to the market to bye the vegetables. That was really fun! The sellers always tell us a higher price because we're "nascarra" (white people). Therefore we just went to the other sellers, checked their prices and used the cheapest one. Then the pther sellers laughed at us, and said that "nascarra sont pauvres" ("the white people are poor")...

When we walk in the market, there's always a lot of people shouting "nascarra, nascarra!" when they see us. But last Friday Kristian wore a  tunic/dress and hat, similar to those the men wear here (both Muslims and Christians). What was fun, was that then people shouted "Alladin" after him, instead of "nascarra"... As you may understand we don't go to the marked unseen, we always draw  a lot of attention, even though it's not our intention...


So, after having bought vegetables, we made "pitabrød", Guacamola and Salza sauce. And then we had a delicious meal, and a "filmkveld" (movie-night). But some of us were too tired to keep our eyes open during the films...

Taco! This is how the picture was when I tried "selvutløser", (and the boys were too impatient about the food that we could try again... ;-) )

The mountain that we climbed

Saturday morning Kristian, Johanne and me went on a mountain-trip. That's part of a birthday to some friends of us here. We walked for around half an hour, and then we were on the top. From there we could see the city of Ngaoundéré! We played games, ate and took pictures, which is always very popular. Among other things, we ate popcorn with sugar, because here they use sugar in stead of salt on popcorn... In the evening Runar, Johanne and me were at the nurse's house. There we had a nice evening, eating sweets and talking.

Just reached the top. Eating popcorn and drinking soda

Playing card-games in the shadow of a big stone

Sunday we ate at a restaurant in town, Coffee Shop, as we normally do on Sundays, when our cook has free. After that I went to the swimming pool here, sun bathing while reading, and then swimming. (The reason why there's a swimming pool here, is so that  the Norwegian missionary children may learn to swim).

Monday was my second time to work at Rainbow Orphanage. There we are having English teaching and playing with the children. It makes an impression on me working here, listening to stories from some children's life and watching the children taking care of each other. The orphanage is their home, and they're like a big family. There are some workers there, but they also have to make the food.

Therefore, at least this is how it seems to me, it' often the older children who look after and raise the younger ones. I feel sad for these children, but at the same time it looks like their having fun. After all, this is the life they know. To them, just us being there, is really fun. That we watch them throwing their paper-planes, or joining them playing... Being with them, who enjoy so much for so simple things, as a paper-plane, also make me happy inside.

Okay, this was some of my impressions and experiences the last time...


J'espére que vous allez bien!