Today has been a day of firsts for me. For the first time ever in my life I washed clothes by hand. It was an eye-opening, if not actually outright enjoyable experience. How are you supposed to know when things are clean! and how long are you supposed to clean them for? I suspect for longer than the 20 seconds I gave each item, as they dont look or smell much better than they did when I started, in some cases they may be worse. You live and learn...
Secondly, for the first time in a long long time (since I was maybe 13) I rode a motorbike...all on my own. Andrew agreed to give me a lesson as I should have free use of a motorbike once I get to Doro, and it's probably best to have a shot here whilst there's someone who actually know's what they're doing to keep me right. By and large, it was a success, although I managed to stall about 8 times before I finally got moving. Luckily there were only some Sudanese woman walking past, and I dont think they were all that interested in some white guy struggling to get a bike going thus keeping embarrassment to a minimum.
Other than that, my time in Malakal has been a mixture of Arabic lessons, attempts to memorize vocabulary, and trips to the market to practice. And some leisure time, to chill out. We have a hammock here, in the shade, so it's not all bad. I think I preiviously reported that it wasnt overly hot here. Well, it is now. The last few days have hit around 40°C and I'm told it's going to get warmer...happy days.
And finally, in a rather random aside. I've found myself missing a lot of things in my time in Africa. Friends, family, coffee from the shop across the road, KFC, fast internet, but perhaps the most surprising addition to that list is my old car, the black clio, that I sold in the summer:
did not expect that...
You gotta let go man! There's plenty more Clio fish in the sea.
ReplyDelete