Happy Independence Day

Happy Independence Day!

Wishing you all a very happy belated independence day. The last two days have been lots of fun in Keren,as people celebrated their Indepence from Ethiopia. Though a lot more laid back than it looked in Asmara, Keren still had lots of people out in the streets celebrating. Tuesday, things shut down at noon and people headed to the stadium for speeches, music, drama, etc, all in Tigrinha and other national languages of course. Kim was the only one brave enough to go but didn’t stay too long as it was really hot and he didn’t have a clue what was going on. After that we all headed downtown to find every single place closed as everyone was at the stadium , but slowly things opened up and we spent the early evening on the roof of the Keren hotel, watching the streets fill with people and sipping Fantas. We headed back home too early I guess, because later on there was lots of dancing in the streets, and a tremendous fireworks display at midnight. It woke Kim and me up with some very loud “booms” and I had to keep reassuring myself that it was fireworks and not bombs. We were too lazy to get out of bed to watch, maybe next year! The next day, we headed downtown in the morning to find that most people were at home sleeping off their late night. We had a nice afternoon at Saba’s watching the president’s speech (the subtitles in English didn’t make it any more understandable) followed by some dancing and singing from the various Eritrean ethnic groups. We all joined in on the dancing. After some popcorn and cake, we headed downtown hoping to find more dancing but it was pretty quiet. All in all a nice holiday though.

Only two more weeks of teaching, then it’s exams and by the middle of June we should be done! The year has whizzed by really fast, though maybe not so much for the kids who have found sitting through their classes very challenging. We’re all looking forward to the summer holidays and working towards our plans for a trip to Mozambique.

A new update on Eritrean wildlife. The lizards are out and about as it warms up outside we see them scurrying all over the yard and a huge one is hiding somewhere in our wall in the kitchen, it uses the holes made by the termites in our door frame to get in and out. Our favourite critter are the "dum beetles" these big, clunky insects that fly around our rooms at night making the sound ressembling a helicopter. They are very clumsy and tend to fly into doors and walls, then fall and get stuck on their backs. A less pleasant visitor was the scorpion Kim found on our mosquito net as we set it up last night. It was dead, probably from the chemicals in the net, but probably tried to visit us the night before last. Thank heavens for mosquito nets! There are also some beautiful huge birds flying over our compound and I continue to be entertained by the beautiful yellow bird with a black mask who is building a ball shaped nest in the tree outside our kitchen window

Guess that’s all the news for now. Take care,

Barb