Home Life

We’re back in Keren and not much new has happened here. We waited two hours in a doctor’s office in Asmara for our shots only to be told he wouldn’t give them to us us. The kids of course were heart-broken (not) but I was very frustrated after trying all day with VSO to get an appointment. We’ll try again in a month, but for now, it’s life as usual in Keren. So I thought I’d use this week’s blog to write about what we do every day here.

It’s amazing how quickly our day passes. Although Kim and I only work mornings, the rest of the day seems to fly by. This is because every day activities just take more time here. Shopping for instance. Luckily, we are in a warm enough spot for VSO to give us a refrigerator, but it’s a very small one and only holds a supply of produce for a few days. This means we shop every few days. And this doesn’t mean running out to the car and whipping over to the local grocery store where we can get everything we want. Our bikes and our feet are our only means of transport, though we sometimes take a mini-bus home if it’s hot and we’re loaded down. We get most of our produce from Titi at the market and top up with things she doesn’t have at some of the stalls belonging to our students’ families. This is pleasant, involving chats with the vendors, usually a banana or orange to munch on from Titi, and calls from other vendors hoping to get our business. After that, we go to a few dukans (very small shops where everything is behind the counter) to get rice, pasta, lentils, and other dry goods. Specialty items like peanuts and halva are in the Tigre section of town. But we won’t have to buy peanuts for a long time because our friend Adem has delivered a huge bag to us that should last the rest of the year. If we want taita, we go to a family in town who make it and sell it. After all this running around, we’re usually ready for a tea, coffee or yogurt at the local bakery. And that’s shopping.

Cooking is also a lengthy process. It begins with picking through lentils, rice or beans for rocks and bugs. Flour needs to be sifted carefully because it's full of bugs and their wormy little offsprings. Then it's time to cook. For a few weeks we had the use of some ex-VSOs’ gas stove. It was very wonderful, cooking up fast with no fumes. But the canister ran out and the only gas to be found is black market stuff from Sudan that costs several times the usual price. So we’re back to using our kerosene stoves, one per pot, smelly and very slow. They keep us on our toes by occasionally exploding, but the sound is worse than the actual explosion and no one has been injured. We also occasionally bake up biscuits or cakes in a "dutch oven" made by balancing the pan on three little metal tins inside a big pot. For a while there it looked like we would be cooking over charcoal as there was no kerosene available for a week or so, but luckily stocks were replenished before our supply ran out. Luckily, Maya has become a first class cook and is very good at making tasty dishes out of cabbage, tomatoes and onions.

Cleaning is an ongoing activity. There is dust everywhere and it is constantly being blown into our house, so sweeping up must be done about three times a day. This also plays the important role of collecting all the “eshos” the round thorns with about 4 spikes on them pointing in every possible direction, that get tracked into the house and are very painful when stepped on. Dusting should probably be done daily but I hate dusting, so it gets done once a week and by then it’s fairly disgusting.

Washing clothes has been luckily reduced greatly thanks to some very kind friends who sent us some money to pay someone to do this for us. Kim still does a wash a week though and it takes several hours. It involves carrying buckets of water onto the porch and using all your strength to scrub and wring out clothes. Fortunately the clothesline only breaks rarely now, but when it does everything gets covered in dirt and you have to start all over again.

Taking out the garbage, one of the easiest household tasks back home, is a lot more of a chore here. You have to keep on alert at all times for the honking of the garbage truck, then run out with your bucket of garbage to dump in the truck which stops 100 metres up the street. Usually, you are unable to dump the garbage because the truck isn’t where you thought it was. It usually takes me three attempts to find the truck. We can go a few weeks before we successfully get rid of our garbage, so we’ve learned to keep it to a minimum. Saba’s chickens get our compost and we burn everything we can, including toilet paper which can’t go down the toilet without causing major problems. Paper burning is thus another activity that keeps us busy here.

Getting bread deserves a paragraph on it’s own. Since we’ve been here we’ve had several different bread sources, all involving being at the right place at the right time and waiting a lot. These days, we’re able to get bread from the local dukan (this one a tiny metal hut up our street). I usually go to check for bread two or three times before it arrives, but if I wait too long it’s all gone. Bread is the only cheap belly filler available (30 buns for a dollar). But you’ll never get 30 buns. We are lucky if we get 6 a day.

The final job is getting milk, one of the kids’ jobs. It is relatively painless and involves walking a few blocks to a neighbour’s house with a litre container for them to fill. The milk then has to be boiled before we can drink it.

So that’s it for daily chores in Eritrea. I’m feeling a bit worn out now so I think I’ll participate in one more daily routine...the afternoon nap.

Take care,

Barb