On Friday I got a text message from Nyama - your soil, hay and dung is coming. I had asked Nyama to find out where I could buy the ingredients for my no-dig garden. She did better than find out, she ordered them and arranged a truck for delivery. Chris and I got ready, but decided to go out for a coffee first. When we came back we found the truck had arrived early and all the soil was dumped directly where I wanted to build the garden.....So we did a bit of digging to move the soil, a lot of digging really. I am useless with a shovel, so Chris did the bulk of the work. We entertained all the passers-by, and Chris said the timber holding everything in would be stolen after one night. Almost a week later everything is still there. I have helped the office get the gardening bug and we are planning balcony gardens. The food security team has taken over the logistics. They arranged a load of soil to be dropped off at the ADRA office on Friday afternoon. It arrived just as we finished our garden bed - so guess who kept on digging to help empty the truck!
The no-dig garden bed
Chris helping to empty the second load of dirt
Seed pots ready for planting with the vegies for the no-dig garden (recycled toilet rolls that will biodegrade in the garden bed when the seedling is ready to transplant - how cool is that idea)
Alesia quotes:
Describing her family while eating dinner Wednesday night:
"I am a tomato/lolly/tv/tofu girl" (not sure where the tofu fits in, but the others are pretty spot-on, Alesia is eating tomatoes like apples lately)
"Keira is a wee and poo machine" (we are working on toilet training and had an unfortunate series of mishaps the other night while out at a restaurant...)
Chris: "A coffee/cricket/work daddy" (spoken with the three girls in the house ate dinner while Daddy was still downstairs in his office)
Michelle: "Early come home Mummy" (spoken in reference to me being home while Chris was still at work, clearly I have no other notable qualities)
This enlightening view of her family members was followed by:
"I don't like counting"
"Why?"
"Because I can't count to a million billion trillion"
This week Alesia has been discovering idiosyncrasies of English - such as "I ate 8 apples" (same word two meanings). She is collecting them. At lunch she announced that she had thought of another one - "they are building a building". She is pretty good at thinking them up, or making them up if she can't think of a new one!
Icons
On Wednesday I met a Mongolian icon. I didn't know it at the time, I just knew I had an appointment with a member of parliament who wanted to talk about Downs Syndrome. The MP and some others have formed the Downs Syndrome Association of Mongolia. There is no formal support here for parents with children who have Downs Syndrome. There is no pre-natal screening, and very little knowledge of the potential health problems that children with Downs Syndrome can suffer. There is no early intervention, no access to speech therapists (we have a few speech therapists that were trained during Communist times, but no academic training in speech therapy is in Mongolia now), no access to occupational therapists. All the things we take for granted in Australia, where there are pretty good services for children with disabilities. It was a good meeting, as the three people who came to visit me are all parents of children with Downs Syndrome, and are all articulate high achieving Mongolians. After the meeting I looked at the business cards given to me. The MP was the Mongolian Foreign Minister up until the last election. She is now the leader of a "middle ground" political party that is between the two opposing parties (one ex-communist and one pro-capitalist). She is also the sister of S.Zorig - one of the leaders of the democracy movement in 1990 who was assassinated in 2001. As the staff were filling me in on her background I was glad that I hadn't been briefed before the meeting, because I didn't meet the icon, I got to meet a woman who is a passionate mother wanting to do something to help her child and other children.
Celebrating 10 years of stitches
About 10 years ago Chris sliced his wrist badly lifting several sheets of roofing iron onto a truck in Bougainville. It cost him about $2 to get treatment and medication at the Buka Hospital. He was left with a weird scar. On Monday night Chris decided to get a screwdriver and fix the hose to the tap while I was watering my no-dig garden (to help it all settle and get nice and mushy before I put the seedlings in at the end of May). He fixed the tap, put the screwdriver in his pocket and then thought that he might tear a hole in his pocket so turned the screwdriver up the other way. Then he jumped the little fence near our garden, slashed his wrist with the screwdriver tip and calmly walked over to me and said "I have cut myself badly". We were all outside, Alesia riding her bike and Keira stamping in muddy puddles. Luckily our Australian intern (Carly) was still at work as she was talking to her Mum on Skype. I ran in and asked her to look after the kids while I tackled the evening traffic to get Chris to the expat clinic. I only ever drive on Sundays.... We had to access the expat clinic after hours service, which resulted in about seven people coming into the clinic just for Chris (at about 7pm). The price tag? Four stitches, at $100 a stitch!!!! So we figure that because the old wound was reopened we are just paying a fair price for both injuries....and my driving was fantastic :-) I have been hunting for photos of the old scar, but it must just be a print. The new scar is still covered by a dressing.
11am movie
Late last week we worked until 10pm on a proposal due to ADRA UK. As a reward for the overtime we decided to go see a movie that is in English at the local cinema. We had the choice of "Fast and Furious 4" at 11am. I haven't seen the previous three, but at $2 each for a ticket figured it didn't matter. Surprisingly the movie was pretty enjoyable. Lots of suggestive fleshy women around cars, but no actual sex or swearing. Some of the driving stunts were pretty impressive. A kid in front of us was trying to do his own bootleg copy by propping up his digital camera on the seat in front and recording the whole thing (maybe for Youtube?). He was discovered about half way through the movie, but they didn't take the camera, so he has half of it. We came out of the cinema with the urge to jump in a hyped up car and do burnouts. On the walk back to the office we met a friend from another organisation. We mentioned that we had just been to see a movie and he looked at us blankly - clearly he doesn't have kids so he doesn't have the need to schedule his movie watching when there is childcare available!
Going Native
I have a confession - I now have three pairs of black boots. One pair is knee high, the other is mid-calf high, the third is ankle high. Today I wore a dress, black tights and my knee-high boots to work. All I needed to be a typical Mongolian urban chic was stiletto heels on my boots, and a giant patent leather handbag (black hair would help also). I will have to watch myself or I will be buying some tailored knickerbockers next to show of my boots in all weather (another common Mongolian urban fashion look). At least I got all my boots second hand at the Black Market and only paid about $30 for all of them. We went to the Black Market this week to get shoes for Alesia, as she has grown out of all her spring/summer shoes. We got five pairs of great second hand shoes for $25. I love shoes, especially cheap ones.
Trash Diving
To finish on a somber note, the link below is to photographs taken by a Mongolian photographer at the rubbish dump for our city......
http://www.suuder.com/?p=2503
