The Mexican Bus & the Beach
SATURDAY - 9 Sept - "The 'Dreaded Mexican Bus' & the Beach"
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WIRELESS ACCESS
We'd paid $600 cash to get DSL of some sort set up at the school. We didn't really know what to expect or how it would work, but it's important enough to both of our jobs that we wanted it in-house (the cyber center was not at all pricey- about fifty cents an hour) to be able to get on and off at will, and to use the telephony features we'd set up. So Sh. Harun called us in with a bit of fanfare, indicated that he'd pulled some strings to get our "box" over the weekend. So we came in and he held up a d-link wireless ADSL router with a USB wireless key, and a couple adapters, all sealed in the box. The box was in french, and he read it several times out loud, saying something like "High Speed Internet Access" and saying that according to the folks who provided it, all we have to do is plug it in and it will work. Needless to say, I was cynical, but it was forward progress.
So we unwrapped it, plugged it in, jacked in his machine, put in the phone adapter (their original phone lines are a very large vertical plug with contacts on each side- but they seem to have lots of adapters for the normal rj-11 cable. We even got an adsl light. So everything seemed fine, and we put in id and password- but just couldn't get it to go past the final step. The office was closed, so we decided to wait until Monday.
SODIS
I'd done some research in the past about SODIS - which is a method of using sunlight to decontaminate water. Cheap-almost free, and universally applicable. I'd read about it on the BBC years ago, and did extensive research right after Katrina, thinking to print out 1000 handouts of how to use the method to get clean drinking water. In retrospect, it was naive to think the folks that needed the most help would have been helped by it, but I learned a lot in the process- and was eager to try it here. I was frustrated by the cost of bottled water when we were in Morocco - 9 people for 2 months - and had even gone with tap water myself - and didn't want to think about the cost of a year of bottled water here- not to mention all the other precautions, like not using ice (since it's made from tap water) and having to either give water to everyone at the table, or segregate drinking in groups- which just seems like a big headache.
So using a heavy black plastic trash bag that Elizabeth brought as a backdrop/heat sink, we'd put some bottles on it on the roof patio in the sun. The water got very hot- not enough to burn, but hotter than a hot tub (so what's that, between 110 and 200 F?). It actually tasted pretty good, so initial results are promising. We'll continue with the experimentation.
BOARDING the BUS
In the afternoon, we finally all got it together to head to the beach. The trip had been much anticipated, and had we arrived here on time, we'd have spent a week there. As it was, it was only going to be a day. So about 5pm we all went outside to find one of these diesel busses I'd referred to earlier. They are ancient-looking, though probably only about 20 years old. They are mercedes vehicles, but the bodies were either produced domestically, or reworked so many times they might have been. Universally, they are dented, dinged, bashed up, stickered, hung off of, and otherwise beat up. The back doors don't usually latch well, and there is a wooded back running board that the doorman - the guy who helps the driver and is always in the back- hangs off of half the time. All i could think of was a line from Fat Freddy's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, "It's the dreaded Mexican Bus!!" when they encounter a bus in mexico loaded fully with people and stacked with animals and other stuff.
We all got on- and mercifully we weren't filling it - since it was basically hire exclusively for our group -
my family, the Sheikh and a few of his folks, and the other kids from the school. The drive took a good while - proabably an hour and a half to cover 35 miles- but so it goes here. I've seen a lot of places where they work on cars and trucks- often sitting in the dirt and never in a "proper" garage - and wondered how they do things like balancing and alignment. I've realized that the roads are so bad - EVERYWHERE, that you'll never go fast enough where balance matters. I think in the entire time we've been here we might have made it to 40mph.
Driving thru the country/city is always an experience - an assault on the senses of sight and sound and smell. There are boys and men selling everything to the drivers and passengers, congested in an unweildy compromise of people and vehicles and semblances of lanes. I sat in the front seat, which was collapsing and because of that surprisingly comfortable (like a little butt-hammock) and Noura sat next to me. Even as we approached the beach, and what is actually pretty exclusive territory for senegalese - what appeared to be a newly-built and paved road was pocked with large pot-holes that required the driver to make dramatic turns and speed changes to negotiate. Mercifully they're never going fast enough for it to be dangerous (so far) but it's get's to be jarring after a while - like riding a roller coaster continuously for a bit too long. I suppose it helps with the digestion. Things got messier as we got closer to the beach house, with ponds of mud, narrow alleways, and a closed of street because of some village gathering. I even thought for a moment we'd get caught in the mud, and imagined myself trying to help dislodge a bus in plastic slippers... But it never came to pass, and we arrived with plenty of daylight still.
THE BEACH
The ocean was, as it always is, beautiful, even with some trash on the beach. The properties are being eaten away by the sea, to the point where at high tide they come up to the walls marking the edge of the house patios. Such is life when building on the ocean. The property has 3 main structures- the big house with 2 floors, several balconies and at least two bathrooms and 5 or so bedrooms of varying sizes. The other is a 2 bay garage with a 2-story patio-topped building with two or more bedrooms and a bathroom. The boys stayed there with Hassan, and I took Elizabeth and the girls to the house. It had a nice sitting room downstairs with one of those moroccan style ceilings with the intricate plaster patterns. I don't actually know if it's moroccan style, but that's where I saw it first. The third building was an open covered patio with 2 sides walled, and leading to an enclosed kitchen and pantry- all within about 30 feet of the ocean. We ate there each time, and it was wonderful to sit at the table and look out over the water, or at the backs of the kids as they sat on the wall looking at the waves
Check it out.
WET CLOTHES
Kids, as the way they are around waves, can't stay well enough alone - so even though I read mine the riot act about how somebody ALWAYS falls in the waves after intending only to get their ankles wet, Iman was the first. Fortunately the water was warm, and the air was warm, so being wet wasn't as bad as it has been in the past in the US. After Maghrib all the kids got wet, until eventually I couldn't see them enough to know if they were safe, and yelled at 'em all to get out. Remember that most of these kids are DARK, and trying to spot a dark-skinned kid in the night in the water with no lights gets tricky. The missus pointed out that "it must be bad when Inayat tells 'em to stop" - since i'm usually the one more relaxed about water.
WALKIN'
Late at night, before bed, we two went for walk on the beach. We started going North, but at high-tide we started to get pinched between the waves and the walls, and so found a nice place on rock and sat for a while, then walked back and went down the other way for a better distance. Even without my glasses on I can see the milky way, which is nice.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WIRELESS ACCESS
We'd paid $600 cash to get DSL of some sort set up at the school. We didn't really know what to expect or how it would work, but it's important enough to both of our jobs that we wanted it in-house (the cyber center was not at all pricey- about fifty cents an hour) to be able to get on and off at will, and to use the telephony features we'd set up. So Sh. Harun called us in with a bit of fanfare, indicated that he'd pulled some strings to get our "box" over the weekend. So we came in and he held up a d-link wireless ADSL router with a USB wireless key, and a couple adapters, all sealed in the box. The box was in french, and he read it several times out loud, saying something like "High Speed Internet Access" and saying that according to the folks who provided it, all we have to do is plug it in and it will work. Needless to say, I was cynical, but it was forward progress.
So we unwrapped it, plugged it in, jacked in his machine, put in the phone adapter (their original phone lines are a very large vertical plug with contacts on each side- but they seem to have lots of adapters for the normal rj-11 cable. We even got an adsl light. So everything seemed fine, and we put in id and password- but just couldn't get it to go past the final step. The office was closed, so we decided to wait until Monday.
SODIS
I'd done some research in the past about SODIS - which is a method of using sunlight to decontaminate water. Cheap-almost free, and universally applicable. I'd read about it on the BBC years ago, and did extensive research right after Katrina, thinking to print out 1000 handouts of how to use the method to get clean drinking water. In retrospect, it was naive to think the folks that needed the most help would have been helped by it, but I learned a lot in the process- and was eager to try it here. I was frustrated by the cost of bottled water when we were in Morocco - 9 people for 2 months - and had even gone with tap water myself - and didn't want to think about the cost of a year of bottled water here- not to mention all the other precautions, like not using ice (since it's made from tap water) and having to either give water to everyone at the table, or segregate drinking in groups- which just seems like a big headache.
So using a heavy black plastic trash bag that Elizabeth brought as a backdrop/heat sink, we'd put some bottles on it on the roof patio in the sun. The water got very hot- not enough to burn, but hotter than a hot tub (so what's that, between 110 and 200 F?). It actually tasted pretty good, so initial results are promising. We'll continue with the experimentation.
BOARDING the BUS
In the afternoon, we finally all got it together to head to the beach. The trip had been much anticipated, and had we arrived here on time, we'd have spent a week there. As it was, it was only going to be a day. So about 5pm we all went outside to find one of these diesel busses I'd referred to earlier. They are ancient-looking, though probably only about 20 years old. They are mercedes vehicles, but the bodies were either produced domestically, or reworked so many times they might have been. Universally, they are dented, dinged, bashed up, stickered, hung off of, and otherwise beat up. The back doors don't usually latch well, and there is a wooded back running board that the doorman - the guy who helps the driver and is always in the back- hangs off of half the time. All i could think of was a line from Fat Freddy's Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers, "It's the dreaded Mexican Bus!!" when they encounter a bus in mexico loaded fully with people and stacked with animals and other stuff.
We all got on- and mercifully we weren't filling it - since it was basically hire exclusively for our group -
my family, the Sheikh and a few of his folks, and the other kids from the school. The drive took a good while - proabably an hour and a half to cover 35 miles- but so it goes here. I've seen a lot of places where they work on cars and trucks- often sitting in the dirt and never in a "proper" garage - and wondered how they do things like balancing and alignment. I've realized that the roads are so bad - EVERYWHERE, that you'll never go fast enough where balance matters. I think in the entire time we've been here we might have made it to 40mph.Driving thru the country/city is always an experience - an assault on the senses of sight and sound and smell. There are boys and men selling everything to the drivers and passengers, congested in an unweildy compromise of people and vehicles and semblances of lanes. I sat in the front seat, which was collapsing and because of that surprisingly comfortable (like a little butt-hammock) and Noura sat next to me. Even as we approached the beach, and what is actually pretty exclusive territory for senegalese - what appeared to be a newly-built and paved road was pocked with large pot-holes that required the driver to make dramatic turns and speed changes to negotiate. Mercifully they're never going fast enough for it to be dangerous (so far) but it's get's to be jarring after a while - like riding a roller coaster continuously for a bit too long. I suppose it helps with the digestion. Things got messier as we got closer to the beach house, with ponds of mud, narrow alleways, and a closed of street because of some village gathering. I even thought for a moment we'd get caught in the mud, and imagined myself trying to help dislodge a bus in plastic slippers... But it never came to pass, and we arrived with plenty of daylight still.
THE BEACH
The ocean was, as it always is, beautiful, even with some trash on the beach. The properties are being eaten away by the sea, to the point where at high tide they come up to the walls marking the edge of the house patios. Such is life when building on the ocean. The property has 3 main structures- the big house with 2 floors, several balconies and at least two bathrooms and 5 or so bedrooms of varying sizes. The other is a 2 bay garage with a 2-story patio-topped building with two or more bedrooms and a bathroom. The boys stayed there with Hassan, and I took Elizabeth and the girls to the house. It had a nice sitting room downstairs with one of those moroccan style ceilings with the intricate plaster patterns. I don't actually know if it's moroccan style, but that's where I saw it first. The third building was an open covered patio with 2 sides walled, and leading to an enclosed kitchen and pantry- all within about 30 feet of the ocean. We ate there each time, and it was wonderful to sit at the table and look out over the water, or at the backs of the kids as they sat on the wall looking at the waves
Check it out.
WET CLOTHES
Kids, as the way they are around waves, can't stay well enough alone - so even though I read mine the riot act about how somebody ALWAYS falls in the waves after intending only to get their ankles wet, Iman was the first. Fortunately the water was warm, and the air was warm, so being wet wasn't as bad as it has been in the past in the US. After Maghrib all the kids got wet, until eventually I couldn't see them enough to know if they were safe, and yelled at 'em all to get out. Remember that most of these kids are DARK, and trying to spot a dark-skinned kid in the night in the water with no lights gets tricky. The missus pointed out that "it must be bad when Inayat tells 'em to stop" - since i'm usually the one more relaxed about water.
WALKIN'
Late at night, before bed, we two went for walk on the beach. We started going North, but at high-tide we started to get pinched between the waves and the walls, and so found a nice place on rock and sat for a while, then walked back and went down the other way for a better distance. Even without my glasses on I can see the milky way, which is nice.
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