For the most part I don’t mind communal living.  It means I don’t have to cook every night, in addition there are three other apartments to scrounge from.  I’m learning to show up right around dinner time.

The other night everyone ended up in V’s and my apartment on floor one, hanging out, listening to music.  I went to bed around 10:30 p.m. because it appears that I need more sleep than the rest of the crowd and I fell asleep despite the noise.  Then about 1:30 p.m. a slamming door woke me up and I heard a voice in the kitchen,    ” . . . would be so pissed!” And then my roommates voice “blah, blah, blah Tiana, blah, blah.”

Grouchy from having been disturb out of my REM sleep I yelled in my second to grouchiest voice.  “TIANA, CAN F*ING HEAR EVERYTHING YOU ARE SAYING AND IS ANNOYED.”  I then rolled over and went back to sleep.

The next morning I left my roommate a smidge of coffee and hid the rest of it, as payback, if I can’t function neither can she!!!!!!  Unfortunately she didn’t even notice.

Tiana in her gift

Originally uploaded by The Toze

Well, it has been an interesting week. First off I think Mercy Corps has a policy against accepting gifts from beneficiaries and if they don’t they should. I received the pictured outfit from a beneficiary that I work with. The Technical Service Unit where I work after much strategic thinking has determined that it is pajamas and I’m much relieved because I thought the next time I meet with the person who gave it to me I would have to wear it, most likely out to dinner.

My roommate and I are still having difficulties with our weekly vegetable/fruit order. We order half a kilo of apples, V wanted six and got five kilos. So what do you do with five kilos of apples, any ideas? Because so far I have made two huge pies, and we still have half a bag. V is very tired of peeling apples. So this week is our neighbor’s birthday, you remember S the one I save from the cockroach. I spent Wednesday night baking apple pie and I have also attempted flan. I started baking at 8:00 p.m. and got to bed about quarter to 1:00 a.m. My birthday gift to her was to cook dinner we are having cheeseburgers tonight, along with salad, sautéed mushrooms, Greek salad and lots of dessert. As I was cooking last night my dearest roommate (she is actually my only one) not only peeled the apples, but she brought her computer into the dining room to keep me company.

The Mother of All Apple Pies

“When are the pies going to be done?” she asked. “Why?” I inquired. “So I can have a piece.” I informed her that they were for the party and she whined and whined said, “What good is it living with the baker if you don’t get to test stuff.” So I had enough dough left over I made her a little apple turnover. I working for the “Roommate of the Year,” award, I think I’m well on my way to this prestigious accomplishment.

In addition, to ordering five kilos of apples, an all night baking session, I have had to find the blanket I claimed for my bed twice. The most interesting thing about having people clean your apartment is finding things afterwards. As my roommate says, “It’s always Easter.” And yes, it is.

Thursday I went to drop off a donation at a Technical Institution for PWDs. They do skills training for the deaf and the developmentally disabled ages 13 – 45. The new school year just started and most of the students were teenagers, they are trained in handicrafts, carpentry for the boys, hairdressing and sewing for the girls and computers. The students in carpentry, sewing and hairdressing or cosmetologists training were mainly deaf; the developmentally disabled students were working on handicrafts and computer skills. Many of the teachers were former students at the school and the computer trained kids will be employed by the government. I enjoyed speaking with the children. The school of course has many needs; new computers were the one they kept coming back to and the computers were very, very old.

Vixen and her personal pie

It was also this week that I took the initiative to decorate the office in a motivational way. I decorated it when my boss was out and she laughed a lot when she came back in. In addition, right after I had finished decorating was when my gifts arrived. So we laughed a lot more.

It has become painfully obvious why women in this country wear Abayas.  (see the picture of me in my gift.)

Me at the PWD Institute with a student

Originally uploaded by The Toze

I got back to Iraq on Saturday and missed my one day of weekend. We work Sat – Thursday. On Saturday night the power went out, normally it comes right on again because we have generators, but this time it was off until 11:30 a.m. the next morning. But there was nothing to do without power so I went back to bed.

It was a pretty uneventful week, I did make it out of the compound three times. Once for shopping. We went to the “supermarket” and I picked up a few things like Feta cheese, little mandarin tangerines and bread. There is actually a really good bread store that makes whole grain bread. Because we don’t go out to eat a lot and as of yet we haven’t figured out anyplace that delivers, we cook a lot. I think I’m eating the healthiest I have in my life since I left home. Goind through the grocery store is like a hunt for things you recognize and food items that you think you can do something with. It seems like we eat a lot of cooked vegetables with pasta or rice, sometimes we fry Halloume cheese and serve it with veggies and tomato sauce, we eat a lot of chicken, because it is difficult to buy beef in a cut you recognize. My plan is to start visiting the actual butcher with a diagram to buy beef, I’ll see how that goes. Once a week we can order vegetables and have them delivered but there are a couple of bad translations. When we ordered limes we got lemons and when V ordered green beans the last two times she has gotten something that looks like lima beans. That and the bedding situation or lack of bedding situation has been a source of conflict.

Lately I’ve been rolling out of bed 15 minutes before 8:00 a.m. when I’m supposed to be at the office, throwing on clothes, making myself oatmeal or eggs, making coffee for me and the roomie and then booking to the office. I then check my e-mails, review proposals, or get through my to do list and before I know it, lunch is here.

V, my roommate and I usually cook together and we sometimes cook for lunch, but a lot of times eat leftovers. Lunch is from 1 – 2 p.m. then I head back to the office to work until 5:00 p.m. or whenever. I had two late nights this week, one finishing up reports the other on a conference call with the U.S. Institute of Peace about disability and conflict. I didn’t get home until 7:30 p.m. that evening. Usually in the evening after we are done cooking I have a little bit of time to e-mail friends, post on my blog or try and figure out a decent online scrapbook. Sometimes V and I watch SVU and this week, I’ve watched about four movies three bad horror flicks, Species III, Event Horizon and The Descent and a stupid college movie Accepted. You can pretty much forgo any of them. I wish I had the Alien series. Group housing here is pretty much like living in a spaceship. You work with the same people that you live with, you see them all the time, things like green beans or lack of is a source of conflict and occassionally you get to go on a little shuttle ride to explore the space around you.

The second time I got out this week was for a meeting with Rozh Society Disability Organization. I met with the North Community Educator Team to debrief. They did incredible work and are ready and willing to do more. I was out of the mother ship for about an hour and a half.

Thursday nights are usually a decompression night. This Thursday I ate a chicken sandwich with melted cheddar cheese on it that I had brought back from Jordan. There is not a good selection of cheese here. Then I Skyped with my parental unit, the mother. Then I headed up to the fifth floor for movies and relaxation with our Ukrainian crew member E. The fifth floor is inhabited by two Ukrainians and a Canadian. The Canadian is currently on home leave in Brazil. My roommate had dinner with some of the other expats.

One of the interesting things about living on the mother ship is the cleaning ladies. This week they threw away my salad dressing maker, then I came home on Thursday to a new duvet and sheets, but my sacred frog pillow case and the blanket that I had previously absconded with was missing. After the cleaning ladies are here, you never know where you are going to find what. I finally found the blanket in the hall closet the frog pillow case is still missing. It’s like Easter every day.

I woke up on Friday, my day off around 11:00 a.m. and then E and I went for a walk. You cannot go off the compound any further than the corner store by yourself, we were on a quest for bread. We asked at a restaurant if we could buy some and he gave it to us instead. Then we were also looking for tonic water, which seems to be in short supply. We were gone for an hour. So in total I spent about 3 1/2 hours out off the compound this week.

I got back just in time for an interview with the Spectrum, a newspaper supplement for the Scotland, Sunday paper. I had completely forgotten about the interview, because I currently don’t have outlook, but I got an e-mail right as I got back to the compound and was there for the call. Another security protocol is that you have to have your phone with you at all times and you are not allowed to take taxis. So I did the interview, then sent a follow up e-mail. Put my scratchy sheets and duvet cover that had never been washing in the laundry, played Scrabble with K, who by the way lost the “H” the last time we played and then hung my sheets up to dry in the living room. We also have no dryers here.

Drying sheets in the Living Room

Right now I’m blogging, looking for some background information on PWD rights in the Middle East (are there any?) and doing more laundry. I expect my roommate to emerge from her room where she has been reviewing proposals within the next 1/2 hour or so claiming she is hungry. Not sure what we are having for dinner.

Oh I forgot I also killed a cockroach this week. I told my Mom about it thinking she would be impressed, not at all. “One cockroach,” she said, “They were all over our apartment in Hawaii, I had to limit your father to one can of bug spray a week. He would arm himself with the spray and then turn on the light and try and kill as many as possible.”

Me I flipped that intruder on his back, covered him with toilet paper and then STOMPED! All while my roommate was watching from a safe distance asking, does it fly, is it flying and breathing heavily.

T & Camel

Originally uploaded by The Toze

On the last day of the conference third parties were not allowed to attend so I did a little sightseeing. I hired a car and went to visit the Step Pyramid of Kind Djoser. The Pyramid is billed as the first of the great stone work designed and built in the 3rd Dynasty by Imhotep, you may recognize the name from the first “Mummy” movie, he was the evil wise man who came back to life after coveting the Pharoh’s concubine and suffering the horrible death the “Hum Die” Prior to the discovery of this Pyramid, the older Pyramids were made of mudbrick. Located in Saqqara it is a bit off the beaten path and not as touristy as Giza. Although you are not able to enter the step Pyramid one can enter one of the Pyramids in the complex. Right next to the step Pyramid is a pile of stones called the Philosopher’s Pyramid and a short drive away is the Pyramid of King Teti the first Kind of the 6th Dynasty, which you can go down into. One of the most interesting things at the site was the mastaba (a flat roofed rectangular building with outward sloping sides that marked the burial sites of many eminent Eygptians) of King Teti’s advisor Mereruka, it is the largest private tomb, over 1,000 sq feet of the old Kingdom with 17 rooms dedicated to Mereruka and rest divided between princess Watethathor, the daughter of Teti and his son Meryteti.

During my visit there were many Japanese and Europeans there, but few Americans. I was amazed that some of the young European girls were in tight shorts, a definite invitation in this culture. But the most amazing thing to me, was when a women climbed up on top of one of the smaller structures for the view and when the guard when ballistic she just waved him away. I was completely blown away by her disrepect for the culture and their national monuments, she was either English or American. It was embarrassing and we wonder why they dislike us so much.

What I hate most about Egypt is the baksheesh, everyone wants something for nothing. The man who appointed himself my guide down into Teti’s Pyramid wanted a tip, after I had already paid for my ticket. The guard on the camel wanted money for taking his picture, I had to tip the woman in the bathroom for toilet paper, at least she was doing a “job.”

I had been to Cairo once before, but it was by far my most interesting visit, because I ended up doing a lot of walking around the center of Cairo between my hotel and Tahir Square. The city seems deceptively quiet during the day and then just explodes at night. The money thing makes me uptight, for the most part I paid five Egyptian pounds for a Taxi, except when I went one evening to Kahil en lee market, then I paid ten pounds. When on the way back I gave the driver ten pounds he was upset, but in Egypt you decide what the ride is worth, give them the money and walk away.

At the market everything was for sale. I went with the group from Handicapped International, Darryl the able-body, Rhonda the double-amputee and Lars who is blind. First we explored the textile goods side where there were not a lot of foreigners. There were blankets, clothing, food shops, a sewing repair shop, socks, yarn etc. etc. On our way to the tourist side, where they sell statues, T-shirts, dishdashas, head dresses, hats, chauckeys, refrigerator magnets, jewelery and a billion other things with which to decorate your house, I passed a women with her baby selling Kleenex, the little packages were one pound apiece, but I gave her five pounds for two. I don’t mind paying extra if someone is trying to make a living.

Once in the market the assertive vendors all tried to get us in their shops, but we were discriminating shoppers. We stopped at one vendor where Darryl bargained for six glasses and I walked away five times before buying an ashtray for my colleague in the shape of a fly. I ended up paying 55 pounds or eleven dollars for it. I was looking for T-shirts and we were accosted by this aggressive angry young guy, he was absolutely zero-fun to bargain with, so we didn’t buy anything. The market was good, but they were expensive, I think we would have gotten better prices off the beaten track. I walked away with a couple pairs of earrings, two T-shirts and my fly ashtray. Not too bad. But I remember that last time I was in Egypt bargaining was much more fun and the vendors were starting high. One vendor wanted 250 Egyptian pounds for a statue of a cat. I bought mine in 2000 for 11 pounds. Even with the dollar being so down and inflation there was no way it was worth that much.

I also ended up buying spices, that was my gift for my roommate Vicky, I bought them at three different stalls. I was trying to buy some from a woman and of course this pushy man came over and started bargaining with me, but I got the spices and best of all a photo with the vendor who was fully veiled which is what I really wanted.

After making our way through the market with the work “No” constantly coming out of our mouths “La, la, la.” We sat down for tea and Sheeshaw. Rhonda had bailed earlier because of a headache, but it was Lars first Sheeshaw. It was nice to sit down, but a woman holding an infant with a whiny two-year old kept asking us for money and the vendors were non-stop. I must have looked at the same wallets 10 times and the same necklace and earrings at least five times.

Also, during this trip I was able to try pigeon. One night after the conference Darryl and I went to a well-known restaurant filled with foreigners, we ordered pigeon stuffed with rice and an ordered of chicken. We split both the orders and it was a good thing because pigeon is really a dish for one. It lacks meat on its bones. When I finally discovered the breast it was as big as my thumbnail. At this particular restaurant they offered you the option of shooting your pigeon and then they would stuff the head for you to take home while you ate. We didn’t choose that option. HA! JUST JOKING! The pigeons are somewhat free range, raised in a barn not in cages. I have a theory that the lack of pigeons on the streets in Jordan and Egypt is because it is a delicacy. Not sure if that’s true, but it makes sense.

Overall it was a good trip. My hotel was adequate and it was interesting being right downtown. It was near Tahir Square which houses the Egyptian Museum, but if you stay downtown and decide to walk around make sure you pick up your hotel’s card with the address on it, the first night I didn’t and it took an hour and a half to find it again, with a lot of help from a man who was putting the moves on me. However, Egypt is a good place to go if you want men to tell you, you’re beautiful and ask if you’re married. I said I was.

Arab League of Nations

Originally uploaded by The Toze

I’ve been in a conference for the last two days. People have talked and talked and talked and talked. I’m starting to understand the culture more and some of the barriers that change faces. In the two days worth of meetings, nothing has been resolved, nothing has been decided and there has been no call to action. Maybe I’m supposed to become a better listener, it that is the case I’m certainly getting a lot of practice.

It is my first time with simultaneous interpretation and for the first couple of hours I thought I wasn’t going to understand anything. Every other word was actually. “Actually, you know, that actually, what we should actually do is actually focus on advocacy.” After a couple of hours our interpreter was warmed up and the translation improved. Thank goodness I was afraid it was going to be like the translators we had at the second Iraqi Alliance of Disability Organizations (“IADO”) in Kurdistan. The interpreters’ first language was Kurdish, second language Arabic and third language was English. It was a nightmare I barely understood anything. It was a glimpse into the isolation that the hearing impaired experience. Speaking of the hearing impaired there is a contingent of them at this conference, they are fun to talk to and almost more easy to communicate with using signs than with hearing Arabic speakers.

The sign for American is shooting guns with both hands, like a cowboy. Very appropriate considering the current administration. I was so tired yesterday, I went to the Hilton and got on the Internet, first I was having coffee with Ehsan with Mercy Corps Palestine and then he went to do some shopping for his family. After he left Khousoon sat down, she is the deaf woman who was interviewed in the “Making a Difference” segment on NBC news. She was waiting for her friend to go out. She told me that her friend was getting dressed and putting on make up. See I definitely understand more sign language than Arabic. Of course it would help if I started studying again, because even when I ask for coffee they look at me funny, which means my accent is off. The crazy thing about Arabic is not only is it tonal, it has masculine and feminine.

My favorite part of these conferences if meeting people, although they are stymied by indecision they are lovely people, particularly the contingent from Sudan.

I decided to take a cab back to Happy City Hotel and eat there in the rooftop garden. It was a pleasant garden; it would have been even more pleasant if the waiter hadn’t taken an hour to get me something to drink. My food came before the tonic water I ordered and actually the tonic water didn’t come at all, so I asked for water. After dinner, I did a quick tour of the neighborhood for chocolate and then watched a movie in my room. I decided to forego an exploration that might hamper my ability to go to bed early.

Room with a View

Originally uploaded by The Toze

I arrived in Egypt on four hours of bad sleep. I had slept a couple of hours pulling two couch-like chairs together at Starbucks in the Amman Airport and I slept a little on the plane. I was preparing to navigate the Cairo Taxi system when an accented English voice asked me if I was here for the Arab Organization of Disabled People’s Conference (“AODP”). His name was Darryl, Australian and from Handicap International. The HI people had a driver and offered to drop me off at my hotel “Happy City.” The people working there did not look particularly happy. And no wonder when I tried to use the toilet there was a metal tube sticking out of the middle of it. It definitely made me unhappy until I bent it out of the way.

I tried to nap for an hour or so, but it seemed crazy to be in Cairo and sleeping. So in uncharacteristic Tiana fashion, I decided to see if I could figure out where I was going for the conference the next day. The conference was at the Arab League of Nations in Tahir Square, the same square that houses the famous Egyptian museum. It took me about 45 minutes to find the square. When I thought I had found the Arab League of Nations, the guard told me there were two, the old and the new. I gave up and decided to try and find the Cosmopolitan Hotel where Darryl was staying. That took some more broken Arabic, lots of walking and 45 minutes, but I found it.

Darryl was keen on finding a beer, he had been drinking tea, I ordered a water. However, I only had two sips of my water when Darryl’s colleague from Egypt reached over and took a swig out of my glass. My water drinking was over. The communal food sharing here in the Middle East caught me off guard the first time and this was the first time I had ever had anyone drink out of my glass without asking permission.

Darryl is about 5’9, blond hair, glasses, Australian and he does regional work for HI so he travels all over the region. His Arabic was pretty decent, he had worked as a occupational therapist in Saudia Arabia. We sat on top of the Nile Hilton, with a great view of the Nile, and tapas. We left to find our hotels, which were in opposite directions around 10:00 p.m. I didn’t find mine until after being accosted by several men who were trying to “help,” having an empty soda can thrown at me by some unruly boys and then finally I received some help from a man who had lived in America. He was also trying to pick me up, but he got me back to my hotel and when he offered me his phone number, I told him my phone doesn’t work in Egypt, which is true. I think the reason I was lost is because when I walked down the street the first time none of the shops were open and when I walked home, all the shops were open and it seemed like everyone in Cairo was out. I went by groups of men sitting out, smoking Seeshaw, playing dominoes, chess and backgammon. It was like there were hundreds of these little Sheeshaw, tea shops that spilled out over into the streets.

In addition, just crossing the street was a challenge, you just have to pick a time and go for it, at one point this car got so close to me I was able to put my entire hand on the hood. No wonder they have a large disabled population in Egypt.

“Cockroach in my house. I’m barricaded in my room – it was crawling towards my room! I have a phobia.” I received the e-mail at —- on Saturday morning.

“Dang if I had only gotten this last night I would have come to the rescue,” I replied.

“Um, I sent it this morning. Feel free to come. Barricaded in my room. Can you kill these things? I’m tot phobic.”

“I’ll come over and take care of it. On my way.” It was my next-door neighbor another humanitarian aid worker from the states. I threw on long pants, because you can’t go outside in shorts and headed over.

By the time I made it over the six-legged terrorist had abandoned his post and my neighbor was free of her room.

“Search the apartment, we have to find it,” she pleaded with me. I looked all over, but couldn’t find him. I even called his name, well at least the name I had given him. “Fred, come out, if you come out with at least two of your legs up I won’t stomp,” I warned him. Fred was not game.

“Here he is!” I heard my neighbor’s voice from the kitchen; she was at the door of the spare bedroom.

“I looked in there,” I informed her.

“How could you have missed him?” she asked. “He’s huge!” He was actually medium sized. He was lying on his back playing dead. I approached cautiously. My neighbor watched from the door. “Is he dead?” she asked.

“No, one of his antennae is twitching, get me a piece of paper,” I took charge of the situation. Placing the paper over the cockroach that was laying on his back I lifted up my Birkenstock clad foot and stomped. His guts squished all over the paper and I made a makeshift body bag out of the paper. After disposing of the body in the circular file, I wet a paper towel and cleaned up the aftermath.

I later received an e-mail that said, “You’re my hero.”

It appears that we may also have flying cockroaches also.

In July, I had brought three fly swatters to the guesthouse as a gift because the previous time I had been there, there were flies everywhere, but when I brought the flyswatters in July the flies had magically disappeared and everyone laughed at me because there were no flies. But I guess in October there are flies because I have killed at least 12 of them. I have earned the nickname “Tozer the Terminator.” But at least it is something else to do in Iraq. The flyswatter that I had purchased for Head of Office in Suli was high end. Purple with a dustbin and tweezers for body disposal. It’s a great instrument and I have enjoyed using it when I’m patrolling the fifth floor.

Today, I left for Erbil; it is the capital of Kurdistan. A city of about 800,000, about 2 ½ hours north of Suli. To get there we started out with a driver from Suli and then exchanged drivers about halfway. The exchange takes place wherever the two cars meet on the road. Prior to the exchange we maneuvered our way through a medium sized town. You could really only fit one car down the road because of the people, traffic and cars parked on the side of the road. The people were out shopping and socializing, it looked like a pleasant town. It had two sort-of roundabouts, but they weren’t really paved. It was a bustle of activity.

Our second driver was Turkmen and he had previously been a driver for the leader of the Turkmen party. He had been shot three times during an assassination attempt on his charge. Rather than thanking the driver for saving his life the head of the Turkmen party accused him of being a spy and after eight days in the hospital threw him in jail for three months.

You can see the scar on the side of his neck where the bullet entered.

The Iraqi Turkmen or Turkomen, originally came from central Asia, in a migration that took place over several hundred years, beginning in the 7th century AD. Today, slightly more than two million Turkomans are believed to live in Iraq and they have their own language with a Cyrillic alphabet.

We arrived in Erbil at dusk and spent the evening hanging out with the Head of Office in Erbil until the Deputy Country Director and I had to leave for the airport at 1:30 a.m. in the morning.

The apts

Originally uploaded by The Toze

Arrived at my new post on Sept. 25 after about three days of travel. The guesthouse moved and the new “guesthouse” is in what on the surface appear to be luxury apartments, they were just built. However, the wall paper is peeling off, it is missing ceiling lamps, our hall light won’t turn off, a tsunami hits every time I take a shower, the drawer next to the sink floods . . . I could go on and on. When I commented to my boss that I didn’t feel like a humanitarian aid worker she offered to pitch me a tent on the grass. For now the apartment will do.

My roommate is very petite, one of the shortest people here, of Greek descent she talks Greek on the phone with her parents. She is very sweet and a good cook, her name is Vicky.

So there are about five things to do here, work, cook, watch movies, go to the grocery store and work. But we manage to keep ourselves amused. During my first week here, I was having issues with the shower. It has eight shower heads and depending on how you turn it on depends on where the water comes out. My first morning I wasn’t planning on washing my hair, but I ended up washing it anyway. The second morning I received a full frontal blast, I think I might finally have gotten it done. I’m worried about my roommate she is so short the full frontal could drown her.

Also during the first week one of the workers came in to hang up the bathroom stuff the mirror and the

The toilet paper dilemma

toilet paper holder. In all the bathrooms he put the toilet paper holder kitty corner from the toilet, even with my wing span, no way. Please note the location next to the sink in the photo, you can also see the luxury tsunami shower. Luckily the toilet paper holder got moved fairly quickly.

Another fun game that Vicky and I have been playing is keep track of your cleaning supplies. Everything seems to have disappeared, the cleaning lady uses our apartment as a home base, so we think stuff is getting moved around, but we haven’t had the time to organize a rescue party. Which is too bad because the kitchen floor is dirtier than the sidewalk, how is that possible with a cleaning lady, I haven’t figured that out yet. I guess its selective cleaning.

Another game we like to play is keep track of your dishes. The expats live in four apartments and we have a tendency to go back and forth, eat at each others houses etc. All of our dishes look the same, so anytime you take something up, or you share your dishes at a dinner party you have to remember to collect them. It is disconcerting to open the dish cupboard to one plate. However, the coffee cups never go missing, if they did my roommate would freak.

The only other news I have to report is that Buffy (that is my series Buffy the Vampire Slayer) is missing. I had brought her up to the old guesthouse for the inhabitants and she has been misplaced in the move. At least that is the thin thread of hope I’m holding onto. I have looked in every cupboard and nook and cranny. So please keep your fingers crossed that I find her.

Tomorrow I leave for a conference in Egypt.