Bite me!

One thing is for sure: I have never learnt so much about poisonous animals in the last 6 months here.

There are three main scary categories in this area: scorpion, snake and mosquito.

 Let's start with the first one which is also my zodiac sign: scorpion.

-Usually black (but occasionally we found some red ones). Apparently if a scorpion bites you is no big deal. You're going to get a bad a rash, it will be swollen for a while but you'll live. They can be found pretty much anywhere (we have tons in our compound) and they can also be eaten ( I have never tried and NEVER will).

Number two: snakes.

-Now you have to watch out for those! Some of them are normal snakes and not lethal. The bad ones are very poisonous and I just found out no one in this village has the antidote (not even the UN!!) cause it's way too expensive and no one can afford it. So, in the event of a snake bite (also the name of a DELICIOUS cocktail) you have to pray that the effect is not lethal. Some bites can be lethal from 1 to 24 hours so the odds are.. ehm.. OK!!! 

Good thing is that the very poisonous snakes are hard to find. Unless you venture in the high grass or in the fields (no one does that because of the mines but that's another story..), you should be safe!

For the record: I have a snake phobia so every time I see one I start screaming hysterically.. apparently a lot of people find it hilarious. 

And now the final category, my favorite: mosquitoes.

The funniest thing about mosquitoes is that they have the weirdest effects on your body.

Of course there is the malaria one..but I have already covered that. 

Then remember the mango fly? The one that lays eggs in the clothes and turns you into a character of the mummy?

The best one is the one that makes you narcoleptic, it's hilarious!! Last April we were driving through South Sudan to reach Kidepo National Park, in Northern Uganda. Right after the border we met a village chief, a guy who knows our driver very well. They started chatting and after a while we were ready to go. He pops his head into the car and he goes: now roll up your window.

I looked at him, then at my friends in the car and then at the driver. It's 40 degrees outside, AC is not working, still 3 hours to reach Kidepo and we need to roll up our windows? The answer was positive. 

Yes, he said, now the sleep mosquitoes are coming. The way they work? Really simple: they bite you and after a x time you fall asleep just for a minute or so. Then of course you wake up like nothing happened. Isn't it funny? A bit less maybe if you're driving and you suddenly fall asleep (you might wake up with the car in a ditch or similar.. not advisable!); which is why we obviously had to roll up all the windows and suffer in the heat for 2 hours. 

Good thing is that these mosquitoes are only in some spots, especially where a lot of vegetation is growing; you would never find them in a town or a dry scenario.

There are many other types of mosquitoes but these three are definitely the coolest ones (well except for the malaria one).

So one thing I'd def recommend before flying here is mosquito repellent: works for mosquitoes but also for pretty much everything else!!

  

Halloween

Picture a person who has never been outside of their village located in the middle of nowhere in Africa (99% of the people who live here).

Now picture this conversation with them:

"What are you doing tonight? It's Halloween!"

"WHAT IS HALLOWEEN?"

I bet you have never met anyone who has NO CLUE WHATSOEVER about Halloween. 

And I mean it: no idea, nothing at all.

So it's kinda hard to explain to them what Halloween is. I mean everybody has at least heard about it 

and that makes things easier but here they were staring at me with a blank look in their eyes. 

So I just started babbling something about witches, blood, scary things, ghosts, murderers.. Yeah that did not make a very good impression. So I tried again explaining that in the Western world it's just a day where we dress up and celebrate scary things decorating pumpkins outside our homes. Yeah well that was even worse. So I told them we do it just for fun and to have parties because the 1st of November is a public holiday (not like here!).. and they started to understand (I mean just mention parties and fun and things start to make sense). 

Then Geoffrey (remember Geoffrey? my favorite guy) said something really funny:

"Oh yeah we have something similar to that: we scatter ashes around our huts to keep the spirits away."

Yeah I guess, it could work. I mean they are all about beliefs like rainmakers, bonfires, souls of the ancient villagers blablabla.. so I guess It wouldn't be too hard for them to grasp the concept of Halloween.

Bottom line is:

They don't have Halloween but they sort of have it too. That's a big degree of civilization.

Now the best part is about to come: I am going to teach them how to carve pumpkins. Hope my camera will capture the looks on their faces.. and hopefully I'll be able to post the pics too!!

Happy Halloween!! 

Not here, not at home, not at all

Yesterday I realised that there are some things here that cannot be linked to any degree of civilization, they are simply unacceptable7not changeable and that's the way things are.

Remember how I said that mostly we just laugh of all the odd things that happen here on a daily basis just to make it ok? Well some things just cannot become ok; not here, not at home, not all (thank you Paola for this perfect sentence that summarizes my thoughts).

This thought was obviously triggered by something: a peculiar event. 

I was in myoffice yesterday when my colleague (Italian) called me from the other room telling me that "there was something in her desk". Now this sentence may sound like the beginning of a story like Jumanji or Narnia or Harry Potter where a magic portal takes you to another world populated by the weirdest creatures. Nope, this was reality: I got into her office and as I entered the room she started hitting the desk to show me what she meant. After a few seconds we started hearing some scratching sounds from one of the drawers, a very disturbing sound I have to say. So yes there definitely was something INSIDE her desk. How did the thing get there you ask? still a mistery to me. You wanna know the creepiest thing tho? The drawer was LOCKED and we did not have the key. So the animal must have passed from a tiny hole or something.. as I said everything is still a mistery to me.

Anyways we called one of our guys, one who is never scared of catching animals with their hands or disgusting stuff like that. I am not gonna make a big deal out of it, it was just a mouse which was instantly killed by our staff as soon as the drawer was opened (and by killed I mean beated to death). 

Needless to say that this was quite an event in the office since everyone went to the room to assist the slaughtering of the mouse. I found it quite strange tho, these people are quite used to seeing these animals, everyday and everywhere: it should not be a big deal. 

The reason was quite simple: they were happy cause they had fresh MEAT. Yes you heard it: everyone was excited about the mouse because they knew they were gonna get a meal out of it. (Apparently mouse meat is quite tasty).

The staff obviously asked us if we wanted to join them and have a tasty mouse for lunch; our disgusted faces left them puzzled and one of them told us:

"you know, this is our culture: we love eating mice"

And right then it occured to me that some things just cannot be translated into any civilization degree.

TIA.

  

Jambo Kenya!

Took me a while to write a new blog post but I was trying to recover from my last holiday in Kenya and that was not easy.

Let me tell you why: beach, sun, great food, cocktails....

I spent a week on the Kenyan coast, a couple of hours away from Mombasa, in the tiny village of Watamu which is basically an Italian colony. It was quite surprising to see everybody speaking Italian, even better than us.
"Ciao, come stai? Come ti chiami? Vieni qui, piacere blablabla.."

I felt home!

The explanation is simple: Italians started going there on holidays and building homes, restaurants and casinos long time ago and Kenyans got used to that and obviously made a business out of it (let's face it, Italian tourists can be fooled quite easily!). So everywhere you go you meet Africans speaking an almost perfect Italians, offering tours for cheap prices, showing you local places, taking you out to the best clubs in town. It really is like going back to Europe! There are also many other tourists from all over the places (mainly French people and Dutch tourists) but the African-Italian community there is the biggest!
Every Kenyan has an Italian name (I have heard the weirdest ones!), dresses Italian, listens to Italian music and is obviously looking for an Italian wife so that they can fly back to Europe with them.
Nope, I will not go through this again, I have definitely covered the proposals topic; besides also in Kenya my answer was the same: thanks but no thanks.

Anyways this is just the Watamu coast part of Kenya, not the entire nation. Kenya was that but also much more. Kenya is nature too, beautiful nature.

We did a safari in Tsavo East National Park, the biggest park in Africa.
Only problem with that is that it's huge so it's not that easy to spot animals which are always moving around (but yes we did see lions.. yayy!!)






The landscape is quite dry, almost desert but that's the beauty of it: you just get lost staring at the horizon hoping to see every now and then a zebra trotting or a gazelle sprinting to somewhere.. beautiful.

And the best part of it is that Kenyans definitely know how to treat their tourists: staying in one of the lodges in the park is a unique experience: beautiful tents, tented camps, lodges on the rivers, in the middle of the park and among the animals.. It is the real thing just with a but more comfort and luxury!  A MUST GO!

And then of course there is the beach, my element, my favorite spot, the one that never disappoints

Kenya is on the Indian Ocean: needless to say that the seas is simply perfect. Only there is a small problem: as I said Kenyans really made a huge thing out of tourism so it is nearly impossible to enjoy the beach without the very famous BEACH BOYS. This is a very annoying category of people who literally surrounds you and starts talking to you from the moment you set foot on the beach.

"Do you want to buy this, do you want to go there with my travel agency, do you want weed, do you want sex, do you want to marry me? My name is Paolo, Carlo, Licia, Giordano remember me when you decide to do this and that and that.."

these constant incessant voices are the only turn off of a beautiful place: tourists get really annoyed after a while because they can never be on their own, always surrounded by beach boys while walking on the beach, taking a bath or just sunbathing outside the designated beach areas of their hotels (yes, THANK GOD the beach boys cannot enter the hotel beach areas!!).

But then again... this is the beach (so I guess it's worth a bit of suffering)

so RECAP.

Kenya is nature,                                        amazing/crazy people

and animals!

(I am so glad I got a picture with a monkey: it had been in my bucket list for a couple of decades now)

And the best part is I got to see my sister who is definitely a civilization person: it was just great to see all the paranoid stuff she was going through as a European in Africa, PRICELESS!!

It's just malaria!

After 9 months of life here I can consider myself a bit of an expert on diseases and infections that can be caught in this part of Africa. 

Let's talk about the most common one: MALARIA :)

And I say common now because from May to October is the rainy season in South Sudan: that means more humidity and more mosquitoes, of course.

I don't mean to scare anyone with this post, these are JUST every day problems in South Sudan; catching malaria in Torit is just like catching a cold in Europe: it's common, it happens all the time. No dramas!

So let me swipe away some of those urban legends that everybody thinks they know about malaria which are just not true.

One: if you catch malaria once you will have it for the rest of your life. Wrong, at least partially.  I mean it is true that if you catch it once it may come back anytime cause the virus stays in your liver but it also depends on where you are too. Once you go back to a malaria free zone blood cells will continuously change and renew themselves so the chances of getting malaria will decrease.. until they disappear.

Two: malaria is contagious like the flu. Wrong again! There is no way you can get it from another person who has it because you get malaria only if you are bitten by a mosquito. So kiss away, hug, touch that person..you're not getting it too.

Finally: it's NOT that big of deal. I know malaria is dangerous and could even kill but here they know how to cure it cause everybody gets it all the time. Once you have the symptoms it's almost mathematical it is malaria: you get tested and you have a response in FIVE minutes. The cure is simple: pills that kill the mosquitoes in your blood (as well as your liver cause I mean they are a bit strong)  and after three days in bed you're up and running again. Ta-dah! It's not that bad. 

The only complication might be when you catch something else together with malaria, like typhoid or one of those nasty boys that affect your body system: you could be in bed for more days and with more pills.. but that, my friends, is another post!!

To the market!

Once in a while we have to go and buy food (the Italian stocks unfortunately do not last forever) somewhere: the market.
The market is one of those typical African places you must have seen in pictures on the Internet; it's not far from the truth, not at all.  There's usually a main road and then you can just get lost in one of those small alleys which depart from the main one.
It's the pure definition chaos: weird smells, dust, people screaming, animals walking around..you have to be in good shape to go there, that's for sure.
Like yesterday, we had to go and buy vegetables but we encountered a few problems: first of all they had no bags so we had to carry 3 giant zucchini and some eggplants in our hands and then OF COURSE they did not have change. I mean just picture the scene: it's hot, it's messy, it's smelly and you have to carry around heavy groceries trying to avoid people who are carrying stuff as well (and by stuff I mean ANYTHING: animals, long pieces of wood, food,... anything).

So it's a challenge.

The payment of items is a lot of fun too: everything works with the bargain system. They obviously will not issue any receipt or some form of proof so in case you want to purchase something just name a price and see what happens next.
I found a nice skirt yesterday and i really wanted to buy it. The seller's initial price was 45 South Sudanese pounds (I mean it's not much for us but still for South Sudan standards it's quite a lot). So the bargain ritual started: "nope, i'll give you 25 SSP". The reply was "No no, let's make it 50 (yes I know it's more than the initial price but they don't really know what bargain means )' So I ended up not buying the skirt cause the price was still too much and I did not know where to put it anyways cause my hands were full!

I guess i like it better when prices are fixed and I don't have to scream and sweat over a pair of shirts and some zucchinis.

TIA people! (This Is Africa)

Typical food

I was talking to a friend yesterday about my south sudanese life and suddenly she popped the question which is vital for an Italian:
"What's the typical food there?"

DAMN! I knew I was missing something, something quite important I'd say. Italians always need to know this sort of information before they move anywhere: they check the guides and any sort of book which can give them good tips about good food. Well this didn't happen here, for obvious reasons.
So I never had to answer that question; no restaurants, bar, cafes here. And I automatically thought: no food worth mentioning!
Well I am partially right; as an Italian used to GOOD GOOD food I found very few things which can really satisfy my picky taste buds but it would be wrong to say there is NOTHING typical here.

The main problem is VARIETY. This means the menu is always the same: same food every day which is why I tend to get sick of pretty much everything after a while.

So what do we have here? mmm RICE! That always comes with beans, black beans. and that is a meal which is repeated twice a day. Can you imagine eating rice and beans EVERY SINGLE DAY? I get sick of it after half of the meal, that's why I still find it difficult to get used to the idea that south sudanese people have that ALWAYS.

Then there is chapati, typical flat bread which goes with everything, even rice and beans. Chapati is very tasty but also VERY greasy: i'd say it has the same amount of calories of a bar of chocolate. good but ehm like a brick in the stomach.

Third very typical thing is posho, a not very taste dish made of maize (corn) flour: also this one goes with pretty much everything...
TA DAH: there you have drafted the menu of a typical family here. you can mix and match but the food won't vary that much!


The best things to find are vegetables and fruit: cabbage, eggplants and carrots to start (if you only eat those tho, you start getting tired of veggies too!). Because the climate is always so hot, it;s easy to find exotic and tropical products all year round like papaya, pineapples and avocado. It's a bit harder to find those in a small village like ours BUT STILL! One thing that I love now is passion fruit (again, impossible to find it in south sudan) but you can only get that in other East African states like Uganda or Kenya.

And finally let me give you a glossary of food terms quite common here
-Maize (corn)
-Ground nuts
-Sorghum
-cassava (typical potato, quite common here)


nothing compared to ravioli and pizza right? I know, I know...