reliant on convenient

nothing happens fast in africa, especially cooking. the first trip to the grocery store happened several days after we arrived and i almost burst into tears. granted i was exhausted and adjusting to a new culture and everything was in french but on top of the reason list for crying was 1. feel like a complete moron. now, at this point i could blame my mother for not teaching me how to "really" cook, but i only have myself to blame as i am 33 years old and have had a family for almost 6 years and a husband for 8. i could have done something about this before now!

as i was perusing the grocery store aisles trying to decipher by the pictures what was in the cans or boxes or bags one thought kept running through my mind, "how did i survive in the states? let alone what did i feed my family?!" because nothing i saw seemed feasible to keep a family of four full. because nothing was instant! or convenient!!! and the few items that were, were imported and therefore atrociously expensive. no kraft mac and cheese, no tater tots, no cans of vege meat, no frozen meals, no alot of things!!!!!

now of course i knew things would be limited but i never actually thought about how i would turn those limited things into meals. it became very clear, very fast that unless i learned some basic cooking strategies my family would starve. it is all about being creative and thrifty because due to the high cost of food as alot of it is imported you have to make things last a lot longer and you have to be really creative because you can only eat boiled eggs plain so many days in a row, or have plain spaghetti so many nights a week.

having lived in The United States of America my whole life i have become reliant on convenient. i never thought that having a super target 5 minutes from my house actually might be detrimental later on. but i am finding that the case. we go and go and go and go in America and we survive because there are so many conveniences, ways of doing things fast, like cooking. i never learned basic cooking from scratch. yes, i did alot of baking and was pretty good at it, but not cooking, where i could make a meal from "scratch." grocery shopping consisted of once a week or every two weeks strolling (well not with small children) through target or king soopers seeing something that i thought looked good and fast and buying it. every once in awhile i would whip up one or the other of the two casseroles my mom used to make but hardly ever deliberately make a meal from basic ingredients. things are going to have to change.

in order to survive here, i will need to go back to the basics. i will keep you posted on how that comes along.

ps. i have baked banana bread and craisin scones as well as cooking french toast and things that resemble pancakes since i have been here!

in the hands of others

there is something slightly unnerving about entrusting your children to someone who you don't know, have just met, and speaks a different language than you and your children. but what can you do? this was our position last week when we were introduced to Biba, a possible candidate for watching Rian and Myles while we are at French class.

She had come recommended through friends that employ her sister. But there is no such thing as resumes, references or background checks, at least not on paper. Everything is simply done by word of mouth. we needed to find someone to watch them and we had no other options. we left one of our cell phones with the speed dial ready for the other, kissed and hugged them and waved goodbye as they marched off to the playground with Biba.

I know in the states this would be unheard of but "thats just the way it is done here." We ended up being gone much longer than anticipated that first time and when our cell rang I immediately snatched it up thinking thats it, something terrible has happened. When I heard Rian's voice on the other end, saying "i dropped my hello kitty camera and can't get it to work," relief was instant. She also informed me that she had picked up the phone seen a j and a b and figured that was Jason Brooks number (the friend we were with) and pushed the call button.

After that I was pretty confident that if our children needed to get a hold of us Rian could figure it out.

The second time Biba arrived at our door to watch them, they ran to her with open arms. I guess that speaks more than a paper that has some credentials on it.

the adventure has begun

I had these visions of grandeur to write all through the summer and up to the point of us leaving on this adventure but who was I kidding? As you can see nothing has been posted since we left Michigan in August and we are now coming up to the 2 week mark since we landed in Africa.

And I am only getting this done now because my husband has threatened to take our blog address off of his FB page because nothing has been posted. So apparently I am the one that is to do the blog?!

To catch everyone up to speed, we have been nomadic since we left CO in July. We spent the summer driving thousands and thousands of miles across the United States to mission training, visiting friends and family and preparing for our move to Niger, West Africa. We left Los Angeles at 6am on October 1 and arrived in Niamey, Niger the afternoon of October 2.

In hindsight I think we survived the flights fairly well. In the moment however, hauling 8 carry-ons and two tired children, through 3 airports and 3 security lines, did not make for a good situation. And I wish i could write about my first impressions as I was disembarking in our new homeland, but since I had managed to smash Rian's finger between the chairs armrest in the plane and her brothers suitcase and it started to gush blood, my mind was a bit preoccupied as we stepped into the overbearing heat and into the tiny airport.

Once we had made it through the visa and yellow fever line, it was on to the conveyor belts to see if our luggage had miraculously made it from LA to here, without us seeing it once. And believe it or not we collected all our bags, minus one booster seat (that we still haven't located and since neither of our children are using car seats, guess won't worry about). How happy we were to see Beth and Jason Brooks on the other side of the glass doors!

The last two weeks have felt simultaneously in slow motion and fast forward. Maybe jet lag has something to do with that? I do know that on more than once occasion I have thought to myself, what have I done, bringing my family clear across the world? But on the other hand, I have also thought, what an amazing experience this is for us all! I am guessing I will have those thoughts more than several times as we start our life here.

Now that I have caught up to the present more or less, I hear by swear that I will try to blog on a regular basis so all "wandering" with us can join the adventure.