Tea and teaching

7/2/22

I have one student who cannot do the evening class as she works nights, so she gets me up in the morning to do a class at 09.30 – 11.30, and I can’t complain because she come straight from her night shift! However, I’m a bit sad about the morning class as normally this is my time to go to NICU to see how all the babies are doing. Anyways, I did my morning class and then read my book The Family Upstairs up until lunch.

After lunch, I lesson planned the afternoon session with Amanda, which requires more planning as they’re further through the ‘course’ if you can call me teaching a course (lol)! Its actually been super handy that Amanda has a substantial teaching background as she knows lots of tricks to get people more engaged and also knows grammar terms, which I have no idea about, so she can answer the complicated questions – yaaaaas! We taught our class, even watching some Netflix, Chicago Med, with minor technical difficulties which semi resolved, which given my technical abilities, I was very happy with!!

After our lesson, Asha took us to her sister-in-laws, Sudhara, for shaah (tea), and we were greeted with warmth and shown through to the sitting room, which was big and fancy – it had gold gilded sofas and chairs, which looked like thrones. Yet, when we went in, there were two middle aged ladies sitting on the rug on the floor, clearly unimpressed by the lavish seats!! (Why have a chair when you can sit on the floor?!) We had tea served with fresh camel milk to add, which is from Asha’s brother’s camel farm, though both Asha and Asha’s sister-in-law were shocked that Amanda did not wish to try it, as it is a delicacy here. Its not much of an exaggeration to say that people travel far and wide for good camel milk and where in the UK, you’ll meet up with your mates for a drink at the pub, here you go out for a camel milk!! It’s completely normal to drink milk at any time, so I guess people have strong bones here!! Asha’s sister-in-law didn’t spend too much time with us as she said she couldn’t speak the language, but when she came back in to check on us, she brought us each a sheet, which is a colourful piece of fabric which you take to a tailors to become a dress – mine is pink and purple, and pretty extraaa, so I’m excited to use it as a hippy dress! There were also multiple kids in the house, at least three boys and two girls, but all bar one of them were too shy to spend any time with us! There was one brave boy though, who was five and looked very cheeky. He seemed fun at first, until he went and hit his older cousin for no reason – kids are so mean sometimes!! We are going to his mother’s house today for dinner, so we will see if he behaves then!

We headed out from Sudhara’s to a shop which Asha wanted to go to in Jijiga-yar, a place which is meant to be more Western and more chilled than where the hospital is. When we got there, the road was wider, less dusty and less crowded and there were fewer people shouting than around the hospital!! We found the beauty shop Asha wanted to visit, where they sold The Ordinary products – craaazy! Asha bought two different potions and we went for food next door at a cafe called Twenty Five.

The cafe had a nice vibe – it looked cool, it had a nice mix of Western and Somali tunes, had a solid coffee machines and an array of cakes. It also had decor like my fave Brummie cafe Damascena and served falafel and hummus which I was super excited about. When I ordered, they’d ran out though so I got a chicken schwarma wrap instead. There were two guys sat across from us that were super American as well as multiple guys wearing baseball hats, even though it was the evening and we were indoors!! It seems that all the expats/Somali Americans live in this part of town. We headed home to bed after that, taxing across town, though backstreets, getting lost and having to turn round in some back alley!! It seems that there is no main road from the hospital to Jijiga-yar…

8/2/22

Today, I got up early-ish to go to the camel markets straight after breakfast with Asha and Amanda. We got a taxi there and drove into the bustling market! It was quite the experience. At the entrance, all of the camels were standing about – a few were foaming at the mouth, which seemed to mean they wanted to fight, and one camel had its tongue hanging out which looked very unpleasant, and not like a tongue at all! We moved on past the fighting camels, to find the goats and sheep, which were all tied together either in rows or with their heads interlocked like a fine Welsh scrum – yes, I’m sad I’m not watching The Six Nations!

Around the sheep area, a lady was asking Asha if I was single as she wanted me to marry her son! I told her that my mum would be sad if I lived in Somaliland (I think she would!!), and she said, no problem he can come with me!! After that we escaped an ever growing crowd forming around us to head for the cows!

The cows were waiting near a kind of barn with only a roof. Luckily for me, the cows were both smaller and a lot more chilled than home as since doing Duke of Edinburgh and being chased by cows, I have always been scared of them! Someone started herding the cows into a pen that we were standing in and we quickly had to hurry out of the way. We were trying to avoid both the cows and the men that seemed to be always around us! The market was much more like Morocco than the rest of Hargeisa – too much interest in us as white women!! After escaping through the cows and men, we waited for our taxi back to the hospital, while a group of camels were being loaded onto a lorry.

Back at the hospital I had a quick coffee and (home-made) carrot cake, before meeting Amanda to lesson plan our afternoon class. We then headed to the theatre as there were some perennial tears which were being reconstructed. When we got down to theatre, Dr Shukri was finishing up the previous case, but once she had finished she informed us that the last case had to be cancelled as the lady had undiagnosed chronic hypertension which needed to be controlled before she was operated on. I went to NICU to see how my babies had been getting on. Both Farixya and Moxamed had gone home as planned, but I found out that my favourite baby, little Salma had passed away in the night. I’m pretty sad about Salma, as she had been with us a long time and had been in and out of NICU a few times. When I asked the nurses what happened, they said that she had died overnight but that her formula milk given though an NG tube had been changed and her abdomen had become very distended. I think it is likely that she aspirated, but when I asked the nurse, she said she did no, so who knows?! I read up on the two remaining babies (who I had not met before), did some obs and left to go to the tailors. We collected some clothes we had given as examples of the styles we wanted. Then we grabbed what was left of lunch, and then I headed over to Capital Lounge in a Dhaweeye (an Uber equivalent) with Mubarak and paid with my fancy Zaad (like Google Pay). They had coffee, they had cups, they had milk, but they ain’t got no doughnuts, which I was super sad about. Hey ho! I wrote a bit of my blog before heading back to teach my 16.30 class with Amanda.

After class, we met Asha and went to her nieces for tea. The dining table was huge – very long, and only three of us sat at it, so I felt like the royals in Shrek – Amanda thinks I’m weird for making this comparison, but that’s my brain, aha! There was lots of food , breaded fish, breaded chicken drumsticks and fish in a super yummy sauce, with rice and spaghetti – its strange how much they eat spaghetti here. So far I have avoided it since I find spaghetti without pasta sauce bizarre! We ate, drank shaah and observed/made faces at kids age 7 months, 3 years and 5 years. The 5 yr old, Abdul-Rashid is soooo cheeky and weirdly reminds me of a guy from salsa back home – when he is older, he’s definitely gonna be a biiiiig flirt!!

On the way home, we picked up my clothes from the tailor and I actually love my two piece, even though they put ‘grandma’ buttons on it, it kinda works!! I tried them on when I got home and Asha papped me – I didn’t force her, she actually wanted me to showcase Somali fashion!!