Nuances

Living in a foreign country is always filled with uncertainties and their own quirks. I found out a long time ago it’s always easier to just accept them, plan on them happening and laugh at them (these things happen in my home country too, but there’s a sense of being able to control them that gives it a different feel).

Take, for example, power outages; this is a normal occurrence here, generally happens at regular times, so you can plan around it. I plugged in my room heater (we only use them at night) and went to bed to the hum of the heater…ah, what a sweet warm purrrrrr. I tossed and turned all night, freezing. I pulled on my bathrobe and socks and went back to sleep. Into the morning and still no power. Darla mentioned how this had only happened one other time. In the afternoon Dan called from a friend’s house to see how the power situation was. Apparently we were the only one in the city experiencing this problem so they both came over and the friend immediately looked at the fuse box. Why is it that something that would be so obvious in the US baffles us here?

I’ve been trying to get my bearings, learning where to buy things – much of this Dan does and I won’t have the luxury of a man to do my shopping – besides, I look forward to venturing out. So today I said I’d like to go out and see the market and have a better idea of what life on my own will be like. We planned out our day when all of the sudden Darla remembered that the market is closed on Tuesday! So we went to the equivalent of Wal-Mart. Okay, not really, but by Metalcity standards, I guess it is – I never saw anything even remotely like it in Raxaul. On the way over there our rickshaw driver filled up his tires and as he rode, he kept looking at them. I knew there was a problem. And before you know it, he was pulling over at a roadside makeshift tire repair shop. We all unloaded (Darla, myself and three kids) and he had two holes repaired. Nearly everyone passing us stopped to observe the white folk waiting there. It’s almost amusing.