Pyervi blin

There's a Russian saying I hold dear, because it's true: "The first pancake is always a flop."

But the 3rd pancake, he is smart and nice and good looking!

Office Olympics

Youssou N'Dour

Youssou is one of the malaria spokespeople for Roll Back Malaria. Lisa his manager in the states (sort of) got us tickets for the Kennedy Center show last night. We had nice drinks and food at Dish beforehand, where I mistakenly ordered my salmon medium (OOPS!) but it was still pretty good. As always UNF and BASF picked up most of the bill.


Jumana and I went right up front and danced. Fun. I saw Jamaica from PSI (ex PC-Guinea) in the other aisle. Every other white person was an RPCV. This pic of Jumana is not nearly as scary in large format as it was on my camera, when she looked straight out of "Lost Boys".

Comp and the weekend

The climbing comp yesterday was fun except for the part where I was trying this rad move involving a low pocket undercling with my left ring and middle fingers, pushing down with my feet so I could get up to a nice flat sloper with my right, and something popped in my left wrist. It was pretty much curtains after that. Not too much pain, but a sense of weakness in the wrist, and pain all up the forearm to the ring finger. I climbed a few more things but couldn't finish any of them, though I did enjoy the slab route. Sean did really really well, sending a bunch of 11's, and ended up fourth overall, only missing the finals by - well, ok, a lot, but only because VJ, Ben, and the kid from Loyala are crazy good and can onsight 5.12. That means climb it the first time without falling or having any prior tips on how to do it.

So it's rest for me and the wrist and perhaps a trip to urgent care on Wednesday before mom comes into town just to make sure it doesn't need to be immobilized or something. I tweaked it again opening the car door (an undercling, technically) and it aches. I guess going to Mali for three weeks and not climbing through the holidays will be the best thing for it, but it bums me out.

A sort of frustrating continuation to some other things, including boots getting stolen (or misdelivered) off our porch, the treadmill not having its startup key, and not being able to install Windows on my mac this weekend so that I can use our new trial mapping software. Nothing major really. And offset by lots of good hanging out time all weekend and my free Prana jeans I won in the comp raffle. They are size L, but fit pretty good, and hopefully I can shrink them a bit in the wash.

That familiar sense of panic

I am going back to Mali Dec 5-20th for the integrated measles/malaria/polio/Vitamin A campaign so that I can babysit journalists, translate, and do logistics. I'm excited but now I only have two weeks to do this database thing which makes me want to shoot myself. Plus Office Olympics (November 27th) and the Friends of Gabon Mayumba ITN distribution. Yiiiiikes.

Panic Free Weekend

I made a potful of Hazan's ragu this friday. Here's the recipe so that I don't have to keep calling up my mom every time I want to make it!

Melt
8 tbl yellow onion
8 tbl diced carrot
in 12 tbl olive oil and a stick of butter

crumble in
3 lbs chuck just until loses its red color, and 4 tsp kosher salt.

add a bottle of white wine, cook until evaporated.
Then add 2 cups milk (whole is better, duh) and cook until evaporated. All this over medium-high heat.

Oops I forgot the 1/2 tsp nutmeg. Oh well.

Add 3 large cans (~8 cups) San Marzano tomatoes. Chop 'em up in the can first.

Cook uncovered for 5 hours or as long as possible. Sauce should not be too liquidy at the end. Stir occasionally to avoid burning.

Sean's Dream

I went climbing with Sean yesterday and got some beers after. Here's the dream he had last night:

I had an interesting dream last night. The four of us were out driving
in the country somewhere, past lots of corn fields and we passed this
makeshift dirt dragstrip. Someone was racing two white limousines on
the dragstrip, so when we passed it a second time we stopped to take a
look. This older guy owned the place and he liked all things fast.
Hannah seemed to know him. We went inside his house where bryan found a
rolling desk chair, a propane tank, and a stack of cash. He got this
grreat idea that he could sit in the desk chair with the propane tank,
open it up and light it, and shoot down the dragstrip. He liked this
idea so much, he was going to race one of the limos and bet his new
found wad of cash. So we looked around for a helmet he could wear. We
found a stash of about 20 dusty old peugeot bikes. I got excited,
thinking i could buy one off the guy, but Hannah assured me that he
loved them all an would never sell them. So we found bryan a bike
helmet, an old style leather one, and he headed out to race. Everyone
was waiting for him, including a guy riding around on a red track bike.
Unfortunately, i woke up before the race went down, but bryan was so
sure he was going to win, it was hardly worth watching anyway.

We made it out

Sorry for not posting, not like any of you actually read this to make sure I'm still alive :)

I'm in Philly, in a hotel room next to the bank of elevators, listening to sessions I cannot concentrate on, signing myself up for website design for 80 hours a week for the next two months, and hoping the fog in my head will not lead to malaria. Jet lag is getting better and we appear to be moving forward with the project but I'm just so tired, and Gates is taking over the malaria world without putting any more money into it. Kevin describes it as 'the predator', running through the leaves and bushes around us, but we can't see it.

Okie dokie

On our flip chart in a conference room where no one is discussing work and everyone is checking their email, we have:

Dakar Flight

8:30 leave hotel
9am formalities/weigh-in
11:00am departure

It's not much, but it's a lot. Now if we can just get the Ghanaians, our director, and the Camerounaise to Ouaga by road we will have taken care of everybody.

I think I've missed my calling as a logistics expert.

Low blood sugar

Eating always makes you feel better.

We have everyone's tickets changed and distributed - I am not sure if our first flight is 9:30am Saturday or 16:40 Saturday, or how long it will take to fly to Dakar with this little plane, but we will figure it out tomorrow. We had a nice chat before dinner with Charles the airplane mechanic who reassured us that Soviet planes last a long time, so hopefully we will be ok. Then off to the National Museum, which has a FANTASTIC sculpture outside of a minibus filled with people and piled high with metal trunks, plastic mama bags, goats, and lanterns and salidagas. The passengers are made of paper maché and it's covered in stickers like "BinLadens" and presidential campaign photos. The ouijala was excellent as always (Museum has the best Malian food of any restaurant) and it was very nice to see my old friends Maiga and Tandina from the other CCP projects, who I met when I was working here for PSI. It was a little CCP family dinner with our director who got stuck with a pretty large bogolan. Fortunately she's not on our flight so I don't have to worry about the weight!

It's ten to 9:00 and I'm going to sleep. Hopefully Charles will tell me how great the Appaloosa Halloween party was tomorrow.

Charter Flight

We have chartered a 16 seat plane to Dakar on Saturday. If everyone's luggage is under 25 kilos we won't crash.

I'm getting pretty close to not being able to function anymore. At this point it's almost not worth going to Philly since I"ll be broken there anyway and unable to really participate, though I guess we'll see if I can find some strength somewhere.

Two if by land, one if by charter plane

Options:

Charter a small plane to take the 6 of us to Dakar saturday morning; see if we can get on one of the many flights out of Dakar home.

Drive 12 hours to Ouaga where Air France says they can maybe put us on the one AF flight from Ouaga to Paris. We'd have to get visas today.

Stay until the 12th of November because the backup from the strike and the airport closing mean a lot of people need to get out. I love Bamako, but not that much.