A hair cut in pictures

"Marc if you screw up my hair you will not live to see the end of it!! You better do a good job!"

He does not look like he was heeding my advice, in fact he looks a little too gleeful for my liking.

The end product. I am very impressed, maybe Marc will give up medicine and become a stylist.

work

in our time in kapsowar our surgeon bill has left 3 times and all 3 times i have been the doc on call while he is gone. the first time he left for the weekend and on the friday night there was a matatu accident, although luckily only 3 people were severely injured. the second time he left was for a wedding a few hours away and on saturday afternoon there was a matatu accident. this one was a disaster and you can read about it here. this weekend he has left to nairobi to pick up his son and i am on call AGAIN! it has been ok thus far, but i am just waiting for the matatu accident.

while i am on call and in a work mind set i thought i should tell you a little about my work at the hospital. yesterday i was rounding in pediatrics when a boy we were treating for pneumonia began cough/retching. he burped, looked a bit surprised and then this thing slithered out of his mouth.

it is a roundworm named ascaris lumbricoides and he likely has a hundred of them writhing around in his intestines and who knows where else. large worm loads can actually cause something called loffler syndrome which produces shortness of breath and a diffuse infiltrate on CXR, both of which he has, but i dont think these evil little nematodes can account for his high fevers so i am keeping him on antibiotics. in fact high temperatures can stimulate the worms to migrate out of the body... the most typical places for them to exit are the mouth and anus, but given their propensity to wriggle through any little hole they encounter ascaris worms have been known to exit through the ear or eye!!! please take a second to imagine that... i think i may have kylie and i dewormed tomorrow.

yesterday in the afternoon i received a new patient on the peds ward who had been struck by lightening. he was in a coma and apparently had been seizing previously. the lightening entered his upper back and exited his right thigh, burning his lungs and intestines and giving his brain a serious shock on the way by.

he is much more awake today and i think he will recover well, although i am sure he will sustain some lasting brain damage.

a little while ago i was working in outpatients when i saw a little 8 year old girl who had been sick for a while, but came in b/c she couldnt walk well. right away i knew something was seriously wrong just looking at her. during my exam i palpated the biggest spleen i had ever felt - it extended down from her ribs on the left to well past her belly button on the right. i also found big rubbery lymph nodes in every area i looked (neck, axilla, groin on both sides). i sent her for a workup at the lab and this is what her peripheral blood smear looked like (i am impressed that our digital camera took this picture through a microscope!)
for those who are not familiar with peripheral blood smear analysis i will tell you that this picture is supposed to be full of little red life boats, with the odd purple round thing in every other field. the lifeboats in this picture have lysed over time, but the little purple things are lymphocytes (infection fighting cells) and when there are this many of them it is called overwhelming lymphocytic leukemia. basically this cheerful little girl's bone marrow is making lymphocytes and nothing else. we sent her to our referral centre for treatment but i havent heard anything back... most people cant even afford to be seen at moi referral, much less embark on a long and expensive treatment course.

on a more personal note, i have had a recent encounter with an insect known as the nairobi fly. these seemingly innocuous members of the beetle family are regular residents in our home and if we dont bug them they dont hurt us. but if you accidentally brush one or crush it they release a toxin that BURNS!! i brushed one off my chest the other night as i was falling asleep. i awoke in time to realize what it was and washed my chest and hand thoroughly, but i touched my face in the process and didnt realize it and now i am left with this:
it actually looks better today now that the huge pustules have burst (and looked even worse the day before i took this picture - you know those pimples that are huge and fat with a micron thin layer of epidermis overtop and are just quivering to burst and release their pus into the world? this looked like that except 1cm by 3cm), but these burns can last months and even create permanent scars, so i think i will be sporting this facial exclamation mark for a while. we actually determined that kylie's rash of 2 months ago was due to the nairobi fly as well, and her lesion is as red as ever, although hers was much larger than mine.

you might be asking yourself how can marc deal with the stresses of the hospital and various skin lesions at home all put together? well, my ring worm has healed quite nicely although my thumb is still scarred, so that's ok, but mostly its because when i come home from a difficult day at work i am greeted by this:




although occasionally when both kylie and i come home from a tough day i am greeted by this:

100 things

(I wrote this a couple of weeks ago during Marc’s crazy weekend on call (see a few posts below with the picture of a leopard) and did not post it, so I am doing so now.)
So tonight Marc is on call and has been gone all day too and I am getting a little bored. I have read a lot today, baked a lot and tonight I am at a loss for things to do. I have not missed the TV at all here in Kapsowar but tonight I could do with a little channel flipping. Instead I will write a list of 100 things about me. I took this picture because I could not find a fun graphic of 100 and then realized that 100 is backwards, oops!



1. I love...
2. reading
3. sleeping in
4. cherry blossoms in spring
5. squeezing blackheads (weird I know, especially because I like ones that are not my own and weird as well that it is #5 on the list of things I love)
6. a chilled bottle of white wine (can you tell I’m deprived here in Kapsowar?)
7. sunny days in Chilliwack
8. documentaries
9. poppy music with wonderful major chords
10. kisses from Niko (and Marc too for that matter)
11. coffee with cream
12. traveling
13. hiking up mountains that aren’t too steep
14. cooking (never thought that one would make the list 5 years ago)
15. a bath before bed
16. gummy bears
17. flannel sheets in winter time
18. dark chocolate
19. Ricki’s (not the restaurant, the clothing store)
20. sitting in Chapter’s with a stack of magazines
21. the smell of a new book
22. hanging out with friends over a beer or glass of wine or even a water for that matter
23. decorating for Christmas
24. new experiences
25. feeling like I accomplished a lot in a day
26. seeing the light in my students eyes when a concept clicks
27. a clean house

28. Things I DISLIKE:
29. cleaning of any sort
30. being bored
31. doing dishes (I love the cooking part just not the cleaning up after)
32. black coffee
33. fingernails scraping on a chalkboard
34. when Niko rolls in smelly fish
35. a sore back
36. the phone (sorry mom)
37. when I am unmotivated
38. driving at night
39. cleaning the counter with a dirty cloth
40. opening cans of cold food that are supposed to be hot

41. The things that REALLY bug me are:
42. GWB
43. fridge smells
44. taking out the garbage
45. LAUNDRY (this is not considered cleaning, I have put it in a separate category because I hate it so much)
46. when you run out of hot water before your bath is over then you are even colder than you were when you started
47. Vancouver traffic
48. The Calgary and Edmonton Sun (Is the Sunshine girl and boy really news people?)
49. when my blowdryer doesn’t work
50. the smell of turpentine (this may be because I just painted my office here and was shut in a small room with just me, the paint and turpentine for two days)
51. when Marc is on call
52. waiting in line
53. bug bites that swell
54. when people tell me that they have a secret about something and then refuse to tell me what it is (my brother is especially annoying at this)
55. when Marc doesn’t answer a question that I asked him because he is thinking about something else (this happens often and aggravates me to no end)
56. many days of rain in Chilliwack

57. Some other interesting (or not) facts...
58. I used to hate the word vehicle (I think because it sounds so harsh) and Marc used to walk around repeating vehicle vehicle vehicle vehicle vehicle just to bother me and then it would get in m head and I would walk around saying vehicle vehicle vehicle vehicle and get very aggravated with myself
59. I used to practice piano for up to two hours a day in junior high and high school
60. I recently read Sophie’s World and loved it. I now consider myself an amateur philosopher. ;)
61. I hate old fashioned Christian romance novels (Sorry Julie!)
62. I used to think my first impressions of people were generally correct but recently have been QUITE wrong about some people so am having to re-think my first impressions of others.
63. My politics have swung from just right of centre to quite left wing in recent years (no I am not a communist yet)
64. I sometimes make up answers to questions that I don’t know that answer to when I am teaching (I am learning my lesson though, I once told a student that Neptune was blue because it was made of water, which I corrected but the next year I taught his brother and he told me that his brother had told him why Neptune was blue . . . ) Oops!
65. I have scoliosis
66. I was co-grad chairman in high school (it was the first and only time there was a virtual tie for the position)
67. I loved high school and thought that life could not get much better. Boy was I wrong!
68. Marc and I can kick some serious ass at Taboo and Guesstures
69. I am not very athletic, although I recently have gotten into running and hiking and am really enjoying them!
70. I kicked a hole in the wall once when my mom told me I had to practice piano (see line # 59 for the reason)
71. I always knew I would be a teacher but always thought I would be a grade one teacher. Then I figured out that I had to teach them how to read. Grade 5/6 is still my favourite grade(s) to teach. They can read, work independently, but they still like their teacher and are willing to learn.
72. Junior high students scare me (even after teaching them for a year, although they do scare me less in some ways but more in others!)
73. I know that a lot of people read our blog from Calgary but cannot for the life of me figure out who you are. (I know who two of you are but not 15!)
74. Marc and I dated in grade ten and then broke up until after high school. I apparently told him we had to “cool it.” I really don’t remember this but he has a very vivid memory of it and cannot stand to watch “The Client” because we watched it that night.
75. Last night I had a dream that I was on “Trading Spaces” with Angelina Jolie. She was my partner and we were re-doing Shelley’s room. We finished early and were talking on the couch and I told her that I thought her son (a baby, I don’t think she has a baby son though) would be a stoner when he grew up. I told her I knew this because of the way his hair was cut. (Where do I get this from?)

76. People often call me...
77. Crazy
78. Easy-going
79. Weird
80. Confident
81. Amusing
82. (the other stuff is behind my back and will not be reported here)

83. Other useless trivia:
84. I cannot finish one task at a time, I must jump from one task to another without finishing the first one. I absolutely cannot start a task and finish it without doing something in between. I have tried many times.
85. I am a horrible filer (Marc once asked me where his very large Cardiology text book was and I couldn’t find it and a couple weeks later we found it in the filing cabinet filing under “Medicine.” I really don’t remember putting it there.)
86. I ALWAYS read in the bathroom. If there are no reading materials provided I go through the bathroom cupboards to find a bottle or tube of something to read.
87. I am not good at dealing with pain
88. I'm the oldest child
89. I have one younger brother
90. I feel like I’m getting old, my ovaries are ripening fast!
91. I feel like there is a lot I still want to do before we have kids but also feel like my time is running out, I was just doing math the other day of how old I will be when I have teenagers . . .
92. I am rarely uncomfortable in social situations but think that sometimes I make others uncomfortable with my loudness
93. I wish Malcolm Gladwell would write another book
94. I used to want to be a nurse but only so I could order Chinese Food at midnight
95. I think about Princess Diana when I drive through the tunnel by the Legislature in Edmonton
96. Once when playing hangman with my class in Edmonton I had quite the teaching blooper. A student gave me the phrase “Mrs. G’s class is the best.” We were almost finished and a student guessed s. I put it up and all the students started laughing. I looked at the board and it said, “Mrs. G’s ass is the best.” Hee hee I would have to agree. ;)
97. I have said ass twice in this post. (now three times, oops!)
98. I used to love roller coasters but now I hate them
99. I have an uncanny ability to remember names and phone numbers.
100. I hope Marc comes home soon because what will I do next? Another 100 things about me might be a little much.

kids!

biking the other day i found some sweet singletrack... not particularly technical, but fast and fun. reminiscent of the coulees except for the views and the crazy kenyan kids. i think i mentioned before that if i am not going fast enough (read uphill) i tend to gather groups of kids behind me. these guys were total goofballs. they actually spoke english fairly well so gilgal (the local primary school) must be pretty good. we had some deep discussions about the fact that the footpath i was following turned into a maize field and that there was no trail into the valley where i wanted to go.

work at the hospital has been pretty tough lately. it has been busy but bearable as our new sudanese interns have arrived (deng and daniel) and i am working with both of them (one on maternity and one on peds) and they help a lot. but there has been a lot of sadness here. that being said, peds and mat are great... i get to play with kids and make them smile and hand new babies to moms and make them smile too.

speaking of playing with kids, this is one of the aspects of our house that i really appreciate. we live right on the edge of a large field that serves as a free range playground for all the local kids. on the way home from a stressful day at the hospital i can usually stop and teach some kids a few tai chi moves (they love it!) or try to lift as many kids off the ground as i can, or drag them around with my feet. a few days ago we came home to organized races going on around the field.

today some kids had set up a makeshift adjustable highjump bar so we did some jumping and then i taught them to limbo. i really love the kids here: they find joy in simple games and in just running and jumping and moving. they even fall for the old pulling off your thumb trick that my dad used to do! afterwards they all take turns pulling on my thumb trying to yank it off again.

before we participated in the highjump kylie and i went for a run. we rounded a corner and spooked a 2 year old boy who had gotten ahead of his family. he immediately hopped over the fence to our right. i assumed he was taking a shortcut home, but when we came nearer i realized that he had hopped over a dropoff and into a thornbush where we was now suspended. i had kylie grab my belt and reached down and extracted the poor kid (sans pants) just in time for his mom to come around the corner. i guess having 2 white giants pound around a bend right at you is pretty scary for a little marakwet kid... sorry!

well, i had better go. kylie is yelling at me to get off the computer.

FINALLY!

I started teaching today at the local girl’s High School after many weeks of hoping I would be able to. In April I met with the headmistress and was told to come back at the end of April to receive my schedule. (The students were off for the month). I came back at the end of April and found out there was now a new headmistress and that she would be coming soon (we hear this a lot here, soon means any time from in the next five minutes, to a few days to never) and that I should come back again. After several more tries I was put in touch with the deputy teacher. After a couple of thwarted meetings with him I finally received a schedule and the books yesterday and starting teaching today.

Let me just start by saying what a different world teaching is in Africa. I had maybe 30-35 girls in the class and in Canada this would be a major problem due to behavioral issues and of course the oh so dreaded marking. (Thankfully here I do not have to mark just teach, who hoo!) There are absolutely no behavior issues to speak of. I taught for a full 80 minutes and never once had to tell a student to “Get up off the floor Sally!” “Turn around Susan.” “What did I just say Brittany?” “I’m up here Jane.” Oh it was bliss. I was only supposed to teach for 40 minutes but I didn’t have a watch and no one came to start another class so I just kept teaching. Whoops! In Canada believe me I would have heard about it if I went 40 minutes over. Another interesting thing here though is that sometimes the teachers just don’t show up. They take an extended chai break in the staff room. There were many days in Edmonton and Chilliwack that I could have used one of these!

I taught them similes and metaphors and then read them some poems with said examples. I let them pound their desk three times when they heard either and did they ever love that. The method of teaching here is mainly by rote memorization so I was worried that my style would be difficult for them to adjust to but I can confidently say that the majority of the class now fully understands what similes and metaphors are.

To keep with the theme of the title, these two are FINALLY gone from Kapsowar. Just kidding, we are actually very sad that they are gone because they are so much fun. This is Hannah and Eli from the UK and we had them over last night for their farewell dinner and played with photobooth. Does this ever get old? I DON’T THINK SO!!

A bit more civilized one.

And last but not least to finish off the theme (why oh why do I feel I have to do this) I am finally posting some pictures of a night a couple weeks ago when we decided to drink some herbal tea we found in the hostel. It made many claims such as fighting off cancer, liver disease and that it would make you feel amazing. Let me just say that if you can choke it down you deserve to live a little longer. It was absolutely hideous! Hannah got these great shots on her camera.

I think this one could win another one of Joanna's ugly picture contests.

Please still be my friend Hannah after posting this picture of you. Just don't tell your friends about our blog. :)

Freshly Shorn

Well an era had ended. Marc has definitely been known for his hair ever since I met him. When I first met him, he was in the process of growing it out. It grew into these beautiful, long shiny flowing locks that many a female would covet. He would often be asked what he did to make his coifs so luxurious and his answer would always be, “Nothing - no blow drying and no product.” (I would love to post a picture here but I don’t think any of them are scanned.)

After Marc went to Europe in 2000 he got the inkling to put dreadlocks in his hair. Sadly he did not go to the salon but asked me to do it. Those of you who know me know that I am not a detail person and I did not really make parts in his hair or separate the dreadlocks well and they ended up looking absolutely awful. They were huge and chunky and full of dandruff. It probably didn’t help that he stopped washing his hair at this point. At our wedding Fraser told the story of Marc coming into the neuroscience office and telling him that he was going to make it snow and shaking all the dandruff out of his hair. UGH!

I told Marc that I would refuse to walk down the aisle with him while he still had the hideous dreadlocks so two days before we got engaged I cut the dreadlocks off. He looked a lot like a British rocker. He then decided to get a spiky cut. I quite liked this cut and being Marc, he made this cut unique as well by having extra long spikes. He was known in Chilliwack by some patients as Dr. Spike and here in Kapsowar many of the nurses call him Dr. Hair.

"Dr. Spike" with our friend Chris, who partly inspired his bald head.

Sadly they can call him that no more. After our pastor shaved his head Marc decided that it would be a great idea.

Mike and his son James who recently shaved their heads for their nephew/cousin who has leukemia.

Me last night enjoying my husbands hair, not thinking at all about bald heads.

And before I really had time to think about it, this was happening.

Before:

During:

My genuine reaction:

After:

Marc may have gone native!To go along with Marc’s new do, Niko got a shave too. We got this e-mail from Julie last week. I must say that he looks MUCH better than we shaved him last summer. Here is the new Niko last week.

Here is the hideous Niko last year.

I guess if this is the only way Marc can connect to Niko right now, he'll take it!

call karma

last weekend i was supposed to be on call, but paul requested a trade so that he could attend the wedding of our nurse anesthetist, hosea (a slick anesthetist BTW - he can put in a spinal as fast as i can throw a dart in a dartboard). at the time i joyfully accepted, although i was a little jealous when i heard that he slept through 2 out of 3 nights. during the week however, it slowly dawned on me that he was not the only doctor going to the wedding. all the docs at the hospital, including our surgeon, where planning to attend. also, our new sudanese interns had not yet arrived and our 2 current medical students had both been on call with paul. this critical concatenation left me running the entire hospital by myself.

being a bit concerned about this realization (and fairly new to doing major surgery on my own) i consulted with the hospital administrator and it was decided that the hospital would hire a kenyan medical officer to help me with the ward rounds and back me up on surgery. this made me feel much better until i found out late friday that the kenyan MO had a conflict and could not make it out. my friend mariciana felt sorry for me and offered to help me with ward rounds on saturday morning before she left for the wedding. ok, i thought... i can do this. this is part of the reason i came to kenya, to be thrust into situations where i am uncomfortable and learn from them.

after a full and stressful week of working on peds and maternity i had a fairly busy friday evening. i managed to make it home for dinner but then got called back to the hospital to deliver a baby or 2. i got to sleep around midnight and woke up to do an emergency c section around 2am. after that there were a few ladies to assess and a newborn to resuscitate, keeping me up until a little after 5.

the next morning i was lucky to have our brand new med student pak-ling from singapore on call with me. med students are not supposed to take call in their first few days here but there was extenuating circumstances. with mariciana and pak-ling helping me with rounds i thought things would go smoothly but i was wrong. after every 2 patients i saw, a nurse from maternity would come and call me out: "there is a lady delivering twins" "we have a new admission who is not progressing" "we have a pregnant lady who is unresponsive" "we have a new baby that isnt breathing" on and on and ON! we have only been here 2 months but i have never seen maternity that busy.

i finished rounds in the early afternoon and ran home to eat lunch, however after my second spoonful of soup i was called back to resuscitate a baby (the third that day). the baby was (and still is) quite sick and 1 hour later i was still bagging when a flustered nurse ran into the labour suite. "are you the doctor on call today?" yeeesss... "for the whole hospital" yee-essss.... "including surgery?" uh huuh... "well then come quick there has been a terrible accident and many people are hurt!" uh oh.

i walked quickly up to the operating theatre (leaving the baby with the nurses) and opened the door to total chaos. our theatre triage area was packed with patients and nurses. there were people on every stretcher and 2 on some, a guy having a seizure on the ground, kids screaming in the corner. chaos. there was blood all over the floor and people with grossly deformed limbs moaning and writhing back and forth. i froze briefly at the sheer volume of patients, not knowing where to start but then sprung into action. my first order of business was to instruct pakling to phone our medical director steve who had luckily stayed home sick from the wedding.

imagine 10-14 wounded patients and 8 staff in this room - occupied in this picture by kylie, our surgeon bill, a new sudanese intern named moses, wilson the OR guru and several unidentified patients

by the time he arrived i had a rough idea of what every patient's problem was and whether they were stable or not. steve was able to take the sickest patient (the guy seizing on the floor) into the theatre to treat him and i was left to deal with the rest. in retrospect i am glad this happened after we have been here for 2 months b/c at least now i know the nurses' names and how to take a basic history in swahili:
"veronica, start an IV here and bolus 500 NS" "mercy, get me a blood pressure" "una ujungu wapi? happa? happa?" "wilson, get to pharmacy and bring me all the IV cloxacillin they have" "una pomoi mzuri?" "no peter, THIS man needs xrays first!" "bwana BWANA! una etoi nani? bwana!"

with the help of a very competent OR staff in about 7 hours we managed to get everyone stabilized, the seizing patient to eldoret, the fractures reduced, the lacerations cleaned and stitched, the labs done and the children calmed. paul had heard about the accident and pinned it back from the wedding in his land cruiser, so he was able to help see some of the patients who had been deemed not as severe and triaged directly to the ward. there had been about 25 people in the matatu which had gone flipping off the road (around here brakes are an optional feature) and all of them where treated in our hospital. miraculously no one died, but several patients still require surgery.

the mens' ward

just as i was washing my hands after stitching up the last patient in the theatre a clinical officer walked in. "i just wanted to warn you that i am bringing you a man who has been attacked by a leopard." ha ha... bad joke buddy... unfortunately: not a joke... actually: quite serious... luckily the leopard just jumped the poor guy and bit his arm and swatted him in the face and did not stick around to maul or eat him, but still a leopard bite can fracture an arm and lay it wide open, and a quick swat can (and did) tear some serious chunks from a face.

after resuscitating and assessing and irrigating and stitching and writing up the admission (which was subsequently lost BTW) i was finally able to go and round on the patients i had stabilized and sent to the wards. at this point i could barely talk straight and was having trouble fathoming being on call for the entire night and all day and all night sunday and then going right back to work on monday morning (if i wasnt still at work). it was at this point that saint mariciana volunteered to take my night call for me so that i could get some sleep to face the rest of the weekend. thank you mariciana! you are the reason i am awake enough to type this story right now.

Cooking in Kapsowar (and more!)

I am quite enjoying cooking while we are living here and have discovered a lot of new recipes. While I do really miss the grocery store (I do in fact have dreams about it and spend some time day dreaming about all the aisles and selections during the day but I digress . . ) there is still a lot of cooking to be done and I am excited about these new finds.

• Homemade Granola! Oh so good. I made it once in Chilliwack but have found an even better recipe here.

7 cups oats
7 cups corn flakes (I just used two and substituted 2 cups of bran,and 3 cups of oats)
3 cups chopped cashews (I used ground nuts, i.e peanuts)
2 tsp cinnamon
2/3 cup brown sugar
¾ cup water
1 cup oil
2/3 cup peanut butter
¾ cup honey (I did not have honey so I put in ¼ cup oil and ½ cup brown sugar)
1 tsp salt
2 tsp vanilla
**I also put in some raisins and last time I put in dried apricots.

Mix oatmeal, corn flakes, nuts and cinnamon. Heat together in a pan, sugar, water, oil, honey, peanut butter and salt. Remove from heat and add vanilla. Stir into dry mixture. Bake at 325 for 50 minutes or until golden brown. Stir every 15 minutes. Cool. Store in airtight container.

Here is my granola just out of the oven. Please ignore my very messy stove top.

Me typing while I admire my granola.
• These banana bran muffins are great and so are these cream puffs. I just make pudding and have that as filling.

• One thing about cooking here is that we have two separate garbages. You have the garbage to burn and the food scraps garbage. Needless to say the food scrap garbage gets really gross and smelly. Last week it was so smelly I couldn’t stand to open it up because I couldn’t hold my breath long enough for the smell to go away, (You can read about my weird relationship with smells here.) so I put the garbage outside. An animal got to it and there was garbage all over our back patio. I told Marc that I would clean it up since I was the one who left it out there (he did offer though). Here is me in my full cleaning gear.
• We have chai tea and a travel mug! (No I did not cook these but they are food related and this is exciting news for Kapsowar!) Kari (an oh so fun nurse from the US who left this week and I really miss her) gave us her travel mug and some chai tea. All tea here is called chai but it is regular tea. She brought some actual chai tea with her and gave me her left overs. Here I am with my tea bag! (While I was taking this picture my milk boiled over on the stove. Oops!)
• I made my first curry the other night. It was coconut chicken curry and it was amazing! I am excited to try more when we get back to Canada. Last night I made a mango salsa with onions, tomatoes, avocadoes, pineapples, mangoes, corn and some spices. It was great wrapped in chapatti. We had some graduates from the local children’s home over for supper and we had a wonderful time. We showed them photo booth on our computer and while they were amused by their warped faces they were also very scared. Here are some pictures from last night.

Here are some extras for you.

This is the lovely Mary who I mentioned in my last post. We were trying to get her to smile in a picture but she wouldn't until Marc and I kept repeating kiberrberr (the kalingen name for ringworm) and she thought the way we said it was so funny she couldn't help laughing.

Here are some of the local kids playing in the freshly mowed grass the other day. Marc went out and played with them and got these great pictures. They really enjoyed looking at their crazy faces after.

Despite my best efforts I cannot relate these last three pictures to cooking but I could tie it all together with the phrase, here's what's been cooking in Kapsowar lately! :)