Having a haircut and then some...

I have had some traumatic experiences when it comes to having my hair done. I remember a perm that my mum set at home, leaving me walk this earth like a cloned sheep. We also did some hair colouring at home that turned out dramatic.

I still cringe when I see the photos that were taken on Schiphol, when we arrived back in The Netherlands after 4 years in Australia. From the back you can't tell my brother and me apart (and no, my brother did not have long hair!).

Living abroad makes going to the hairdressers a leap of faith. It is a lot harder to explain what you want exactly if it is not in your mother tongue or even in your second language. When we lived in Nigeria, on a small Island, I only went to the hairdressers on our home leaves in The Netherlands. The Nigerians have such different hair from my thin, straight, straw, that I didn't trust that they could turn it into anything representational.

In Libya it was hard to find hairdressers at all, since the women should not be seen from the street without their head scarf. We went on home leave 3 times a year, so I coloured it myself and had my haircuts in NL. Men on the other hand could go to the hairdressers in Libya for a cut and a shave and all sorts of skin treatments and massages too, on almost every street corner. One of the first outings my father had in Tripoli, was to the hairdressers with Adriaan and the boys.

Here in India I do go to the hairdressers regularly. Not just to have my hair cut and coloured, but also to have my eyebrows treaded and coloured and to have a manicure and pedicure. ALL AT THE SAME TIME!!!
The first time I saw an Indian lady at the hair dressers with 4 people working on her at the same time, I thought it looked ridiculous and not very relaxing. I could not see myself like that. I couldn't even remember the last mani/pedi I had had. But now, just a few months later, I have turned into a proper Indian lady:

Look at me acting the real upper class Indian lady the typical expat wife

We went with 5 women and we had so much fun! Lunch before and coffee after, what a tough life we have.

PS

My hair turned out nicely! ;-)

Maybe, just maybe, it will all turn out well.....

Adriaan arrived back home Wednesday night, after 2.5 weeks in Australia. He visited our friends in Perth and worked in Karratha, the town we lived in for 4 years and where our eldest two were born and no.3 was conceived, so a place with fond memories. The first few days he kept sending me texts with updates on our old neighbourhood, the shops and restaurants. It made me home sick for Karratha again. It was our first posting and we had such a great time there, that it took me a long time to get used to living in NL again after that. So he came home with stories, photos and gifts, sooooooo nice.

It has been over a month ago now that we found out (by coincidence) that our belongings might still be in Tripoli. We have been in contact with the company to ask for clarification and got the promise they would look into it, but that was followed by silence.
Last night we decided we would not wait any longer and called the moving company to ask if they knew anything about the whereabouts of our goods. They called us back within the hour and told us they had just been informed our things are indeed still in Tripoli.... Good news is that the container will leave this Sunday, Inshallah, and should be in NL in about 3 weeks. So with another week or so for customs etc, it might just be possible to get it all delivered while we are in NL for the summer holidays. They told A there are 210 boxes with our name on it (but A said later it could be 110 too). Sounds great, but let's wait and see before we celebrate.

Looks like this emotional roller coaster is slowly coming to a halt, let's just hope the photo with the scared faces, that always gets made while plummeting down, will be one we can laugh about when we finally get out...

How to explain this?

One of the positive things about having to take bed rest (besides making my back feel a whole lot better) is that I read a lot. At one point I had read all the books I have, all but one. That one came with a bunch of Dutch books that were on sale for a local charity. It is called 'De Waterspuwer' in Dutch, but the original title is 'The Gargoyle'. It is a book from 2008, written by Andrew Davidson. According to the cover it is "The International Sensation" and the blurb promises a good read, but as the saying goes: never judge a book by it's cover!

I started reading it while waiting at the hospital for one of my daily physiotherapy sessions and within a few pages I felt like throwing it in the bin. I didn't like the style, I didn't like the subject and I disliked the main character too. I closed it and stared out the window and then opened it again and continued reading. I had several of those episodes over the next few days, but somehow I continued reading. Why?
I finished it in four days and was sorry it ended. Why?

I can't tell you why, I can't even tell you exactly what the book is about...

The main character, the narrator, is a man. He is a, drug using, porn star, who gets severely burned in a car crash (and looses he penis, Ha). In the hospital he gets a visit from a schizophrenic and manic, woman from the psych ward. They become friends and she claims she has known him for a long time, since she was a nun in the Middle Ages in fact, and starts telling him stories of her life and his (he gets burned in every one of his lives).

There is not a lot that makes sense about the book and yet there is a lot that does... To me the book is about as schizophrenic and manic as the female character. There are some beautiful stories and some horrible ones. I never got to like any of the characters in the book and usualy the characters are what makes me want to read on.

I have read the whole book (all 475 pages of it) and I haven't thrown it in the bin when I finished  it, it is back in the book case. Why?

Somehow it has affected me and made me want to continue to read it, that has to be a compliment for the author. It can't have been that bad and it wasn't really, but I didn't feel at any moment like I liked reading it...

How to explain that?

The Gargoyle: the mesmerizing story of one man’s descent into personal hell and his quest for salvation.
On a dark road in the middle of the night, a car plunges into a ravine. The driver survives the crash, but his injuriesconfine him to a hospital burn unit. There the mysterious Marianne Engel, a sculptress of grotesques, enters his life. She insists they were lovers in medieval Germany, when he was a mercenary and she was a scribe in the monastery of Engelthal. As she spins the story of their past lives together, the man’s disbelief falters; soon, even the impossible can no longer be dismissed.

Not on the couch...

This week has been quite boring so far, not because nothing happens, but because I have spent most of it flat on my back in bed.
I finally saw a doctor for my back pain last week (it has been bothering me for at least the last 6 months) and a CT scan showed a disc bulge. So physiotherapy and bed rest is what should cure it and I have to admit the pain is a lot less. Hardest thing so far is sitting on a dining room chair with a straight back and not being allowed to sit or lay on the couch. Sitting up all straight and proper is hard work.

It has been raining a lot the last few days. Thunderstorms and lightning. Dark afternoons and washing that doesn't dry.... Can't wait for the Monsoon Season with just the occasional shower ;-)

Incredible Immunisation

Yesterday was my last day volunteering at the summer school in the slum. It was warm and chaotic as always (takes a lot of energy from someone like me that likes structure and rules and obedient children). At the end of the morning there suddenly were a lot of children crying. I asked what was wrong and got some incoherent story about pain and needing an injection and not being able to take part in the activities anymore. So I went outside to check what was going on. I asked one of the women that work there and she told me the children were being immunised.

Turned out that just outside the gate of the unit two women were injecting children. The kids were screaming and crying and it was total chaos (yes, I know, to me it looks like a chaos pretty quick, but this was chaos for real). The women that did the immunisation just wore sarees, no white nurses coats, no name tags or anything to identify them by, so it was hard to tell who was part of the 'health group' and who wasn't. Thank God for India's hierarchy, because there is always an Important Man with the compulsory Important Man Moustache and he soon picked up on our horror.

Alice and I asked what was going on and if he could proof that he indeed was part of an official health group and allowed to do this. We felt that the children were in our care at the summer school and they couldn't just take them out without letting us know and having their parents present.
The IM had no paperwork and no ID tag, but he assured us it was all fine, we were welcome to come and check out his office. We told him he should carry proof with him on occasions like this.

We asked him who was keeping records? He didn't understand. Surely you keep records of the children that are being immunised? Surely you have the parents permission to stick a needle in their child? How else would you know who to immunise for what?
One of the things that I had checked straight away was the needles they used and to my great relieve they used clean needles.

I am all for immunisation and I also think it is great that children that live in a slum get free vaccinations, God knows they need it, BUT is has to be properly recorded and done under better conditions. The children need a record to keep track of what they have been immunised for and when. The whole circus should be done in a health centre or a community hall, not on a dirty table that (literally!!!) stands on top of a garbage belt.
The parents that were there were happy with 'the injection', but didn't really know what it was for.

I may be a bit too sceptical, but how do you know for sure that the fluids that are injected are of good quality? That they are not out of date or overheated? How do you know for sure this child has not had any side effects from previous vaccinations or has allergies to certain components of the vaccine?

I am not sure what to make of it all, but it sure made me think about how lucky we are with access to proper health care, not having to rely on well intended but badly organised visits from an immunisation team.

TCK's

It happens so often that I read somebody's blog en think: I should have/could have written this. That happened to me this morning when I read 'Change the Tone' on  http://shamozal.blogspot.in/  and watched the video she posted. The blog entry is about children from expats, so called Third Culture Kids. My kids are TCK's and I see a lot of positives and some negatives about it.

In the video they ask the TCK's where their home is and none of them can answer it without thinking and explaining why they are not sure. Maybe it is a bit easier for my boys, since we all have the same nationality and have a house in The Netherlands. It is the place where our relatives live and where we flee to when things go wrong in our host country. But the boys have only really lived in NL for 3 years, when they were still quite young, most of the memories that they have of their time spent 'at home' is from holidays, not about real life with school and homework.
Ruben and Simon would love to move back to NL, while Joshua wants an expat life once he has graduated.

The one thing I have always considered a big bonus for TCK's, is the fact that they grow up with children from so many different nationalities and religions and such different back grounds. In Libya there were over 60 different nationalities in their school, here in India about 40 I think. We have lived in Christian, Muslim and Hindu countries and experienced a variety of political systems and degrees of corruption. It has influenced our lives and our way of thinking, both positive and negative. We have been foreigners and minorities for most of my children's lives and that changes your perspective too.
I hope and think it has made us more open minded and tolerant.

Moving every 4 years (or rather 3.5 years with our track record of being evacuated), can make or break your relationship and your family. We have seen several marriages end in divorce or families move back to their base counties, because either the spouse or a child couldn't cope with life abroad.
Adriaan and I are still going strong, TG. Moving to new places also makes your family the only constant factor in your life. It has made our unit stronger.
We love how this life gives us an opportunity to get to know many countries and cultures up close. But we also realise this is our choice and not necessarily the way of life our boys would have chosen. The boys are getting a great education, but they have been 'the new boys in class' a bit too often for their liking (3 school in 6 months last year was a bit much) and they make friends for a few years, not for life as they might have done if we had lived in NL.
I am sure that if we had lived in NL, Joshua would have had better opportunities to make the most of his swimming talent and could have been on a proper swim team. That is one regret I have, that he has missed out on that.

Life is all about choices, not always made by yourself, and it is only in hind sight that you can tell whether you have made the right choices or not. I hope and pray we did!

My TCK's are growing into wonderful teenagers at the moment and I hope they will become well balanced TCAdults one day, that can look back on a very diverse and a bit chaotic time growing up. If not, I hope we can afford to pay for therapy ;-)

Summer School

During April and May it is summer holiday for the government schools in India. Two months off in the warmest time of the year. A lot of activities are organised for the children (like the swim camp that ended prematurely for some...) and the volunteers from ANU organise a summer school for the children in the slum. Every Tuesday and Thursday we entertain 50 children in the morning and 50 in the afternoon. The first camp of 2 weeks ended last Thursday, so today a new group started.

When I arrived this morning at 9:30, most of them were already there. We start at 10:00hr and most Indians are not very good at coming on time, so this is a good indication of how much the children look forward to the day.

Waiting for things to come

After roll call and name tags the session starts with a song, explaining the rules and showing the activities for the day.
Today the children made juggling balls from balloons and they coloured mandalas. Each activity takes an hour and there is snack time in between. Getting the kids organised always takes some effort from us 'Aunties', but once they start they take it very seriously and work very concentrated. At the end of the session they can take their art work home to show to their parents.

What will we do today?

Colouring Mandalas

Little Mounesh ate 5 cookies and 2 bananas and drank 3 cups of lemonade during snack time!

At the end of a warm and smelly day, the children go home happy and so do the volunteers, tired and in need of a shower.

 "Auntie, take picture and show me!"