A stupid month & Mother Tongue Interference

“This is a stupid man” was David’s comment after the man moved away from our vehicle. God, what must he have said? I thought I had caught a little of the conversation in Arabic as he spoke to us through the vehicle’s half-opened window, but I guess I was wrong. I asked David why. I had never heard David insult anyone before; this must have been pretty bad. “Everyone gets sick,” he replied, “August, this is a stupid month”. I smiled realizing the misunderstanding.
I had heard that August was “famine month” because the crops were not ready and the rains made “getting to market” especially difficult. The dead goats we spotted on the side of the road in the morning only reemphasized this. Could the lack of food and the bad health be related? One of our cooks has malaria, probably something she caught from a mosquito coming from her daughter who had malaria before her. Our water carrier has yellow fever. A guy who shares our office has been bed-ridden for the past 4 days, probably with malaria, while everyone else, including myself, complains of headaches and stomach problems. This is a stupid month.
“Mother tongue interference,” what a brilliant expression! I will never say, “that person has an accent” ever again. From now on it’s only “that person has mother tongue interference”; and I can just use either “strong”, “noticeable”, or “slight” to describe the level of “mother tongue interference”. I suggest you do the same, although describing a specific type of mother tongue interference might become tricky, or simply ridiculous. For example, if you were to say, “Have you ever heard Sarkozy speak English? He has a really strong French mother tongue interference”… you might not find it so convenient, while trying to shorten it to simply “French interference” might get you in trouble. I suspect that in true DC fashion, if adopted, it will simply assume the form of MTI.
Speaking of acronyms, UNMIS is a great one around here. It stands for United Nations Mission in Sudan, and is pronounced “yunimis”. Their mission is not to prevent another war, that’s too hard… they just want to be ready for it. So last night, once it was dark, they were getting ready for an eventual evacuation and having one of their new helicopter pilots fly in and out of our airstrip. Some say it was to see if he could find it at night, but considering the fact that he was taking off from it, it would take an idiot not to be able to find it, especially with the beastly spotlight shining from the front of the chopper. I think at one point he might have even made it over the hills to the west of the airstrip and was still able to find the airstrip. They really chose the right guy for the job! Can’t wait for an evacuation during a normal evening with winds like the ones that make roofs collapse and lightning like the one that struck and burned homes the other night. One thing’s for sure, under normal conditions our new chopper pilot definitely wouldn’t be rescuing us since our compound is on the other side of river, which would probably be full and impassable, and anyway, how would they contact us to warn us? All these thoughts came to me last night as I heard the helicopter come in for it’s 4th or 5th test-landing… but suddenly I heard a familiar sound.
Every night after I turn off my computer I hear a sound similar to that of a nail scratching at my bag. The first night it was a mystery, what could it be? A frog like the one that slept in one of the other rooms? No, frogs make different sounds. A snake maybe, like the one we spotted in a tree and proceeded to kill yesterday? Perhaps. A mouse, even more likely, especially considering the baby mouse I’d seen outside my room last week. But there isn’t any food around, what would it be doing? Did I leave crumbs of something in my bag? I tried to spot the creature by shining my computer on it from my bed, but it was only last night that I finally spotted my friend the lizard, not the usual gecko, crawling on my bag. What was it after? Of course, my ant cemetery! By killing ants I was attracting this lizard, who has proven to be a superb cleaning service, leaving my room’s floor spic and span by the time I reach out to grab my alarm in the morning.