Venturing out

We worked from home today, though that meant a trip out into the town as well. I was actually kind of ill when I got up this morning; achy muscles, headache, sore throat, extreme fatigue. I thought I might be sick with a flu or something. Then, I asked Rob if it might possibly be dehydration and he said that, yes, it might be. So, I started tossing back water or, more precisely, an electrolyte drink (Alacer C Electro Mix). Within a few hours of keeping on top of it, I started feeling better. Still, I did chair work this morning. One of my tasks was to put all the local emergency numbers into our cellphones, which took longer than I expected. Then I went through some local papers, clipped the interesting bits and trashed the rest. One of my favorite clippings was a story from the International Express (Africa Edition), a British paper for overseas distribution. It was “Cameron backs down over Teen Army plan”. Basically, some British government person wanted to implement compulsory community service (including rudimentary military training) for all 16 year-olds. The plan was called the National Citizen Scheme. In the end, he decided to make the scheme optional, saying that not all teenagers would allow themselves to be so compelled to comply. Here's my favorite part of the article: “The watered-down proposals disappointed campaigners who believe a spell of compulsory national service-style training would combat yobbery and fecklessness.” [emphasis added by me] Wow. I had no idea that Britain was dealing with such a rash of feckless yobbers.

We walked downtown for lunch and to mail some postcards. The bank lineups were huge today, at every bank and ATM we passed. It's that end-of-month rush that the Megahans warned us about.

We go back around 2:30PM and had an instant guest: Oteng, one of Marya's unofficial foster children. He's about 15 years old and we had run into him while we were downtown today, greeted him. He came in and I served him properly, I think (juice, oranges and Cadbury Fingers). We chatted for a while, then kind of read, each of us reading and doing different things. I realized that I didn't know how a local visit is supposed to “play out”. His sister came looking for him after a while so that's how our visit ended. That's actually our second visit since we've been here. I should probably get a greater variety of cookies in case someone else stops by.

I managed to get some paperwork done later in the afternoon (receipts gone through) but we're actually taking it fairly easy today as tomorrow should be pretty hectic: Domboshaba festival!