Progress

Under a full moon sky listening to the sound of the crickets and children playing late on a Friday evening, I realize that another week has passed. Another week of settling in.

We’re now in the stage of furnishing the house and buying practical stuff. I’ve bought a huge refrigerator. It seemed smaller in the shop. No problem, because I’ll need it. Much space is already reserved for the bottles of water that need to be cooled all the time. More space is taken by the vegetables and fruits which come in big quantities.

It is a model with a separate freezer compartment on top, so 2 in 1. This is needed to keep the meat, oversupply of bread, dried figs, dried raisins and we will start to add vegetables for the winter.

This is a country where vegetables and fruits are extremely cheap and available when in season. Some vegetables, like tomatoes, are available when not in season, but much more expensive as grown in hothouses in the coastal area.

Another purchase this week is the gas fire, with oven. Still need to buy a bottle of gas.

And then on the practical stuff side, the main purchase was a iron board. The women here iron on a blanket on the ground. I tried it once. It is very hard and strenuous. Not good for the back and knees.

Little by little the house begins to come to life. It feels good.

Yesterday evening, we had dinner with friends in Tareb, the big village 3 km from Kafaramme. When returning home we found the soukh full of people. After 12 days of Ramadan, the upcoming Eid (el-Fitr) is on everybody’s mind. This is the time of year to buy new clothes and stuff for the house.

There are 2 Eids every year, 1 after Ramadan and 1 about 3 months later. Both are happening in the same way. Everybody visits everybody. There is lots of food and sweets served and everybody has good intentions. The children are even more spoilt, as they receive money from relatives which they immediately spend on chips, cola and fire crackers. Except for some, like 6 year old Ahmed. He is saving. Until now I could not find out for what. He probably does not know yet.

He is an exception in the family, as his parents and his sister and brother, spend everything at once. He also claims to be fasting every day. Every time I ask him what he had for dinner, he says “nothing”, although he just as well may have eaten grilled chicken. A very delicate and sensible boy, he is. His grandfather claims this is due to the Kurdish influence on the mother’s side of the family. She had a Kurdish grandmother.

I hope to be collecting a lot of Zbieb, dried raisins, next week and to be working hard. We want to lay the tiles at the entrance downstairs and build a small wall (80 cm high) all around the roof. The roof is a big surface that we haven’t been using. That should change.