Belgian community

The weather is lovely over here. Hot during the day with short thunderstorms at the end of the day and cooler nights. This is climate wise one of the most comfortable periods during the year.

As I forecasted the white chicken is broody. I wonder whether that’ll come to a good end, because she is really stupid. For the first eggs, she did not stay on the nest very well and I took them after a few days because they were cold. Now she is much more careful, only leaving the nest to get some food and drink.
I left 3 eggs of the other chicken with her, but she did not accept them. Worse even, she ate them. Yesterday, she was taking care of 3 eggs. Must be her own. We will see in a few weeks what’ll come of it. I am told it takes 20 days for chicken eggs to hatch.

I’m still resting a lot and taking vitamin supplements. It leaves me time to take some initiatives like making mayonnaise which I did for the first time in my life. And I succeeded.

As the tent in the garden – providing shade or serving as shelter for rain and wind - was almost blown away during one of the thunderstorms, I decided to fix it myself in a more intelligent way than was done before. One 6 month pregnant woman can do better than 3 strong men. Even Mohamed had to recognize that. I would like him to plant a vine at the foot of it. One of the many ideas still to be realized.

Am spending a lot of time with the campers and start making plans to buy some baby stuff. We will get presents, but I do need a starter kit. It seems that one of the women in the street has a shop in her house where I could find most of the things, so I will have to visit soon to see what she has to offer.

My new Belgian passport has arrived at the consulate. I am now officially an Aleppo resident. And the Belgian embassy in Damascus has been providing clarification on procedures to get a Belgian passport for the baby which seems to be fairly simple. They are most helpful and efficient.

My contact at the Aleppo Consulate is a young woman from Aleppo who speaks perfectly Flemish. Her mother was Belgian and as a child she spent her summer holidays at the Belgian coast.

She told me there are 8 Belgian women in the Aleppo region. 3 of them work for the ICARDA project which is a prestigious international project for agricultural research in the dry areas. 5 of them are married to a Syrian.

So, I have to go down to feed the chicken. They must be hungry by now. Do not know whether the majority is french speaking or flemish.