Wednesday, July 27, 2005 Man, it's getting annoying now. The water at my place has been out for about 4 days or so, I really wish it would come back. Now, i'm not thirsting to death or anything; my family has a cistern that has plenty of supply. It's actually a pretty neat little system. Rather than having rain gutters like in the states that just keep water controlled, these keep the water controlled and into the cistern. The entire house is our rain collector. Of course it's somewhat dirty and bizzare water, so PC has given me a filter and stove so I can filter and boil it. Haven't been sick because of the water yet! The one crppy thing about the cistern water is that since my family doesn't boil, they do bleach the cistern water. That means that even after filtering and boiling my water might taste like pool water... that's kind of crappy.

Since I'm already whining, let me whine about the ridiculous french keyboard layout!!! Gah, I waS at the cyber yesterday, and I was locked out of pretty much everything, so the first 20 minutes I was typing like 15 words a minute. It's not that it's completely different, but weird stuff is moved. For example the q and a keys are swapped, the m is on the home row, and they have a freakin' mu (the greek letter) where the ' ought to be. Now I'm not quite fluent in french yet, but I for one don't know a single word in French with a mu!! The story does have a happy ending though, there is a keyboard shortcut to change the keyboard layout which I looked up after the 20 minutes of frustration. Yay google.

One more point of annoyance is "The Yovo Song". Actually for me it isn't too bad yet, but I can see the point a few months down the line... Essentially people here aren't quite used to seeing us whiteys, so the children have a special song to commemorate the event.

Yovo, Yovo, bon soir
Ca va bien? Merci!

There are other verses, but none of the kids here seem to know them. In any case, it translates roughly to "Whitey, whitey, good afternoon! Are things going well, thank you!". While it would sound persecuting in the states, here it isn't. It's just a thing they do. My one source of amusement in the entire affair is that really small children don't know hardly any of the words, so they crack me up. Usually they degenerate into the proper rhythm with all the words replaced by "yovo". It's extra annoying when older people do it. Although they usually seem to be content to just say "yovo", hiss, or make kissing noises (hissing and kissing are ways of attracting attention here, not at all the same connotation in the states). Some of them are funny though, there is one guy that when he sees me says "Hello White American friend!". All in all it's a minor point of annoyanceMan, it's getting annoying now. The water at my place has been out for about 4 days or so, I really wish it would come back. Now, i'm not thirsting to death or anything; my family has a cistern that has plenty of supply. It's actually a pretty neat little system. Rather than having rain gutters like in the states that just keep water controlled, these keep the water controlled and into the cistern. The entire house is our rain collector. Of course it's somewhat dirty and bizzare water, so PC has given me a filter and stove so I can filter and boil it. Haven't been sick because of the water yet! The one crppy thing about the cistern water is that since my family doesn't boil, they do bleach the cistern water. That means that even after filtering and boiling my water might taste like pool water... that's kind of crappy.

Since I'm already whining, let me whine about the ridiculous french keyboard layout!!! Gah, I waS at the cyber yesterday, and I was locked out of pretty much everything, so the first 20 minutes I was typing like 15 words a minute. It's not that it's completely different, but weird stuff is moved. For example the q and a keys are swapped, the m is on the home row, and they have a freakin' mu (the greek letter) where the ' ought to be. Now I'm not quite fluent in french yet, but I for one don't know a single word in French with a mu!! The story does have a happy ending though, there is a keyboard shortcut to change the keyboard layout which I looked up after the 20 minutes of frustration. Yay google.

One more point of annoyance is "The Yovo Song". Actually for me it isn't too bad yet, but I can see the point a few months down the line... Essentially people here aren't quite used to seeing us whiteys, so the children have a special song to commemorate the event.

Yovo, Yovo, bon soir
Ca va bien? Merci!

There are other verses, but none of the kids here seem to know them. In any case, it translates roughly to "Whitey, whitey, good afternoon! Are things going well, thank you!". While it would sound persecuting in the states, here it isn't. It's just a thing they do. My one source of amusement in the entire affair is that really small children don't know hardly any of the words, so they crack me up. Usually they degenerate into the proper rhythm with all the words replaced by "yovo". It's extra annoying when older people do it. Although they usually seem to be content to just say "yovo", hiss, or make kissing noises (hissing and kissing are ways of attracting attention here, not at all the same connotation in the states). Some of them are funny though, there is one guy that when he sees me says "Hello White American friend!". All in all it's a minor point of annoyance. I do wish my water would come back though.