The night is long and I am far from home, lead thou me on

When you cannot sleep it is forced reflection situation. One starts to think about loved ones here and passed.

The office in our apartment faces an abandoned construction site. It was "designed" to be a hotel with commercial spaces on the first floor. Only two times has there been any humans on the site but at 3:45 AM I see a guard walking around the first floor with a torch. I wonder if there are more or if this is a solo assignment.

There is another "hotel" being built out our "river" view side that has had work ongoing every day since our arrival. Our view is mostly of the back side (away from the street and river). The past few days two men have been putting a coat of "stucco" on the facia, each room has an air-conditioner installed and a swimming pool in the courtyard looks like it is ready to be filled, nice Caribbean blue, can't tell if it is tiled or painted that color. This is only one of many "hotels" being built here. It is uncertain who will occupy any of the rooms. I think it is a reaction by this "President" because a National Geographic article was very critical of the country and the lack of amenities for travelers so now there must be five or six of these thousand-room mega buildings going up along the two to three mile boulevard. I believe that this corrupt leader can skim more of the cream from these big projects than he can a "chapel" project. The government "red tape" makes a simple chapel project a twelve-year marathon. The chapels being built, five are now in process, are using a "pod" configuration so they can be built under the residential codes instead of commercial. Instead of one large chapel there are three or four pods, one a large open building to be used as a chapel with two or three buildings for classrooms, kitchen, etc. It isn't easy either but they have fewer "agencies" with their hands out (or is it under the table) trying to get a little more "grease" for the "President's" Swiss bank account.

The day begins in an hour and I don't know how I will fare with so little sleep in the tank.

I am intrigued by a fig tree that can be seen from apartment. In the six months we have been here this tree has twice lost all of its leaves and within days, new leaves are breaking out all over the tree. It is so out of the cycle of plant growth we are used to so it is quite a sight to see this tree one day dropping all of its leaves and within a week a new "crop" of leaves. 

 

There are two seasons - wet and dry. We are in the wet period. it is not a rain-forest ecology because much of the growing things in the beds around our deck are also dying mainly because there isn't enough moisture in the soil. The "soil" is mostly sand which doesn't help things grow. Produce like tomatoes, cabbage, potatoes, courgette (a lightbulb-shaped zucchini like vegetable), bananas and onions are available all the time. We spent $6 for a head of Belgian butter lettuce yesterday and you say - wow, what are we thinking - but it looks so good. We have discovered that "good" meat is available at a market called Extra. After eating canned tuna and eggs as our main sources of protein we decided to give their meat a try. We have tried meat from other stores and were not too pleased with the results but this time the meat is good. We bought some "stew" beef, a hunk of bone with some meat around it, and made beef stew for Sunday dinner, a great dish.

Mark loves marzipan and while shopping in a store called Hasson et Frères he found a 250g block of the genuine thing for $3.50, that may sound expensive but it is about the same as $6.50 a pound and it is delicious. Other finds; hot fudge sauce for $.50 a bottle also high quality, a French baguette as good as anything in Paris, and Mark's favorite pastry called a religieuse (named after a chubby nun) which he labeled even better than the ones he had while serving his first mission in France and a great baguette to boot. The bakery is called Eric Kayser and can be found in many large cities around the world. We left the restaurant after eating a religieuse and a molten chocolate torte suffering from chocolate overdose; next time we will restrict ourselves to only one dessert divided.

We have two favorite produce sources where we find excellent tomatoes, apples, cabbage, onions, cucumbers, potatoes, sweet potatoes (white flesh), carrots, bananas. There is a store called City Market where Mark's friend Amer is a manager.

Mark and Amer on the day he gave us a pickup load of food for the orphanage

Amer is from Lebanon and went to  Boston College. He has developed a promotional department where he puts items that are near expiration at deeply discounted prices. We have found many luxury products there like Nutella, Ocean Spray cranberry juice, Crisco sticks, honey, Betty Crocker cake mixes, Lay’s Potato chips, Raisin Bran cereal, Heinz ketchup, pickled onions, Ortega salsa, Orangina, canned chow mein noodles, and the list could go on. It gives us more choices of what we can eat and how we prepare it and brings in a little bit of home.

We have heard disturbing accounts of bad choices among the members. One person was caught selling fuel used to power the generator. Another was a sister going into the expats houses and stealing money from purses. One Canadian sister whose husband is here on assignment told us that they cannot stock cleaning supplies in the chapels. After supplies arrive the custodian closet is empty by the next week. Hymnbooks have to be gathered by deacons as the congregation leaves or they would disappear as quickly. Each ward (our chapel has two wards) has their own set of hymnbooks and guards them carefully. The Gospel Doctrine teacher left a projector in the Relief Society Room where the class is held and he went right back to retrieve it. It was gone not to be seen since. I guess things like this happen all over the church, but it is disappointing nonetheless.