Happy 2012!

Well, it sure seems that years have flown by!

When we moved here our youngest was 2 years old, just a baby really. Now she is a lanky 5-year old with opinions! The middle one still yearns for Israel, as she did from the beginning, and the 13-year old is a teenager with an Adam's apple and an attitude..
I look at videos of myself when we first moved here and am SHOCKED. Who is that pretty, young chick with the fat guy? Now my dear husband is the one who looks better after all this; he is thinner, healthier, is just finishing a book he's been writing for five years, and is on the brink of, if not research, then at least some serious data collection.
As for me, I'm a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I don't know how other women do it.
I feel like a juggler whose balls are constantly smashing to the ground.
This is my life: Clinics, patients, organizers, translators, volunteers, 3 kids. Husband who is away a lot. Two volunteer houses.Very little electricity, although it seems they had mercy on us over xmas. Water running out when electricity goes. Cars that keep breaking down if not daily, then at least weekly.
 However, on the plus side of things I don't have to cook, clean or iron!! Ever. Yahoo!! I hate housework. The downside of this luxury is that I have staff. The issue of staff is something that is hard to explain to Europeans and a constant topic among us wazungu in TZ.

Every time I look in the mirror I want to scream; sun spots, wrinkles, grey hair... Lucky the lightning is bad and the bathroom mirror a small one. My friend Veronique summed it up when she said: 'Look at me! Look at the state of me! Look at my shoes, my clothes...' She said her family, who came for a visit mumbled in astonishment when they saw her at the airport. What happened to your hair??!! What happened to YOU! (Apparently she cut her own fringe, which she hadn't done since she was 6).
Our clothes shopping is done at the Memorial second hand market. Sometimes we get a kick out of finding an authentic Louis Vuitton or Prada bag, but mostly we buy someone else's old junk that deteriorates even further on the sunny clothes line. (Because no matter WHAT you say or HOW you train your staff, they will never understand that dark/coloured clothes should be drying in the shade.)

Life here is a strange mix. On one hand I feel deeply grateful that I can do the work that I do, to help people profoundly, to make a difference of literally life and death in many cases. I love my job.
But it's hard. The conditions are sometimes awful. I come home a wreck from sitting on crooked chairs, straining to be able to read the computer screen, and frying in 38 degrees.
On the other hand my house is always tidy, there are clean undies in the drawer, and the food is ready and waiting when I get home. Can't complain about that.

Summa summarum; two days ago I told my husband I'm staying in Israel after our next holiday there. I said he can continue, but me and the kids will not be returning to this hellhole. Anyway we can't afford the school fees (a mere 30 000$/year), and I need a shrink, a car that works and a dishwasher that doesn't speak. AND the kids would learn hebrew without my having to endure another israeli au pair.

Hmmmm... I guess he still loves me, because he talked me into booking a return ticket after all.