August 21, 2011 Movie Night

Linda’s husband traveled via public transportation all night from Sierra Leone to be with his wife, arriving around 9 yesterday evening. Aminu is a tall, buff man with tattoos, large earrings, and lots of bling on his fingers and around his neck. He’ll be living on the compound, too. Already he’s been extremely helpful moving furniture and working in Linda’s classroom. He seems a bit shy but polite. Before he walks away from a conversation, he always says, “Excuse me”

I can’t help but wonder how having a married couple on campus will affect the balance. Albert’s happy, though, at the prospect of another man, who is not his boss, living on campus.

Albert volunteered to drive me to the 8:30 Mass at Our Lady of Lebanon, but I had to back out at the last minute. I pulled a muscle in my neck and shoulder that kept me up all night. The pain was sharp and uncomfortable, and I was relieved when I remembered that I had brought some Heat Wraps with me from the states. (I had pulled the same muscles just days before my flight to Africa.) Thankfully, those provided enough relief for me to get some sleep.

Albert went to Mass without me anyway, which surprised me because he’s not Catholic. He reported that it was a great service with African drums and all. The homily was actually the reading of a letter from the Archbishop, encouraging people to go vote in the upcoming referendum.

I hope Albert will continue to take me to Church. I miss it and feel at a disadvantage since I used to have Mass every Monday at my old school.

I feel like everyone was getting a bit antsy today. Maybe it’s the fact that no one had a raucous weekend or the fact that we know that the start of school is right around the corner, but everyone was looking for something to do. So, we arranged a movie night.

All of us (Linda, Aminu, Adisa, Albert, Ed, and myself) watched Avatar in Ed’s room and munched on popcorn. He’s got about 500 movies stored on an external hard drive, and the school has a projector. So, we were able to watch the movie on his living room wall – like a mini-movie theater. Ed talked quite a bit during the movie, always noting that it was the females of the Navi that had all the power. Albert kept asking when the characters were going to get some; Adisa, who hadn’t seen the movie before, kept muttering “Oh no” as suspenseful scenes unfolded.