Lebanon day - one after the previous post
Oh this is ridiculous - we're being fed, like, three full meals a day!!!
So, starting where I left off - just as I signed off the last post, Chris came rushing in saying "we have issues"! Now, he's a drummer, so uttering the phrase "I have issues" would have been stating the obvious, but using the plural was obviously either a gross error in grammar (which he is more than capable of committing, being Canadian too), or indicative of something that would affect me far more directly. In the event I chose to take the latter interpretation, just to be on the safe side.
It turned out that the taxi driver knew only to pick up four guys from the school. He also knew no English and precious little French. I tried a few phrases on him, such as "la plume de ma tante est dans le bureau" and "vous savez ou il faut nous ramener?" none of which he had any comprehension! In the end our trusty helper at the school, Jamela (a teacher of Arabic who lives at the school and is constantly doing stuff to help us) acted as intermediary between the taxi driver and Wadih (contacted via her cell phone) to communicate to the driver the place where he was supposed to take his four charges - Wadih's house.
Once there we were fed MORE food - this time a great chicken curry followed by brownies - and watched two episodes of Blackadder the third! We got to bed at a reasonable time with instructions to be ready by 8:30 for Wadih to pick us up.
Today, which I believe is Tuesday, we did another school assembly thing - well two actually. This time it was at CTI (Christian something or other). We started with the same set as we played yesterday on the theme of forgiveness, presented to the 7-11 grade students - again much appreciated but in a quieter way because we were asked not to encourage them to clap or anything!! We then spent a pleasant hour drinking coffee and speaking with the head master and his mother (who also works at the school) before giving the 1-6 graders a 15 minute jolt to their day. For this second stint we chose not to do our songs but to to lead them in two well-known action songs - "Father Abraham" and "Deep and wide" - and we also changed the band lineup a bit, with Jon taking the bass and me leading the singing and "actioning". That also seemed to go quite well, a view that was confirmed by the way we were mobbed when we joined the students at recess. We did get a number of requests for autographs (aw shucks) and for email addresses - duly answered with the website of the band. We also had some fan followup forms returned!
Lunch was taken with the head and his mum and wife (it seems he needs constant monitoring!) - a Caesar salad, a sort of chicken and vegetable pie thing with salsa dip, and brownies - a full meal, note! We packed up in record time having been offered ice cream by Wadih if we did it within about 20 minutes - which we did.
We then spent the afternoon going ride-about in the van-with-character, expecting at every stop our ice-cream reward. Wadih is constantly on his cell phone and having to meet people so we tagged along, and, in the process visited the offices of Youth For Christ, where we grilled a Clinical Psychologist who is on staff there on the ethical and emotional problems related to her job (we're not an easy bunch to meet!), followed by the Campus Crusade offices, where we met the lady who is coordinating our two university lunchtime gigs on Thursday and Friday. Finally we went to the orphanage where Lindy works (she needed the drums for a practice tonight).
As usual the travel was filled with near-death experiences as the van challenged every vehicle that dared to come within 6 feet of it to mortal combat. The roads themselves were somewhat safer today, it being beautiful weather, but that doesn't stop every Lebanese driver doing his civic duty of trying to kill every other Lebanese driver that he or she encounters. By the way we HAVE found some traffic lights, but they are out of order.
I had plenty of time to just look out of the window while Wadih was trying to kill us - Beirut appears to be a city center on relatively flat land by the sea, with wild, seemingly unplanned suburbs stretching up into the mountains with connecting roads built on age-old donkey tracks (that last bit is fact!). Extended periods of rain often bring mud slides, even if holding walls have been built! You can see construction projects building into the sides of ravines, and I'm certain I saw one that had been abandoned because the whole thing (a large office complex by the look of it) had subsided!
The evidence of past conflicts here is easy to find - walls with shrapnel in, abandoned bombed-out buildings etc. I didn't mention before, but on Sunday we stopped outside the hotel where Wadih's crew had built the stage the previous night. Just next to this hotel is the shell of a huge Holiday Inn IN which a battle raged in one of the wars that this place has been through - it can't be refurbished for some reason, but it hasn't been demolished - it just stands there burnt out and boarded up as a silent testimony to the violence Lebanon has suffered, and continues to suffer.
Note that the ice cream never materialized during the trip!
After our jolly jaunt we ate at Wadih's again, another over-full great meal, this time of spaghetti bolognese followed by the promised ice cream, BUT by THEN I was too full to accept it.
We got back to the school at 20:30 and planned the set for tomorrow (a 50 minute "chapel" at a university) before sorting out email and blogs etc.
So, starting where I left off - just as I signed off the last post, Chris came rushing in saying "we have issues"! Now, he's a drummer, so uttering the phrase "I have issues" would have been stating the obvious, but using the plural was obviously either a gross error in grammar (which he is more than capable of committing, being Canadian too), or indicative of something that would affect me far more directly. In the event I chose to take the latter interpretation, just to be on the safe side.
It turned out that the taxi driver knew only to pick up four guys from the school. He also knew no English and precious little French. I tried a few phrases on him, such as "la plume de ma tante est dans le bureau" and "vous savez ou il faut nous ramener?" none of which he had any comprehension! In the end our trusty helper at the school, Jamela (a teacher of Arabic who lives at the school and is constantly doing stuff to help us) acted as intermediary between the taxi driver and Wadih (contacted via her cell phone) to communicate to the driver the place where he was supposed to take his four charges - Wadih's house.
Once there we were fed MORE food - this time a great chicken curry followed by brownies - and watched two episodes of Blackadder the third! We got to bed at a reasonable time with instructions to be ready by 8:30 for Wadih to pick us up.
Today, which I believe is Tuesday, we did another school assembly thing - well two actually. This time it was at CTI (Christian something or other). We started with the same set as we played yesterday on the theme of forgiveness, presented to the 7-11 grade students - again much appreciated but in a quieter way because we were asked not to encourage them to clap or anything!! We then spent a pleasant hour drinking coffee and speaking with the head master and his mother (who also works at the school) before giving the 1-6 graders a 15 minute jolt to their day. For this second stint we chose not to do our songs but to to lead them in two well-known action songs - "Father Abraham" and "Deep and wide" - and we also changed the band lineup a bit, with Jon taking the bass and me leading the singing and "actioning". That also seemed to go quite well, a view that was confirmed by the way we were mobbed when we joined the students at recess. We did get a number of requests for autographs (aw shucks) and for email addresses - duly answered with the website of the band. We also had some fan followup forms returned!
Lunch was taken with the head and his mum and wife (it seems he needs constant monitoring!) - a Caesar salad, a sort of chicken and vegetable pie thing with salsa dip, and brownies - a full meal, note! We packed up in record time having been offered ice cream by Wadih if we did it within about 20 minutes - which we did.
We then spent the afternoon going ride-about in the van-with-character, expecting at every stop our ice-cream reward. Wadih is constantly on his cell phone and having to meet people so we tagged along, and, in the process visited the offices of Youth For Christ, where we grilled a Clinical Psychologist who is on staff there on the ethical and emotional problems related to her job (we're not an easy bunch to meet!), followed by the Campus Crusade offices, where we met the lady who is coordinating our two university lunchtime gigs on Thursday and Friday. Finally we went to the orphanage where Lindy works (she needed the drums for a practice tonight).
As usual the travel was filled with near-death experiences as the van challenged every vehicle that dared to come within 6 feet of it to mortal combat. The roads themselves were somewhat safer today, it being beautiful weather, but that doesn't stop every Lebanese driver doing his civic duty of trying to kill every other Lebanese driver that he or she encounters. By the way we HAVE found some traffic lights, but they are out of order.
I had plenty of time to just look out of the window while Wadih was trying to kill us - Beirut appears to be a city center on relatively flat land by the sea, with wild, seemingly unplanned suburbs stretching up into the mountains with connecting roads built on age-old donkey tracks (that last bit is fact!). Extended periods of rain often bring mud slides, even if holding walls have been built! You can see construction projects building into the sides of ravines, and I'm certain I saw one that had been abandoned because the whole thing (a large office complex by the look of it) had subsided!
The evidence of past conflicts here is easy to find - walls with shrapnel in, abandoned bombed-out buildings etc. I didn't mention before, but on Sunday we stopped outside the hotel where Wadih's crew had built the stage the previous night. Just next to this hotel is the shell of a huge Holiday Inn IN which a battle raged in one of the wars that this place has been through - it can't be refurbished for some reason, but it hasn't been demolished - it just stands there burnt out and boarded up as a silent testimony to the violence Lebanon has suffered, and continues to suffer.
Note that the ice cream never materialized during the trip!
After our jolly jaunt we ate at Wadih's again, another over-full great meal, this time of spaghetti bolognese followed by the promised ice cream, BUT by THEN I was too full to accept it.
We got back to the school at 20:30 and planned the set for tomorrow (a 50 minute "chapel" at a university) before sorting out email and blogs etc.
posted by Martin Bartlett at 7:38 PM
3 Comments:
I want to vote Martin Official TACO Blogger and request his presence on every tour. All the details - even the consumables - are what wives and absent team mates long to hear and which no one remembers when they get home. :-)
I hope you now that we were making sure the rest of the Bartlett clan was equally well fed on Sunday !
Glad it's going well
It seems ironic that a "bass player" has the gall to criticize the drummer. If I am the kettle then you are most certainly the pot my friend (that means you're big, clunky). Ha ha!
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