A lulu of a week.
I had a Doctor appointment and met my new Doctor on Saturday. Jay and I waited for a prescription. While we were in the “female only” waiting room surrounded by shrouded ones, a young muslin girl came in with a camera and started photographing the TV set and the monitor for prescriptions. She was very determined to photograph these two devices. Finally I asked her what she was doing. A pharmacy student, her group summer intern project was to determine how patients could get greater benefit from their waiting room experiences. I suggested to her that looping videos on nutrition, exercise and diabetes may be beneficial. There is a captive audience and gaping holes in education at all levels. Jay and I obviously made a positive impression and she asked permission to photograph us. I think she really wanted Jay and his iPad and I was just the sidekick. Nonetheless, she took our names and asked if she could quote us.
So far so good, the day was going well until we headed to the borrowed 13 year old Range Rover in the carpark.
It was 2.45pm and the hottest part of the day. The car had a flat battery. My cell phone had a flat battery. By the grace of God, my iMac was with me and charged! A very nice Canadian man drove us home much to the chargrin of his bewildered wife and 2 children. As Jay grabbed his hand and anyone else looking on would have thought the three of us were a "family". He left his family at the hospital while he took us home. You can imagine how they felt - “Oh that was the last we saw of Dad, he took this blonde home with a cute kid with blonde ringlets who held his hand, he never returned. Fortunately the hospital has plenty of beds......”
As you know there is only a supermarket in the compound and the only car we had access to was dead! I called the AAA here on camp for the rest of the afternoon and finally called our private taxi driver and asked him if he could buy a battery for us and deliver it to the house. Then the next day, I had to call one of the three taxi services and ask them to collect me from the house, with jumper leads, and drive me to the hospital and try to start the car. As I waited for someone to call me back, I hoped that whomever they sent had a grasp of English and would know how to use jumper cables. I could envision another disaster in my future. The taxi arrived well within the 10 min scheduled time, and of course the whole 8 min. drive was spent praying to the parking angel that we would get a "spot" beside the car or directly opposite, otherwise it would be a long hot wait for an appropriate parking spot. Parking Angel came through, thank goodness! After working out the car model, which wasn't easy, I can't read Arabic letters or numbers, so Rex worked it out on the internet and managed to dust off the battery and get a battery number, we were able to call Abu back and arrange for the battery. He arrived and we stood outside in the blazing heat 115F for about 1 hour and got the old battery out, which took some doing and installed the new battery. It took 36 hours to achieve what could have been done in 2 hours in Houston. If Jay plays with the lights again, I'll have his blonde hair as a trophy! In honesty, it was probably time for a new battery!