rain rain, go away.....

it's been raining for over a week now, incessant and dismal and very, very heavy.
I've said it before I'm sure, but there is nothing like Algerian rain.. it's relentless. I spent the majority of last week wet.. and muddy. and sleeping with my family in our living room to get away from the leaky upper level of our house. But we haven't flooded yet so this I tell myself is a bonus. We needed the rain.. in fact about half an hour before it started a couple of our local mosques prayed Salat-al-Istisqah.. which is basically a plea for rain.. it worked.. I was standing outside the school when the heavens opened and the rain came down, and it's hardly stopped since.

It's at times like this that I have to remind myself why I came here. Why I put up with the sub standard housing, the mud, dust and bugs...This time last year I was almost booking tickets to go back to the UK, so I guess there's been some kind of an improvement because it hasn't got that bad for me yet this year...

Hijrah does get easier for people. I see the evidence in how other people are living, but then maybe I'm only seeing the surface... who knows how hard it is for people really and how much they divulge about the difficulties of living here. I have yet to see it in my own life.. but we march on regardless... getting through the day and making the best of what we have, and don't have.

Lately I've begun to supplement the 8yr olds schooling ...  trying to weave into this life of ours some of the homeschooling lifestyle we left behind. So we've been reading ALOT... Roald Dahl is what she's loving at the moment and me, doing the grand high Witch complete with German accent is making her super giggly. She's also doing some Math drills online to try and get to grips with the speed at which lessons move in this country. And slowly, very slowly she's recognizing words in English and reading them on her own.

It's been a strange learning curve for her. Her first spoken language is English, but she's so fluent in Algerian derdja that English has become a language she only uses if she has to... She can't read English yet, she learnt to read Arabic first and is learning to read French before attempting to read English in any determined way. So the pace is slow, sometimes too slow for Algerian teachers and she's fallen behind her classmates a little. But this happens in the life of the multi-lingual child. And while I patiently sit by waiting for her brain to filter all the languages and make sense of it all, knowing that eventually it will all settle and make sense to her, the teachers here are not so forward thinking. I console myself with the fact that school will be out by the end of May most probably this year and that we can settle down in the summer to some home-ed unschooling style and do what comes most naturally to us all.

And we're embracing simplicity. Sometimes due to neccesity, but also from choice.
We live a pretty frugal, simple life anyway... we're minimalist from habit and don't have alot of the "stuff" that other folk have. But this year I was determined to set myself a challenge and make this my year of living sunnah. embracing from it what I could and living my Islam more holistically.

Which is why I started the New Year quietly... keeping myself slightly at arms length. Putting it all into perspective and taking slow, purposeful steps. I have hermit tendencies, and I'm standing slightly further back all the time,  no longer trying to find the place where I'll fit but content at last with the fact  that I never will and feeling comfortable with it.

And the rest of the day ahead?
Well the rain is falling... upstairs is leaking and out of bounds. Outside my window the mountains have disappeared into a grey cloudy haze and are no longer visible and I have all of the children in the sitting room trying to stay warm and not get on each other nerves. We were supposed to go to the doctors today for a routine visit for more meds but we're not brave enough to face the rain today. I'm off to cook, and get some laundry done. Figure out my spending plan for February, decide whether I'm going to plan my menu's next month or not. Get some more knitting done, a chunky scrapbusting scarf for the 3yr old and some of the Shalom Cardi that's coming along so nicely despite a couple of very minor imperfections that I can live with and the 8yr old won't notice. And if you've really been taking notice since my last post you'll have notice that the cardi is no longer destined for the 12yr old... we have a bit of a yarn, needle problem here in Algeria .. not enough different sized needles to suit the yarn weights... and I'm not going to even bother discussing my relationship with Math & Dyscalculia  here and my innability to veer even slightly from the pattern... so the cardi is slightly smaller than it should be but will fit the 8yr old nicely thank you...

Pictures will come eventually, when the rain stops and the Internet connection can take the pace of multi-tasking...

:: TWO ::

I've spent some time this evening going over some old halaqah notes. We used to hold regular halaqaat when we were in London, I also used to help run a youth halaqah and opened up my home to sisters at least a couple of times a week so that we could learn together and spend time focusing on our deen.

Sometimes I miss it. The hustle and bustle of a busy home... my home is still busy, but not in the same way.
I miss being active in my Muslim community. I miss the discussion and the opportunity that writing halaqaat gave me, in terms of researching and learning.

Unfortunately there  isn't the same kind of opportunity here in Dz, and I think alot of sisters suffer because of it. I think we're all alot more isolated in some ways and for some of us it's had an adverse effect on our eeman. I realized while I was reading my notes, that I'm further away from the Islamic ideal I was aiming for. That in making hijrah I have focused too much attention on the rest of my families needs and not enough on my own, and I think sometime soon something will have to give.

I've tried to be useful in my community, I've taught for two years running in our masjid, but decided to spend time away from teaching this year. I've held weekend crafting classes in my home for the young girls in our area, but nothing seems to hit the spot the way it did in the UK. I can be useful... but I can't be useful in the way I find most fulfilling.

And I'm trying to decide if this is a hurdle I need to jump, if this is something I need to just get past before getting on with something else and being productive in other ways. There is no way of giving dawah in Algeria as an ajnabiya.(foreigner) Even the most subtle attempts are unappreciated. I think the general opinion is that there isn't much a revert ajnabiya can teach someone who was raised Muslim. It's shortsighted, but it is what it is...
And so I'm left with thoughts I need to unravel and make some sense of inshallah. Perhaps the problem is that I've not actually given myself the space to think it through and really find some other purpose for being here... other than just, being here....

Thinking ahead...

School, belive it or not, will start winding down for the year in May... Yes MAY!
As an ex-homeschooler, having them at home isn't the part that bothers me. What really worries me is that since we stopped home-schooling, their whole approach to learning has changed.
Part of our reason for coming to Algeria was the fact that the children would be able to learn Arabic more readily, which they have done (despite the fact that it's not actually the spoken language of Algeria); But I feel we've lost alot of ground Islamically over the past couple of years and I really need to do something about it. I think I've mentioned before that our lives were much more faith based when we were learning at home, and that was mainly because our deen was the foundation we built all our other studies and projects on.

So, I'm sitting here this morning planning some summer homeschool... yes I know it's only February but I've been out of the loop for a while. And if it takes me from dawn till noon to get my thinking equipment into gear even on a good day... imagine how much longer it will take to do something even remotely sensible.
I am therefor ignoring the mess on the floor, the fact that it's dh's day off and that he will probably be in and out of the house all day long  and I'm getting on with some long overdue planning.

Dh was impressed with my plans and even fell back into home-ed mode when ds13 brought out his maths book and decided to (briefly) explore the mass and quantity unit in the CPG book he's all but ignored since we came here... but it's a start. And if dh got a bit ambitious in guessing the mass of eggs and the possible capacity of a paddling pool, never mind! It's all part of the fun, right?

In the meantime, while we're waiting for the summer sun to bring our thinking matter back to life I've come up with a vague strategy to get them back on track before we plunge head first into our summer of learning.
Tuesdays afternoons will be extra English studies, Friday will be family halaqa, and I'm reintroducing our craft-time for Saturdays insha'allah. It's a small step forward but I'm feeling hopeful.

The weather continues to bombard us, and we're waiting for brighter, warmer things to happen inshallah. Despite the fact that I come from a cold climate, I have realised since coming here, that I dislike Winter intensely. I'm a hibernator, I have barely left the house since the start of December and I don't think very much will push me to venture into the breezy alleyways where I live, although today my dh's aunty wants us to visit. One of her daughters whom we haven't seen for a while is also visiting with her. The question is... can I be tempted?.....

We also have a casualty in the house, dd8 slipped and fell, hitting the side of her head on the bottom of our oil heater, there wasn't much blood but it did need some stitches. She's back at school with her patchworked scalp and strict instructions to obsessively stalk the teacher and stay as far away from marauding or menacing little people as is humanly possible. Algerian children are invaders of personal space... she may get feisty.

I'm off now to have my coffee and try and then it's split pea soup and cheesy bread making that awaits me this morning... connection and dh's phone permitting there may very well be a couple of recipes here tomorrow, how's that for a promise?

xxx