At a standstill

It's been an interesting week. My kids are still sorting out their schedules for school and we're trying to transfer Jenna to a different school. Yusef still has to be registered, somewhere... how to deal with five kids in five different places? On top of that, one day we dropped Nora off at university only to have to go back to pick her up about an hour later because there were no classes. Students were demonstrating - they want reforms, a clean facility, a change of lecturers, and some feeling of security, among other things. 

On our way one day we got stuck in a huge traffic jam. One lane soon became six as you can see in the picture below.

For forty-five minutes everything came to a complete standstill as drivers did their best to push their way through. Lots of shouting and then some stupid idiots took out their guns and started shooting. Was this all necessary? Someone could have been killed for God's sake! After that day I decided to skirt this particular traffic junction by taking back roads through the country - rough, bumpy dirt roads that were mostly thick mud from all the recent rains.  How many times do I have to tell my husband I need a four-wheel drive? Maybe I should just insist on an armored tank (it would protect me from all the gunfire).

My husband came home with an interesting story. It seems his friend's wife needed some kind of surgery (since he didn't say what it was surely female related stuff). They decided to go to Jordan. When they arrived at the airport they were met by some kind of Libyan diplomatic committee that asked them why they had come to Jordan and when they said it was for medical treatment the guy said 'Come right this way!' They were taken to a five-star hotel, given cash for spending money and ushered to a hospital where the woman had her surgery for free! Yippee! They met a bunch of people there that were getting all expenses paid medical care too. Apparently there's some kind of racket going on with doctors and others taking a cut of all the money that's been earmarked for the wounded Libyan veterans. Money's been flowing into Jordan and landing in people's pockets.... sigh... crooks... 

Hopefully we'll have all the kids enrolled in school by next week. And hopefully all the puddles will be dry too.