crab sandwich

This morning Kelli and I were snoozing away when we heard the familiar hasty knock-knock and door opening.

I blurted half-awake: “Sim! Allo! Desculpe!”

We both groaned and rolled over. The damn cleaning people waking us up again. Then I looked at the clock.

11:47am.

Maybe not such an unreasonable time to be cleaning the room.

Now, I don’t usually wake up so close to noon, but last night I had trouble getting to sleep, having finally dozed off sometime around 3am.

Maybe it’s the jetlag, maybe it was that late-night tea, or maybe it’s because someone decided to hang annoyingly bright Christmas lights off the building across the street that light up my entire room.

I felt like I had my own personal blue version of the Kenny Rogers Chicken sign.

These gloriously tacky lights seem to be part of a city-wide cleanup project. In the last few days, workers have been furiously festooning lights from every tree and lamppost, whitewashing houses and businesses, and painting traffic lanes onto the streets.

Wait, traffic lanes?

In a country where passing occurs on every inch of road no matter the oncoming traffic (as long as you honk your horn incessantly), traffic lanes will do nothing but give an appearance of order.

Something important must be going on in Cabinda. A festival? Important dignitary, perhaps?

Restful night or no, it’s nice to be back to our ‘normal’ routine, annoying lights and sounds and all.

Another case in point … this relaxing sound was blasting outside my window for a solid half hour while I was trying to write this post:

Welcome back to Cabinda!