wildlife

We are fine here and trying to keep out of the rain which is still coming most afternoons. This has been a really wet “short rainy season” and people are now concerned that if the rain continues like this, the ripening corn cobs will not dry properly.

It’s Monday and I’m looking forward (can you believe this?) to our regular Monday lunch of boiled potatoes and beans. The potatoes (“Irish potatoes” as they call them here) are really tasty and are cooked in water with a little oil, onion and tomato. The beans are just normal beans but are delicious with a dollop of chilli sauce. (Terry maintains that chilli sauce makes anything edible here!)

We have a nice wee house here and we don’t mind sharing it with others. However, apart from the bees in the chimney, a few of which find their way out each morning and commit suicide trying to get out of the (permanently shut) back door, the other creatures we have found sharing the house have been a bit of a problem. On Monday evening Hilda noticed a little pile of earth on the floor in the hallway, and on close inspection found termites coming up through a tiny hole in the concrete floor. The night guards confirmed that they were indeed termites and we also found more evidence of their presence outside. In fact there was a large frog sitting beside a termite hole just waiting for more of them to emerge. Where there are frogs there are also snakes, the next link up the food chain, and Leonard’s torchlight then found a nearby baby black mamba, which he quickly dispatched with his hatchet. Life here is never dull! Today a fundi (expert) was brought in to dig round the house and spray insecticide, so hopefully we have seen the beginning of the end of the termites.

While we were out of the house this evening, waiting till the insecticide fumes drifted away, I joined some of the Home kids in a classroom doing “prep”. Some were revising for tomorrow’s Standard 7 maths exam, some were reading books or today’s newspaper, but six of them were gathered round a table reading the Bible and discussing its meaning. Encouraging!

On the other hand, a young man who recently became a Christian and seemed to be turning his life around has gone against the godly advice a church leader offered him and has got married. Arranged marriages are no longer the norm here, but this young man’s sister apparently found a suitable girl for him and he went off to meet her last weekend. The next we knew, he had brought her back to his house and they had “married”. While Western ways of courtship and marriage are not necessarily good either, the church here has a lot to do to help people to apply biblical principles to relationships and many other aspects of life.

Hilda and Dorine are starting a group for young mothers and the first meeting is Thursday morning. Hilda will be giving some basic health education and the first topic is “water”; Dorine will do a very short Bible lesson . The purpose of this group is to support young mothers who are struggling and to outreach into the community. We’ll let you know how it goes.