Speaking of using time (un)wisely here i go with another blog entry.

We’ve been having a terrible time with the milk/ranono tamin ‘ny tapa-bolana.* In the morning whilst i’m pouring Judah’s cereal milk, for instance, it’ll come out in chunks… ugh. And then Judah – looking at the chunky milk sitting atop his chocolate petals with upturned lip – will say, “yuck, i dont want that”, in such deadpan that it makes me laugh.

This is not altogether uncommon every once in a long while, but lately, after the Frishli milk (from Germany) is no longer to be found in Shoprite – which, incidentally, we know is stellar milk because it froths with the milk-frother whereas all the other milk definitely does NOT! Now all there is at Shoprite is this “Enjoy” milk from some Arabic country. Milk that we have definitely NOT been enjoying. I mean, we make it through not even half a liter and it starts to turn and get chunky. Yuck. I was wondering also if it was the milk making some of our tummies feel like they were going to puke. bleh.
 
I finally went all the way to Jumbo to get some Candia milk, which i remember had been a not-even-close second-runner-up to Frishli in the good-milk contest.

I miss fresh milk that doesn’t turn bad within half a day.

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* (tamin ‘ny tapa-bolana means last fortnight/14 days) ok, excuse me for these annoying insertions of Malagasy vocabulary. I’m trying to use the words i do know in order to practice and become more fluent.

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As i wrote this i was thinking of certain people who might find the fact that we store most of our milk in the pantry rather than the fridge to be an interesting part of life in Mada. Also, this is our ‘pantry’ where you might be able to pick out what our family, at least, stores in-house. My imported Cornelia Bean teas are on the top left. The new Coke-bottle of honey from Mandritsara is on the top right in the blue bag. Most of the top-of-the-shelf stuff is imported and thus used more sparingly than the other things. Hm, i’m feeling strangely vulnerable displaying my pantry to the general public. haha.

Those bottles you see on top there are vanilla beans stewing in vodka (that’s how you make vanilla for baking f.y.i.) and other cooking liquids.

I’m exhausted.

Boy #2 – seen here pretending to play x-box with his big brother – is back into a terrible sleep (ie. non-sleep) routine in the night. We enjoyed a fleeting few days of sleep-through-the-night-ness last week (hence i was able to get down and hip-hop my abs in the somewhat early mornings) and now we’re back to waking every other hour or so. Argh! Is it teething or just plain “i’m-out-to-make-my-parents’-lives-miserable” temperament? Gah! The most irritating bit is that when it’s time for the rest of the world to wake up he’s up with them all as chipper as can be while i drag myself around the house trying to decide whether i should just call in sick for the day.

The thing that makes this experience have a silver lining is this – i’m not working outside the home right now. Woot! The other day i was whinging to a friend via email about life in general here. I seem to feel the need to explain myself and the “surprising” prevalence of crummy life issues and challenges even despite the fact that i’ve got a lady in my house washing my dishes and my laundry and my bathroom… “How can that be possible to have life problems with house help?!”, some might ask. This is the thing: Due to the nature of my house, this country, and the life challenges of living in a foreign country where things take 15 times longer than they would in Canada, i simply would not be able to function normally (ie. like a normal person of Canadian origin) without a lot of help. Or, if i eschewed househelp i would be
a) a bear to my kids (or, more than usual), and
b) uncompanionable to my husband.
c) utterly incapable of having/maintaining friendships here or ‘there’ (ie. anywhere outside a 5km radius of my house).
What my whinging surfaced though was a eureka moment: i’ve househelp so that i can live like a normal canadian person who is raising a family in a developing country. I do not have househelp so that i can live outside the box, so to speak, and have some kind of fantastic career saving orphaned children or teaching literacy to underprivileged street people. As terrible and/or funny as it sounds, i think i’ve had – for the last 5 years – a subconscious expectation of myself, or perhaps felt a subtle expectation from others, that as a missionary wife with househelp i therefore have the responsibility to use whatever gifts i have (…?) outside the home in a almost-full-time career. To be sure, in some other MAF programs i’ve visited (ok, only one other one… besides the other 2 [out of three] MAF wives in this program) i’ve seen almost ALL the MAF wives out working a second job to… pay the bills? (what the?) or probably have a feeling of greater contribution? (Often there’s the question posed ‘So, Josh is a pilot, and what does your wife do?’) and i felt rather… frowned upon for not doing similarly. Well, sure, i did work in the office a few years back quite regularly. But now i’ve got another toddler on hand i’m feeling called home again… and realizing that it’s not a bad thing! Have i ever mentioned how i hate social manipulation?! (yes i have, so i wont go into it here).

Anyway, so i feel liberated by the realization that i can legitimately be a stay-at-home mom even with househelp – househelp who weekly scour all my floors with a coconut-half and then wax them by hand in order to keep bugs at bay. Can you imagine having to do that on top of ironing all your clothes because you dont have a dryer? and besides dusting and cleaning the whole house daily because the house isnt sealed like in Canada and therefore there’s a layer of dust at all times. Gah!

If i eschewed househelp when would i have the time then to do the every-three-to-four day grocery shopping (because i dont have a pantry nor a large freezer) and cooking? (i suppose i could hire a cook too. haha) When do i have the time to spend just hanging out with my kids and helping with homeschooling my 5 year old who is learning his ABCs in French, but needs to also learn to read and write in English (but who knows the best time to do that – before the French or after the French is established?). Gordon Neufeld’s book has also convicted me to spend way more time with my kids than i have done until now for the simple reason that as my children grow up in a ‘strange and foreign land’ and will undoubtedly move around the world before they become adults it’s important that they learn to attach to their parents as a source of continuity and of guidance and security rather than their peers/teachers/househelp. And, when will i find the time to read all these books i want to read – two new ones just moving into our house: Families on the Move: Growing up overseas – and loving it! by Marion Knell; and Third Culture Kids: Growing up Among Worlds by David C. Pollock and Ruth E. Van Reken, both ordered and ‘assigned’ by our program manager?! Never mind my own writing and study. I suppose i could cut out some other activities to make more room… like, blogging (haha), Malagasy lessons, eating… alas.

All this to say, despite the cultural differences and the fact that i’ve househelp and you dont, the issue of time management is one that plagues most, if not all, of us. I, for one, have found justification not only in my Calling from the LORD, but also in the realization that in this time of my life i’m most ‘useful’ here at home. And God has seen fit to bring me a ministry field to my doorstep – ‘into the box’ as it were. Praise God, for his mercies are new every morning… even those when i’m exhausted.

 
the last few days to a week of regular evening thundershowers have done wonders for growth. unfortunately, it’s almost harvest time for the rice fields, which means this rain is too much too late. the wild white spikey flowers are blooming again and it has me wondering if it’s already an entire year since i saw them bloom last.

this year, despite the difficulties in readjusting, has flown by at lightening speed and we are already looking at less than a year until we leave for furlough again. ack!

the geraniums on the guest room window sill are loving the long periods of morning sun.

Solo came last Thursday with a 7 foot high nikosia? orchid to plant in my garden. it was the high point of my day. I told him that i thought God had given me this garden and it’s flowers because He wanted us to stay in Madagascar. If there’s suddenly a blight that demolishes all the plants at once i’ll take that as a sign for us to leave. haha.

rhonda‘s bougainvillea (just cut by solo in this pic, drat! I think he should rather let it grow up and over the wall and then across along the top the whole length of the garden… any thoughts Karina?) I remember Rhonda lamenting over the bougainvillea because it was never flowering, and of course, now that she’s gone it’s covered in flowers). Before Solo cut it smaller it was covered in many more blooms. alas. i reckon my own flower-less bougs will do the same to me when i leave. Let’s think of it as their way of mourning our departures, shall we?

Last week i made this recipe with the new 5kg batch of cashews. They are dElish! I’m also liking how the articles i’m reading in the magazines people have left behind tell me that i should eat more fats that come from things like olives, avocados, and nuts. Woot! So anyway, since making these honey roasted cashews we’ve been using them in two-seed-dressing salad (with spinach from our back yard garden and mangoes from Maintiraino – OH! YUM! According to Kingsolver and her book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle i’m doing pretty good with keeping to ingredients whose origins come from very near to us. [a triumphant "HaHA!"] ), on top of our home made icecream (i confess though that the cream comes from france, alas), and today i used the honey roasted nuts on plum/mango/banana/litchi/apple fruit salad with a bit of natural yogurt. egad! Anyway, we’re getting rather nuts around here. haha.

Did day 4 of Hip-Hop Abs (“HHA”) today. Woot! Still not feeling it in the abs though. The guy, “Shawn T” (shaunti?), always asks if we’re “feelin’ it?!”, but i cant say that i ever do. So, either i’ve already got hip-hop abs from previous bouts with pilates and regular dance parties held with my boys, just the over-layer of flab just disguises it ‘so no one can boast’ ( ) or else i’m not doing the hip-hopping correctly.

Anyway, that’s it for today. time for ‘dodo zaza’ (naptime for baby).

So, things are slow around here, hence the absence of regular (ie. daily) updates. Apologies to those whose habits include reading this blog with their morning coffee.

The rains that i alluded to in the previous post have continued in earnest, which is lovely. The only downside is the task of bringing in and out of the deck chair cushions. Alas, what a difficult life we lead. haha. We still have yet to find and purchase new deck chairs since our old ones are falling apart at the seams, or at the corners as it were. Fanja claims that there is a guy from her church who makes and sells bamboo furniture just near to the Ambohibao corner (which of course means nothing to anyone who doesnt/hasnt live here, but anyway.) I suppose we must just go out and look for him one of these days, a day preferably prior to the day the last 3 chairs collapse under our weight.

Judah has latched positively onto the idea of going to “the” French Elementary school, which is located just up the road from his current Frjji0iench pre-school. I’ve heard that applications are due in March, so that’ll be an upcoming project. We are also currently debating about the best time for furlough/home assignment and how it can best correlate with his schooling.

I’m waiting for my Malagasy tutor to return from a trip to France. I was loathe to get back into it because i am a lazy bum when it comes to regular lessons, but i did realize that right now is the best time to get back into it before i become too accustomed to the free time again. alas. I’ve been doing self-study though.  My ladies seem equally determined to stuff as much Malagasy into me as i can hold, they talk to me first in Malagasy and then, upon seeing my blank face, attempt to explain what they’ve said in french. Asher, on the other hand, is taking to Malagasy like a Malagasy. haha. I swear to you that he understands the words already and has repeated the important ones like: misotra (thankyou) and mihinana (eat, time to eat). His normal daily routine is communicated to him mostly in Malagasy by me also.

We just had the CEO of MAF-Africa Region over for dinner and discussion. It was a good chat, especially since we’ve no pressing concerns or annoyances. I reckon we’re on the same page as his vision, which makes things a lot more exciting than being led by someone who is going in a different direction all together.

Josh and i have been doing Guitar Hero III Co-op Career together most nights as our evening’s entertainment. We generally play our ‘guitars’ sitting right in front of the front living room window with the curtains open, which i can imagine may supply the night guards with occasional viewing entertainment. haha.

Asher is displaying some significant uh… how to say… strength of character traits. haha. At 14 months he reckons that he can walk down stairs standing up, facing forward. ack! he climbs up on the table constantly, and/or anything else he can clamber up on. He thinks he’s an adult, essentially, and can be found sitting on the couch more often than not with an x-box controller in hand (despite the fact that they are definitely off limits to him) pretending to play because he sees his big brother playing. When in-crib against his will he will throw bottles, teddy-bears, and blankets across the room in protest. <sigh> Mostly i find his unwillingness to cuddle to be difficult. ha. Judah is definitely more of a cuddler and i suppose i must content myself with his affection.

anyway, now it’s 8:45pm and time to head up for bed. have a great week!

The litchis in the front are finally turning red, which has caused minor excitement in our house. Now often when Josh gets home from work the boys and him will sit out under the tree and try pulling the redder fruit off with a long bamboo stick to enjoy. Asher likes them so much that throughout the day he’ll point up at the tree and grunt until someone fetches one for him. haha. It’s his first litchi season and he seems to be following in his brother’s footsteps for loving them.

(M&R: you can see in this pic that they painted the litchi tree white at the bottom to deter ants… i dont see that it’s helped much. i think they just painted in all the ants that lived in the tree. ha).

check out that whispy hair. soon it’ll be time for the buzz cut i reckon.

Last night (after some pretty amazing BBQ chicken pizza made by Josh on his day off, YUM!) we had rain for the first time in a long time. And it poured like a huge faucet for most of the night. Thank you Lord! What we really need is that kind of thing every night now for the next few months*. What better way to fall asleep than to listen to the rain thundering on the tin roof and smell the fresh rain fall on thirsty earth through the open windows. <sigh>

If you haven’t already seen it, there is a marvelous article on Madagascar’s Pierced Heart in the September 2010 issue of National Geographic. Stellar photos. And very accurate depiction of the goings on here just now what with the political nonsense and blatant land-rape that’s going on. Alas. (Just perusing the NG websites i came across this blog entry about the photographer who who took the photos for the magazine article. It seems as though the pilot that flew the photographer could be the pilot that died this last April in a helicopter accident, does anyone know if that’s the same guy? Tanja?) Funnily enough, it’s the Canadian Flyers living in #5 beside us who are flying the Canadian miners to and from the coast… ahem. So, any finger pointing in this regard will be pointing three fingers back at us (ie. Canadians), as it were.

*I hear from the Flyers the other day that some people living near Tomasina think that the rain shortage is due to their airplane flying in and out… They’ve thus been the victims of some attempts at bullying.  I’d say the rain shortage is more due to the slashing and burning going on that demolishes rain-bringing forest, but what do i know. The article also does take somewhat of an environmentalist-campaign slant by portraying the miners and timber barons as the biggest threats to the rain-forest, whereas what I’ve heard is that it’s the people’s propensity to slash and burn acres of forest to a) induce rain via the smoke [that's superstitious thinking for you], and b) make more room for rice fields.

I confess that in the past i’ve been somewhat of a hoarder. I’ve got so many pieces of memorabilia from my experiences all over the world, you see, and who wouldn’t want a global beer-coaster or postcard collection?! haha. Who would toss lovely cards and letters from friends and pen-pals from Europe and the Baltics all penning the story of life for us during those exciting times? Truly, all those many, many boxes of junk souvenirs tells quite a detailed story of the adventures I’ve lived abroad since i was 16 years old. This last furlough, however, due to the fact that my parents moved into a brand new house and therefore had to up-end their old one, including the basement, of all their junk life souvenirs and those of my brothers and i, it was evident that storing all that junk memorabilia was something i needed to reconsider… or else pay a storage premium in my dad’s newly pristine mechanical/storage room. So, before i could get all weepy about it all, i burned it. All. Well, except for the photos. And journals. I burned almost all the wedding cards, baby shower cards, any card that didnt have some sort of very significant writing in it. I burned all the pictures of other people’s kids (GASP! ) and it was liberating! One thing that we must all know (surely) is that things drag you down. They create obligations and responsibilities. Like, where to store them, how to ensure they dont get damaged, protecting them from would-be thieves… When we left for Madagascar we left (apart from the boxes of junk memorabilia that i hadnt yet disposed of):
1. the queen-sized bed we received for our wedding which has now been pressed into use by my parents as a guest bed for the plethora of people who make use of our their sweet-suite.
2. two really nice lamps which my mother is trying to absorb into her own furniture collection. haha. (i laugh because i would have done [and already have in other cases] the same thing). I always ask to borrow them when we’re home on furlough.
3. assorted other lamps
4. our wedding dishware which we use during furloughs (that way it always feels new and exciting like when we first got married. )
5. one brown chair.
6. winterwear.
7. journals and photo albums.

Everything else we owned (like our beloved diesel VW Jetta) we sold prior to our departure. Well, and we brought along our wedding-gift pots and pans and kitchen utensils because Josh couldnt live without them. Leaving Canada without anything tying us down there – no debt, no (meaningful) possessions – was one of the most freeing thing we’ve done. There was nothing to worry about, no house to rent to others who may not treat “our” things well and needed to be maintained and paid for, no expensive things to worry about whether it’s being kept safe.

Living overseas, however, has put an entirely new twist on the word hoarding for us. Hoarding now takes on a “prudent” disguise because we dont have access to the things that we might otherwise have used/enjoyed in Canada: Carnation Hot Chocolate mix, for example. Tea from Cornelia Bean. Chocolate chips. Peanut butter. Good underwear and socks. Bath & Body Works hand soaps. Tennis racket strings. Guitar strings. Where we would just go out and get more peanut butter when we ran out of it in Canada, here we need to hoard any peanut butter we find when it comes to the shops (which it hasnt now since November). Where most people in Canada dont hide the Bath & Body Works hand pump soaps when guests come over, i confess that i’m tempted to do just that because i only have so many pumps to last me until our next trip to Canada to re-stock. haha. (it was somewhat painful to use one entire bottle the month my family was in house, i confess). Josh is very careful about letting others use his guitar because it’s next to impossible to replace strings here with good quality ones. I’ve heard him deliberate about how to change his overhand so as to treat his tennis racket strings better and thereby use them longer. I use linen table napkins not because i’m posh, but because i’m too much of a hoarder to use the pretty napkins i’ve been sent as gifts.

I remember seeing a drawer full of pretty napkins in my grandma’s house when it was being cleaned out after she died. I remember thinking to myself that i totally understood the thought behind hoarding those pretty things… but that in the end she didnt get to use them because she kept them too long.

Yesterday we had Baked Herb Chicken out of the More With Less cookbook (p. 179) because i knew we still had 2 cans of mushroom soup on the shelf, imported from Canada in a far by-gone era. I asked Josh if he thought canned mushroom soup would go bad because i didn’t remember when we bought/brought it over. He declared that surely it wouldn’t go bad and probably there wasn’t even a expiry date on it and, if there was, it would be the year 3000. Ha. I looked it over and found it all right: Sept 2009! Anyway, it smelled ok and tasted fine. It just looked a bit worse for wear… we’re still living this morning so i suppose it was still edible. But the idea that we had stored canned mushroom soup for our entire first 4-year term in Madagascar without ever using it… gah!

So this year/term i’m determining not to hoard things. I even shared my new imported Cornelia Bean tea with two people already! And some of my family drank half of our imported hot chocolate this last Christmas without knowing that it was unattainable in Madagascar and we wouldn’t get anymore until Christmas 2011! haha. It’s silly, i know. It sounds silly especially to people living in Canada where they can go get Carnation hot chocolate 25 minutes after reading this blog entry if they so desired. In Madagascar though these are the kind of treats we dream about, talk about amongst missionaries, plan our furloughs around, get excited about when we leave the country for a more privileged locale like Nairobi where we can buy cottage cheese (sigh!!)…

I think this kind of thing (hoarding food items and the like) has a lot to do with culture shock, or the knowledge of it anyway. When my family was here i could see that some of them found it difficult to be pressed into cooking duty but not have access to the pantry items they were used to having at their fingertips. Moreover, not only were these items not in the pantry,  they weren’t guaranteed to be at the store either! I know they didn’t recognize the stress caused by these dilemmas as culture shock, but i sure did. I saw them flummoxed at these things and realized that after 5 years living here, we had overcome that particular hurdle. We’ve adapted our cooking and eating habits to fit with the items we can easily find here. That is also, in part, one of the reasons the Madagascar Missionaries have created the Madagascar Manna recipe blog – so we can help each other find yummy things to cook with what we’ve got on hand. And to give one another the heads up on where to find certain impossible-to-find things. And where we can go out to eat without getting sick. That blog is what could possibly be termed a hoarding of knowledge.

Anyway, as we continue to live here and make this place our home our list of import items gets shorter, in part due to the fact that some things are easier to find, and other parts due to the fact that i’m learning how to either do without or make it myself, or people leave their underwear behind for us to use. HAha. It’s a liberating feeling, severing ties with things. It’s something we fear though, returning to Canada if/when we would ever move back: to reattach to things that are within easy reach. alas.

I imported a whack of teas from Cornelia Bean on Academy Blvd (thanks to Nik for picking them out for me). I’m sure they were very expensive (i dont really want to know how much – that’s the bonus of getting other people to purchase stuff for you (and then have the money just come quietly from my account): you dont have to struggle with that “ack! i dont know if i should spend that much on tea!” feeling and simply can enjoy them later, sitting on the deck in a tropical climate. haha). I’ve been cracking open the tea recently because the tropical depression that blew over us this last weekend has cooled things down and given reprieve from what has been an otherwise VERY HOT and very dry “rainy season”. alas. Yesterday, in fact, we awoke to the sound of rain on the tin roof above our heads… <sigh>, i love that sound. The temperature in our room showed a chilly 20.8C and i was therefore silly-excited to don long sweats and a hoodie to traipse downstairs and boil a kettle of water for my lahimatoa (first son), since he’s been asking for hot chocolate now on a daily basis for weeks! We broke open one of the special packets from auntie lisa – packed with chocolate bits and mini-mini-marshmallows… he drank about 1/4 of it and declared himself full. <sigh>.

Today i’m going out with girlfriends for a birthday lunch. I’ve bought soap from the shop Ivahona in La Gare as a gift… which i’m trying hard not to just keep for myself. haha. I have the bag sitting here on my desk and every time i sit down i can smell those heavenly scents of vanilla, litchee, coco, and ylang-ylang. so nice.

anyway, the real reason for this post is because upon downloading the pics from my little camera yesterday to post the photos of Cafe de la Gare i realized i still had videos of when my bros were still here.

Eric was always such a baby lover.

And below, i love to watch my ankizylahy play together. It’s beautiful…

whew, this is an old photo already! this is the birthday lunch we had for Brielle’s birthday on Dec 31 at Le Cafe de la Gare.

The boys at the club. On Tuesday afternoons Judah’s school usually has swimming lessons, which he may or may not attend based on Asher’s sleep schedule since the ladies dont work Tuesday afternoons and if he’s sleeping then i cant just bring Judah to the pool… anyway.. so this last Tuesday when i picked the kids up from school the teacher says to me something about swimming, and i said, ‘yes, yes’ i knew there was swimming and i would try to bring Judah that day… so we walked down to the Club with Asher, thinking that he would fall asleep en route, but he didnt, and then we swam for a while before the school was scheduled to come… and then they didnt come and didnt come… and then i realized that i had obviously not listened very well to what the teacher was saying. haha. he probably told me that there was no swimming that day but i just assumed he was nagging me to take my kid to swimming. Regardless, it was a nice time with the pool to ourselves. Judah is spending increasing amounts of time in the big pool and i suspect that the water wings are just a psychological thing for him by now. I reckon he’s fully capable of swimming on his own, he just doesnt have the confidence yet to do it, nor to use the slide (you can see the slide in the background just to Judah’s left). Here we are, above, having a little snack before we pack up and walk back home. (didnt i just feel so active that day! haha).

This last Saturday Josh, Judah and i went downtown to look for a shop called “Naza” where we went to suss out TV prices. We received some really nice gaming toys this last Christmas and now thought we could invest some of our Christmas money into a new TV that didnt have a smashed in upper right corner. ha.

It was nice to go out for lunch there without Asher keeping everyone on their toes. It felt quite relaxing with only one mature child around. haha.

When we got back from downtown we saw a chain gang of workers tilling under our front grass area by hand. The proprietor has hired a landscaper and apparently they plan to level the area (!), re-plant better grass (without weeds) and then once the grass starts growing they will purchase the gardeners (2) an electric lawn mower so they can stay on top of the grass mowing. ha. i’ll believe that when i see it.

these are the aforementioned kitchen counter-tops. I did dishes today in my raised kitchen sink because it was that exciting. haha. You can see in the back corner behind me that we need some sort of corner counter/ shelving. I would love a corner trolley (like there is, with the microwave, but it’s not long enough) that reached the length between the fridge and the wall, and then i would put the water filter up in the corner on a stand of some sort. Where it is now (see below) Asher loves to play with the spigot and we’ve got none to spare if it breaks.

We still plan to put the cupboard doors back once Josh has router-ed holes in them to allow the air to circulate so that the under counter area doesnt get all moldy like it did before. I think i mentioned that we’re hoping the proprietor will send someone to finish up by replacing the window and cupboard door frames. then we’ll paint the doors and window frames white (in real life they’re kind of an old dirty beige, which looks terrible now with our brand new tiles).

i wanted to include some pictures of the less than stellar finishing job that the ’tile-guy’ did. Apparently it usually takes him 2-4 days to complete tiling these kitchens, but “miraculously” he did my kitchen in one day! this was reportedly because he wasnt bogged down by constant criticism by those looking over his shoulder. it appears i would have benefited in being more critical while he was there! gah!

look at how much bigger a cut he made in that tile by the corner of the sink!

that corner will need some serious filing down or else it will be a health and safety hazard.

the corners, you might not be able to see, dont have very good top cement, and the holes will undoubtedly gather dust and bugs in them. ugh.

under the since there is some rough concrete which, if you accidentally drip – say – some schmont fat gravy while trying to scrape the leftovers into the garbage, it settles into the little holes in the concrete… blech. i’m hoping to also paint the floor of the cupboards with oil paint to sort of seal it a bit better.

the outlet up on the counter-top was a) chipped by the tile-ripper-outter, and b) apparently they forgot to re-install it back flush into the wall… it’s impossible to just push it back in for reasons i havent yet determined. alas. BUT check out the new canisters i found at Shoprite to keep our oatmeal/porridge and flour and sugar and display on our lovely new counter-tops. woot!

I’m hoping that we’ll be able to afford a new paint job in parts of our house in the near future. Anyone have any brilliant ideas of if i should go “wild” and paint the kitchen a colour other than white? and, what about a new curtain by the window. suggestions?

Our kitchen has been upgraded by the proprietor. Woot, woot! Not only is it nicer, newer, ‘upper’ (i suppose i could use ‘higher’), cleaner, but it’s also free-er! yes! We were thinking, after we had seen the new tiles in the other house, that we would shell out for our own new counter-tops since the proprietor seemed somewhat stingy at that time. But we waited until after Christmas and, voila, he decided to our house also!

We’re also enjoying our new icecream maker that i ordered off the 220volt website and had it brought along with my parents. That first batch of vanilla bean icecream we had before my siblings left was probably some of the best ice cream we’ve ever eaten! Just now we’ve also made the ‘fudgesicle ice cream’ recipe one of our favourites, mostly because it’s chocolaty and doesnt require cream, which costs ca. 18,000Ar/litre ($9!) If we ever get ourselves over the chinese ‘grocery store’ Horizon to see if there are any Oreos in country we’ll also be making oreo icecream soon. Yum!! I’m also looking to try ‘pumpkin spice’ – mostly because it sounds strange, and peanut butter, once i’ve made my own peanut butter to make it with as there still isnt any in the shops since before December.

Two days ago in our stroll through the back garden Judah and i found a nest which had obviously fell from the pine trees above and had fortuitously landed face-up atop one of the bougainvillea bushes, thus safe from prowling fosas and stupid cats who like to come into our yard to use our sandbox. At first thinking it was merely a nest without birds i took it down to show Judah, only to find two baby birds therein. ack! Just this morning Irene came inside with Asher to show me his scraped toe, which he obtained while running after a baby bird in the front yard, too little to fly, but apparently having hopped/fallen out of a nest somewhere. We rescued the poor bird from his squishing little hands and put it up a bit higher in the bamboo poles stuck in the back garden… only to fall prey to starvation no doubt, since the little guy’s mother wont be able to find it now. gah! What is it about the bio-chemistry of a woman that causes us to feel that surge of mother-instinct and want to help motherless children who are in dire straights? I’ve got no clue what to do for baby birds who stretch out their mouths for food and i’ve got nothing to feed them. I did search the dirt for some worms, but with no feeding success. I am a failure as a mother bird. Now i’m forced to sit here listening to their tiny peeps and dont really want to sit out on the deck to read my book because i cant stand the gnawing helpless feeling of doom.

I get the same feeling when i pass by collections of small children – some no more than infants – sitting, seemingly unattended, on the sidewalks downtown. We passed some kids New Year’s Eve noon when we went with Geoff and Brielle to Le Cafe de le Gare to celebrate her birthday, stepping out from glitter and old age ritz onto dirty streets with dirtier children, what looked like a 4 year old watching over an infant lying on the sidewalk. ack! I could only assume – to calm my heightening blood pressure – that the parents were just over the street selling vegetables and had their eye on their children, who they had placed there to be in the shade rather than baking in the hot sun.

Meanwhile, my own children are plump and active with good health, well cared for by a collection of loving adults.

Periodically worked to the bone to earn their keep.

This last Sunday i found out that one of my ladies, Irene, had taken in a nephew of hers from the bush. Apparently his dad had left the family for another woman and the mother was unable to keep-well her two children. Besides that fact the little boy – Adrian – thought that Irene’s husband was his dad and was tortured at the thought that he would leave him behind when Irene and husband Eli would leave back for Tana from visiting during Christmas vacation. He’s almost 4 years old and struggles with a stutter, most likely brought on by stress, i think. Anyway, he was thrilled to play in the sandbox with Asher and all the big trucks yesterday. I chided her for being too shy to bring him to our Christmas party with the staff and their families because she was afraid to upset me (!?). She said she didnt bring him because she had rsvp’d that there were two coming to the party, before she knew of their third. Somehow i had a kid’s present left over from the fete and had put it away – still wrapped – for some later birthday party or somesuch. Upon hearing of the new child i sent it home with her for him.

With stray birds and unattended children, with heart wrenching stories of kids not being allowed adoptions until they’ve lived at least 9 months in an orphanage meanwhile i’m reading Gordon Neufeld’s book on parenting and imprinting at a young age, it settles my feathers somewhat to know that a sad little boy has found a new loving home.