Today we went downtown to the post office to collect a package (woot, woot!!) that was sent to us November 3, 2010. I think it was sent to arrive in time for Judah's birthday at the beginning of December... 3 months en route... that's not so bad. I've heard of many parcels that have taken a much longer 'vacation' before they arrived at their intended destination.

Anyway, so somehow my name was the one they picked off the package address, even though i now see that Josh's name is first and in one place the only name written! But, since 'they' picked my name out (i reckon they thought it was the man's name, since Jocelyn without an 'e' at the end is a french male name) i was the one who had to pick up the package in person... so i was told anyway. The entire time we were at the post office, or whatever one might call that place i went to pick it up, no one once asked me for identification.

We actually went by there last Friday to pick it up, only to be told that - as the lady pointed out on the paper i had in hand - the office closed at 11:30am until 1:30pm for lunch break, and i was there at 11:35. <sigh> gotta love french siestas in the middle of the working day.

We arrived at 8:05 and i was already with a bad attitude, i confess. I thought, "if they arent there by now, even though 'the paper' says that the office is open at 8, i'm going to kindly point it out to them as they did to me last week!" There was a guy there though. The first guy. He took my paper and proceeded to open up all his scribblers cluttering his desk. I'm not kidding when i say his desk looked like a not-much-more-grown-up version of elementary school desks with his piles of lined scribblers and filing folders to keep them in. Everything in that office is on paper, and there is lots of it! He transcribed my information into about 2 or 3 separate ones - by hand in neat blue ink on graph lined paper in a blue scribbler, a brown one and probably a red one too - then he printed off a new paper for me on one of those computer printers that uses rotary holes along the side, like the one i used to use to print off college essays in the 90s. Then i was pointed to two other offices, both being empty. We waited.

While we were waiting (it was by then 8:20 - that first part went tickity-boo, but too good to be true i suppose) Asher and Josh played around in the main garage like area... until the ladies from upstairs couldnt resist him anymore and whisked him upstairs to bounce him on their knees and take photos of him with their phone cameras. I said to Josh that if we were in Canada just now i would feel a bit uncomfortable with that kind of thing, but here, meh. I just love how they love my kids so much in this country, and i mean that in a totally honest and delightful way, not a creepy North American way.

So then i paid about 2$ at the cashier - that was the next office i had to wait for and attend to in line... and then we waited for another half and hour before "the man with the key" arrived and he, after unlocking his office and the gate to where the packages were kept proceeded to make his way around the office to greet everyone, shaking their hands good morning. Us North Americans who have a difficult time with Southern time management customs were thinking just then that if he wanted to come an hour late to work perhaps he could attend to us first and then go around greeting everyone. gah! But anyway, once everyone was greeted he returned to his office and stamped my paper. That was it. We were free to leave with our package after an hour of diddling around waiting for people to show up. If they had all been there at the office when 'the paper' said they would be i reckon it would have taken 10 minutes maximum to get everything sorted. But alas. This culture is out to teach us the virtue of patience, and for some it's working. (haha).

For a while now it's become apparent that MAF's work is changing, at least in Madagascar it is. There are fewer missionaries from abroad, especially from the western countries. And what foreign (western) missionaries there are mostly (not all, mind you) live in the larger cities and therefore have access to public transportation as opposed to years ago when more missionaries lived in the bush, isolated from a lot of things (schools, hospitals, RnR, etc). To be sure, this doesnt mean there arent missionaries here in Madagascar - but their work is changing also and MAF as an organization must change with them.

There are more aid organizations working in the country though (although not nearly as many as one would see in more 'popular' countries like Kenya and Sudan despite similar needs... ahem, but i digress). One of my personal concerns (which i wasnt shy to share when the CEO of the MAF Europe/Africa Region, Chris, came to our house for dinner) was that it is NOT our (ie. Josh and mine) intent to live here on financial support (given towards our ministry with MAF) and only fly for big NGOs who could just as well fly to their destinations with the non-MAF aviation companies. Especially if their mandate is merely handing out water buckets and food-aid. Sorry. I come from an evangelical background, i cant help the fact that i think that kind of aid is lopsided. I also believe that many of the people who support our ministry with MAF financially think the same way (or? tell me if i'm wrong please!) and i feel that they should expect that Josh and i (ok, mostly Josh because he's in the thick of things) should be responsible to ensure that we're here to do what we say we're doing: bringing wholistic transformation - spiritual and physical, rather than just one or the other. Physical aid might be great in the short term, but it aint the Good news.

This past week we had the CEO of MAF Europe (with headquarters in England) come to visit and share the renewed vision of MAF with us. It was exciting to hear from him that he had a similar vision to what Josh and the MAFers here in Tana have been batting about in the hangar amongst themselves: that we need to better serve our Partners, especially the smaller partners who havent the money and resources of larger NGOs but are still doing a great work amongst the isolated areas of this great island. Josh has been saying for a while already that what our program needs right now is not "our" other plane back from the Congo, but rather a smaller plane that doesnt cost as much for our smaller Partners to use. The Caravan is a greatly efficient aircraft: it can take a lot of stuff and a lot of people to remote and short airstrips, but it's very big and takes a lot of money to run. It's just not as 'efficient' for people who, say, want to send 1-3 people to a destination. Of course, our Madagascar Mission Runs (MMRs) have done fantastically in addressing this problem to an extent, offering seat rates to designated areas within the country thereby making it more affordable for the average Jandre Rakotbe instead of requiring everyone to charter the entire aircraft. Our Operations office (aka Josh and the Ops guy Haja) also sends messages to Partners we know have projects in areas where a bigger Partner is flying and has some extra seats, thereby making the cost affordable to the smaller partner and a cheaper rate to the larger. It's what is called Yield Management. But a smaller aircraft! When Josh heard from Chris that there might be a possibility of getting one for our program he emailed around to some of our Partners and asked if they would make use of such a resource. Within the same day he received huge support and enthusiasm for the idea, one Partner going so far as to say, "if we would have access to such an aircraft we would have already booked it on a regular basis!" (that's a lot, for those who might not know). So, all that to say, this new idea may bring some changes and Josh, for one, is pretty stoked about it. It has definitely put more enthusiasm into his work, as a renewed vision tends to do.

He also talked about being a 'more active donkey'. Haha. Have you ever heard MAF called the "Good Samaritan's Donkey"? apparently it's an often used illustration of what MAF is in place to do: to be the 'donkey' that Partners use (acting as the Good Samaritan) to bring spiritual and physical aid to those in need in isolated areas. Chris is saying that we need to become more active in the projects than just a means of transportation. Apparently he uses Madagascar as an example for other MAF bases in this case because MAF-Mad is very active with the Madagascar Medical Safaris (MMS): organizing the doctors and the medicines and the camp arrangements so that they can do the work. We also have a lot of expertise and professionalism in many technical areas, perhaps we could offer training of some sort to others. We need to search out amongst our Partners how we can better become involved in their projects... or create more projects of our own and encourage partnerships in it with our Partners.

One thing i've never even considered (which is indicative of my own myopic view on missions, evidently) is that as missionaries are increasingly coming out of Africa and Asia, are we (MAF) going to those places to see how we can better serve them and if they can also support the work of MAF through prayer and through financial means. Are those churches hearing of 'the donkey' who can partner with them to bring spiritual and physical aid to those they are coming to Madagascar to reach?

There was more to this little pep-talk, but these are the things i latched on to and identified with the most. It's exciting stuff, to be sure, and i think we were at the point in our tenure with MAF-Mada where we were in need of a renewed vision. That's often the case when you've been somewhere for a while, isnt it? Anyway, all that to say, MAF is continuing to serve with integrity and intention here in Madagascar and we're looking forward to realizing new and innovative ways of sharing the love of Jesus through aviation (and being a more active donkey) to those isolated people of Madagascar, bringing spiritual and physical transformation.

Two blogs in one day, does that tide you over for a weeks worth of no blogging? haha. Perhaps you were thinking we had expired due to, and long before, our long-life UHT milk.

Currently we are hosting 'the guys' over for supper and the evening. They are having a guitar-hero battle just now while the icecream(s) are thawing enough that we can get a sharp edged machete in to carve a bit out and the freshly baked apple pie is patiently waiting for us all to get it together. I have become quite the (better) pie maker since i developed the skill of making pie crusts (and boy are they good!) from a packet - just add water. You know those are being restocked when we're back in C! (arent you proud of me for using a packet of pie crust mix for no special reason instead of hoarding it for Thanksgiving 2011? ) Anyway, the apples are not really great for eating, these ones i bought from that ubiquitous fruit man who seems to be everywhere at once (at school, at church, on the road up from Jovena... all on foot - he must be in fantastic shape!). Asher likes to eat them, but then again he also likes chewing on pre-chewed/spit sun flower seeds. ugh.

WE've just enjoyed a sumptuous BBQ'd chicken thigh dinner with mesquite rub. DEE-lish! (8 largish thighs for 10$, how does that compare to Canadian prices, can you tell me?) potato wedges and green beans from my garden that i put in the freezer without doing whatever one is supposed to do before putting them in the freezer so Josh declared them almost unfit for company... (insert dejected droop of shoulders. who knew?!) Now for the selection of: pumpkin spice icecream (oh my goodness, it tasted just like either a very creamy pumpkin pie or some sort of pumpkin cream cheese cake filling!), vanilla bean icecream made with Madagascar vanilla beans , or peanut butter icecream. The chocolate fudgesicle icecream was polished off this afternoon (finally a warm one after weeks of incessant rains) by Judah and his buddy. Woot! can you tell we're enjoying our new icecream machine?

gotta go serve the pie.

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.

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...