November

More butterflies for my record.

Not sure of the name of these but they're EVERYWHERE at the moment.

Everyone likes a good love story.  Here's one that happened on our roof.  They are Speckled Pigeons.  Awwww.  Hope I get to see the chicks.

I'm not sure what was happening in this photo.  This butterfly was on my living room ceiling with the orange fluffy thing seemingly attached.  I took this photo hoping to see a difference later.  When I looked about an hour later both butterfly and blob were gone, I've no idea what happened to them or what they were doing there in the first place. 

I've shown you the laughing dove before but this was the first picture taken with my NEW LENS that my wonderful adorable husband bought me for our tenth wedding anniversary (just a couple of weeks early). 

This Levaillant's Cuckoo was the first I'd seen.  It landed on our mango tree and stayed just long enough for a couple of photos.  Love his hairdo!!

Some birds have very apt names.  These are Beautiful Sunbirds and you can see why.  They are very difficult to photograph because they appear from nowhere and only stay long enough for me to say "Oooh Sunbirds!!  Where's my cam...."  This time they hung around for about a minute.  They're not great photos as they were taken through the mosquito screen but you get the idea of what we see. 

These little Firefinches are very common here but they're so tiny they're difficult to photograph.  With my news lens I managed to take some of one that was on our patio.

Wonder where this school got the idea for a picture from?  (For those of you who don't know it's our Bible Stories book)

We've come full circle with transport problems.  We no longer get stuck in puddles, now we get stuck in sand.  One witty elder asked which did I prefer being stuck in, water or sand.  The advantage of sand is that they can ask the passengers to get off to lighten the load then ask the guys to help them push and dig our way out. 

Conversations of the month.  The Gambians aren't very imaginative when they name their children.  The first boy is always called Lamin so there are LOADS of them.  Fatu is a very common name for a girl.  We were waiting for a friend one day and got chatting to a guy who was hanging around.  He told us his name was Lamin.  I laughed and said
"Everyone is called Lamin here.  What's your wife's name?"
"She's called Fatu"
"Many Gambians are called Fatu"  (This sounds like I'm being a bit thick but Gambians love to talk to us and sometimes I can't be bothered so just say anything that comes to mind)
"Yes, my daughter is called Fatu too"
"Really?"
"Yes, it's a nice name"
"Yes it is a nice name"
"My other daughter is called Fatu too"
Oh PLEASE!!

Ben and I were on a bus and a guy asked us were we going out!!  I hate to be rude and I enjoy talking to people who have something nice or interesting to say but a lot of them just want to talk for the sake of it and say all sorts of stupid things. 

And a sad one.  I'm studying with a girl who used to work for Sandra (the lady with all the cats).  She told me that she used to be scared of cats and when she was a child and did something naughty her mother would take a cat and put it in the compound.  Martine would be too afraid to enter the compound and would have to stay outside all day which would mean she couldn't eat all day or have any contact with her family. 

A man told us he was born up country but wanted to come to this area to find work.  He had no money for transport but was offered a place on the back of a lorry carrying "cattles".  The "cattles" here have very long horns and during the journey he was injured by one of these horns.   He told us "The blood was coming out VERY well".

A happy event was the birth of Terry's newest granddaughter Alexia.

Next week we go to Senegal for our District Convention.   Terry had a nice experience with the invitations.  The people here are very poor and we didn't expect that any from the territory would go.  Terry had a brief chat with one man and left the invitation.  Because they had had a nice conversation he returned later in the week but the man wasn't home.  Later that day he received a phone call from the man saying that he had traveled to Dakar and was hoping to make it to the convention.   

October

Only one word can describe October here - HOT!!  It doesn't cool down much at night either.  For those of you thinking of coming for a holiday DON'T come in October.  I took photos of our thermometer on the patio this morning.  At 8.15 it was already 29 degrees, at 10.15 it was 33 and when the sun came round half an hour later it went up to 43.  Terry says that isn't the real temperature, the real temperature is only in the shade.  Whatever . . . it's hot.  As I'm writing this (1.30pm) it's 35 in the shade.  It's paralyzing.

8.15 am

10.15 am

10.45 am

Here are a few more insects I found this month. 

The Widow Dragonflies are really strange looking things.  Their wings aren't really that shape, it's just the colouring.

This blue dragonfly was the biggest I've ever seen.  I was watching it from a shop across the road and it was massive even from that distance.       

This butterfly was one I was trying to photograph all morning and this was the best I could do.  It's not very often I see them upside down.














The grasshopper was outside the dining room window. 




There are lots of varieties of tortoise beetles here, not sure which this one is.

Rasta chicken.  This isn't a great picture, I think I was bored waiting forever for a bus.  These chickens have really weird feathers and their chicks are adorable.







Local ram and sheep.  The ram will be dead by now as they have their Tobasky festival this weekend. 

I forget the name of these things.  Actually I think they have more than one name depending on the colour.  There's a kid inside the costume (you knew that) which is made of rice sacks.  He is waving two machetes around (you can see the one in his right hand) and his friends are making a lot of noise.  Something to do with circumcision.

The rains have passed and everywhere is drying out fast but the buses are still struggling.  I promise this is the last photo you'll see of a broken down bus.    I was on this one which broke down in the middle of a huge puddle.  A passing bus tried to pull us out with that bit of rope but they couldn't do it.  I'd only just got on the bus (near that building in the background) which was annoying.  I was at the back which was in the deepest part of the water so I had to climb over the seats and leave through the driver's door.  The bus you can see coming was full so I walked.  It's often quicker.










 One thing we CAN rely on is power cuts. 

Also whenever we buy anything it's sure to break down very soon.  This was Terry trying to repair the computer in the dark.  In the end he had to buy another but it took nearly two weeks to get that one working too. 









Some sad news was that my lovely Bible student, Sandra, died at the end of September.  I miss her a lot.  Here's a video of her with Billy.  You have to watch it lying down as I was holding the phone the wrong way up.  Also I have to apologise about my awful laugh.  I'd been laughing at the pair of them all afternoon and my lungs couldn't cope anymore.  I wish I'd continued filming as Billy ran away with Sandra in hot pursuit.  She (Toye discovered Billy is a girl!) took Sandra to the other side of the compound then came bouncing back to drink up the milk she had spilled. Billy is now being cared for by an organization who will eventually release her into the wild. 



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TOucdLDphI

This blog is short and to the point, I think my brain is frying.   

September

The gorgeous butterflies keep arriving.  Some of them are such posers and sit for ages on flowers and allow me to photograph them.  Sometimes I wonder if they know what I'm doing, I'm sure I see a smile sometimes! 

                                                                        Orange acraea

                                                                                Pierrot






Others are more difficult.  This one (below) is constantly on the move from one flower to another.  They just stop for a second then they're off again.  Even when they're on the flower their wings are constantly fluttering.  To get this shot I had to wait in front of an unvisited flower.  Even then I took about 20 pictures of their feet as they flew away or if I managed to snap a little quicker I just got a blurry smudge.  I'm so proud of this photo, it's not perfect but it represents a lot of work.

The other insects here aren't quite so charming.  There are huge gangs of these spiders hanging between the trees and they're massive.  What's the collective noun for spiders??  Gang?  Mob? Horrible??  Wiki says it's collective or clutter.  I prefer horrible I think.  Anyway, there are horribles of spiders everywhere.  I carry an umbrella for three reasons, the rain, the sun which is very strong at the moment, and the horribles of spiders.   

Here's a close up for those of you interested.  This was was the door keeper at the Kingdom Hall.  Imagine having to pass this every time you go in!!  We (I say we meaning other people, not me) took it away when we were preparing for the Special Assembly Day.  To any potential visitors, we don't see these in the dry season so that's the time to visit.

The Assembly was Sunday 9 September.   We had TORRENTIAL rain for the first week and we were really worried that we wouldn't be able to get there because the transport stops when there's a lot of rain.  Terry had the first item so we were planning to book into a hotel near the Hall so we could just walk in the morning.  On Wednesday 5, Terry went down with malaria.  It was the first time any of us had had it and he had to be the one to get it right before the Assembly!!  We dosed him up with the pills straight away and by Friday he was feeling much better.  The rain also stopped on Friday night so on Saturday Terry had chance to recover from the worst of his illness and the roads had chance to dry out a bit and we all made it to the Assembly on time from home.  What a relief!!

Here's Terry and I at the Assembly.

Later in the month I was asked to help with the catering for the Pioneer School.  It was only the second school to be held in Gambia, the last one being 7 years ago!!  It was great fun and a very African experience.  Imagine you're asked to cook for around 20 people.  Where do you start?  You plan a menu then hit the supermarket, right?  Nooo, you hit the market and buy food from off the floor.   At the fruit stall the sisters came across a fruit they weren't familiar with and asked if I knew what it was.  It was a pear.  To them a pear is like a mango or papaya to a European.  The couldn't decide whether to buy some to put in fruit salad so they bought one to taste and decided it was good.  The next fruit was more familiar but still strange and led to the conversation of the month. 
"Janet, what is this?"
"It's an orange"
"What type of orange"
"I don't know, just a normal orange"
"No, oranges are normally green"

I had to wonder whether they ever wondered why oranges are called oranges and not greens.  I didn't ask.  But it's true, the Gambian oranges are green when ripe.

Then you take the food to a kitchen and prepare it on the worktops, right?  Nooo, you prepare it on the ground outside.  These are cow skins to go in a stew, lovely!

Mixing fufu takes a lot of muscle, fortunately there's plenty to be had here.
 

                                                                       Steaming rice

Next, you light the gas or electric cooker.  Or alternatively you could just light fires on the ground and put the pans on top.

Naturally washing up is done at the sink.  Not here. 

   But the food was delicious and looked great too.  Hats off to these women who can create clean healthy food out of nothing.

                     Stew made with okra

                                        A drink made with fruit from the baobab tree, it's like milkshake


The rain continued, anyone visiting in the dry season would find it hard to believe we experience mud like this.  I used to think it was difficult to walk in the soft sand but the alternative isn't any easier.

The buses really struggle.  Getting stuck, breaking down and wheels falling off are a daily sight.  It took 10 men to push this bus out.  The man walking through the water is the driver of the bus I was on going to help out.  He knows that next time it could be him.

This day we tried to go on the ministry but we got rained off.  Terry and I were together but Ben's group had gone to a different territory.   By the time we got back to Latrikunda the buses had stopped so we started walking home.  After some time we met this bus.  Ben had reached Latrikunda before us and had managed to catch the last bus but when it stopped to let someone out it sank into the mud.  There was no one around to push it so it had to sit there, slowly sinking.  That's Terry under the umbrella having crossed the river ahead of me.  

We kept walking until we reached the bridge.  The water was so bad the bridge was almost useless.  I should have waited before taking this photo as before those people reached the bridge the water was up to their knees!

Just a few steps before the bridge Terry turned to tell me there was "something" in the water.  This wasn't helpful.  Was it something useful to stand on?  Was it something dangerous?  I suggested it might be a crocodile and the crowd of little kids following us laughed their heads off.  They didn't speak English but they understood crocodile and did their best to reassure me.  The "something" was just a tyre, Terry was trying to tell me not to trip over it. 

And finally a wonderful example of African English in the washroom in a restaurant.