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.