End of the rainy season

In some ways I love the rainy season.  Everywhere is green and the grass grows up to 5 feet tall.

This is the entrance to my garden.  There's a lawn on the other side but I let the grass grow around the edges cos it's so gorgeous.

 It made such a nice backdrop to lovely warm evenings and a glass of chilled wine.

The landlady has a gardener to look after the rest of the compound.  In the bottom right of the top picture you just about see the top of my compost heap.  I throw kitchen scraps and grass cuttings on there.  For some reason the gardener keeps taking it away so the other day when I was on my way out I asked him to leave the compost heap alone.  I know it's not in my own garden, its outside in the public area, but it's really not in anyone's way.  Somehow he managed to misunderstand and thought I wanted all the grass taking away from my garden.

This is what I came home to.

 

The rains have stopped now so it's going to be hard work to get it back to being a lawn again.

I hung some teacups on my ugly fence and put seeds and water for the birds.

 

It's very hot.  I'm sure we didn't get temperatures like this in previous years.  It's actually only mid 30's but feels much, much hotter.

Muppets With Machetes

The kankurang is a tradition intended to scare people.  It's to do with the initiation rites when boys (usually around 15 years old) get circumcised.  During the day he is just a man dressed up who goes around the neighbourhood scaring people.  He carries two machetes which he bangs together and shouts loudly and menacingly. 

They say that at night he can fly to the top of trees, duplicate himself and makes himself invisible.  The purpose of this is to attack witches and evil spirits. 

Needless to say I keep a distance when I hear them coming but sometimes I can't avoid them like when I ran into them a couple of weeks ago. 

As a white woman alone in the car I was a prime target!

There were around 150-200 boys following them.  I had to stop driving and eventually the car was surrounded by young men, posturing and shouting.

One man stuck his head in the window (it was WAY too hot to close the windows, I'd have died of suffocation) and asked if I was ok. This was my only opportunity to get them off my car.

"Tell them to get off my car or I'll take their machetes and circumcise them AGAIN!"

I used to be such a nice person.  Don't know what happened to me.

2016 Update

I had no idea how long it had been since I updated my blog.  A couple of people have mentioned it so I thought it's time to update you on what I've been up to lately.

I'm still loving my birds.

Okay, you get the idea.  My love of nature isn't restricted to birds.  I also love snakes and we are very fortunate to have a reptile farm about an hour's drive away where you get to cuddle (and be cuddled by) pythons!!

I took a huge bunch of kids to the snake farm and to the beach afterwards.  They never get to go to the beach so it's a real treat for them.  They don't have swimming costumes, they just run about in their underwear.  They don't have towels either.  Just stuff we take for granted.  I gave out some of my old ones.  But not having the 'proper' beach equipment doesn't stop them from having fun.

Our friends, Clare and Susan came for a month.  We love it when people visit.
Clare loved it so much she decided to move here and will rent a house in our compound.

Cute isn't it!

 We did the usual touristy stuff with them, snake farm, crocodile park etc.  Terry prefers not to get too close to the crocs, he prefers looking at weird fruit.

Oh! Nearly forgot my cats.  I seem to get through quite a few here.  Sadly.

This was my adorable cat, Smwt.  He was so affectionate and lovely.  He got in a fight and died of rabies.  He's not dead in this picture, he's just sleeping.

He was a funny cat, he loved me pouring water on him. I've never had a cat quite like him.

And poor little Minty.  I found him while we were out preaching.  He had a damaged back leg but it turned out to be tetanus and we couldn't save him.

So now we have Bryniog, remember that cute little kitten we adopted during construction?  He managed to survive all the nasty diseases and accidents that befall cats here and has grown into a lovely healthy cat.

And Hilja who belonged to our neighbours who moved back to Europe.  He's a bit of a grump but I love him anyway.

Next time I'll post a few pictures of our trip to UK.  It's hard work writing anything at the moment.  October is the hottest month.  As I'm writing it says 33 feels like 46.  It occasionally reaches 50.

Kotu Kingdom Hall and Assembly Hall

This was my first view of the new site.  It was impossible to imagine how it could be turned into something so beautiful.  At this point the brothers had hired a company with a huge tipper truck and removed NINETEEN loads of rubbish and topsoil.  This site is much bigger than Ebotown, some serious work and a LOT of volunteers would be needed.

Where would they all come from?  Everywhere.  Gambia, Senegal, Sierre Leone, Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, Austria, Canada, Belgium, Finland, France, Italy, Poland, Spain, UK, USA.  I've probably missed a few.  Some were already here of course, some came on holiday, found the site and gave up their poolside to shovel sand, some heard about the build and traveled especially to help.
Psalm 110:3



 The work started in October, the hottest month of the year. This was on the verandah of our house.  It was a little cooler at the site as it's nearer to the sea but you get the idea of the heat. What this doesn't tell you is the nearly 100% humidity. 






Once again we learned new trades.

Some learned how to dig a well, but, sadly, not how to find water. 

Some just couldn't keep up the pace.

 Of course our personal lives had to be fitted in somewhere.  Our family adopted a street kitten who was too weak from dehydration to even walk.  His name is Bryniog.

Slowly the weather cooled and the Kingdom Hall started to take shape,

and we made a start with the Assembly Hall.

Some were a little eager to start using it.

Work stopped in December for the District Convention.

And two weeks later for some of us who had the privilege to attend Pioneer School.

We made good progress with the Assembly Hall and plans were made to hold our first meeting there, the visit of the Zone Overseer on 1 February.

The Hall wasn't finished at the time of the visit but it was in usable condition.

Part of the construction report showing the very Assembly Hall we were sitting in!

Then the work continued.

Well into the dry season there was a LOT of dust! 

The gardens started to take shape.

By March the project was nearly finished and we were able to enjoy our first Circuit Assembly.