O Yea, That...

I made it home safe'n'sound bright'n'early Sunday morning and am now working on adjusting back to life on the other side of the Atlantic. Strangely enough it kinda feels like I never left...but there are those few exceptions where I am strongly reminded, "O yea, that..."



-Coffee shops. Surprise, surprise...Starbucks was the first thing I saw upon landing.
-Bagels. Yum.
-Pre-sliced Bread. Well, you can get it sliced, but you have to ask them to open it and do it for you once you buy it.
-Stoplights. What does red mean again?
-No sand in my shoes!
-Drinking water straight from a spicket.
-Flipping the light switch up to go on, not down. Why is it suddenly darker in here?
-Dishwashers. The plug in, electric type.
-Driving on the right hand side of the road...this is really going to get me in trouble. Aaaaand i keep turning on the windshield wipers when i want to turn...
-Not having to count the seconds I'm online. I love unlimited FAST access.
-Having to write today's date as 5/25/10 instead of 25/5/10. That will be a perpetual state on confusion for quite a while.
-The roads are huge. And they curve.
-Dryers. I prefer a string and some great African sunshine on this one.
-The washing machine doesn't give you a nice little medley to start off the washing.
-The microwave isn't narcoleptic...
-There isn't 'fresh' meat being sold along the side of the road.
-TV shows in their original language, not crudely translated from Spanish by the same 4 people.
-There is no bleach water to dip my dishes in when I'm done washing them...no matter how much I keep trying...
-Driving to town in a car. Sure beats a boat.
-Church only lasts for an hour...not hourS.
-Amish Buggies...something that really should be in Africa. But I guess donkeys are close enough.
-Street Names. There is more than one in each town aaaand its not Hage Geingob St.
-Waking up to the sound of silence. Deafening actually...I'm a little too used to Petro? :-P

But on a more serious note, I don't even know where to begin in expressing my gratitude and thanks toward those who made this last year of my life possible; and I know there are alot of you. Whether it was the daily prayers, the notes of encouragement, keeping in touch, or supporting me financially (or d. all of the above); all played a cumulative role in making the last year of my life my biggest adventure yet. I miss the kids, the staff, and life there like craaazy! They were all my extended family and home away from home. But anything good that came of my time there was a team effort led by God, not anything I could have ever done on my own. So for that, thank you all for letting me be a part of what God is doing around the world!

Quintupled

The constant decibel level in the children's home has quintupled overnight as the first lot of kids were brought back yesterday from their villages. With every one that Jenny and I picked up yesterday, the van got louder and louder with more and more stories and more and more laughter as they quickly picked out who had gotten chicken pox and who hadn't...yet. So with 14 more kids in the home, all with 14,000 stories to tell, its no wonder. They all had a very nice holiday and can't wait to go back in December for the next one. "Wonderful, excellent, & too amazing to describe" were responses I heard alot of. Since it was harvest time during the holiday, they brought home and learned to cook many different traditional vegetables, milks, and nuts, all of which I can't prounce (me and bushman !clicks are not friends...). Many got to see friends and family they had not seen in a long time and some even meeting parents and siblings for the first time. Overall a very memorable and valuable experience for them all.

Pictured here is Beerina & Djolo (in greens) with their siblings & cousins.

Bones'N'Eyeballs

Mafuta is a nearby village in which there is a feeding center that we provide food for. There are local volunteers who do the preparing of food, serving, and teach the preschool. Since Jessica has been gone on furlough, I've been the delivery/firewood girl and yesterday was my last day there. Shortly after they had made me do the final stirrings of pap (corn meal) for the kids (exhausting...seriously), a guy rode by on a bike selling tiny little fish. The largest was maybe 1 inch long and were N$1/cup. So the makuwas threw in N$5 for the experience on how they are prepared and, of course, a taste test :-)

First you separate out all the large (1 inch) ones from the small ones then put them in water a bit at a time and start squeezing handfuls to remove their innards. Then you sort through them and pull out any grass or large pieces of dirt. To cook them, they are all put into a pot together over an open fire and fried with oil. They are stirred for a while before finally getting mashed up and adding salt to taste.
The final outcome included everything from bones to eyeballs, but all eaten mashed onto a handful of pap. I have to say, I had my doubts, but it was extremely delicious and definitely worth the experience. Pictured above is me with the Mafuta volunteers enjoying our meal of pap and (tiny) fish.

Retirement!

The boat has finally reached its long-overdue retirement...until next year anyway; Gilligan has escaped Zion Island via road!!! For the first time in more than 9 weeks, we have reached the tar road by something other than a boat!! The road is still not completely dry, or fixed, but is at least now passable by 4 wheel drive vehicles.

The 2.5 mile road is now visible, not knee deep at the shallowest part, the ponds have been reduced to large puddles, the largest holes have been filed with sand, and the large gullies have been filled in with bricks (only wide enough to pass one car of course, as you can see by the photo). And last but not least, the bridge was fixed yesterday making the road now fully "passable" for us at Zion, the end of the road. We had kept our truck on the inside during the flood and it can now get in and out, but I was also able to get one of our other vehicles back here with very little problem. Now getting our low-riding 14-seatbelt (but up to 30-some passenger) van back in may be another story, but all-in-all an excellent start towards normal travel once again.

Fish Are Food, Not Friends...

Over the past several months Dave has been teaching the kids how to fish, especially the boys. There are many that are now excellent fishermen thanks to Daves work and many have enjoyed private tigerfish dinners thanks to Margaret's cooking as they celebrate their catch. But perhaps the best fisherman of them all (or the most lucky), is Muny. He has been away at his school for the deaf in Windhoek until recently, but save the last learner to be the best learner.

He has trumped them all in the biggest tigerfish caught (pictured right) and the first and only to nab a bubble fish (pictured above & helped by Albert just this morning). Yesterday alone he caught 3 large tigerfish, also a record for the number caught in one day by one person. Since so few are left in the children's home these days, he has reeled in a scrumptious dinner for everyone on several occassions. This bubblefish might even be enough for a couple of nights.

Nsala

Earlier this week, the local news showed a small clip about a newborn baby, only 1 day old, that had been found abandoned in the bush here in Katima. And of course, not but a couple days later, we got the call about our newest addition!! So off Jenny and I went this morning to meet the social worker, the magistrate, and to collect her from the hospital. Since she had been living there since discovered by the police, the nurses were very sad to see her go. But she is now the youngest of Zion's very large family, one week old today, and weighing in at 6.8 lb and adorable. When we told Josiah (no longer the 'baby') that she was coming to stay in this crib, he looked at me and yelled "Liar!" before screaming his head off for the next half hour. Though the extremity of his antics funny, they are also due to the fact that, though the smallest, he has the chicken pox the worst of all and is an overall very unhappy boy these days.

Since such a public story was made about her case, we were asked several times if she was the one from the news when we seen with her in town. In addition, the Minister himself granted a nice donation towards clothes/supplies for her at the hospital and was given the honor of naming her. He did so after his own mother, Nsala.

Pox De La Chicken

That's right, chicken pox. Did you really think things could get quiet, calm, and normal around here with only a few kids left?? Ha! :-) Now there are only a few who don't have the chicken pox. Starting with 2 of the young boys at the beginning of the month that are now gone, only 2 kids are left here who don't have it (yet...) and a few staff members. And all who do have it are large lovers of Calamine Lotion...so much so that they look like makuwas (white folk) before they are done applying it. Moses (pictured left), one of our most energetic staff members, is also the most proud wearer if his Makuwa face and daily welcomes each new person to the chicken pox club with open arms. We have heard of at least a few of the kids not here that now have it and we're sure there are/will be many more. It may be easier to count the ones that don't have it by the time they reach back to Zion.