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| Oh, the irony of it allActually, it really isn't ironic, maybe more cruel and unusual than anything else. In the same week that Jeff tells me that I have to limit my uploads onto the internet, he buys me a one year pro account to flickr! Oh, the horror! Now I can have unlimited pictures for viewing but now I'm limited by my internet provider. As a type of therapy for my flickr withdrawal, I decided that today I would organize my online photos better. With a free account I was only given 3 sets to put photos in, but know with a pro account it is unlimited. So I've decided to go through and make up different sets for the pictures that I was already able to upload. No new pictures, just new files to put them all neatly in.
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| Sad TimesI'm sad to say that my internet bill is too high! I've been put on an internet leash. No more than 7 picture uploads a month. ouch. I think this month I've probably uploaded close to 60 pictures between here and my flickr site. How in the world am I supposed to only upload 7 pics a month?!? It's a sad day in a girl's life when she's been grounded like this.
So unless the internet company decides to gift me unlimited internet (which they won't) or we become horrendously wealthy (to be able to pay my $200/month internet bill ~ I'm embarrassed to actually type that number) or I'm able to get free internet at the coffee shop/restaurant whose internet always seems to be down, I don't think you'll get more pics from me for awhile on here. I'll do my best to keep my flickr site up and maybe I'll try to hit up that free internet at Java House. Until then, you'll just have to read the drivel I put on here and try to pass off as legitimate.
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| Things That Make Us Laugh This one isn't really funny, but I've been wanting to comment on it for a little while now. This is the ingredients list for the Nestle brand baby cereal that I buy for Benjamin here in Nairobi. When I first mixed it for him, I tested it to make sure it wasn't too hot and I noticed that it was sweet, really sweet! I thought that was really odd after feeding three babies rice cereal in the States and we all know that it tastes pretty blah. I checked out the ingredients and I couldn't believe that the second and third main ingredients were sweeteners. The instructions say to mix the cereal with milk or formula, which are naturally sweet to babies. Jeff thought it was to give extra calories in a country where many babies are not receiving adequate food. But poor people don't buy this cereal! I was disappointed to see that starting at 6 months of age, babies are introduced to sugar on a large level. When I make this for Benjamin, I don't add milk or formula, just water. I think it is too sweet as is to even add fruits like I used to do with rice cereal.
Now this one is funny, in a junior high sort of way. This is the back of the same box, telling how to mix the cereal. Emily's pretty grossed out by the cartoon breast. I laugh every time I look at it.
Here's one that really confuses me. It's free, for only 900 bob (close to $15 US). This is the back of our ATM receipt at Barclay's Bank here in Nairobi. I really have no idea what this means.
Jeff really likes this last one. This is the bag of pasta we buy. It's the cheapest one I can find. It sounds pretty scary, right? The Macaroni Zar!
In the upper right had corner is a small symbol. That's Jeff's favorite part.
Iranian taste, Italian Quality?? I'm not even sure what Iranian taste means. I mean, I know where (about) Iran is and I'm sure they have food there, but are they actually known for great tasting food? Especially great tasting Italian food? I think for pasta it would make more sense to say, "Iranian Quality, Italian taste." I want my pasta to taste like it's Italian, not Iranian. Plus, my way of saying it mean, "hey, we may be from Iran, but we know how to make quality products that taste like the original." I guess the main question for this product is, how does it taste? Well, folks, it tastes like it was made in Iran.
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| Cut and Paste I'm lazy to the core. So lazy that many of you have already received an email story that was originally written to my mom from me. It's our first authentic snake story here. I wanted to send it to others, so instead of rewriting the whole thing, I just cut and pasted the original to others. And now that's exactly what I'm going to do here. You'll find plenty of sentence fragments and major grammatical errors, but that's how I send messages to my mom. I realize that 90% of my readers have already read this in email form (all 4 of you), but there may still be one or two who didn't. Enjoy.
We just returned from the bush. We had meeting for three days, plus a
day to get there and a day to get back. All went well. It was a
crowded place, but we managed. I was responsible for two meals, so I
made most of the stuff ahead of time and froze it or mixed it when it
was time. We saw warthogs, baboons and dikdiks from their house. While
we were walking we saw something bigger and brown behind bushes and
heard something loud. Could have been impala or lion in the bushes and
maybe an elephant made the sound from the trees. To be safe we headed
back to the house. There was a big baboon fight that we could hear and
see the baboons running up acacia trees. We weren't sure what started
it, but it was loud! It was cold and windy at night and during the day
it was usually sunny and warm. Two of the afternoons/evenings it
rained. That was a little harder on the kids because then they were
stuck inside.
The guys all slept out in the guest house (two room house with lots of
bunk beds) and all us girls slept in the main house (small house).
There is a bathroom (with septic) in the main house and an outhouse
behind the guest house. The septic is so full and old that we are only
supposed to pee in the house and never flush paper. Most of the time we
all just went in the outhouse. Dan came into the main
house one night and said he was laying in bed and he kept hearing a
funny noise. He called over to Joe (teammate who just returned to Kenya) who
was sleeping in another bunk, asking what he was doing. Joe wasn't
doing anything. So Dan sat up and saw that he had a bat crawling up his
blankets!
The scariest and most exciting moment was Thursday after our meetings.
We were heading back to the main house (we had the meetings in the
Maasai church). Connie and Jeff were the first ones to arrive at the
house. Connie walked onto the screened in porch and started moving toys
to make way for the safari chairs that we had brought to the meeting and
were bringing back. She picked up a miniature red wagon and underneath
it coiled up was a 6 ft long spitting cobra. Connie stepped back and
the cobra was scared enough that it slithered away, but it was going
near the door to the house. Edison was standing right there at the door
and it was open. He had heard Jeff's voice, so he was coming out to
meet him. Thankfully, Edison didn't step down and the snake continued
just past Edison (inches away) and hid under the solar battery box.
Jeff ran into the house and shut the door to keep the kids in. Once
Jeff was inside to guard the kids, I was able to calm down (slightly)
and help keep an eye on where the snake was to help the guys find it. I felt like I was at a high school basketball game. I was cheering and screaming and directing people where to go. I
was really scared at first, especially since when I had arrived, Edison
was standing there at the door right next to the battery box. Connie,
Veronicah and I kept guard at the two porch doors and waited for help.
For awhile we were waiting for their Maasai guard to come (no one knew
where he had went). We figured he'd have a spear or machete to use and
he'd know how to get rid of it. We couldn't find him. So Dan, Lynn (a
man) and one of the interns, Eric, went in to try and get it out. At
first we really didn't know what kind of snake it was. Jeff, Veronicah
and Connie were the only ones who saw it, but Connie thought it was a
spitting cobra. So all the guys went in with glasses or sunglasses on
to protect their eyes. They had a hard time finding it around the
battery box. They were trying to be careful because of the wires and
things. To make matters worse, the battery box was old and half the
wood was rotten, so it was hard to move it or look around it because of
it. Eventually a few Maasai guys came up. One guy (Maasai pastor) went in to help and
they were able to poke at the snake enough where he would come out.
That's when we found out it was a spitting cobra. It started to spit at
people and it hit the Maasai guy in the eyes. Connie and the other two
medical interns helped him to the ground and started to flush out his
eyes. They immediately started to swell. That's what the cobra does to
prey. It spits to blind it temporarily and then it strikes and bites with poisonous
venom that kills. Any time that they were able to pull part of the
cobra out it would spit. Everyone else was wearing protection. Dan did
get it on his skin and went into the house to wash it off immediately.
It took at least 30 minutes, maybe longer to finally get it and kill
it. The Maasai have a tradition of hanging dead snakes up in trees or
something. So we hung the body (they had chopped its head off with a
post hole digger) on the fence. The next day we went and really looked
at its head. The teeth are hollow and there is a hole in the tongue
where the spit comes out.
This is what was left of the snake after our guys took care of it. Edison just happened to be wearing his slinky slimy snake shirt that day. When held up to hang straight down, the snake was about 6 ft long.
The decapitated head of the cobra.
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| More Photos I could easily upload all 400 of our Zanzibar photos, but that would cost me a ton of money (since we pay by the megabyte). I think these will have to be the last of them. Maybe in the future I'll throw one in for kicks.
This is the local fish market. We were not planning on going there, but Richard, our unofficial tour guide, led us there anyway. Yes, it smelled, I think. I actually never breathed in my nose the entire time we were in there. I started to notice the smell as we were heading towards the market and basically shut off my smeller at that point.
I imagine this to be the shell of one of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This shell belongs to the largest sea tortoise every caught near Zanzibar. I think that the sign said it weighed 390 kg (1 kg = 2.2 lbs, you do the math). There wasn't any mention of a colored eye mask found with it, so we will never know if it was Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael or Michelangelo. (PS my legs are seriously white for living in Africa!)
This is a typical view of all the boats sitting off the coast of Stone Town.
We returned Saturday night from a 5 day trip in the bush. We had team meetings for 3 of the days and a day each to travel in and out of the bush. We didn't take a lot of pictures this time, but we have a few I'll share soon and a snake story. I've been told every missionary needs one good snake story. I finally have mine!
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