Flowers

Our new house held a nice surprise for us, these cool flowers! They are in the side yard close to the house, so they are tricky to find unless you are looking for them. But when you find them, what a treat!

They grow like bananas, which probably doesn't mean much to you. :-) But like a banana stalk, they start small and tightly packed together. Then they start growing downwards and expand to their full size. I can't figure out how you could pick them and display them, because they are growing from the top down, so we just leave them on their giant stalks (about 10 feet tall with one HUGE leaf at the top) and walk outside and around the corner of the house to enjoy them. Beautiful, aren't they?

Rice Packaging

While we were in Nairobi, we bought a bag of jasmine rice from Thailand. In Musoma we can get Tanzanian rice and basmati rice imported from Pakistan and/or India, but Thai jasmine rice is a treat for us.

Today I opened the bag and was reading the back of the bag, which was rather amusing in its use of English (as anyone who has a read an instruction manual for a device manufactured in China can imagine). Then when I got to the part about cooking directions, it ceased to be simply amusing and became quite confusing. As you can see in this picture, the amount of water to add to the rice apparently depends on what month it is! What on earth?! I can only hypothesize that it is really humid sometimes in Thailand and so the water in the air makes it so you need less water added to the rice to cook it. But then, I ask myself, why is the package printed in English, not in Thai, if it was intended for cooking in Thailand? No clue. I couldn't help but take a picture so you all could laugh along with me. Let me know if you know why the rice/water ratio depends on the month, as I'm quite curious!

Ikizu Luke has arrived!

Ikizu Luke has been printed and the books are ready! It's pretty exciting to see the Ikizu words in print in a real book instead of just on a computer screen!

However, Rukia and my sneak peeks are the only peeks that are going to take place for a while, because we can't be letting undedicated books run wild. (That was a joke.) The Ikizu Luke dedication is not until August 25, so we have to close up the boxes and sit tight for a little while yet. It is very tempting to take a few out and take a picture for you, but if we all have to wait before we get the books, you all have to wait before you get a picture of the books!

Thank you very much to those of you who prayed for us through the whole process of developing an Ikizu alphabet and writing system, learning about the language, hiring and training translators, and working on the Luke translation and checking the drafts. The fruit of your prayers is now sitting in boxes in my office, and come August 25, we'll be celebrating it!

New House

We're pretty excited about our new house! We've now spent eight nights there and it's starting to feel like home. I think yesterday was our first normal (not unpacking or packing) evening and this morning we were actually in a bit of a routine for getting ready for work. After the craziness of moving and almost immediately going to Kenya for ten days, we're mighty thrilled to have some normal routine in our lives.

One interesting thing that came about because we moved and then left right away was that when I was unpacking after our Kenya trip, I couldn't remember where to put things. Like, I took my lotion out of the suitcase and then stood in the middle of the bedroom looking at various cabinets and wondering where on earth I had decided to store lotion when I'd unpacked our boxes to set up the house two weeks earlier. I hadn't exactly had time to use any lotion before packing it again! I did figure it out, though, eventually (and random other things that also had me stumped for location).



This is the sideyard and backyard of our house. In the newsletter you all saw some pictures, so in this post I'm putting up different ones. There is lots of space for Andrew to exercise his gardening skills! Neither of us are under any delusions that I have any gardening skills, so the outdoor area is all his. I told him that if he'll grow it, I'll cook it. My skills are more in the cutting up plants area of life with a knife and cutting board, not in the tenderly nurturing little plants area of life.


This is our bedroom, which is huge. I think someday we'll put a desk and bookshelf down here and make a little home office for me. In the meantime, we're enjoying the luxury of empty space. We have a bathroom (with a toilet that has a LOUD flush! No sneaking into the bathroom to quietly go potty at night with that thing!) off our bedroom, which is the open door in this picture. Having a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house is pretty exciting!



This is the kitchen. Yeah, it has two sinks. It also has extremely low counters and is kind of long and thin. It has cupboards, though, which is a nice treat that one doesn't find in most Tanzanian houses! I'm still figuring out where the best place is for various things. I think the more I cook, the more I'll have a feel for where I want stuff.


This is our back porch. Someday we'd like to have some comfy chairs and a coffee table down there. Right now, though, there is a very big hole in one of the screens that needs to be fixed before we're intersted in spending time there! I am not going to volunteer myself to be mosquito fodder.

Spaghetti in Musoma

When I cook, I like to listen to music. Unfortunately, due to power cuts in Musoma, in order to listen to music, one must have music that works off of a battery! For me, my iPod and headphones suffice. It's a little awkward when the cord snags on a pot handle or something, but thus far I've managed to avoid disaster (iPod flying into a pot of soup, etc.).

Also, when I cook, I like to make tasty things. Unfortunately, due to lack of canned chopped tomatoes in Musoma, in order to make tasty spaghetti sauce, one must peel one's own tomatoes! As you can see in this picture, I'm lifting the peel off of a tomato. I have discovered that peeling tomatoes isn't as difficult as a process as it may sound. If you boil the tomatoes for about 3 minutes, you can lift it off without too much struggle (or losing too much of the tomato). It takes some time, and I highly recommend letting the boiled tomatoes cool a bit before you attempt peeling them, but it works just fine and the spaghetti sauce tastes great.

Fridge-dried gecko

This little dude made a wrong turn one day and scampered right into our refrigerator. Unfortunately for him, we didn't notice. Somehow he ended up on the shelf where I usually keep cilantro, and I, not looking very closely, mistook him for a little cilantro sprig that fell off the bunch.

After a few weeks, I got tired of having a messy cilantro-shelf in the fridge door and took it upon myself to clean up the fallen sprig. Lo and behold, I realized it was a gecko! Not quite freeze-dried, but fridge-dried. Apparently geckos do not survive when trapped in the refrigerator.

Andrew took this picture of him, and then dropped his crunchy carcass on the kitchen floor for Betsy (cat) to consume. She's more used to the fresh and wriggling variety of gecko, but cheerfully consumed this one after a bit of sniffing. Maybe it's like astronaut food for cats - shrunken, aged, and dried, but still food.

Sick Cat

Clive at age 6 months


Clive in a tree (he got stuck in a tree as a kitten, and since then has always figured out how to get down himself)


Clive and his sister, Betsy

We've got a sick little guy, Clive. He's been on antibiotics for a while, but his problem might not be biotic, or he might just need more antibiotics or a different kind. He's hanging in there pretty well, though - despite having problems breathing, he's very active and healthy-seeming.

So what does one do when one lives in Musoma and has a sick cat, you might be asking yourself. Well, that's a good question. I'm still trying to figure out the answer myself, in fact.

When Clive and Betsy needed to be neutered/spayed years ago, I had a vet who lives about three or four hours away travel to Musoma by bus and come do their surgeries on my dining room table. That was an adventure. After he left, I found a couple little male kitten bits on the floor under the table - he had cleaned up the table well, but I guess they, being wee round balls, had just rolled off.

When Clive was bitten by a snake and was in acute near-death misery for a week, I used Skype to call the vet in Olympia, WA, that we used to take our cats to years ago. The vet, after hearing that I had a deathly ill cat in East Africa, gave me advice over the phone. That was helpful, but not the kind of thing I felt I could do unless a cat really was deathly ill.

There are two local vets who can do things like administer rabies shots each year. One year I put Clive and Betsy in a basket and took them to his little roadside shop in town to go get their shots, thinking that would be easier than having him make a house call. When I got there, he hopped on his bicycle and went to go buy a syringe! I was a bit surprised he didn't have any on hand. When he returned, he stuck Betsy with the needle and gave her her shot, and then promptly stuck Clive with the same one for his shot! I have a feeling that vets in American don't usually share needles between animals...

With this most recent sickness, I've relied on a vet in the States, whom I call Dr. Sarah when talking to Clive about her as I shove pills down his throat, who has very kindly sent advice and prescriptions via e-mail. I did have a local vet come to the house to look at him one day, but I think this vet was more accustomed to cows needing vaccines than cats with airway issues. Anyway, Dr. Sarah and I met because she's a very good friend of a very good friend, and she's now my (and Clive's) friend, too. We can get all sorts of drugs here at our local pharmacy, so finding the right medication is rarely an issue, although it's often sold under a different name than in the States, so I have to read packages to figure out the ingredients. What IS an issue is finding them in the right size! Pills here are designed for humans, not cats. Even the worm pills are too big, because they are intended for dogs. But hey, what's a knife and cutting board for, if not for cutting your cat's pills into quarters?

So if you are reading this and you have animals, may I advise you to build up a good relationship with your vet there at home, because you just never know when you might need to call or e-mail them if you should happen to move overseas someday!