Mangos bombing the tin roof

Every now and then we are startled by the very loud thud of a mango hitting the tin roof. I have jumped up in bed several times thinking surely someone had busted down the door only to be told by an orange lipped guard that everything is fine. The kids and Andrew love them. I do not. But it is so nice to have fresh fruits in your yard. I think I would like to have that in every house I live in but if I have the privilege of planning the landscape I am going to move it away from the house a few yards.

It finally rained! Only for about 15 minutes and then it was gone. That is the only rain we have had for the entire time we have been here. I know I have said that several times but that is just amazing to me. We woke up to the sound of it and the kids were so excited that they went strait out to play in the rain in their pajamas. I did not stop them because I was in front.

I opened the bag of flour I was going to use for pancakes and saw a worm on top. That is not what I was hoping for! Our cook tells me you have to sift it every time. So, I am sifting the worms out of flour these days and not eating raw cookie dough any more.

I am now the mother of a nine year old. We asked John if he had ever had any kind of party or cake at the refugee camp and the answer was no as expected. At the center they celebrate with 4 parties a year to celebrate all the birthdays of that quarter. So, I loved getting to celebrate just him. We made him follow a streamer that went from his bed all through the house and at the end we were in the living room waiting to pop the confetti poppers and sing happy birthday. He opened his presents and after a fun day at the beach we had pizza and cake. Yes, those are matches. We are in Africa and I didn't have candles. I am so thankful that God has allowed us this time to be his family. He brings joy to our lives and is really a wonderful person that I adore.

Levi will surely be a biologist. He spends all his time outside looking for creatures. Two Saturdays ago there was a spectacular development. He found a hermit crab. It was way over at the far side of the beach. He begged us unmercifully to take it home. I relented reluctantly. Why? Because they are gross and I was remembering the episode a year or two ago of him loosing one in our house that was missing for months and then showed up one day in the kitchen. Then one day he died and fell out of his shell on me. Disgusting. But, a disgusted mother is no match for a pet needing 5 year old so he took it home. It promptly died. I did not take this one out-he did. This Saturday he came home with somewhere around 19 hermit crabs and 5 clams. I love this photo of him trying to haul all those gross things plus sand across the beach to our car.

This really is getting out of control and I need to put my foot down. However, when he woke up the day after bringing them home, he literally went strait to the crab box and stayed there all day. He loves to watch them. I want to yell, 'no more crabs stinking up the back porch!', but how could I take away his joy? Here he and Ivey are eating egg sandwiches and 'studying hermit crabs'.

And, he is so quirky. This is how eats banana's:

And the funny label of the week is:
Diabetic Raspberry Extra Jelly

The other day I pulled out a map of the world that has been color coded for Christianity. It shows all areas where it is illegal and what area's are hostile with intensely persecuted churches. Albert was very interested and asked several questions about that. He has said for years now that he wants to be a pastor. I showed him how the line is all across north Africa and the persecuted realm is coming south. The line at this point is just north of Sierra Leone. I said, "It appears that God is doing something along this line because many missionaries are feeling led to go to countries and area's right along this border all the way across Africa. I think it is time to push that line back". He smiled, agreed, high 5'd me, and walked away. I almost cried. There was a day that I thought my job as a mother was to protect my children from ever suffering anything including a persecution. I felt that I needed to pray that God would not choose my child. Today I am at peace with the fact that of all the things I have to protect my children from, God is not one of them.

the two request

So we have a request. Actually two.
Request #1
The boy we have mentioned in two recent post about selling the biscuits and hurting his eye has now been kicked out of his aunts home for not selling biscuits on Easter. He instead went to church with us. We had no idea that he would get in trouble for that-we just invited him. At first he said he was coming but didn't show up for a while. When Albert went over to check on him he said he couldn't come because he didn't have anything to wear. So Albert walked him to his closet and told him to pick something. He went and showed up the next week too. He had apparently knocked on the gate and we didn't hear him. So he went on his own. He was sitting there playing drums when we walked in. He grinned from ear to ear at our surprise. He came over to tell us about his situation and say that he was walking to his uncles house to ask if he could live with him. The answer was no. He asked his mom who according to him abandoned him at birth and never comes to see him if he could live with her and she let him know he would have a new dad when he got there. He was not excited about this option but agreed and I don't know what happened but she showed up and left without him. He is currently staying with the really nice lady across the street. We are wondering if anyone out there would be interested in helping with his school fees. We think it is going to cost approximately $500 and the cost of a uniform, lunch, and transportation.


Request #2
We will be shipping a container soon that will bring some of our last items that were bigger and we couldn't bring on the plane. Since being here we are figuring out what things are reasonably priced and what things are expensive. We have a food list of items that cost triple here what I could get it there when I was couponing. So are looking for around 3 Super Savers out there who would not mind shopping for us. We will take as much of each of these items as we can because with 5 kids we are going through things pretty fast. I have been watching the Publix site and many of these things are buy one get one free or even just on sale at Publix this week. They have a limit to the amount that you can buy so we need several people to buy as many as possible. We have to have the items at the home of our shipping coordinator (who lives in Spring Hill, Tn but items can also be dropped off at Logo Chairs in Franklin, Tn) by April 27th. If you are able to shop at Publix for these things please add a message at the bottom of this post and let me know. When you have a total and we will have our fantastic financial partner reimburse you.

Here is the list:

Instant Oatmeal
Peanut Butter
Powdered Milk
Tuna Fish
Honey
Cascadian Farms-Honey Oats cereal
Shredded Wheat cereal
Raison Bran Cereal
Cheerios
Chex cereals
sunflower seeds-shelled
oatflour
Parmesan cheese
Emerald brand almonds
Barilla alfredo sauce
Canned vegetables(green beans and peas)
Louisiana Hot Sauce
dried beans(black eyed peas, light and dark red kidney, navy, etc)
grape, strawberry or blackberry jelly/jam
Levi would like to request Mac-n-cheese($4/box here! Isn't that crazy!)
Velvetta cheese
Nutella
Chocolate chips
M+M's
Creamers in Hazelnut
Canned drinks: coke, dr.pepper, sprite, fanta, mountain dew, canada dry.
Starbucks coffee (Pike place roast ground for a french press)

Misc items:

Borax and Armand Hammer washing detergent (for making our own laundry detergent-thank you Rachel Ropiecki)
Paper Towels
bleach

Thank you advance if you can do this!!!

Beating Dudas

Today we saw something new.
In my 32 years on earth and 19 of christianity I have never heard of the tradition of beating Judas on Good Friday. Today as we drove to our weekly family day location-River #2- we past what I would call a scare-a-crow stuffed full of clothes instead of straw. He was sitting in the middle of the road in a chair. The kids yelled, "Dudas! It's a Dudas". Of course that launched 100 questions on our part and found out that on Good Friday they stuff these things and call them Dudas which means Judas from the Bible. They beat it to smithereens at some specified time of the day because he betrayed Jesus. We passed a total of 3 and as we were coming home from the beach they had all been annihilated. The clothes were spread all over the road. Has anyone else ever heard of that?



Speaking of the beach. We love it. All week we look forward to it and everyone gets so excited, myself included. People ask us how we are doing here and what life is like but it is really hard to answer that. Last Friday I really had a meltdown. Thank goodness it was only an inward meltdown and no one around me knew that I was upset. It started because I get really antsy when anyone is inside our compound and we had 3 other people here besides the guard and cook. One of them was trying to take something they shouldn't and they were all waiting on me to pay them for various things. I didn't know how much so I was trying to call Andrew who I couldn't reach and the kids kept kicking a soccer ball on my new little sprouting flowers that I was excited about growing. That is not all but I am going to choose not to elaborate more than that. Andrew also had a tough week. While we are aware that we are much wealthier than anyone around us and we want to help people it gets so exhausting to have people ask you for things everywhere you go. There is a man in the area who waits at our door every day and if we go outside the gate he is there ready to ask for some money or an egg or something. You think someone is coming around talking to you because they really do want to know you but then they ask for money and you find out that they were only building up to asking for something. It will be hard for us to make real friends here because of that. There is another man who comes about once a week. He is not all there and begs without end that we would call BBC to tell them to stop talking to him through the radio. He is sure that they are telling him to hurt people and they are telling other people to hurt him. When we were buying chickens I had a lady rush me and shove a boy towards me. She then held his face from behind so that I would look at his face and said, "Look at this boy! Look at his face. He needs a chicken, buy him a chicken!" Except this boy didn't look like he was sick or that he was doing without any meals or anything so I said no and moved on. There has yet to be a time when we go anywhere that at least 5-10 people don't beg us for something. Then you also have the everyday difficulty of living. There is no dishwasher so you hand wash 7 peoples dishes. You also can only do laundry when all the stars are aligned there is electricity. You have to hope that it will stay on long enough to make it through the wash and dry cycle. If you have to hang it on the line-well it is probably going to be pointless. Like today, I washed the cover on our bed and hung it up on the line. The nail came out of the cement wall(again) and the cover went strait into the water drainage area where it is really gross with dirty food and muck. The other day the people in the compound next to us were burning trash and the smell permeated everything on the line. So anyway, it is hard here. But you know, we really feel like it is where God wants us and we would not be happy anywhere else. On the way to the beach Andrew commented on how he liked it here. And I do too. Some days I may not feel the same but overall we are at peace with this and are learning to love it-even the hard parts. I kind of like the way everything is so old school. You want furniture-build it. You want eggs-go ask the lady with the coop. You want to know how the game ends-listen to the radio. Everything has pro's and con's. Here are the photos of this weeks biggest pro's:


Beautiful Isatu at gorgeous River #2


Albert


John, Levi and Isatu


The little fishermen-no bites today. They were quicker than any of us expected.
Ivey

Seven chickens

We have the chickens!!!
I finished painting the inside of the coop white and we went down the street to collect the shavings from the carpenter. After dropping them off at home we drove down to Lumley where I had seen the chickens. They were right in the middle of a market and it is a busy time of day at 5:00 because people are buying the food they need for dinner. So Andrew stayed in the car while I took Albert, John, and Levi to check it out. We had to slide between booths of hanging garlic, bowls of beans, smelly fresh fish laying on trays. Once we had squeezed through the small space to get to the chickens and bartered with the lady to determine a price I let Albert pick his chicken. The lady shoved an arm into the cage of about 20 chickens and yanked the pointed out rooster. It was a little alarming how rough she was with it but I am sure she thought he wasn't living past tonight anyway. So then I held John up to pick his chicken. He also picked a rooster and so ended a large selection of birds for the rest of the family. He had the funniest expression. One of uncertainty, as if he didn't know if he still wanted this squawking, flapping, talon ended bird. But the lady was shoving it at him so he took it and held it with two hands all the way back to the car. Levi picked a beautiful solid black hen and grinned from ear to ear as he carried her to the car. They got in and put their chickens in their designated bucket and I got Isatu and Ivey out. Isatu wanted white and Ivey wanted black, but yet again the roughness of the chicken handler was alarming to the kids. They both shrieked back gasping at the terror of this bird yelling at them and the lady holding it in their face barking 'take it'? So I took the chickens and convinced Isatu to hold hers while I carried Ivey and her chicken. As we were turning to go the lady who was probably in her early twenties said something to me and I replied that I was coming back and getting 2 more. I have never seen anyone react in the way she did to a purchase I have made. She asked, " Two more?! Your coming back to buy two more?" I shook my head yes and held up two fingers and she jumped up shouting to her fellow venders "She said she's buying two more!" She jumped up and down and pumped her fist in the air laughing and yelling that over and over. All I could do was laugh and leave. So I took the two girls to the car and getting in was quite a scene. I put Ivey's bird in her bucket in front of her and it came flapping right back out. Ivey flipped out! She pressed herself against the seat as hard as she could and in quick repetition scream yelled at the bird. That set Isatu off and she tried to jump out of the car wearing this wide eyed frightened look and saying she didn't like fowl. Of course Albert and Levi were laughing hysterically and John was doing his usual hilarious commentary. He says 'uh huh' in a deep voice at really funny times. It is almost impossible to describe him but he can get Andrew and I laughing until we cry. So we got the girls in and I went back for the other two hens and we went home. Everyone was so excited to get the chickens to the coop and even Ivey and Isatu calmed down and enjoyed the scenes.
The chickens quickly established the pecking order and we gave all of them names. Albert's rooster, Poppet, came out on top and is currently ruling the roost. John's rooster is second and was named Lion-King of the Coop. There is a little uncertainty about the middle but we are pretty sure that my hen is last in pecking order because she got bossed quite a bit. I went to check on them before I locked up tonight and they were all huddled up together sleeping so I think they are going to get along just fine.

the atari farm

Sometimes I feel like I have been dropped into some kind of alternate universe where we live on a strange farm with plenty of roosters and atari music. We will just be driving down the road and suddenly hear atari sounds blasting from giant speakers that they have set up for school field days. Goats are always crossing the roads and the other day we were in the middle of Freetown and saw several hilarious things including a guy pulling a giant wagon(which you see all the time) but with an oversized helmet on so he looked like an atari character. I couldn't get my camera out in time or I would have an extra photo on the blog today. Also, we saw several motorbike taxi drivers wearing coats. One was wearing a fur coat. I guess it gets cold when you buzz through heat waves. Another alternate universe phenomenon. Again, I didn't get my camera out in time.
I have been amazed at the fact that we have been here for 2.5 months and it has not rained once-not once! I don't know how the trees stay green. I guess the oceans humidity is enough.
We sit outside to eat every night because it helps us to avoid mopping the dining room and because in this alternate universe it is so hot that sitting outside is better than the heat inside. Our tin roof could burn the skin off you. When we sit outside there are two patio type areas in the back and we always line up on the edge of them. We have been trying to have what we call 'mommy daddy time' periodically with each of our kids so that they get to spend one on one time with us. I overheard Levi say to John as he sat down next to him on the patio that he had really enjoyed Levi Johnny time. I laughed and asked him what that was and he replied that he and John had sat on the front porch together that afternoon and played and talked together. So that was Levi Johnny time. So sweet! There is always a lot of giggling and throwing toys from bed to bed at rest time too. While sometimes I have to go in there 40 times to tell them to be quiet I usually give it my sternest voice and then smile to myself when my back is turned to them because I am glad that they are bonding.
There is a common scene at our house where Samuel the guard and Albert huddle around the radio to listen to the soccer game. That feels so old school to me and I love it.

Also during dinner-we are all eating and talking when suddenly Ivey shrieks, "Look at my mustache!". Yes, that is a chicken bone. I can't promise that she is not always this dirty but I will say she is sometimes clean...


We painted the chicken coop today and are getting the shavings tomorrow. Friday is the big day for chicken hunting. We have been learning about them all week and I just have to share this hilarious excerpt from a fantastic site for beginning a backyard chicken farm;
• Young pullets often lay malformed eggs before getting established in a normal laying routine. Older hens may occasionally lay abnormal eggs due to age, stress, or illness.
• Pullet eggs--the first ones produced by each pullet--are smaller than the eggs that the same hen will produce as an older hen.
• “Fart egg” and “oops egg” are terms for tiny eggs that quickly pass through the oviduct without reaching full size.

You can imagine how that went over sitting in the chicken coop reading that to 3 boys.
I couldn't quit laughing myself so we moved on to the painting.
You really don't have buy kids toys for them to have fun. This "shooting hat gun" made by Levi from discarded wire was the source of hours of enjoyment on his part and torture for everyone else that he was 'shooting' by running at and poking.
And after all that is it any wonder that this is what the end of our day looks like?