A couple of weeks ago I mentioned the Feast of Mother Cabrini we celebrated and promised a video. If you are still interested you can click here to see the video.
Posts Tagged ‘Africa’
This Week’s Happenings 12/5-12/11
Sunday, December 11th, 2011I spent 2.5 days in town this week for an all staff training on Child Protection. Ben stayed back on the mission to watch Mikayla and hold down the fort at Cabrini. I got a lot of raised eyebrows when I said that Ben was watching Mikayla while I was at the meeting. Swazi men are not typically seen as the "caretakers" of the children so for Ben to watch Mikayla for almost three days without me being around was strange for them. He did a great job keeping up with our almost three year old! They played games, had school, washed the car and just hung out.
Handprint Tree Ben and Mikayla made while I was gone.
Most of the meat of the meetings were things that I already knew, but new information for a lot of our staff. It was nice to hear their perspective on things and I even learned a lot about the Swazi culture. For example, when the Gogos (grandmothers) were kids they actually lived in their Gogos huts instead of their mothers so they wouldn’t see things. Want to hear an interesting fact – Only 20% of the children of Swaziland still have both parents? No wonder we have such a problem with child abuse and have so many OVC (orphan and vulnerable children). Another thing that raised my eyebrows was that the school systems still practice corporal punishment!
In other news, mangos and lychees ripened enough to call them into season this week. In case you aren’t familiar, lychees are small fleshy fruit with a tough skin that peels off and a pit in the middle. They taste kind of like a green grape without the skin. Ben and Mikayla are big fans but they aren’t my favorite. But I am very excited about the mangos. I can’t wait to try some of the mango recipes people have sent me soon. Did you know you could get a mango burn? It is similar to the rash you get with poison ivy. Ben and Mikayla had the pleasure of experiencing this first hand. It comes from the sap.
We had some unseasonably cool nights this week so we spent a lot of time hanging out on the porch. Mikayla loved blowing bubbles and running around. Ben even had a couple of braais while I was away.
She is a redneck at heart! Blowing bubbles barefoot in underwear, a t-shirt and headlamp!
On Saturday we had some family time by making homemade gingerbread cookies. I found the recipe here. They turned out delicious, even if we didn’t have any holiday themed cookie cutters. We decided to not spend lots of time frosting them (they were that good), but make some cream cheese frosting to dip them in! This was my first attempt at gingerbread cookies. I usually make sugar cookies this time of year (and we still might), but I really enjoyed the change of making gingerbread instead. Mikayla of course had a blast rolling out the dough and using the cookie cutters to make designs. Have I ever mentioned how much I love my little family? I missed them so much this week, even if I was only away for 2.5 days.
Doesn’t he look handsome in his jewelry?
Working hard with daddy!
This kid loves playing with dough! She took it very seriously and would not let us help her at all.
Ben cut this Christmas tree out of the dough by hand. He was really proud of it and Mikayla enjoyed eating it!
We spent a lot of Sunday in imaginative play. Mikayla began by dragging out some of her stuffed animals and had a tea party. We then made her a car out of a large box and she drove her "family" around all over the place. Her imagination never ceases to amaze me! And it is amazing how a few pieces of "trash" can stem an hour or so of play.
Necklace dance – She spent a good bit of time dancing around with some necklaces on Saturday night. It was hilarious because she was so serious about it.
Family tea party
Pretend car made from old box
This Week’s Happenings 11/28-12/4
Sunday, December 4th, 2011We had a pretty uneventful week, but a wonderful weekend. This week we put up and decorated our Christmas tree. It was a little weird decorating for Christmas in shorts and a t-shirt, but oh well! The only thing missing now is a star or something on the top. I think Mikayla and I will make it this week. We also introduced Mikayla to the advent season by making a wreath and talking about it.
We also had the staff Christmas party this week. It was more of a service and then cake and refreshments afterwards, but fun. Part of the service was each of the staff got up to put a star ornament on the tree. After putting on their ornament they were supposed to say what they were thankful for from the past year. Mikayla of course had to put an ornament on the tree. The thing she said she was thankful for was presents! Classic two year old moment.
Sr. Diane and Thandiwe (pronounced Tan-dee-way) at the Christmas party
We discovered this week that we probably tell Mikayla she is cute too much. Our friend Joey was over for dinner and Mikayla was up walking around playing by herself. All the sudden she looks at Joey and says, "I’m cute, people tell me that all the time"! Hilarious.
On Saturday we packed up and headed into town for the weekend. We started the day by doing some quick Christmas shopping and I am excited to say that we are almost completely finished! Just a couple of small things and we will be done. That evening we had some very gracious hosts – Peter, Callista and Aviva. Peter works with the Embassy and does some work with Cabrini and Callista works for the World Bank. Aviva is their one year old daughter. On Saturday night we had a wonderful braai, watched the children play and just hung out. It was great family time.
On Sunday morning we woke up and headed to Malolotja Nature Reserve. It was completely different than any scenery we see in St. Phillips. Mountains, valleys, trees, rocks…absolutely beautiful…even if it was overcast and cold! Of course we were not prepared for the cold weather and forgot to bring jackets, Ben even forgot pants. Aviva was nice enough to loan Mikayla a sweatshirt and I used her blanket as mine. Ben just toughed it out! Our car took a little bit of a beating, we did a little mudding, but I think everyone enjoyed themselves. We hope to go back when it is clearer (and we are better prepared) and do some hiking. They also have a zip line canopy tour we would like to do at some point.
Random flower we saw while walking around
This Week’s Happenings 11/21-11/27
Sunday, November 27th, 2011The bulk of the past week was spent on prepping for two big events – Our Thanksgiving feast we had on Saturday and then the Hostel’s Christmas party on Sunday. Ben was also gone Monday-Thursday to a meeting in town so Mikayla and I held down the fort here in St. Phillips! While in town he picked up some hard to find items including a Christmas tree and grill!!
On Tuesday Mikayla, Sharon (the childcare director) and I began some preparation for the hostel Christmas party. We took out our new car for a spin and headed to Big Bend (a town about thirty minutes down the road) to pick up some supplies. While driving I noticed that the car kept pulling in one direction and turns out we had a slow leak in one of our tires and it was almost flat by the time we got home. Thankfully some of the guys on the mission helped us out.
A couple of weeks ago I volunteered to make cookies for the kids as part of their gifts. At two cookies per kid, plus some for the staff I was looking at making almost 400 cookies!! On Wednesday I baked 200+ chocolate chip cookies and then on Thursday I baked 200+ snicker doodles. Mikayla was a big helper and cooked along side of me most of the time.
Have I mentioned what an imagination Mikayla has? She can take almost anything and turn it into a fun game. This week I tied a string to an egg carton and she called it a turtle and took it everywhere with her. She made it go for walks with us and talked to it just like we talk to her.
On Saturday we had some folks over for a Thanksgiving celebration (more about that coming soon), so Friday and Saturday were spent cooking, cleaning, prepping and eating a lot!
Sunday we headed to the hostel to celebrate Christmas with the kids. They celebrate early because their school term is over next week and they will all head home to their homesteads for several weeks. The kids put on a very nice play featuring the birth of Jesus and did some traditional dancing and singing.
Shepherds with their sheep from the Christmas play
Some cows and donkeys hanging out in the manger
Angels
The Christmas cast singing Silent Night
Auntie Jane on the left bringing in some of the older girls to do some traditional dancing.
Remember this guy? Simo has grown so much!
The choir plus some of the staff singing/dancing at the end.
Found this guy just hanging out on the laundry this week, must be time for it to rain again!
Picture taken using the Light Scoop given to us from my sister-in-law, Sarah!
This Week’s Happenings 11/14-11/20
Sunday, November 20th, 2011The most exciting thing to happen this week was we finally purchased a vehicle. It is the Suzuki I mentioned in a previous post. Ben went into town on Wednesday and brought it home. The windows still do no operate so we will have to take it back in when the parts arrive. But for now we at least have our own transportation! Of course we haven’t driven anywhere yet, but it is there if we need it!
We also made plans to host a mini Thanksgiving dinner next Saturday. The sisters will be coming and possibly our friend Joey from the Peace Corps. We haven’t found a turkey or ham yet, but are hoping to find something this week. If all else fails there is a farm on the way into town that sells live turkeys and Ben said he would slaughter one for us. So we shall see! It will be memorable either way. Mikayla is enjoying studying about turkeys and Thanksgiving in school (which will be updated next week when we finish our Letter T study).
We were also approached by Sister Barbara this week asking if we would keep the twins again for a bit over the children’s summer break (December and January). It would be off and on for the seven weeks the kids are not in school and back at their homesteads. Of course we said yes. There are also two other opportunities for us to keep high-risk children, but the details are still up in the air. I guess you could say we are becoming the "foster parents" for Cabrini, which we are totally okay with! There are a whole lot of orphans and vulnerable children in our area that have some support from extended family, but need special attention for a short period of time. At Cabrini we call this respite care and it seems to be a good combination of needs, skills, and availability.
Power outages have been ridiculous this week. On Friday and Saturday we only had power for about four hours combined. Crazy! Things could be worse, but it is getting a little annoying. Especially when humidity levels are 80% and it is 90 degrees outside like it was one night this week. Needless to say we have had a couple nights in the last week where it was just too hot/humid to sleep! We actually lost some food in the fridge because the outages were so long and it also means we will have to cook up most of the meat from our freezer today. I foresee a braii (BBQ in our future). That is the first time that has happened to us. Not much fun, but like I said things could be worse.
On Friday night we discovered we had a bat in the house. Mikayla and I hunkered down in her room while Ben tried to capture and release it. He never did catch it but since we didn’t see it anymore we decided that it had flown out on its own. About an hour later the power went out (again) and we decided to make some popcorn and watch a Friends episode or two before calling it a night. While Ben was making the popcorn I noticed Mikayla’s artwork moving on the wall, which was weird because there was no wind or fans going. Then all of a sudden out flew the bat again. And let me just say that this bat was fast! He was swooping back and forth it was hard to even track him with our eyes. Eventually Ben was able to knock him down with our comforter (and yes it did get a good washing the next day and we slept with just sheets that night) and then grab him and release him outside. It made for an exciting and interesting few minutes.
Creepy bat!
I was commissioned this week to make some biscuits (cookies) for one of the child care staff. Instead of her paying me I offered her a trade of making Mikayla a dress for a bag of cookies. So excited to see it when she is finished. I am sure it won’t be a Dacia original, but it is great to know someone here who can sew!
World’s cutest baker helping mommy make cookies and banana bread!
On Saturday Ben drove 6+ hours (one way) to pick up Bongani from the hospital in Pretoria. He is one of our health care staff members who was recently diagnosed with cancer. Since no where in Swaziland offers any kind of cancer treatments he has to travel to Pretoria, South Africa. When he first went to the hospital about a week ago he was in really rough condition, but Ben said he looked much better yesterday and did great on the ride home. He will return in a couple weeks for another round of chemotherapy. We are hopeful that this treatment will help. So far it looks like he is responding well.
Today we travel to Manzini to Mr. Ceuhlo’s house for his wife’s birthday. He is a contract worker and friend of the organization. He is actually the one who got all the food donated and cooked for the Feast of Mother Cabrini and also the man who had all the bananas donated a few weeks ago when I made all the banana bread! He is a great chef so we are looking forward to some yummy eats.
This Week’s Happenings 10/31-11/6
Sunday, November 6th, 2011I forgot to mention this in last week’s post, but Mikayla has truly embraced the African way of life. If we are out on a home visit and she has to use the restroom we go in the bush. We have had to do this several times and she doesn’t seem to mind. The other day I was at the hostel helping out with the after school programming and Mikayla came up to me asking to go to the bathroom. There was only five minutes left so I told her I would take her in just a minute. Next thing I know I look over and she is standing in the middle of the play yard, pulling down her pants and popping a squat. When I rushed over to her to take her to the bathroom (they tend to frown on peeing outside at the hostel) she said, "What mom, I was just peeing in the bush!". I then had to explain that the hostel was not the bush and thoroughly confuse her I think! I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was slightly embarrassing.
On Tuesday and Wednesday Ben had an overnight meeting in Ezulwini. Mikayla and I thought it would be fun to tag along and do some touristy things while he was in meetings. The rain slightly changed some of those plans, but we still had a lot of fun. The hotel room had a bath tub so we took full advantage of it! On Tuesday Mikayla had three baths (one being a "pool" with daddy) and I had one too. On Wednesday she had another bath. Needless to say she was a very clean and very happy girl! She misses baths in a big bathtub. On Tuesday it was really too rainy to do anything outside so we walked around one of the shopping centers, grabbed lunch and hung out at the hotel. On Wednesday it was wet, but not raining. So after we packed up the room we headed to one of the game parks and bought a Wild Card. A Wild Card will allow us to get into a lot of game parks for free or discounted prices. It was about $100 for the whole family and it will last us a year. I say money well spent. While in the park Mikayla and I drove around for a bit, almost got stuck in the mud several times and saw lots of animals. Since it is a smaller park they were mostly in the antelope family. Afterwards we hit up a little café for lunch and then headed to pick Ben up. It was a relaxing two days and I think we all had fun.
Mikayla enjoying her bath time! Shot is blurry, but you get the picture!
We saw lots of beautiful birds, but had our old camera with us so didn’t get any great shots.
We saw a lot of these guys, but they are so fast it was hard to get a decent shot.
By far the coolest thing we saw at the game park. When we got back to Ben he asked us what we did and Mikayla promptly responded, "We saw a baby zebra eating from its mommy." Clearly it made an impression on her too.
Doesn’t he just look relaxed?
Afterwards we went to pick up our car. Unfortunately, a couple things weren’t fixed on it yet so we are still waiting. The mechanic had to order some parts so who knows when it will be finished.
In the last few weeks the power outages have been ridiculous! We have lost power about 20-25% of the time. Most of the time it hasn’t been a big deal because it is at night. It just makes things a little stuffy and hotter. Yesterday the power was off and on for most of the afternoon. It would be off for 30 minutes and come back on for 2 and then go off again. I am not sure how much more of these outages our poor fridge/freezer food can handle!
On Wednesday both of the Sisters returned from the US. Sister Barbara had been gone for six weeks and Sister Diane for two. It was great to see them both and I think Mikayla was even excited. They came back and got right to work on Thursday. While in the states they got to visit with Katie who was a volunteer here when we arrived. She sent some fun stuff for us back with the sisters (thanks Katie)! Mikayla was really excited about some new stickers, and of course all the candy is pretty much gone.
Mikayla opening her stickers from Katie!
Sunset over the river on our return trip home Wednesday.
On Saturday morning we took another walk in the bush. If you didn’t read Ben’s post on it, you should. It looked much different than it did two months ago when we went. Mikayla has grown so much since the last bush walk that we were able to go further without her tiring down. This time we made it all the way to the river and got to see some wonderful views of cattle egrets.
And for all of you Toddler School followers, I just wanted to let you know that due to interruptions we will continue on with the Letter F next week so I will not be making a post this week. We only had two days of school, so I will combine those two days with next week for our Letter F week!
This Week’s Happenings 10/24-10/30
Sunday, October 30th, 2011Ben went into town on Monday for a big Global Fund meeting and got a great lead on a car. He stopped by the mechanic who Cabrini uses for a lot of their vehicles and he had two for sale. We are working with the mechanic to get a few issues taken care of and then possibly purchasing it. It is Suzuki SVU (similar to a Rav 4 but with full 4 wheel drive). We should find something out this coming week.
On Friday Ben went to Nelspruit, South Africa to drop off the sisters vehicle at the airport. In the meantime he was able to check out one of the malls. He said that if you didn’t know any better you would think you were in the US. It will make a great little getaway town if we need a feel for the US. He was also able to find some Gold Mountain sauce which we use in our Asian cooking. We have developed quite the spice/condiment rack since arriving! For the most part we have been able to find everything we needed/wanted.
This week seems to be the week of creatures! It rained most of the evening and night on Friday and Saturday brought forth a whole new world of creatures! It started with a (very brief) walk that Mikayla and I took after her nap. While walking bugs of all sorts were crawling over our feet and flying around us. Needless to say we turned around quickly and headed home! Then Saturday evening while Mikayla was taking a shower our house was swarmed by flying termites. By far the craziest thing we have seen yet! Thousands of these flying termites were flying around the house and 20-30 found their way inside the house. Sunday morning we woke up to find a porch full of their wings (which ironically look like helicopter seeds from the states). A lot gross and a little cool I guess!
Flying termites – Ben posted a video on Facebook if you want to really see how crazy they were!
We also found these guys in our front yard.
Not sure what this guy is…any guesses?
Giant African Land Snail – Steve we thought you would like these!
And we finally got a picture of one of my favorite birds this week. Needless to say it was a week filled with new creatures!
Of course the big rain on Friday meant we were without electricity for 14 hours or so! We have gotten pretty used to going without electricity, but 14 hours was a pretty long time. We were lucky in that everything in the fridge an freezer made it through the power outage okay.
One of the most exciting things to happen this week was we discovered that we now have 3G at home. I am not sure what all the means, but it does mean we have faster Internet which means we can do things like call people from our computers and occasionally video chat. It is still really expensive and the faster the Internet it is, the more you spend to be online. We were able to make a few phone calls to friends this past week. We haven’t done so previously because it is so expensive to call from our cell phones (around $1 for thirty seconds to a minute). It was nice to be able to call folks without having to wait for them to call us!
On Saturday evening our friends John David and Brittany continued our tradition of having our annual Halloween Party. We were sad to miss/host this year, but glad the tradition continued! Because we now have 3G we decided it would be fun to wake up during the party to "see" everyone. So we woke up at 3am and after a couple of failed attempts we were able to video chat with our friends. It was so great to "see" everyone and take part in the festivities a little. Our costumes were a little lame (on account of us waking up in the middle of the night), but we dressed up as a couple of sleepy heads! Mikayla even woke up to see her friends, although I am not sure how much she remembers!
We went for a brief walk one evening and it turned dark so Mikayla had to wear her "torch".
Animals in the First Three Months
Sunday, October 23rd, 2011We have seen lots of wild life and livestock since arriving in Swaziland. On a daily basis we see cows, donkeys, dogs, goats and a variety of birds. On rare occasions we see some more unique animals. We have visited two of the game reserves since arriving and have seen a variety of African animals. Here are some of the animal we have seen so far.
Lots of deer like creatures:
Blesbok
Blue Wildebeest
Nyala
Impala Female
Impala Male
Kudu
Common Reedbuck
A couple more birds (I am leaving the names off for my father-in-law. He asked for some more birds to identify!):
This is the nest of the bird above – how unique? They fly through the little hole in the bottom.
Some unique finds:
Southern Tree Agama
Rock Monitor – Mikayla is not the unique find!
Animals you think of when you think of Africa:
Warthog – terrible picture, but man those suckers are fast!
Ostrich
Zebra
And of course giraffes! We have lots of these pictures, but here are just a few!
Seriously, how could someone not think these are beautiful!
I love this picture because it reminds me of our little family. Daddy and Mommy giraffe on the left and Mikayla giraffe on the right. Silly? Yes, but still fun!
This Week’s Happenings 10/10-10/16
Sunday, October 16th, 2011We had a pretty slow week this week, not much to report on. Ben managed to only work 43 hours this week (which is much lower than his average has been). He said he didn’t get everything done that he needed to, but it was nice to work a shorter week.
One of Cabrini’s contract workers donated a truck bed full of bananas to the ministry this week. In the truck load there was probably ten gallons worth that were already over ripe and needed to be used immediately. Ben asked if I wanted some to make banana bread and I said sure. Little did I know that the ten gallons would end up in my hands! Yikes! So on Friday I spent the entire day baking banana bread…14 batches to be exact! We gave a lot of it away, but ended up keeping five or six loaves in our freezer for down the road. Mikayla was a big help when it came to peeling the bananas and stirring up the batter. Needless to say I have no interest in seeing another ripe banana for awhile!
I went to wash dishes the other day and was greeted by these two frog eyes! (Side note – I keep this little hippo I found in a closet when we got here by my window in the kitchen. It makes me think of my friend Dacia each time I see it!)
The most exciting thing that happened this week was we were approved for our TRP’s (work permits) this week! We go into Mbabane on Monday to hopefully get all the paper work signed off and pay our fee of around $800!! That’s right folks, for a two year TRP it is going to cost us around one dollar a day to live here!! Pretty spendy, huh? I guess that is what happens when the government is broke. We are hoping to get the fee waived, but aren’t expecting it. Basically what a TRP means is that we can live in the country for two years without having to cross the border every thirty days like we have been, we can legally stay in the country. We will also be able to open up a bank account and purchase a vehicle (assuming one comes our way).
We put Mikayla’s hair in one long braid this week also (I need to learn to French braid). She is getting so big and talking up a storm! She announced to one of the aunties at the hostel the other day that she was "Swazi"! Sometimes she talks in jibberish and I wonder if she is really speaking Siswati that we just don’t understand!
It is a little hard to tell, but she is "sweeping" the ground with a stick like someone living on a homestead would sweep the dirt in front of their house.
This is a picture of the female Southern Tree Agama I mentioned last week. Her colors are not as bright as the male colors are, but still neat.
Be sure to check out the contest I posted about yesterday! Have a great week.
Swazi Jumping Beans
Monday, October 10th, 2011Here are the beans/seeds I mentioned in a previous post.