So there are some things I haven't told you. Not because I'm playing silly buggers, but more because they seemed insignificant to our other thunderous developments. Thunderous remains the theme though - no, I havent mentioned that in between our marvellous wins, we've been battling some pretty mental weather. It's rainy season (the long rains - which mean it should rain for most of the day, as opposed to the short rains which come in Oct/Nov and occur only in the afternoons, lasting an hour tops). So we've rain. But not all day (climate change say the locals - they might not have enough rain to grow their crops, yet they know why). Instead these rains are a bit random in their arrival, but they do last a few hours... Just enough to absolutely saturate the pitholed dirt roads turning them into a slimy, slippery quagmire in just minutes. Quagmires that send dala-dala (local bus system: think Tarago van with 32 Africans somehow squished in - yes! we counted!) careening off the sides of the supposed road and that force penniless taxi drivers to refuse to take you home - nomatter what price you're paying! The road that once took 20 minutes to walk down, now takes 50. It worries us about the access to our Utopia Block, but Daz Rob and I just keep saying "we'll have to start and finish building in between wet seasons." I once asked what about when we've finished building, and are living there, what about access then...and we decided it was good news that we are setting up to be self-sufficient! It gets so muddy when wet here that I took a photo of Rob marking out our land in long strides the other day. His shoes were caked up with 1 kilo of mud on each boot, kid you not. He looked like Ronald Macdonald except the red oversized shoes were deep, dark brown and sog-sog.
He must be relieved that he's not traipsing out the land today. instead he's sitting at home in the six bedroom volunteer house the brothers have donated us for this stay, drawing up the first of his plans. Daz is seriously inlove with Rob.He says that all his ideas are genius - super simple, super clever. I feel the same - except that they are able to speak in more depth about things that I can - being a girl and having spent years discussing stilletos and handbags, not so much sumps and bearing capacities.
Speaking of shopping (were we?), I headed out to the souvenier market this morning and bought some terrific stuff to auction off at our Melbourne event. I'm particularly impressed with the Maasai stool. I have one at home already (snaffled up last time I was here), but it seems these are now few and far between. The market guys still have stools and they like to pretend they are original Maasai stools, but for the experts like me, well we know better. They are the wrong colour for a start. They look new for a second and they are too small for a finish. Anyway, I've got an original so whoever is the lucky bidder might find that they are buying something that is becoming more and more rare. I'm not telling you waht other great stuff I bought becasue it's a surprise, but suffice to say, it's all going to look/feel great at the Melbie gig. True Africa.
Rob came up with an idea last night... see, genius... whereby we hire a labourer to run around our local village colecting kitchen scraps and cow manure to help supplment our biogas system. yes, a system wehreby our loos become a community project! We like this one a lot because a) community involvement and b) we've been wondering how to use biogas when it's going to take more than 40 kids to fuel it. Frank runs biogas with 600 students and still sometimes struggles to get enough matter to run the system... so yes, this could be answer for us. Okay enough toilet talk.
Did I tell you we have an African cook? Compliments of luke, the photographer who left us recently. I'll tell you more about Elizabeth next time... I'm running out of time here.
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