news from the duplex

• Last week I was sitting outside my front door…a stoop of sorts…and Naume and I were talking about each others’ shirts. My red t-shirt has a train of small camels on it, and I asked her if she knew “camel”…she didn’t… “do you know desert?” …nope…so I tried to explain what the desert is…that place in northern Africa where there is only sand and no water and where it is very hot… “I think you can die there” she said. I agreed. “and I think if you had a nanca nah…if you had a small ka-swamp you could sell that water?...” she looked at me inquisitively…I laughed and agreed again. “You are so right, if you had a small ka-swamp in the desert you could most certainly sell the water!” Naume Afisa, always the entrepreneur, and with such meager resources as a small ka-swamp…

• And, last week, Anna and I were trying to pick out a movie (you know how THAT goes!) and I was verbalizing all of the options but I totally pulled an Ashley and added the following movie to our list of options…“Whoopie Act, Sister Two”…sheesh ☺

• The blooming night jasmine bush is getting wonderfully huge and has almost overgrown the "phone rock" that sits in its shade…but it seems criminal to cut such a scrumptiously fragrant bush back in such a place as this.

• we made a few bad decisions about the use of christmas lights...yep, remember those seizure inducing christmas lights I mentioned several posts back?...those ones...anyways, they weren't *quite* the right voltage, but they lit up when you plugged them in so we used them with an adapter but no transformer...seems to have been a mistake...David Pierce, our resident Electrical Engineer, says they shouldn't have caused damage to our solar batteries, but it seems they may have...anyways, in hopes they will recover we have turned our inverter off for a few days...that means candles for lights and computer charging elsewhere (like now, at Myhre's internet cafe)...we'll see. I may need to buy new batteries, but it seems it might be time for that soon anyways...and the grid is here, so I'm supposed to be designing grid electricity points for the duplex...I hardly think that any electrical design should be left to me, but it's fun to try new things, right? of course right.

• *****biggest news of the week***** There was a concert in nyahuka yesterday...right in our own community center. Ask my mom, she called my cell phone in the middle of it and I answered with the booming afro-pop in the background just to tell her I couldn't talk (there wasn't really an easy way out any of the doors). Anyways the Send Me Band is a Christian band from Bundibugyo Town that has a few CD's recorded, and they came to raise money for instruments. 2,000 Ush for admission, mats were placed in the windows to prevent the ever present peeping toms that try to look in the windows and catch the show for free. There was a bit of singing, but mostly lip synching (sp?) to their cd and dancing that was fun to watch. The party didn't really get started until the hip thrusts got going...the hip thrusts and gyrations that were accompanied by the signs of the cross...(maybe the sign of the cross will cover sketchy dance moves?)...pretty funny, but a blast to watch, and to catch glimpses of scott will and anna gettin' their dance on with the kids. Even Scott Myhre busted a few moves as he went up to give his contribution (much to the crowd's delight :) during a song the leader seemed to dedicate to the "World Harvest Mission team" (or at least gave us some sort of a shout out before starting into it) - "Pray without ceasing!" We should take note, Christians in Bundibugyo encouraging us to Pray without ceasing!