Hey Everyone.
It's a lovely day today. It hasn't rained in 48 hours and the dirt roads are starting to dry out. The ocean breeze keeps the temperature at 30 which is nice.
We went up the river the other night to check it out. It's a magnificent place and we visited villages that haven';t seen white people in months. Classic african colonialist adventures. It was fun though and the village elders were all amusingly bug eyed on palm wine - palm tree sap fermented into some unearthly brew. We also saw a colobus monkey to go along with the wee vervet's we saw the other day.
Then sunday we spent the day making dinner. An adventure in itself! We went to the market and acquired tomatoes (50 cents for 6), lentils (50 cents for half a kilo from a sack), garlic, whatever else total cost = $1.50. We cooked on a wee kerosene stove for ages which was great but then i noticed small bugs crawling across the top of our pot. Turns out the curry powder we had bought was infested. This was massively annoying as it wsa the only "western" ingredient in our dish - i.e it came in a plastic masterfoods style shaker. Oh well. Luckily the bugs were black and we could see them in our yellow dahl. Kate spent 20 minutes picking them all out!! dinner was eventually tasty though. All's well that end's well.
Our bed is our newest problem. It's a slat bed with an inch of foam on top. The local shop will sell me a much better mattress if i give them $70 USD which is a massive ripoff. Humpf. Also, all the local beds are six feet long which is fine for kate but about 2 inches too short for me and when you have a mosquito net you can't touch the sides etc. Bsaically i have to sleep in a ball on our inch thick foam mattress! ah well. it's all good.
Another funny thing that's happened is that kate decided she needed more to do at nights so randomly she bought a 16 in 1 dvd off some street vendor. Anyways, the dvd of course doesn't go at all and the street vendor has moved to timbuktu or somewhere so a refund looks unlikely. THe funniest part though is that the dvd is a wesley snipes collection. It has blade one, blade two, passenger 57 and other essentials on it! Kate must really be battling to have bought that one!!
O well - enough frmo me. take care.
Jeff
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2 comments:
Hi Jeff and Kate....so many adventures! Not just too sure how I would handle coking with the black bugs.....How brave!
Am printing of your Pangani Times and sending them to granddad...he had his knee replacement done yesterday and seems to be coping well!
We are of to see the Blue marlin berth in Nelson in a few minutes...it is the biggest ship in the world and is partially submersible. It has put a crane in near one of the oil fields and is coming to Nelson to unload steel...there is some debate here as to whether it will get through the cut....the cut is the gap in the Boulder Bank you need to get though to access the port of Nelson.
Autumn days and cold mornings are with us...the first snowfall for the season on Mt Arthur yesterday! Brrrrrr.
School holidays are here....yeah....no major plans but we will get to Blenheim to see granddad a couple of times.
Also, a couple of weeks ago I was appointed Principal at Nayland primary School in Stoke, here in Nelson so will have this next term at Brightwater and then a new challenge! Should be good!
We are enjoying reading about your adventures...... hope the bed and the bugs sort themselves out soon! Continue to enjoy
Love from us all
Janice
Hey Jeff and Kate,
You guys look to be having an amazing adventure - always expect the unexpected in Africa eh?
Must be a challenge getting used to life at its most basic - none of the trappings of modern life to corrupt you. You could think about using your experience to start a mennonite-type cult back here in NZ. Reeves would be insanely jealous of course... At least you have your iPods to cling to...
Things are ticking along here in Auckland. Your replacement, or "Son of Jeff" as we are referring to the position now, is close to being appointed which will help. Not too much change in Nige's team due to the restructure, but watch this space.
Hooray,
Simon
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