Happy New Year!


This is first blog in a while and there seems to be so much to blog about! We haven’t had any phone or internet at all for over week and before that it was very sporadic and infrequent (as our electricity continues to be!). But we were very pleased to get Andy and Angela back with us from their Christmas in the UK, and right now I am using their internet…

Birthdays
Since Christmas we have celebrated our first two family birthdays in Africa! Amisadai turned 7 on Dec 30.. My birthday was on Friday and we celebrated with our first meal out in Iringa. Tim and I enjoyed a curry and the girls were very excited about their first pizza since we were in England! I enjoyed a bit of pizza just for the cheese on the top! And the exciting news on my birthday was that a third chicken started laying eggs for us! So we persevere with the chickens after some doubting moments over Christmas with yet another death and no egg production. Hamna shida sasa (no problem now).

My birthday meal out

Rabbits
Our five new bunnies are almost two weeks old now and have opened their eyes, gained some fur and weight and started scampering about! They are very cute, and the girls love them. We are still waiting for the other rabbit to give birth… any day now!

Playing with the bunnies

The two old rabbits met their end last week. This was all another very new experience! Spedito did the duty with the knife and with amazing speed had him skinned and gutted. Then he gave the poor thing to me! I had hoped Lucy would do the next bit, but she unfortunately had a family funeral and so I was on my own. But with a little help with the bone cutting from Spedito, I soon had it simmering and made into a delicious pie. As I grated in some nutmeg, I felt just like Mrs MacGregor. All in a day’s work!


Rabbit Pie

Back to work
After a great break, we are enjoying getting back into the swing of things. The girls started school again on January 4th and we are into Florence Nightingale for studies in literacy, history, geography. And we are doing a unit on “Forces and Movement” for science, DT and math. I started language school again on Thursday. Tim has been several times to Uhamingeto for work on the water harvesting and church building projects there and also saw the new “banda” (shelter) that has been built there for the institutional stove that was made last month to cook porridge for the school children. Here at the office, he has been doing research for the stoves project and is seeing a banda completed for our “pottery” so we can begin making lots of stoves.

Happy New Year
We hope we will soon be back online and back in communication with people again. Sitting in the dark with no power or phone lines, does make you feel rather out of touch with the world. Thank you for your Christmas cards; we love hearing from you and the Christmas cards are still coming! Happy New Year to you all!