This Little Piggy ...

The deed was done at the Wingfields. Our little piglet from last year, now all grown up and belonging to our guards, had sadly come to her time. And I was called to put my butchery observational learning into practice rather sooner than I expected. After scalding and scraping the pig hair off, she was hung in a tree and gutted. With the bung gut tied off neatly, I pushed that out without disaster! After sawing in half, (now about 2 hours after slaughtering) we were ready to start the butchering. There was definite improvement! Recognisable cuts of meat, which could all be neatly labelled (loin joint, spare rib, leg, belly, hand...) and weighed for sale. And I clocked in so much faster! I had my trusty photos (taken at the Kingsclere Butchers) and my own rather patchy written instructions, and I went through them all carefully with Edgar, who is the new trainee butcher. So now he will be able to butcher a pig, British-style, to sell. So if anyone is passing, please stop in at Kingsclere Family Butchers, and thank them from me. Their kindness and help to me is reaping benefits here. Meanwhile I need to get busy getting my smokehouse built. No bacon this time.

Today the girls and I have just returned from a day out with Andy. We went with him to see all the work that has been going on at Furahia Secondary School. They are almost finished the water project there, building 6 large water tanks. The school had a big problem with the lack of a water supply. Now the school of over 600 students will have water to drink and cook with as well as handwashing/latrine stations. The difference that clean and available water makes is very hard to appreciate unless you don't have it. These schools appreciate it!

The girls check out the water point by Tank #5

Andy working things out with Titus, the foreman

I particularly wanted to go to Furahia to meet a lady I have heard a lot about, from Andy and also Tim who recently met her. She is Mary and she runs a shop in the village, selling various things, including chai and chapatis. She is lovely Christian Masai lady, extremely generous, making sure Andy is fed for free when he visits as her thanks for what he is doing in the village. She offered the same hospitality to me and the girls today. She also showed me how to correctly fold and wear the traditional Masai dress, having supplied me with the material through Andy a few weeks ago. When I tried to do it at home earlier, we all agreed I looked like I was doing a poor imitation of a Roman in a toga! When done properly, it's a beautiful outfit!

We also stopped off in the village of Ikengeza which is where we are hoping to run another stoves project. They had some samples of clay for us to pick up. It was great to meet the pastor and his wife of the church there, again receiving such warm hospitality! And while there we learned how to hit the sunflower heads to knock out all the seeds. The family was gathering their harvest of sunflower seeds, drying them in the sun and then sacking them up to take to a machine in town which would squeeze them into sunflower oil. Itchy work.

We had a little trouble on the way which caused a temporary delay

Louisa waits for the guys to sort it all out!

There seems so much more to write about with Lucy's Cinnamon Buns (the great Canadian UBC recipe!) now available for sale in Iringa, seedlings appearing in the Keyhole Garden and Bag garden (see the girls' blog for more about this!), bone explorations for our skeleton unit, and a final fling with the Rainforest to get the girls' website published (find the Rainforest Explorers at www.rainforestexplorers.webs.com) but this post is getting long. I will just finish with the good news that we have a good water supply again! Since we arrived here in January, there has been a problem with our water tank and we have had very low water pressure which would often cut altogether (very bad news for showers) when water was running elsewhere. Now, thanks to Andy's hard work, we have water really coming out of taps! And the shower really works! Well it did! Only one problem ... all this water pressure was a bit of shock and Tim just got rather wet testing the shower. The pressure popped the shower head and water went all over the bathroom! But all fixed now! Washing up will be so much easier now! And flushing the toilet - wow!