The bath photo sequence

it was too hard to choose just one picture, so here are all of them!

Eileen loves bath time!

Quote of the day

“There isn’t anything to cook. Actually, I just remembered I have an electric eel head in the fridge; I guess I can cook that."

Making flatbread

I made flatbread with Molly assisting.

She had her own blob of dough that she could cut and squish to her heart's content. :)

She wanted to just keep adding flour.

Molly’s very first attempts at photography

Caleb

Caleb is a little bit like The Cat Who Walked by Himself. He comes and goes usually without anyone noticing or caring. He hangs around as long as he feels like it and then moves on. He is not a kid magnet; meaning that when he comes he comes alone, which is highly unusual around here.

When Caleb stops by our house, he likes to play with the toy cars. He can spend hours here without his mother or anyone else coming to look for him. His father is around somewhere (we see him occasionally) but I don’t think his parents live together.

Like many of the children around us, he is a boy "without a future," and without hope. That sounds dismal. It is. This is the reality of life around us. But we have to think about why we are here! Is it for Caleb? And the other children? What can we show him that won't perish? I would remind you, whoever you are, that you can pray for him. The Lord Jesus is able and powerful to give him a future and a hope.

Ngayi ngayi

This is what I call “bitter herbs” but in Lingala they call it “ngayi ngayi.” You cut what you want from a mature plant and then strip the leaves off the stem, wash and cook. Once you’ve cooked it down so all the leaves are soggy and wilted, you rinse it again thoroughly to remove the excessive bitter taste. After that you add it to whatever meat dish you are cooking. It’s actually really good! Today I made one of Orcxance’s favorite meals which is the bitter herbs with chicken. Bone-in chicken that I have to chop up (yes, I have to cut through the bones with my dull kitchen knife). I take all the chicken outside to my metal topped dish washing table and whack at it till I crack the bones and then cut it up into small pieces. This is the way my sister-in-law taught me to make this meal so I do it just the same way. Back to the ngayi ngayi; I planted some!

After stripping the leaves off the stems, you can just stick the stems directly into the dirt and they keep growing and produce more leaves. That's a picture of what I planted in our yard after harvesting the leaves from what we bought.

I’ll try to remember to post a picture once the plants have sprouted leaves again. It’s pretty cool that all you have to do is stick it in the ground and it sprouts roots.

Afternoons outdoors

We live in a jungle town but our particular area nearby our house is exceptionally dusty and sandy. There’s no short grass anywhere. Sunday afternoons usually find us outdoors in our picnic spot enjoying the fresh air and almost always music and some kind of food. Eileen has recently been devouring bread.

The plastic chairs are the neighbors’ and when there’s nobody around for the outdoor bar, we take over and camp out. Orcxance pulls out the hammock sometimes too.

You can see our house in this picture (the building slightly to the left). The other building is our neighbors. Our front door opens to the side of their house about 4 feet away.

fresh papaya for breakfast and fresh baked bread from town

Garbage

Sometimes I feel kind of silly as I carry our trash bucket out to the main road to empty it into the dumpster. I walk down a garbage-strewn dirt road carrying a bucket of garbage. In this picture below you can see the irony of the trail of garbage with the dumpster down at the end (circled in red)

In defense of our neighborhood, the dumpster is a more recent addition, but people still toss their garbage out on the road. But even here where littering is common, I try not to contribute.