It's raining!!!

Yippeeeeeeee ! After four months without so much as a cloud in the sky, it has just started raining all of a sudden! In our minds, this is an excellent thing as rain cools down the temperature... According to people here, it does the exact opposite, and following an evening or night of rain, the temperatures really are unbearable during the day... We will just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings!

It's so strange to hear the sound of rain after so long without it!

Oh, it just stopped. That was brief!

Another morning at Educolo

This morning, Maman (Elmire) got a bit lost and thought Educolo was a motorbike park...



Haha... In this country, it's normal for people to put their bikes inside buildings - their businesses and homes - usually at night, just for security reasons. But Maman puts her bike inside Educolo so that the seat is protected from the heat! I don't blame her!

We also have some new posters up, which clients enjoy looking at, discussing and trying to read. Fortunately, Etienne can help them with their English accent ;-)



Esther, the daughter of our most enthusiastic church member, Papa Antoine, has recently started the Computer Initiation course, so she's here every morning. While she was busy typing a document/taking a break, Etienne decided to give Frere Lazare and his wife, Maman Jean, a geography quiz...



They didn't do so well!! But now they know that Kenya is not next to Liberia :-)

Oh, and Etienne had a hair cut this morning - yippeeeee!



Just another morning in Bénin!

Sonsoro has gone solar!

After the success of the solar panels in Kandi, we decided to install some solar panels for the new church building in Sonsoro (their generator was starting to have a lot of problems). The new church is now the light on the hill - the only building in the area with electricity! It's slightly outside the main town so there are no power lines feeding the building there yet... But who needs power lines when there are solar panels and a lot of sun?!

We took a little trip to see the installation, congratulate the members there and thank God for His providence.



We had to get some petrol first, which proved to be a challenge as most of the petrol stations were empty... Finally, we found a little place with petrol.





And there was a nice snack bar behind so Pastor bought some treats for the kids in the back...



And then we headed off!

As we turned onto the dusty track, Pastor told us there had been a recent bandit attack and then proceeded to pull a gun out of the driver's door to show us he was prepared to protect us!!! Lol... But he wouldn't let me take a picture of it... Maybe next time ;-)

Fortunately we didn't encounter any bandits!

The installation looked good. Rigo had decided to have one massively bright light at the front of the room - I think they are planning to add some smaller lights around the room soon as the cabling is already in place.



We also discovered that they have erected a gong to call people to prayer! Apparently people can hear the gong even down in the village, several hundred metres away...



Resourceful, no?!

We prayed with the church leaders there...



...and then returned home, again without having to use the gun!! :-)

Pintade on a plate!

I can't remember if I shared this or not, but on Saturday we had another two guinea fowl delivered to the house, courtesy of the Banikoara Brothers (Etienne's students at Educolo who recently moved to Kandi from Banikoara). Florentin attempted to calm them down so I could take a picture...



Fail! Lol...

Take two...



That's better. And a close-up?



Those things were SCARY when they were flapping about!! Turns out I am seriously scared of birds!!

They're much easier to handle on a plate...



Tasty little guinea fowl thighs. Mmm... :-)

HALF WAY

By Etienne's calculations, we are now half way through our mission service in Bénin !

We flew out here on 25 August and our return flights are booked for 23 July (arriving back in the UK on 24 July).

Our half-way day was spent marking exam papers (Etienne helped me and we had a good chuckle at some of the funny things the kiddies had written), teaching IT (only for a little bit because there were a lot of power cuts), trying to sleep (and failing miserably on account of the oppressive heat) and sharing an interesting Bible study and prayer meeting with the Gansosso group :-)

What is in store for the second half of our stay here? Plenty of surprises I'm sure! (And a lot of miserable sleepness nights on account of the heat... Am I sounding like a broken record?!)

May God keep us alive and give us the mountains of patience we need to live for His glory here on a real lack of sleep!!

Much rejoicing!

WOOOOOHOOOOOOO!

GO IVORY COAST!!!

Pastor nearly died from all the pressure during the final of the African Cup of Nations and I've never seen Marina so ecstatic!! People kept phoning throughout the match to share their commentaries with Pastor. Elmire was fast asleep until one of the church ladies phoned her and expressed her surprise that Elmire wasn't in front of the TV! Elmire managed to arrive in the living room as the final penalties were being taken...

What a nail-biting finish !!

For those who didn't seen the dramatic end to a relatively frustrating match, Ivory Coast beat Ghana on penalties with every player on each team having to take a penalty... The Ghanaian goalkeeper had his penalty saved whereas the Ivorian goalie, despite having terrible cramp, managed to hit the back of the net when it was his turn.

I'm so glad our fellow missionaries share our love of football!!!

So much sweat...

Oh boy... The cold season finished rather abruptly in the last two weeks it seems. We had been expecting several weeks of 'transition' - something similar to Spring - where the temperatures slowly creep up, reaching a peak in March or April.

Nope!

The hot weather is here, accompanied by a complete lack of wind, and will probably not go anywhere for 3 or 4 months...



What that means is that the fan in our bedroom is basically useless. No matter what we do (even lying very very still), we are sweating buckets. I hadn't anticipated exactly what that means...

1. Underwear that is CONSTANTLY wet with sweat - I cannot begin to explain just how unpleasant that is!

2. An inability to nap due to the fact that every bit of skin that touches another bit of skin becomes a puddle of sweat in a matter of seconds - behind the knees, between knees, under arms and between arm and core if attempting to sleep in the foetal position; between chin and neck and under the arms if sleeping on one's back - and sleeping in a massive star shape in order to eliminate any kind of skin to skin contact is just plain uncomfortable!! And the mattress and pillow don't help - they seem to be functioning like heaters so that when one leaves the bed, there is a visible sweat print of where one was lying... Yuck. (NB Sleeping in anything more than underwear is just not an option!)

3. A persistent unpleasant underarm odour. Using deodorant is about as helpful as throwing a thimble of water on an Australian bush fire. The only effective solution would be to take a shower every 5 mins and that's just not practical... Doh!!

For someone who has a particular aversion to sweatiness and smelliness, this is, well.... Hard.

May the Lord help me! (And may He give me some rest in spite of everything!)

Happy Sabbath (and thank God that you live in a temperate climate) :-D

Guinea fowl update!

So... We finally arranged for delivery of the guinea fowl yesterday and discovered that in fact there were not ten... There were two! Deux... Dix... People pronounce words differently in this country!

Etienne tried to take photos of them last night but it was a bit dark in the Badé's courtyard....

At lunchtime today he went to try and get some decent shots, only to find that they had already had their lives terminated, been plucked and shoved in the freezer...

Oh well, we'll take a photo when they appear on our plates! ;-)

PS Sorry we're late sending our newsletter for January... I'm ill again (managed to get a cold despite the fact that it's 42 Celsius) and Etienne's been busy at Educolo and church!