Village Chicken

Kodak Moment

2012-01-20T12:19:00.004+02:00

World, meet the "Kodak Vest Pocket Autographic Camera" Produced by Eastman Kodak from 1912-1926, it features a Kodak Anastigmat f 7.7 lens. This model was made Jan 1913 and so is 99 years old. It came all the way to me in Zambia from an antique shop in Michigan. Can I embarrass the Winters with a very huge and public THANK YOU?!! Thanks, guys. Clearly, I'm smitten.

This camera has 4 shutter speeds: 1/25, B, T, and 1/50; and 5 f-stops: Moving objects f/7.7, near view & portrait f/11, average view f/16, distant view f/22, and Marine, Clouds and Snow f/32.

Charles Linberg carried this camera with him on his flights, as did George Mallory and Andrew Irving on what may be the first summiting of Mt. Everest -- 29 years before Hillary and Tenzing's documented climb. Many of their personal effects were recovered but Irving's body and the expedition's KVP camera was not. If it is recovered - there are efforts underway to fund a controversial climb to recover Irving's body - and it's hoped, his camera.

Compact and portable, advertised as the "soldier's camera" during WWI, it's utility has outlasted our point-and-shoot nikon by nearly 100 years.

Now, to find some film.

(It takes Efke R100 127 from Fotoimpex...just in case you are out and about in Berlin)

2012-01-09T11:29:00.000+02:00

Elephant Quarantine

2012-01-06T09:42:00.002+02:00

We took a little trip yesterday to go and see 3 baby elephants. The three are in quarantine at a lodge just outside of town until they are fit enough to be transferred to an elephant orphanage in Kafue NP, part of the David Shephard Wildlife Foundation Elephant Orphanage Project in Zambia who work in tandem with Game Rangers International and ZAWA, the Zambian governmentWildlife Authority

7 month old Musolole and his keeper

Kavalamanja (1 year 7 months, rescued from the banks of the Zambezi River in September) and Maramba (1 year 5 months, rescued from outside Livingstone) get their bottles....the 2 litres of milk went down in about 2 minutes! Both were found by their mothers, killed by poachers for their tusks.

O gets to hold a baby bushbaby (also called galagos), a small, nocturnal "early" primate. He, Gizmo, is so unbelievably cute and his fur so soft he hardly even seemed to be real.

Clearly.... he is a primate! Here, Gizmo is clutching his surrogate momma, a stuffed teddy bear.

Musolole (7 months old, orphaned at Siome Ngwesi at the Namibian border) is recovering well from injuries and is slowly but surely putting on weight.

Kavalamanja, making a go at opening the gate. The babies have the stables as 'home base' and have a large area of the miombo woodlands set aside at Lilayi to explore.

Sandyland

2011-12-16T11:22:00.000+02:00

The sandbox is a hit. it's also going to be an ongoing headache. There are a few options for sand here: building sand, river sand, quarry dust and filter sand. If you are really ambitious you can load up beach sand from Mongu or Samfya but it's 8 hours away for either place and unlikely that you can convince anyone to do this load for you. The filter sand is closest to what we want for the sandbox but at 12x the price of the river sand it's really not practical for a sandbox this size. We bought 80kgs of it. this will hardly make a dent. For now we have the space half-full of building sand and will need to organize for another type of sand. Why? The building sand is perfect for building strong sand sculptures. However, it's the rainy season. And after a downpour? The sandbox?

It turned into a mud pit of the Eastern Europe Spa variety. It was fun for one day. Also a complete soupy, slurry, sloppy mess. Fun, but not really what any of us wanted after that one day. Fine for the rest of the year but we need the thing now! We have one month off school and need to be busy from sun up to sun down! (if there is sun, that is)

The next day after the downpour as a school holiday - it dried out OK but now it was too sunny out there! It's great for afternoon play but, again, for the rainy season when the kids have a month off school, we need some morning shade and some other sand. Finn and I set up a shade tarp. But see that PALE back in the distance....not under the shade tarp....and that pale back, belonging to a friend, was a painful shade of pink by lunchtime. I'm thankful my two don't burn easily but they also are pretty good about wearing hats, shirts and just making sure they play where or when it's shady.

Above, Finn loading up his Tonka truck (which is now 5 years old! Talk about a great toy for a child!) for the big kids...

For your next long distance call?

2011-12-16T10:42:00.000+02:00

I'm not sure if I have seen anything cooler.
Of course we had to buy it.

The sand in the timer is neon pink, by the way, and the glass broke after about a week. But the box is going in my permanent collection of awesomeness.

Elves of Jesmondine

2011-12-11T17:35:00.001+02:00

An early santa project? Uhhh, no. This was begun for xmas 2010 but the elves got distracted by work and food and football. With reindeer again round the corner, we felt renewed holiday pressure and finally figured out how to youtube a soundslides production.

Merry Christmas, mom!

Finny trailer, movie set for release in 2012

2011-12-11T17:29:00.001+02:00

Let me dutifully give props to The Kinks for supplying the audio from their fabu Arthur album released in a fabu year (1969). Seems the attorneys at YouTube (aka Google, their march toward world domination continues) get all atwitter when music is applied too liberally for their briefs. But so far the result is only an inability to view this trailer (still unrated, mind you) in Deutschland. Nein!

Friday commute

2011-12-05T22:43:00.001+02:00

40 Celsius

2011-12-05T22:07:00.001+02:00

Things to do on a really hot day when the lake right off your doorstep is oh so inviting but oh so infested with crocodiles.....

1. Dump water on your head. (check)

2. Dump water on your brother's head. (check)

or....this:

Activities #1 and #2 occupied things 1&2 for a 20 minutes but when we added an art element this kept them busy another 2 solid hours. Good thing b/c we had 4 hours to kill. After this we moved on to counting monitor lizards.

Flame Tree study

2011-12-05T21:50:00.001+02:00

FlyBoy and little gecko

2011-12-05T21:23:00.001+02:00

We half expect the boys to sprout gills or wings. (above, O needs both, plus a good insurance plan)

Here is a welcome November surprise -- baby geckos! They are everywhere inside and out and the littlest ones will sit tight like a little logo on your shirt... or in a welcome (and wet) hand. (that's Owen's hand -- this is one of the smallest we have seen)

Advent-tureland

2011-12-05T17:58:00.001+02:00

What is this monstrosity? An early Christmas gift from SantaMere. In the kids advent calendar today there was a pile of sand and a note from the me+big guy in the red suit: "Can you dig it? Yes, you can!"

Somehow we managed to construct this monstrously large sandbox without the kids really registering what it was. "Wouldn't it be cool if mom wasn't really building a patio??! It would be and awesome sandbox!" Uh, yes, duh.

While we were away this weekend, it was (mostly) finished and the kids got to see it before heading out for escuela. We came home from school today at 1:30pm, changed out of school uniforms (tho they both put on orange shirts and blue shorts. how very odd) and it's 6pm...they are still out there. there was one minor complaint, one angry shout and a heated discussion that lasted about 4 minutes but otherwise, I was able to work this whole time undisturbed....it's already paid for itself.

We still need more sand, must plaster the pool wall, tidy up the construction mess and plant some flowers or something to make it look a little more garden and a little less WT-Industrial. The sandbox is our answer to missing the beach so much. It's a poor substitute to be sure, but it's all we can do for the time being and it will surely be enjoyed by many friends and be home to many battles between plastic dinosaurs, kitties and various other critters. We have some sand from zanzibar here to add and will start adding in shells collected from all over, some stones that somehow came from Lincoln Park and Cannon Beach, etc. Bring a pocketful of sand next time you come over, will ya?!

(Egads! I missed posting anything in November! For what it's good for, November was too busy with living to get around to much blogging, so I can't feel too badly. )

Bottlecaps

2011-10-31T21:37:00.001+02:00

When we first moved here friends of ours had a wrought iron table and chairs cafe/bistro set made for their patio. The table top was bottlecaps wired together and covered with glass, the seats and seat backs of the chairs were wired-together bottlecaps. They are so very cool, hand made, recycled, and as a bonus, decently comfortable. (they are not cheap, however). I wanted one, but...for what ever OCD reason I decided from the get-go that if we bought a set it had to be from bottle caps that came from bottles we consumed. I wanted a diet coke chair for me and a mosi chair for todd and fanta chairs for the kids. (Not that we would ever in a million years allow them to drink THAT MUCH FANTA.) Fast forward three years and hundreds of bottles later. The guys who do bottlecap furniture are long-gone, the bottlecap collection was growing out of control and we happened to have had a visitor with an idea....Catherine? are you owning up to this one?

We had two prime candidates for a bottlecap countertop project. they were built by someone with minimal direction and zero supervision while we were in Seattle this summer. they are functional, flanking the Super BBQ on the Super Q Patio -- one for prep and one for serving. They are also Super U.G.L.Y.

The first task/obstacle was getting materials. DYI has not really caught on here. Why get your hands dirty when someone will do it for next to nothing. The real cost of building or doing projects here is in the materials. And the fact that you have to un-do someone else's work 9/10 and re-do it yourself (or do it twice, three times more to get it how you want it). Well, we set out to the hardware stores with a vague idea of what we might need...thinset, grout and sealant. What we came home with was...supafix, supafill and slago dressing. (Everything has a new and different name and it is usually in Afrikaans or has a trade name which is a total mystery to me. It happens everywhere i.e. at the fabric store I wanted white heavy duty canvas? Drill. Drill? Yes, drill.) The guys at the hardware store thought I needed 3 bags of supafix when we needed 1/3, two boxes of supfil but we used maybe 1/8 of one box. The slago dressing we have other uses for so the excess will not be wasted.

The project went in fits and starts. Three years of enjoying diet coke out of an ice cold glass bottle was NOT ENOUGH TIME to collect enough bottle caps. The coke factory here is making Coke Zero which I don't like and recently, they ran out of the normal bottle caps and everything is being printed on YELLOW bottlecaps. Yellow? Not part of the "I-don't-really-have-a-plan" plan.

In the end the caps were procured from far and wide -- friends, cafes, bars, etc. and the countrop was finished. It was finished in the most dramatic fashion. The fix was mixed and curing, dinner was on the table, we had BenAnna on hand to help, the kids were staying up late.... and it was starting to RAIN! And not just sprinkle. The night it was finished we had the storm to end all storms. Thunder, lightning, down power lines arcing behind our house, the entire neighborhood flickering for an hour before finally blacking out. And instead of abandoning the project we foolishly finished it. It is not a thing of beauty but it is memorable, meaningful and for as long as we're here it's mine.

The "holy-crap-I may actually be struck by lightening" pattern. you like? FREE FORM and frantic with six sets of hands pressing caps into soggy supafil.

There are funny little things about it I love. The Lion lager cap that came back from Zimbabwe as part of a 6 pack from our friends' trip see Uncle Bob, the yellow caps from the Blue Moon, the Peroni from Italy (which a waiter once told me was "baloney" b/c of whole r/L plus ESL thing), the 'blanks' from Henry's yummy home brewing experiments, the gold ones which aren't stamped but we know are negra modello from the commesary, a few Fat Tires, and a few Coronas scattered in along with all the Mosi and Castle. The kids know where 'their' grape fanta caps are. They got them as a special treat the day before in hopes that a few more caps would push us over the top and we'd have enough.

After three+ years of bottlecap hoarding it's a tough habit to break, so maybe before too long we'll have enough to tile the other hideously ugly countertop. (above, supafixed but not supafilled or sealed)

The best surprise is that the countertop makes the absolute best sound when it's raining!

Gruesome Twosome

2011-10-30T13:53:00.002+02:00

Halloween is for many reasons not celebrated here. Americans try to keep this fond childhood memory alive by having 'trunk or treat' at the American School (with american sweets, this reason alone is one that justifies attendance!) and by having private parties of their own. One family we know has a big birthday bash with a halloween theme. This was the very first time the kids dressed up in scary costumes. (As opposed to....tree, kiwi, fireboat captain (and kitty), bird, bat, etc) The result was effective but I must admit that it's not nice to see my sweet, cute boys made up like zombies. They did the costumes themselves and we used a minimal dusting of face-paints b/c not only it is uncomfortable when it dries in the 35 degree dry neat, but the Halloween party ends with all the kids in the pool. (at one point there were 23 kids in the pool -- with many parents keeping track, not to worry)

FPFJ got into his role and demanded photos and many viewings of MJ's "Thriller."

FPFJ surprised us the most with his willingness to dress up. Usually his idea of going crazy with his clothes is pushing one of his socks down a little bit...oooooohhhhhhh scaaaaaarrrrryyyyyyY! He took baby steps to get to his final costume, reluctant all the way. Doing the work himself (cutting, ripping, painting, putting the clothes in the grill ashes, etc) I think was the only way he would do it. Next year I'm voting for a not-gruesome twosome. (In fact, I'm insisting on it.)

Viv's team (with O) won the 'toilet paper mummy wrapping competition' three dozen toilet paper rolls then went flying and the place looked more like 'homecoming night' than halloween!

In case you were wondering what zombies wear for swimming......

What's for dinner?

2011-10-30T11:20:00.001+02:00

When it's too hot to cook inside or when we have a bunch of folks over, we fire up the big grill. (It is risky to ask 10 people to come over and then to find the power's out and you've got nothing to feed anyone -- the grill is the safest bet!) It's a beautiful thing made from a barrel and cleverly outfitted (thanks to some awesome customizing by our friends who sold us the grill when they moved away -- and then moved right back, but we got to keep the grill thank goodness.) It doubles as a smoker and has an extra 'arm' that holds a shallow wok or pizza pan. For ages meat never touched the metal. I simply don't know how to cook meat, or buy meat for that matter. We perfected our grilled pizzas, roasted veggies and were happy to have this metal monster, even not knowing how to use it for smoking or other carnivorous pursuits.

Meat here is plentiful, fresh, and delicious -- when you know what you are doing. With much help, we're venturing into meats and enjoying the results. On the menu recently? T-bone steaks! O grabbed the biggest one last night and finished the whole thing by himself. yikes.

For lazy nights or when it's too hot we fall back on breakfast for dinner. I keep making 'oeufs en couchette' but I keep over cooking them. it makes a pretty plate. The kids may give me one more try to get it right, otherwise they are on oeufs-strike. (I can't blame them).

And then there was the hours-long pasta dinner.....pasta in America is a quick and easy dinner. Not at 23 b. We made an ugly but delicious batch of genuine ragu and hand rolled pasta last week. Everyone participated and it took FOREVER. It was delicious and we'll do it again, I love home made pasta. BUT WE ARE NOT MAKING THIS SHAPE AGAIN. EVER. They ended up being 8 inch long hollow tubes. each one made one at a time starting with folding a blob of dough around a wooden skewer and rolling it out then TRYING to get it thin enough and then trying to get it off the skewer. never. ever. again.

Casper the friendly pasta. (who did this one do you think?) O went for a new shape altogether. nice!

By the time dinner was done we were too tired to clear and set the table so had a picnic on the living room floor.

Tanked

2011-10-30T10:50:00.001+02:00

Our water problems continue here. The problem, however is a moving target. One day it's the fact that 'low voltage' tripped the switch for the submersible pump (we have a series of pumps to get the water from the well to the tank and then to the house, another bunch of pumps for the pool, but all connected - it's a formidable setup), another day it's the booster pump that is out (for any number of reasons), or the hot water heater (geyser) which sits on top of the roof is not working or, or, or, or.... What ever it is, it is rare that we have hot water, water pressure, clean water and enough water all at the same time. By 'rare' I mean never in the time we have been here.

First step was draining the tank. clearly it's dirty, so the guys were satisfied with the fact that this project was necessary. up they went. The one not in the coveralls is the new supervisor. He agrees to all my suggestions and then does not do them. (In his defense this is how the way everything goes here, and he also has a supervisor to answer to and it's his mercedes-driving-smooth-talkin supervisor that is in charge of the checkbook.)

One huge, gigantic problem is that we have a tall house and two upstairs bathrooms. It's a long way up. Getting the water up three stories from an underground source at the end of the dry season is the first challenge -- distributing it is the next problem. In this house, once you open the hot water tap in the kitchen (the lowest water point in the house) it pretty much drains the hot water heater (on the roof), so you can forget having a shower, filling the tub, etc until the evening or the next day.

We try to keep the property management company on top of maintenance...but it is a challenge to get them to spend money to fix actual problems and an even bigger challenge to ask them to put money into the house for things that may become problem. Some projects they get excited about. For whatever reason when I brought up the idea of CLEANING the water tank they were all over that. Maybe b/c it's just a matter of labour and zero expense. A few people we know have had their water tested and were more than a bit horrified at the results. Others discovered ant or rat or other infestations in their tanks. The workers has suggested that there could be frogs. It's gross enough to think about that I couldn't STOP thinking about it, so when they agreed, I was right there with them....literally. (They saw I was nervous and asked if I was afraid of heights -- I said I was but I was more afraid of falling.)

There was a thunderstorm rumbling...the light was amazing but I was a bit concerned about them being up there. This picture is taken from the top story bathroom window. There is a little porthole that a person just barely can fit into, this guy (below) clearly drew the short straw and spent an hour in there scooping mud 1/2 liter at a time and handing it out.

It took a few hours to sort out the tank-cleaning logistics -- they went up to assess the problem, drew straws, entertained my company up top for a bit, and in the end scooped out of foot of muck and mud. They scrubbed the tank best they could and refilled it, we flushed it and put in a bottle of Clorin for good measure.

The guys, led by our fearless maintenance man, Gesham (l) (above, our roof behind them, you can just see the hot water heater) and below, the view of the marsh behind our house. The marsh is soon going to be completely full of houses, a real shame for the natural water filtration that it provides to those downstream (there are 2 streams that run thru here). It's pretty green and productive despite that we are at the tail end of the dry season, no rain since....February but for a freak downpour in April.

The only obvious result of the tank-cleaning project is that I feel a bit better about the water. It's dirty as before -- it ran clear and actually smelled clean for about 24 hours - but at least I have assurances that there is nothing macro living up there...micro I'm certain of but we don't drink the water at all so I'm not too worried about that. The laundry is back to being dingy again -- we had clean white sheets and shirts there for a second -- but it's a little peace of mind we were really after and that we got. Still no water pressure, still not enough water, still no hot water, etc. sigh. 48 h after the tank-cleaning....back to brown. Sigh. What? You aren't excited about having a bath??

hot

2011-10-28T16:18:00.000+02:00

we had to cancel our camping/fishing weekend escape but just learned where we were headed (lower zambezi about 2 hours drive from home) it is 47 degrees.

that is hot.

real hot.

it's warm in Lusaka but it's not 47 degrees.

Magic Key Birthday Adventure!

2011-10-09T10:18:00.002+02:00

The boy-wonder is officially SIX years old!

For the occasion....sleepover, ice cream sandwiches at school, a weekend of non-stop partying, finny-dictated dinner menu, a BAKED ALASKA (topped with candles and 6 skiing kitties, as promised), and ..... a special book was produced. For those not in the know, it's based on a series used for the kids early-reading/literacy studies -- the characters are familiar to all the kids here....and the for better or worse, also the parents!)

The book was started and finished in the 24 hours before it needed to be at school in time for his classroom party so....please don't pass judgement on the artwork....the biggest challenge was to make Finn look different from Kipper. He kind-of IS Kipper. Please note that the for the last picture, I swapped out Floppy for Siku!

a little vermicelli on top

2011-10-06T17:25:00.001+02:00

Do you want to know the best bring-to-school summer birthday treats EVER?

Chocolate cookie and vanilla ice cream sandwiches with.....chocolate sprinkles. Easy peasy, cheap and mighty delicious despite that the store-bought ingredients separately are really not at all delicious. not in the least. But put them together and there is some crazy alchemy of flavors and crunch and cold goodness.

But this distracts us from the "chocolate sprinkles" lexiconographic discussion:

Jimmies? East coast US (Boston origin circa 1940s). I am not from the eastern seaboard and will wholesale refuse the term "jimmies." They incidentally call rainbow sprinkles "Rainbox Sprinkles" which makes a lot of sense. Why not "chocolate sprinkles?" Does that not make perfect sense?

Some people argue, and I'm NOT sayin' who (but it's the same people who say "kah" instead of CAR with an "R" sound), that big fat chocolate sprinkles are "Chocolate Sprinkles" where the normal small ones are still "jimmies."

Oh really.

Here in Zambia? They are vermicelli. come on. Apparently it's the "industry" terminology. Last I checked, Vermicelli are a traditional Italian pasta...round and a bit thicker than spaghetti (which is too thick already).

Please, people. Chocolate Sprinkles.

Chocolate.
Sprinkles.

Dear Liza, Dear Liza

2011-10-06T16:58:00.001+02:00

April Chorus:

There are bees in the roof, Dear Liza, Dear Liza!
There are bees in the roof, Dear Liza, some BEES!

So get them out, Dear Henry, Dear Henry!
Get them out Dear Henry, go get them, the BEES!

There's a hole in the roof, Dear Liza, Dear Liza!
There's a hole in the roof, Dear Liza, a HOLE!

So patch it, Dear Henry, Dear Henry
So Patch it, Dear Henry, patch up the HOLE!

But it's raining, Dear Liza, Dear Liza!
It's raining Dear Liza, it's raining real hard!

September Refrain:

There's still a HOLE in the ROOF, Dear Henry, Dear Henry....
and now there are rats in there, Henry, Dear Henry!
There are rats in there Henry, rats in the roof.

October Chorus:
And now it's really really, really raining hard! really hard!
And the bees moved in to the tree in the front yard! in the front yard!
Be on your guard, Dear Henry, Dear Henry! Be on your guard!

I'll be there, Dear Liza, Dear Liza!
I promise Dear Liza, Dear Liza!
I promise, I will!

On Monday. Oh, sorry.
On Tuesday. I swear....What? You say the rain short circuited the water pump? and you have no water?.... and the voltage for the house is coming in at 30 volts instead of 240?
On Wednesday. I will come. At 14h Really, I will.
On Thursday. But it's already 17 o'clock.

On Friday, Dear Liza, I promise to come.

Really? To have a look to see the hole in the roof AGAIN?

Oh really? Dear Henry, Dear Henry?
Oh really? Dear Henry, Dear Henry... we'll see.
Will you fix it, Dear Henry, Dear Henry?
Will you fix it? HIGHLY- UNLIKELY!

making history and not making the evening news

2011-09-25T01:30:00.002+02:00

Well, the world was not exactly watching Zambia this week (Zambia? What’s zambia? oh -- WHERE is Zambia -- its “ZAM-bEE- AH,” is it??) but it’s been a doozy of a week for us -- monday was a school holiday and tuesday was off for elections. For a small african country with such a short history of independence (since 1964), it started OK. The run-up was an insane battle of personalities and exactly zero politicing. All I really know about the two main parties are from the three text messages that I got this week. Policies? Positions? nothin. One calling for more of the same great leadership, the other asking for change.

PHOTOS: PF supporters (Patriotic Front, not Peter Finch) at the swearing in. Supporting the new President apparently requires a green foam Incredible Hulk fist. .... and a Kuamboka boat. One of Sata's campaign 'slogans' was "Don't Kubeba" which roughly means, "Don't tell." and the photo is of Sata 'shhhhushing.' It basically was telling his supporters -- sure, collect all the free things that the ruling party is handing out, wear your free chitenge and your new MMD hat -- but when you come to vote, vote with your heart, vote PF. Photo credits go to Simon, who was invited to the swearing-in with his diplomatic passport ink still drying. What a guy to remember to bring his camera. The first photo is from the podium where he was for the speeches, overlooking the crowd in front of the High Court.

There were a few problems in the lead up to the elections -- “political management” of the state owned electricity supply during a big opposition party rally in Lusak (which backfired b/c everyone was bored and came out to the rally -- including a guy who crowd-surfed HIGH above everyone's heads in....a bathtub), scattered reports of rioting and violence, the extreme and never-explained delay of ballot-paper-printing in South Africa, a bus load of ballot papers that fell into the zambezi river on the way from the polls, relatively little. Polls opened at 6am on tuesday in most areas -- for some it was delayed simply b/c it was difficult to get the papers to hard-to-access parts of the country. Or, opening was just delayed without explanation or apology (in these places, things got a bit hairy-scary). People starting queue up as early as 2am. The EU had 120 election observers, one of whom was on an hour-long call in show and actually stopped to laugh at one point to remark how he had never before heard the term “free and fair elections” spoken by so many people in such a short time. Clearly, people were aware of what they wanted. Free and fair. There were some 40 African (SADC) observers and all kinds of party observers and local observers. Everyone was watching everyone else watch everyone else. Somehow 2 million-plus voters turned out. (Zambia's 13 million population has some 5 million eligible voters, 80% were registered for this election with an almost equal male to female ratio).

By Wednesday the Electioral Commission website had been hacked (maybe?), there were rumors of violence (never confirmed) and rumors of foul play, rumors -- but we never fully knew what was going on. The Election Results Centre is just a few km from our house and nearby to school, so the kids’ school week was....wednesday. The work day was cut short most places as people headed home b/c of the uncertainty of what was happening -- or more importantly, what would happen. Students at University of Zambia (UNZA) are famous for exercising their rights to free speech (here called “rioting”) and they did apparently but not with much gusto. So, we steered clear. A trip out for some groceries was eerily quiet. gone were the crowds, the kids, the traffic, the vendors, etc. There were no hints of what was to come.

Trading was closed -- except the little grocery store “Melissa” which is run by a bunch of crazy Lebonese guy who were likely making money hand over fist. (good for them!) The police presence was visible -- paramilitary out ( but they are usually out, strolling around the shopping mall in their uniforms and carrying ancient automatic weapons), new police horses roaming from the elections results center to the polo ground stables. newly enlisted officers -- walking around uncomfortably in newly purchased bullet proof vests (even tho the police are pretty much the only ones with guns). The power (and now I mean electricity) came and went, the internet was working and not working, the higher court had injunctions against the three private media house and were banned from publishing any results or early returns. All we had were text messages. But as my friend pointed out, the “Arab Spring” and the politial revolution of north Africa had better internet.

It really was a close race between the political party that has been in power for the last 20 years. Zambia has only had 4 presidents: Kenneth Kaunda (still alive, in his 80’s who was president from 1964 to 1991), Frederick Chiluba (who died just a few months ago), Patrick Levy Mwanawasa (who died in office in 2009), and the latest to take the office, Rupiah Banda. There were a dozen presidential hopefuls but three main parties and two ‘real’ contenders -- the sitting president and Michael Chilufya Sata (whose nickname, by the way, is “King Cobra”) who has by now run for the office 4 times.

It’s unclear exactly what people expected but events unfolded predictably at first. As the initial results from urban areas came in the opposition party was in the lead. Folks expected that over the next 48 hours, however, that the rural vote would come in for the ruling party, and with these votes would come the allegations (true or not) of rigging and corruption. But the rural votes came in and the opposition lead remained. 80 constituancies, 100, 120.... (there are 150 voting districts). The state owned media was running boring movies and bad music videos while they waited for the calm voice of the electoral commision head. They promised and update at 6pm, at 8pm. at 10 pm. at midnight. FINALLY at 1230, an update but with the caveat that there were 7 constituencies remaining and the race was so close. finally at 145 in the morning, they felt comfortable announcing...the opposition party won -- the new president would be inaugurated that day...pick up your invitations at the Parliament Hotel.

Almost miraculously, the sitting president ceded, an act for which he will have earned his place in history. All have said, an african president has every reason to fight, every resource to resist a change of power, every expection to NOT give up the post.

At 1:46AM the city erupted -- people hopped out of their beds and hit the streets -- in their PJs in their...underdrawers? however they were -- they left their homes and headed to Plot 1 (state house, zambia’s 1600 Penny Ave/10 Downing Street), hooting and hollering and dancing. shooting fireworks, beating drums, blowing horns, going absolutely mad. I think Zambias are themselves surprised. They know the historical significance of a democratically held (and upheld) election. They know that by NOT making the international news, they made history.

Yeah for Zambia!

The news from Zambia: http://www.zambia-weekly.com/index.htm
(and the bathtub crowd surfing yoot photo)

Hair Ambassador turns 9

2011-09-24T23:38:00.001+02:00

The big O turned 9 this week. NINE. Amazing, right? Finn is 6 in another few weeks. How did that happen?

Owen’s birthday fell the Saturday of a four-day weekend (one that in fact turned into 9 days off of school) so it would have been a great weekend to take the boys out tiger-fishing at the Lower Zambezi River-- how we celebrated last year. Unfortunately, the bwana was traveling and wouldn’t be back until Saturday afternoon....and school was closed b/c of uncertain about how the elections would go. Would their be rioting? Violence? Trouble in outlying areas? We had to stay put.

He carefully crafted a small list of boys whom we invited after school on friday --would they get along with eachother? would they like to come over and goof around with science experiments? Can they come? One of his closest friends is Muslim and leaves school early every day to get to mosque -- his mom briefly considered bringing him over after but they live on the other side of town and like many people, were reluctant to be out and about if there was any risk of getting caught in a riot or demonstration.

So, this left him with 5 friends plus finny.... they had four big bottles of vinegar, three bottles of coke and a few packets of mints, two boxes of baking soda, balloons, and anything else they ‘needed’ to blow stuff up or make mad science concoctions (ooblek, anyone?). The boys mixed their own sodas to drink, experimented with rasperry jello, swam and generally mucked about all afternoon. They made ice cream sundaes and munched on chips and ate fruit. It was really fun and mellow.

The next day was the ‘family’ party. Family here includes our friends and perhaps a bit embarassingly to him, a GIRL from his grade, two in fact. I suspect that we needed two b/c there was no way he could invite THOSE BOYS and THOSE GIRLS and have it turn out OK.

I’m quite happy with the fact that he continues to have girl friends. Not “girlfriends” of course, b/c the kid is only just turned 9. Unlike some of his classmates he doesn’t flinch when the teachers pair him up for projects with a girl. And, equally wonderful is that the girls don’t get all goofy and squirmy when they get paired up with O. It’s nice.

Maybe it’s the hair. He’s like a boy ambassador with those golden locks.

mike wang

2011-09-16T09:15:00.001+02:00

something funny happened this summer. it’s actually not funny at all. something strange. something truly horrible. a friend of ours was killed in a hit-and-run, bicycle vs. SUV accident a few blocks from his office...from our office. he covers hundreds of miles on his bike each month, commuting to work, heading home to his wife, his son, his daughter. he was the sole provider for the family. he was a good guy. a great guy.

he was also an amazing photographer. he was a mentor to me.

so. every time I pick up my camera. i can’t take a photo. i can’t bear the thought.

i think the best way to honor him would be, in fact, to take photos. to take them with abandon. to tell the world about mike wang, about his work, about his family.

I can’t just yet.

---------------

A memorial fund has been established at BECU credit union. Donations in Mike’s memory can be made to:

Mike Wang Family
c/o BECU
PO Box 34044
Seattle, WA 98124-1044

Donations also can be dropped off at any BECU branch location. To donate online, please contact info@path.org for instructions.

With any luck we will also be able to purchase Mike's documentary portrait photography, the copyrights for which have been generously transferred to his family.

Kyla's Awesome Summer Adventure Photo Book

2011-08-06T06:12:00.002+02:00

Click here to view this photo book larger

Emergency Room

2011-07-01T18:56:00.000+02:00

God Bless Grannies and Pac Med. New Kitty is in recovery after emergency surgery this morning. He was losing beads at an alarming rate and we brought him in last night, poor thing. Dr. Mom stitched him up, Dr. FPFJ administered banana treats and gentle post-op care. He is resting and can take visitors as soon as this evening.

BFF

2011-07-01T18:53:00.000+02:00

When is Lusaka getting Trader Joe's??!!

Home again home again, Jiggity Jig.

2011-06-30T19:27:00.000+02:00

Londontown

2011-06-30T19:24:00.000+02:00

the boy in london....looking 15 instead of 5.

We liked the hidden animals in the main hall.

The best stop in the Natural History Museum...the BASEMENT! Skip the animatron dinosaurs (altho it is really cool), check out the blue whale and friends in the mammals section and then leave plenty of time to head downstairs and play.....

Back up top, we headed to Kenningston Gardens/Hyde Park to the Princess Di Memorial Playground. With the crowds and the heat the kids downed a bottle of water each, a handful of gummy worms and didn't make it past the first play structure -- a washed up pirate ship. O is up in the crows nest here....

strolling....

The London Eye from the Westminster Bridge.

and...for Al the family eagle scout, a quick visit to Robert Baden Powell, the father of scouting.

We did a mad dash thru the Tate Modern -- FPFJ was appropriately awed at seeing Matisse's Snail in person, and O was impressed at the Picasso room and the scale of Ai Weiwei's sunflower seeds installation, even tho we only saw the post-exhibit piece -- just a fraction of the size of the main hall exhibit and a hands-off exhibit (the main exhibit full immersion....walk on the ceramic seeds, hold them, roll around and take a nap on them if you like....sorry to have missed that.

overheard

2011-06-30T18:55:00.000+02:00

"I think we need to figure a way to earn a bit more money....."

we missed an opportunity to talk to Jack White a few days ago. am kicking ourselves. we are torturing the family by downloading every single White Stripes youtube we can find. kicking ourselves. but what would we have said?

Care to join us for a Dad's Day pint....of wasps?

2011-06-19T19:10:00.001+02:00

Care for a second round?

These suckers have been creeping us out. We have a knotty (naughty?) pine ceiling in our sitting room. On day we noticed a cluster of these nasty wasps congregating on one of the knots. They weren't moving so we kind of ignored them. For weeks.

I also had a party this week and at one point I made a comment about them....everyone was a bit horrified to suddenly know they were sharing their happy party space with a cluster of giant wasps (right over the buffet table, in fact. Today, Mr. 13Socks decided he was done staring at them and leapt into action.

Happy Father's Day Mr 13Socks! THANKS for all your crepe-makin, ethiopian-food-bringin, goodnight-kissing, soccer-playin, wasp-trappin, awesome daddy self. You ARE the best.

Story Problem

2011-06-19T19:02:00.001+02:00

A 11.77m x 5.32m pool loses 10 cm of water in 36 hours. How much water leaked out?

A staggering 626 liters! Sorry to go metric on you but I can't imagine doing this 'story problem' with feet/inches/cubic yards/gallons.

By some miracle we were able to fix the problem with some careful research, some helpful children and a $10 packet of epoxy putty.

We had kind of assumed we had a leak but it was getting increasingly worse and increasingly expensive. Our fear was that it was in the water/pump/filter system. Rather than call our house maintenance team (who have yet to return to fix the gaping hole in our roof from the bee-hive removal project), we took a week and did some research online, a few experiments in the pool.

The funniest thing was reading an online forum about pool maintenance (yes, I did that). One guy was worried about losing 1cm in a week from his outdoor pool in the summertime. Uh, Hello? but this was when I confirmed that losing 10 cm in 36 hours was more certainly abnormal, especially considering that it's winter. I also knew something was seriously wrong b/c I had just added an entire bottle of dry acid in 36 h to balance the pH where the directions recommend adding a capful a week at the most -- and only if you need it. I am not going to even try to calculate the $ lost to this leak in pool chemicals. Instead I'll focus on the money we will save by fixing it.

The research.
We turned off the pump and started 'the bucket test' to see about cracks in the pool itself. Over the 36 h the pool lost water but the bucket did not. This meant that water loss was not due to evaporation (duh, but good to have confirmation). We dropped in some food coloring around the edges and did a visual inspection. This was the art experiment part of the project! FPFJ did some performance art.....finger in the dye and then...absent mindedly....finger in the nose.....

The noticeable cracks in the concrete did nothing to attract the dye so we assumed they were superficial; the cracks in the plaster between the pool and the pool intake/filter were not. After the 626 liters of water leaked out, we left the pool for another 36 hours and saw that there was no more water loss. This was a good sign - we could at least isolate the problem - the union between the concrete pool and the plastic water filter intake.

Despite a shopping trip that yielded only 2 of 9 things on our shopping list, we found epoxy putty that seemed (from the pictures, the instructions were in Afrikaans) to be the answer to the leaky pool. FPFJ and I hung over the edge of the pool and poked our heads in the weir for an hour, squeezed the epoxy into the cracks and smoothed it out.

The epoxy putty cures underwater so we optimistically added 626 liters back in (it took a day and a half). nearly a week later the pool is sparkling and the chemistry back in balance. The best part is that we have not added a single drop of water.

This meant....an icy swim today and the opportunity to put in our air mattresses....so we can figure out where to patch THEM up!

Yes, this is really what it's like to live in "africa." We have it rough....trying to patch our swimming pools and get through the Nutella shortage. (this is going surprisingly OK - I even stopped looking for it). Everything about our life here is ridiculous lately. from the hole in the roof to the hole in the pool.

Home leave soon...but soon enough? Can't wait for automatic dishwashers and central heating.

POOL UPDATE Jan 2012: am realizing now how much money we lost just by trying to maintain proper pool chemistry with the constant water loss. we noticed it right away but assumed it was b/c it was cold weather....but we got through the hot season and now even mid-rainy season all is well with very little input. we were regularly having algae outbreaks, mold problems, frogs (uh, we still have frogs), and annoying things like bright green and cloudy water. but really, aside from the normal cleaning and monthly testing and adjusting the pool has been practically maintenance free. too bad we didn't look into this 3 years ago!

Livingstone....revisited

2011-06-09T13:18:00.000+02:00

The family headed down to Livingstone over the long weekend for our annual chilly winter camping trip. Usually we go to Kafue National Park and camp at a lodge that has $260/per person/per night chalets and $14 campsites but opted for the tourist mecca (Victoria Falls/Livingstone) down south instead so we could try a few new things with our friends who are moving away. We also gave up out usual fancy room with air con, cable, breakfast buffet and a giant bathtub in favor of camping at a backpacker lodge at the edge of town.
The completion of the Zimba Road has made the trek to Livingstone a viable long-weekend option. It took them 3 years to do it but isn't a thing of beauty?

Below, the bypass/detour Zimba Road....This dirt trail was in far better condition than the actual road but it was still not cutting it as a replacement for a proper tarred road. For two years this was the road for getting that last 60km to Livingstone.

Ahhhhhhhhh. The Chinese did a most excellent job with the new road.

There was a big group also staying at the lodge from Gonzaga....on a 5 week psychology class doing research at a chimpanzee reserve in the NW province (what a way to get your biology credits! three weeks at the reserve and two weeks of travel and tourism. -- they popped over to Botswana to go to Chobe along with some travel within Zambia).

Above, The Overland Vehicles that took around the Gonzaga group. These monstors are based in Zambia but can travel to Botswana (where they transport folks to Chobe national park but also where they fuel up at $600 a pop, much cheaper than if they fueled up in Zambia), and Zimbabwe (were their business operations are based)

The place was recently refurbished and was quite OK, the staff was super helpful and nice. Even the food was good. BUT the establishments surrounding their compound were noisy as all get-out. Three bars/parties with loud music until 3am and then the roosters starting in at about 3:20. And can I just say that a mummy sleeping bag is perfectly suitable for one of me but quite uncomfortable with one of me and one 5 year old. He's small but he's not THAT small.

Going with another family meant that we could divide and conquer. O joined them for an elephant safari while FPFJ stayed behind and hung out with the cheetahs, white lions and caracal. Only the lions, which were 4 months old, did not think that my little guy looked like a delicious snack. There was a group of 3 others there with us doing the full-on 'ENCOUNTER' and the animals were out to be pet and played with.

Another party doing their "cheetah encounter" they had the cats on leashes when they were out of the enclosures but they paying customers also got to hang out with the cheetahs INSIDE the enclosures. Yikes. We were doing the free, 'voyeur encounter' and had fun just watching the spectacle as well as enjoying the big cats up close with a wire fence between us. Even a little bit of fencing is nice when you are traveling with a tasty snack (aka Finn).

It was nice to do something new and I was surprised at the level of professionalism and the ethics of the operation. I'll be honest to say I'm quite afraid of elephants and the idea of sending O into the bush with two little girls and another mom wasn't high on my list. That said, it ended up being quite alright, and totally awesome. And, like I said already, I was totally impressed with the whole operation.

The elephants are free to roam the grounds but are called into service when it's time for an elephant safari. The animals are all orphans from Zimbabwe or are otherwise 'rescues.' The big momma ele is about 50 years old and the smallest one, Mouse, is 11 years old. They have 7 elephants, all of whom came to Zambia on foot from Zimbabwe over the Victoria Falls Bridge in 2009.

In every photo I took you can tell exactly where my delicious little 5 year old is....just follow the stare of the predator and you can see where he is too! It's a bit unnerving. The staff were great and made sure they knew where he was and asked that we carry him if the animals were getting ideas (which they did). Creepy.

No trip to Livingstone is complete without a visit to Victoria Falls. So, visit we did. We all hiked down to the Boiling Pot (a gorge at the base of the falls), hiked around by the knife point bridge and at the top of the falls. Everyone got thoroughly soaked.

Double Rainbow? (search for the youtube double rainbow clip if you are ever bored)

This is from a dry-season trip to Livingstone -- when the water is raging (below), rafting operations come to a grinding halt. Livingstone is the adrenaline junkie's paradise.

O, doing his part to hold up the Victoria Falls Bridge. From the Boiling Pot you get a good view of the bridge...and the bungee jumpers who take the leap mid-span. TJ enjoyed his views overhead with Pilot Pascale. Check them out! (the 'cloud' is the mist rising from Mosi-y-tunya, the smoke that thunders. Does it ever!)

Thanks, Gesuales for a wonderful weekend!

Say "CHEESE!!!"

Sunset on the Zambezi

simple bear necessities

2011-06-09T11:36:00.000+02:00

The primary school had their annual drama production this past week -- a DISNEY DAZZLE spectacular. It was pretty darn cute. The play was narrated first by Mickey and Minnie and were joined by Uncle Remus (Song of the South), Shere Kahn (the tiger from The Jungle Book), Snow White, Princess and a few more. (I'm really not up on my Disney characters, especially the newer ones, thank goodness.) The growing crowd of narrators filled us in about the history of Disney, the success of the films and all the major milestones of animation interspersed with each of the primary classes performances of signature Disney songs. It was really well done, everyone participated and .... wow were they excited!

Year 4 did "Simple Bear Necessities." Yours truly volunteered to help with the costumes -- I stepped up when they thought there would be 6 bears. Fast forward to me with my eyes as big as saucers when I find out that the plan changed and bit and not there were 25 bears! We scratched our original plan and headed to the Foam Shop in Kamwala and bought three giant sheets of white foam. FPFJ and I traced and cut out 25 of these (Plus a giant kitty head for good measure along with a few foam swords and surfboards). Seeing that the bears were not Polar Bears, out came the paints. What a mess.

The night of the play there was an army of face-painters and I think each and every child in the primary school got painted: dwarves, flamingos, dogs, princesses, sprites, tigers, lions and bears....OH MY!

And if you are so sorry you missed the show....not to worry, we have a DVD and I pretty sure if you see us this summer, you will be asked to sit and view.

Finn already has his lines memorized for his 'graduation' play in June, along with everyone else's parts! They are performing "Wackadoo Zoo." Now to figure out a "Professor" costume for the little guy....we're fresh out of tweed jackets. Do professors even wear tweed anymore?

How Sporting

2011-06-09T11:26:00.000+02:00

The little kidlets are become quite the athletes. There seems to be no end to their interest or enthusiasm.

Some snaps of them in action. The little guy, who is somehow STILL a head shorter than 90% of his classmates, participated in Saturday Soccer and played for 'Team Airtel.' While the team's win/loss record wasn't so good, the kids (and I dare say, the parents) had a fun season and reached some of their team goals. The highlight of the season was the invitation to play on the 8-10 year old team for a game. (The teams are very loosely set up....players swap shirts to fill the lineup and as long as the kids are the age or under they are welcome on the pitch.) A lot of the fun of playing when you are 5 is the playing that goes on off the pitch. He hit it off right away with a few of the other kids (lots of different schools participate although it's at the American School and so is mostly kids from AIS) and those clowns spent many hours finding many ways to make it down 'the big hill' by the soccer fields.

O opted to keep up with his Capoiera practice which has a weekend session so he couldn't do soccer, which made for some complicated logistics but meant FPFJ didn't have to push his way onto center stage. Big brother has a tendency to hog the limelight, just b/c he's so awesome, not b/c he's a big meanie. The group that practices capoiera on the weekend is all adults and that has been really fun to watch. There is talk of starting a kids' group. The boys will both squeeze in some work at a Capoiera center in Sea-Town this summer -- we found a studio in SODO that has drop-in classes for kids. Fun.

O has been doing field hockey at school and really enjoys it. He's doing "Athletics" as an afterschool activity along with the PE athletics. As far as I have been able to sort out, it's track-and-field-ish with some funny stuff thrown in. The local school hold meets. Our school does miserably at these meets but the kids do their best and of course, have fun doing it. O has learned a lot about non-sporting topics from his bus trips with the secondary students (YIKES!) and has made some more good friends that maybe he wouldn't normally have hung out with at school. Now mom has to decide about team swimming for next year. He's been invited to swim but quite honestly....the schedule means a lot of running around for yours truly and would mean little brother would be dragged around Zambia to watch swim galas. I did swim team as a kid and (yes, mom) really enjoyed it -- so maybe it is my payback time. I'm remembering all the running around my mom did in Minnesota -- and the big speeding ticket to make it to the Cornelius Classic in time for my race....

O running a 50m sprint at the "Ten Step" meet at the Italian School. The kids did 10 different athletics/sporting races, including the high jump, long jump, beanbag races, and a 50 m jump-rope race!

Four Seasons

2011-06-09T09:52:00.000+02:00

Lusaka is not unlike many cities we know and love. We have four seasons here, even if they are a bit different than you’d usually consider:

the cold season (6 weeks around july and august) The cold season in Lusaka is kind of like "summer" in Seattle. But in Seattle you have things like fleece, down, and wool....carpeting, insulated wood floors, doors and windows that actually CLOSE, central heat, etc. In Lusaka when the temperature drops to 40F at night, it means that despite the warmish daytime temperatures your house will maybe warm up to 50. Your stone floors and stone walls will make your house feel like you live in the crisper drawer in the bottom of the fridge. You can't keep a breeze from blowing through and you certainly can't actually ever 'heat' a room. Being inside means being constantly cold. You can be certain to find me bundled up most nights in my famous orange 'puffy coat' and wrapped in my down blanket, wool socks on and a hat if I can find one that survived storage without getting too musty/moldy. The cold season is dry and windy. The air quality (very low in Lusaka to begin with), is horrible between the pollution, the fires and the dust.
the hot season ( 6 weeks some time between september and November) It's mind-bogglingly hot and humid. In Lusaka it's not unbearable but out side of Lusaka temps regularly exceed 100F. Where we are there are a few truly miserable days but then comes......
the rainy season (6 weeks between December and January) Seattle and Lusaka actually 'match up' pretty well for annual rainfall. The difference is that Seattlites experience this precipitation as a constant drizzle. In Lusaka it comes down in violent bursts -- the 'season' lasts about 6 weeks but there are probably only about a dozen days of rain in that time period -- and it's coming down in solid sheets accompanied by spectacular thunder and lightning storms. Rainy season here is Mother Nature at HIGH INTENSITY. The rains bring some relief to the heat and when they first arrive everyone welcome this change. But then your roof springs a leak, your car stalls out in a flooded road, any excursion out of town is put off
all remaining months are strangely seasonless and perfect: sunny and 70 degrees F.

For the most part, the weather is amazing, Zambia's strongest selling point, to be honest. Right when you get completely fed up with the heat, the cold, the rain...it changes. The change of seasons is never gradual. One day it's the hot season and the next you are full-on into the raining season. And when the rainy season stops....there is not a drop of the wet stuff from the sky until the next year (imagine...not a drop of rain from March to November -- it's surreal).

But that's only three 'seasons.'

The fourth season? It's a doozy.

It's... the LEAVING SEASON.

The leaving season is the worst. The weather is starting to get cold, everyone is starting to get cranky about “things” in Zambia, most expat families are fleeing to the northern hemisphere for warm sunny, home leave, the school term is incredibly busy and compressed (term 1 is 15 weeks, term 2 is 12 weeks but term 3 is 7 weeks of pure insanity) and there's never enough time to squeeze everything in.

On top of the rush of the last school term, this time of year is when families, friends wrap up their 2-3 year postings and head onto the next stop in their life. It's quite exciting but of course sad to see friends leave. One family we knew briefly came to Zambia from Cambodia, stayed here for their 3 year post and were headed to Croatia. Can you even imagine? That is how it goes when you work for the US State Department overseas.

The Leaving Season is filled with endless goodbyes, parties, packouts, boot sales and travel planning. (those passports and visas, curiously, tend to expire from time to time, creating more than a few dramatic departure stories and many many headaches.) There is such an exodus of families going on 'home leave' this time of year that any chance of getting actual work done is abandoned.

Well, this year is a rough one. Not only b/c we are not leaving* but b/c our good friends ARE. After 5 years in Zambia (and many more years on the continent) the Gesuales are through with attending leaving parties and hosting home-away-from-home holidays; they are fed up with having the responibility of bringing a wee bit of sanity into all our lives.....this time they are the ones leaving. It's breaking our hearts.

See -- look, there one goes now, sneaking off on her elephant!

Lusaka has never met the likes of Steve, Melinda, Scout and Matea, who are all in their own ways special, kind, and generous -- beyond imagination. They will be missed by many families. We will be making every excuse to catch up with them where ever they happen to land. (Yellowstone!?)

Best go, we've got some packing of our own to do...

*no need to remind us that we thought we'd be away from Rat City for "2-3 years." In our defense, did anyone truly expect the economy would take such a spectacular nose-dive? That the housing market would take such a hit? that there would not be a job to come home to? Not us. Apologies to all....but this gives you some time to save your pennies and book those tickets. There is a sale on South African Airlines right now if you book your trip before the 21st!

Honey, honey?

2011-05-17T10:03:00.000+02:00

Mr 13Socks recently sent around a little quiz (which he called a "weekly quiz" but which was not weekly in any way, shape, or form). In case you missed it:

This time it’s multiple choice since last week’s entries were so lame.

The scene: shirtless brothers on top of our two+ story house last night, setting fire to old mountain bike tires and ripping off asbestos roofing panels with a borrowed claw hammer.

The appropriate response:

(a) call the police

(b) call the fire dept (I think Lusaka (population over 2 million) has one working fire engine)

(c) turn up the volume on the Argentian soap opera to drown out the thudding footsteps on the roof; only then it will be clear that Soledad should NOT get engaged to Carlos the attorney who is defending her sister for murder; she’s obviously preggers from Alejandro, her true love, and needs to get over the inconvenient fact that his father killed her father.

(d) wait for a gooey clump of honeycomb, a divine product of the bee clearing operation

The answer?

We have two very active hives....one up under the soffits 30 feet up and another double-colony in our ceiling board in the pantry off our kitchen (below). The ceiling is sagging in several spots as the size of the hives and the weight of the honey has grown over the years. Seeing as how our housekeeper has a fatal bee allergy (we had some excitement last year when she was stung and 15 minutes later I was rushing her to the "best" private clinic in town. more on this after the bee story!)

In the night-time photo up top I must point out the one piece of equipment the 'bee brothers' brought -- a ladder. You might notice it's a bit short. At one point TJ says to me "Hey...You should go check out the operation outside...." and I went out to see how Plan A: approach the hive from below, was progressing. They were 'testing' the ladder....on top of which they had positioned a handmade wooden ladder (half rotten and very weak)--- on the top rung of the aluminum ladder. it didn't reach up quite high enough. thank goodness. They went with "Plan B" (get it? Plan BEE?) which was to climb up on the roof from the balcony and rip off the asbestos roof panels, smoke them out and pull the hive out by hand. TJ's question about this plan: "This sounds a bit....Dangerous." The response? "YES! You can DIE doing this job!" Lots of laughing and up they went.

"our" bees like to hang out in the fountain grass by the door (below). there are thousands of them. Removing the hives did not remove the bees and since our neighbors cut down a tree that had a huge hive in it as well, we also have their bees. Our very sweet but very strange, crazy dog (who we believe thinks he is invisible) has been known to skip his dog-food and meat breakfast preferring instead to eat....guava, ferns, avocados and....bees. He once vomited up a stomach-ful of....bees. The bees are looking for a new home and we have had a few 'lockdown' days where every door and window is shut and no one is allowed out.

Back to the bee allergy. It was a really scary day and very lucky. Our housekeeper, Obrin, is in her mid-20s and has somehow never been stung by a bee. I was headed to school one day and she was stung on the face right when I was leaving. we live 8 minutes from school.....I went there and back and by the time I returned, I could hardly even recognize her....she was swollen all over, breaking out in hives, having trouble breathing....all the classic symptoms of a severe allergic reaction.

Lots of things fell into place for this to have a happy ending. We had someone call ahead at the private clinic -- one of three private clinics in town that can take emergencies and deal with them. How well they deal with emergencies can be debated all day but overall I am TOTALLY UNIMPRESSED. First off, you have to go upstairs and wait in a queue and return with a receipt of payment before you can be treated and then you wait indefinitely. (If you are to be admitted to the 'hospital' part of the clinic I think it's 5 million, cash, up front -- even if you show up at midnight with a seizing 4 year old which someone discovered one night a few years back)

At any rate, she saw a Zambian doctor (which is important b/c her English is very limited) and had 2 Zambian nurses on duty. They gave her a massive number of injections and observed her for an hour. After an hour, they sent her home. They gave her a weeks worth of allergy pills. And that was it.

I followed up with a few of our friends who are doctors (I like to keep a few in my pocket at all times!) and learned that without a bulletproof plan for 'next time' the outcome was not going to be good, especially given the severity of this reaction. After many conversations, much research, we finally settled on a 'plan.' Having an epi-pen on had turned out not to be practical -- they cost $800, last a year and there was a 3 week wait to get one. As her employer I was happy to go this route but just having a pen isn't enough. You have to use it properly, have it on you at all times, and replace it annually. The pharmacist and I agreed that this would work but it wasn't sustainable. They came up with a better solution; we put together an emergency kit (with hi-dose allergy drugs, written instructions and three ampules of adrenaline/epinephrine, the active ingredient in an epi-pen. We live close to a clinic and hospital and they can administer the drug -- and know of her condition as long as she notifies the staff from time to time (when she takes the girls in for checkups/vaccines, etc.). And while an epi-pen is a great solution (which still requires a clinic visit and emergency car) in a perfect world, there is no way she could afford an $800 pen. She CAN afford an ampule of adrenaline which contains 3 doses and which can be had with no wait from the chemist for $1. YES, $1. Not only does this take the burden off of us (and any future employer), it puts her in charge of her health which is a good thing.

The bees remain a problem....and more than a month later we still have a hole in our roof. The pantry got a full makeover but....the bees returned to this same spot and also have a new hive at another spot on the roof.

The Buzz: Honey in Zambia.

Zambia has fabulous honey and there is a small export business of honey/bee products from the miombo woodlands in the NW Province. Zambia honey even makes its way onto The Body Shop retail shelves! A group from Gonzaga University has an ongoing project which sprung up a few years back. It's actually kind of funny the way it's marketed -- certified organic, blah de blah. The reality is that the honey is harvested by a village cooperative which consists of guys climbing up trees in the woods.

We have honey taste-tests and agree that 'house-honey' ranks high against the commercial product. But if you want "Zambia Gold" you may be able to find it on the store shelves to do your own taste test.

We TRIed!

2011-05-01T11:38:00.000+02:00

Owen gets ready for his 200m swim

For the past 10 years (?) the American International School in Lusaka has held a community triathlon every April. There are four 'levels' of competition: Sprint, Intermediate, Fun and Junior. Racers compete for prizes and for our local teams it's a great opportunity to get some records under their belts and some race experience. For the rest of us, it's a good challenge and heaps of fun. The race had over 300 participants age 4 to 56, every-one finished (and a few had to scramble to fix flats and change tires and recruit swimmers (and borrow swim suits!) right before the race. A majority (if not all?) of the “Overall Winners” for the 11U and 15U were girls/young women. There two bike crashes at the bike finish lines (both grown ups) and zero medic response required for anyone -- not even skinned knees!

SuperBoy was the family triathlete this weekend; he was the youngest competitor in the American School's Community Intermediate Triathlon event. He competed against a handful of kids in the 15&Under category and 30 adults 30-48 y.o. The race consisted of 200m swim (in a 25m pool), a 6km bike ride on a seriously intense mountain bike trail, and a 2km run with a spectacular sprint to the finish.

SuperBoy, aka #C240, started the swimming at Batch 22 in the center lane with 4 other racers (age 39-48). By race day he had acquired a huge fan club amongst the race organizers and all our friends from all of Lusaka’s schools, so he was off to a good start just by signing up!

Some backstory......We had gone through the race course a few weeks before...he raced with Dad’s team and they went on a wild goose chase trying to find the route. Later, he raced with Mom’s team on yet another (wrong) route. Finally, after trying to drive the route in a 4WD three times, we finally decided we found the actual course route and #C240 biked the full course as a training session -- or at least what we hoped it was the course -- with a good friend and excellent athlete from the secondary school (his best bud’s big brother!). The kids in fact fared much better than the truck for the training run, but a LandCruiser is never happier than when it gets a good workout, right? It turns out it’s quite a handy thing to have a bumper (ahem, and someone to replace it and wash the car before Mr13socks got home from work.)

On race day Owen had a great swim - he swam breast stroke very beautifully.

The transition from swimming to biking was assisted by dad and a handful of helpers, was photographed by mom and cheered on by brother. Transitions are tricky -- have you ever tried to put on shoes and socks in a hurry when you are dripping wet?

Owen reports that he took the bike route pretty easy and the fact that we had an overcast morning REALLY helped b/c it was high noon by the time he finished biking. On the last 50m of the bike race he had a run-in with a giagantic flying beettle thing but otherwise the biking went well - the course wasn't crowded and he neither passed or got passed by any bikers which he was very proud of.

After a sip of juice and a few sour gummy bears, he took off his helmet and TOOK OFF for the run! Everyone watching thought he twisted his ankle after about 50m or was tripped up by something but in fact, it was the SAME beetle from the biking that going after him and he had to do a quick evasive maneuver. He reported the run wasn't too tough and Owen finished strong, barely sweating in 43:18.

High Fives at the finish line

WOW! Today he's asking for one of us to go on a 6K run with him. Uh......sure.

Myself and Mr. ThirteenSocks were swimmers on two different Sprint Relay Teams: Team Vector (Malaria Control Team) and the Greater Puget Sounders (Seattle-Lacy-Bothell/Anne-Beth-Terri). We did not get to compete against eachother on race day (except for our times of course) but had a great time training with everyone at our school pool and the American School pool where many 50M all-out sprint races were won and lost with no awards or trophies, or tears. Little13Socks did not sign up but only b/c he decided too late to register. He trained with us and not only mastered his age group’s 25 meter swim but also learned, through a beautiful thing we like to call YouTube how to swim BUTTERFLY. Yes, he is 5 and wears size 2T swim trunks but he . can . swim . butterfly. It’s more like fluttery-by but it’s still darn impressive.

The Greater Puget Sounders (above) were exceedingly happy with our time (1:07) and proud that we did it and finished strong.....good thing b/c when Beth finished up her run, she grabbed a cold water and ran straight to her car with her family cheerleader to meet the rest of her gang to leave town for a weekend camping trip! We didn't win any big trophies or set any records but we decided that the race was truly the icing on the cake and all the training was our real reward. (The excellent time does earn us some bragging rights, doesn't it?) Next year if we keep our same team together we will be in the 40-49 category instead of 16-39! This could be a good thing. There's got to be some benefit to turning 40. (Age 16 to 39?? Who are they kidding, right?)

Terri just moved back to Zambia 3 weeks ago and she had to jump right into training on a borrowed bike. She was amazing! And cute! notice the pink nail polish to match her top?

The happiest runner in the world, Beth, had to figure out how to ONLY run 4k. 10k more her distance.

and me....race ready?

PATH's Team Vector (Todd, John and Msinide) made excellent time (1:00.44) and won first place for the Corporate Team Award which is a speed -per-kilometer race between the all the Sprint and Intermediate teams. Most years an Intermediate team wins so it’s a real accomplishment that they won in this category racing the sprint distance. WAY TO GO TEAM VECTOR! They get to have their names engraved on a special plaque and they can post the plaque in their office until next year. Awwwwww. Next year I promise to make them Team Vector Shirts.

Overall, a great day! We’re all ready to start training for next year!

Some more Race Day pictures:

Friendly? Fun? Non-Competitive? Yes, until you are the middle-aged pot-bellied guy and a 12 year old secondary school cross-country record-holder is trying to pass you in the last 200m. The big guy won but I think it's gonna take him about 3 weeks to recover. CE on the other hand was still pretty fresh (but frustrated at being elbowed out at the finish line?)

Below, Todd's race had an interesting start, the swimmers matched up well, but after 100M things fell apart for everyone else but TJ hung on and easily crushed his heat. Even better, he beat his best swim time by 30 seconds and did flip turns at every turn. Nice.

Above, the gang, post race. They are already thinking about their soccer game tomorrow.

Below, Team Sandbloom. This family is going to need a trophy room for all the prizes won and records broken. All three kids competed in multiple races; Dad's team set a new record which should stand a LONG time Incredible!

6 in 6 plus 1

2011-04-12T12:58:00.000+02:00

In a testosterone-filled home you'd think it would be all mud-pies and skinned knees.....but no....the boys don't shy away from any project, even sewing.

ESPECIALLY sewing!

Maybe it is the allure of making something from nothing or using heavy machinery --- my old sears singer counts as heavy machinery, doesn't it? Both kids are incredibly creative and are always asking about doing this project or that. Their eagerness to bust out the scissors and raid my chitenge stash inspired a recent stitching marathon.

In honor of the recent and remarkable "6 in 6 plus 1"* we celebrated by putting together some quilts. Only the tops are done and there is no quilt batting to be found in all of LSK so we'll save the big 'reveal' for another day. In the meantime, I just had to declare my pride at having two more confirmed quilters in the family.

* 6 baby boys (Solomon, Fisher, Ronan, Soren, Sam, and Noah - in that order!) born to friends in 6 weeks, plus new sweetheart Madelise Irene who arrived just yesterday. Congratulaions, everyone!

Thinking Pink

2011-03-23T07:59:00.001+02:00

While sharing photos with the kids, some of Hugh's pictures ended up on their computer and....in my hands! I wanted to share these two flamingo with the world. I also thought it would be fun to share his final birding report:

February 2011:

Zambia - 67 species seen

South Africa - 70 species seen

Total - 133 species

New or Life Birds - 54 species

This is pretty impressive given that they had one morning birding trip in Zambia with a big group from the ornithological society and one dedicated birding morning in South Africa, no guided birding tours and no experts to identify calls or point out unusual species. Hugh was armed with his binoculars (no scope) his digital camera and a book. We missed the weekend pelagic birding trips (every Saturday) b/c of the train fiasco....I mean the train trip.....and morning cheetah encounter.

His most exciting spotting (from our perspective) was the hornbill that was for some reason in our big tree out front. We've also got a breeding pair of barn owls who are usually shy and elusive (they fly out of the palm by the pool every night at dusk, one at a time and silently disappear into the night. Lately though they are screeching and squawking and hanging out in the garden til all hours. We'll be on the lookout for little owlets soon I think.

We also missed going to "World of Birds" which is a bird sanctuary in Cape Town with about 3,000 birds. Unfortunately, we likely won't ever get there...the sanctuary is on the verge of closure.

Hops

2011-03-22T22:23:00.001+02:00

*no grandparents or grandchildren were injured while filming this footage

Wide Open Spaces

2011-03-22T22:19:00.001+02:00

Boulders Beach (Penguin Colony) in Simon's Town, Glencairn in the distance

The crowded beaches at the Kaap dei Goeie Hoop. Yes, Ostriches. At the beach. Who would have guessed.

Crowds, crowds, everywhere, we could hardly see a thing for all the people. That's Hugh, by the way....if you can see him in the crowd there trying to get a glimpse of the lighthouse (there's one up top and one at 87 meters above sea level, no one could ever see the one up top for all the fog. And the crowds.

At Oliphants Beach in the Table Mountain National Park at the Kaap dei Goeie Hoop (see? isn't it funnier than just saying the "Cape of Good Hope?"), hiking for miles to try to find some bling-blang privacy and a spot for a quiet picnic, geeze. Owen in the distance, on his way to a shipwreck and some whale bones). really, we saw a family of baboons along our hours-long hike and the park rangers who waited for us before closing the gates.

The chilly Atlantic at Nordhoek Beach

Finn, braving the winds along Chapman's Peak Drive overlooking Hout Bay - or is it Camps Bay? This Drive (capital D) is along the back side of Table Mountain and was our primary route into and out of the city. It was either this curvy cliff-hugging 30 Rand toll road (about $4) or double-the-time on the N2 (highway) in traffic. Being both afraid of heights and mildly claustrophobic, and driving a tiny Kia Picanto stick shift while trying to keep up to Todd in his equally tiny rental car...the Chapman's Peak route was a challenge, but a spectacular one. This is the spot where one year during the Cape Argus Cycle tour (more on that in a bit) a block of thankfully empty honey pots went OVER the edge. At one point along the route, they ran out of buildable cliff for the road, so they dug into the side but not a tunnel, it's only in the cliff on three sides, open to the sea on the other. yowsa. The cyclists this year reached speeds of 80 km/hr on this road. The speed limit (which I don't think I came close to) is 60.

Overlooking the Cape Town Victoria & Albert Waterfront from the Table Mountain Gondola. Robben Island on the left, in the distance, is famously the site where many now-famous leaders were held as political prisoners (three past SA presidents, including the current president, Jacob Zuma, and former presidents Kgalema Motlanthe and Nelson Mandela, aka Madiba)

The 'table cloth' of clouds moved in to cover Table Mountain while were up top. At it's highest point, Table Mountain is 1, 085M above sea level.

From Table Mountain Base Camp....you can barely see the gondolas in the middle....and you can obviously see the reasons we declined taking in the sights on the hiking trail up to the top!

Scratch Patch

2011-03-22T21:29:00.001+02:00

Tucked away off the main drag in Simon's Town on the Cape is....the world famous Scratch Patch. What, you ask, is the Scratch Patch? I still am not sure myself, but I know that I spent over 2 hours there with two small boys who must have touched every one of three million polished stones before they picked out their own precious collections of special rocks.

The gemstone tumbling factory in Simon's Town, SA is the largest of it's sort in the world. The kids had to themselves the whole Scratch Patch, which is simply a massive open play area whose floor is completely covered (about 10 inches deep) with polished stones from every corner of the world.

Two Oceans

2011-03-19T22:14:00.000+02:00

No trip to Cape Town is complete without a visit to the Two Oceans Aquarium

Now here's something you never see!

2011-03-19T21:47:00.000+02:00

The photographer in front of the lens atop Table Mountain.

Wine Country

2011-03-19T21:45:00.000+02:00

A visit to wine country was not part of our original plans but there was a 38,000 person cycling race in Cape Town which had all the roads closed the day we needed to get from the beach to the airport. So, poor us we HAD to go to Franschhoek. We had to stay in a spectacularly beautiful B&B, had to go to an amazing French restaurant and eat oysters, drink wine and choke down the most amazing meal... wow, is life rough here in Africa or what?

Close encounters

2011-03-19T21:31:00.000+02:00

On the grounds of the Spier Vineyard is an animal outreach and encounter facility. They have 'ambassador' animals which are available for encounters. We were able to keep this side-trip a secret from O, aka Mr. Cheetah. I think "stunned" is an appropriate description of his reaction (everyone's!) at getting to spend some time with and to pet this snoozy cheetah named Pedro. The boys also got to do an 'eagle encounter' and got to see all kinds of raptors up close. They both got to hold these eagle owls (below). This photo is from the end of their time in the owl flight cage. The boys had heavy leather gloves on but one talon of this owl was off the edge of the leather and poking FPFJ's arm. All part of the experience.

Jackass Penguins

2011-03-19T21:18:00.001+02:00

Not the first to dream of flight

Penguins are of course high on the list of charismatic megafauna.

Despite that they are uber-cute, not all that shy and not all that quick on land, it was really difficult to get an interesting photo! We visited Boulders Beach three times and I must have 300 pictures of penguins....close up, far away, in little rows, in cute little bunches, snuggling together, hopping from rock to rock, waddling up the beach, scrambling down the boulders into the water, trying to sneak into the nearby bistro, parading down the street, etc. These were the only keepers.

This colony numbers around 1000 penguins; they are one of 16 penguin species. This species has colonies at 28 sites, mostly offshore islands. The Boulders Beach colony is one of only 3 mainland colonies. The funny thing is that the Penguins themselves decided to settle here in Simon's Town in the 1980s at a public swimming beach in a suburban setting.

Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens

2011-03-19T21:06:00.000+02:00

Below, a temporary sculpture pavilion I was particularly interested in seeing:

This wall is a 'living wall' created using a metal frame and 2L soda bottles (see detail below). Gorgeous.

Portraits in Stone and Sand: Cape Town

2011-03-19T20:54:00.001+02:00

Rainbow Buffalo has a friend!

2011-03-19T20:16:00.000+02:00

Above, Viv's original drawing

and below, the Vivi brand....

Cross Country

2011-03-19T20:11:00.002+02:00

O has been running cross country in PE and was speedy enough to get invited to the inter-school cross country meets at Musikili Primary in Mazabuka and Baobab College just outside of Lusaka. The kids come from all over and from all walks of life. There is the sugar refinery school, from the private primary boarding school, from day schools and international schools. LICS kids are for some reason the only ones who favor wearing shoes, although our best runners do not. The races for Owen's age group are about 1.3-1.5 km long. O is coming in at the back of the pack but he's one of the fastest runners for our school. This was really discouraging for the first meet but for the second one he saw that he needed to do his own best race. He seems to be enjoying it, so we'll carry on. He declined the invitation for being in Junior team swimming -- it's a big time commitment for such a young age. Should kids this young be competing like this at all? I did as a kid but as a parent, I'm not sure.

The best part about any school field trip is the time when you don't have anything to do but play.

Vintage Vantage

2011-03-19T19:59:00.000+02:00

Shosholoza Meyl*

2011-03-19T14:46:00.001+02:00

Not to be outdone by my "Light Industry of Zambia" tourism, TJ decided we should take his parents actually some place nice and beautiful and warm and fun. As anyone who has spent time in/around Lusaka will know, there is NOT A WHOLE HECK OF A LOT TO DO and anything fun is either a giant hassle or so expensive that you do it once and never again. Really. It's a very family-and-friends oriented lifestyle here if you are not a big drinker (-- even if you are!) There are plenty of excuses for sundowners in Lusaka. Being barely able to finish a bottle of Mosi Lager myself, I take advantage of any open door I see. Want to go to the foam matress factory? Sure! The football stitching workshop? The gemstone studio? Want to come on a photoshoot in the compound? Order furniture from the roadside Kalingalinga carpenters? Why not! I outdid myself with the tannery tour, sheesh.

TJ decided to add a layer of drama to his fancy-pants tourism itinerary: Cape Town....BY TRAIN. And we'll do the trip by the skin our teeth: starting with barely making the plane to Johanesburg. There are two morning flights to Johannesburg on South African Airlines and on Zambezi Airlines. They leave about 20 minutes apart. Par for the course are unnecessarily long lines, ridiculous charges (our $49 one way tickets ended up about $300 apiece for the roundrip with taxex but not including the departure tax which is an additional $30 a ticket, to be paid in cash at the airport.) The airport, however seem totally caught off-guard every day by the number of people who show up every day for these daily flights: They never have enough people working and there is always a pen-shortage and a stamp-pad ink shortage. This morning's rush was further hampered by missing 'exit' forms required for all international flights.

Now they have some hi-tech iris scanner contraption and finger print scanner, too, which only complicates things and distracts everyone. I'm sure Interpol requires it to keep the airport certified for international flights. How things are run here in actuality can be summed up by the fact that the last thing you do before you can go to the boarding area (more like a holding cell) is to get your name and boarding pass recorded into a giant ledger by a guy in a metal folding chair siting at a card table at the bottom of sometimes-functioning escalator. And he may need to borrow your pen, by the way.

Usually you just walk out to your plane but on this morning we all crammed into a shuttle bus. We did a tour of the entire airport and ended up nearly back where we started, but about 20 meters past where we got on the bus.

Once in Jo'burg we learned that the slick new Gauteng trains don't actually go to the train station just yet. They did a big rush to finish them in time for World Cup but the train only goes to Sandton City -- the posh supermall of Africa. So, we took a taxi/van to the station instead. Finn "Safety-First" Jennings cracked our driver up by finding and untangling seatbelts for everyone that clearly have never been used. (never mind that Finn and I ended up sharing a seatbelt and were literally buried under a mountain of our unsecured luggage.

We expected trouble at the train and found it. We had incredible difficulty with the booking and had the booking cancelled the week before we left despite paying for two sleeper cars. So, upon arrival, it was no surprise that while we had the booking we had to pay for the tickets, again. I was the reluctant train passenger and TJ had something to prove, so we were both on a mission.

I will just say now that the train was AWESOME! It was cheap, easy (ahem), comfortable and really fun despite the hassle (with which I'm only just getting started!) I have never ridden a train except for short distance commuter trips in big 1st world cities. A 24-hour train trip from Jo-berg to Cape Town was never on my list of things to do. We all would do it again. (But I'm not doing the 48-72+hour trip to Tanzania. Ever.)

To make this long story even longer, we must have signed up for the BONUS tour b/c instead of a 24 hour train ride, we actually got a 28 hour train trip, a 7 hour stopever, a mid-journey hiking tour of the actual tracks, and a 5 hour bus ride**. Also, I got to shower with an ostrich.

Above: Getting off the train 10 hours from Cape Town. derailment? power failure? slow strike? Below, Bev, putting on a brave face and getting mentally ready to the trek to the waiting buses

*Shosholoza Meyl is the name of the train company. They promise their customers a "Pleasant Experience" from when they book and pay for their tickets to when they disembark at their end destination.....
**Again, Finn "Safety First" Jennings spent much time crawling around under the seats to recover seatbelts. The South African ladies sitting near us where in hysterics, so he found their seatbelts, too, they were ever so grateful.

Impala

2011-03-19T13:58:00.000+02:00

Alive and Kicking, the Prequel

2011-03-19T13:43:00.000+02:00

A while back I did a photo-essay about the making of a football after touring the workshop for "Alive and Kicking," a UK-based non-profit which makes and sells fair-trade, hand-stitched leather foot/soccer balls.

We had the opportunity to visit the workshop again but the 'tour' this time started not with the cutting of the leather into 32 pieces, but with a hide straight from the cow. Here are highlights from the ZamLeather tannery tour.

Zambia has "Zam" everything.....ZamShu, ZamBeef, ZamLoaf, Zam-Zam-ShaaaZAAAMMMM. So, naturally, ZamCows provide the tannery with ZamLeather and ZamLeather provides the basic materials for the Alive and Kicking socccer balls. They have a unique arrangement where the stitching workshop in on-site -- ZamBeef and ZamLeather provide the leather and the workspace. They also generously buy footballs which they in turn donate within Zambia. Time for a group hug.

The process starts with the hide straight from the slaughterhouse. (Disclaimer: There may be some serious gaps in my information, I was more concerned with the photos than the details of the process!) The hides first get cleaned -- they are put into these gigantic tumblers with water, lime and salts. Now I know that White Hydrated Lime is used for: sugar refining, water treatment, road construction, sterilization, metallurgical processes, coal processing, sewage treatment, bleach manufacture, whitewashing and....leather tanning.

When the hides have tumbled around with the salts for 72 hours or so, they come out blue! At this stage they are rough and thick and pretty stiff.

The hides get put through the wringer....literally. They are pressed one by one through two giant rollers and taken directly to a scanner table which digitally calculates their size.

80% (roughly) are immediately rolled up, marked and packed for export to the US, South Africa, India, etc.

The remaining 20% stay on-site (and in Zambia) for further processing. The first/next step is splitting the leather into two. Into the splitter it goes:

And out:

The top pieces are numbered with chalk (#8 below) and stacked 200 hides-high. These are uniform thickness and higher quality. The bottom pieces are the leftover and they are used as well for processes that don't demand/require the best leather.

The split hides go on to the next room for rough cutting, conditioning and dying. There is not a big demand for baby-blue leather apparently.

I liked the look of these hanging hooks

Below, excess leather at the edges are hand-trimmed to make processing easier.

Below, the dying and processing shed.

The pieces from which the footballs are made are actually 4 layers: a synthetic coating, the leather, a latex layer (for bounce) and a cloth layer. The layers are run through machines like this one -- a combination press and iron. Below, they are demonstrating how the two pieces (synthetic coating and leather) are fused. Once again, in it goes:

and out!

The process is repeated with the materials for each layer (depending on it's final use it may not get all the layers). ZamShu, the standard-issue school uniform shoe (below) and the boots made for the military, for example.

From here is goes on to Alive and Kicking.

Each stack of 32 pieces are stitched together to make one football.

Jewels of Africa

2011-03-19T12:17:00.000+02:00

It's no secret that natural resources prop up many economies in Africa. Zambia's economic successes and failures are closely tied to the price of copper, which makes up 86% of the GDP. And while diamond mining supplements many Southern African incomes, Zambia is not (yet?) a signatory to the Kimberly Process Certification Scheme (KPCS). Zambia IS able to mine and trade in other gemstones, most notably emeralds, tourmalines, citrines, garnets, etc.

I recently hooked up with a family-run company which works a 'mine to market' scheme -- meaning they do everything with no middle-men. The level of transparency in their operation is such that they routinely open their doors to anyone who asks. And so, we asked. And this is what we saw.

In a building behind the tennis courts and swimming pool of one of Lusaka's 4-Star hotels is the unassuming workshop for "The Jewel of Africa," a family-run company which owns some small mines and has established themselves as one of a handful of Zambia's gemstone and jewelry. The operation is totally self-contained, the workshop does everything from the metal smithing and gemstone cutting to designing, marketing, and retailing. The above photo is from the 'homewares' workshop where they make silver trinkets like souvenir teaspoons, napkin rings and such.

Each worker has a set of projects and keeps their tools and 'in-progress' items in their own little lock-box.

In another room, they are working on silever and gold jewelry, making necklaces, bracelets, and setting stones (above, a butterfly necklace in progress. below, citrines waiting to be set) They learn their craft through apprenticeships, training, and hands-on-experimentation.

Above, this jeweler is polishing the loops on silver charms. The charms depict Nyaminyami, the River God of the Zambezi who has the body of a snake and the head of a fish. The people of the river valley in Zambia and Zimbabwe believe they are protected by this ancestral spirit, who "fed them from his own meat in times of hunger." Given that most tourists leave zambia with a Nyaminyami carving, charm, walking stick or necklace of some sort or another, I'd say this story is incredibly relevant today.

The jewelry is entirely hand-made

This is the casting room where two artists sit, one making silver necklaces, the other making cast figurines of animals. This gentleman (below) is the necklace maker, and I think that 'gentleman' is the most fitting term to describe him. He is lovely and patient and exceedingly talented. The question we all asked was, is anyone apprenticing with him? Has he found someone willing to take a spot at the bench next to him? (Ooop, after the question about his eyesight and working with such tiny tiny tools and tiny tiny links.) He starts with a spool of silver thread, winds it into a spring, cuts each loop of the spring and connects the loops to form the necklaces. This description does not do justice to the necklaces he makes, of course. Some are simple chains but most are intricately braided creations.

It was really neat to see the figurine casting. In my end-of-the-rainy-season-allergy-fog I'm not remembering the details but know they use the 'Indirect, Lost Wax Process' involving wax models, rubber molds, and slurries to do models making (positive and negative), chasing spruing, polishing..

The gemstone cutting starts with raw stones (cutting the facets by hand) and ends with creating the settings and finishing the pieces. They just finished a gorgeous video which shows the details of the entire process -- (I'll link it up as soon as it's posted!) Below is Todd's Dad admiring their cut emeralds.

and Finn, who walked away not with the $10,000 emerald and diamond pendant but with a pretty pink and green tourmaline rough...

Seeing Spots

2011-03-19T10:25:00.001+02:00

It's a sign

2011-03-19T10:15:00.001+02:00

We just returned from a fabu holiday in Cape Town, South Africa. (Above, the sign at the lighthouse which was decomissioned soon after it was installed b/c it was too high and usually too fogged in to be useful.) There was something incredibly amusing about the Afrikaans language and we found a lot of signs that tickled our funny bones. Besides all the unfamiliar place names (we stayed at a B&B off Katzenellenbogeng Weg in Nordhoek, for example.) the signs always had us laughing. Here are a few:

On the train

At the beaches (gorgeous, white-sand...), they fly different color flags depending on shark sightings. The area is famous for both surfing AND sharks, go figure. Green means GO - spotting conditions are good and there are no shark sightings. Black means that spotting conditions are poor. Red means there are sharks in the area. White (accompanied by a deafening siren) means GET OUT OF THE WATER. We opted for surfing with the black flag flying.

Finn took the position of penguin-checker for the week. In Simon's Town the penguins have a few beaches which are protected during the breeding/nesting/molting season but most areas are open for people and penguins. The people respect the 'stay on this side of the barrier' rules but the penguins are not, they are waddling around all over town. The kids got their shoes pecked unexpectedly more than a few times.

The polite words for essential bodily functions are "poo" and "wee" but it still makes us giggle. (He said "POO!!!")

There is a sign at the Cape of Good Hope (the south-western most point of the continent -- NOT the most southern point) with English and Afrikaans. There is a small parking lot at the beach here where the tour buses full of drunk people of all nationalities (but, we observed, one nationality per bus) doing the Cape Town tour (enjoying the amazing South African wines, hence the tipsiness) come to take photos. They come in, wait politely in queues and have their photo taken at the sign and get back on the bus). We opted to stay a while and do some hiking but it was funny to see all the buses of people come all that way for a 5 minute stop and a quick photo. Been there, done that. But we still can't say Kaap Die Goeie Hoop with a straight face. (I think it reminds us of one of the kids' favorite books, "Martha Speaks" about a dog who eats alphabet soup)

This last sign is actually from Zambia -- it's from our smallest national park and is of course a list of what NOT to do, but it reads like a list of suggested activities:

Says WHO?

2011-02-07T08:01:00.000+02:00

How do you explain to an emergent reader why the word WHO is actually pronounced HOO?

Santa laughs HO! HO! HO! Mom exclaims "woo-hoo!" from time to time (when there is mozzarella cheese at shoprite?). Dad works with the World Health Organisation - WHO.

It is causing MANY problems and tears at 23b. Please, someone tell us: Why is WHO not w-ho?

Back-blogging

2011-02-05T10:41:00.002+02:00

Remember these clowns? ...and that insane 'exersaucer?'

I have resurrected an old computer and a dying external hard drive and found some previously inaccessible photo files. I have yet to figure out how to unlock our first digital camera that we got when when O was born. (What do I notice about the above photo - the dishwasher!)

This innocent little play ball was FPFJ's kryptonite. We once used it as a baby gate; we (cruelly?) put it in the doorway and he was so scared of it he wouldn't even come close. The koosh-ball phobia lasted for months despite all attempts to condition him otherwise. (Note: If he needs therapy as an adult, and we are not around, please refer his analysit to this post. )

The Little Engineer surveying the caboose installation at the head of the Iron Goat Trail. Even FPFJ has outgrown that red shirt that TJ got at the UN in NYC on his way back from Sierra Leone one trip. We just gave away those awesome Vans here -- they are still in great shape and we got them from a consignment shop for $5. the shoes we have now may last 2 months and are in no condition to hand down. I sound like an old lady. Actually, maybe by now I AM an old lady?! Next birthday.

(above, FPFJ trying to get a better view of the naval sub station across the strait from the beach at Battle Point on one of those unbelievably beautiful PNW summer days --"HIGHER!")

RIP to my kitchenAid. It did not survive the 240 volt-on-a-converter transition to zambia. This was back in the day when Mr. 13Socks was first expermenting with the CChip cookie recipe. Good thing for such rigorous testing (and hygiene?) standards....

Ah, the onsie days. surely he's off to see if mommy forgot to put up the dog-dish.

Mr. 2-Teeth's cardboard play house: it lasted in our for months and months and survived many transformations. It was just a house at first, then a theater, then a bakery, a science laboratory, and then... O wised up and realized if he took ALL the diapers he could sell them to mommy to pay for more laboratory equipment:

We just got balloons this week to do an expanded version of this experiment, adding heat to the equation. An the glasses below? just recycled as part of the harry potter costume!

It's good to take a trip down memory lane once in a while.

Reading Post #2

2011-01-22T13:27:00.000+02:00

Santa brought a cool present this year: a Kindle ebook.

I read a lot and participate in a book club --- which is more like a movable book library and coffee club -- and books are traded between friends freely. There are a few book groups that are very serious and you have assigned reading each month and formal discussions -- not for me. Our group is very informal; a bunch of us sit around & eat snacks and drink coffee for two hours while we decide what of the four giant bins of books is worth reading next. The snacks are always amazing and the company and support of this group of women has been fantastic. The book collection is getting a bit stale, however. And the best books I have I pass on to friends while the fluffy ones I bring for the bins. (I'll admit to being part of the problem with the stale books.)

The Kindle experience has been interesting. I got some great books downloaded as presents and new books are a single click away. With a decent WIFI signal I can search the Kindle shop and download a book in a minute or two straight to the ebook (and the money straight from our bank account - gulp, it's frighteningly easy and high up there with the instant gratification factor.) There are a whole bunch of classics for free. I can get audio files as well but I have not tried that yet. I imagine that TJ would like to experiment with that feature -- download historical speeches or NPR? I'm really not sure what's possible but would like to get him on board. He's not convinced and is as I speak probably ordering a book he wants ("Africa" a very unappealing title for a book that looks/sounds fantastic) and having it hand carried in someone's luggage when I can order the exact same book for a lower price and have start to read it in 60 seconds.

While waiting at the dentist office the other day we downloaded a Curious George book. Just because we could. The main problem I see with this new toy is that I can't easily share.

Reading Post #1

2011-01-22T12:58:00.000+02:00

MOM LOOKS LIKE A BIG FROG BOTTOM

So the little one is now reading and part of his program at school is working with a series of word lists which consists of 'high frequency words.' I will brag that he's the only one in reception to have already mastered the word lists (for the year) and is flying through the book list at lightening speed.

To support the school program we have home flash cards with phonic letters and letter groups and now...word cards. I printed up cards with the word lists and added a few to make sentence building more interesting i.e. his friends' names, common nouns (tree, sky, house, etc). I also added the words HEAD and BOTTOM. I did it on purpose knowing that the kids would use them as potty words and of course they have. So, is it enough that they are reading and playing with the word lists? Did I lower the quality of their learning AND manipulate them into actually using these little word cards?

We're also reading the Emily Post kids' manners book for bedtime reading if that redeems our parenting decisions in any way

Best of

2011-01-18T21:11:00.000+02:00

I love a good top 10 list as much as the next person but as I tried too hard to come up with a good end-of-year post (which I missed) and then instead a worthy 'beginning of year' post, I drew a total blank. And then my favorite husband, the baker, emerged from the kitchen with this warm macadamia nutty chocolately carmelized salted morsel:

No "top ten" necessary. This was the best cookies ever. Not the recipe, not the batch, THIS cookie.

When will they come out with scratch and sniff techonology for macbooks? lickable PC screens?
Somebody, get workin' on it! QUICK!

You Lookin' at ME?

2011-01-17T23:25:00.002+02:00

do not under any circumstance tolerate anyone telling you that you have 'ostrich toes'

or ostrich wings for that matter: this 'lady' was cooling off and had her wings unfolded. really not charming.

You really couldn't blame her. It was HOT. This warthog had the right idea:

Below, one of 7 lions at the park. we had a lengthy discussion on why the guy was going INTO the lion enclosure and leaving the gate wide open.

Mom 1: He's able to go in b/c the lions are not in the enclosure. (looking to Mom2, who has intimate knowledge of the strange innerworkings/nonworkings of the park)

Esssssssscuse me? (say the moms to themselves in the park where the cheetah was killed by a wandering snake, where anthrax took the lives of some visiting pachaderms, where there are as many tortoises INSIDE the tortoise enclosure as out, where we get ant attacks on 9/10 visits and cornered by angry peacocks (why are they always so angry?) - Where, pray/prey tell ARE the lions).

Finn: If they are not IN then they are OUT?

Moms: No, the guy is doing some work and then he's going to let them OUT.

Finn: He is going to let them out of the enclosure?

Mom1: Yes.

Mom2: No.

Finn, who is visibly agitated, tho still upside down on the upside down bench (below) tries to decide if he believes either one of us: Is is feeding time?

How ELSE to you sit on such a bench? and with an audience?

compliments of the season!

2010-12-21T19:57:00.002+02:00

Christmas snuck up on us again. The kids had a great, hysterically funny nativity play at school before they were let out on their FOUR WEEK holiday. If this seems excessive, for the families who live in the southern hemisphere it is the summer holiday for them and they are always crying for a longer break. (Thankfully for us the school follows a N. hemisphere school calendar but I see their point for sure).

Two of our primary teachers took on the pagent project again this year....they did the normal christmas story (herod, wise men, baby jesus in the manger, etc.) but it played out as a news report with on the scene interviews with smartly dressed journalists interviewing period-dressed wisemen, shepards, travelling taxpayers and innkeepers. Last year they worked ABBA in to the lineup, this year we had Leonard Cohen and Annie Lennox (all the little ballet girls dancing to 'talking to an angel')....the older kids did some singing and recorder performances and the little kids were left with all the "acting." Finn was King Herod but only had a vague idea that he was actually a bad guy. (above, about the cutest evil king ever.) gotta love the costume sews from our old library curtains and the fabric the kids have for their curtains!)
Our funny little secular community school puts on the nativity every year -- a few of us always ask if it's appropriate and frankly there are only 3 of us who think the thing could be more culturally sensitive. (what about Haunakkah? The New Year (Islam, the 7th this year), etc.) The Muslim moms we talk to find the whole thing incredibly entertaining and really aren't concerned. And so, the show goes on. There is always mulled wine, mince pies and a cash bar. it's funny that nary a school event passes without a fresh delivery of lager. Can you imagine a seattle public school having a mandatory pagent performance with Annie Lennox and booze in the equation? AND don't forget a visit or two from Santa, of course. Our Santa usually is the newest male teacher, last year it was our Belgian PE teacher, this year our Zambian SEN teacher. Santa collects presents (and many hugs) from the kids after the show and they get taken the next day to the UTH Cancer ward. It's a good thing.

Christmas for us is a lot like it would be in Seattle...minus the weather and the many trips to target. Cookie decorating parties, decorating the tree, making ornaments, friends and fun. We really miss the family part of course. and the Menashe Light Show spectacular.

and snowboarding. not a whole lot of snowboarding going on here in Lusaka. Family album snaps of our preparations:

Every year we take on an art project for our tree. It takes up a good chunk of that first week off school and involves lots of planning and working, measuring and math....and troubleshooting We had a GIANT origami tree one year. Then a 7ft tall, 6 piece, cardboard tree last year. This year we wanted something a little sturdier. Particle board was all we can manage, maybe next year we'll find some plywood. The kids cut this out with a little hack saw and a leatherman, drilled with a hand drill...not something I'd undertake with plywood.

I bought a pile of BLING beads and they made many many many 'fancy' ornaments.

FPFJ enjoying 'his side' of the cute bling-tree. Every day there is something else hanging: beads from mali (demarreur beads, perhaps not the most appropriate for a christmas tree!), mylar 'tinsel' and most recently a collection of small animals (gorilla, moose, cows, etc).

The kids have been getting bits of a pay doctor kit every day (advent project, something new for their kit every day) and we also made kits to give to friends, complete with casts, slings, bandages, velcro wrist bands, pez 'medicine', felt 'blood' spots. we added and extra file folder with fake medical degrees, clinic posters (vintage malaria and polio posters) patient intake forms, x-rays, eye charts, you name it, we found it or made it!!

Many many many people made many many cookies today. Funny that out of 8-10 dozen all the frosted ones disappeared in the course of the day. They are so beautiful, how can you resist? Wow, right?

All for now, can't wait to share photos from Christmas day!

*******

MERRY CHRISTMAS...and Compliments of the Season!

(art photo from Todd, bonus points from Santy Claus if you can tell what it is...

it's the array of lights at the Mulungushi Conference Centre....close up below)

)

Operation Bunk Bed - Complete!

2010-12-13T19:10:00.001+02:00

the sign at m. furnitures, kalingalinga - the real

reason we picked this shop over the others

A colleague from Seattle recently came to Zambia for work and stayed on for a project at our favorite women and orphan's center, Chikumbuso. The task? Fundraise in Seattle, bring the cash and some supplies, and get the kids some new bunk beds for their boys and girls 'dorm' rooms. The rooms are not quite dormatories, rather they are a safe, short-term place that the kids can come to if they find themselves in a situation where they need a safe place to stay. Maybe there is a situation they are escaping in their family (violence, substance abuse, sexual abuse, etc) or another sort of emergency. At any rate, the rooms are sometimes just a few children but sometimes they are really packed in. When I visited the center back in July the comment was made "Well, wouldn't bunk beds be useful?" The reply? "Yes."

So, the opportunity came to hook up Manny and Chikumbuso for "Operation Bunk Beds." We figured it would be a nice neat little project -- a little fundraising, a day of shopping, a day of hauling, a day of painting, a day of sewing. Voila! Two sets of bunk beds (with mosquito nets, of course). Needless to say, something that we thought was a reasonable task to complete in a week's time took nearly three months and we went over budget. But...it's done! Yah!

Thanks for everyone who donated for this, Manny's Operation Bunk Beds, project. Sometimes making a difference really IS that easy. (More ways to help Chikumbuso in my next post.)

Here are some snaps and a long, meandering dialogue to fill you in on how the project came together:

Manny with the carpenters Gift and friend in Kalingalinga at M. Furnitures discussing modifications on their bunkbed design. We had a plan for how they should be but the carpenters had....how shall I put it....they had 'other plans.' If I have learned anything it's to NEVER INNOVATE. Or at least never try something different and expect it to work out as you intended. Building in a mosquito net canopy to a bed/bunkbed seems like a no brainer but after 3 visits to the carpenter and two sets of sketches, what we picked up was something completely different. They were maybe too distracted with why trying to extract from me why I was teaching kids geography instead of the gospel.

To get something made of pine this is where you come -- the side of the road in the Kalingalinga compound between Jesmondine and Kabulonga along Kamloops Road. The roads in Lusaka are named after other cites -- we have Los Angeles Blvd and Addis Ababa Rd. and....Kamloops Road, which is a tiny north in British Columbia, Canada on the way to Whistler/Blackcomb. There are many other pine furniture carpenters, this one is easy to remember and they had a 'floor model' that was close to what we wanted and a price that seemed reasonable. The guys were nice and friendly and we thought they could meet quick turn-around. (HA!)

Other workshops in Kalingalinga make wicker furniture (raw pine from Zambia, wicker from Malawi), welded playsets (swings, slides, monkey bars), metal gates, gravel (hand-crushed), charcoal, etc. There is a new row of stalls for salaula -- a second-had market for your value village castoffs. What does not sell at the Federal Way VV store is delivered here and sold-roadside. (the clothes come from all over but I have seen a FW little league shirt or two, and lots of Sonics jerseys lately....)

If you need to purchase something (as opposed to making something) you come to Kamwala or go 'to town' to Cairo Road or Freedom Way. In Kamwala we found Manali Mfg Ltd and got four single high density foam mattresses and pillows. Unfortunately for us they had them in stock and we decided to forgo the unnecessary trip to the FOAM FACTORY! I'll dream up some excuse to go there, mark my words.

It was October when this photo of the Kamwala shopping district was taken. The City Council was just beginning to think about drainage issues for the upcoming rainy season. Now that we are in the thick of the rains it's an absolute mess down there. They (hand) dug massive drainage ditches (which were promptly used to dump rubbish) are 8-10 feet deep and 10 feet side with rickety plank bridges between the roads and the shops. It's really not charming and extremely dangerous. (Particularly if you factor in the poor drainage alongside the poor sanitation system, the annual cholera outbreaks, and the fact that many people (especially kids heading to school/work before sunrise) don't know how to swim.)

This was early in the morning -- Kamwala is typically packed with wheelbarrows and cars to the point of absolute gridlock and chaos. On the left you can see the Julilika cycle shop -- this is where I get bike supplies - with marginal success. The tube we got for Finn's tiny trainer bike (from Hank!) fit but has the strangest valve that we can only pump up with an attachment that we have to borrow from a friend who works on cars on the side. It leaks so we have to borrow it most every time we use that bike.

There is a dying art in Zambia, it's the art of murals and handpainted signs. Sadly most companies are moving to vinyl or metal signs (which are incredibly expensive, poor quality and are frequently stolen or vandalized). In Kamwala, the handpainted signs are priceless.

On the left, my favorite fabric shops, Safiques and the House of Chitenge and on the right WIG WORLD. (along with every other shop you can imagine and even a few you cannot imagine.)

Our assistant, doing inventory. " 1. 2. 3. 4. Hey, I'm FOUR!" (not for long, pup!) I really did not think it possible to put four mattresses and four pillows and bedding in my car.

Part Two of the project was a lot of waiting and a lot of hauling. We waited for the carpenters to finish. We waited for a truck to bring the beds home. We waited for the hardware store to get some wood primer. They only get pink primer here for some reason but there wasn't a pot to be had in all of Lusaka from what I could gather. The wait was fortunate b/c when the hardware store finally had primer they had switched owners and the new owners were clearing out custom mis-mixed paint and we scored a pot of pretty blue paint for 80,000 that is normally priced 300,000. ($16 vs. $60, score!) We waited for paint to dry (it's so cliche but it's the rainy season by now), we waited for a bednet to be stitched, we waited to borrow a drill (and used the most horribly made hand-drill in the meantime), we waited for extra hands to measure and re-cut all the bednet canopy wood (which was presented like an ikea-flat-pack from bizarro world). At last we waited for an opportunity and a sunny day where a big truck was available to deliver the beds. Last week it finally came together.

Before -- a tangle of nets

After: new mattresses, new bedding, new pillows, new (uber-fancy) net*

The second bed, in the shop, waiting to be assembled in the boys' room.

*We purchased one of these super fancy (and super pricey) nets with the idea that it will be a 'model' for the sewing studio to use for making a second net for bunk bed set #2 and....if they are inspired to make more for the shop....even better!

Garden Party Guest

2010-12-01T11:13:00.001+02:00

TJ gets credit for spotting this strange creature (can you see it in the picture below?) as it made it's way slowly slowly slowly across our grass lawn the other morning. While we watched it for over an hour and witnessed it eat 8 snacks of crickets and moths, we only were able to snap a photo of before and after capturing it's prey. O took a little movie on his camera and happened to catch a little video clip of it getting a cricket. I watched the movie a dozen times and you can't even tell for sure that anything has happened. it's amazing. more amazing are the photos I have seen of chameleons with their tongues out and grabbing a snack. I can't imagine what kind of camera someone would have to have to get that micro-second in a frame.

Giving Thanks

2010-12-01T11:02:00.000+02:00

While not the traditional menu we had a feast in honor of thanks and understanding. It wasn't too difficult to settle on the Middle East as the inspiration for our gathering. One reason is that the food is yummy but also the ingredients, while unfamiliar, are available here. Also, while the power supply has been pretty consistent (thanks, ZESCO), we can't really plan a big gathering that depends on having electricity all day. So, we always do big dinners that involve a lot of day-ahead recipes and an hour before guests are due we fire up our giant 55 gal drum grill. The logic of getting some lamb from the local butcher vs. a turkey from Brazil also was a strong incentive for a non-traditional menu. I won't bore you with the details except to say that it was yummy, the table was overflowing with sides and sauces and figs and dates and grape leaves and litchees and pineapples and falafel, the most amazing falafel I've ever had......I only thought about wool once or twice.*

I will share our lamb and chicken kebab recipes:

Jooleh Kebabs (chicken)
for the marinade:

1/2 teaspoon safron threads (I'm certain you could skip this without any grave consequence -- it's really expensive but I know even TJs used to stock it in a teeny tiny little glass jar. Myself, I have a lifetime supply of the stuff which I got for a few shillings on Zanzibar)
1T warm water
1-1/2 cup whole milk yogurt
1 large onion, chopped (about 2 cups)
1/2 cup fresh lemon juice
2t salt
1t ground pepper
2 chickens (or 2 chickens worth of parts.....we used cubed boneless/skinless breast meat and put them on skewers with great results)

For the Basting mixture
1/4 t safron threads (again, leave this ingredient out as necessary)
1T fresh lemon juice
3T melted unsalted butter

Marinate overnight. Grill. yum. eat with couscous salad and some yummy spinach.

Moroccan lamb
For the meat, I found lamb legs and lamb arms (don't ask) at the butcher's already cut into 'steaks' or chops. I beat them (b/c they were naughty) to tenderize and then I cut them into cubes. B/c I am so squeamish still about meat the dog has month worth of scraps and gristle and bones for all my efforts) I marinated them overnight in lemon, salt and honey and rosemary (as suggested by Donna Hay) first.

I kept aside half of the lamb to cook as is (further basted with a lemon/honey glaze at the grill/braii). The other half I marinated a few hours in the below (I may have made double this recipe, too, I can't remember. I do remember that I was so clever to reserved half of the marinade (that the meat didn't touch) to cook down into an amazing sauce to accompany everything at the table)

At any rate, the sauce/spice butter/marinade ingredients:

1 stick butter
5 cloves garlic
1/3 c chopped fresh mint leaves (or pos 2T dried mint leaves)
1T ground coriander
1T sweet paprika
2t ground cumin

rub half of this on the lamb. set aside the other half for the basting sauce and the table sauce:

In a saucepan on the stove add:

3T butter
1 onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
3T white wine vinegar or lemon juice
16 fresh mint leaves slivered
2 cups broth or other liquid (I added water b/c my beautiful quail stock was in the freezer in a container that I couldn't microwave)
salt to taste
ground cumin to taste

to cook sauce, melt butter, add onionand garlic (saute 5 min or until just starting to brown), add vinegar, mint and bring to a boil (DON'T try to smell it while the vinegar boils off, it'll singe your nostrils something fierce! Not that I know, ahem, from experience.) Stir in the broth/water and simmer to reduce. mix in the spiced butter at the end of cooking. I let this mixture cool and then ran it through the blender but you could leave the sauce chunky). Check the flavor and add any other thing you think is missing. (more salt? more cumin? some corriander or tumeric for good measure?)

Use 1/2 of this mixture for basting and set aside half to serve as a sauce.

Happy Thanksgiving

*Our good friend Ben can't/wont eat lamb b/c he is convinced it tastes like old wool. We took a pass on the thrift-store-sweater-marinade, but of course now I can't prepare lamb EVER without thinking of Ben and of course my favorite green cableknit sweater, all soggy from a rainy walk on the beach.

So (thanks Ben) in a sick way I also think of wool sweaters when I fix lamb. This does not deter me from eating it and strangely enough, enjoying it. A long marinade, by the way, is the key to making the sweater association Gucci vs. Goodwill....Versace vs Value Village.

Book Week

2010-11-27T10:44:00.000+02:00

The kids celebrated BOOK WEEK at school....Friday was 'Villians and Heroes' dress up day (or dress like a book character). I saw Tinkerbell and Peter Pan taking the register to the office, the Grand Witch (roald dahl) jumping rope at recess, the Ice Queen (HC Andersen) teaching math to year 3, and Stellaluna getting a phonics lesson from Barney. Zeus was throwing lightening bolts while smacking gum that Violet Beauregard had given to all of year 4....and lots of kids were ready to go to platform 9-3/4 right after assembly. O won the prize for his research and costume for upper primary, but also earned his silver award AND got his stage four amateur swimming association patch. whew. exciting week. Finny is charging forward into his reading program and is so proud to have a book with words for his homework reading and FOUR word lists to practice every day. wow.

Harry at school with Violet Beauregard...the gum chewing bubble gum champion who turns into a blueberry at the Willy Wonka factory....she is post-popped here... Violet is nearly a year older but even she was wondering if little Harry here had given himself a shrinking spell or if she had some growing beans for breakfast! The girl is like a stringbean to begin with, but lately you can practically SEE her growing. Note to self: get magic growth beans for our little stellaluna....

Rainbow Buffalo

2010-11-20T08:18:00.000+02:00

My designer made some changes as we were working (he claims there IS a nose in his drawing for one!) and of course we had to use chitenge print instead of solid colors....fun project.

we had to destroy some pillows to get the poly-fill....something you can't purchase here.

Owen, trying to draw his pattern for an elephant. not exactly a tidy work space, eh? it was about 95 degrees and this, the smallest room in the house with the lease floor space has the best AC.

3G in the 3rd world

2010-11-19T09:35:00.000+02:00

Doing business in Zambia is getting easier and easier as competition is quickly opening things up. Companies that once had monopolies are scrambling to adapt (or are slowly going under). Just in the last 3 months the pain of buying more 'talk time' is getting less and less b/c we're getting much more for our money. Additionally there are special promotions (calling the UK for 50% off, for example) that are automatic (opt out vs. opt in as they formerly were). Now we have three providers -- all of whom have been bought and sold by bigger and bigger companies and have shifted from government to private commercial operations. The company I use, for example has changed from Cell-Tell to Zain to Orange and now it's Bharti Airtel (in India) but for the time-being is called Zain-Zambia.

For us 'mericans the whole system of make cell phone calls here is kind of refreshing. The hassle of getting a phone in Seattle this summer that we could use during the 6 weeks we were there was kind of shocking, actually. When we came here back in 2008 we went to a cell phone retailer, bought a cheap Nokia phone (which is basic and irritating to use, but is still working and has stood up to being dropped, run over, plopped in the pool.....); it came with sim card and pre-loaded with 30,000 worth of talk time. All this for 80,000--about $16.

To get a 'go phone' in Seattle this past summer we had to shell out about $150 for a sim card and a month of talk/text and another $60 to 'top up' for the remaining 2 weeks that we needed the phones. We already have 'unlocked' phones b/c I'm pretty sure that the US is the last place on the planet where your phone is tied to your phone company. (Does this make a lick of sense?) Otherwise we would have had to buy the "Go Phone" on top of the calling plan.

Because of a mix-up when I first signed up for my US go-phone, I blew through my 'time' after only 5 days. Thankfully they honored the original contract and I got the original 'plan' that I signed up for (unlimited talk/text for $60 for the month) restored at no cost but with 40 minutes on the phone to India trying to sort things out. These sim cards expire if you don't continue to sign up month after month so we'll have to buy new sim cards and sign up for a new plan when we come back. It may be cheaper/easier to buy a new phone and sim cards in London -- they sell them from vending machines at the airport.

This thing of making a 2 year commitment to a phone and plan as is standard in the US really seems absurd. How can you anticipate what you may need, how you will use your phone and how you may use new technology? I sure can't.

At any rate, making a call here is pretty straight forward. Buy a phone you like. Buy a sim card for the company you want to use. (or buy lots of phones and a sim for every company you want.) Sign up for a post-paid plan or pre-paid plan (without signing your life away or having to give personal information -- I was shocked at how much of my personal 'data' I had to give up to get my little 'go phone.' For pre-paid, which is what I have I have to buy little scratch cards for 5,000 to 50,000 kwacha ($1 to $10) and to get more time, I just scratch the code and call *958* and punch in the code. There are vendors on every corner and you only need to nod your head and roll down your window to buy more time (or just make eye contact or look like you might be reaching for your pocketbook, these guys don't miss a thing). If there is no one nearby you can pull over and just ask if there is anyone and they will come running in no time.

I spoke with our corner-vendor today - he gets 5% of sales. If I buy 50,000, he gets 2,500. Some quick calculations tell me that to make the same amount that a well-paid gardener makes he has to sell about 400,000 every day. This is a lot. He also sells the newspaper/s and the corner where he works is a hotbed of entrepreneur activity. There is a group of men that do everything from plumbing to selling veggies, fixing flats, doing bike repairs, etc. There is a lot of checker-playing going on as well, it's a very social corner and maybe is a bit different in character from the other corner....the one close to the bar.

My plan has been shifted to new, reduced-tariff plans automatically for me and I can sign up for internet on my phone as well but have to go into the store to do it so have not bothered. I'm connected enough to the computer, I'm not sure I'm ready to be even more tied to the thing. My phone company is one of the most expensive but the coverage is great, especially considering where we live and where we travel. By using a bigger company, too, we have the added benefit of the new lifting of restrictions on country-to-country calls and opening of borders and 'roaming' charges. TJ has a dual sim-card phone so he can keep his zambia number and also use a local phone number sim card (and get local rates).

With my One Time Takamo plan, I think I pay 8 kwacha per second /480 per minute (10 cents) for off-peak and 13 for peak time (16 cents). My internet, if I signed up for it would add on 70,000 a month (pre-paid, $15)

We pre-pay for our electricity now, too, but this is not so interesting, eh? I have to go to the little office down the street, turn off by the Carnival lodge and travel down a bumpy dirt road to the office with no sign. The office is closed a lot and we have to plan ahead a bit but somehow, the system works. Occasionally we run out of units and are without power until we can top up. I think for our electricity (which also has greatly improved -- we used to have outages 4-7pm a few nights a week but now it's really infrequent that our power is inexplicably out). costs about $150 a month.

The next thing we are waiting to improve is our internet access. Zambia remains one of the most expensive countries in the world to have internet access.

creepies and crawlies

2010-11-14T21:50:00.003+02:00

it’s hot. really hot. people get a little nutty it’s so hot.

and then the rain starts.

the water pours down from the sky in sheets.

the streets fill and city floods.

lightening snaps

thunder crashes

like you absolutely wouldn’t believe.

Everything is cool and fresh.

New birds appear with this sudden change of weather,

the toads are out in force. keeping us awake with their insane loudness.

and then.....

the creepy crawlies appear.

four legs, six legs, eight, 300. flooded out of their homes,

they

come

into

ours.

It’s when the rain begins in earnest that I get to worrying

about the critters coming in to get away from the rising water.

because, then,

it’s time

for the critters

with

legs.

Rock star

2010-11-14T21:48:00.002+02:00

Remember Remember the 5th of November:

Gunpowder, Treason and Plot.

I see no reason why Gunpowder and Treason

Should ever be forgot!

Most Fridays the school day ends with an assembly that goes on for 40 minutes or so. they celebrate birthdays and give awards and reminders and tally their house points. Usually a class 'hosts' the assembly and is responsible for preparing a skit. 4A's assigned assembly day fell on 'Guy Fawkes Day' "Bonfire Night" AND "Diwali" and so these were the themes for the assembly. Owen got to 'be' Guy Fawkes, one of 7 (or 13 depending on what you are reading) conspirators who hatched a plot to blow up Parliament in opposition to King James I's persecution of the Catholics in the year 1605. We cannot sort out the modern-day logic behind this 'holiday' or why it is still around but we have tried. We even mis-read something and it made PERFECT sense. Then we re-read and again, are totally baffled. I can try to explain.

The 7 somehow gained access to a room below parliament and filled it with explosives (36 barrels of gunpowder!) They realized somewhere along the way that innocent people would be killed/injured (duh) and so they put out a letter warning people to stay away. Well, the king also heard of the plan (duh) and the plan was foiled and one of the conspirators, Guy Fawkes was caught red-handed on the night of 5th November, down in the little room, ready to ignite the gunpowder. He (and his compatriots) were sentenced, tortured, and killed.

One story tells of Guy Fawkes' torture and that as he went up to the gallows to be killed he somehow summoned the strength to escape the guards. He made a run for it, only to fall, break his neck and die....and then be drawn and quartered along with a few other things, just for good measure. (do you see a monty python skit in here somewhere?)

So, 5th November is bonfire night....celebrating the overthrow of the 'Gunpowder Plot" and celebrating the safety of the King. Or, it is celebrating the plot to overthrow the king -- kind of a demonstration or reminder to the King of what was the will of the people?

To this day, the reigning monarch doesn't go to parliament except once a year to 'open' session.

In any case, Owen's class was going to recite the poem. But....Owen made up a song to go with the poem and the whole class sang and did instruments. He is joined on guitar by his good friend Rushil, Emmanuel played the drums the rest had shakers. It was really sweet and Owen looked like a natural up there.

And Finn....never missing a thing: We could not get Owen's attention to get a decent photo, but Finn, who is now with O up at 'the big school' never fails to notice when we are there...and when we are not there. This guy is a tough one. The kids have received many awards this school year and we have managed to miss the presentation of most of them. This assembly I came EARLY and Todd came just in the nick of time with the camera.

Part II of the Assembly was Diwali and fireworks safety advice. Explaining Diwali is much simpler: a five-day festival of lights celebrating victory of good over evil. (For Hindus, the return of Lord Rama from his 14 year exile, or in Jainims and Sikhism commemorating the return of Guru Har Gobind Ji after he freed 52 Hindu kings -- in India it also marks the end of the harvest season.) We went to the Lotus Club for Diwali night (instead of to Baobab International School's Bonfire Night) and stayed for a 4 hour long music and dance extravaganza and terrifying fireworks show. They had all low-clearance fireworks and let's just say that when you add the genuine fear of something going terribly wrong to a fireworks show of this scale it adds a whole new dimension to the experience. It was really impressive but I was so tense the whole time it was hard to 'enjoy. And for Finn, who never misses a thing remember, it was too much. We really couldn't blame him. Perhaps we all should have been that worried.

Cuckoo-Siku

2010-11-01T22:31:00.000+02:00

Siku. A rare moment of (1) contemplation (?) and (2) stillness.

Siku. Demonstrating his (1) athleticism (2) brilliance. (?)

Siku as we typically see him, a blur, a skinny black blur.

His ribs show even when he's a blur.

This very very strange dog we have here, Siku, is the oddest creature I have ever encountered. He is frequently on a hunger strike despite the full dish of real-meat-gravy soaked dog food (and any meaty table scraps we can put together for him) and yet he'll happily and systematically eat our sword ferns down the nibbins and will collect, gnaw on and bury rotten avocados. He'll forgo a foam bed with a clean blanket on the patio by the house for a pile of wet leaves in the pouring rain. He'll chase bees and birds, skinks (lizards) and cars -- all with pretty miserable outcomes --- but won't chase a ball or frisbee or dog toy.

The oddest thing is that he HATES the water. It's been really hot and the dog is black and lays down, tongue hangin' out, slobbering from the heat on the asphalt driveway.....so we lured him to the pool with a handful of meat and tossed him in the water. He can swim but he swam the totally wrong direction and couldn't get out, another attempt, another frantic paddle.....until we had to haul him out. We're certain he felt better for it but the result was that he needed to run circles around the yard for 30 minutes re-gain his 'composure.' so in the end I doubt it did much good.

But how do we 'feel' about Siku. I suppose we love him....it's just that he's so odd ... and I'm mad at him for not being Ruby.

Counted.

2010-11-01T22:13:00.000+02:00

On this steamy Sunday morning our lazy day was interrupted with the distictive ‘clang-clang-clang-clang-clang-clang’ of someone at our gate (a stone banging the metal gate.) Frequently we ignore this most irritating noise b/c if we are not expecting anyone, it’s easier just to let them pass than try to unravel why exactly they need to speak with ‘the boss.’ Once in a while it’s actually someone we want to see but usually it’s someone asking for the gardener (if he’s not answering the gate he’s not here) or someone inquiring about a job (we are not hiring, although looking at the mess in my office, the laundry piling up clearly we do need help!)

Today, it was one young Lunda school-leaver named Bruno, an enumerator for Zambia’s 2010 National Census. He had already spoken with the other family that lives on the property (Uladi (Peter) and Obrin, and their two girls, Margret and Taowanga) but now it was our turn to be counted.

The census has to capture information from the likes of us, a straightforward (we think) nuclear family of expatriots living and working in the capital city as well as capture relavent information from, say, Mwinilunga widow farming in the village and raising the orphaned children of her distant relatives.

The survey counts number of people living in the house, service animals (oxen, donkey but curiously, not horses, b/c horses are not commonly used in Zambia for farming), vehicles (motorcycle to scotch-cart (ox cart), wheelbarrow and bicycle, communication and technology (house phone, mobile phone, computer), construction of shelters (mud and thatch, concrete block, timber frame (very unusual give the ferocity of the termite population) etc), number of rooms (bedrooms, living rooms, bathrooms etc), source of power, source of water, employment, age, education, and the relationship of everyone living in the house. The newspaper today just printed a full pullout explaining about the census and a full-size copy of the census-taker’s survey worksheet (for complete transparency?)

In talking with a few friends we heard that when they were answering questions the enumerator hesitated at the “are you disabled?” box when the man of the house answered “No.”

He stopped, looked him square in the eye: “But.....you are wearing glasses?!”

“How long have you had this disability?”

“What caused this, this nearsightedness?”

He also asked if the children were albinos.....they are ‘white’ for sure but not THAT white. Good to ask, just in case...

In the end, we got a sticker on our gate and Bruno headed on his way to try to track down the other 20 ‘go-back’ houses on his list of 130 houses.

Tricked, Treated.

2010-11-01T21:59:00.000+02:00

For the first time in several years the Jennings boys took part in Halloween activities, dressing up, bobbing for apples, sticking their hands in mystery boxes to collect treats or feel squishy eyeballs, carving watermelons, doing the limbo (with a giant paper mache bone), banging black cauldron pinatas, and having fun with other witches, bats and gouls on the Leisure Hire Jumpy Castle... Halloween, clearly, Zambia-style.

This was a birthday/halloween party and the girls were advised to leave their princess costumes behind....they came instead as drowned mermaids, dead queens, ghouls and evil witches! Owen was "Capoiera Kid" (instead of Karate Kid) but was mistaken by the parents as Jesus, and Finn, fresh from Kananka dressed up as a fruit bat. There were a few characters from Thriller and even a little Brett Favre showed up in a Green Bay Packers uniform -- SCARY!!!!

To be honest, I had enjoyed the break from making costumes and the pressure of trying to dress a child up for trick or treating in the cold and rainy weather. Over the years we have made costumes for: Rainbow, Kiwi, Fireboat captain (and Kitty), Black lab, Muppet Bird, Scuba Diver, and Tree (with crow).

Owen put together his own outfit so I only had FPFJ’s to worry about. And worry I did. The challenges were (1) using materials we had on-hand (2) making something that fit (comfortably) and that could come on and off (3) making something that would be reasonably comfortable in the hottest days of summer (and potential downpour) (4) no pattern, no reference materials, NO INTERNET and (4) something that would last longer than just the party.

We finished version 1 in time for the party (if arriving nearly 2 hours late can count as ‘in-time’ - we don’t have email and didn’t know when the party started) but did a major remodel the next day. Version 2 will hopefully survive the rigors of being a costume-box-costume and can be passed-on to the next little wanna-be-bat that wonders our way.

Happy Halloween!