The VisitorA much better week! Esther is finally better and her sparkle is returning. Benjamin has decided that Emma is not too bad after all. It's been fantastic to see him going to play without tears (with a small packet of "Smarties" clenched firmly in his hot little hand to soften the blow of parting from Mum!!) and returning for tea break + lunch break with a smile. Emma seems happier to be with the children and all round, everyone has been more jolly! Lots of prayers have been said for the children by many friends and it's been great to see how they've been answered :-)
Kiswahili lessons continue. Before coming here, we were told repeatedly that Swahili is an "easy" language- but we seem to be more confused each day! There appear to be about 1000 tenses(!!) and it's tricky getting used to a language where the words all get joined together, rather than each word standing individually. eg. "I did not watch you" becomes "Sikukuangalia". After 9 days of Swahili lessons, we were really struggling to unpick the words we actually recognise in our conversation class this morning. Each word is like a jigsaw puzzle with lots of other words inside! My mum, a great fan of jigsaws, would probably enjoy studying with us!
As for encounters with nature, we met a small black snake on the path one morning. Thinking it was just a worm, I pointed it out to Esther, Ben and their 2 little Swiss friends -and we all had a merry time bending down to look at it closely, as the children poked at it with their sandal-clad feet. It was only later that I discovered my error. I was so horrified by my mistake that I later dreamt about saving children from snakes all night!
The other visitor, pictured, popped in to our banda yesterday, after lunch. Esther's sharp eyes spotted him first. Needless to say, he also went the way of Mr. Snake of last week's frightening meeting!
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