Assembly

 

Caleb with his class.

Assembly

 

Caleb presenting his class assembly on Friday. He loves to be at the front as much as possible.

MAF Conference 2010

 

View from the hangar.

MAF Conference 2010

 

Helping (or not) move the plane!

MAf Conference 2010

 

Can you see the small drummer!

MAF Conference 2010

 

Daniel in full Program Manager mode. The man next to him is translating

MAF Staff conference 2010

 

 

The new play room

 

A short post for those of you who have been asking when the next blog will be written. The children spent most of last week playing in the car!! No idea why, but it was fun while it lasted. The other picture is of Caleb in the boot space in our new car. We will sell our old car which is too old to import into Kenya. This week is very busy preparing for the MAF conference at the weekend. I have also been helping out with swimming at school because they are a teacher down. Next week my parents arrive and then we will go away, so hopefully there will be some more pictures and news then.

Lion Rock

 

Us and our neighbours at the top of lion rock the other weekend. Josh and Caleb are somewhere around. Just be glad you can't see my face. I am not good with children and heights!

Wildlife

 

Wildlife outside our front door

Currently

Currently not enjoying

...the nightly power cuts. Joshua and Bethany have developed an obsession for playing Dutch Blitz every evening. However, it is quite a challenge to tell the difference between the blue and green cards by candle light.

Currently enjoying

... having had my hair cut. An American lady flew down from Moshi and cut every bodies hair. It is slightly odd when the whole MAF community have their hair cut in the same week, so everybody you meet has a new hairstyle. I have decided I have quite international hair. In the last year I have had it cut twice in Kenya, once in the UK and once in Tanzania!

...My new neighbours. It is always sad to say goodbye to people, but I also enjoy all the new people we meet. I like having American neighbours who seem so relaxed about everything.

...Having coffee with friends. The Dodoma Travel Cafe is still up and running and every week a group of us expat mums go there for a coffee. It is just a nice time to chat and relax. Although I have stopped having the Cappuccinos and now drink some ginger drink that blows your head off.

...My weekly women's bible study.

Currently watching

... Well Daniel has given up DVDs for lent, but he was away quite a few nights this week so I started watching season 4 of ER. Has anyone got anymore ER I could borrow, I think I only got up to season 11 and it went on to about 19.

..Prince Caspian has to be a family favourite at the moment. Even I, who don't usually re- watch things can watch that again and again.

...and of course I mustn't forget Hannah Montana.

Currently reading

... Having new English speaking neighbours also means a new source of books to read. I have just finished reading the Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. Strange book, but quite interesting reading living here. Not sure if I recommend it or not.

...Josh is still reading everything he can get his hands on. He likes the Horrible Histories, especially reading the gruesome bits to me. Talking of gruesome, both Caleb and Josh took the chicken foot into school this week. By Wednesday it absolutely stunk and I made them put it in the bin.. Joshua also took a buffalo skull into school to show the class its teeth. I have no idea why we have a Buffalo skull in our garden.

...Bethany is reading a book called Sophie's Adventures by Dick King Smith.

...Daniel is in Dar and I am not sure what he is reading at the moment.

...Caleb is just starting to read and is very keen to learn.

Currently working on projects..

...working out how to fit our stuff into 1000kg, which is the weight we can take on the plane.

...Getting Daniel to sort out his junk. Bits of wires and electronic gizmo's, plugs,batteries etc.. in preparation for moving. I know we have a while to go yet, but this is a slow process!

...I have the opposite problem with the children who want to pack now. I keep having to persuade then that they may want to play with the toys in the next few months, so it is better to wait.

Currently looking forward to

... My parents coming out at Easter and our trip to the highlands where the tea plantations are.

...Well I am not, but everyone else is looking forward to our new car which Daniel is driving up from Dar today. The old one was too old and had too big an engine to take to Kenya, so we are selling it to our neighbours and getting a newer one with a smaller engine. I am quite fond of the old car and will be sad to see it go.

Currently wishing for

... nice chicken, and nice lettuce.

Currently praying about

... our move to Kenya

A saturday in the life of Caleb

 

Today was a good day. As is usual on Saturday morning I woke up early to watch a movie. Generally my mum and dad have to haul me out of bed to get me ready for school, but on a Saturday morning I figure why waste valuable movie watching time in bed. As I was up first it was my choice, so we watched my favourite movie of the moment, 'Prince Caspian'. I like this because it has a lot of fighting in it and a lot of animals. I spent some time leaping off the coffee table trying to slay the lampshade whilst watching the film. I thought it was good to get some practice in, but my mum wasn't so keen. She got up early to make me pancakes for breakfast. This I rate as a fairly acceptable breakfast, but unfortunately only get at weekends.

After the film finished I had the usual dialogue with my mum where she tells me to get dressed and I ignore her until I think she is going to blow and then think it's probably worth doing to avoid nuclear mum. I spent the rest of the morning roaming the compound with my gang. We generally go to each others houses to see which mum will let us watch TV and then if that doesn't work, wonder round looking for bugs, climbing trees and playing imaginary games.

For lunch we had a compound BBQ. BBQ's are always good because you get sausages, which is definitely one of my favourite foods. There were other things on offer, but I didn't really have room for them after all the sausages. The real highlight of the BBQ was Paul next door killing a chicken. He dunked the body in boiling water to remove the feathers and then I realised that the chicken was missing it's head. we all raced to Paul's back garden to find the chicken's head and came back to show the adults our trophy. As you can imagine my mum was not thrilled with this, although she didn't go mental like she did with the dead rat, so it can't have been too bad. I can't quite figure out why my mum doesn't like these things, she's really missing out, I'm just interested, that's all. Why would you play with a ball, when you have a chicken head? (There is a chicken's foot outside the house in a pot, but don't tell my mum).

The BBQ finished, and then I managed to persuade my dad to make me a helmet, Prince Caspian style. Then it was off to the swimming pool to cool down. I generally spend most of the time at the pool on the bottom, looking for things. I do come up for air, but I like to count and see how long I can stay down there. My mum isn't keen on this game either, mum's heh! We came home for tea and then it started raining, so we did a quick rain dance before we had to come in before we got too wet -boring. However, we were allowed to watch an episode of Sliders, so that made up for it. This is an American show about people who slide between parallel universes. My dad thinks I understand this pretty well for a 5 year old. Anyway there was some punching in it today, so of course I had to practice that too. Sometimes I do that on my sister, but to keep the peace I just did air punching. It's funny how grown ups are always going on about sitting down for meals and staying there. Whilst I find a few punches and leaps through the air and a few swipes with a sword always makes the meal more interesting. Maybe one day I'll understand.

Staring contest

 

What you can't quite see in the picture is that I have had to shave the back of Joshua's head because he has an infection. It's so hot and sweaty here at the moment it's the best way to let it heal. Fortunately we have a doctor staying on the compound to consult.

Off with his head!

 

Of course Caleb was thrilled when out neighbour decided to kill a chicken! Who needs toys when you have chicken heads to play with!

Best friends

 

It will be hard for Bethany to say goodbye to Raisha. They have been firm friends for 3 years now.

Compound 2010

 

What a difference a little bit of rain makes!

Our compound in 2007

 

Rainbow

 

The double rainbow that was over our compound on Tuesday night.

Caleb the MK

 

As missionary kids, our kids are definitely growing up in a different way than they would have in England. Here are some of the things I have noticed about Caleb.

He loves cheese and salami on bread for breakfast, scandanavian style and doesn't really like cereal.
He eats peanut butter and Jelly (Jam) sandwiches for lunch American style.
His favourite fruit is mango which he can eat and eat and eat.
He speaks with a Dutch accent but uses a mix of Swahili, English and American words.
He mostly walks around bare foot.
He likes watching films in Swedish.
He doesn't know what a lamp post is.
He sings songs with a Tanzanian accent.
He plays role play games in which people get malaria and often die.
Has plans to climb Kilimanjaro. (he has a few years to wait because you need to be 12)
His best friends are from the USA and Sweden.
Is very aware of different countries in the world and different languages.
As a smaller boy has been to all sorts of different houses and slum type dwellings that I would probably never take him to now.

Sometimes I feel guilty for bringing my children out here, but I think they are having an interesting upbringing. Next week there is a grown up MK coming to speak about her experiences of growing up, I will be interested to see what advice she has to give.

Picnic

 

The younger kids on our compound love to lunch together when they come home from school at 12. Sometimes they go to each others houses for lunch but more recently they all take their food outside and picnic together. Joshua and Bethany like to join this for evening picnics too. Bethany says it is boring to eat together as a family because we do that all the time! Anyway the picnics also give the parents a quiet meal time too, so it works for everyone.