'Let there be light'

 

A photo of the kids having great fun on a sand pile on a building site in the hills above Dodoma. Who needs bouncy castles and soft play!!! Health and safety would have had a fit to see them roaming around this building site jumping in and out of ditches and drinking water from a hose pipe.

As we (Libby, Joshua, Bethany and Caleb) swam in the cool blue pool this afternoon(well it was nice and blue once I'd cleaned all the bugs out)I was wondering what we would have done on a November afternoon in the UK. I'm thinking cold, raining, grey and probably inside!!

It's getting quite hot here. We would be using the fan by now if it hadn't broken, along with the video player, the DVD player, and the camera!! It is dry and dusty as we await the rainy season. The last rain was around April or it might have been February. Still we had enough rain in the UK to remember what's like!! The grass in the compound has withered to almost nothing and the whole place is one big sand pit.

Th latest craze is climbing trees, Joshua, Bethany and Caleb have discovered how fun this is. I am not so crazy about this especially when they are all pushing each other and Caleb already had one fall last week.

It was Bethany's birthday party last Saturday, a pink princess party. All the little girls came dressed as princesses and we made tiaras and ate pink food. It was also the day she decided to cut her own hair-again! She seems to be back at the stage where Bethany playing quietly in her room is not so good. Now however she is older and 'wiser' so her misdemeanors have gone up a notch!! Still according to her teacher she is well behaved at school, so that's a start.

Other big news in Dodoma is that the first street lights went up in the main street and they actually work. Dodoma is slowly beginning to feel like a proper place. There is also a lot of digging going on, not sure what for, but still it adds to the feeling that Dodoma might slowly be making it's way into the 21st century.

If you remember the street boys that are now being sponsored, you might remember that they had a blind grandmother. Well this week we have found out that she owns a few hectares of 'good' arable land. However, because she is blind she has been unable to farm it. Together with Sarah (my house lady) we are planning to grow crops on this land and if the rains come, the land will provide enough food for Sarah and the blind lady's family to live off for the next year!! It also turns out that there is another family member living on this land who has 4 small children who are all sick and malnourished, and the baby has scabies. Another whole family to try and help, it never ends. Anyway please pray that the rain will come soon, it really can make a difference between life and death here.

One last thing that made me laugh that was written on a wedding invitation we got last week, "Children are loved but not allowed"!!