Here's this morning's "This 'n That."    Totally random and unrelated wanderings of my mind.

     When we first moved into the 2nd house, we were serenaded by a rooster , busy crowing up a storm every morning.  He lived next door to us, and we enjoyed his "song" as part of our morning routine.  This went on for about 3 weeks.  But, now, for the past 2 weeks, there has been no rooster crowing at the crack if dawn, leading us to believe either he has packed up and gone to the country for a needed vacation, or they ate him.

     We have to deal with the missionaries various health issues.  (Hey, fam, why didn't I take any medical classes?)  Right now we have a missionary with malaria, one who just had a tooth pulled yesterday, various stomach ailments, one with hemorrhoids, and a couple with different aches and pains--and diarrhea.

     The water here, when you have it, is naturally soft.  Thumbs up!  I have never had soft water before, and I like it!

     I think Africa would be totally over run with bugs if there were no people living here and trying to fight them back.  We have the little sugar ants in the kitchen that we are always battling.  And then one day we had huge ants in our bathroom that were seemingly coming up out of the drain.  I kept trying to wash them down the drain with our shower nozzle, but they kept coming back out of the drain, swimming hard against the current of water, such as it was.  They were strong swimmers!  Gary finally got some insect poison to spray on them, and we won this battle.  Two days ago, we noticed 4 large green grasshopper-like insects lying dead on our front porch.  An army of ants was trying to haul them all away.  Then last night, after dark, we were in the living room, and we heard hundreds of them beating against the windows trying to get in.  It sounded like rain hitting the windows.  When one of them actually made it into the living room and landed on my lap, that was the last straw.  We turned out the lights and headed to the bedroom!

     Hey, Geoffrey!  Here is a photo of a welder doing his thing over at branch one.  Thought you'd appreciate seeing how it is done in Bujumbura!

Notice the protective eyewear (children's sun glasses) and the transformer in the foreground.