Did we have a happy Christmas? I will answer that question with this one-take, self-timer photo taken after our Christmas dinner...
Tuesday 29 December 2009
Wednesday 23 December 2009
and the winner is...
... well, no one guessed exactly ... and I'm going to put the answer to last week's mystery object into the comments section of this post so that no one reads it by mistake before looking at the last post ...
Tuesday 15 December 2009
mystery object
Can anyone guess what this is? (Please don't answer and spoil it for everyone else if you actually know!)
Thursday 10 December 2009
seasonal confusion
When I was a child, my aunt and uncle were living in South Africa, and one year they kindly gave us a calendar which said on it “It's sunny today in South Africa”. This wasn't a message we necessarily wanted to hear on a gloomy November day in England. Now that they are living in England, I'm tempted to make a calendar for them which says “It's sunny today in West Africa”!
But jokes aside, I have realised that it is very odd for me, as an English girl, to be living somewhere where the weather is so stable. At the moment we never have to wonder how the weather will be the next day, as we know it will be sunny but fresh in the morning, temperatures around 32°C by the afternoon, and cooler again in the evening and overnight. It's reassuring … particularly since this kind of weather suits me very well. It may be less comfortable in dry season when the predictability means we know that temperatures are going to be up near 40°C every day!
I have at last been able to feel a little bit as if Christmas is coming. Yesterday I went to the rehearsal of the missionary kids' Christmas Presentation, and hearing them singing carols helped me believe it might really be December after all. We are planning to buy a Christmas tree this week and get it up and decorated this weekend. Fake, of course!
But jokes aside, I have realised that it is very odd for me, as an English girl, to be living somewhere where the weather is so stable. At the moment we never have to wonder how the weather will be the next day, as we know it will be sunny but fresh in the morning, temperatures around 32°C by the afternoon, and cooler again in the evening and overnight. It's reassuring … particularly since this kind of weather suits me very well. It may be less comfortable in dry season when the predictability means we know that temperatures are going to be up near 40°C every day!
I have at last been able to feel a little bit as if Christmas is coming. Yesterday I went to the rehearsal of the missionary kids' Christmas Presentation, and hearing them singing carols helped me believe it might really be December after all. We are planning to buy a Christmas tree this week and get it up and decorated this weekend. Fake, of course!
Thursday 3 December 2009
yellow fever jab
The Beninese government is having a Yellow Fever vaccination campaign, offering free vaccinations to everyone, this week. Anyone entering Benin over the age of one year is checked for Yellow Fever vaccination as they go through customs, so all of us except Benjy had been jabbed already. But Benjy is now old enough to have it – he is ten months and it is recommended from nine months – so we thought we'd take advantage of the offer of a free jab.
I went with Esther (our home help) who mentioned she wanted to go today and was very happy to have us come along too. Marc is in Cotonou so it was just me and the boys. We had heard a rumour about one of the places it could be done where there would be less queueing, so went there. It was difficult to find, which might explain the lack of crowds! In fact when we got there Esther was able to be vaccinated immediately, but they told us to take Benjy elsewhere and ask for the person in charge.
So we drove up the road to another dispensary, where Esther jumped the (not very long) queue to say we'd been sent there. She then called me in, I answered a few questions about Benjy, and he received his injection.
The cross-cultural confusion I have is that I'm still not sure a) why Benjy couldn't be injected at the first place, and b) whether we jumped the queue at the second because we're white, because we were sent there from elsewhere, or for some other reason, like Benjy's age. However, I'm not too bothered about not understanding since the important thing is that Benjy has had the vaccination now!
I went with Esther (our home help) who mentioned she wanted to go today and was very happy to have us come along too. Marc is in Cotonou so it was just me and the boys. We had heard a rumour about one of the places it could be done where there would be less queueing, so went there. It was difficult to find, which might explain the lack of crowds! In fact when we got there Esther was able to be vaccinated immediately, but they told us to take Benjy elsewhere and ask for the person in charge.
So we drove up the road to another dispensary, where Esther jumped the (not very long) queue to say we'd been sent there. She then called me in, I answered a few questions about Benjy, and he received his injection.
The cross-cultural confusion I have is that I'm still not sure a) why Benjy couldn't be injected at the first place, and b) whether we jumped the queue at the second because we're white, because we were sent there from elsewhere, or for some other reason, like Benjy's age. However, I'm not too bothered about not understanding since the important thing is that Benjy has had the vaccination now!
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