Have you seen these diapers?

This past week brought us some frustrations. Someone sneaked onto the compound and stole half of our cloth Fuzzi Bunz Diapers which we had left up on the line overnight. The nationals do not use diapers: they do a sort of infant 'potty training' which does involve some genuine 'training' but also a fair amount of [throat clearing] 'potty'... lets just say I have already had a number of opportunities to become intimately familiar with some aspects of this local practice. There was one silver lining as our next door neighbors quickly heard about our plight and offered to lend us their diapers, as their two year old just potty-trained (I mean western style). So that was a partial relief... A second frustration has been our freezer. It broke again, and since it was still under warranty, the store in Niamey agreed to replace it. Only after going through all the transport hassles (with big assists from friends) did the store tell us that they would not replace it because our local shop had tried a minor repair. Again, this is not shocking in an African context - indeed, it would have been surprising in a way if everything had gone smoothly... but since the freezer was one of our big 'purchases' this year, this saga has definitely drained us. Pray for us.
On the positive side, the internet has been connected in our house and running about as well as it can be expected to of late. It took some doing... including the shop digging up about 100 meters of faulty ethernet cable and replacing it, along with many hours of 'labor of love' technical assistance from our CMO/IT expert. Suffice is to say that this whole experience has taught me more than I ever wanted to know about the intricacies of networking. But I am learning... I even tried my hand as compound IT troubleshooter while the usual suspects were away last week!