Desert Gills

For the month of September we are blessed to have a H. Language teacher here.  Both T and I have benefited from the chance to take some H. classes and work to improve our language skills.  T's class is pictured.

Great article by my brother .

My dad is retiring today from a 30+ year career as a Professor of Entomology.  When he and my mom visited us here at G in 2009, we gave him some specimens as a gift!  Most people around here hate mijin kunamas , but my dad enjoys studying and writing academic papers about this spidery creature.  We miss you, Grammie and Grandpalito, and look forward to when Grandpalito can visit us in his retirement.

This month the local committee of ch*rch leaders for Operation Christmas Child asked for help to distribute 450 cartons of shoe boxes to different locales.  Most of the applications for boxes were completed by local believers, but since we expats are able to rent hospital 4x4's, several of us applied for boxes to take to some more remote villages.  I was pleased to be able to be a part of a four-person team that drove 3 hours into the "bush" towards a village where we had a contact.  After leaving the paved road and heading north, there were no ch*rches or known believers along our route. We drove through millet fields and open scrubby areas along dirt and gravel roads.  The rainy season had created many pockets of mud and puddles along the route.  The drive was a challenge, as we had packed the boxes too insecurely on our roof rack.  My friend M, a local friend with theological training, came along to share the good news.  After about 8 epi...

Our beloved household helper, A, is our kids' biggest source of local language lessons and traditional local foods during morning snack.  Here I. and A. look over the morning's tuwo da miya.   The tuwo  was a porridge made from pounded and boiled maize, thickened enough to cut into pieces.  Over it was poured miya, or sauce, made from dried, pulverized okra and black-eyed peas.  A few weeks ago, I was struggling with the lack of fresh fruits and vegetables that seemed to be available.  Around that time, as I was discussing with A. the ingredients for various recipes of miya, I was astonished at the number of local plants that could be used in making sauce.  During the rainy season, ground that is brown and dusty for the rest of the year bursts forth with many kinds of haki,  or weeds.  A. led me outside and around our yard and the neighbor's (where two Hausa friends were at that moment picking haki ), pointing out and naming over ten ...