Recipe for disaster:
When your young son opens the bedroom door at 7:00 am and asks,”Hey Dad! What do you want for breakfast?”
Breakfast in bed has no appeal here. If there is even a crumb that falls, ants will find it. The ants here are voracious and even the tiniest crumb attracts a swarm…
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Rita started working again today. Brynnie sure was happy to have her friend Rode (Rita’s daughter) to play with again. They are so cute together!
I also bought Brynnie a new tricycle as we now have a place where she can drive one. I bought the simplest one they had and it still comes complete with rearview mirrors, a big horn and a basket at the front. I could have bought the one with the large sun canopy, music and steering stick for grown-ups…
After that I went to visit our guard’s wife. We understood from him that his name was Nuel, but when I went to the general area of his house and asked where I could find Pak Nuel’s house, I got blank stares… Turns out his name is Nios (Nee-aw-s). Anyways, his wife wasn’t there at the time that I had said I would come, she was at a roving clinic having their new daughter immunized. So I came back at 11:20 as agreed and she wasn’t there again, she was down below washing clothes at the public clothes washing place. But she came up and I went in their “house”. Wow, talk about a humble abode! It is a very small wooden building with a dirt floor that they’ve spread straw over. There are two rooms. One is for sleeping and the other is where they cook and hang out. The baby was nicely sleeping on the floor on top of a rubber mat and then some blankets. She’s cute but has no hair. They haven’t given her a name yet as they have to have a party and feed lots of people in order to be able to give the baby a name. (In fact when I asked if they had any names picked out, she said they didn’t!? I have to admit that I made a couple suggestions…) At that time the minister will come and pray for the baby as well. I find it very sad that they feel they need to do this even though it is very obvious that they are so poor. They moved here a number of years ago from Wamena specifically so that Pak Nios could go to the Bible school across the road from us. (so their language is really bad, hard to understand because they mix up some of the letters and add a uuhhh sound to the end of words) He is nearly done his studies there and will hopefully get a church after that. In the meantime he works for us as a guard and takes care of our yard. I think it is hard for him to find the time to work on our yard but when we talk about finding someone else, he says that he can do it. Now I know why! BTW, they have five children and school is not free here and they have to buy uniforms.