Back in Africa

Every now and then, during the course of everyday life in Africa, something odd will happen which will prompt Dusty to say, "you should put THAT on the blog!" The first time those words were uttered since our return was for the new toilet seat.

Because our toilet seat cover has been broken in half for a long time, we put it on the to-do list to get an entire new seat. Dusty went to town and came back with a new seat and cover. He promptly put the new seat on the toilet the next evening. By the following morning, the seat was mysteriously cracked in half! It had not cracked beneath either of us, so who who-dun-it?

Such is the quality of products we can purchase here, and returning purchases is basically unheard of here.. In the end, Dusty went back to the shop, and the shop owner gave him the display seat which he has not installed yet. I haven't seen it, but he says it's pretty banged up. I guess that's better than split in two though!

Regardless, we're happy to be back in our own home after a year of traveling and living out of suitcases and borrowed drawers. We've been welcomed warmly back into Musoma and are adjusting back to African life. We're amazed at how long it is taking us to settle back in, and are relearning how to cope with things like unreliable electricity, mosquito nets, and filtering the tap water. The kids are gratefully handling it all in stride.

Here are some pictures of our travels since we left America, in reverse order (sorry for the odd formatting).

1. My birthday party in our house. It was a team effort: Dusty made the cake, I made the icing, and the kids helped with the sprinkles.



2. The tunnels and tents my grandmother gave the kids for Christmas - set up for the first time since Christmas, and in our own house in Musoma.



3. Our annual family photo on the beach of the Indian Ocean.



4. The kids at Turtle Bay, the location of our annual branch conference in Kenya.



5. A painting shop in Zanzibar selling traditional Tingatinga paintings.



6. Having lunch while on a day-long safari in Ruaha National Park in Tanzania.



7. The tent where we all lived for one week during our two weeks of Swahili refresher course near Iringa, Tanzania. It was crowded and very cold! We were thankful to move into a cottage/hut for the following week.



8. The kids waiting at Heathrow airport for our flight to Tanzania. Amazingly, Jack fell asleep in the rental car and stayed asleep through unloading the baggage from the car onto the trolleys and continued sleeping for about an hour in the airport. What a blessing! Between Dallas and Musoma, we had an incredible amount of travel, airports, flights, rental cars, countries, and luggage.



9. Tessa and Dusty went out one morning in England to explore the canal system and it's locks. We visited several of our friends for about 4 days in England.



10. The Netherlands, where we visited our good friends for 5 days and visited the Outdoor Museum with traditional windmills and other historical monuments.