Rain!

Yeah Yeah Yeah! We got rain! Yesterday evening was very humid and hot, and there were storm clouds in the sky. We woke up in the middle of the night with strong blowing winds. Then the rain broke loose. At first slowly, and then letting it all out. It had all the trimmings of a good storm too, with good peals of thunder and flashing lightning. Andy and I got up out of bed to tend to our plants in the back. We didn't want them to get pummeld by the rain, but they were also in danger from getting toppled by the winds. The rain falling off our our roof was milk chocolate brown. Andy noticed when he looked at me while we were standing under the corrugate roof in the back and said, hey, your dirty! It was also cold with the rain and the temperature suddenly dipping. Today on my way to work at the nursery school I surveyed the damage from my seat on the gelley. There are major puddles (in some places more like small lakes!) everywhere. There was also a big billboard sign that was torn up. The winds must have been really bad. Our power went out for a little while, but then amazingly enough came back on.
I was a little worried about a certain kitten last night. The story goes like this. The same cat that had kittens before, had another set in our shed. There were three of them. Because we have gotten some new neighbors on either side of us now, like last time she needed to move them out of the shed before they got too big. In the corner of our compound is a pile of rumble of concrete blocks from when a portion of the concrete block fence just fell down in the middle of the night. The day before yesterday I kept hearing a very faint meow when I was walking around the compound, but just thought it was the kittens in the back. So yesterday I was hanging out in the compound, playing with the kids, when they all started screaming and running towards the concrete rumble pile. I looked, and there was this little kitten, all scraggly, frightened almost to death, shakily standing on a piece of the rumble, as all these kids came running and screaming at him/her (?) I made sure I got there first, swiped it up, before they could frighten it back down into the ruble, and took it into through our house, (with a whole group of kids following me), closed and locked the door, (so they wouldn't follow me through the house) and took the poor little kitten to the shed where it was born, and was living until recently. As I did that, it was meowing its head off, and I could hear the momma cat meowing for it. I just put the kitten down, closed the shed door, and went away. I figured that the cat would know the place, and hear the kitten, and come and get it again. I went and checked if it was still in the shed about 15 minutes later, and it was gone. The only way out is from the top of the shed in a space between the corrugate and concrete blocks. So, I think my planned worked! :)

Well, more on the "library" thing on the home front. Last Saturday I went to the carpenter and showed him my drawing for the bookshelf I wanted. He said that it would be done Monday. Now, living in Gambia, on Gambian time, I totally didn't believe him when he said that, and even though I had a chance to go check on it on Monday, I didn't. I went Tuesday, and he wasn't there. So, on Wednesday I got home from the school, and got Adja to come with me to see if it was ready and it was! So we carried it home. That night Fatou Bintou and Alieu helped me organize the books. Fatou B. wrote the alphabet out on pieces of paper the size of flashcards. We spread them out on the floor in alphabetical order, and then I went through each book, and held it up for them both to see. They looked at the first letter of each book title, and then put it under that letter in a stack on the floor. Once we had them all done, Fatou B. put them in the bookshelf. yeah! The kids have already starting checking out books. They have a colored index card which they wrote their names on and I have stored in a box (old platex wipes plastic box actually), and then the title of the book they checked out and the date. I decided that I would let them come and check out and return books one day a week. We started on Tuesday, so next Tuesday they will come to return the one they have and get a new one. The great thing is, that since Tuesday, a few of them have come over with their books to share something they have notice about them, get help with reading them, etc. MoLamin came over yesterday (he is almost four yrs. old) and Andy and I were sitting on the couch, and he came over and showed Andy a picture in his book, (it was of a dog chewing on a shoe) and he said, (in Mandinka of course) Look! This dog.. He is chewing on a shoe! Like he couldn't believe it and got such a kick out of it. And then he flipped through a few more pages, and then went back to his house. Alhagie and Dembo both came over at different times last night to sit there with their books, trying to read, while we helped. They are all very enthusiastic about it, and I hope it lasts. But right now everything is going good! We shall see what kind of shape the books come back in. Though we reiterate every time, no water, no food, etc.. with the books.
My plants have been growing slowly slowly, but hopefully they will soon get a burst of fertilizer.... Because Andy and I have been preparing to try a fertilizing technique, by making our own urea. How do you do this you ask? (do you really want to know!?) We take what is called a bidong here (big plastic container that originally holds vegetable oil) and fill it up part way with water, then pee in it (instead of our pit latrine) until it reaches a certain level...let it sit for 2 days then, apply to the soil! Wallah! Cheap home-made urea. The only thing is,..for woman it is a little bit trickier (of course). But a funnel can (and was) made out of a liter water bottle, so it all worked out fine. :) Tonight, we will get to try our first test with it. We plan to use it on the plants I have been working on in the back, and also on some of Andy's trees in the compound. To be able to demonstrate how fertilizer helps the plants, we will have ones we use it on and ones without. We figure, if they see the difference with their own eyes, it will be easier to then explain that we did the above process and we just poured watered down urine on the soil.... We'll see how that goes!
Well, this weekend I plan to get a some curtains hemmed to goes across the front of the bookshelf to help protect it from the dust. I'm running a training session at the end of next week at the nursery school so I will be preparing things for that next week, and maybe some this weekend. I want to make something in the solar cooker, but haven't decided what yet. I have also started Atlas Shrugged.. Andy got it and I started to read it,.. he said something about 13 years bad luck if I didn't finish it once I started it).. so the challenge is on! But man, the type is so tiny!