School on Mulberry Street

There are so. many. kids.
   On Mulberry Street.
         In our neighborhood.
                  Everywhere we walk there are kids.
                   
                 So. many. kids.

I can't begin to know all the names of the kids that live in the two houses/yards on either side of our home.  Scads of them.  Some we've gotten to know quite well.  Some of the little ones will run to meet us if they see us walking down the sidewalk towards home.  A couple of them love to sneak inside the house in the hopes of getting a cookie or a cracker.

We enjoy them.

This afternoon I went outside to check on "life on Mulberry Street" and  saw a beautiful sight.

 Someone had thrown away slightly termite eaten paper and documents from an office and these kids had found the treasures and were playing school!  The "professor" sat on the large rock under the tree.  (It looks like he has white hair, but due to the intense heat, he has a severe case of heat rash so the powder helps to make him feel better, but it also served to make him look like a REAL professor!)

None had pencils or other writing instruments.   The "professor" had a tiny piece of charcoal he was trying to write with so I grabbed a box of crayons to add to the fun and pulled up a chair to observe the play school, Niger-style.

Having a writing tool,  "the prof" began to carefully write down the names of all his pupils and then called the roll.

Recitation came next.  Each one got up to count as far as he could, in French, of course, which is the language they speak and learn in at school, but not at home.

I was reminded of all the times as a kid that I had set up my pretend school in the kitchen on Sunday afternoons and coerced my little brother to be my pupil. And Lindsay! A natural from the beginning. She spent hours teaching Erika "everything she needed to know about everything!"

This evening I went out on the porch to hang up a wet rug and found another school set up in our yard.  This time  "the professor" was the student, learning his multiplication tables, reciting them over and over and over again. His teacher was the neighbor boy who is in jr high.

Everything's Orange on Mulberry Street

We had just started skyping with our son when we heard the wind pick up noticeably and trash started flying around. Then the sky began to change colors:  yellow to light orange to dark orange and dark, dark orange until it seemed like night out. At that point, for some unknown reason, the electricity ALWAYS goes out.

 Our first major dust storm of the season.  Grabbing my camera, I ran outside to join the neighbor kids who were spooked with the sudden "night" sky.  

 The entire "orange-out" lasted maybe 30-45 minutes before the sky slowly turned yellow again and then normal with a touch of dust in the air.

Alas, no rain to wash the dust away.
Just a lowering of the temperature 10-15 degrees which is very welcome.

Now all that's left to remind us of the storm is the layer of dust and what the wind deposited in the yard.

Happy Easter!

Easter Sunday was celebrated with our church family here in Niger.  With temps hovering around 110° all week there was not even a fleeting thought that it would be any cooler on Easter Sunday.  And it wasn't!  But we spent the day in a mango grove across from the lush, green rice fields and next to the Niger River. As we walked the mile+ to the site,  there was a breeze to make the morning temps that had already climbed to 100° seem tolerable.  But this post isn't about the heat, even though it seems like much of our lives and conversation revolves around it these days.

Back to the Mango Grove celebration of Easter.

 There was a bit of GREEN and a trickle of water that was pumped out of the river to irrigate the small garden plots.

Others with vehicles had arrived earlier to bring the chairs from church and everything was arranged under the trees.

The promise of a pop to accompany the noon meal made it a REAL celebration albeit the temperatures of the day didn't lend itself to ice cold anything.

The service was scheduled to begin at 10 am.  We started when most of the people arrived, many in new Easter clothes.

Many had been up at daybreak making food and preparing for the celebration. The hot, cooked food arrived.

The service started with singing in both Hausa and French, accompanied by our excellent drummers.

The Easter story was read by our pastors, once in Hausa

and once in French.

 Our church service always includes special numbers from the different groups in the church and today was no exception.

A group of girls, who are learning English, sang with their teacher.

 The children's Sunday School group sang.

 The women's group...

A beautiful duet in German by two of our short-term missionaries.

The Youth Group sang as well , as did the Youth Group #2 (the group of "older" youth otherwise known as missionaries.) No pictures of these groups.

The offering was taken by group:  men, women, children danced up to the front to give their gifts.



Someone forgot to bring the offering basket so a motorcycle helmet filled the need.

Announcements and a lengthy sermon finished off the service by 1:00.  

Then came Easter dinner:  1/2 of a baguette and a tasty tomato sauce with a chicken leg. With a bottle of warm coke to polish it off.

Some neighbor boys collected the plates and ate their fill of left-overs.

Eating and visiting done, we left to walk home at 3 pm while others stayed to play some organized games.

Happy Easter to all of you!

The Princess and the Pea on Mulberry Street

We can purchase foam mattresses, locally made, cut to size, in a variety of denseness and thickness.  

Transporting them around town and around the country makes for some interesting and sky-scraping loads.  

There's More to See on Mulberry Street

What to do when it is 96.6 degrees inside the house at 6:00?  Go for a walk!  It's 106.6 degrees outside!  But life goes on as usual.  We took a stroll and remarked to each other again that life is indeed lived outside here.  Here are some of the sights we saw today:

Groups of men shooting the breeze, playing cards, or just watching life go by.

 Women building their fires, setting up their little mini "drive-by restaurant"  and beginning to cook their evening cakes to sell to passers-by.

Camels finished with their days work and relaxing in the shade.  I love their tufts of hair on their hump.

And taking the family cow home from grazing, We didn't get a picture of the neighbor's dozen goats all coming home "to roost".