Davis Pictures

“Hard to catch, but worth the work.”

Jen and I ate them. 

Elami: “Umm, I like them. But I don’t want more.” 

Tovah reserves the right to spit them out.

$400 buys you a Chinese motorcycle in Dubai.  It cost that much again and a more to get it to the islands.

After that you own what amounts to a blender on wheels, and an opportunity to socialize with other people as you fix your motorcycle!

So this is our new motorcycle!  It is a great blessing for me (Davis) for running errands—saving a lot of time and opening lots of new ministry possibilities (like visiting).

Yes, I wear a helmet.  It cost $6 in Dubai.

Every once in a while the kids of our town play soccer against the other kids of our town who come from across the imaginary line that splits our village into often rivaling neighborhoods.

They go down to the beach and take off their clothes (except that now they have uniforms—otherwise they play naked or in their underwear).  And they play and argue for an hour and if they can decide on a winner, one team takes the cup home and sing all along the way and ask for money or treats. 

So they just showed up at my house.  (I was glad they had dressed first.)  Being an avid supporter of kids soccer (no matter what the state of dress) I gave them a pound of dates (the good stuff from Saudi.)

In the spirit of hospitality I was invited to climb the cell phone tower near our village. 

I didn’t fall.

This is a picture of the girls cleaning out the cistern.  The town has been without regular water for about 2 weeks now.  We share a tank in our neighbor’s yard that catches water when it comes in at 2 AM.  We use these cisterns to hold water to wash clothes.  The girls cleaned it out, and recently we got a whole bunch of water!  So now we live like kings (i.e. we can flush our toilets again…)

Speaking of toilets, today we got toilet seats!  It is not easy to find toilet seats here, but I drew a picture for a guy in a hardware store and he says, “Hey, I got a whole bunch of those!”  The icing on the cake—it even matched in color!

We have fruit bats that fly around in the day here and eat mangoes and drink coconuts.  The boys happened to know this one down with a slingshot.  After lots of examining it (and offering to give it to us to eat) they got tired of it and threw it up in the air and it flew away.

…the islanders have some different ideas about how they enjoy the turtles.

So after falling off a cliff and sleeping in a gorge, and Lami’s birthday, and a month of visitors we felt we should get some family time away. 

So we drove clear across the island (12 miles) to where the turtles lay their eggs and spent 2 days relaxing and swimming and looking at turtles.

I’ll start this off with some pictures of Boabab trees (this one had a built in seat) and Lami flying her kite (she got it for her birthday.)

On our mini-vacation we found our own version of “Giant’s Causeway”.  Tovah found brittle stars, Lami sat in tidepools and Jen whistled Irish tunes and tried on her Irish accent (you know her).

We got up at midnight to watch the turtles come up onto the beach, dig a nest, and lay their eggs.  The whole process takes about 3 hours.

In the day we watched the little turtles hatch out and make their run to the water amidst the crows and eagles that swoop down to eat them.

Lami’s neighborhood birthday party was a rollicking good time.  Birthday parties are not a new thing here, but they are often only for the rich, and exclusive only to those wealthy enough to be invited (and to bring a gift).  We had some firsts.  We called it “American Style” (to try to escape some of the cultural norms.)  We posted a public announcement that all the kids were invited—that they should not bring gifts but that they should come to play games, eat candy and cake.

The whole neighborhood came out to play and to laugh, and to help.  (Something we have noticed is how much people help us with setting up, taking down, etc. and never expecting anything in return.)

We had the former National Minister of Sport (one of our neighbors) help us officiate relay races (like filling a coke bottle with a spoon) and help kids perfect their form in piñata smashing.  The piñata was definitely a first here.  So was the greatest candy riot this town has ever seen.

(piñata pictures in a separate post.)

Lami’s turned 5!  There were blueberry muffins and presents from Grandma and Grandpa.

So I don’t have great pictures, but here a few to give you some perspective.

One is a waterfall, like the type we hiked around… and the one I fell down.

This is a picture from our night sleeping in the gorge.

And all of us the day we got home.