A wedding

A couple months ago my house worker said she was going to get married. When the time came to make the formal announcement she gave us missionaries bon bon or candies instead of the traditional cola nuts, since she knew we wouldn't eat them.

The day of the wedding Elianna, I another lady and her daughter went into the village to help prepare food for the wedding. Elianna showed no fear in going right up to the ladies pounding. They got a good kick out of it as well.
They let her try for a minute.
Eli and another girl also intently watched them butcher a chicken. My friend and I got to cut up eggplant, onions and garlic oh, and yes try to open a large tin can with only a paring knife. We called on one of the Guineans that we know to assist us!

The actual wedding takes place at night.
Pete and I went to the wedding around 8:15 which is what my house worker told us to do. They have all their weddings at night. They hook up a generater, have a d.j. and a soiree/party, it usually lasts all night often till 7am. I really wanted to see the bride come out and this hammock dance that they do. At one point they said there was a hold up because the brides older sister wasn't married yet so she needed to be paid money. Pete left about 10:30 since we had someone watching the kids. I stayed with a couple other missionary ladies till the bride came somewhere after 11. It's amazing to watch these people dance, especially the women, some which you might think can't move like that. They have a group of men with tom tom's or bongo style drums and whistles. The whistles are really annoying!:) I came home right around midnight. It's so interesting to see part of their culture. Kids of all ages up at all hours of the night. A missionary friend said they really do "live at night."

Here the bride is carried in a hammock underneath this canopy by four men. They dance with her like that for quite a while before they put her down.

Nincong King

These are nincongs, I don't really have any idea if there's an English translation... or what language that is! There are a ton of fruits in season right now. The kids love climbing trees to get these and eating them. Aidan would eat as many as we would let him each day.

I think they're a bit on the sour side.

Proudly displaying his loot.

Rain and a roof

There she is the finished roof, all nice and shiny. Now only a few weeks later it has a nice layer of dust/dirt on it.

Notice the darkish looking sky. Low and behold we got a full blown rainstorm on the first day of work. In the middle of dry season no less. It was a very hot day. Someone said they saw 118F on the thermometer. The guys had gotten a lot of work done but weren't finished when it started raining. Another glitch was that one guy had mis-stepped and came through the ceiling in our living room so their was a hole right into our house. We had a bit of water damage and some clean up but nothing too bad. It was worse for the guys working on the roof b/c it was slippery and dangerous.

What we call the front of our house, it's really one of the ends.

The first of the tin going on.

If you can see the black plastic inside the truss area that is what Pete had to put up last year to combat leaks.

You can see how dry the ground is right now. The trees and most plants still have green on them.

The African guys worked on taking the tin off the roof . As payment for their work they got to keep the tin which they resold and make quite a bit of money. Everyone wants a tin roof even if the tin does have holes in it.
One day they took off half the tine and put up new tin on that half. The next day they did the other side. The third day they worked on our porch. Our field has a construction crew, two guys who work with local guys. They do big things like roofs and building of houses and new buildings.

New Roof part one

I wanted to upload the pictures of the guys working on replacing our roof but our internet connection isn't very good right now. I'll try more later.