Smothers' Soliloquy: The day we weren’t woken up by a donkey or children.

Sunday

I awoke to glitter surrounding my pillow. I vaguely remembered being promised a bonfire last night, but we all fell asleep before that happened. Which was probably more necessary.

I felt incredibly well rested and remember praising the Lord for soft pillows and a large king-sized bed.

And for no donkeys at Tunza.

I looked at my clock, since I was the first person up. I love waking up and then realizing it’s not time to wake up and then getting to go back to sleep.

I decided since it was 10:30, I should get up for the day. I got dressed and left Julia and Stephanie a note. I took my camera and went for a walk on the beach.

[beach in the morning]

I stopped by the bar for some coffee. I specifically asked for non-instant coffee and the man looked at me like I was crazy and walked me to the coffee bar. He heated up the water, and I mixed myself instant coffee. At least they had sugar and drinking chocolate and cold milk to add to it.

I can’t wait to drink real coffee on a consistent basis.

………………………………………………………

[The rain that almost spoiled our beach party]

[tree house climbing!]

Beach party. With our new friends and Dr. Laura. She’s not really a doctor, she’s actually a PA spending a year abroad doing medical mission work, because she was tired of living in New York and working in Neurosurgery and she wanted a change. She was working in Sudan for the first six months before the violence got bad and they evacuated her, so now she’s just traveling around East Africa. Stephanie’s got lots of crazy stories about Dr. Laura because she spent the night out on the farm at Buhongwa last weekend before we got out to the farm. She’s quite the character, but she earned the nickname Dr. and I guess I have too.

[Dr. Laura, Major, Jacques, and Julia. Notice the slip and slide behind them]

We finally left Tunza because our bus driver arrived 3 hours after we called him. Which wasn’t bad, I guess considering, it’s an hour drive to Tunza from JBFC and Jacques offered to buy us all drinks.

[Swarms of bugs]

On the way home Cha Cha (the snake killer) bought us some corn that was cooked over coals. It was delicious.

[eating roadside corn that tasted like popcorn]

[Sprite, Desani, Coke, Pepsi, and Fanta are all over the place here]

I love that there are rocks all along the side of the road that look like they would have fallen from a huge mountain, but there aren’t any huge mountains here. Chris said some geologist came one time and told him that there used to be huge mountains here before the Earth’s plates shifted and now there are no mountains.

Which I take to be true because the “We all went on Safari” Tanzania book said there used to be volcanoes here bigger than Mount Kilimanjaro but they fell down and now there are craters.