Friday, August 14, 2015

Friday Afternoon turns into an Adventure!

There are three missionary families here in Mbala.  On Friday afternoons we ladies get together for tea or coffee and let the kids play.   As I drove down the farm lane we came upon these purple flowers.

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In one of my last posts I talked about thanking God for the color purple in the dry season.  We haven’t had rain that amounted to anything since April.  I don’t know if you can see the black ground in this picture.  All over Zamia they are burning the bush and fields.  I think this area was just burned two weeks ago.  And yet these purple flowers are blooming – giving the black ground some color.

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We drove further down their lane and found this.  They don’t want their land burned!  They have 30 cows then need to eat what little grass they can find.  But it has been burnt thanks to an unknown somebody.

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Here is a better picture of the lane with the burnt bush on either side.

And then we had an adventure!!!  The man who takes care of the cows came to say one is stuck in a mud whole.  My first thought it it is the dry season, where is their mud!!  But, I forgot they have several dambos (big swampy area) around them. 

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The mud hole was to the right of this picture.  The rope they were using broke and so they climbed in and pushed the cow out.  The men were conveniently gone.  My friend was a city girl!  I the farm girl spent way too much time not wanting to get muddy to get there in time to be much help. 

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

Hauling Grass

Our insaka needs a new grass roof.  A lady in Zambe collected grass for us.  Our Land Cruiser hauled it home.

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Monday, August 3, 2015

Hauling Chickens

Sometimes we haul interesting things on top of our Land Cruisers!  Here our team leader is taking I think 60 or 80 chickens home.

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Saturday, August 1, 2015

Thankful for the Jacaranda Trees

We are smack in the middle of our dry season.  Brown is the color of this season.  Some of the trees and bushes have green leaves, but they are coated in brown dust.  It looks like everything could use a good rain storm to wash it off.

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This is the very back of our lot.  During the rainy season it does grow a little bit of grass and weeds.  It has too many trees and is too shady to grow much.  But this is what it looks like this time of year – brown. 

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April showers bring May Flowers!!  In the spring, the rain starts falling in the states and the flowers start blooming.  Here in July without no hint of rain the Jacaranda Trees start to bloom.  We have two of these trees.  One blooms in July and the other at the end of August.

This week I have been thanking God for creating the Jacaranda Tree and for the color purple.  I really don’t like the colors of the dry season.  I love the greens of the rainy season.  God created this beautiful tree to bloom in the middle of the dry season.  The picture doesn’t do it justice, but the purple blooms in the brown dirt are lovely to look at.  I am glad He created purple to add to the brown dirt and make it beautiful.