We've stuck to the 7am wake time for the kids...that gives me a chance to have quiet time etc before the house gets noisy...Roosters start way before that though at around 5am...including our own. Our chooks live in a chicken house - locked away all night to escape 'genet's' - blood sucking wild cats. Similarly the ducks and sheep are locked up too. Darran has acquired all of these animals that they might one day multiply and give us food...for now though they're fertilising the garden, ridding the plants of the humongous slugs here, and keeping the lawn nice and clipped. So in total we have a duck house, chook house, dog house and kid house...hee hee...only kidding about the last, although sometimes it would be nice to...STOP. must stop dreaming now...
Just some of our animals!! The two outside pups here are our little monster Ridgebacks. We're hoping they'll grow up healthy and strong and be good guard and family dogs.
I've gotten stuck into kids schooling now...we've signed up for the curriculum from SIDE which has been interesting...Trying to figure out how to teach three different grades at once is hard work!! I totally admire teachers who do this for a living...although this is me now also!! The first week was terrible but it's now getting better as we get into the swing of things...So school goes from 8:30am - 2pm ish (depending on how well they all apply themselves). We have converted our dinning room into the school room with a nice 'L' shaped school desk that we all sit at. I've decorated the room with nice posters of Phonics, Tell the Time, Class room Rules, Months of the Year etc...it looks like a regular classroom - except with less students!!
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| Michiah's Food Train. |
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| Amber painting a mural of a truck... |
Tahlia learning to balance...
Kia's first attempt at building a city.
Lunch consists of bread sandwiches still...only Vegemite doesn't go too well with this bread as it has humongous amounts of sugar in it. Sigh...we can get 'sugar free' bread in town but that requires a journey of about one hour to a place about 4kms away. There are bitumen roads the whole way once we get off our road, but the traffic is something else to be described in another email.
In the afternoons the kids either play in their huge tree house that Darran's built or we go out to various mother's group, home group, visit friends etc...it's good fun. We've made a nice group of friends here - mainly white people. The difference in culture between us and Tanzanians is amazing...rarely a day goes by we are not asked for money for something. People with deformed body parts bail us up in our cars asking for money for doctors, house helpers ask for money for hospital bills for family, people constantly asking jobs, loans for houses, loans to visit sick family far away...the list is endless and it's exhausting. It's hard to embrace the principle of 'give the shirt off your back' when if you did you'd be left with nothing in a matter of a week. Besides...it doesn't actually help by giving handouts...somehow we have to work with people to teach skills, money management etc...so much to be done and yet so little resources to do so.
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| This is our guard/gardener - Samueli. He's Darran's right hand for outdoor things at home... |
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| This is the alternative way to carrying kids...not one we've embraced!!! Hee hee...he actually got Kia up there too - just amazing. |
Kids are in bed by 7pm so Darran and I crash soon after. We have no TV so there's little to sit in the lounge for...we generally hit the sack around 8pm and read or watch DVD's on our laptop. we've been able to pick up some TV series on the roadside which is fun.
Sleep is interrupted constantly by dogs, beeping horns, crying babies etc. We've managed to block it out, but I fear what it must be like for our guests when they come - we definitely recommend ear plugs!!
That's our average day...lots of details not included of course...they'll come another day...
Erin :-)
loved reading about your day to day stuff. it is soooo much like india with regards to so many things. they do the same rugging up poor babies. i am assuming they don't put nappies on them either? animals maimed and just left to their own devices or teased. that happened a lot in india and even in their zoos, kids poked the animals with sticks!!! i home schooled my three when they were 6, 8 & 9 which is quite similar to yours isn't it? is there a school nearby they can visit. we lived in a compound with a christian school nearby and the kids used to visit the school kids after school each day. when i taught the highschoolers my kids attended class themselves which the indian kids loved. they used to come for sleepovers at my house coz they could have a shower!!! cold water only though. and we had the same problem with being asked for money. and it IS hard to say no all the time. in the end we used to give the beggars biscuits becoz they used to be pimped by handlers who would wait around the corner and take all the money off them anyway. at least if we gave them food they would eat it. are u involved in any of lyndal's aids work or doing any nursing stuff, erin? i am planning to visit india again at the end of the 3rd year and can't wait to get back into the hospital where at least now i will be of some practical use as well. i hated when they would all call out to me coz they assumed i was a dr or nurse coz i was white. i felt so helpless. anyway enough waffle. i envy you, now that my biggest r grown up and some r leaving home. it brought back some really fond memories of when my kids were the same age in india. stay well and God bless, thel
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