September 8th

The last two weeks have been a time of celebrations and farewells.
The first was a farewell from the ladies at the school for the Principal who was leaving and returning to Australia after a period of 4 years.
This was closely followed by a staff farewell a couple of evenings later.


 The students celebrated the finish of their exams and were very excited to be going home for the school holidays. Early on the Thursday morning, a fleet of dula dulas  arrived and students were farewelled and packed in to be taken to their homes.
A dulda dula is usually a Toyota van of varying degrees of age and condition and carry up to 24 people in the back part of the van. They are not very safe and we avoid them. It was quite a sight to see almost 500 students being moved in this way . There was much banging and slamming of the boot door often as it was absolutely jam packed with luggage. By eleven o'clock an unusual quiet descended on the place as the last vehicle departed.
 About two days after they left , the monkeys returned. I looked out the window and there was this monkey just outside sitting at the bottom of a very tall pawpaw tree taking a bite out of a pawpaw. I crept put to get a photo but he was too cunning , picked up the fruit and ran over into the trees. As there were another two pawpaws beginning to ripen, we decided to see if we could pick them. When we finally got them down they both had pieces bitten out as well. The monkeys are very amusing to watch playing but not when pawpaws are involved.


Who has the advantage-man or monkey?

A couple of days before the students left, the results of the drawing competition were announced and the winner of each section was awarded a prize. The library doesn't have any attractive photos or displays so we set up a display of all the entrants work with the limited resources we had. Needless to say sticky tape doesn't adhere to concrete walls very well so we spent a lot of time re -positioning them as they systematically fell off.

Part of the display.
The winning entries



We have also welcomed a new Principal and the founder of the organization this week so all in all it has been a busy time.

This last week work has been progressing on the building and we celebrated   the commencement of making blocks for the two new buildings.(well not with a party,more like a sigh of relief  that it was finally up and running.) There were a few little fine tunings to be done but now production is going full steam ahead and the block layers will start on Monday.


Making the Blocks
The ever growing numbers of blocks.




Tomorrow we are going to celebrate at a traditional wedding in a village somewhere. We thought we knew where it was but found out today it is not there at all and so will be guided by some of the staff. Next installment, I'll tell you all about it.



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