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Saturday, August 10, 2013

Pets Reunited!


It has been a tragic fortnight in Casa del Crow, as our chickens staged a mass demise, much to our distress! It means that after 5 months of the relative relaxed pecking, they will now be reunited with our dog Jaffie in that fluffy place in the sky, and no doubt be terrorised by her once more! It appears that Bam Bam’s incessant wanderings had consequences, as she brought back a disease that promptly wiped out our happy chicken clan.  We are obviously particularly sad about our favourite sweet Mr Magoo, whose dramatic exit from the world was most upsetting to witness.  Wahhh!
 
R.I.P Mr Magoo, Petra and Bambam

On a brighter note, we had a great week Celebrating Children on a course run by Viva.  This was week 1 of 4 (with a week of teaching scheduled for every month). We learnt about “understanding the child in context” (including the question: “what does God say about children?”... hint: it’s called Celebrating Children, so what do you reckon??) and “listening to children and child participation”.  It looks like it’s going to be an intensive course, and we are currently peering in despair at the large pile of notes and assignments that we have to plow through, but it was really excellent and relevant.  Noah found it very interesting for the most part, but on occasions objected loudly to being made to sit quietly (leading us to learn the phrase: “Awulikika nga kapa effa”, which means “He sounds like a dying cat”). 

The White Eagle Project is a bit of a busier place these days, as we’ve recently welcomed two sweet and cheeky new boys into the Boys' Home.  Despite having a horrible back-story, these resilient little fellows have definitely added an additional spark of life down in the project, and Tim enjoyed playing football with them (whilst Sarah had a slightly less exhilarating task of poking and prodding them as part of their Annual Health Check).
New Synergy Players in the making!
 

Things we’ve learnt the hard way about parenting....
#2: Suppress your delight at your son’s amazing ability to chow down his crushed antimalarial tablet without fuss.  IT WILL NOT LAST!!!

You know you’re in Uganda when....
1.     You get a lengthy lecture from the police about you having followed “improper procedure” when you call them for help in a dire emergency.
2.     You are unable to open the gate to let your guests in for dinner, as you are busy balancing a sofa mid-air, trying to hustle a precocious bat out of the house.
3.     A sound emanates from the kitchen which seems to be a cat screaming – NOPE, turns out it is just a rat so enormous that it is able to free itself from the rat trap that is meant to ensure its instant death, and escape!
So perhaps we have a new pet after all?