a bit more building

Yes, my blog is full of building at the moment, but then we are living in a building site so it's kind of inevitable! Plus I don't even know that much about building in Europe, and seeing how it's done here is interesting!

Here is our (old) bedroom wall before anything was done to it. The thing looking like a door is actually the top of our big desk:



Here is the "after" photo - if you look carefully you can make out some of the butterflies still! Despite looking very different this photo was taken from the same place. A wall has been built to the left, and a doorway now leads into the newly-built room.


Here is the "scaffolding" used to build as the structure got higher:


And here is the finished building ... I say it's our walled garden, but Marc thinks it's a sun room ;o) We are now waiting for the roofer and electrician, who are booked in for next week.

up up up

The building work has had its ups and downs but is progressing fast. A few photos from the last week. The foundations are laid:


Then they begin to prepare to make the floor:


After the concrete floor had gone down:


The walls are now up:


And the holes for the windows are in place:


And they were nearly in the wrong place! I happened to go out to bring the clothes off the line yesterday afternoon, glanced over at what the workmen were doing, and decided to take a closer look. There had been a misunderstanding, and they were putting them in way down at the end of the room, right next to where our built-in cupboards are going to be, and where we wouldn't get any air circulating over our bed! I ran to ask Marc about it, he went out to speak to them, and fortunately since the mortar was still wet they were able to correct it and put them where we wanted them!

Finally, a photo of the cement being mixed - no cement-mixers here except the human kind!

so far so ...

Well, our builders have already managed to ... make lots of bricks:



... dig the foundations of our new room:



... and break the pipe which brings the water from our well to our house, several hours after discovering it, and after we'd congratulated them for not doing so! *sigh*

the wise man built his house upon the rock...

Well, our house is already built, but we are building on an extra bedroom to give us some office/guestroom space, and a wall around more of the misson's property here. This is a bit of a challenge for our skills and courage, as we have never done anything like it before. I'm not quite sure why I'm saying "we", as it is my lovely husband who is taking most of the stress and strain (I'm just back-up!). Not doing the actual building, but at least coordinating the different workers and sorting out the logistics. (And here is his blog post, in French, about it!)

This is the best time of year to build, as there is no rain. But that means that everyone who wants to build is getting ready to do it now, so we needed to get in early to get better prices on the cement ... or even, to get cement at all!

So on Monday we had seventeen and a half tons of cement delivered, in these 50kg sacks ... each carried on someone's head from our gate to our car port. We've hired a night guard to watch over them!



On Tuesday we were supposed to have 7 skip-loads of sand delivered ... but only 2 got here, and today none ... however it seems that this problem is being solved :o) A lorry delivering sand:


Here is the site of our extension before any work:


Here is the beautiful tree we had to have felled today ... I am slightly consoled by thinking that tucked away behind the house no one actually saw it very much.


Here it is on the ground!


And here are bricks for the extension being made by hand:


I got a great video of a brick being made with commentary by Simon ... but if I tried to upload it on this connection you'd be waiting a looooooooong time for it!

flotsam and jetsam

Just a few of the things that have washed up on West Africa's markets and awakened some nostalgia for my homeland...


... the last one being particularly mysterious! On the back, the packet says "packed in the UK", but I can assure you that they were packed by a girl on a Parakou street ... I don't know if she could even read English!

the power of watt?

When we were back in Europe people asked us a lot of questions about our living conditions and about our electricity supply. If you're interested in our slightly complicated electricity supply, read on! If not, I won't be offended if you skip this post!

We have solar panels on our house. So far so good. Despite being ten years old they are functioning well. The batteries, however, which are now coming up for four years old, are as good as dead. This means, logically, that if the sun is up and shining, we have solar power. As soon as the sun sets, or on cloudy days, we don't. (Our reasons for not replacing the batteries will be explained below!)

A second source of electricity is our generator. Since it is noisy and guzzles diesel, we generally only use it for an hour or so in the evening to pump our well water, and to have an hour of electric light while we get the washing-up done and the kids washed. Bought when we moved to the village in February 2009 it very quickly developed a problem with one part which needed replacing. Unfortunately we still haven't been able to find this part in Benin (or through some research we've done in Europe) so our local electrician does a botch job from time to time to keep it going. Recently however the generator had been working less and less well so we had it serviced and the specialist discovered that the capacitor (?) had a fault. It turns out that this might be what wore out the other piece in the first place, so although things aren't perfect, we may have fewer problems in the future.

A future source of electricity will be mains electricity, but it is taking its time! The poles arrived in the village in April 2009. They were erected in October 2010. We got home from Europe in July this year to find cables, though we're not sure the work on the cables is quite finished yet:


The other question is where exactly this electricity will be generated. We've heard that it will probably come in from Togo (or even Ghana), which means it has to come a good distance before it reaches us. So although the poles and cables are in place near us, until they have also been installed between the border with Togo and our nearest town, there won't be much power coming through them. And we also need to find out just how much they will try to charge us to get hooked up (in neighbouring countries some organisations have been charged astronomical amounts and we may need to negotiate!).

So anyway, with the promise of mains electricity at some point in the future, we aren't sure it is worth investing £1000 or so in new batteries for our solar power system, and going through all the hassle of finding where we can order them from, getting them shipped/flown in, and trying to pay customs taxes (apparently we oughtn't to have to pay customs taxes because it's for our personal use, but we might have to spend a while arguing our case!).

We do have enough electricity to charge up our computers and phones, run the “knead-and-rise” cycle of our bread machine, keep our fridge going for 7 hours a day (so we don't bother trying to freeze anything), and to put the boys' fan on during their afternoon sleep. We don't have lights in the evening (except battery-powered ones or candles) or fans at night (hard during hot season!) and we do have to be thinking all the time about what to charge up when so that, for example, I have enough battery in my computer for the first couple of hours of work in the morning.

More electricity would make it easier to work in the evenings (your body and brain tend to think it's the middle of the night when you're in the dark, even if your computer's working), would keep us cooler and help us to sleep better at night, and would give us a properly working fridge and freezer. Obviously once mains electricity is here it won't be perfect, but we will always have solar and the generator, and be able to juggle between whatever works best/is cheaper!

This is absolutely not meant to be a post to make anyone sorry for us. You get used to functioning differently, and I am finding the lack of light in the evenings easier to deal with than I was at the beginning of the year. And the only thing we're asking for is prayer that the mains electricity will arrive soon, and that we won't have to pay too much to get connected! Maybe you could put a reminder to pray for us on the light switch you use the most often :o)

team news

The translation team has not been getting far with Exodus this month, mainly due to me being away for our annual conference, our trip to Cotonou and soon a few more days away to take our friend Judith back to Cotonou and get the car fixed in Parakou. The pastor and Philémon are carrying on with their individual translations, and when I have been here we've been plodding on through the description of the tabernacle.

Sometimes it really does feel hard, when you can't even be sure what the Hebrew means, but I am a stickler for consistency. So even if we aren't 100% sure what an object is, I like us to at least choose a word for it and stick with that. Sometimes it means pulling a sentence apart and then struggling to put it back together again, but it's a good brain-teasing exercise and there is some satisfaction in coming up with something we're all happy with.

Work is also disrupted by things you wouldn't have to contend with in Europe, like snake tracks being found in our compound and a search party being launched (no luck), or cows having got into Philémon's cotton fields (he has had to leave work today to go and sort that out). But of course we don't have other more “northern” problems, like snow making transport difficult!

conference and cotonou

We have had a busy last ten days. After the “Women's Day” service at church on the 6th we drove down to Parakou. This gave us all day Monday in Parakou before our conference meetings started in the evening, which meant we started the conference fresher than we might have. It had the added, and un-planned, benefit that Simon hung out with the kids' worker as she was setting up her stuff, and came round to the idea of going to the kids' activities!

Conference was good. The teaching on Romans 12 challenged me, in ways that confirmed things God has been teaching me lately about total trust in Him and acceptance of my limits and His infiniteness. Time spent with others was a blessing, and easier now that the boys are a bit older. Simon had a few wobbles but generally got on well at the kids' club, and on the last day of the conference even took his lunch off to eat with the other boys! Benjy decided to stick to me more than usual, but that may be a reaction to our new routine at home involving me leaving him for the mornings – he decided that even if being in our meetings meant being still and quiet, it was worth it to have some “Mummy Time”, and since he was so good I was still able to concentrate.

I do love our church here in the village, but it was a refreshing change to be able to worship in English and French! We were privileged to have a speaker and worship leaders come down from SIM Niger to serve us for the week, and our family also enjoyed getting to know them better over breakfasts in the Guesthouse (the other families were staying elsewhere).

One highlight of this conference for me was a Ladies Afternoon Tea I helped out with. A church in the States had very kindly sent over bookmarks and cards of encouragement, and also presents for us all! We played a game called Chinese Christmas which does involve some rather un-biblical behaviour (it can involve “stealing” someone else's presents – though our conference speaker had encouraged us to “appreciate” other people's gifts … probably not what he was thinking of!). It was fun though, as was the game which ended up with “stacks” of ladies sitting on each other's laps – very close fellowship at this Spiritual Life Conference!! And of course we enjoyed our tea and sweet treats too!

After Conference we didn't have much time to be sad that it was over, as we headed down to Cotonou to pick up a friend, Judith, who is staying for a couple of weeks. We also wanted to collect our residency cards. I managed to, but Marc's wasn't yet ready. At least this means the whole family won't have to travel down again for this reason, he'll go down on his own.

The dry harmattan wind is now blowing from the North here at home, and we haven't seen rain for weeks, so it was a surprise when we approached Cotonou to see this:


By the time we got into the city the rain was pouring down. It had taken people by surprise, and we saw lots of “abandoned” motorbikes by the side of the road, with their riders sheltering under buildings.


The roads are getting better in some places, where work is being done, and deteriorating in others. The long journey back from Cotonou to Parakou seemed endless … and then on our journey from Parakou to the village, the next day, our exhaust pipe dropped off! We were on a temporary road avoiding roadworks, ploughing through very fine sand. We heard a loud bang, the car shook, and Marc hurriedly stopped it. At first I thought maybe we'd lost our back wheels or something, the impact seemed so great … it was a relief when we realised that we could still drive the rest of the way home (albeit very noisily!!). The exhaust pipe was bent in two, so Marc shifted it to the edge of the road and left it there. A mechanic in Kandi is going to convert another exhaust pipe to fit our car, so we should soon be back on the roads a little more quietly!

wildlife of West Africa

Sorry, no elephants or camels, though elephants were seen just down the road from us last weekend, so maybe we'll get lucky one day! First of all, one of our huge rainy season snails. I was concerned its shell was about to fall off, but it seems this was normal:


Next two photos of frogs/toads (I'm no expert) which are lurking near our back door at the moment:



And finally, a baby bat we found which I assume had fallen from a nest (?) in our roof:


And yes, I am enjoying having a camera which can capture real close-ups!

fighting through a linguistic jungle!

Sometimes I feel rather overwhelmed by the task we have of rendering the Hebrew Bible in the Monkolé language in a way which is faithful to the original text and yet as far as possible understandable to a Monkolé reader (or listener). Fortunately I am not working alone! I have my Monkolé team mates and some very good resources on my computer.

Just recently, as I was working on Exodus 23:24, I read about the Israelites being instructed to break down the “pillars” or, in another translation, “sacred pillars” of the Canaanite people. This had been translated in Monkolé as “push over the stones they have put in place”. My first question was to know what these “pillars” represented, and here my Logos resources came in extremely helpful. I searched for the term “pillars”, which brought up more than 4,000 examples. I scrolled down, found “The Archaeological Encyclopaedia of the Holy Land”, and opened up the different instances of the word there. It gave me the Hebrew word massebah and an explanation of how these pillars were set up and used by the different Canaanite peoples in their cultic practices. Since it said they were stones (not the highly polished columns I tend to think of when I hear the word “pillars”) I supposed that the word “stones” would be fine in Monkolé, but my second question was to know whether a Monkolé hearing the sentence “push over the stones they have put in place” would realise it had religious overtones, and there I can only rely on my co-workers' mother tongue knowledge! We had quite a lengthy discussion about this, but finally agreed with the youngest member of the team that since the instruction is placed with other prohibitions of idol worship, it should be clear to your average reader that these were no ordinary stones.

I am not translating into English, so this is by the by, but if I were, I wonder if it wouldn't be possible to translate massebah by “standing stones”. The photo in the AEHL looked more like a standing stone, and I would automatically associate “standing stones” with some kind of religious practices, which is not the case with “pillars”.

Another example, which reminded us not to translate on automatic pilot, was Exodus 4:6 which says that Moses' hand became leprous and “like snow”. Where the Bible describes things as being “white like snow”, we translate “white like cotton”. Fortunately the commentary I'm reading pointed out that this verse doesn't say “white”, and that quite probably it means “flaky like snow”. We were able to find a Monkolé word which means “flaky” and have avoided introducing cotton into a context where it wasn't relevant!

oh, for a thousand tongues...

Most of us Westerners were brought up in mono-lingual families, and we tend to forget that many people in the world grow up being familiar with two or more languages. When the four of us were back in Europe, people were often fascinated by our boys' bilingualism. That didn't bother us at all, except Simon who insisted that he actually spoke three languages, but when we're out here in Benin we're just like everyone else who speaks two or more languages on a day-to-day basis. Esther, who worked for us in Parakou, speaks at least 6 languages relatively fluently, and has even been picking up some Monkolé from us!

As the name of my blog says, I like to think we are at least try-lingual! Our Monkolé is getting better, though we still have bad days where it feels like the language is an express train speeding through the station where we're waiting, and we have no hope of catching onto it!

As a family, we're used to being bilingual by now. Simon never speaks anything but English to me, or French to Marc, except as a joke. Benjy still mixes the two, but is beginning to separate them out and speak more English to me and more French to Marc. If I say to him, “What do you say to Papa?” (when Marc has given him something) he will say, “Merci, Papa!” and vice versa.

We are very OPOL – One Person One Language – which leads to funny conversations sometimes. We parents don't always register which language is being spoken, but Simon is very indignant if one of us answers when he is speaking to the other parent. So the conversation can go:

Simon: Tu peux m'aider, s'il te plaît?
Me: Yes, hold on a moment, I'm just coming!
Simon: I was talking to Papa!!

This also means that it is difficult for Simon to address us both at once, not that this particularly seems to cause him problems. I was amused once in the car when Marc and I had just been singing something, and Simon said, “Tu peux encore le chanter s'il te plaît and you can sing it again, please?” I noticed once recently though, that he started a sentence, “Mummy? Papa?” and then carried on in English when he wanted to say something to us both. He knows we both understand both languages!

That said, I usually speak to Marc in French, and if I say anything to him in English, Simon is likely to ask, “Mummy, why are you speaking to Papa in English?”

For a while I had hoped that Marc and I might be able to speak to each other in Monkolé if we wanted to keep things secret from the boys (who do know some Monkolé, but not as much as we do). For a long time though we found we just didn't understand each other, which was rather discouraging (not to mention a waste of time!). This week I decided to try again. Simon had had a bit of a temperature, had taken some paracetemol and half an hour later got up from the sofa and came to the lunch table to eat some chicken. I asked him if he was feeling better and he said no. Watching him tuck into his chicken I said to Marc in Monkolé, “Despite what he says, he's feeling better!” and Simon replied in English, “No, I'm not feeling better!” … so I guess his Monkolé is improving, and that parental strategy is a dead loss!

We aren't sure how fluent Simon will become in Monkolé, particularly now that he is spending mornings at school in French and therefore has less contact with Monkolé-speakers. His best friend, Benja, has completed a year of school and now only wants to speak to him in French – which does at least mean they can communicate better than before! We'd like Simon to understand Monkolé simply to avoid church being meaningless and boring, but we just don't know to what extent that is going to happen.

People in the village used to laugh at Simon because whenever they tried to speak to him in Monkolé he would just reply “Aawo!” (which means “no!”). However, now he's picked up a bit more, he will reply more sensibly to their questions … and that just makes them laugh even more, to hear a little white boy speaking their language. So it's a bit of a lose-lose situation for him!

Benjy is looked after the pastor's wife while I'm at work in the mornings, and she only speaks to him in Monkolé. I'm a little unsure if this is the best way to do things when it comes to disciplining him, but then it isn't as if he understands French or English when he doesn't want to! At any rate, it does mean that he has more of a chance of ending up fluent in Monkolé, and will probably end up cringing at his parents' accents and messing-up of tones. We'll see...

Well, it is hard to find a photo illustrating bilingualism, so I won't even try! Instead, here I am with my two lovely bilingual boys:

fun with the translation team

I said I would post about translation work, and I have been so busy with the new work routine that I haven't got round to it yet. Marc and I are both finding it rewarding to at last get our teeth into the work which we came here to do. Yes, language and culture learning is essential, and ours has been an enriching time, but it can be very frustrating and the rewards are not instant or constant! We are also aware that although we aren't doing it full-time any more, we still have a lot of room for improvement. So on Wednesday mornings we are still reserving 2 hours for language work (plus time spent in the village hearing it around us).

Marc is getting on with preparation for Dry Season Bible School in March (a month of Bible teaching), and also some sessions to train the church youth leaders.

And I'm working with the translation team at last! During September that meant just Pastor Samuel and me, and we soon got into a good routine. He is working on a rough translation of Isaiah, working from 3 different French translations, and together we are revising Exodus. So while I'm reading ahead in Exodus, or in the afternoons when I'm not at work, he's been getting on with Isaiah, and then some of the time we've started to read through Exodus together. My task is to look at what the Hebrew says – and while I have learnt some Hebrew I have to admit I am well-aided by software which gives me a grammatical breakdown and thesaurus notes on the Hebrew – and to compare it with the Monkolé. Then we go through with me saying, “Is there any way we could say it more like this in Monkolé?” and either he says, no it isn't possible, or else we manage to find an alternative which is closer to the Hebrew while still sounding like Monkolé. It's a pity we don't have anyone who has good enough Hebrew and Monkolé to go straight from the Hebrew to the Monkolé, but we don't, so we have to work this way.

A big answer to prayer is that we have a new member of the translation team who started this month. His name is Philémon, he's about 27 years old, and he's a farmer. He is one of our church elders and sings in the church choir (he writes songs too). He's active in the church youth group and also serves on the national church youth committee.

Philémon started work last week, and it seems to be going well so far, though I'm not sure it's easy to sit at a desk all day and think hard when you're used to being out in the fields doing very physical work. He is going to re-take his BEPC (primary school certificate) this year, and from next week will have evening classes every weekday night and Saturday mornings too. So he'll have a lot on his plate!

I wasn't feeling entirely confident about Philémon starting work, and needing supervision, when I've only been working with the team for the last month. It didn't help that the pastor had to take the first two days of the week off, so I had to get Philémon started myself, and as I only work on translation in the mornings, he was on his own for his first two afternoons. I left him plenty of work to be getting on with, but still!

As a linguist, it is very interesting to see the kind of questions we run into when translating the Bible into Monkolé. For example, the Monkolé people believe that there is one God who created the earth, but they would pray to local spirits rather than God. So the idea of idols, as presented in the Bible, isn't hard for them to grasp. The idea, however, that there are “other gods” as also mentioned in the Bible, even if they are “false gods” is very difficult. Sometimes it's possible to translate it as “idols”, but sometimes that just doesn't work.

Another difficulty stemming from this, is the fact that the Bible often speaks of God as “the God of Israel” or “your God”. If it isn't possible to have other gods, this seems strange – and in fact isn't grammatically possible. I was trying to think of a parallel in English, and the closest I can come up with is the air. The air is everywhere, and we can't talk about “my air” (except perhaps in a very figurative sense). You couldn't talk about people having “another air”, either (though you might say that the air is very different in Benin compared to Europe – that's where my parallel breaks down!).

I'm sure that as time goes on I'll be able to share other interesting examples of translation challenges!

I have noticed my spoken Monkolé improving simply because I'm having to use it in a situation where I'm not thinking so much about the words as about the overall meaning. It is hard work and sometimes very frustrating, but I haven't had to resort to French too often. My Hebrew reading is improving too, having been rather rusty when I got back to it, but again, using it regularly is polishing it up nicely!

I am thankful for the team we have. It is early days yet, but I think we are going to work well together and find that our strengths complement each other. I am also grateful that Grace, my predecessor, uses email and has been able to answer many of my questions about Monkolé grammar and such matters.

mutilated in translation

Marc bought something in Kandi last week which had the following label (the only other language on it was Chinese). I think this is supposed to be English ... and can you guess what object it is referring to?!

first corn

The first corn of the year is ready for eating chez les Deneufs! Everyone welcome!

rainy season sunday

(written Sept 18th)

Today was a fairly typical rainy season day, at least in terms of weather! Around 7.15am the rain started – I was in our room with no noise, and heard it approaching, a low rustle gradually growing louder as it raced across the field, leapt over our wall and began to rap on our roof. We ate breakfast in a sort of half-light. I hate rainy Sunday mornings, as we never quite know when church will start. There have been times when we've turned up on time to find no one … and then the last time when we waited for the rain to stop and went late … only to find ourselves walking into a packed church! I sit at the front (the only place where I can put my folding chair – better for my back than a backless bench) so it is pretty obvious if I get there late. Since it had stopped by our usual time to go, we went then and found the church as full as it usually is when we arrive … phew!

The service was led by someone who had never led the service before, and he did very well. Discussing the sermon afterwards, however, Marc and I realised we'd had the same problem – we seemed to understand the individual words said, but found it hard to put that together into something that made sense! It didn't help that we'd found the Bible passage hard to understand, and weren't sure the sermon was exactly based on it! But during a time of prayer I was encouraged to hear one of the church elders saying how important it is to pray for our Bible translation, particularly that we won't be slowed down by illness or anything else. Very relevant since the pastor wasn't able to come to work (as a translator) for four days last week because of bronchitis.

We came home after church and were soon joined by three boys who'd come to play with our boys and/or their toys. We sent them home at lunchtime, and others arrived in the afternoon! Sometimes I feel like we're running a day-care centre.

Marc is the one who usually goes to Bible study in the afternoons, but I have been saying I should make the effort to go, and so off I went this afternoon, unsure if it would actually be happening since the pastor had been ill last week. When I saw about fifteen men sitting under the tree outside the church I knew that meant it wasn't on, but since I knew them all I went and greeted and checked that yes indeed it wasn't happening. So I went and took a photo of the corn growing inside the new (unfinished!) church building and then went to my favourite place for sitting with women, under a mango tree near the pump.

The friend I know best wasn't there, but the women who were there greeted me, and I explained why I was there and said I was “wandering about”. That made them laugh in a nice way, because I'd said something the way they would, which they didn't expect me to (if you see what I mean!). They invited me to sit down with them and I ended up staying for a couple of hours. It was a pleasant temperature (30°C-ish in the shade, with a slight breeze some of the time) with sunshine, blue skies and just a few white clouds to make the sky more interesting.

I realised that I have come on from when I first used to go down to the village, where I understood about 10% of what was said, and felt very removed from everything. Now I am far from understanding everything, but when the women talk amongst themselves I can tell more or less what they're talking about (and get some of the details), and if they talk to me I can get by (as long as I'm honest when I don't understand, so that they will repeat it!). We had some good chats about liking okra (or not), what is a good number of children to have, an old injury of one of the women which still hurts, whether my boys understand Monkolé and so on.

I think I do still prefer harmattan (beginning of dry season, before the heat really kicks in) to rainy season, but I do like days like today. Actually, rainy season isn't so bad now that I am better at remembering to put on insect repellent, and now that we don't have nappies to wash – and dry!


The blue blue sky as I walked into the village:



The corn in the new church building – one way to bring in more funds for the church!

Kandi-Fô camp

Today we visited the Monkolé churches' children's camp. It is being held in a village called Kandi-Fô, about 15 minutes drive from our village. They are holding it in the school there – school doesn't start until October – and we thought it would be good to go over and see how it was going. We had a few blow-up footballs to give them, which we'd been given by a friend in England, and it was nice to come bearing gifts! Just after we arrived they rounded up all the kids:


And then we went into one of the classrooms with one of the groups to hear their lesson:


It was encouraging to realise just how well I could follow the story and questions, and also to feel that we weren't just visiting a camp as we've visited others, but these were our churches (and our language!).

school at home - almost!

Simon is now old enough to begin school. Actually, according to French law, he wouldn't have to start school until next September, but since we are going to be homeschooling we thought it might be a good idea to get the hang of things in a year where it “doesn't matter”!

We decided a few months ago that it would be Marc who would do the majority of the homeschooling. We had decided a long time ago that we would follow the French school system, mainly because they have a distance learning scheme which goes from Reception class onwards and which is subsidized for French people living abroad. It therefore makes more sense for it to be Marc teaching it, and that fitted in with our idea that our priority is to complete the translation of the Bible into Monkolé.

So since Thursday 1st September we have had a new routine. On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday mornings at 8.30am, Marc and Simon head off to the small house on our mission property for school. One of the bedrooms has been converted into a classroom … and since it was originally converted from being a translation office it actually still has a blackboard on the wall! (Funny how God provides!) At the same time, Benjy and I go to the (new) translation office, the third building on the property. The pastor meets us there, and all being well not long afterwards his wife turns up to work in our house and takes Benjy with her. (I will be writing another post soon about the translation work!)

At 10.30am we all meet up for our coffee/tea/squash break at our house, and at 11 go back to work. Marc and Simon finish at 11.30 and I continue working with the pastor until 12.30. At that point I go back to the house where I find the meal that has been sent up from the village ready and waiting to be served! A lady down in the village is cooking for us every weekday lunchtime, and so far it has been delicious! The only problem is that the quantities are enormous, and have been sufficient for both midday and evening meals … we will be putting on weight if it goes on like this!

On Wednesdays we follow French tradition and Simon doesn't have school. This gives his parents a chance to have a language learning session with the pastor (I then carry on with translation after break). We realise that we still have progress to make with the language, and need to plan in time to do this.

So far, Simon has been loving school, and is very conscientious about his work. The distance learning scheme hasn't turned up yet, however, either because it is taking an awfully long time to get here (most things are taking about 6 weeks from Europe at the moment) or because it has got lost. We are praying that it won't take too long to arrive. For the moment Marc has plenty to occupy Simon as he has a lot of books which either his family have sent to us, or we've bought in Cotonou, but in years to come we hope we won't be starting the school year a month late just because we haven't received the resources!

As for Benjy, he did seem a little unsettled by the changes the first couple of days, and wanted to stay in the translation office with me instead of going with the pastor's wife. I had brought some toy cars and colouring books to the translation office with us. But then he realised that his friends were playing over in his house without him, and that actually he might have more fun over there!

I'm going to do some English school some afternoons with both boys, but am waiting until we get used to our mornings before structuring our afternoons more. It is going to be a challenge to find some things which will interest them both, and other things where I can supervise them separately at different levels. But I am looking forward to it! Marc is using his afternoons to prepare teaching for the church.

Simon and his teacher!


Benjy in his little corner of the translation office:

growth!

Since I posted the following photo, taken on July 15th, I have realised I was wrong to assume this field had peanuts in it again this year.



Now it is plain to see that it is full of corn, and I find it amazing how it can grow this much in just a month and a half!


Simon's corn is also doing well, seen here on our rainy day yesterday:



And here is a photo taken the day before, of a rain cloud over neighbours a few miles away! (To the naked eye you could actually see the rain pouring out of it, but unfortunately it didn't come out on camera - obviously too shy!)

out with the old, in with the new

Every parent knows that once a child has adopted a favourite toy or softy, there is no replacing it, and a crisis of international proportions looms if that particular friend goes missing. Simon has had the same softy (in French, "doudou") since he was about 6 months old, and Benjy similarly adopted one when he was about the same age. Simon's, called Little Prince, has been confined to his bed since Simon's third birthday, and only comes out if we are travelling. So far he's never gone missing for more than 15 minutes or so. He has got grubby at times, but washes well, and has come out of his first four and a half years looking pretty good.

Benjy's softy is called Bengy (yes, it's confusing, but that is what it says on his label) and he has spent more of his life on African floors than Little Prince. Thanks to some foolish parental behaviour he also ended up with some large holes ... and thanks to Benjy's gnawing teeth many little ones.

Then came the day when the (admittedly filthy) Bengy got thrown into a basin of water at 6pm by Benjy's "helpful" older brother who thought he would "clean" Bengy. Very unhappy Mummy, as I do prefer softies to be dry when they are taken to bed, especially during rainy season when they can smell very mouldy! So I decided that Bengy couldn't get any wetter, so I would give him a proper clean, and just to buy myself some time brought an alternate softy out of the cupboard, one rejected by Benjy many months ago. He also has "Bengy" on his label, so I said, "Look, Benjy! New Bengy!"

And Benjy adopted him and hasn't spoken of old Bengy since. Now Benjy isn't stupid, and new Bengy is quite obviously different from old Bengy, so I can only assume that Benjy was a bit tired of old Bengy's damp smell and head coming loose, and decided to quit while he was ahead. ("Ahead" in this case being "in possession of a clean, sweet-smelling and actually soft softy"!)

And here they are, old Bengy after being washed and just before retirement:


New Bengy:


And here is Simon with the Little Prince in his hand, at 5 months old!


And again when he was nearly 3:

the big city (or "and our nomadic lifestyle continues...")

We were down in Cotonou last week to apply for our new residency cards. Hopefully these will be 3-year ones, as we have to both apply in person and pick them up in person, and with Cotonou being a two-day journey from home, that's a lot of time on the road!

I took this photo of Cotonou. Probably not one that they'll be using for their next tourist brochure, but it does show all the cranes working on the new port extension.


It is already an extremely important West African port, bringing goods in for Benin but also for the landlocked countries beyond - Niger, Burkina Faso and even Mali. And anything going to Niger comes up the road in front of our house, on the back of lorries. No wonder the road deterioates so fast! And unfortunately the lorries don't always last long either - this is not an uncommon sight when we are travelling:


The long journey down isn't much fun, especially the Parakou-Cotonou day, which includes about six and a half hours of driving. So we try to enjoy ourselves when we are in Cotonou, getting some shopping done and treating ourselves to meals out, for example this restaurant on the beach: