settlers

And here we are, settling into our new home in Pèdè (North Benin). So far, so good! We are being well looked-after by Grace, a Canadian missionary who has lived here for years (but will retire in May), and the pastor and his family. It does help when you already have friends around!

I do occasionally have a moment of feeling tired of moving and starting all over again – after our fourth major move in two and a half years. But then I remind myself that – God willing – this should be the last move for some years, and that this time I can enjoy decorating the house the way I want it, and get to know people with the perspective that these can be daily friendships that will last!

Life here is different again from life in Parakou. Our water is pumped out of our well into a huge plastic storage tank on the roof. Some of it then goes into a solar water heater (basically pipes heated by the sun), giving us lovely warm water for our evening showers. The rest is piped into the house, and some of that we put through a sand filter then a Katadyn filter for drinking water. It is hard to convince our boys that the water coming out of our taps is not for drinking!

Our electricity is provided by solar panels on our roof. We are being eased in gently, since Harmattan is the best season for solar power – plenty of sun during the daylight hours and then cool nights which mean the fridge doesn't use too much power overnight. We were hoping to use a borrowed kerosene fridge during hot season, but it is proving hard to get it working properly. Marc has some tiny solar panels my Grandpa gave him which are powerful enough to charge our mobile phones! We try to make sure we remember to charge the laptop, and run the bread machine or the food mixer, in the middle of the day, when we have plenty of power.

Having had to get used to a limited range of food products available when we arrived in Parakou, now it's time to get used to having even fewer things on sale! The only Western-style cheese we can get is “La vache qui rit” (soft spreading cheese), and fresh fruit and vegetables are scarce, as it's hotter and drier here than in Parakou. I did manage to buy onions, tomatoes, okra, cabbage, carrots, bananas and oranges, so that's better than nothing! And I have some vegetables I canned in Parakou, and some fruit I dried there too.

I make my own granola, yoghurt and bread (Grace is selling us her bread machine) and if we want cake or biscuits I have to make them too. Almost all meals have to be made from scratch. Fortunately I enjoy spending time in the kitchen! (And it's a good thing we like the taste of “scratch” - haha!)

We have help with the housework, as we did in Parakou. The pastor's wife worked for Grace when Grace was living in this house and she is now working three days a week for us and two days a week for Grace in the smaller house Grace has now. She comes highly recommended by Grace! We have also taken on a younger girl to do the clothes- and nappy-washing, since we have such a lot and it all has to be done by hand. I did find it a bit strange when we arrived in Parakou to have people working for us, but it helps us enormously, and the provision of jobs is useful for the local economy. The side benefit is that it means we get to know some of our neighbours very well. Esther, who cleaned for us in Parakou, became a good friend. Here it is also good to hear Monkolé spoken and to be forced to use our own Monkolé, limited though it is!

Our house:

the day before...

Today had the potential to be stressful. The day before moving day always does, but when your contact for getting a taxi to transport your stuff announces at 9.45 that the taxi you thought was coming tomorrow is turning up today ... anytime from 10 onwards ... well, it is a bit of a surprise, to put it mildly! After the initial shock, I realised that actually we'd managed to be so well-organised (praise God!) that we just about had enough stuff to fill a taxi, so I just threw some more things into a couple of crates and a suitcase, and by the time the taxi eventually arrived at 11 they had plenty.

Here is the taxi getting loaded up...

It actually worked out really well, as all that stuff was out from under our feet, and our friend Abraham who went up to the village with the taxi will be able to get back tomorrow morning and go back up again with tomorrow's taxi (just taking a few last boxes which won't fit in our car). Our bulky stuff left this afternoon on a lorry transporting cement from Lomé (Togo) to somewhere in Niger. We're just hoping no one will tomorrow be getting too excited about what "came off the back of a lorry"! The photo below shows the lorry - though they were going to cover our stuff up with tarpaulin so it wouldn't be quite so obvious!

We have also been very well-looked after, with one or other of our neighbours giving us lunch and tea today, and breakfast tomorrow! Plus another missionary has invited us to lunch en-route tomorrow, and our co-worker up in the village has promised us our evening meal! We do feel very blessed and carried - many thanks to all those praying, too!

moving on ... again!

We are getting ready to move in a week's time. So there isn't anything very interesting to report. It is like moving anywhere - boxes and chaos all over the place. We are, however, wrestling with some questions we wouldn't have if we were moving house in Europe. There are no removal men (as such), and you certainly can't pop online and book a drive-your-own van with Hertz or Avis. Fortunately we don't have a lot of furniture to move - we are buying up quite a few things that were already in the house - but we do have a few awkward things like a 2m long desk and our double bed and mattress. It looks as if we will just use two taxis and our car ... but I'm not sure that will give us enough space, despite the ability of these taxi drivers to get an awful lot in and on their taxis (I'll try to remember to take photos on moving day!).

Marc has been busy converting mobile phone chargers into transformers for our 12 V fans. An ingenious idea of our neighbour's to avoid having to install a 12 V circuit in the house. Marc did find it a little difficult to explain to the person selling the chargers that he didn't care which brand of phone they were for, it was only the voltage they produce that interested him!

happy birthday, Benjy!

Now:

And then:

colour blind

Until today, during these first eight months here in Africa, Simon had never mentioned skin colour nor given any indication that he realised his skin wasn't the same colour as most other people's. Then today at lunchtime, he was talking and laughing with our friend Abraham, and suddenly stopped and looked at him again, turned to me and said, "Oh! He's black! He's not like us. Why?" I gave a brief, three-year-old-friendly explanation of skin pigment and sun protection, and that satisfied him. I'm sure the subject will come back, probably when he realises that it's his skin colour (and not just his cuteness and good looks) which gains him so much attention from strangers here.

january doesn't bring the snow ... but other changes are ahead!

The holidays are over and it's back to life as usual … except that we haven't found out what that is yet! The month of January is actually going to be a month of preparation for our move to the Monkolé village of Pèdè. It has been good to live in the large town of Parakou as we adjust to life in Benin, and it has given us the chance to get to know the other missionaries here. We have also very much enjoyed the house we have had in Parakou, as it is big, light and airy. It was a blessing to be able to start to learn the Monkolé language during our time here, but even that will be easier once we're living in the community where it's spoken.

The missionary currently living in the big house in Pèdè is going to retire back to Canada in June, and she kindly said that she would move into the small house for a few months so that we could move straight into the big house. There is some work to be done where the concrete is crumbling around windowframes, and the whole house needs to be re-painted, so Marc is going to go up to Pèdè next week with a mason and a painter. They will help Grace to move out, and then get the work done.

We will then need to leave the paint some time to dry and lose the worst of its new-paint smell, but during that time Marc will probably go up to Pèdè again with another colleague who will make a few alterations to the electrical system to make it more efficient. The system is solar-powered, but we are likely to use a generator to pump well-water and a kerosene-powered fridge to make sure that we have enough electricity for all five of us (our family and the other missionary).

We have bought curtain material, and need to get curtains and new sofa cushions made up. It is a novel experience to realise that we are moving into what will – God willing – be our family home for years to come!

I stayed with Grace in the big house in 2003. When I left, the translation team told me they were hoping I'd come back to take over from Grace when she retired. At the time I thought that God might possibly be leading me to do that … but I never dreamt that I would actually be back with a husband and two small boys!

school day

On Saturday we took a trip out to Nikki – 100km (2 hours drive) away – to visit Anni. Anni is a Dutch missionary also serving with SIM here in Benin, and she was our neighbour when she came to Parakou for a while during the school holidays last summer. She teaches at the Nikki Girls' School, a Christian school which gives girls discipleship training while training them in practical skills such as knitting, sewing or weaving.

We had been intending to visit ever since she went back there in September, and this was likely to be our last chance before we move North. On the way there we took the tarmac road as far as N'dali, and then the dirt road from there to Nikki. I realised that I got far more car sick on the tarmac road (with all the braking and swerving to avoid holes) so on our way back we took an alternative route which is dirt road all the way back to Parakou.

Benjy was the star of the show when we arrived at the school. All the girls wanted a turn holding him, and at first he wasn't at all bothered, even when he was carried off out of our sight. But eventually he decided he wanted to go back to his mum, and I then had the difficult job of fending off new girls who turned up and tried to pull him out of my arms!

We saw around the school – a classroom, a sewing room, the knitting room – and Anni also showed us the current accommodation – just small huts with concrete floors – and the site where they are going to build a new dormitory. They will also have an indoor kitchen, since at the moment the girls have to cook all their meals outside. Fine at this time of year, but less fun during rainy season!

We also enjoyed catching up with Anni over a meal. We do appreciate the friendship of the other missionaries here, from so many different backgrounds.

Some photos from our trip: