Tidbits brought to you by the letter C

We met Catherine, Joyce’s sister, on the first day. She has been here every day or so, dropping in to chat or to bring us treats. She sells fruit in village, and so brings us fruit: bananas, avocado, and passion fruit. She also makes pancakes (small, like Scottish ones) and sells them each day. We were so honoured when she brought some to us. They were so good, Steve stole Karin’s pancake while she wasn’t looking. Yum.

Of course, it is difficult to receive such lavish gifts from a woman who barely ekes out an existence—she is still paying school fees for her youngest son Patrick, and helping with her grandson’s school fees as well. She has a warm and generous spirit that we admire.

Cockroaches, on the other hand, are not nearly as delightful. Steve tried to convince us that they were beetles—three-inches long and about an inch wide—but we figured it out. One night after crawling into bed, I was quite interested to discover one of these critters in my bed. I managed to encourage him to leave and went back to writing in my journal. A short time later (these suckers can move, Steve says) Karin gave a little yelp: the bug had made its way inside her net. There ensued a great deal of swatting, squirming and laughing around Karen’s bed, while the three women did their best to encourage him out (to be honest, Anne and I mostly offered verbal encouragement). Steve, meanwhile, was strangely silent…until we heard the faint sound of snickering. “Oh for goodness sake” he said with a sigh, and came into our room, swatted the cockroach on the floor, and stomped on it. Unfortunately, That was not our last encounter….so far it’s Steve-4, Cockroaches-0.

What we have seen a lot of are students. Karin has enjoyed teaching them some new things, including the song, “Land of the Silverbirch”. They wanted to sing the “Masooli-Kittetika” song, but then complained that it would never work because they didn’t have Steve! A small group of older girls decided that they could do it after all, singing “dum, dum, dum….”, although some others corrected their pronunciation.

Karin also taught them to play a name game, where each one had to say their name along with an adjective beginning with the same letter. There was Jolly Joanne, Pretty Purity, and Dynamic Doreen, among others. But the best part came in the evening when Karin was helping with the dishes and they started giving names to the adults. They came up with Beautiful Barbara, Careful Kristine (they think my name begins with a C), Strong Steve, Kinetic Karen, and Amazing Anne.

There is a word that they use a lot here: cute. They use it differently than we do. It means fabulous, as in “You look cute”. Sometimes it even comes with two thumbs up. Steve says all of us women are ‘cute’ (insert eyeroll here).