Birds of the Plateau

I come from a family of farmers, gardeners, and all round nature lovers...and I am so glad.  I am proud to inherit that.  

Growing up, my grandparents had a book of birds with an accompanying tape of the bird songs.  I still remember sitting on the floor looking at birds and listening to that tape as a kid.  If I remember correctly, I had hopes of someday seeing an indigo bunting and a scarlet tanager...both of which, I think I realized, actually.  

My cousins and I used to sneak outside with a net and nab birds out of the bird feeders.  To our credit, we tried to create comfortable homes for them in buckets...little beds of grass, sticks for them to perch on, etc.  I'm not so sure that mollified the birds.  It certainly didn't mollify my Nana; she wasn't too impressed.

Anyway, I started taking some pictures of birds on the Plateau to show my grandparents and aunts.  Ironically, I've stated nature photography as one of those jobs I would like if I could have multiple lives.  I don't think I'll be getting any awards for these pictures...birds fly around a lot (why do they DO that?), and they like to pose with their heads cut off by twigs and branches.  So here is the first installment of Birds of the Plateau:

These little guys are called toutrel or zandolit in Creole.  I think they're probably turtle doves.  When they fly, the underside of their wings is a reddish hue.

These bright fellows have a really beautiful, clear, warbling song.  I have no idea what they are called. 

This is a boustabak.  They must be some kind of blackbird/raven, but they remind me of black parrots, for some reason.  They have a screeching, plaintive, somewhat eerie call.

I love these, and I'm a little disappointed at the picture.  They are rather flighty.  Back and wings are a sleek mahogany brown, and underside is white with that beautiful black pattern.  They build these beautiful, globule-shaped nests out of long grass.  The first time I saw one (the wind has a tendency to knock them down), I thought it was a swallow nest.  The eggs are so tiny!

This one's for you, Bum!  It's not a Downy, but we do have these large woodpeckers around.

I only saw this orange and black bird once...maybe they're around, I just don't look hard enough.  He gave me a bit of a hard time as far as pictures go.

This was a treat.  One day, I was sitting in the hammock on my porch and noticed this little guy making his presence known in the tree right in front of me.

He didn't seem to disposed to move on, so I ran and got a camera.  He fluttered around for a few minutes, and then....

...this lovely little lady showed up.  After another minute or so, they flew off together...I'm assuming happily ever after.

Believe it or not, even as I was preparing this post I heard a ruckus right outside my office.  I don't know whether they were mating or fighting over territory, but a couple of hawks (or falcons?) were shrieking and flying at each other.   I startled one of them into a tree.  Their backs are a sort of light reddish brown.

 Afterwards, one perched on a tree in the yard, and I could hear three or so of them calling back and forth to one another.

Some of my favorites are also the most common.  In the morning and evening, the sky is replete with swallows.  They make nests in the thatch, including my roof, where they are always laughing.  It's a bit difficult to capture how many of them can be in the sky at once,  but here is my best attempt.  It is beautiful in the evening when the sky is changing colors, full of darting swallows and, a bit lower, dancing dragon flies.

Although it shows few birds, I love this picture for some reason.  Maybe its the gigantic blue of the God's sky and the glory of God's clouds underneath and the joyous flight of God's birds...

Introducing....

....the young moms!  These are the lovely ladies with whom I will be working in January.  For those of you who don't know, I will begin holding classes with them in various skills.  As of now, these classes will be centered around the kitchen, but I hope in the future we may be able to dabble in a few other things such as flower making (as in crepe/tissue paper flowers) or crocheting (if possible...materials are a problem).  We will see.

Our purpose in doing this is to provide these moms with tools to enable them to escape exploitation and provide for themselves and their kids.  They all face a rather high risk future.  They have a child, but no husband to help support them.  They come from poverty, have a low education, few skills, and live in an area plagued by chronic drought (no garden = no self-sustainable food source)...its not a good situation.  Pretty soon some guy comes along and offers to help...oh, but you have to have a child for him too.  Soon after that, he's moving on...and now you have two.  You're even more desperate when the next guy comes along...and then you have three.

This is the all too common story, and we hope to give these young women the option of escape.  

Not only that, but through a study we will be doing together, I pray that we will all grow in our knowledge of who God is; I pray that they will understand who Jesus Christ is, the great value that he places upon them, the healing He brings, and the peace, joy, and hope they can have in Him.  I pray they will pass on Truth to their kids.

So far, there are four young ladies.  So without further ado:

Rosita and her daughter, Bertha (pronounced BER-ta)

Cerilia and her son, Maickel

Fleurillia and her daughter, Abigael

Mona and her son, Youbensley

This past week, the girls came with their children.  I took coloring pages and pencils, along with some cotton balls, plastic wrap, and glue to dress up the pictures.  I suspected it might be so, but the moms didn't want to let the kids touch the papers.  They didn't want them to ruin them!  So, while the mothers were coloring, I played with the kids and took some pictures. 

Happily munching crackers

Happily munching pencils

 

At least Bertha got to do some coloring.

Sumer is iguwen ut

Lhude sing cuccu!

Ok so probably not many of you got my parody on obscure poetry...alright, so maybe no one did.  But it's hard to believe the summer is "iguwen ut" (ahem...translation: a-going out) already!  Here are a few snapshots from the last couple months.

I had fun teaching the girls to crochet.  They each want to make a bag.  A few of them caught on amazingly quickly.

Concentrating...

Aren't they cute?

Manis started a small music group with the same girls.  We had several practices, and they have sung a few songs for the church, as well as for another church in a near-by area.  Here we are trying to coordinate some movements to one of the songs.

 Obviously, we weren't all on the same page here, as is evidenced by Modelene's pose of confusion behind my right shoulder.

 This is slightly better...

 I had fun playing the bongo drum and pretending like I knew what I was doing.  I'll have to listen to a bit more konpa to get it right, though.

There is a new, frequent visitor to my office.  He was given to us to help with the mice.  

 

We found him one day in this strange napping pose.  

When we removed the pillow he just sank down, collapsing in half.  I truly thought he was dead (he looks it, doesn't he?!).  It was only when someone picked him up that he shook himself back into life. 

Speaking of visitors to my office, I sure did miss one little lady who was gone for two months!  It didn't take long for things to go back to normal....

...yes, this is normal.

C'mon, don't you play your ukelele in your underwear and high heels?

Today, I caught the girls goofing off on a rare coffee break.  

 

Olenda--on the left in the blue shirt and baseball cap--has more than once questioned me with wonder in her eyes as to how I drink coffee every single day...here is a short excerpt:

Olenda:  "Will you get sick if you don't drink it?"

Me:  "Well, some people get a head-ache."

Olenda:  (very seriously) "Ooohhh....so, it's kind of like people who smoke cigarettes, huh?"

Making Peanut Butter

Bread and peanut butter are sure and steadfast staples around our house.  Our supply had been depleted for several days already, so I decided to make some yesterday....then realized it was a great opportunity to make good on my promise of pictures!

The stars of the show: fresh, sorted.....let me just insert a little note here: Basically, EVERY dry food item has to be sorted or sifted here before you use it: Flour? sift out the bugs.  Beans? pick out the stones and the bad beans. Cornmeal? sift out the meal worms and bugs.  Sugar?  get a spoon and pick out the ants.  Peanuts?  Sort out the bad ones.  The past weeks I have even had to carefully pick bugs out of the oats every time I need to use them. 

ahem...anyway, fresh, sorted, unroasted peanuts.

They are grilled in a large pot over the charcoal (no oil, for those who are wondering).

(Next to them, by the way, are the beans for lunch, which the girls were preparing.)

Once they start popping and darken in color, they are about ready.

After they are all roasted, you have to rub them in your hands until all of skins come off.

Once you have the skins off, you can toss them and let the wind take the chaff away (isn't there a word for this process in English?  I can't think of it).

I'm not quite a pro yet....probably lost a few more peanuts than I should have...but the chickens were happy.

After that, you have to sort them AGAIN, picking out the bad ones you missed or the good ones you burned,  and sifting out the germ, which apparently makes the peanut butter bitter, not better (ha! shout out to Betty and her butter! what what!).

The beautiful batch that's left is then carried up the way a few yards to a house with a grinder.  After setting up the grinder rustic style, the peanuts are put in that hopper at the top. 

Then, you hand crank away (this is how we go to the gym).

I'm not cranking as enthusiastically as it looks...it was actually just really windy.

What goes into our peanut butter?  Peanuts, salt, and hot pepper.   Wait, hot pepper?  Yep.  We make ours mild, since there are people in the house who don't like it too spicy (you know who you are!).

Golden, natural, delicious.

So there it is.  Seem time consuming?  um, yeah, but most things are when the grocery store is 5 hours away. (It's certainly not done in a Jiffy...get it? ha!)  Luckily, I actually enjoy pioneer era-type activities.

It reminds me of the time my neighbor came home while I was sitting on my porch in Lancaster city shelling lima beans that I had grown in my little garden plot behind a local church (seems completely normal to me).  He seemed to walk by every time I was engaged in this or a similar activity.  He gave me one long, puzzled glance and said as he mounted the porch steps, 

"You have the strangest hobbies."  

Well, I kind of thought that his under-age partying and pot-growing habits were strange hobbies, so it's no wonder we didn't understand each other.  

Obviously, he didn't grow up shelling buckets of peas on his Nana's porch.