The Weekend

I didn't think I did that much this weekend but as I sit down to write this I realize a lot happened. First, my poor shoe started falling apart on Friday. I caught the toe on a rock and the sole started flapping. Since I walk almost 2 miles a day, I have wondered how long my shoes would last. Omar and Juma sent me down to the corner hut they call a shop and said to ask for the lady who fixes shoes. I did as they said but only got some confused expressions in return. When I took off my shoe and demonstrated the problem I got a much better response. A guy quickly grabbed it and pulled out this yellow sticky junk and started to swab it between the shoe and sole. After that dried then he pulled out the super glue. That's when I knew this was legit. 2 minutes and 20 shillings later (about $.25), I was back in business.

Friday night Brenton and I decided to go to a restaurant that serves authentic African food. Since I had already eaten the ever popular Pilau for lunch, I opted for some seafood. I ordered the large Tilapia fish. However, I forgot to mention that I only wanted the fillet. I was only somewhat surprised when my plate arrived with an entire fish on it. The saddest part wasn't that I now had to mess with the skin, bones, head and fins on this fish but that I didn't have my camera with me! However, I was quite impressed with my work in the end. It was so good that I'm pretty sure I'll be making a return visit, this time with my camera.

On Saturday we went to a school for the deaf to give them some pencils and erasers that Brenton had brought with him from home. Mama Rose arranged for us to meet up with her daughter, Rukiya, who would then take us to the school. Mama Rose later explained to me that her daughter had been using her own money to buy candy for the kids at the school. She had been doing it for awhile but they only found out about it recently. It just goes to show how amazing Mama Rose is when you hear of her daughter doing something like that. The kids were really cute and kept saying hi and thank you using sign (the only two things I understood, anyway). All of the primary schools having paintings on their walls with maps, the alphabet and numbers. Brenton stopped to take a picture of one of the maps and the kids all ran over to show their pencils. So cute!


I ran off to institute from there. We had 4 come again this week. I think we are going to combine institute and seminary. There is only one seminary student and they are all on the same level anyway. Maybe that's against the rules but we're going to try it. We're going to tackle Jacob 5 this week, at their request. Cross your fingers for me.

After Institute I went grocery shopping. Brenton and I have talked about trying some new fruits and/or vegetables that are here. Since he was leaving soon, I picked up a few that the produce guy suggested. Here's the array. I'll go clockwise from the top left. On the outside we have a pomelo, mango (just because they're good), paw paw, tree tomatoes and turpa. On the inside we have limes (to cover any gross tastes), green tangerine and golden passion fruit.


Here's what I decided: I love pamelo, mango was overripe, didn't like the paw paw (even with lime juice), tree tomatoes are weird tasting but look pretty, we never figured out how to prepare the turpa (it's a vegetable that should be cooked), love limes, tangerines were a bit tart and the passion fruit almost made me puke (the texture, not the taste- think I'll stick with the juice).

So, in other news...we have a cat.

Brenton is an animal lover and came across this stray kitty last week. It's back legs and right eye had been hurt. He not only brought her home and fed her but he also found a local vet and got some medicine for her eye. Nice of him since he has now gone and left me with the cat and the remaining prescription to put in her eye. He's found her another home so her new owners will be picking her up on Sunday (I hope). We named her Mombasa and she's actually grown on me a bit. She and I had a girls movie night last night :) This is what my social life has come to- watching movies with a cat!