Sunday, January 17, 2010

Hippos, fly catchers, and other monkey business

Today Tammy gave us the idea to go to the beach. So we forgot about the work we're so far behind in as quickly as possible, and went. This time a few of us swam quite far out into the river. Then we got a game of keep-away going. As the game was getting good, a lady told us to watch out: a hippo had been coming to the beach about this time of day. We looked around, and about a minute later Mr. Mosier saw the hippo. So we watched it a while - at least it's nose, which came out of the water every couple minutes. Good thing the hippo never came by when we were way out in the river...
Nathan and Tammy's sister, Melody, is here with her boyfriend Jonathan, who's a mission pilot in Chad. So we had to go up to the zoo to see the monkeys. There are also donkeys at the zoo, and one of them had just had a colt today. It was just starting to get comfortable on it's soft hooves. We were allowed in the pen, so it got lot's of attention, to say the least.
Freddy the chimpanzee put on a really good show. Nathan started to do the rival male thing with him, then he started to get a bit upset. There was a baby baboon, and another cute little monkey that the zoo had recently acquired.
Here's a little bit about Chad that I learned: Chad has a dry season for about half the year, and temperatures that reach like 115 F many days. For a few months of the year, papayas and mangos are available: most of the year there's almost know fruit available. And Chad is flat as a pancake from central Alberta. I'm glad to be in Congo...
Last week I saw a little praying mantis, so I put it on my hand to show people (I found out they've already seen lots). Just after I got it settled on my hand it shot its arms out like a loaded spring and caught a fly. It was awesome - we could use more of these critters around.
That's all I have time for now - if only I could hire one of the Africans for the usual $3 a day to write my blogs for me...
I've got lots of pictures I want to put up, but that'll be later
God bless

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