Bonfire

So the last few weeks have been incredibly busy and we keep waiting for a lull so we can lie in the yard in the hammock for a few hours.  Hopefully it won't be too long now. 

 A lot of what has kept me busy has been working for WIA.  They are the NGO that I have gotten involved with.  Emily is the woman who got me into working for them in the first place.  They do incredible bead work in the local style and struggle to sell it because competition is fierce.  So I am helping them come up with unique products that will be easier to sell.  Emily will often come over and entertain the children while I try to be creative with the beads.  Kaia loves her!!!  They spent most of the morning together and here they had built a 'campfire' out of the red flowers that fall from the trees and are all over our yard.  Then they invited all the coolest dollies and animals and had a very lively time around the campfire.

 For WIA we are focusing on wine bags.  So then we went shopping with Mama Sophia who knows the local prices and bought gobs of material for our bags.  We have made our first sale and need to produce 25 asap.  After fighting off the criminals (i mean salesmen) in the market we found an honest business man who turned out to be from Yemen.  Emily's arabic is better than mine and they had a nice little chat.  We will always do our shopping there.  After 2 hours of that in the middle of the day during the hot season we had worn Mama Sophia out and had to take her for a soda.

 When Carl came home he brought 1kg of coffee grounds with him.  He buys them at Burka Estatates the coffee plantation right next to the school.  It smells so good I wanted to sleep with it last night.  He paid 10,000 Tanzanian Shillings which is about $7.50 for a KILO.  So you might think it is cruddy coffee but this is the plantation that Starbucks buys from.  Quite the markup for Starbucks!!!

So then I was so tired that all I wanted to do was crash but there was a once in a year event going on at the other international school so we hopped back in the car and, due to the horrible traffic, drove over an hour to get there.  Totally worth it.  It was very similar to an American Fourth of July festival.  They had games for the kids.  Kaia didn't play any though because we were late and it was mostly dark by then and they were geared towards much older kids.  But we still had fun watching. They had a huge bonfire set up, which was so ironic since her dollies had just sat around the campfire.  Then a huge fireworks display!!  We love fireworks!!  And since the international community is so small here that when you go to an event like there are always a ton of your friends there too.  Awesome end to the week.