Hannatu's Happenings

I'm a cold cereal lover, but there just isn't much choice in cereal available here at a price I can afford.  So, there's corn flakes and there's corn flakes....about three brands of them sometimes!  So, without Wheaties, Frosted Mini Wheats, and Raisin Bran, what do we do for breakfast?

We can buy oatmeal here, so we have that once or twice a week.  One day a week we do eggs.  Once a week we eat fonio (I'll do a blog on that later).  On Saturdays John always makes pancakes.  And on Sunday we'll often have something like coffee cake or sticky buns....that kind of depends on my energy level on Saturday!  But one of my favorite breakfasts is yogurt with granola on it.  

Sometimes in the stores here I can find Muesli Croustillant - Chocolat Noir.  Yep, you read that right.  Muesli with dark chocolate in.  See, the French have figured out that chocolate is a breakfast food.  I can't argue with that!  So when one day I went to the store and there was no more Muesli…

Last week we went up to the town where we used to live.  Our main goal was to visit our friends.  We also knew that the harvest there was non-existent, so we wanted to help them out a bit financially (though what we gave them is nothing compared to what they need!).

We left home around 7:00 and got to the ferry before 8:00.  It was still nice and cool then and some women were down by the river washing their pans, clothes, and bodies....and then taking water back home with them.  Some of the water they take is probably for washing things at home, but doubtless much of it is for drinking.

Our first stop was in the village of D.  There are actually two hamlets where Christians live, so we stopped to visit this family.  The husband (in the pink shirt) has been quite sick since December with pneumonia.  He showed us his x-rays and there was a definite improvement, though since we're not medical it was hard to tell what we were looking at.  He still gets winded easily and is fatigued much…

When John and I got married and returned to Niger we bought a set of used furniture on the street.  It lasted pretty well, but with the advent of children, combined with the dry climate, it was starting to get pretty wobbly.  So we replaced it with a new, custom-ordered set.  Unfortunately the guy mis-understood our directions and we ended up with very short and uncomfortable seats.  But we lived with it for at least 10 years.  When we left for our two-year home assignment we sold it.

So when we got back this time, we were using borrowed furniture.  We again had a living room suite built and had cushions made.  The carpenter never called me to tell me the job was done and I was going to call him to check on it, but then Suzanne was sick and I went to the US.  So it wasn't until I got back that I finally checked on it.  Finally, three months later we got our furniture!

It is a lot more comfortable than our old set, but still not exactly really amazingly comfortable.  I chose a light …