You win Africa, you always do.

       Well. I have survived three weeks in Africa today! There have been lots of little adventures. Also, quite a few moments of little bits of bravery. And this past week many times where life in Africa got the best of us. Sometimes I just get overwhelmed with the privilege the Father gave me when He gave me the opportunity to come to this wild, beautiful, loud, hectic and wonderful land. It has only been a week since I posted, but oh boy have a lot of things happened.

Elijah Thomas was born. It makes my heart very squirmy that I have to wait 5 more months to see him in person. However, if the pictures do him any justice, he is already too cute to handle.

Wes, Elijah, and my sweet AB.

       Last Sunday the 31st, Pearl, our language teacher took me out on my first "excursion." I am supposed to go on an excursion once every 2-4 weeks ish to get to know other important places in this beautiful country. Well Pearl is originally from an island off the coast of our city. Every day a ferry runs back and forth multiple times. When I came for a visit in March we rode the ferry out to the island. It is really inexpensive. Less than 500 millem which amounts to less than 50 cents in the States.

       The ride is about an hour across the Med. We took the car on the ferry for the first time on the trip. Let me tell you that riding a ferry doesn't seem like too much of an adventure, but when you have about 6 men yelling at you in Arabic how to back it onto the boat it is definitely an adventure. Beth handled it like a champ and we had some good chat time in the car.

In line for the ferry.

       So we set sail in this little sailboat called a Fluka. The water was extremely shallow for quite a ways. After we had been out for a while we decided to swim. When I jumped in I expected to hit the ocean floor because I could see straight down to the seaweed from the boat. It just looked shallow. However, the water is actually just that clear that you can see at least 15-20 feet deep straight to the bottom.

Looking back at the shore. Water about knee deep here.

In motion. Water about 10-15 feet deep here.

Our captain.

So eventually after swimming and just puttering around our leader decides there is not enough wind to get us out to the nets very quickly. So he calls his "cousin" I use the word cousin loosely because according to Pearl everyone on this island is her cousin. She knows everyone and everything.  So he comes in his motor boat and tugs us along to the fishing nets.

Sir Tuggington

Meanwhile we had some charcoal heating up ready to cook us some fish!
(I know. That grill is just chilling on a wooden boat. Fire hazard in a major way)

 So all around the island there are these fence type things. They slowly get more and more narrow until they lead into this area where the fish swim into traps that they can't get out of. At each of these big areas there were probably 2-3 traps.

The big net.

Pulling out the trap

This guy was also fishing. He later gave us a tow and shared his catch with us.
He really wanted me to take his picture doing everything.

Beth steering us around the nets

 So. The following pictures are all things that either we caught, or the guy in the other boat gave us. Just take a little gander at these things. Let it be known, there are some weird looking sea creatures.

This is an octopus. It was flung at me from another boat. I didn't
even scream. Be very impressed because that joker was slimy.

The boating model pulling another octopus
out of a trap to throw at me

Apparently you are supposed to use crabs as bait for the octopus.
This was also thrown at me. And I was forced to hold it.
And let me tell you that crabs are the spiders of the ocean.
They just move really creepy and weird and I am not a fan. NOT a fan. 

He was a cute little shrimpy. And he was delicious.

A bucket of weird sea life.

Cleaned and gutted about to be put on the grill.
I try not to make a habit of eating food that can look at me while I eat it.
But they like to leave the heads on their fish here. It's a thing.

    Anywho. So that was fun. When we got back Beth and Brandi both began to realize just how sun burnt they were. So we spent the evening testing out home remedies for sunburn. In our opinion using tea to draw out the heat seemed to work the best. I thought I escaped mostly unscathed by the sun's rays, however it seems mine just took longer to set in. I woke up the next day with a red back.

      This week I managed to catch and ride in a taxi by myself several times. Which doesn't seem like much, but when you have had to have someone take you literally everywhere you go, it feels like the biggest victory. On the downside I also waited about 35 minutes for a taxi to go teach and finally gave up and called Brandi for a ride. I was very annoyed. Africa won that day. I was 30 minutes late for work.

     I don't know how many of you have ever been to another country. I have to say that one of the most terrifying things to me is the driving. When I learned how to drive in Birmingham I always thought there were some crazy drivers, and some just really awful drivers. Then I moved to Jackson. And I sincerely believed I had met the worst drivers on the planet. Then I moved here. And let me just tell you something. Driving here is one of the biggest adventures of all. I've only been a passenger here. And if you have ever ridden with me you will know that my road rage could not be kept in check if I had to drive here. Well. Long story short, let's just say Africa won again on the roads this week. We will leave it at that.

    We don't have a dishwasher here. So we spend a lot of time doing dishes. Well the other day we had accumulated a massive pile. So I began working through them. I turned the sink faucet to fill one side of the sink and the faucet popped off in my hands and sprayed me with super hot water. We finally managed to get it back on the base and finish the dishes. But I was quite soggy for a bit. Africa won again.

We had a lot of adventures this week. We had a lot of frustrations this week. But we had a lot of laughs this week.


Here's to drinking extra mint tea. And getting back after it again this week. Until next time.