The Best Baka Christmas Pageant Ever!

Some of our Baka friends put on a Christmas play this year for the village to come and see. It was very simple, but so precious! Here are a few pictures. It was getting dark so the quality of the pictures isn’t the greatest. The first one is of Mary (played by Tendi, and baby Jesus was played by her 3 week old son) before the angel came and appeared to her. She has her mortar and pestle and is making “Jabuka”.

In the next photo you can see (if you look hard enough) the wise men bowing down to baby Jesus and offering him their gifts of cassava leaves, a couple hands of plantains and a live chicken. Mary and Joseph are sitting there under the star of Bethlehem, and behind them are 3 shepherds and their herd of sheep (which were our kids and the Baka kids on all fours, bleating “baaa baaa”).

After the play and some explanation of the meaning of Christmas in Baka by Samba, we brought out some juice and popcorn and played some music for dancing. The last two Christmas’ we have tried different ways to give our Christmas gift to the village. Our gift includes rice, salt, bouillon cubes and candy for each family. This year we decided to hand this out after the play. Kpess and Sufiyo helped us out by filling up bags of rice and salt and making sure that each family didn’t take more than their fair share.

Finally after more dancing and merrymaking, folks started itching to get a ride back to the village (2 miles away) and cook their rice to have with their dinner. Barry made 2 trips in his car; Nathan made one (he had to fill the tire with air before they left…couldn’t imagine why it was so low!).

So…now email us or leave a comment letting us know what YOUR village / neighborhood / church / family is doing this Christmas!!! :-)

One more post before going home

Here's Darla (our new tutor who just arrived on Sunday), Nandry, Asher, Aunt Karen and Boaz (with some cool 3D glasses) trying on some Christmas tinsel. I just wanted to post this last picture before we leave for the bush tomorrow. Pray for Darla that she adjusts well to village life and that she hangs in there for the next 6 months!!!

Gotcha!!!

This is our little girl, Nandry, who is growing up way to fast! She’s so smart and clever that sometimes it takes pictures like this one of her with a basket on her head, or her sitting in a bucket to remind me that she’s still a fun-loving little girl who likes doing goofy stuff to get a laugh. She is “Miss Info” and would love to have your undivided attention to tell you the incredible thing she just learned in school about the reed warbler and the cuckoo. She is also our artist and gift-giver. If you are ever visiting our house for any amount of time (even as little as 5 minutes), you will walk away with an original piece of artwork, care of Nandry. If you stay for a few days, you might have to bring an extra suitcase for all the pictures and crafts that she has made for you. By the way Grandma, she was upset after you left because she found a bunch of stuff she made that she meant to send home with you…be expecting a package! Nandry can greet you in Baka, and have a pretty deep conversation with you in French and she’s not shy about it at all. And in this last picture, don’t let her girly-ness fool you, she can climb trees like a little monkey!

You talkin' to me?

Meet Asher. This is his snorting face, it’s one of his favorite responses when he’s asked a question. Here’s what usually happens. Someone (usually a Cameroonian) will come up to him and in French say, “Hello baby, shake my hand.” Asher gives them a blank look for about 10 seconds, then snorts like a pig, and walks away. No one yet, fortunately, has said that he’s rude…they just laugh. I’m trying to figure out if it’s just Asher’s way of saying, “I don’t know you so therefore I’m not going to talk to you.”

Asher is our puzzle man. When he’s not running around outside with the others, you can be sure to find him quietly on the floor of his room putting his favorite puzzle together for the 100th time. He’s good at seeing little details and fitting them together.

All of our kids bring us flowers that they pick out of our garden, our neighbor’s garden, the orchard and the forest, but of the 3 kids, Asher is the one that brings me flowers constantly and is very bothered if I don’t put them in water RIGHT AWAY. He loves to smell them all too and his “smelling” face is almost the same as his snorting face (see above).

And here’s a final picture of Asher just hanging out in a tree with his infamously infectious grin.

"Mom...Can I keep it?"

Meet Boaz, our animal collector. I was going to say "our animal lover", but I think that Asher actually LOVES the animals more, Boaz is just completely fascinated with them. These were all taken when Nathan's parents were here. In the first picture Boaz has a lizard. Do you know how FAST lizards are? We were completely amazed that Boaz actually caught it. It wasn't so cool that it got away and was crawling all over us during our dinner.

This next picture is Boaz with a handkerchief full of rhinoceros beetles that the Baka caught and were going to eat. One of the phrases I hear most often during the day is, "MOM, come see what I have in my bug jar!" (and the next most common phrase is my reply of "GET THAT THING OUT OF THE HOUSE!" Often it is more than one species of cool looking bug. Boaz is already planning out his zoo and all the animals that he's going to have in it.

Here, Boaz is holding a "chat-tigre", which means "cat-tiger". We aren't sure of the English name. Anyone know? These are ferocious like a bobcat with rat-shaped faces. They are soft and cuddly-looking up close...when they are already dead.

In this last picture is what Boaz really really wants. A horse. He's been praying for one lately. He's gotten to ride one twice here in Cameroon, each time when we were at the beach.

To get your car washed...any puddle will do!

Hey Dad Crane...here are some new ideas for the carwash. Have you ever thought about opening up the stream behind the buildings? That's where the real money's at!!!

And now you need something for all the grease-monster trucks:

Why are some people so...URGLY?

Kemi Update

Kemi - taking in the sights like a good little tourist.
Though we thought at one time she wasn't going to make it, our little primate Kemi has survived and is growing well. The kids still enjoy playing with her and she's starting to explore a little more outdoors. We just have to watch out for the neighborhood dogs!
She loves to be cuddled and have her belly rubbed. Here she is falling asleep in Laurel's arms. And we thought we were going to stop after three....

Our New Chauffeur

I was getting ready to leave one morning and had left the door of the truck open while going in and out of the house getting everything together. Then, while I was walking past the truck one time, I noticed little Ambili at the wheel. I guess his mom thought it would be funny. It was. And - by the way - this is the kid that almost died a year ago. He's now walking all around like a pro and, though a bit late in his growing, is advancing well - Praise God.

A Day in the Life of the Conrods

Today, our first day settled back in the bush by ourselves after a wonderful 2 ½ week visit from Mom & Dad Conrod, went a little bit like this:

(The Abbotts are on a 2 week camping trip to survey the Baka area farther south of where we live – so we are the only foreigners in the area for a while.)

Nandry and I had our first full day of school for a few weeks. We got caught up enough and I was surprised how well she is remembering everything (especially in math). I was also surprised to look at the clock when Nathan interrupted us and find out that it was already 12:45…we started around 9am. It was a full day for us, and I hadn’t even gotten to do any Kindergarten activities with Boaz yet, which I guess I’ll do tomorrow.

Nathan interrupted to ask if we had time to take a picture of him eating a rhinoceros beetle. That put an end to school!!! It is rhino bug season and they are being eaten by the bucketful. A few of our Bantu neighbors asked Nathan if he would ever eat these large beetles and said they would cook them up just to see him eat them. So, after asking for salt, oil, a bullion cube and some onion, they boiled the beetles in a pot over the fire with all those ingredients except for the onion – we didn’t have much left.

Yum, yum, they tasted just like salt, oil, and beef bullion. We all tried them, but Nandry and I only had a little nibble. They were crunchy on the outside with a creamy filling. You were supposed to spit out the crunchy part.

After our real lunch of mac-n-cheese (thanks Mom Conrod for the powdered cheese packets!!!), the kids and I measured the path around the orchard to find the distance for running. We had a rope just over 16 feet long that we stretched out 52 times (plus or minus 1 – I would loose track when I had to mediate between siblings who thought other siblings got to hold the end of the rope longer). That means 4 times around the orchard equals 1 kilometer, and 6.25 times around equals a mile.

Nathan and I then put on our running shorts and shoes, heated up a can of oxtail soup and took it down the road to a woman who lost her baby a few hours after it was born a couple days ago. The soup had a lot of protein, so I figured it would be good for her body as she healed, as well as a kind gesture. Then, we set off running around the orchard. It was way too hilly and bumpy, and we couldn’t make long strides very easily, and we had to dodge under branches of trees…who’s idea was this anyway (mine, ooops). After two times around we realized that it took more effort than it was worth. The reason we wanted to run in the orchard verses on the road was that we could still be within earshot of the kids if they needed anything. When we got back to the house from the orchard, the kids were all playing “school” with the Baka kids and writing on a make-shift blackboard with chalk and burnt sticks. They were having so much fun we decided that because there were so many people around, our kids would be fine under the watchful eye of Mama Lendo.

Well, about 20 feet from our house we walked right into the middle of a HUGE group of biting army ants on the move, heading towards our bedroom. Not wanting them to come any further, we spent about a half hour unsuccessfully trying to spray them with plant insecticide and pouring kerosene around only to discover the best way to kill some of them and make the rest turn around was a big spray can of bug (roach) spray. Hopefully they won’t come back in the night because I emptied the whole can on them this afternoon!

We finally made it to the road and had a nice run. When we came back, the boys wanted to run a little bit with us on the road too, so we took them on a short run. Boaz is FAST. He’s a little bit short for his age, and he reminds me of the boy from the Incredibles that runs super fast with these short little legs just going a mile a minute.

After our run, we spent some time outside sitting around our cooking shelter waiting for the water for our showers to heat up over the fire. Then we washed us all off, had some soup for dinner, and the kids went to bed early because they didn’t get naps.

Well, this is long and I guess only parts of it were exciting…but hey, you can pick and choose what you read and just have fun looking at the pictures.

PS – while I was doing school with Nandry, Nathan was busy fixing our toilet seat, chatting with neighbors about all of the sick folks in the area, preparing a malaria treatment for a sick 5 year old, and talking to a Baka teen, Sufiyo, about how his (Nathan’s) nose was stuffy and Sufiyo could find just the right stuff out in the forest to fix that. Well…Sufiyo came back with the dark powdered stuff and showed Nathan how to snort it. So, Nathan did. This was right before our run, right before the ant invasion. I was standing there next to Sufiyo while Nathan was trying to spray the ants and Sufiyo sneezed like I never saw anyone sneeze before with stuff spraying out of his nose…it was gross. When he saw the repulsed look on my face (sorry, couldn’t help it) he said, “It’s the powder…see, it works!” After that, Nathan started sneezing like crazy for about 15 minutes. I think that snorting ground pepper probably would have had the same effect!