Curly Hair

A lot of times when people ask me how life’s different over here I don’t really know what to say. It’s different in so many ways – where to begin?!? The other day as Jason went up on our roof to do something that might seem a bit strange I thought to myself, yup, this is one of those differences...

In the US water is pumped up into giant water towers and then the pressure from those towers gives you running water in your house. Here we don’t have big water towers that bring us running water, but we use that basic idea on a smaller scale. When the youth center’s generator is on for classes we pump water from our well up into a tank on the top of our house. Then, even when we don’t have power, the pressure coming from the tank gives us running water.

About once a year the tank needs to be cleaned out. All kinds of algae and other fun stuff grow in it, and it’s just a little disconcerting to shower in green water... hehe. Our water tank is pretty new but when it was installed they put cement blocks inside of it to hold it down and they did not put a lid on it. So, a few weeks ago when Jason went up to check it he discovered that the cement blocks were dissolving into the water and that somewhere along the line some cardboard and some plastic bags had gotten in the tank (presumably from the lack of lid) and were decaying also. That was enough for him, so he donned his grubby clothes, grabbed a filter, a scrubber, and some bleach, and slithered into the small opening in the top of our 1,000 liter tank.


He scrubbed and flushed and scrubbed some more and I’m happy to report that he did make it back out of our tank, our water is much cleaner, and we do now have a lid!

I'm not quite sure what Jason was going for in this one - big intimidating water tank dirt eliminator, maybe?

Over Christmas I got my hair braided with curly extensions and we went out the village to visit our Brazilian friends there, Gilson and Rosania.

Decorating the dead Christmas tree - it's amazing what you can do with garlands and bows, when we were finished it actually looked pretty good!

I couldn't get my hair wet, so I decided, who needs a shower cap, I'll just go with the dress that I wore earlier :-)

Jason and I on Christmas day

Christmas just isn't Christmas without a one-year-old to play in the wrapping paper :-)

A few days after Christmas they wanted me to make American food, so I made mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, and Swiss steak. It was good!!! (Yes, I am wearing the same clothes as Christmas, we don't take that many outfits when we travel on public transport...)

In another little bit of news there is a bakery in Bissau that makes whole wheat and nine grain bread! It’s been open for less than a month, but so far so good. Before this you could really only buy two kinds of bread in Bissau - a long Italian loaf or a sweet roll. We’ve been frequent visitors to the new store and we’re hoping that it stays open for a while!

Slicing into a loaf of nine grain bread!