Holy Smokes! Look at all 'em pictures!

Welcome! Welcome to another post at Zoobar - the place where wishes are made and dreams come true! Please accept my apologies for such a long absence. In an attempt to make things up to you, I have posted over 100 pictures to chronicle my adventures of the last few months. Sorry about the gray spot in all the shots - the lens is dirty and I can't find a lens cleaner in this country...

To get things started, we have several photos from my bike ride home from Bissikrima back in February. Bissikrima is about 50km (30 miles) from my village and I go there to visit friends, drink cold sodas, and use the telephone. The ride back was done between 7am and 9:45am.

























Okay, now for some pictures around my hut and the village. The area surrounding my village is quite beautiful, but photos would not do it justice right now, as the dust in the air really just makes everything look grimy - I'll post a full series of village photos in about a month, once the rain has come and washed the filth out of the air. Here's Banana again - she can sleep anywhere.





Hornets come into my hut WAY too often. They're about the size of my head. I was stung once while on my bike - the stinger went through my shirt and got me on me chest, and it still hurt like a son of a gun. There are more hornet photos further down.
Cows are always just outside my front door.




My new whip:









Kids
Props to Laura and Jamie - Connect 4 is a big hit with the neighborhood. They still don't get the rules but man do they love dropping those pieces in the slots!!




















A bushrat fell the forty feet down the hole in my backyard, died, and stank to high heaven. I paid a fellow 2000gf (40 cents) to climb down and scoop it out.





They finally poured the concrete for my latrine (and to those curious PTO examiners - they did NOT use a single one of the new-fangled rebar connectors I spent the last two years examining. They connected the rebar with wire.), but they are still yet to move the slab over the hole, so I'm still using the neighbors (disgusting!) latrine. Here comes the third month of privacy-free life!



These next photos were all taken in Kankan. People get upset if you take unsolicited photos, so these were all taken from my hip. Apologies for the skewed/out of focus photos. I think it's artistic.






















I wanted to test her sleeping strenght, so I played the balance game. She never even stirred, not even when all the objects came crashing down :-p



This darn cow is always sneaking into my backyard, eating my fence, and keeping me awake at 4 in the morning.


This is Mr. Bah, manager of the local gas station, and my go-to go for electricity. He is the first Guinean I've met to have a computer (granted, it's from 1987), so I teach him Excel on his PC while I charge my iPod. Booya. This is his family:

That's all of the photos for now, but I'll be back tomorrow for a more in-depth update, and back again on the 15th with updates from Sierra Leone!