In February we had a visit from Rich's brother and his family. Considering we had just found out that we were going to have our own baby, this was a real shock as our house was suddenly filled with three young children (and another one on the way, so I got to talk baby things!!). It doesn't necessarily follow that the shock was a bad thing, and we had a wonderful time with them. It was the first time we had really seen the youngest boy, Eli, as he was born just over a year and I think we had only seen him for a grand total of one hour when we were in the UK in October.

Here are a few pictures from their visit.

Walking through Jozani Forest looking for monkey's. Jon using a kanga, local style, to carry Eli where the push chair was unable to go.

Noah and Melzi sampling passion fruit juice - yummy!

As with all of our guests, we soon put the whole family to work! Here Jon is helping Rich and the guys at the school to lay the floor in the workshop area and concrete the pit's. Everyone else helped out delivering water around town and had a great time.

The only children on the island I have ever seen wearing helmets.

Chilling out at a swimming pool :)

Synchronised jumping/diving/posing for the camera!

Why accuracy is important!

Although posts have been lacking over the last few days, this has not been due to power problems. Thankfully we still have power, although approximately 20 minutes after I wrote the last post the power went down again. Apparently this happened across the whole country and wasn't just our poor island this time. But it came back later that evening and is more or less still here despite the occasional black out. It is such a blessing to be able to use the washing machine and have the fridge on and use the oven and not have to switch it all off again to be able to pump water from the well; I can do it all at the same time! What a wonderful thing!

As our Swahili continues to progress we have been learning helpful Bible verses in the language. I was testing Rich on that well known verse John 14 v 6 and found that although he had done a good job, by accidentally switching just two letters, he had changed the meaning of the verse entirely and come up with some interesting theology at the same time. It went something like this:

'Jesus told them, I am the lime, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Grandfather except through me.'

Nearly!

JOY!!!!

I am sitting here in a state of disbelief; the umeme is back!! We have pretty much every single appliance on in the house at the moment charging and filling, just in case it doesn't last (oh ye of little faith!!)....

Been 10 minutes so far, we'll see how it goes!!!

Umeme?

Today is the day we have been waiting for. Over the last couple of weeks we have been told that electricity would be restored to the island on Tuesday 9th of March. This is the third or fourth date we have been given and as each one has come and gone we have had less and less faith in the information we have been given.

However, EVERYONE has been talking about the 9th of March and how there would be tests on the 8th March so little by little we began to hope.

We woke up this morning to no power and still we have no electricity in our area. However we have heard (and seen) that there are areas of the island with electricity. This led us to wondering why we didn't have any power.

When I was told the reason why I laughed. It's so typical and unsurprising although at the same time makes your mind boggle. The cables bringing electricity to our neighbourhood were STOLEN whilst they were not in use and presumably sold to make someone a small amount of money. WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? WHY? Is about all I have to say about that really. Words fail me. (Rich is laughing right now as clearly I have quite a lot to say about it!)

We are still told that we should be back up and running by this evening... watch this space!

One of many reasons why Rich thinks that Dog's are annoying.

Walking through fresh cement without a care in the world.

Hen party Swahili style.

Last week I was invited to a party. Until I arrived, I was unsure what exactly the party was for, even though we had an invitation and had asked all of our friends. All we knew was that there would prayers recited, we should cover our heads and we needed to take a gift of some sort.

So we headed off at the time specified on the invitation... we should have known better really. Sometimes we forget that 'this is Africa!' After about an hour and a half the rest of the guests started arriving and sitting down on the floor around us.

There was also a group of girls who turned up and started chanting at the front of the room. They carried on for about an hour and a half with the rest of the guests joining in on occasion. We were asked why we didn't join in. Well for one thing the whole thing was done in Kiarabu (Arabic) so we didn't have the foggiest what was going on!

I have to say I felt a little bit sorry for the 'Bibi harusi' or hen who sat on a stage by herself the entire time looking miserable (that is what they do here. They will not smile for photographs but go for the pouting, I am miserable look) while we sat around and chatted with the women next to us.

After the chanting had finished, it was photograph and giving of gifts time, all of which was filmed by a man with a huge fluorescent light and old school video camera. So up we went to give our gifts and have the obligatory photo's taken before collecting our own gift (the food parcel that signals the end of any party here) and heading home.

I have to say that I'm rather glad my hen party wasn't like this, it wasn't exactly exciting and I much prefer having a picnic and cream tea by the river!

Bibi harusi sitting by herself :(

The girls who chanted their way through the evening.

Giving the gifts to the bibi harusi at the end. Anything for the house including a washing up bowl - it's all useful! (Plus there's no Denby here!)

Having photo's taken at the end although I had never met either of the women in the middle of the picture before this picture was taken! Hence my look of mild discomfort!

Family Photo's

This weekend we visited the mainland. We had a lovely time enjoying the electricity and visited an English pub which served real pub food. There was even vinegar for the chips!

However, this was not the main reason for our visit. We had a very special appointment yesterday morning with a lady who is able to take very special pictures and was able to confirm that I am indeed 12 weeks pregnant.

We are very excited with our news and it was incredible to see our baby for the first time! The best bit was hearing the heart beat and watching him (her/it...) moving about when we woke him up. He's only 5.5cm long but already he already looks and is formed like a baby and just has a whole lot of growing to do in the next 6 months or so.

The very kind lady gave us a couple of pictures to bring home so thought we would put one on the blog so you can all have a gander at your own leisure and get a look at baby Osborn's first official portrait!