Tuesday as a Holiday-Swimming, Dinner out...

Tuesday Holiday! Tuesday was a special day all around. For starters, we had invited 5 'young men' to the Heisey apartment for an American pancake breakfast. Though really, the only thing American were the pancakes. We served them with Malian honey, mango syrup, and fresh (made the day before) mango-orange jam/marmalade. We also had fresh mango and bananas, of course. :)) Paul, Tierno, Adama, Mattias, and Yakou(Ray) sat at the table while Julie and I kept the pancakes coming. I started the first platter of pancakes with Ray, so that he could show them how we top them with butter and syrup, etc, considering Paul was the only other one who'd eaten pancakes before. The platter got the whole way around, and everyone had two or three to start. The last one to get them was Tierno (our night guard here), and he hardly touched them for a while. I was getting worried that maybe he didn't like them, and what else did I have to feed him?! My fears were short lived however. Towards the end of breakfast, Paul and Adama were teasing him about eating 7 pancakes already...Paul was really counting... and then he took two more. I told them a mom or gramma likes to see boys enjoying her cooking, so that was a good thing! (I found out later that Tierno had gone to bed at 6 o'clock and had just been wakened to come over for breakfast—he was still ½ asleep at the beginning! I think 4 satisfied young men left our house that morning, and I'm hoping to be able to do this for them again soon. The next part of our day was also special. Eva Durst, the young Austrian lady who came to work with the children this summer, returns home July 25th.. She gave the children a special treat as her going-away gift, a day of swimming in the pool at Kangaba Campment. That is a rare treat for our kids. The pool at Kangaba is a lovely L-shaped jewel of refreshingly cool, sapphire blue water wrapped around a restaurant pavillion. It is shaded on 3 sides, including the shallow end, but the foot of the “L” was in full sun, and that ell was deep enough to dive into, much to the boys' delight. One adventurous 15-year-old did a back-flip that earned him a serious scrape and bruise on his lower back. (Whereby the lesson to be careful was learned much better than any lecture from Mimi. LOL) Eva also brought some oranges and a packet of cookies for a snack much to everyone's delight. It was a wonderful 3+ hours of enjoyment for the children, not to mention it was refreshing for us as well. Kangaba is a lovely African safari style resort camp set at the base of a small rocky ridge, and just 20 minutes away from where we live. There are cabins available to rent (think rustic cabins like at Cowans Gap State park--ask the Reynolds or Hance families, if you've not been there). They offer horse riding (at least we saw the small corral:)), an observation tower, open air restaurant, drinks bar and a gift shop. They also have lovely grounds with quite a selection of botanicals; many of the trees and shrubs were nicely labeled for us. I doubt if the boys gave much thought to the setting, but we appreciated its beauty. When we need a get-away, we think that we might plan to make a night or two there a mini vacation. We finished off the day as guests at the home of another missionary family here. When Julie invited us for dinner, she asked if we had any foods allergies or foods we dislike. We said “no, but we would appreciate not having rice and sauce”. She readily understood and chuckled, promising that she could arrange something else. (How much we have learned to appreciate the variety of foods that have been our daily rations in the States. Variety is available here, but not on the budget that we operate under to feed 25 or 26 people everyday. More on that in a later post.) So we had delicious lasagna dinner with chocolate fondue as a finishing touch, accompanied by thought provoking (English) conversation. Wonderful! It was a weekday that felt like a Sunday. Be a blessing to someone today. Mim in Mali