here come the rains in Africa

 This is our garden last night - the white patches are very large hail stones!

13 months of sunshine - apparently

 Ethiopia claims to have 13 months of sunshine - we beg to differ! When it is not raining it is not really cold, but not bright sunshine at the moment either.

National Museum of Ethiopia

 The National Museum of Ethiopia was split into three (technically four but one is currently closed) sections. The first floor was lots of bones - 'Lucy' being the famous one but also other fossilized remains. Lucy is a partial skeleton estimated to be 3.3million years old and had recently returned from her 'travels' somewhere or other!!

Born Free - Ensessakottah

 Ensessakotteh (means Animal foot print in Amharic) is a Wildlife Rescue, Conservation and Education Centre about 30km outside Addis run by the Born Free Association. We took Sarah's Uncle Mark while he was visiting out for a change of scenery:

coffee ceremony

 Coffee ceremony's are ritualized forms of making and drinking coffee. Coffee beans are roasted over hot coals and then ground using a pestle and mortar. They are put into the jebena (the pottery pot pictured) to boil the coffee over the coals.

 The host pours the coffee into small handle-less cups and serves it with sugar but not milk. The grounds are then brewed two further times for the traditional three cups of coffee.

And the coffee is served with popcorn - always a hit with the boys who don't get to drink the coffee!

following on from the water blog...

Apparently our current water problems are due to regular maintenance of the city water tanks. The water did return about 8pm last night again so we did have a crazy couple of hours of showering, laundry, dishes and filling our emergency water barrel outside the door (that we flush the toilet with when there is no water).

Our friend Danielle has written a blog post about what has been called the trinity of missionary happiness here - it may give you a little more insight into living in Ethiopia with the frequent power, water and internet challenges :-)

http://culturalseasoning.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/the-trinity.html 

Today there is no power...but I am prepared for the water being out - I have bowls in the kitchen of tap water ready to boil to wash up and buckets in the bathroom ready to flush the toilet, so typically of course the water is running right now!

I remembered another of Captain Tim's little rhymes last night too (totally miss him and his lovely family)- of significance when there is no water 'if it's yellow let it mellow, if it's brown flush it down'. Haha, you've got to love living in Africa. My boys have taken this one on board - except they can't flush the toilet with a bucket - so guess who gets called whenever a bucket flush is necessary??


[update - actually there is some power hence why I have internet - just not in most of my apartment...time to investigate....]

water irony

When we lived on the ship we had permanent water restrictions - two minute showers and one load of laundry per person per week. Every now and then the ship couldn't take water on board for some reason (or if we were sailing and the tanks were running low) and we were down to drinking it only, no showers or laundry allowed.

The irony when we lived on the ship was that we were surrounded by water - as the Rime of the Ancient Mariner goes 'water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink ' (Thanks to Captain Tim for introducing us to that rhyme - so much that we still remember it!!). 

We lived at Appelsbosch  - a deserted college in South Africa - and had constant water problems there. We lived with out flushing toilets for most of the five months, the washing machines rarely washed without needing to be filled with buckets and sometimes you couldn't shower.

So you would think really that we would be used to living with water issues, but the water is off almost all day, every day at the moment and trying to wash nappies/diapers in the very small windows of running water is driving me crazy (well that and the fact that our block washing machine hasn't been washing properly).

It seems ironic that once again we are living without much water - when it is RAINING constantly! I might have to write a new rhyme...hmm...

Our staff

Here are the Bingham staff for the year 2013-2014. As you can see from the picture it is a large group of people from many nations around the world.

six months

Lily is now half a year, and with it came eating food :-)

This is the 'I like avocado face'

the first day of school

Tom is now in grade 4 and Joshua in grade 1. School started on Tuesday this week.

excitement in the family

We are very excited that we have a new member of the family. Isabelle Audrey Slennett has arrived in the last week!

Congratulations Sam and Amy! We can't wait to meet her :-)

Our new Director!

Bingham's school board has been prayerfully considering who to appoint as our permanent Director. During the summer the board made the decision to appoint Brad Adams as Bingham Academy's new Director. Brad has served at Bingham for six years and has an excellent understanding of the strengths and challenges the school faces. Please join with us in thanking God for such a strong appointment, and asking the Lord to guide Brad as he takes the school forward.

If you want to put a face to the name, Brad and his wife Krisha appear at the end of this short SIM-Australia video.

SIM // Brad and Krisha Adams from Worldview Productions on Vimeo.

we have new teachers!!

We're starting teacher orientation again, with the new school year starting in only a couple of weeks. We have a great team of teachers here ready and we are excited for what this year will look like.

We've been having all sorts of fun despite the rain, and were blessed to have Sarah's Uncle visit last week so we'll share some of our fun times soon. Until we get the chance please think of us and be praying for this time - we want the team to start the new year well.