Week ending 16th October

---

The week ending 16th October
On Monday I met Libertina, the girl I'm supporting through secondary school. She's in Shelby's girls empowerment group, so I went along for the beginning of the session. She's a very smiley, confident girl. She says she'd like to go to university after school.

Thursday was a public holiday for mother's day, so ad the school was shut I went with Steve to the maternity hospital. He was tiling the birthing room, and I painted the skirting board in the maternity ward, which meant I was on my knees for about four hours.
Priscilla, the cleaner who also helps with nursing, watched me intently for a while, then asked if she could have a go. I showed her how as she had never painted before - paint is so expensive so people in the villages don't paint.

Wednesday night I managed to kill three spiders, but Thursday morning another one escaped me. I picked up my decorating t-shirt, which I haven't used for about three weeks and a huge spider ran out. By the time I'd got the broom it had run behind the settee (this is an optimistic term to describe the two seater wicker piece of furniture that is so uncomfortable that I'd rather stand. If I was at home I'd sit on the floor but with wind scorpions so prevalent here, I won't).
My room seems to attract creepy crawlies. Wednesday night i had several things under the mosquito net with me, and Thursday night there was a large beetle thing on clothes hanging over a piece of bamboo on one side of the room, and just after I'd dealt with that and got back into bed there was a loud thrumming noise and a huge moth was sitting on clothes hanging over the other side of the room.
The eaves are open here so noises outside can sound disconcertingly close. Once I'm keyed up by things moving about my room, I can be twitched by anything. There's no real wild animals here, apart from snakes. I haven't seen one but last week the guard killed one in the compound. Early in the morning the birds in the thatch start tweeting. Sometimes they are inside as the thatch is open to the rooms. I think the mosquito net would catch any falling bird poo. I'm woken at 5am by the school bell which clangs clamourously fairly often, rung by a child to signal the end of break times, or a drunk on his way home from the bar.

Some of the Landirani team came with the Project for Africa team to the maternity hospital while I was there. They had built the maternity hospital two or three years ago and are planning to extend it, and renovate the staff housing so that the excellent medical team currently in place, will stay. They took one of the pregnant mothers to the main hospital as she was having a breech birth.
While I was painting two mothers gave birth, and there was no sound from either of them. Stoical, or what!

Wednesday night there was a tiny sliver of a new moon. Tne moon here is always on its back, presumably because it's so far south. It's wonderful to see so much sky, I'm conscious of not seeing enough sky at home, not only because my neighbour has built an extra floor in his attic so I get considerably more shade, but there are trees and houses getting in the way of the moon's trajectory. And the colours of the sunsets are like no others that I have seen. Greek islands and Australia were pretty good, but African sunsets are something else. It's possibly the reddish brown dust that the sun shines through. Sam, Heather's son, has made a bamboo,hanging bench seat, which he's put outside the library and Shelby and I sat there with a spiced rum each.
I've now been here for half my time, and I'm wondering if I've achieved anything. I've had a great time, but I don't know what do far I could count as a success. I'll have to think about that.

---