A river crossing blast from the past!!!

Many moons ago... prior to any of our children actually being enrolled in Sahel Academy, the school asked if they could borrow our horse, King, for a "Western Night." We were happy to loan them our critter, except for one huge obstacle: getting King from our side of the Niger River to their side. 

The two lane bridge, the only bridge - at that time, spanning the river often crammed three lanes of vehicular traffic plus pedestrians, camels, donkey carts, bikes and motorcycles into a very finite place. Adding a horse often spooked by close contact with anything on wheels into the equation just didn't seem to equal very good math.

Additionally, neither Tim nor I were accomplished or confident riders, so we weren't volunteering. In stepped Amber, one of our EBM colleagues would try just about anything, and - if I remember correctly, the dorm assistant at that time. 

She was asked. 

She succeeded.

As you can see, we had several "local" spectators (i.e. dorm students) who enjoyed watching, as well as two boatmen who helped show Amber the "best" path for traversing the river - shallow enough that the horse mostly walked, yet without any terribly fast flowing currents. What excitement!! 

We even believed King enjoyed his dips into the river, although he was totally exhausted by the time he returned home!

Something tells me that even though we'll be living close to another major river once we move to Quebec next summer, we won't be having anyone swim/ride a horse across that river! It will be too cold most of the year.

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An edited repost

of a seriously ancient post

- from April, 2007.

(Yeah! Like over 7 years ago!)

This was actually the second post I

ever published on Our Wright-ing Pad.

Kitties and "K"amp

We've spent the past week down in Southern Indiana at a Salvation Army campground for EBM's Annual Enrichment Conference. It was a good opportunity to reconnect (and in some cases, connect in person for the first time) with other missionaries from our organization, the wonderful folks who serve and work with us in the Home Office and to report to the board. It was a good week of both challenge and encouragement, worship and fellowship, rest and recreation (how far can you kick a shoe??)...

The camp was beautiful... Tim found it very amusing that a Salvation Army campground was located in a geographical region called "The Devil's Backbone," and reminded me of that several times. We were also amazed that every road we traveled to get to this campgound was paved! The facilities were lovely... We'd see more green in 5 minutes than we'd seen the last four years in Niger. As we'd walk to breakfast every morning, we would walk up a long, gently sloping hill covered in green grass, clover (and several bees) and the conversation would always revolve around King (remember the horse we had in Niger for a few years) and how he'd go absolutely crazy to see that much open space covered with all that green grass! The camp food was "too" delicious, the fellowship with other EBMers was great, the pool was cold (so they'd fill up an inflatable boat with hot water for the little kids) but lots of fun, and the big kids enjoyed activities like hiking, a high ropes course, paintball and archery... not to mention the wii in the game room in the basement! Now we are mostly home (we stopped at my parents for a little visit) - we'll finish up the trip this afternoon - and while getting ready to attend and actually getting to the conference less than two weeks after touching down in the States seemed more than a little crazy , we are thankful we were able to do so.

Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures - especially of the paintball. I'm still trying to figure out the appeal in volunteering yourself to be the target for several other folks shooting at you with hard pellets filled with a die that not only explodes all over you when it hits you but also leaves rather large welps and bruises to document the contact (just ask Tim, Brendan and Rebekah). But I do have some pictures to add...

While we were down at the camp, we were able to check our email a few times, and received word that one of our pets, Knight the cat, was doing very well (and getting spoiled) in his new home. The girls often talk about and wonder how their animal family/friends are doing - it is hard for them to leave them as we travel back and forth between our two homes...

...so I thought I'd post the following photos of the girls loving on and saying goodbye to their fuzzy buddies - taken right before we left Niger, almost 3 weeks ago, now.

This is Mickey... she's been our kitty for almost 7 years. Tim found her at our office and brought her home late one night, after the kids were all in bed. I was sitting back in our bedroom reading and I knew something was up... he walked into the room, but kept looking back down the hallway and then I heard the "meeooww..."

That meow was nothing compared to the squeals and "cris de joie" the following morning when the kids discovered what their daddy had done. Rebekah has a particularly soft spot in her heart for all things animal... and she was always loving on Mickey - even if it meant climbing the mango tree (to which she's allergic) to spend time together!

Knight

...is Nadia's kitty. A few years back, Nadia had gone out to spend the weekend with a friend who lived in another village and they'd just had kitties. Nadia fell in love, so several weeks later for her birthday we arranged, as a surprise birthday gift, for one of those kittens to come and live chez nous.

Knight is a little "tom" and can't seem to remember that he's about a third of the size of all the other toms in the neighborhood,

but he's always been so patient, loving and cuddly with the little ones. First Elsie Mae and then Mary Michelle could pull on his ears, tug his tail or toss him whichever way and he'd never complain or swat back at them. In fact, he'd often seek out their "risky" company.

So, the girls were super excited when we heard from Knight's new family this past week, friends who've welcomed him into their home, that he's doing well and even starting to get fat!

Horse Crazy Girl

What is it about horses that almost all little girls, at some point, dream of having their own and having that special relationship with their horse about which books are written? Anna is definitely one of those horse crazy lovers. Some of her biggest smiles have been from back of a horse, especially when she was the one doing the "driving" all by herself! Right now, she is reading Misty of Chincoteague, and also reading through a series of 8 horsie books that her grandparents sent her for Christmas. Reading isn't one of her favorite activities (she'd much rather be playing imagination games with all her plastic horses and horse figurines), so that is a huge accomplishment (and the horses are the motivation) for her. She can't wait until we return from furlough and she has her chance at riding lessons down at the equestrian club!

A few months back, Anna put up a poll, wanting to know what colors of horses people preferred. And her favorite, bay (like our horse King), tied for first.

• Jet-black like a Friesian 21%
• Bay (rich red-golden with black legs, mane and tail) 21%
• Chestnut 17%
• Brown 3%
• Spotted Appaloosa 5%
• Grey or White 1%
• Palomino 7%
• Piebald (Paint or Pinto) 3%
• Blue roan 13%
• Strawberry roan 1%

My favorite is the Blue roan... Rebekah (our other horse lover) is partial to Palominos. Horses are such fabulous animals!

Quick Update on Youki

No, this is not the promised picture of Youki, not yet at least. He's still too shy to stay out of the shadows long enough to get a picture when someone is close to his cage... and we still need batteries for the camera. But this is a picture of a Timneh African Grey, the type of bird that we think he (or she?) is. Youki is still a young bird, as evidenced by the downey feathers still on his chest and stomach, and we are all throroughly enjoying his addition to our family.

We feel he is making great strides, and starting to become comfortable with our family, although removing his blanket, feeding and watering and cleaning the cage still make him quite nervous (and he's not too shy to let us know). He also doesn't appreciate it when taller family members approach the cage, growling to warn us. I was surprised to learn that parrots "growled."

But most of the time, he is comfortable when the girls sit around his cage and read, (sometimes reading aloud to him), enjoys family meal times, when we are all there in the room eating at the table, but no one approaches too closely, when the kids are watching a movie (he especially likes episodes of MacGyver and the light saber swishes on Star Wars) with lots of intriguing noises and sounds for him to listen to. But his hands down favorite is the sound track from "Prince of Egypt," or other theatrical music. Then he sings, squeals, squeaks, whistles and performs gymnastic tricks as he climbs all over his cage, even hanging upside down from his roof.

He also likes to dismantle the straw roof to his cage (maybe he wants more light?), as piece by piece, he's slowly taking it apart. We figured he learned this behavior by watching King, during the time that their sejours here overlapped. King ate the roof (a thatch made out of millet stalks or straw) to his hangar this Spring/Summer... This has nothing to do with the subject of Youki, but we think it was just the challenge of pulling it down plus the fact that we kept some of his feed stored on the roof that enticed King to first slowly dismantle and then rapidly consume his roof. But back to the subject at hand - Youki pulls the silver spray-painted straw out stalk by stalk, plays with it then throws it on the floor. And yesterday, he stuck his head through the top wires of the cage where he'd made a whole big enough for him to peek out. It was quite funny to see his head poking up through the roof and looking around. It could have been our imagination, but he seemed quite proud of himself for all the squeals and giggles this particular behavior elicited from the girls. That dovetails nicely with everything we've read so far on African greys: emotionally, they tend to act like a 2-3 year old, often doing things just for attention or reaction from those around.

We are learning that earning his trust will take time and patience, however. He was not a hand raised baby accustomed to the love and care of people from his earliest days, like the parrots available for purchase in the States. Instead, his first contact with people was probably when he was snatched from his nest, thrown in a cardboard box, shipped in the back of a truck over horrible roads to Niamey, and then tossed in a tiny cage near the little market where we buy fruits and vegetables with nothing more than a handful of peanuts for people to stare at him and kids to poke sticks at him until we bought him and brought him home.

Rebekah is working hard to earn his trust - we all hope for both of their sakes, that day will come sooner rather than later.

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Photo of Timneh African Grey copied from the Animal Company web site.

Wordless Wednesday - Ahhhhhhhh, isn't he cute?

It was a sad day last week...

...when we had to say "Goodbye-" to our horse, King.

King is an 11 year old gelding. A few years back, Anna was really struggling with a lot of fear and anxiety, but loved horses. At that time, King belonged to another missionary family who used him to give riding lessons, and we arranged for Anna to take lessons with one of their daughters. We've really seen Anna blossom as a result. When that family decided to sell King a little over 2 years ago, we took advantage of the opportunity to purchase him and it has not been an investment that we have regretted. Anna has continued to make great strides in her self-confidence and willingness to try new things. And that's not to mention that her preoccupation and love of horses and all things equestrian has only continued to grow.

For much of the past two years, we've been able to find folks to continue working with the girls on the horse. However, we've not had anyone to work with them in recent months, the price of feed has increased (along with all the other staples here in town), Tim has had to pick up extra responsibilities again this year, we've just decided that Richelle will be returning to the States for the delivery of this baby, finding time to exercise and give him the attention he needs is scarce and the girls aren't old enough/mature enough to safely do so on their own, we are looking at a furlough next summer and we'd need to find some place to board and people to care for him for the year... for these reasons among others, it seemed a good time to sell him - he's in good health, a gorgeous animal and still worth something. We've mentioned this in our last prayer letter because it was important to us and the girls that we try to find him a good home (i.e. we didn't want to sell him to someone who just wanted to run him into the ground out at the race track).

We want to let all who've been praying for this request that we did find what we hope will be a good home for King. Two young men affiliated with the equestrian club down the hill wanted to purchase him as a gift for their father, and they came to take him to his new home last week.

The girls (Anna especially) are sad, and we all miss his exuberant greeting (or was that a desperate demand for food) when we'd walk by the door in the wee hours of the morning (his stall was where he could look right through the front door into our hallway), but we hope that this will enable us to allow her and Rebekah to take riding lessons down at the equestrian club, with those have much more experience than either Tim or I.

A Kingly Wordless Wednesday

Hungry as a Horse...

Most of you know we have a horse and his name is King. We really enjoy him, although we don't ride him near as much as we need to or as much as the girls would like to...

But we do have an honest-to-goodness "we've lived THAT one" understanding of the expression "He eats like a horse."

In fact, after today, I can say I have a whole new understanding AND appreciation for several things...

When our houseworker arrived this morning, she informed me that there was a man waiting out by our gate, with a donkey cart load of hay, and that he was wanting to speak to me. (You see, everyone who passes by our gates knows we have a horse because several feet from the door, our guard deposits our horse's deposits... the ones we don't want to leave laying around in his stall for too awful long. Because of this "advertising," we regularly have entrepreneurs stopping by the house wanting to sell us things for our horse to eat...so he can continue to make those deposits - but all that was totally beside the point.)

I wandered out to our front gate, burning my feet because the sun had already heated the sand THAT much and Elsie had been playing with my shoes and I couldn't find them. We usually do have a guard, but he's on vacation in Benin, so for this month, I'm the daytime relief guard. That means I'm being called to the gate fairly often (at least 4 or 5 times a morning) to answer questions, hold the dog while someone comes in to get water, or some other miscellaneous thing. I greeted the young man with his donkey cart (Yeah! Zarma language practice!) and after we'd both agreed that today was a very hot day and that the heat was tiring, he asked me if I was interested in buying some hay for the horse.

Now typically, that is not part of my job description around this household. I do dishes, wash, dry, sometimes iron and fold laundry; I grocery shop and plan menus; Some days, I run a school taxi service; I cook - thankfully, because of our househelp, not all the time; I clean and pick up - a never ending job, believe me! I help with homework, teach, regulate computer use, read books and stories, cut hair, fix hair, wash kids, change diapers and potty train. And make sure everyone takes their malaria prophylactic. I brush/clean the horse and sometimes I ride him. But, I've never bought his food before. And, I have no money at the house.

So, I tell the young man that I'll have to go and call my husband and find out what he wants to do. I go back in the house, call Tim at the studio, clue him in as to what is going on. Tim says he is interested in buying the hay, IF I can bargain down to what Tim has decided he is willing to pay.

Back out to the road I dash - I was prepared for the hot sand on my bare feet this time! And, we begin the bargaining process. First, I find out how many bundles of hay he has - around 30. And how much does he want to sell each bundle for? 750 CFA a bundle. Fortunately, about this time, a friend showed up who speaks Zarma to help me with the money amounts - since in Zarma money transactions are all handled in base 5 math... I think... and I can't think quickly enough to translate --Zarma words to French words to English words to figure out what the base 5 numbers actually are in our base 10 number system, and then retrace that same mental path in the opposite direction to communicate with my hay entrepreneur-- in my head, especially with my feet burning again!

Well, 750 CFA is way more than we want to pay, so I remind the young man that I actually have enough food for the horse for several more days and don't really have to buy anything more today, but that if he'd be willing to sell his bundles for 500 CFA apiece, I might be willing to reconsider.

He shakes his head, laughs a bit and then goes on to explain that this is very high quality hay, much better than what I can find down the road a bit, that he's worked very hard to bring it from a very far place, and that his hay bundles are significantly bigger than the standard hay bundles sold in and around town. No, 500 CFA is way too low of a price. "How about 650 CFA a bundle," he counters.

Since it is my turn, I tell him: "It is a very hot day and I'm sure you've worked very hard to bring the hay by my house..." (At this point, I'm very thankful for my friend who is translating the Zarma for me to make sure I'm understanding and really saying what I'm wanting to say), "...your bundles of hay do look very nice,..." (Please don't ask me what I really know about hay.) "...and I can see that they are a bit fluffier than the ones currently stored up on the roof of the horse's shelter. So, I do very much appreciate your hard work and effort. However, my husband has set a maximum limit that I can spend on hay for the horse today and that is 600 CFA a bundle."

After much hemming and hawing, he finally agrees to that price (which, by the way, is the current price on the street), I make sure that he understands I can't pay him that moment; he'll have to wait for Tim to come home for lunch in a bit, and we open the gate. He drives the donkey and cart in and begins to unload his bundles of hay.

About 40 minutes later, 38 bundles of hay are stacked in our front yard: 2 rows of 7 bundles stacked 2 high, 1 row of 5 bundles stacked 2 high... all that equals 38. Jonathan and Elsie Mae have had a ball running around outside in next to nothing and nothing, trying to get the donkey to pay attention to them while the cart is being unloaded.

Finally, it is time to do the math. Tim (I've seen him do this) squats down and does the math with his finger in the sand. Since this hay entrepreneur is not literate, that means nothing to him. So we started doing mental math (which I always hated as a kid, especially in the grocery store with my mom and sister who were/are actually good at it)!:

30 times 6 is 18, so 18,000 CFA for 30 bundles.

8 times 6 is 48, so 4,800 CFA for 8 bundles.

Add all that together and you end up with 22,800 CFA for a month's worth of hay for the horse.

Unfortunately, at least for this hay seller, that didn't translate very easily to Zarma base 5 math, and he didn't understand. So I tried again:

30 times 5 is 15,000 CFA for 30 bundles at 500 CFA/bundle (which was not the price we'd discussed).

8 times 5 is 4,000 CFA for 8 bundles at 500 CFA apiece.

So, if he would sell them to me for 500 CFA each, it would be 15 + 4, or 19,000 CFA.

But, he's not selling them for that. I still have to account for an addition 100 CFA/bundle.

38 times 100 is 3,800 CFA.

19,000 + 3,800 = 22,800 CFA (Notice, this is the same price I'd already come to once before).

After repeating this math process 6 or 7 times, he was finally assured that everything was just, I got him some cold water, brought a bucket of water for his donkey and told him that my husband would be home in about 45 minutes. He asked if he could keep the donkey in our front yard while he was waiting, but I wasn't feeling that hospitable, so after a few more pleasantries and amusement on his part as I tried to speak to him in Zarma, he was on his way to find a shady spot in the road and await Tim and payment; I could go back to my regularly scheduled program (working on Sheep Tales) - only an hour of time had elapsed.

As I went back to my work, I took a few minutes to thank God for our guard, who usually does all that for us, for Tim who takes care of so many similar sorts of things that just eat up time, for friends who show up at just the right time, for an unexpected and unplanned Zarma language and culture lesson, and for an 18 month old and a 3 year old who find donkeys enough of a fascination that they can watch one being unloaded for nearly an hour without too much supervision on my part. It was not exactly fun, but it was an interesting experience! *SMILE*

And, I can guarantee you, King was watching all of those proceedings with great interest! He definitely is motivated by and thinks... with his stomach!

"Mama! Mama! ..."

"... Miss Ruth is BACK!"

Boy, were they excited when they saw Ruth walk into our courtyard the other day! Since she left for her vacation, we've been so busy that the girls haven't had much opportunity to ride King and they've missed it. Then, he was injured when a gust of wind caught one of the metal gates and blew it into him, gashing his side and leg pretty deeply as well as banging and skinning up his knee.

Fortunately, King had healed up and we were about to start riding him when Ruth returned. The girls had a ball this past Saturday morning when she came over, they saddled him up and everyone had a turn for a ride.

We are so thankful for Ruth, for all her help with King, and for being the kind of young lady our girls can look up to!

The Real Hidalgo (???)

SANDSTORMS!!

They ARE impressive.

Remember watching the movie Hidalgo? The scene where the man rides the horse, furiously gallopping to escape a huge sandstorm? Until I moved to Niger, I thought that sort of representation of a sandstorm was hugely exaggerated... except that we've had two sandstorms just this season (so far) that have looked remarkably like that scene from the movie. In fact, this picture was taken just yesterday morning...

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...Ok, we know, this is supposed to be a blog page, not a "blague" (If you don't get it, check out the meaning of "blague" in French), so here are a few pictures we really took, still in their unaltered form, as the sandstorm moved in yesterday. What was super cool was that the storm moved in from the north, so we were able to sit on our terrace where the house sheltered us from the worst of the sand, dust and wind - and experience it as the storm moved right over and around us. What was super incredible is that the men working on cementing the 2nd floor and roof of the house they are building in the concession next to us continued to work right through the storm. The first two pics were taken yesterday morning. The third was taken as a storm rolled in off the desert from the east over one of the Niamey markets. Amazing, aren't they?

(photo by Brian Trutwin)

PS Richelle cannot take much credit for this blog entry - she was only the executor. Tim was the creative inspiration.

THE River Crossing

Sahel Academy (the school where Brendan will be enrolling next year... if he passes CM2 and his French Exams in June) asked if they could borrow our horse, King, for a "Western Night." We were happy to have them do so, except there was one huge obstacle - getting the horse from our side of the Niger River to their side. Neither Tim nor I are accomplished riders (although we are learning), and King can be a bit spooky sometimes, so neither of us was going to volunteer. So Amber (one of our EBM colleagues who will try just about anything) was asked. And, she succeeded - we think King even enjoyed his dips in the water, but he was totally exhausted by the time he returned home! As you can see, we had several "local" spectators who enjoyed watching, as well as two boatmen who helped show Amber the "best" path to traverse the river - shallow enough that the horse mostly walked, yet without a terribly fast current. What excitement!! And how's this for exciting - I successfully posted twice today, including uploading pictures. Yippee! Maybe we can get this blog thing to work.