Hotting up

Greetings from a very hot Owamboland. I hung out the washing this morning then came to pray with David. When I went back out I found the sheets already dry! 40 degrees’ forecast for tomorrow!
We have found a very lively and capable young lady to be a language helper. Koneka (which means ‘take note’ or ‘notice’) wants to be a school teacher after school (she is 19) and is an able teacher of us! Because of the necessity of learning so many variations of the concords in all the different noun classes, we spend our time at the moment drilling Oshiwambo sentences such as …
The man goes under the bed
The coffin goes under the bed
The grain goes under the bed
The sin goes under the bed
Caris is art-mad and I spend time trawling the internet to find pix for her to colour in or be crafty with. She also likes to design her own pictures and is doing that as I write this. As the WHOLE area for 100s kms around is only sand, Caris misses blossom trees, flowers (and colour in general). We have bought a packet of seeds and a bag of fertiliser and will now try and grow something in the garden (if they don't wither and die as they come up!). (Like Collarenebri, it is very flat and dry here, with a farming culture. However, here all hoeing, sowing, and harvesting is done by hand. Ploughing is by hand or using a donkey or cow.)
She still dances her heart out whenever she can. You can see her on the trampoline. She pirouettes as she jumps! Although our music books never arrived, at least our electric piano did. She loves to set it to play its selection of classical songs and then dance around. The local shops with canned music all know her as she twirls and skips up and down the aisles.
As for our boy, he still enjoys karate. He will do a second grading next month. When he is not absorbed in a book he is racing through life at 100 miles an hour. He is mine of interesting information that he gleans from reading. (Did you know that the eye is attached to the brain with an optical nerve!?). His burning desire at the moment is to build his own robot. He collects any scrap bits of metal (even if they are part of something that actually is NOT always scrap!) and tries to twist and shape them into something robot-ish. He has suddenly become very interested in Lego and spends a lot of time with the Lego we brought with us.
They are excited about their upcoming birthdays and Caris is already telling me what kind of cake decoration she wants (she wishes!). I will have friends over and organise games – that does not seem to be the norm here. I did it at Johannes’ birthday party and was a huge success!
David is away for the third Saturday in a row doing workshops. The people are always very grateful. He did one near Ruacana last week (the pastor had advertised it as a Bible conference). After getting David to talk for 3 hours the pastor said they would have a short break then have another session. David could see the people had information-overload and said why not let him come back another day, instead. Good plan!
The Sunday school I have started at Ondangwa went a bit better last week with one of the children being willing to have a go at translating.
There is a picture of Étienne with kudu horns on – from a relatively small kudu apparently. They are very big animals and are responsible for a number of severe (even fatal) car accidents between here and Windhoek.