Garden Update

  This is about as interesting as it gets here in Zambia, a garden update.  Our garden has already started sprouting stuff, I don't think either of us remember what we planted where.  Also I guess we have a gardener also as one of the guys who works here shows up and does stuff to the garden, like put the protective glass on the sprouts and expand it.  He also sometimes moves plants around.  Its good as we don't have to worry about making sure it's watered, he does it for us.

Bug Town

  By request I am making sure to post all the insect photos that I take.  I have made a label called "Bug Town" so that if you are the kind of person that wants to see the bug pictures they are are in one place.  I was going to call the section "Insect Overlords" originally but I decided on the nicer sounding Bug Town.  Anyway I am working to get the insect pictures filtered out of the main page and off to the Bug Town section, but it requires editing the blogger template I haven't found a workable solution.
   To follow the locust pool party I have a picture of a black millipede.  This is one of the larger ones I have seen, and they are pretty common.  I assume that they don't get much larger than this, and assuming that I will be able to sleep.  My Massachusetts Drivers license is included for scale...

   That's all the bugs I got for today.

one month...

Hi, 

We are at the first month marker which mainly means we have to figure out how to pay for our own utilities since our landlord set us up the first day we got here.  Please wish us luck as it is not very apparent to me how we are supposed to do this.  A few pictures of the past week.

 Have you ever been curious to know what "All Nighter Chilli Rub" favor is?  Well it's sold in Zambia and we are scared to try it, however we did buy a bag because Kim just couldn't resist.

 

Since we got stuck behind this truck we thought we might as well take a picture.  I can't remember if the crates had chickens or produce. 

I'm pointing at what will one day an avocado tree, but that's speculation and we have yet to confirm that with anyone.  If it is an avocado tree it won't produce fruit for 2 years, perhaps I will stay on a little longer...  Things tend to just sort of magically appear from time to time in our yard.

These are our landlords horses or 'horsies' as Kim calls them.  There's an area that they run around in just beyond our fence.

I bet you have never seen a locust pool party before.  Actually we have no idea what these guys were doing and I'm pretty sure we don't want to know.  They were like this for about 45 minutes or something.

Then they ended up going into the pool; luckily: 1) Locusts can swim 2) Our pool is cleaned every other day.  Surprisingly few of them drowned.

Another zambian sunset.  I'll get the exposure level figured out some point.  I think we may need to use our better camera to do these sunsets justice.

This is one of our roomates who lives on the porch.

That's it for now, there is a car purchase for us on the horizon, but we'll post about that for another time.

meanwhile back on the home front....

We got this picture from our property manager yesterday and we both can't stop staring at it.

Its intense, and our carpenters Fred and Lester are doing an amazing job, fixing things that have been messed up with the house for years. Of course, would have been better had we just not bought a house with things that were this wrong in the first place, but live and learn.

packing mistakes

On departing from Boston we knew we 'd be moving almost immediately into our house so we brought what we deemed as necessities which included every electronic we own, all of my sweaters and socks (haven't unpacked), a packet of shower curtain rings (but no shower curtain) and a tube that apparently i can use to pee standing up (sorry for our family members and anyone else who might find that inappropriate to disclose). I also brought a vacuum wine stopper.

What we didn't bring were any pots, pans, cooking utensils, wine openers, vegetable peeler (which would have been useful as both a peeler and for cheese). I don't even really know when these items will show up because I do not know if we put them in our air (should arrive soon) or sea (not going to hold breath) shipments. For now we are using two pans, one is about 6 inches is cast iron-ish and has grill pan marks and the other is what i think is about a 2 quart pot. Both of which were kindly loaned to us.



Yesterday, I was taken to a produce market and stocked up on things actual fruits and vegetables which I'm ridiculously excited about. I found the woman who makes tofu which we haven't eaten yet so don't have much to report back on. Also, the bag on the left are lemons brought in for me by my coworker.

Picture below is of grill pan, Keith is trying his best to pan fry but its not quite the same, he does still get twitchy whenever I bring it out.



We have made some very good meals, but mostly we have been eating very strangely and continued our diet of almost no vegetables. At least we are not eating meat 3 meals a day anymore.