lightening always strikes thrice

Through the magic of Twitter we have been able to give all of you faithful readers (thanks mom!) up to the minute reports on our activities. But now that I'm in the capital and I have some time on my hands I can expand a bit on how things have been going. Kim and I are well. We just finished giving our final exams and the school year has pretty much ended. We still have a little bit of grading to do and we're waiting on some colleagues to get there grades in to use. Beyond that we have a few conferences to go to and a new group of volunteers to help train but I think its fair to say that Kim and I are more or less on vacation which is a great feeling. Something interesting: Kim went out a few nights ago with some other volunteers to see a French performance of the Vagina Monologues. It sounded like a really cool time. Today we went out to visit the workshop of an artist that lives in Conakry and makes tapestries. He showed us just how much time goes into the work he does. Besides that we made eggplant parmesan and have been watching a "True Blood" marathon.

As Kim and I mentioned, our house got hit by lightning a few weeks ago. It blew a couple holes in our walls and scared the crap out of us but we're fine. Unfortunately it wasn't a simple fluke. All our neighbors got hit as well. The cell phone tower next to our house wasn't grounded properly so when lightning would strike the currant couldn't reach the ground and jumped off the tower hitting nearby houses. Here is a before and after of where our house got hit and later repaired.

An up close photo of the hole made by the lightning when it hit our place. At a second hole you can actually see the course taken by the lightning because it burned the paint a different color as it passed by. Unfortunately I couldn't get that photo. Maybe another time.

This is a photo of the repair work that our community did for us. There was a huge crack made in the wall when the lightning hit.

Here is an additional photo of the lightening strike. That light grey line is the path that the lightening took through our house. Scarey..un peu

On a more uplifting note, our garden is going great. We planted a bunch of pumpkins, basil, squash, sunflowers, lettuce, carrots, etc. We're really excited to see what comes up. Kim in particular is taking a lot of joy from her time gardening and I can't think of a much more constructive tool for offsetting every day stresses and the frustrations we sometimes run into. Kim harvested some of the lettuce the other day and we made a salad with it and some of the crasins sent by her mom. It was remarkably great. After a year here in Guinea, its easy to get tired of the food situation. But I think that our garden will be a real treat during the up coming months. Here are a few photos Kim took before we left for Conakry.

Our first salad.

The garden as seen from the gate. I made the stump into a really great lawn chair; for when I watch the grass grow.

A cantaloupe flower.

A Cornstalk after the rain.

Besides the lightning and the garden Kim told me to post this video of our Neighbors' daughter - her name is Mama - doing the hula in an outfit Kate and Jim (our friends out in Hawaii) sent us. She's incredibly cute.

Mama on our front porch dancing the hula. Winning hearts and minds for the American way of life one overexcited child at a time.

On that note, and I hope you all appreciate the amateur home video, I'll sign off for tonight. I'll be having to get up early for trip out to the mountains for a conference on hiv/aids demonstrations. I hope everyone had a great father's day.

-jonathan