Drought

As many of you have heard, we have not been having good rainfall this rainy season. Southern Province has been particularly bad, there has been better rainfall in other parts of Zambia.
Here are a couple of pictures to show the result.  These were taken at the beginning of March and there has been no significant rainfall since then.  With the end of the season approaching, and harvest coming soon, you can see that the situation is not good, particularly for those families who just have a small plot of land where they grow the maize that usually keeps them for at least part of the year.

This is a patch of very sad looking ground nuts, with some wilting pumpkins amongst them.

A field of maize. This should be tall and dark green, with some good cobs forming by now.

Spelling

This is a little taste of Zambian spelling:

Tiling?  You'll need some Bull Nose Grount!  A very common mistake, adding an 'n' after the final vowell

Space-Age Solutions?

Combination of Zambian and American spelling

Tairoring done here.  Another common error - changing 'l' for 'r' and the other way round

Brown-hooded Kingfisher

Happy New Year Everyone
This is my favourite picture from 2018



Brown-hooded kingfisher leaving its nest hole

School

Firstly, sorry this has taken so long, we've been having some internet issues.

We thought that you might like to see that it's not all birds and bugs, so here are some pictures from school:

Grade 6

Amos in the library, reading with a small group

These were from Careers Day, when the children come to school dressed for their intended profession:

Soldiers

Doctors and Nurses

Grade 7 saying 'Good Bye' to the rest of the school after their exams.

After school chillin'

We're back!!

It's been a long time, sorry.
Since the lunar eclipse we have been back in the UK for a brief visit.  We are now back in Choma.  These are some of the creatures that welcomed us home:  [Pictures especially for Evan]

Hoopoe

Glossy starling

Black-collared barbet

Lilac-breasted roller

Mrs Praying Mantis despatching Mr Praying Mantis

Teeny weeny frog



Roman solifuge.  Apparently NOT a spider (!) but not equally unwelcome!  Uuugh.

Eclipse

The recent lunar eclipse was clearly visible here.  It started just after dark so we went out, wrapped up and with a fire, to sit and watch.  It was still quite chilly so we sat around the fire drinking tea and eating biscuits while the moon did its thing.
These are some of the pictures, not the best that you will see, but we were there!

The moon rose as usual behind the trees.

We sat around the fire, with our friends Amy (R) and Omega (L), and waited.  Quite a long time because 'someone' got the start time wrong!



Until at last the moon began to shrink:

 



Eventually there was the memory of a moon, accompanied by Mars:

 

Visitor

We found this chap while we were moving some of the (tons) of fallen leaves onto the garden for organic matter: