Lake and snakes

Posted by Ali

Tonight's Bible study was at a different house than usual. The Rotherys, who usually host the Thursday night potluck and Bible study, are away traveling so another couple from the group offered their house. They are a very interesting family. All five (parents and three little boys age 7 and under) can talk pretty much nonstop. For example, when we drove up to the compound their house was in we weren't sure which of the two houses was theirs. So we idled at the gate for a minute before Max decided to get out and walk to one house to check if it was the right one.  Just as he climbed out, though, Clayton, the oldest boy who just turned 7 today, came waltzing out of the house and told Max that he was at the right house and walked down to open the gate, all the while chattering about every conceivable topic. Max decided to park the car in an open area where we wouldn't get hemmed in and Clayton followed us there on foot and then walked back to his house with us, hardly ever pausing for a breath, it seemed. Almost as soon as we got into the living room the boys started racing to the bookshelf and then back to us, bringing stacks of books for us to look at/read. They told me which books were in English or another languages and numerous other facts about each book (including, "This book has hardly any pictures left in it because we've tore-en most of them out." Really, direct quote). And then the middle boy, after bringing Mariah and me a SuperPluto Disney cartoon book, asked me if he should put on his Superman costume. I said sure and he did and then raced around the room with his cape flying out behind him. But despite all the craziness, the family were really great hosts and it was fun to be at a new place. We ate supper on their back porch and had a nice view of Lake Duluti, the first Tanzanian lake I've seen. Since most of the Bible study members live right nearby, they know the area really well.  One lady, Jan, who is from Kitchener, ON, told me about a really nice walk to take on a road that borders part of the lake. And then another lady, Jenny from Australia who lives on the same campus we were at, said that sometimes you can see monitor lizards sunning themselves on rocks beside the lake. Later on Clayton told me that there are snakes in the lake, but if you fall in it's OK because they're scared of you and will swim away. I don't think I'll try my luck, though.

When Clayton's mum, Holly, heard him say that she confirmed it and then told me a snake story. One day she went outside to her driveway and found a huge black snake stretched across the dirt. She wasn't quite sure what to do and then when she looked away for a second and looked back, the snake had disappeared. A few days later she drove into Arusha and when she got out of her car people were pointing and shouting that a snake had poked his head down out from under the car before vanishing again. She didn't really want to investigate further so, since she had already planned to take her car in to the mechanics during her errands in town, she went there right next and told them what the other people had seen. At this point in the story Holly took a break to enter into another conversation that was going on and I never got to hear the end of the story. But it was OK because Jenny jumped in and told me that there's spitting cobras around these parts and when Rothery's were clearing the land for their backyard landscaping they found a whole bunch of spitting cobras and their dog killed seven of the snakes. That was a bit scary to me because I've walked around their backyard in the evening twilight. But I guess snakes don't really hang around much at night. Or at least that's what I've heard. Anyway, supper was great (other than having to fight off the food-investigating advances of the very tall and rather skinny ridgeback dog) and I ate way to many banana bread and peach-slice-filled muffins. I'm sorry to say that I eat a lot at these potluck suppers. Actually, I'm not really. The food is great and much different than what I eat the rest of the week. I haven't attempted anything that has to be baked in the oven, partly because I'm a little scared to try the gas oven out and partly because the only baking ingredients I have at the moment are flour, coarse brown sugar, salt, margarine and some cocoa (which is actually called drinking cocoa but used as hot chocolate). Not really many things I can think of to bake with those limited supplies.

After supper we left the kids with a nanny at Holly and Chris's house playing with toys and watching McGee and Me movies (haha, remember those!?) and went to Jenny's apartment to watch a sermon on DVD. It was about tithing and was really good, as was our discussion afterward. I'm not sure what denomination all the other members are, but they all go to the same church (I haven't yet figured out if it's a nondenominational church or what). Anyway, it was a good discussion and nicely supplemented by yummy chocolate oatmeal no-bake cookies that Jenny offered all of us. She even made me take two for the road when we left (although I wasn't hard to convince and they were gone before we left the campus). Right around that time Max told me that this afternoon one of our gatekeepers had found a cobra on our campus. He killed it right away and Max only saw it after it was dead, but it had been quite close to our offices, near the pathway between our conference centre and the rest of the offices. Ack, that's rather close to my office and I'm not sure it's news that I really wanted to hear. But I am glad that it was found quickly and taken care of just as quickly. I haven't really been worried about snakes since I got here (other than on the first Sabbath when Davona took all of us new volunteers on a hike toward the foothill area of Mt. Meru and told us to stomp our feet while we walked to make sure the snakes would leave before we came by), but I might be a little more concerned after all of today's serpent-related tales.