Last week right after I posted my Lui Parish video, I spent a long time posting photos, but then my Internet Explorer crashed and I lost hours of waiting for photos to upload and arranging them with commentary. I had been clicking 'save now,' but I didn't find a saved file. With the deadline for May trip applications this past Friday, I have a renewed desire to communicate, so I'm going to try again now...The photo above is the mango tree in front of Frazer Cathedral. It's a gathering place for just about everybody. Anytime we had nothing in particular to do, we might go out and sit under it and just see who would show up. Sometimes it was little kids, sometimes Bishop Bullen -- we never knew till they came. There was another mango tree in front of our compound, but that one was used mostly by the Bishop and clergy. I don't know why.
Some of us spent quite a bit of time in the computer room in Lui. Here Joe is in front of Gordon's computer, probably resizing photos so he could upload them to the LuiNotes blog. Joe did a lot of work on the computers, as did Robert, while they were there. About a month after we came home, the BGAN satellite was moved. Nobody notified us or Lui Diocese, so Vasco called to tell me, and it has taken a couple of weeks to find out what happened. Fixing it will require climbing on the roof and manually resetting the satellite dish's orientation. Not being able to communicate by email is wildly inconvenient as we are working on getting the grinding mill going and also planning the May trip to Lui.
Something else we did a lot of was wander around. At left, Robert shows off the beehive he bought at the craft shop of the upper primary school (I think that must be a bit like middle school). Below, the carpenter at the shop we went to on our way home from Lunjini school.
We ordered eight small mahogany boxes at the carpenter shop and went back for them the next day. When we got there at the appointed time, the carpenter and his people had finished a box or two and had the rest in process. We waited a very long time. Eventually Vasco came looking for us.
Another favorite destination was the market, right. Here you can see the doughnuts we discovered. We bought so many of them in our afternoon excursions that Christina and Ada finally started feeding them to us for breakfast. In the background you can see other stalls; it was amazing how much was available in "downtown Lui" -- fabric, plastic pails, chips, candy, readymade clothing -- but there wasn't any chocolate in the entire town.
The most fun we had when we were on our own was sitting and visiting. Here Emily is holding Harriet, the baby daughter of Betty, who is one of the Lunjini teachers the Diocese of Missouri is supporting. Harriet was sick when we arrived in Lui; Emily made friends with her family, who live in a tukul in front of the guest compound, and came to Deb concerned for Harriet. The two of them went to the tukul with rehydration solution, and Harriet quickly got better. Betty sat with us a long time talking about the school, and she came back later and chatted with Deb, Dan, and me about the U.S. and how we get our food, among other things.
If you've been reading my blog all along, you might remember that Emily very gracefully wove a piece of blue Emil Frei stained glass from St. Timothy's into her Christmas Day sermon at Lui Parish because of the two parishes' sister relationship. Today she came to St. Timothy's and worked into her transfiguration sermon our escape from our minders that day, when we managed to walk back to Lui town down the dusty road. It was beautiful symmetry.
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