Friday, August 28, 2009

romance on the rooftop

Last night was a particularly wonderful sunset. As our tradition, we try to soak up as many sunsets together on the roof.

Naturally, malaria carrying moquitos make for an especially exciting time--here Scotty is trying to set up ou chairs as the romance of the mosquito repelant incents coils wafts over him.

We were shortly joined on the roof by Herma. Our roof is a wonderful place for her to get away from prying eyes and needy neighbors, even if it's just for a few moments.

"Proast", this may be one of our last evenings together, just the three of us.

That is, until Herma comes to Oregon.


Thursday, August 27, 2009

A little friend

We have a little friend living under the roof of our rooftop hut. He's not super big, but he sure is cute!!!

AND for your viewing pleaure just some good old fashioned rain. It may not seem like much but it sure does make us miss home. Imagine rain in Oregon, but WAY warmer, ahhh!!!!

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

New products for the monkeys.

Thanks to the help of friends back at Doxology, we have been working on new products for the Malika Monkeys...t-shirts.
Here is an upclose of the Malika Monkey's logo in Senegalese flag design. We also are working on just black and on other items: hoodies, pants, etc).

Thanks guys.

Sunday, August 23, 2009

My favorite little man.

What started as a joke, to buy a monkey in a remote village and make it a pet, has turned into a significant part of our lives here in Senegal.

Chaco is by far my favorite little man (weighing in at under 10 lbs). We moved him into his new home last week and I have to be honest, I will be sad to say goodbye to this little man.
Though he is still VERY wild, he is also very social and loves to just hang out.

He loves to try and steal stuff...
... especially stuff from INSIDE your pants as he was caught in the act here
.
He is trying to master the art of sophistication by working on his table manners...it's slow going.

He is super playful.

And loves to help Scotty out with odd jobs around the "house".
Speaking of his "house" he has a new swimming pool, which doubles as a drinking fountain.

Saturday, August 22, 2009

Cocktails and a shadow show in German lady's home in Senegal...normal?


For those of you who have met Barbara, I have another one for you. A few weeks ago we were sent formal paper invitations to have cocktails at her house with a special presentation. Barbara LOVES nice things, so we took the hint from the invite and all got dressed up, the best we could, and arrived fashionably late (something Barbara does not appreciate).

The adults were directed to use the back entrance to the house, while the young Bode girls were taken with Barbara through the front entrance. For the week prior Barbara and the Bode girls had been rehersing for the night's performance.


We sat in Barbara's living room and were passed a tray of beverages from underneath a sheet separating the living room from the dining room. This sheet served as the focal point of our evenings entertainment which featured shadows of fish, birds and trees projected onto the screen. This was accompanied by some very festive classical music played on a tape player, which inevitably malfunctioned and was beaten back into submission by Barbara's helper.
After the shadow show there was scarf dancing of which we did snowball style, meaning slowly each member of the audience was beckoned to the dance floor and given a silk scarf to dance with.

Somehow the boys managed to evade inclusion.

As a gift, Barbara let the girls keep their silk scarfs of which they promptly turned into wraps.

Just another day in Malika. Man, America is going to seem boring after this!!!

Friday, August 21, 2009

Belated farewells

It's been a couple weeks now since we had to say our farewells to the Bode family. It was bitter/sweet. Bitter for us because we will miss them. Sweet for them because they get to go back to life as "normal". We miss them a lot already and are thankful that we have been a part of this family for a season.

We all went out to dinner on the way to the airport to say "bye for now".


Herma gave the girls gifts for the plane.

Blurry but still cute little Neve and Crys.

Crys is going to miss her "little sisters"

The ever faithful and awesome Djibi.

I don't know why Scotty never smiles...

...unless he's with THIS guy!

Miss you guys. Can't wait to see you in snowy Colorado!!!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Moving day for Chaco.

In preparation for our move back to Oregon we got Chaco all situated in his new home outside. It's nearly twice the square footage of his old house. We think he will be very happy here.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

Mr. and Mrs. Kelley


Celebrating 6 years of being Mr. and Mrs. Kelley.
And to think it all started in a little place called Tadmor.
Everyone pictched in, even Baby Casey and Baby Tom.
The ladies...
...and the gents.

We were ahead of our time regarding modern wedding fashion.


It's "baby" Casey!!!
We did it!!!
Cutting the cake (that Chef Whitney made, BTW).
And who could forget the dancing. I tried to find the video but I must have left it in America (silly me). You can just ask Casey or Jim (depending on where you are in the world) to reinact it for you.
Now there's a handsome group of boys. I guess by now they are men, eh? Funny that Winklepleck walked away with the garter. I don't even see him in the pile.
An awesome Tadmor sunset, perfect for our day.

Leaving in style (?)

Friday, August 14, 2009

Where am I?

One of the many things that is different here is the driving. You woud think driving 25 km (approx. 16 miles) should reasonably only take 30 minutes and definitely under an hour.

But, this is Senegal...this drive takes us anywhere from 1 1/2 on REALLY dead days up to 3+ hours on really sad bad days.

Senegal, however, has been given some money to put in a new autoroute and we are REALLY excited about it. They have been working on it since before we came here and just this week we got to drive on it for the first time. It was amazing, it reminded us of I-5, for a moment there I thought I was back in the states. It's going to make communting so much better for so many people.

Just for comparison:

Before

After

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Another baby!


A friend of ours through the shop, Maryama, had a baby girl about a month ago. We were able to visit them both last week.

Sweet baby girl sleeping. Check out her earings...she has double peirced ears with a twine like material. Amazing.

There is nothing like holding a sleeping baby. In many of the smaller villages like Malika, many babies and young children are quite frightened of white people simply because they don't see many. It's wonderful to be with a new young baby who does not have any of these fears because they haven't yet noticed skin tone.

Maryama's home that she shares with many family members.

This is a pretty typical home in our village.