Social whirl

There may be two entries today as Mr B and I led separate lives for the day. He went off with a friend to look at some nice land and birds and do some sort of carbon sequestration sums... the kids and I went partying instead! Well we started with a relaxed morning at home doing jigsaws, crafty things (birthday card soon wending it's way to Auntie T), "big cuggle"s with the Mancub, Mama plus the woof and miaow, various sorting and tidying things (toys into newly aquired toy cupboard) and some instructing and helping J our house-help. (It seems that  Tanzanians and Brits do household things COMPLETELY differently. I hadn't expected to have to instruct in the pegging out of laundry, cleaning of windows, washing up.... just about everything. And poor Kitty has had her Christmas jigsaw tidied away twice now while she took a breather from it, into a basket full of other stuff too. It's amazing we still have all the pieces. Instruction will continue next week...)

Anyway, this afternoon we headed to B's 4th birthday party where the kids stuffed themselves full of popcorn, biscuits, crisps and cake and a half-hearted stab at a samosa while I met some new neighbours, exchange phone numbers and  organised a get together. I returned home and realised that I now have social engagements  on monday, tuesday, wednesday and friday. This may not sound very exciting to some of you but it's progress for me! It's nice to meet some other mums who either don't work outside the home or only work part time. And we could even walk to the houses of both the people I got to know today, weather permitting.

Talking of weather, which I guess all you in Britain are probably doing a lot of at the moment, we have definitely arrived here in an El Nino year. We should be comfortably in the dry season now, with the short rains having ended about a month ago. Instead it thunders most days and rains at least once, often several times a day, often torrentially. Contrary to popular opinion amongst our domestically minded readership, getting washing dry is far harder here at the moment than it was in Aberdeen!! Last time it was an El Nino year the country skipped this dry season and the rain carried on until the long rains.... hmmm, And you all thought we spent all day in the garden covered in sun cream....I'm still glad we have postive temperatures though, and seldom need a jumper, although Kitty is very jealous of the snow in the UK. She's now determined that we all have to climb Kili so that she can throw snowballs at us at the top.

Now that we have furniture, Mr B is no longer incarcerated and we're reasonably optimistic about being allowed to stay in the country, we have bitten the bullet and sent out invites for a house-warming party on saturday 23rd January. Any friends or family who happen to be passing through that weekend are more than welcome....