binta barbie

Well here it is: Binta's Barbie Safari car!  Surely you see the resemblance. Okay, I don't have a roll bar, but the front two seats do nearly touch the back window, just like the barbie variety. The driver's seat pushed all the way back is just the right size for me and I can easily lift the whole car to change a tire with just one hand! Feel free to send gawdy pink bumper stickers or other decals. It's a work in progress.

In other news, I just hit the three-month mark!  My stuff arrived last week and I've been unpacking mystery items hastily stashed in my crawl space before leaving for New Zealand.... I don't need 1/10th of it, but that was evident in march as I crouched under my house and wondered what to do with it all. After procrastinating for days, I finally decided that the two piles would be: what I can give away in Africa and what I can give away at home. Those became my shipping and storage piles, respectively. The arrival of the truck was quite the attraction in my neighborhood - here's the spectator seating... yes, it really is boring to watch people unload trucks after all.

Too bad they missed the exciting pack out in Alaska the day before the Japan tsunami. With the warning sirens going off in Homer and my moving guys at a hotel on the beach, they panicked and drove to Anchorage in the middle of the night - thankfully with everything in tow (and not in an under tow). Boo-- I know I shouldn't make ocean shipment jokes.


I was rather happy to see my musical instruments, though. My dad's 1980 Kurzweil electric piano drank some miracle cure on the sea voyage because it no longer has the awful speaker buzz it's had for 15 years. It now sits proudly next to my balafon, which I finally bought a couple weeks ago from my friends at the Bakau market. They watched me eye it for two months, with weekly visits and questions... I bargained for a half calabash to be thrown in for free, so now I've got a drum too! Not only is my new balafon professionally made/tuned, it is directly related to the legendary balafon player of The Gambia, Banna Kanuteh (d.1995). My instrument was played by his son, Saihou (Sheriffo) Kanuteh, who eventually traded it for a kora at the Bakau market. So I'm quite honored to own a piece of the Gambian griot tradition (even if I do crank out some Zimbabwean tunes).

Banna Kanuteh

Work's going well - very busy this month as I do both top jobs at post while our other American staff member is on honeymoon for 4 weeks, but I'm crossing the half-way mark today and think I'll survive. My circle of neighborhood friends is growing, mainly in the number of kids that want to play in my back yard now that my soccer ball has arrived. But I've gotten lots of hugs this week from the ones I signed up for a free basketball camp - I've become the local activity messenger. I let moms and kids know about upcoming youth activities (many sponsored by the international development community) and sign them up. Now I just have to keep them from jumping on the back of the barbie safari car every time I drive into the compound!