More Of The Fun With Ericksons

 On Friday afternoon Sarah and I set to the task of making pizza with no oven, a special treat for Friday night supper with Ericksons since it's their family tradition to have pizza every Friday night :) turned out really good, we've learned to do things I never knew you could with only a gas stove top and limited kitchen supplies.

 Making food for potluck at church.

 Girl's night out at Andrea's house, she made us lentils for a treat, only place to get them is Yaounde (6 hour bus ride away).

 Trixy and Claire tackled a Jack fruit (or in pigin, "belly fruit").  It's quite the process, they are wearing gloves because until you get into the heart of the fruit it is unbelievably sticky, next to impossible to get off, the knives used for Jack fruit are forever the Jack fruit knives because they are forever sticky.  The fruit itself, the part you eat, is not sticky but is very slimy, a texture I can't quite explain, and almost a bubblegum flavor.

 These are "weaver bird" nests.  They strip long grass like pieces of banana and plantain leaves and use them to literally weave these round nests in the trees, very neat!

 My good friend Elizabeth invited us over to share an African meal with Cheryl and Heidi

This is their kitchen, while we were posing for this picture a rat ran across the floor in front of us and I let out some sort of combination of a moan and scream while holding the pose and smile for the picture.... Elizabeth just said, "oh, a rat" with no concern at all in her voice.  Totally normal.

Speaking of rodents, we discovered we had a little friend living in our room.  Cheryl and Heidi wanted to perform a very kind deed by removing it from our room before they left, we moved everything on the floor out of the room and the rustled and banged and did everything that would scare a mouse out.  I had borrowed the cat from next door the night before, so when no mouse came out we assumed that either the cat  had gotten him, or he was just plain gone.

However, that very night, when I was laying in bed I heard something below me, we had a bag of TVP on the floor and I could hear whatever it was rustling the bag.  We do have a lizard we see around from time to time, and earlier that night Mary found a frog in the bathroom (we couldn't get him out from behind the door so had no choice but to leave him there).  So I'm laying in bed, wide awake now, not sure if it was our mouse, lizard, or frog.  I threw something in the direction of the sound, then huddled back into my covers... a few seconds later, the sound again.  I did this several times, tried whispering to Mary, but she was sound asleep.  I just laid there, didn't know what to do, couldn't sleep, just kept hearing the mouse making valiant efforts to eat my TVP!  I felt like he was mocking me!! tried to get rid of me today huh? haha, well here I am!!

I reached the bathroom light from my top bunk and sat up half expecting to see it making faces at me.  I didn't see or hear anything now... so I waited, there was no way I was going to fall asleep now, plus, I had to go to the bathroom.  I threw one more thing in the direction of the sounds and then worked up the courage to climb down from the bunk and put my feet on the floor, I took a wash bucket from the bathroom and picked up the  TVP with a long stick (you never know if the mouse OR all his friends were INSIDE that bag, just waiting to jump out at me!!).  I put it in the pail and put the lid on with a smile and sense of pleasure and accomplishment, There! NOW try to eat my TVP! 

I got back in bed but left the light on, thought maybe I could trick the mouse into thinking I was awake all night if I left the light on.  Turns out the mouse didn't care if I was awake or not, now that the TVP was safely stowed in our washing machine he moved on to whatever was under Mary's bed.  Granted I'm pretty sure it was only one mouse, it made enough noise for an army of rats!  I had been courageous, but there was NO way I was going to reach under Mary's bed and rescue the trail mix or whatever it was she had under there.  The light stayed on all night, and I was awake until after 2, helplessly listening to the unwelcome visitor rummage around our bed, I'm sure laughing the whole time.