Eyes

I have fallen in love with the lyrics to this song and wanted to share.  They are perfect for Joe and I right now.

Give me your eyes for just one second

Give me your eyes so I can see

Everything that I keep missing

Give me love for humanity

Give me your arms for the broken hearted

The ones that are far beyond my reach

Give me your heart for the ones forgotten

Give me your eyes so I can see

Give me your eyes

Brandon Heath-Give Me Your Eyes

Each day

A little tour of our house...

Our library
Our wall of pictures...thanks for all who have sent pictures
Our water filter.  We pour 9 quarts of water into the top and then add 18 drops of diluted bleach and between the bleach and the filtering process we end up with drinkable water.

Gami sleeping in our kitchen
My map of West Africa along with our bed and shower bucket and water canary

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Lately we have been eating pretty well.  Mango season is upon us and the lettuce, carrot, tomato, onion, and cabbage harvest is taking place as well.  I have been eating lots of Mango's and Ashley has been making some good vegetable stir fry.    

This is the canary that we keep our vegetables in.
We have to soak all of our fruits and vegetables in bleach (very diluted) water for a half to make them safe to eat.  These mango's were delicious!!   
I bought all this lettuce for 100 CFA (20 cents) from a guy in our village when I was out in his field while he was cutting it.  

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Recently Ashley and I got to travel to some villages in our region to see if they would be good sites for future volunteers.  

Our SUV got stuck in the sand

A bunch of kids from a local village came to help push us out of the sand
A soccer game outside a beautiful little Dogon village

Dirty Laundry

This is an email that I sent out to some family members and friends, thought I would share it with you all. Actually my mom said I should share it. Listen to your Mama.


So this past Friday, I decided to do some laundry. We had let it pile up a little too much so there was alot to do. And as you know I do it all by hand. So I packed up all the clothes in two buckets, one small and one big. And decide to head down to the pump, which is about 3/4 of a mile down a cliff from our village, mind you it is 100F outside too. So I put the big bucket on my head and the small buck i carried in my hands and I start a' hikin' . At one point the bucket falls off my head and the clothes tumble everywhere, which was okay cause I needed a break anyway. But I finally made it to the pump and was ready to start washing.

I find a place under a shade tree (really it was a bush) and I sort out all the clothes, colors, whites, malian fabric (these tend to bleed really bad), and so on..... I then go to the pump to get water, meanwhile the cows, goats and chickens are getting in my way. So there are a few kids around so they start batting away all the animals so I can get water. I get my buckets full of water and head back to my shade tree, but as I am leaving the pump area a cow sticks his head in my bucket and starts drinking. I had to whack him away. Next I am under my shade tree washing, and every 3 minutes the goats come up and try and drink my soapy washing water, I am having to yell at them and chase them with a stick, meanwhile the rooster is crowing in my ear and wont stop. Each time i would have to change my dirty wash water, I would have to keep running back and forth from the pump bc the animals would start drinking my water. And then when I was done and hanging the clothes to dry the cows started eating my bar of soap. I had to hang the clothes on thorn bushes because there is no where else to put the clothes because everything is sand, so I got a few pricks and scratches too.

So there I am sitting in the hot sun, my clothes spread everywhere, cows and goats bugging me and all i could do was laugh. I guess what doesnt hurt me only makes me stronger.

I think I am really going to enjoy my wash machine when I get home.