A little A-5 moment (our house in Moshi)

small hornbill waiting for avocado

Great folks coming from Duke tonight for festivities for the next 3 days.  Hotel reservations checked, double checked, triple checked.  Guests at A-5, our house.  Caterers called re-called, invitations checked, our fabulous administrators checked and rechecked and Vera Mushi of course drove to the hotel to fix a glitch...Only one problem, one of our toilets is a bit on the blink, and though tomorrow is Eid, the most important Muslim holiday in a country that is about 22% Muslim, the plumber is coming, the plumber who is not Muslim. For him to come to our house on a precious holiday for him, is a gift.

This is not the rainy season. This is the time for very cool dry weather.  So just to prove to us that we can predict nothing, last night it rained slightly more than 1.5 inches.  We have two outdoor dinners   tomorrow and Tuesday.  Today, in terror, we found a wonderful Mama who will bring a big tent to our house Tuesday morning so our 50+ guests can be sheltered from rain if needed. Whew, problem solved.  Again, we are so lucky to have friends. We found a caterer for Monday night who is willing to work on the holiday to help us with the first smaller dinner.  It is again a testimonial to long term relationships. 

To lower my blood pressure, I took my camera out to the yard and found some interesting things.  And from one of our guests learned a good deal about my camera and taking better pictures.  This one, was the only perfect one.

Dragon fly at my feet

There has been an interesting chirping from the front yard (we have many avocados on the trees and they are attracting all kinds of birds)  And I found the small hornbill.  I don't know if it is a juvenile or just another type, but he was nestled in the lemon tree.

small hornbill chirping

I had to pick salad, and the salad is prolific.  This is entirely due to our gardeners new skills with sustainable gardening and a good rain late in April-May.  We could just eat salad from dawn to dusk.  And just as many sweet and hot banana peppers as a party of 30 could eat (wish I had time to fry them for appetizers.)

prolific peppers

Sweet wonderful lettuce

Sadly, I took picture after picture of the new rooster and this is the best I could do.  I have named him Michael Jackson because he crows proud and big and alot.  He came to our house because one of the children staying at the house opened the coup door and out my sweet Charlie came.  A random dog killed him pretty quickly. am so glad I didn't see it.  It happened before I got back.  My Charlie's have been wonderful.  But our gardener Pauli moved one of his roosters to our hens, and I have to say that Michael Jackson has had some adjustment problems.  But, I let them all out to have a little walk in the green yard while I watched for dogs this afternoon, and tried very hard to get a good shot of him.  I had of course my settings all wrong and learned a lot from our guest from Duke who is a true photographer.  Learning through failure is actually one of my favorite things.  And I am grateful to this statistician from Duke who walked me through what I could have done.  But right now, it is unlikely that I will get another good picture of Michael Jackson so I will just post what I have.

Michael Jackson

In memory of Charlie 2:

Charlie2

 

Monkeys in A-5

Monkey wants corn

During the time that we have been absent from our home in Moshi, the monkeys have moved in.  In "On the Beach" the rabbits were going to survive World War III, but I believe that in present day World War III, the monkeys will survive.  We have only been here 36 hours and already the monkeys have come out and I have had the joy of watching 3 monkeys methodically strip ears of sweet corn from our garden, climb up one of three trees, and shuck the ear, toss down the outside and happily sit in the tree munching on the ear of corn.  When they finish, they head back to the garden and pick another.  I have watched each of the monkeys pick at least 3 ears each of corn (they do not share).    These are Ververt monkeys I believe and they have blue-green butts.  Most interesting.

Blue Butt Monkey with ear of corn in mouth

I was determined to scare them off, but with no luck.  I ran after them screaming, "Shooooo" and they just sat down looking placidly at me.  Here is one just two feet from me. She was waiting for me to move so she could go to the corn field just behind me.

Mother Monkey at my feet

Eating Rangoon Creeper

The monkeys were calculating how fast they could run around me to the corn....The corn does not look terribly appetizing to me but I plan to shuck one and try it for myself before they strip the whole field.

Sweet Corn?

The nearly stripped corn stalks

 

The monkeys left the shucks all over the yard under the three trees.

So, I gave up, tried to chase a butterfly to get it to sit quietly on another flower with no luck.  The monkeys finished their treats and now the crows have moved in. 

As we prepare for our visitors who will take most of our time here in Moshi this trip, I will already have been entertained by these thieves who seem to believe that A-5 is a new safari park.  The A-5 game park.I think we need a snazzier name.

Monkey climbs to sitting perch

Monkey shucking corn

Casually eating

Looking me square in the eyes, but thinks she is invisible.