Spring is here!

     Spring is here and the garden is doing well.  The lettuce is growing like crazy, and the tomato plants lived through the transplant this time.  The cucumbers are a little iffy and slow, but the zucchini plants are growing here just like they do in Utah - we will have 'plenty' with just three plants!

Greg waters his garden every morning before we go to the office.

     After the fun weekend in Antsirabe, the week started off pretty calm.  Tuesday night Greg got a call while dinner was cooking, and one of the sister missionaries needed some medicine.  By the time he and the Office Elders got over to their house, it had been decided that they should take her to the hospital.  When you hear the word hospital over here, you are not exactly sure what you are going to get.  They took her to the hospital not too far from where we live.  They drove into this little courtyard and there was a little exam room on one side, radiology on another side, and admitting on another side.  When they decided to admit her, they put her in a wheelchair and pushed her up this open air ramp to the second floor where they put her in a 'tiny' room.  Her companion had to stay with her, so someone took an air mattress and some sheets and blanket down to her.  The room was so tiny that they had to fold the air mattress in half and she huddled on that during the night.  The next day they moved her into another room that had a bed in it for her companion. 
     It was Sister Pani who was sick, she is now pretty much my adopted Tahitian daughter.  She is a sweetheart.  She got here just after we did, so we have a great bond going.  They finally let her go home on Friday, and I'm still not all the way sure what they decided was going on with her.  But she is doing much better now. 

Sister Cloward and Sister Pani in the Malagasy hospital.

Sister Pani has lost over 30 kilo since she got here, I need to follow her around and see what I can get rid of. 

     We took Sister Adams and went back up to the drainage project site the other day.  It just amazes me the different 'layers' of life and living that goes on in this city. 

This is just after we left the main road and started to go back into the neighborhood where they are doing the drainage project.

     The whole city of Antananarivo is built on hills, everything here is either up or down, nothing is level or flat.  You will be walking along a street or walkway and all of a sudden a head pops up, followed by the rest of the person, or two or three.  It gets dark here about 6 pm and everything pretty much shuts down.  Imagine walking along this walkway - and there are no street lights - you could easily fall in one of these stairways without even realizing it was there.
























 

      They have covered all of the drainage pipe that they have put in, and now they are making stairs on top of it.  The people will be able to walk up and down this alleyway, even during the rainy season, without getting washed away.

Just a few weeks ago this was a deep trench with 24 inch pipe in it.

This is back in the neighborhood near where the pipe comes out of the little alleyway.

    The best part of going back in this neighborhood is seeing all of the cute kids there.  They love to have their picture taken, and then they always want to see it, and then they laugh and laugh.   The kids are really cute, and there are Lots of them back in there. 

These little boys have a chameleon on a stick, and there were two more in the tree that they were trying to get to climb on other sticks. 

Sister Adams with some of the kids.

 This little girl is always there when we go.  She is sure a cutie.  All of the kids are usually barefooted; I remember when I had tough feet and loved to go barefooted.  Some of the people wear flip flops but a lot of the time they are barefooted.

     Yesterday four of our missionaries went to the lemur park here in Tana.  Last night they called Sister Shupe, the nurse, and told her that one of the lemurs had bit three of them and was also going around biting some of the other lemurs.  They were wondering if it was anything they should worry about!  This morning they all went down to the hospital and got rabies shots.  They have to get five shots in all, they got three of them today and then go back on Friday for the other two.  Either the lemur has rabies or he was having a really bad day :(.  Anyway, all of the other missionaries are going to stay away from that park for a while.

     Thursday evening Greg and President Adams went to a meeting at the US Embassy.  They talked about the elections which will take place on Friday, October 25, here.  They don't think there will be any violence, but want everyone to stay away from crowds and be prepared for anything.  Everyone we have talked to think that it should go pretty smoothly.
     Another thing they talked about was that there is bubonic plague here in Antananarivo, and the place where they have found it is in the prison over by Lizy's Art Gallery.  That is exactly where we live!   About 10-12 feet out our back door is a 20 foot high wall that happens to be a common wall with the prison that they are talking about.  They said that it is spread by the fleas on the rats in the prison.  So if we can just keep the rats and fleas inside the prison and not over here, we will be fine.  There are three Senior Missionary apartments right here in our complex, we are all getting our houses and little yards sprayed again this week. 
     We all take our doxycycline every day, it is for malaria but it is also what you would take to keep from getting bubonic plague.  We take ours faithfully every day, even more so now!

We are having a great time here.  New adventures every day!  We love you all!  We also love email!!!