Minster Lovell and St. Paul's Cathedral

It's hard to top seeing the queen of England, but we managed to have a pretty great last few days! We spent one day in the Cotswolds, looking around the old little English villages of Bibury and Minster Lovell.

 Slightly different scenery from South Sudan, ha!

 My aunt Janet is the best! Everyone should have one.

 Old churches...

 ...with old cemeteries...

 ...and old manor houses (Minster Lovell) that are now in ruins.

This one's for you, Brown family!

Then we went to Blenheim Palace, which is the home of the Duke of Marlborough aka Mr. Fancy Pants with the humongous house.

Fun fact: Winston Churchill was born here. 

We also spent a day in London, complete with a personal tour of the Houses of Parliament and St. Paul's Cathedral. 

 Lamb shawarma for lunch...delish.

Her Majesty

Monday was one of those "wait, did that just happen?" times when we accidentally had the coolest thing happen on our tour de England.

That's right. We saw Queen Elizabeth.

Our original destination was Windsor Castle so we drove to Eaton and were walking through the town when we saw this:

There was obviously some kind of statue unveiling and a considerable amount of security so we asked around and someone told us the queen was coming to unveil the statue in honor of her Diamond Jubilee. We decided to delay our tour and stick around for the ceremony, which was supposedly an hour or so later.

 A girls' choir from a local school showed up to sing a song. And sure enough, an hour later, the queen was there!

 60 spheres in honor of her 60 years on the throne.
The local newspaper wrote an article about the ceremony.

 After she greeted all the dignitaries she came right in front of where we were standing to take flowers from a little boy.

 The tour of Windsor Castle was a tiny bit anticlimactic after that, but still really cool!

England

Alyssa and I are halfway through our version of London 2012 and so far it's been just what the doctor ordered. I am getting to spend time with my family in a place that's fairly familiar and so far it has been so wonderful!

 Got to see this handsome man.

 Love my grandparents!

Got some cousin time with Ella and Cara 

After a weekend at a friend's holiday house we stopped for lunch on the way home. 

England is quite a bit colder than South Sudan, which is totally fine with me!

The Two Cow Herds

     During the days that we don't go tell the AIDS stories or the story cloth in a village, we work on writing down the AIDS stories in Toposa. Our goal is to have a recording of these stories (along with audio files of the New Testament, etc.) available on a solar player so that we do not have to physically be in a village for the information to be heard.

Um, makes my brain hurt.

     There was once a herd of cattle that stayed far out in the forest with a group of young men. The young men looked after the cows and kept them safe. They would sing songs to relax the cows at night, and they would clean the cows and make sure they had plenty food for grazing.  One night, hyenas came into the camp to attack the herd, but the young men fought them off with their spears. The next night, a leopard came into the camp to attack the herd, but the young men fought it off as well. The cattle were safe from all the wild animals, because the young men protected them.

     But then one night, while the young men were asleep after dancing for many hours, a man-eating lion snuck into the camp. It crept up silently and pounced on the young men, one by one, before they knew what was happening, and killed them. The cattle were left all alone in the forest. When the hyenas came, the young men were not there with their spears. The hyenas killed some of the cattle. When the leopards came, the young men were not there with their spears. The leopards killed some of the cows. Soon the herd was destroyed by all the wild animals.

     Now, there was another group of young men with a herd of cattle, who lived in the forest some distance from the first herd. These young men also looked after their cattle and kept them safe. One night, hyenas came into the camp to attack the herd, and the young men fought them off with their spears. Another time, a leopard came into the camp to attack the herd, and the young men fought it off as well.

     These young men heard about the man-eating lion and how it killed the young men at the other camp. They did not want the same thing to happen at their camp. So they set guards at night to watch and wait for the lion. One night, the lion tried to sneak into the camp, but the guards saw it and chased it away. Every day, the young men set guards in case the lion tried to come back. They never forgot that it was out in the forest, so they were always watching. 

These young men stayed alive, and the cattle were not left alone in the forest. When the hyenas came, the young men were there with their spears to fight them off. When the leopards came, the young men were there with their spears to fight them off as well. The cattle were safe and happy, because the young men were there to guard them from all the wild animals.

**We use this story to explain how AIDS is like the lion that comes to attack. If they are careful to remember the information they can keep AIDS away from their village, just like the second group of young men kept the lion away from their camp. 

Storm Clouds

The clouds were comin' fast the other day. Look at how cool the sky was! We drove home as fast as we could and almost made it before the rain hit! 

If I were Alyssa, I would have some great analogy about how these storm clouds are like the storms in my life, coming without warning and causing me to run away from the trouble they cause...or something like that. But I really just thought these pictures were cool, so this is all you get! :)

(and just for the record, these were taken on my iPhone and I didn't put any effects on them or anything...just straight up Toposaland weather!)

Happy Labor Day!

Any excuse to celebrate something American is good enough for me! We made pumpkin pie with some of the pumpkin that my mother Regina Nakwam gave us, used cabbage and potatoes from the market to make coleslaw and potato salad, and pulled hot dogs from Nairobi out of the freezer. WIN!

I took some of the pumpkin pie to Regina so she could try some. Natabo loved it and started to cry when there wasn't anymore. A girl after my own heart...

She started fussing when there was only crust left.

This is my brother, Lokuru, who was in a grumpy mood, probably because the pie had run out.

This is Regina's house (left) and cooking area (right). And yes, that's a cow inside of her house. Regina has a big garden across the river, works in her husband's garden that is next to our compound, and also has pumpkins growing around her house.

Lots of pumpkins behind her house!

The last volunteer team passed out bandanas as part of the field day activities so my friend's little girl, Lomayen, had strips of bandana sewed onto her skirt. So cute!

I Love Pumpkin

One of the benefits of having Toposa mothers/friends is that sometimes we are given stuff from their gardens. Pumpkins are now "in season" and so I am loving it! We've already cooked two and still have another one and a half left to go! A little glimpse of the process:

Regina's garden is really close to our compound so it's easy to walk to.

Pumpkins here are usually green and white on the outside, not orange.

Notice how tall the sorghum stalks are. I get seriously nervous whenever I can't see Regina because I'm afraid I won't be able to find my way out! 

It's a LOT of pumpkin so I can only fit half of it at one time into our biggest pot. 

Depending on the pumpkin, it takes 1-2 hours on the charcoal cooker for it to soften.

 

This is only half of the pumpkin, all mashed up with a fork. After it's cooled then we freeze it. I'm pretty sure most of our freezer space will be filled with pumpkin, which is fine by me!