Rainy season be upon us!

Tis bucketin down so it is, fierce wet altogether. Its making me strangely nostalgic for home, especially when a van drove past and splashed me with water from head to toe. We've been managing ok though, made it to the market yesterday. We had to edge our way along through the mud in between the stalls and piles of fruit, and when I finally looked up I realised we'd lost Connie (who was merrily ploughing ahead to lead the way) and Phoebe had given up straggling behind us and gone home to wash off the mud. Marley and I soldiered bravely on through the alleyways of stalls to eventually locate Connie, past a man who greeted me with a cheerful "Greetings fellow citizen!" and another who told me I was very pretty and this made him so happy he would be delighted to sell me some handkerchiefs. I politely refused.

It's been an interesting week. We took the kids to Haller Park and had a picnic. This attracted the attention of quite a large group of monkeys, one of whom ran up and snatched a sandwich from a volunteer's hand. This scared the children so in an attempt to show them that the monkeys were harmless and more afraid of us than we were of them, I clapped loudly at the one eyeing my banana, whereupon it bared its teeth, snarled at me and leapt towards my head. I screamed and ran, failing hugely to instill any sense of calm in the already freaked out children. They started pelting the monkeys with stones and sticks which served only to further provoke them. I stood in the middle trying desperately to be heard as I screamed "DO NOT ENRAGE THE MONKEYS! I REPEAT, DO NOT ENRAGE THE MONKEYS!" It soon became clear that the monkeys were indeed enraged and quickly advancing, so we fled to a safer area. No children were injured during the experience, although one child was bitten by a giraffe during feeding time. I am now terrified of all animals, regardless of size or diet preference.

On another note, I was offered a soapstone penis this afternoon by a security man selling carvings from the back of a truck. He pointed out that even if I had no "personal use" for it, I could always use it to demonstrate condom useage to teenagers as it was to scale and surprisingly lifelike. I politely refused.
Still, if anyone has any requests... :)