Learning from the researcher

Ah, so I've been learning the ropes from Renate lately. Work so far has included lots of office work, trying to work out a good relationship with the computers in order to not only understand the multiple databases but also learn how to handle them correctly. But work has also included traveling north to Eden's field station and starting to use cars a lot bigger than my ordinary choice.

Never thought I would make such a great collector of manuals and written instructions, but I have!

Learning from the expert - it took some time to learn how to download the weather data but I think I got it right!

A picture of the photographer: Nettus herself!

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Life in our garden

Don't you just love it when animals of all kinds settle in and start making nests, only to find a few weeks later that there is a little junior growing at an amazing speed?

It really didn't take long for this little guy from the time he broke out of his egg to fly out of the nest. Honestly, it was all over within two weeks! He's gone now - from his nest that is - but he might be part of the number of adults that come to feed from Arwen's leftovers...

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If you're wondering why I'm such an irregular blogger nowadays...

It's because the Internet connection this year is so slow. I'm having trouble uploading my pictures, and without pictures, they're little point for me to blog, right? I could bore you all with poetry and random thoughts but I don't think you'd be half as interested in that as in pictures of life in all its beauty in the least developed country in the world!

In the meantime however, while I in a very Nigerien manner await for things to get fixed by themselves, I'll leave you with this pleasant little bugger - compliments from Eden's field station!

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Thanksgiving

For the first time in my typical Scandinavian-Nigerien life, I celebrated Thanksgiving. Our neighbor Michelle invited us over to the Peace Corps hostel, where we got the first feel of Christmas this year.

The food was great!

and so was the company!

In short, we had a very nice time!

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Showing off a Nigerien horse rug

I didn't buy the horse rug (too expensive for an unpaid volunteer) but I enjoyed it so much that I had to take a picture and post it for the world to see! And one day, maybe I have two of them custom made for the horses and give them to myself as a birthday gift for years to come!

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Making friends at the race track

Yesterday afternoon when Nettus and I passed by the track to take our girls for a round, we discovered that this weekend held an ambitious program at the Zinder track and that there were quite a few important guests there. On Saturday, we met with the governor of a large Nigerian state, and on Sunday, our friend the Snowman presented us to the owner of a very nice sire that I've been interested it.

It turned out that the owner and his brothers were very, very nice people and we quickly found a lot of things to talk about.

I didn't think much about what place I had been seated at, but all of a sudden a race administrator came by and placed the second prize in my hands.

The races were off and the winner set a good time.

And so Nettus got to hand out third prize to a guest jockey (dressed in black and red t-shirt)...

while I had to hand over second prize to my former jockey Chinada, lol!

Then it was time for the big buckle!

YB didn't win a prize, but he got to take Arwen on a flashing round with her brand new Zilco saddle! :-) Now that horse never stops enjoying a good run.

It was a fun day with good laughs and appreciative company! We came home pretty late and pretty beat, but that's the charm of it!

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