Chez Carine il y a une piscine. . .

Hello All,

Sorry for the long silence. No internet, no computer, the usual excuses. This has been a very exciting week for us. We have a house!!! Yay! We'd just about given up last week when we got a mysterious call from a woman named Carine. Neither Cheikh or I had a clue who this person was, or why she called MC, but did we really care? Nope. She said she had a house to show us, so off K and I went to see it. It turned out that Carine worked at MC before and heard through the grapevine that we needed a house. Gotta love that. We hired people to find us a house and they didn't find us jack. The only good houses we saw were through people we just happened to meet at K's school, at the restaurant, in taxis. . . that's the way it is here though.

Wow!! That's all I can say. It's beautiful- with a white tile foyer, a little pool and big, perfect trees to hang a swing. The only catch is that, uh, somebody lives there. But, he's leaving June 30, which could have been terrible, but in the way things come together in Africa sometimes, it turns out that Carine left on Saturday for a month in Benin. So, we're renting her house till June 30. All contracts have been signed and paid for, so I can confidently say that we do indeed have a home.

It was with great joy that we packed our bags and piled into MC's landcruiser on Saturday afternoon. Bye Bye hotel! Cheikh made mafé on Sunday and I'm making Rabo Encendido today (thank you Gaea for giving me those recipe cards- all our cookbooks are on the boat!)

Carine has a 2yr old, so there are toys in the house and a little bed for K. He calls his mosquito net, his "tent" and has been sleeping under it since we got to the house. He's liking school a bit better now, but it's still a daily struggle to get him out the door, but he didn't want to leave when went to pick him up yesterday. Whatever the pros and cons of Petits Pas, I think it's good for him to be around other kids every day.

We can't access our internet at the house, so my online activities will likely be patchy until we move into our house. wow, our house. That looks good in writing. well, internet time's almost up. Love to all and thank you for your news! miss you.