For January 21

The day started with rain again. It's been so nice not to have to measure the water in the rain tank! We slipped down the hill for market this morning, and I asked Naris to pass a message on to her little sister, Foamela, to wait for the rain to stop before she came to help me in the yard. For this first time, I found that some of the prices at market were higher than I anticipated, but since you don't bargain here in the Solomons, I wasn't sure what to do. After market, we did morning chores, and I finished the laundry just as the sun came out. As I was hanging out clothes, I noticed a pretty little spider's web catching the sunlight.

My little point and shoot camera couldn't capture how pretty that small web built in between the red hibiscus flowers was, but the spider and its home made me smile and pause to thank the Lord for His creation.

Since the rain stopped, Benjamin and I headed out to my garden to dig out uvikola/cassava. Ofain had already told me that she didn't harvest any of the produce from my garden while we were in Honiara. This particular batch of uvikola/cassava was very over ripe and only fit for making lelenga/cassava pudding. On the way, I stopped by Ofain's house to talk to Foamela and tell her we were going to the garden. She was asleep, so I told her to come whenever she felt like it. Benjamin and I found a huge mass of vines and overgrown uvikola and bushes in my jungle of a garden. But, oh, was he happy! With a bush knife in one hand, he began swinging and cutting and clearing away the brush. The ground was nice and soft from the rain. Benjamin is great at pulling out the fruit, even better than I am. We had worked for over an hour when Benjamin cut his finger and headed home with a bag of uvikola on his head for Ofain's family. I asked him to send Daddy and Fomela to replace him and kept on working.

Eventually, Aaron showed up and helped me finish getting the oldest uvikola harvested. He said that Foamela had been at the house cleaning up the yard. So, we headed home with four bags of uvikola and one huge mass of fruit that we saved to show Ofain. When we arrived at the house, Foamela wasn't there, so I popped down to Naris' to ask where I could find her little sister. Naris said that Foamela hadn't realized I had a long list of things I wanted to do with her, so when she finished raking the yard, she went home. I also asked Naris what she thought about the high prices at market and how I should handle the situation. She told me that she was also surprised at the high prices and suggested that I just not buy the item if I thought it was too expensive. I expressed concern about shaming my friends at market, since the market is very small (only about ten women bring food - but I'm so thankful for those women!). She didn't think it would be a problem if I just skipped that particular item.

 

So, I went back up to the house to grab a late bite of lunch, and Naris went to find her sisters to make sure they knew we left uvikola/cassava at the house for them to make lelenga/cassava pudding.

We finally sent the kids on to play while Aaron and I finished the scraping and squeezing. I got the fire going to heat the stones about the time the kids came in. Thank goodness for leftovers! 

Smelling like smoke, I finally got the big tray of lelenga on the fire just before Evening Prayer finished up. We should have plenty to share tomorrow.