Serving In Sahel

There are many perks of being the elementary principal at Sahel Academy.....birthday goodies come your way, poems get written about you stating you are as "pretty as a sunflower", you get to be the substitute PE teacher and hear your name chanted all the way to the basketball court, and... and you get to go on field trips with different classes. Just recently I got to go with Beth's grade one class to the SIM Air hangar, which was very cool since my neighbour is a SIM Air pilot.  The students had a great time learning all about the parts of the plane that the pilots use to fly missionaries all over Niger.       Our next stop was to see the airport fire trucks...they put on an impressive show of just how far the water will go. The kids had fun trying on some of the firemen's equipment. But I think the favourite part of the visit for the students and the pilots was making paper airplanes. Oh the perks of being a principal...

    Yesterday I got to see first hand the destruction that occurred last weekend here in Niamey. All it took was three hours and several mobs to equal something that this country has never seen before....   The church had just finished this building two months ago and were about to start using it. As Jacques, one of the Nigerien workers at our school, led Beth and I around his church compound, the damage to each building was overwhelmingly sad.  Jacques was able to save the goat that the church had recently purchased for a celebration from the mob by offering to take care of it for them, so we had to get  picture of him with the rescued goat. As the many of the pastors have said the buildings might have been destroyed but the church is not made of the buildings, it is made up of the people. So the clean up has begun and while we were seeing all that was damaged, the choir was practicing for Sunday's service and I have to say they sounded amazing!   PLEA

It's cool season here in the desert! A blessed relief for a couple of months from the heat. Now when I say cool, that means the temperatures have gotten down to as low as 11 degrees Celsius at night. The mornings have been delightful for enjoying a cup of tea. Our students have come to school all bundled up with comments of "It's cold outside, Miss Farrer!" I will remember these cool mornings when the heat and humidity return and they will... all too soon. The cool season has brought harmattan winds with it. While they have been cool and refreshing, they have also been full of the dust from the desert. This is what the water looks like after I finished dusting my office. From the looks of it, you would think I hadn't dusted in months, but it had only been a week. Oh, cool season, won't you please stay just a little bit longer, although I dislike all the dust... I am enjoying these temps.....