Friday was just one of those days when everything seems to go wrong! First was the shock of some difficult changes that might have to take place at work in the year ahead – it’s always difficult in our work with a constant flow of people coming and going and change is inevitable. Then there was a sad farewell lunch as we said goodbye to a friend and colleague who will be sorely missed (we were also celebrating being settled in our new offices)! Then I broke my tooth – or at least, broke the cap off my tooth that I originally broke when I was a child. Then there was the milk – I left it just for a few seconds and it boiled over (as all our milk is fresh and has to be boiled before use). Well, as they say, "There’s no point in crying over spilt milk" – but by this point it was getting hard to keep control of the emotions. Then the icing on the cake, which was really a very small thing but after everything else it just tipped me over the edge, was finding out I didn’t have enough eggs to both make the pancakes I’d planned for tea and do an eggy filling for them that my friends like.
And now it’s Saturday…the good news is that I was able to get my tooth fixed**… however, otherwise it seems to be another ‘one of those days’! I got less than 5 hours sleep (just couldn’t get to sleep – maybe it was the coffee), I have an upset tummy and the milk seems to have a vendetta against me as the little milk jug I had put a the last of the old milk in fell over in the fridge and got milk all over the vegetables.
**Things can go wonderfully smoothly when you know the right people here! Getting my tooth fixed… My landlady just happens to be a dentist. Yesterday she phoned a colleague in the hospital 5 minutes up the road and today I was able to go and get it fixed! Looks like he’s done a really good job, and he had good English so I didn’t have to cope with medical vocabulary in Swahili!
A typical rainy day - looking out the back of my house
