Flooding

 

Waiting to go up in the helicopter

 

Flood damage to crops and house

 

our rice - fortunately survived

Flooding can be both a good and a bad thing...

Today I have news of both. On the negative side there has been some severe flooding of the local population's farm land with some corn fields and a neighbouring rice project particularly affected.

Not all doom and gloom though as a veritable flood of new orders for bread have come in this week so far. including a possible contract to supply +/- 100 breads a day to a local business down the road. I have ordered a larger 'production run' already of which i'll take 50 with me tomorrow and see if we can get them sold first. If we can it will be a great start to getting things back on track!

back again

Wow so I'm finally back in the land of the third world. In case I forgot where I was flying to yesterday I was soon reminded upon my return by the 3 hour wait on the pavement at the airport to get a lift, then a flat tyre at 9pm on the way home scuppered any attempt to be back in time for supper.

Good news though came in hearing the bakery has been well looked after by my friend and colleague Pedro. Even returning a little profit and meaning I had enough cash on hand to pay the bakers today. They sure were happy to see me, apparently Pedro had been ruling the roost with a heavy hand! (not literally don't worry...)

Just a quick update for now to let you all now things are back on track. I've returned with some fresh ideas so look forward to getting them implemented and writing about it on-line over the coming few weeks.

Holidays

More profuse apologies for not writing any posts lately, I have fortunately been granted 2 weeks holiday to go and visit my family in Cape Town, South Africa. The bakery is in the safe (I hope) hands of one of my colleagues who so far hasn't contacted me with any problems. Well, its only been 5 days so lets see how the rest of the time goes!

random snaps

big lawn mower!

snake eyes!

Apologies to all faithful readers, haven't had much time to write any posts of late so have had to settle with a few pictures illustrating the activities of the past few days!

Mythbusters

A 'swarm' of winged termites outside the office last night

Living in the middle of no where for long periods can do strange things to you, last night was a case in point.

After every heavy rain here the bugs come out to play. None more so than the winged termite (Reticulitermes flavipes) which burrows out from the rain softened soil and flies around the nearest light source looking for a partner - this last about an hour then their wings fall off and they crawl off to mate.

termite close-up (Photo credit: Wikipedia.org)

As long as I've been living here I've heard the myth that these flying ants are edible and tast just like peanut butter. Last night we decided to put it to the test, catching a few, breaking off the wings and head and giving the body a good chew. The taste? nothing in particular really although we did detect some "buttery" undertones! We decided to complete the myth we must fry them up, just waiting for some re-supply on the cooking oil and we'll give it a try!

Strange indeed!

car trouble

Break down in paradise

As if right on cue, the new year has started with car problems. I was due to drive the re-supply trip through to the beach camp but someone else asked to go instead, being the kind (haha) person I am, I let them go. The result being they're still stuck there as the clutch disk burnt out on the way back. So far they have been stuck there since Friday the 1st Jan! Stuck in paradise, not too bad.

clutch repair team!

Having purchased a new clutch disk on Saturday we needed another car to give us (and mechanic) a lift there to fix it - typical catch 22 situation. We do have another car here - a land rover defender - but that is also broken so this morning was spent trying to fix that to drive through and fix the Nissan at the beach. Needless to say we don't have the parts to fix the land-rover so we were stuck again. That is until a friend came by with his helicopter to airlift our mechanic, clutch disk and tools out to the beach camp.

Interesting morning so far!

New Year

A belated happy new year to everyone!

I hope you all had a good one, things here were very quiet. My quietest new years to date I'd have to say. What I did enjoy though was the 'late' wake up of 6:45 am on new years day, what a treat! This was, however, made bearable by the fact that I didn't drink and therefore had no hangover :)

Unfortunately the Christmas and New Years period has seen us suffering from a spate of break-ins and small scale robberies. Nothing major has been taken fortunately but it really annoys me that we get taken advantage of like this when all we are trying to do here is help people out. I guess I should stick to the humble approach of "They obviously needed it (whatever they took) more than us, so let them have it". Easy to agree with in principle but would I be as humble if some of my prized possessions were among the things taken? Hmm, one to ponder for a while...