After our rough Saturday we cancelled some obligations for Sunday, including our usual day of church, and decided to take a real Sabbath together - resting. In a rare and desperate move we locked our gate! (usually just closed to hold the dog in) reinforcing our Sunday-no-visitor policy.
Saturday night I sat the kids down and along with David we made a Sabbath chart listing the things we wanted for ourselves and for our family to really give us rest. The kids included playing some games and doing some learning activities . . . David and I predictably requested time alone and naps.
What an enjoyable day as we woke to the first real sun in a long time and spent the whole morning enjoying each other and Him. The kids emptied our cookie jar for breakfast and I made us a large brunch at midday, relishing the time to cook and serve prettily.
The few small interruptions?? Two tarantulas were gished in the course of our day (yes, Mim, both by your son - Africa’s been good for him!) One in the mosquito net of our most recent visitor’s bed, (glad it was us, not you, Ron!!) and the other beside our shower tap. The afternoon was mostly taken up by an impali infestation right beyond our back porch. A small amount of food was left there Saturday and the next day I went out to sweep up and found a complete infestation over about 20 square meters. The grass was literally crawling with ants and if you stayed quiet you could hear them moving. Impali are biting ants with huge guard ants that bite really hard. As I stood trying to pour parrafin down some of their larger holes My legs got covered and several guard ants embedded their heads in my feet - ripping them out left bleeding holes from the large pinchers.
We have learned that the solution is to find the queen and that the locals know how to do it. Today one of our neighbors, always looking for work, is supposed to come bright and early to hunt up the nest, supposedly a hockey puck sized disk of hard dirt containing the elusive queen. Apparently once she dies they all move on and our dog Jessy will be able to reclaim our porch as home. Poor thing, she got swarmed by the impali and ran around in a frenzy till I manage to pull most of them out.