Happy Late-Easter!

I hope everyone had a great Easter. Here in Banyo, my postmate and I got in the spirit by dying hard boiled eggs. My parents sent me an Easter package with an egg dying kit and a windup chick (which my cats are really afraid of) that got here just in time. The eggs here are all a brownish color, but we managed to find a dozen lighter colored ones to dye and it worked pretty well. We only used three of the colors, so we’re going to save the rest for another day.

(the other side of the egg says -non)

On Easter Sunday we went over to the American missionaries’ house which is about 15 minutes outside Banyo to have a special dinner. It was awesome. We ate beef and vegetable potpie, green beans (my contribution), fruit salad, shrimp chips with guac (not really sure what these things are, they taste kind of like the cinnamon twists at Taco Bell, but shrimpy), and mango cobbler with a semi-frozen vanilla ice cream for dessert.

After dinner, my postmate and I left around 6:30 to try to find a moto taxi back to town before dark, which is usually around 7 every day. A really big storm was coming so it was already kind of dark when we left. No motos were coming because it was Sunday (normally there are motos coming and going from the hospital there) and about to rain, so we figured we could walk until we found one. Well, it ended up raining with no motos in sight so we had to walk all the way to town (which has never happened before). Luckily my postmate had a raincoat and an umbrella, so she shared but we both still got really wet. Then her headlamp battery died. We ended up stopping twice along the way at bars when the rain got really bad. I’m sure the people sitting there thought we looked ridiculous and that we don’t have enough sense to get out of the rain. Right before we reached the market where we knew we could find motos there was a giant flash of lightning and all the power in town went out, so there was a collective yell from all the bar goers. After waiting a while in the dark, I found a moto to take me home. We almost fell over in a giant mud/water pool on the way, then he charged me double the normal fare. I ended up paying it anyway because I was just happy to be home after about an hour and a half (again, normally 15 minutes max) and didn’t feel like fighting about it. Long story short: rainy season is TERRIBLE. I’d take the dust back any day.