After three car-less weeks, the Land Rover is finally up and running once again. HOORAY!

I picked it up last Thursday, just three days before our visitors leave (so at least they’ve had a few rides in it!) The main reason for the delay was the availablity of Land Rover parts. It needed a new gearbox shaft and a cog thingy which looks like this:

In the end, I phoned Amazon 4×4, an excellent supplier of second hand and new LR parts with a very efficient service – to be recommended (take note, Caroline H – they could come in handy one day!) So, blokey there DHL-ed two brand new parts out to Benin, which actually worked out cheaper than what we could find here, even after postage. Here I am, happy to be holding the parts others could not reach:

Other news…

*The Wood family leave this evening (Sunday 26th). It will be sad to see them go.

*After a few days of fever, Micah and Mads are cool again!

*Rob’s planning to work with two different groups of Bago people in October, to encourage the usage of traditional song genres.

*Internet is only partially working and we don’t know why! We can send and receive e-mail and the BBC site (our default home page) works. However, the blog and most other sites do not – unless we dial up! Any suggestions from computer bods out there??

*Last school year, Rob took his GCSE Dutch at the school, just for fun. He got his result last week – an ‘A’!!!

*School starts back in just over a week’s time. Lois is probably teaching Years 1 & 2, but it’s not certain yet.

*Still no change on the mobile phone situation. We will have to buy a SIM card for a different network if this persists, but the other networks seem overloaded already.

*Rob’s planning to start his masters research in September, on ‘The reclamation of Voodoo song genres for Christian worship’, a current phenomenon in Southern Benin, and one which needs studying. Still looking for a university to supervise, but a possible lead in Germany!

And finally…Ruth and Annie had their hair done African style the other day. Here they are enduring the pain:

…and here’s the end result:

It took about an hour per child and cost £2.50 each! Rachel had hers done in a different style, but didn’t like it so pulled out all the plaits the same night! Melissa had hers done the next day in a similar style. Still trying to persuade Lois to take the plunge…

Apologies for the lack of posts lately. Hopefully we’ll get the internet sorted soon!

Bye for now!

PS Have you looked at our YouTube videos yet? (filed under ‘robenin’). More coming soon too!