(no, not Coca Cola!)

Rob is delighted to have a REAL piano at home now! Here it is:

We bought it from some Nazarene missionaries who are leaving, and for a good price too! Transporting it from their house (half a mile away) to ours was fun. It took 6 men to lift it onto the back of a friend’s pickup, then there was a muddy, bumpy dirt road to navigate. After that, we joined a paved road and it was plain sailing. So much so that I couldn’t resist playing a few tunes on the way! Great fun and when we passed the ‘Livingstones’ restaurant, every head turned to see what was going on! Such fun!

You’ll notice this one is shorter than normal upright pianos; it’s what is known as a spinnet piano. The tone is not bad considering and it’s reasonably in tune! At the end of the day, any acoustic piano is preferable to some electric thing you plug in, and…I can still play during power cuts!!!

I dismantled it the other day and found they are much more tricky to work on than conventional uprights! Here’s what it looks like inside:

Other news…

* Rob is feeling decidedly dodgy today, but tested negative for malaria.

* Madelaine and Ruth are both singing solos in their school shows on Friday.

* Micah was 7 yesterday and Madelaine will be 10 on Friday!!

* I posted the last of the Christmas letters today – sorry if yours is late (or if you don’t even get one!!!)

* The Harmattan was the thickest I’ve seen today (the ‘Moov’ tower being quite faint as a result).

* We went back to ‘DFC’ yesterday and it was a tad less positive than the first time: about 4 of the extra value meals were not available (so I couldn’t have my chicken tikka burger – shame), the bread roll in the burger I did have was a tad stale and they’d started charging 500cfa for children to use the play area even if you eat there (but didn’t tell us that until we got the bill!) T.I.A. Never mind – it’s still the best kids’ play area you’ll find here…

* There have been two cases of bird flu in Benin last week – one near Porto Novo and one in Cotonou (bad news for DFC? Maybe that’s why their menu was limited…). Read more about these outbreaks here. No human cases yet and, in any case, we should look on the bright side – our friends in Uganda are on alert for the ebola virus. Now that is scary…