2026Eswatini

 Around 10:30 last night a thunderstorm came rolling through, complete with hail, which sounds rather loud when sleeping about 3 feet away from the sloping edge of a thatched roof! Jeff was kind enough to run outside and take a picture. (Hail in Eswatini is uncommon, I have learned, and hail in Winter in Eswatini is even more unusual since this is the dry season.) The storm didn't last long, however, and this morning was bright and beautiful, as we walked over to the coffee shop (the morning meeting place where we meet up with the vehicles taking us to our locations for the day.) This pic is looking out the door of the coffee shop.  Today Pastor and Barb went with Possible Dreams International (PDI); Anita, Jeff, and Laura went to Home Based Care (2 different teams); and Denise and I went to Good Shepherd Hospital (GSH). Before leaving with PDI, Pastor was origially going to meet with a Catholic priest after a church service that he was leading for a primary school.  Our ...

This is sunrise over the house where Anita and Jeff are staying. It is a duplex, sleeping four on each side, so when Kasia and Shane join us tomorrow, they will stay there also. The other half of the duplex is unoccupied currently, and the owner of the guesthouses said we could use it to shower this morning since the hand held sprayer was no longer attached high up on one of the showers in the house the rest of us are staying in, so I walked over to the duplex at dawn this morning to shower. Only to find out I had brought the wrong key, so I came back and just showered using the hand held sprayer (in my hand). It was a nice morning to be outside at dawn though, so I'm glad I went out and experienced the sunrise.  We met at the coffeehouse at 8AM, then went as two different groups - some of us to Palm Grove Initiative, my group to Kudvumisa, (and Anita I think went to Operation Hope). On the way to Kudvumisa, we went through a game preserve. Apparently the elephants and other large ...