SIL branch picnic

We were invited on Sunday by our friends from SIL to attend the SIL branch picnic on Sunday. I've been doing a little helping out at SIL's Rain Forest International School with the computers, and we are now neighbors in the same building with many SIL folks, so we have several SIL friends now. The picnic was lots of fun. Here are a few pictures.

Ann reads on the couch before the picnic, with an assistant. Bert the cat has now left the building. His owner, Ginger, picked him up today. We are now almost pet-free for the first time since we left San Francisco. We do still check in on the Kapteyns' dog faithfully, til they get back, but we don't live with her anymore either.

Picnic time at Rain Forest International School.

Ann with Charlene and Fabienne, being fabulous together.

Our neighbor and friend Christi, who shared her food with us. I grilled that pan of delicious halal garlic sausage shortly after taking this picture, along with the layer of burgers hidden beneath it.

Me with another neighbor of ours, Julia, who lives downstairs with Lois. The classic hold-out-your-arm self-portrait, which worked out pretty well in this case.

The grills. That's Daryl the pilot in the blue shirt, who works with our friend Ray.

Friend and neighbor Liz (at left) checks the progress of her burger. Charlene's husband Michael is in the white shirt at right.

Shirley and her daughter. Shirley lives around the corner. Guy, who lives in the dependance we were going to move into at the Kapteyns, studies English with her. We often see her outside after a heavy rain, filling in ruts in the dirt road with a shovel. We play frisbee with her kids sometimes. They run like the wind.

Liz, Ruth and Ann. Ruth just sprained her ankle, undoubtedly complicating her new position as Rain Forest's PE teacher. Ann is about to enjoy some dessert from the well-stocked dessert table just out of frame to the left.

Lois (at left), the director of Rain Forest, and our downstairs neighbor.

Bert and Wilma. Ann would go running with their daughter when she was in town. We've played boardgames with Bert and Wilma, like Ticket to Ride and Settlers of Catan (a favorite here), and Bert seems to win pretty much all the time.

We'll be heading off to the west on Saturday to spend a week in a village, something we haven't managed to do until now. We're staying with a couple of SIL linguists, and may get to help out with their projects a bit. And we're starting to wind down our affairs here in Cameroon, and prepare to leave toward the end of next month. As we continue to settle in, and get busy preparing to leave, time is accelerating again, but it's still going nowhere near as fast as it does back home.