Flat Stanley Visits from Franklin, NC

May 25, 2017

Dear Ella and Friends,

My trip across the ocean took SOOOO long and then there was all that time to get sorted in the mail but I’m happy to say that I arrived in the mailbox of Miss Botheras here in Niger just yesterday.  You might be wondering where Niger is?  It is right in the middle of West Africa above Nigeria.  One thing is for sure…I should not have worn a long sleeve shirt because it is hot here!  At 7:30 am it was already 96 degrees Fahrenheit inside.

Miss Botheras is a First Grade teacher at a school for missionary kids here in Niger.  Her students come from all over the world like Korea, Italy, Kenya, Brazil, Nigeria and the United States.  I hung out with them on the playground and I thought you might like to see some of the things that her students like to do for fun.

Miss Botheras forgot to feed me anything for breakfast so my first stop was to hang out with some third graders who were cooking in their kitchen.  They were making spinach.  Not what I prefer to eat for breakfast but since I was hungry…I ate some!  

I was feeling super strong after all that spinach so I decided to go for a race with some first grade boys.

On your mark! Get set!      

         

Go!

After that it was on to the monkey bars,

slide

and parallel bars.

Hey!  Have you ever heard of an antlion?  What are you picturing right now?  A dangerous ant with a furry mane?  That’s not what an antlion is.  Antlions are insects that live all over the Sahel Academy campus. The kids showed me how to hunt one down.  First you have to find a hole like this: 

This hole is actually a trap that an antlion has set for ants.  They wait for an ant to fall in and then they eat them.  So if you want to find an antlion you have to flick a little bit of dirt into the hole to see if there’s an antlion waiting at the bottom.  If he is waiting down there he will think an ant has fallen in and he will kick sand up, hoping to cause the ant to slip even further into his trap.  Once you know he’s down there you quickly put your hand over the hole and grab the sand.  Then you sift the sand away to see if you have caught an antlion.  This is what an antlion actually looks like…

He walks backward and he is very ticklish to hold!

Well it’s been a full day and I have to get this letter off to you because I know school is just about over for you.  I sure do hope this letter gets there before summer break starts!

                                                              
All the way from Africa,

Flat Stanley