The Fly Tree

Chalk this one up under weird things.  One day I was walking along the sidewalk by my old classroom and heard this incredible buzzing sound.  Turns out there were hundreds of flies gathered on the tree beside the sidewalk.  I've never seen such a phenomenon before and I'm not quite sure what would cause them to gather like that but there they were.

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

                     

What's a Little Bug Between Friends?

 

About a month and a half ago, I found this big bug going into a restaurant.  He was deader than a doornail so I decided to pick him up, wrap him in a tissue and put him in one of the little compartments between my car seats.  I planned on showing him to my students when we talked about insects.  We have yet to talk about insects so there he sits all wrapped up in his tissue - at least that's the way it was until this morning...

He happens to be sharing a compartment with my school gate pass.  This morning my friend, Bev and I drove up to the school gate.  Someone was in front of me and someone behind me.  I reached down to grab my pink gate pass and couldn't find it.  Feeling pressured because of the car behind me I began searching a little bit more frantically.  I grabbed the tissue for some reason, thinking to search every possible place the card could have gone. I unwrapped it quickly having completely forgotten what was inside. 

When I saw the bug I freaked out (just a little bit) and yelled, "What is that?"  Being the thoughtful, nice friend that I am I then proceeded to throw the bug away from me and onto Bev's side of the car.  As you can imagine, I wasn't the only one freaking out any more.  Bev yelled louder than me, "What is that???" and started dancing in her seat.  By this time it had registered with me that it was just my dead bug and I was laughing hysterically.  I don't think Bev had the benefit of that knowledge...

However, she is still speaking to me so I say, "What's a little bug between friends?"

Some things to be noted:
1.  This kind of experience will get your blood pumping in the morning.
2.  This might have been the best laugh I have had in a long time!
3.  Bev's crazy eyes are pretty CRAZY!

The Mosquitoes Are Driving Me Batty

Lately, there has been some repair work going on to get the sprinkler system working properly so that the lawn right outside my classroom can stay nice and green.  That's meant a lot of standing water and a direct increase in the mosquito population.  Last Friday I literally had mosquitoes swarming in the classroom.  So, of course, I have been strongly promoting a closed door policy.  But then there's that one time when a fellow teacher stops by and stands in the open door to visit and who should swoop in for a visit but Mr. Bat. Perhaps he heard that the eating was good what with the abundance of mosquitoes and all!

Now I've had a lot of visitors to the classroom - a swarm of bees, a scorpion and a water scorpion to name a few.  But this was my first time to have a bat drop by.  It was nice of him to consider helping us with our mosquito problem but with all his swooping and carrying on it would have been hard to focus on learning.  (Really, I just didn't want everyone to hear me screaming like a girl!)  So I called some friends to help me catch Mr. Bat and send him on his way.

Bye, bye, Mr. Bat!

(No children were traumatized in the making of this story.  They were away in French class.)

Irresponsible

Who put me in charge of this little piece of blogland anyway?  I've been an utterly irresponsible owner.  I'm not sure it's even possible to catch you up so I'm going to hit the highlights.

In October my students made Synonym Rolls and ate Cinnamon Rolls and I hung weird things on my apartment wall just to prove that I do decorate once in a while (a real highlight, I know!).

My First Graders had an awesome cheer for Spirit Week!

In November, my friend Kathy celebrated her 60th birthday.  We all enjoyed a night at Parc W and an early morning safari.  Kathy is on the left in the blue scarf.  She is an amazing lady.  My life would be minus a whole lot of laughter without her!

We had a praying mantis and a walking stick join us for the safari.  They enjoyed seeing the water buffalo with us which was a first for me!

 It was also the first time I had ever seen a baobab tree with leaves on it.  They were so colorful that it kind of reminded me of fall.

What's not to love about the dawning of a new day?

November saw the return of my students' Kindergarten teacher.  She took time to come in and sing their favorite song from Kindergarten with them and share an awesome book.  They were over the moon!  If they could, I think they would sing this song every day. :)

We also had a staff retreat during the month of November which was a huge blessing to me personally and to many of our staff.  November is also the month of our annual field day but I'm not sure where those pictures have disappeared to.

So I'm off and running trying to catch up. Hopefully, December's highlights will be right around the corner. :)

Second Floor Sleeper

I was sitting outside my apartment in the SIM library connected to a cable hoping to get a little bit faster connection.  I happened to glance out the window and see this guy snoozing on the grill work.

He's probably tired after climbing so high!  Sleep well little guy!

Hello Hyena

You just never know what you are going to see when you wake up in the morning!  This morning I headed out for my morning walk and I actually grabbed my camera because I had in mind a picture that I wanted to take for my forthcoming newsletter.

These guys are members of a pack of dogs that I see on the mornings that I walk around the national stadium.

But this particular morning as I walked in through the parking lot a much larger, round eared animal caught my eye.

Well hello there, Mr. Hyena!  I did not expect to see you here this morning.

Yep, Mr. Hyena and a fellow hyena friend were just hanging out under the tree.  Don't let that fence fool you though, they were chained to the tree but definitely not enclosed.  Their owners had obviously spent the night sleeping on the pavement yards away from them.

Things that make you go, "Hmmm?"  There had to be a story there somewhere.  I didn't get it but I did get a picture of the curiousity of the day.

There you have it, you never know what you are going to see when you wake up in the morning.  So get up with a sense of expectancy, Sleepyhead, and maybe grab your camera on the way out the door!

It Was A Good Last Day

The 2013-2014 year has come to an end.

We began the day with our traditional soccer game.

The secondary and some staff played while the rest of us watched and cheered.

Midway through the game we were introduced to a new animal called a bush baby or a galago.

Then we moved inside for our closing assembly where these four earned a certificate for saying their verses with no errors.  I am especially proud of the little guy on the end next to Miss Carriger who is an English Language Learner and made only one mistake all year!

We finished our assembly with the "Be Happy" dance.

And if you don't feel happy after that then there's always kid writing.

And there you have it another year of "theaching" in the books for Bothers.

The Elephant Orphanage

After visiting the Nairobi National Park, we headed over to the Elephant Orphanage.  These babies were cute as anything.  The littlest three (about 6 months old) came walking down the hill following the keeper.

They each received two bottles of milk. After they finished eating, they roamed around and the keepers began to shovel dirt on them.  They were were trying to teach them to enjoy the mud and dirt.

A few minutes later the 6 to 12 month olds came charging down the hill.

They wasted no time in getting their milk and they weren't afraid to try and steal someone else's either.  This group definitely had some personality!

After 15-20 minutes of eating and playing they left and were replaced by elephants that were over a year old.  This group still got milk but they enjoyed chewing on branches too.

They were definitely all about the mud pit.  Basking in it and slinging it far and wide.  Good thing I didn't stand close to the mud pit!

After all the babies returned to their home, our group headed back to Mayfield to prepare to go on to Rift Valley Academy for our conference.  Here we all are together on the steps of Mayfield along with A's friend who really opened the way for our last minute adventures to take place.

Front Ends

Well, every tail end comes with a front end and we did see our fair share of those too on our trip through Nairobi National Park. But before we get to that, here's just a little perspective in regards to the closeness of this park to the city of Nairobi.

The first thing we saw as we drove into the park was a group of about 7 lions.  We didn't have to do any searching at all.  They were right in the middle of the road and they were quite content to be there.

I loved these funny looking birds.  We all agreed that surely Dr. Seuss must have drawn some inspiration from them for some of the funny creatures in his books.

We spotted this guy moving down a hill.  Interestingly, he appeared to be quite far away from any water.  He was definitely aware of us and he was moving at a very fast clip which was surprising.

Apparently it is rather rare to see rhinos in the Nairobi National Park.  So we were privileged to see four altogether both white and black.  This along with the zebras were the animals I really wanted to see.  

There were lots of deer like creatures.

I forget the name of these little guys but they loved to sit on rocks and they weren't the least bit afraid of people.  We saw them halfway through our trip when we stopped for a bathroom break.

We also took a picture of our selves from our perch where we could see all the wildlife.

Then it was on the road again where among other things we finally got to see our zebras.  They were having fun rolling in the dirt.

We get to see lots of giraffes in Niger but I had never seen any fighting.  It looked like they were trying to knock each other down by swiping the legs out from one another with their long necks.  

On our way out of the park we passed the lions in the same spot.  They had really settled in for the day and were all enjoying a mid-morning nap.

This was an amazing experience and definitely a highlight of the trip.