Again, I got up early to put the chicken outside to browse - we'll let him have the run of the compound when he's settled in, but for now he stays inside while I'm at the school. So I had breakfast, got all my stuff together, went outside to find him, and he was gone! Aaargh! I freaked out, how could I have lost my chicken after only three days! So I went round and round the compound garden even though the guards keep it so neat and tidy that there are no dark corners and if I didn't see him the first time I wasn't going to the second or third. Finally I went and found Armani and fumbled out the Swahili for "chicken" and "where". (I may have picked up quite an extensive vocabulary so far, but I am hopeless at putting sentances together). He smiled at me, and pointed at his feet. The demented scruffy bird was just hanging around him quite happily, and apparently (from what Armani seemed to be saying) (he speaks English to the same extent I speak Kiswahili) (ie. doesn't) had been doing so all morning. Ha. I think we're giving the guards the impression that mzungu are eccentric. I mean, we have this chicken as a pet that clearly should have been cooked up long ago, we take them biscuits or fruit at all hours of the day and night, and we scurry across from one house to the other with pots and jugs and various other implements long after we should have been in bed. <-- Because we still don't have a functioning stove and have to rely on April's household to fufill that purpose.

Tommy came running up to me again at breaktime.
"I have another joke to tell you!"
"Excellent, tell me it." Maybe this will shed some light on the significance of the first joke.
"There was a Chinese man standing on top of a building. What was he doing there?"
Pause.
"Uhm. I don't know..."
"Talking to you!"

I still don't get it.

Obviously there is some joke in there, because Tommy was laughing his head off. But then again, that might have been because of the puzzled look on my face. Ah well. He's a funny kid. If he keeps telling me enough of these, maybe the child part of my brain will kick back into gear enough that I'll stop trying to understand them and accept that they're just funny because they are.

Pool is finally filled. But it's green because they pumped up bore water to fill it. Gosh I hope they have a good filter system. Dad, you know that time our pool went bright green because the ducks had been swimming in it? Well, imagine that but more tinged brown, and even murkier. Fun fun. They're giving it a week to settle and such. I shall reserve judgement until then.

Andrea* had invited us over for dinner, so Kenny picked us and their two kids up after soccer and we went straight back to their place. The family is from Ireland, so Zoe spent quite a while telling them about our trip there and where we’d visited. I went and sat outside on a deckchair and watched skinks on a tree trunk.