On more than one occasion during the week while Mike and Becky were gone, I found reason to walk into the kitchen and turn on the light after dark -- something I have never done previously. Each time, I was greeted by half a dozen cockroaches scurrying across the dining room table. (Ugh. Sometimes I'd just prefer not to know. Oh well.) The problem is not slovenliness in the cleaning department, but the shoddy craftsmanship of the table (sadly typical in carpentry here) so that the ravages of a family of 6 on a table already suffering from pocks, holes and cracks creates happy hunting ground for creepy crawlies. Surviving in Cameroon requires a phlegmatic approach to insects.
“There’s no accounting for taste.” That’s my dad’s favourite way of explaining personal tastes that are incomprehensible to him, like living downtown, and riding bike in winter. The inexplicable factors which determine an individual’s likes or dislikes are probably the only way I can explain why my favourite nativity scene contains a horribly caricatured black magus, a random adoring child attired – to my fancy – like a Roma person, an old shepherd carrying some sort of blunderbuss. And a haloed holy family with an 18-month-old baby Jesus. This is the "Christmas Manger Set – the Christmas story in beautiful cut-out scenes and life-like figures." See how the 1940s-era family admires the realistic flourishes, like raw wood beams and straw protruding from the edge of the roofline; the rough, broken wood of the stalls; the tasselled camels; the richly dressed magi; the woolly sheep; the Bethlehemites on the path in the background, ostensibly out to get water, judging...
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