Thinking outside the box

Spent this morning in one of Blantyre's nicest hotels, at a ladies' Bible study. Before we began, Kayla tried to close the curtains behind her chair, only to discover that they were fixed in place.

Just when we were becoming resigned to being hot (Kayla) and blind (me), the bartender came from way across the lobby with a stapler, and proceeded to staple the curtains shut.

After he left, we noticed a long line of staples left in the material from other occasions.

Flying Foxes

So I did manage to get a couple of pictures of the fruit bats, or flying foxes, or even 'megabats,' according to Wikipedia. Now I just have to figure out how to load them on this here Interweb thingy.

That wasn't actually so hard. 

There are several different species of flying fox in Malawi. I've tried to find an estimate of how large they are online, but have given up after minutes of strenuous googling. From the ground, they look larger than a crow, but not as big as a housecat. I'm trying to come up with a better comparison but drawing a blank.

I tried to give a sense of how big they are by making sure the moon made it into the shot, but I don't think that really helps much.

I would say their wingspan is somewhere between 18 inches and two feet. Anyway, they're big.

I've not seen the bats at the new house, although there are more birds than we saw in town. And there are occasionally giant snails in the yard.

Somehow, that's not quite as exciting as giant bats. But it is interesting. The largest snail I've seen was about eight inches long, including both body and shell.

I've made friends with one of our neighbors down the road--Grace, a secondary school student. Grace said she would come visit Sarah and me this weekend, which should be a challenge to the language skills of all three of us.