January 13

8 pm on a wednesday night, we just finished a meal of sweet potatoes, cooking bananas (I think we would call them plantains in America, but I've never known much about tropical foods, here we call them matamatas) and black beans on flour tortillas.

We walk to a village that is said to be two hours away tomorrow morning to do health surveys and see the village. Alex should finish all her health surveys tomorrow, if not we walk the four hours again on Friday.

We made these scones for breakfast this morning and left a few in the dutch oven cooking pot in the bush kitchen with intentions of having them for lunch. We go to the health dispensary to plant some mint, check on our garden, check house progress and storion with the nurse. After we come back to our house, it's 2pm and I'm starving, I can tell Alex is starving too because she heads straight to the bush kitchen for the scones - the scones, by the way, were really good, with brown sugar and chocolate inside - The scones weren't in the kitchen where we had left them, Someone had stolen our scones! Who could it be? Who would steal a hungry man's scones? Especially ones with chocolate and brown sugar inside? We had offered a scone to my host papa, bob, and he had seemed to enjoy it this morning. Had he returned and finished them off while we were out? Had the pikinini (children) found them and did they regularly check our cooking pot? This would have been the first time they had found something, surely they wouldn't have persisted in checking an empty-every-time cooking pot for two months. (Alex writing now...) Lucas and I were not sure what to do...it starts with scones and then what? At one of our training sessions, the safety and security trainer said that your chances of larger theft increase if smaller theft is not reported because the thief realizes that you are not going to say anything and gets braver...What to do? Lucas thought we should tell my host papa, Leo, but I felt like it wouldn't be a good idea because my host papa is slightly paranoid already...he's always worried that the pikinini f that live up in the bush (up the hill) are going to come down and spit on our solar panel and mess it up because they are raised wrong and he worries that Lucas and I not only don't lock our doors, but sometimes we'll leave the doors wide open (for the cat and because we forget) and that the strangers that may be walking on the road will come and steal everything...I didn't want to perpetuate any of my papa's schemas by mentioning the scones incident...

After dinner, Lucas and I were sitting in the bush kitchen, drinking tea and talking as is our usual after dinner custom when my papa comes over with a big banana leaf full of water cress for us! Lucas is psyched because he loves water cress...we stori for a little bit and my papa, who is a preacher mind you, said he had a confession to make...he said that after he got back from the karen (garden), he was starving and as he walked past our kitchen on the way to his kitchen, he checked our pot to see if we might have any something left inside (living here makes a person hungry as you're always walking up or down some impossibly steep hill)...and there were the scones...he tried to have only one...but he said they were so so good he couldn't help himself and ate all of them...he apologized profusely and Lucas and I told him all our theories about the scones and we all laughed and laughed! It was really great that he felt comfortable enough with us to eat our scones! I feel like we've reached some kind of integration milestone...and I know what I'm going to make him when we get back from Vila as a thank you gift for watching the cat and feeding the bat.