Turtle Bay Day 3

Yesterday afternoon after getting our email and blogging fix, we noticed the monkeys had come in for their afternoon feeding. They look for food in the trees in front of the hotel, and occasionally in the cars in the hotel parking lot.

 

There were several monkeys with their babies along for the ride. Here’s one baby clinging tightly to mom.

This morning, Kyle, Susan and I got up early for a guided bird walk. This was around the village outside the hotel. We started about 6am, and found a number of children starting their walk to school. Many of the children walk 3 kilometers to school (about 2 miles).

Here’s a typical entry home. It’s made of Mangrove branches and mud, with a thatched roof.

The land around the hotel and village was formerly sea bed. Many of the upper end houses are made of quarried coral, such as this one with our welcoming committee.

The village is poor, and beer is expensive, so Palm oil is collected and made into wine. Villagers climb the coconut palm, and lash the tops and put a collection bottle in the palm.

Here’s the local bar where they go for their 50 shilling palm oil wine.

Here’s the church that is being constructed for the village. They use about 60 plastic chairs to seat the members. They are raising funds for windows (okay, window frames with bars – there’s little glass used in construction here). On our way back, we talked with our guide Jonathan about our purpose here, and he talked about how good it is to have a bible in his native language, particularly for older villagers.

We walked along several Mangrove forests looking for birds, and finding crabs, snails, and other creatures. One particular Mangrove tree grows straight branches which are used for much of the building construction.

We passed a village well. The water is brackish, but the poor villagers still drink it. Here’s a woman walking back with a full 5 gallon jug on her head a couple smaller containers in her arms. She put the jug on her head, then picked up the other containers.

Walking back to the hotel, this was probably the nicest house we passed in the village.

Across the street from the hotel, this young boy was eating corn for breakfast. Corn is a staple grown in the fields around the village.

 Birds were a bit scarce on our birdwalk, but we saw lots of the village, and several butterflies.

Here’s one of the birds we saw out in a field – he was probably 30 yards or so from us.

Back at the pool, we saw this bird – probably the closest we got to any birds this morning, and we didn't have to pay 1000 shillings to see him. The tour was well worth the price, even not seeing lots of birds, just to get to know the community better.

Tim has been enjoying the pool. Here he’s creating a whirlpool with some of the missionary kids.

Pray that our other team gets their luggage and safely gets here this afternoon.