Friday Night Life

This past Friday, Rod took the girls – and only the girls – out to the bush to shoot guns and star gaze. Yes, it’s true. We left around 5 PM in the Landcruiser, Rod in the driver’s seat and ten girls packed in everywhere else. Dinner stayed warm and somewhat untouched along the route – though the smell of rice and curry made us all hungry. A hefty telescope, two shotguns, and plastic mats were strapped onto the roof. We arrived out by this incredible rock quarry just before dark. But, that didn’t stop Rod from loading the shotgun and allowing all of us girls to take a couple of shots. Our target was a large rock in the lake. Life-threatening? Maybe. But by some miracle, no animals, people, or any other living species were injured in the process.

Meanwhile, Tricia began making tea and Jess got the meal together. We had two pots, and therefore two groups (one around each pot), and we ate communally. Aside from our choice to use spoons, we were close in form to eating like Ivorians often eat (see photo below). We were in the bush, away from the city, under a blanket of stars. Therefore, we relied on a few flashlights to see our food and all the translucent bugs that felt like eating curry too. But it turned out they’d stick to the rice and we ended up eating them, accidentally. Fresh pineapple, peanuts, onions, bell peppers, and other condiments trounced any bug flavor. We all ate our fill and then some.

Rod established the telescope on a more or less flat piece of rock and set the scope first on Jupiter. We saw the beautiful planet with two stripes and four of her moons. Then we moved up in the sky to Plateaus and found a magnificent view of star upon star. To the naked eye Plateaus appeared to be but a handful of stars. Through the telescope, however, there were tens if not hundreds in view. Slowly, mister moon in all his fullness strolled into the night sky. I could have stayed on that rock all night, questioning the moon.

“The heavens declare the glory of God and the skies proclaim His handiwork…night to night reveals knowledge…” Psalm 19:1

So yes, it was a lovely evening. All of us girls enjoyed feeling a bit “dangerous” with guns (Jess’ new phrase is “I am dangerous!”). We also felt completely small and humbled by the night sky.

On our way back, I rode on the roof of the Landcruiser with Lina, Carina, and the telescope. We dodged so many branches and occasionally got whipped by small ones that seemed to jump out of nowhere. But along the way also we managed to dream up a future voyage around Europe, and then maybe the U.S. too. Someday down the road, maybe I’ll get to travel around with my sweet German friends.

Okay, the night didn’t end there. We arrived home at 10ish and braced ourselves for a surprise. You see, a couple of weeks ago the girls pranked the boys while they were out of town, and we knew they had been planning revenge. (I don’t feel far removed from college!) When we walked into the living room, the guys were hanging out as “normal”. We knew better than that. We dropped off the bags and pots we carried in and walked down the girls’ corridor, only to see a giant snake body coming out of our bathroom. Gross!! But it was completely still and it didn’t take us long to determine that the thing was dead. We walked toward it with squeals and a bit of fright. Then the boys came running down the hall and grabbed the snake’s body, only to swing it back and forth at us. We all turned around and ran. It turned out to be a black cobra, probably 2 meters in length. It had been found and killed on campus that afternoon. (And since then, two others just like it have been killed – so that’s three consecutive days in a row!)

We could deal with the dead snake. Our bedroom doors were still locked (as we had left them) and we breathed a sigh of relief. The guys couldn’t touch our rooms…. or could they? Carina opened our door and screamed. It looked like a storm had gone through there. Our mattresses were stolen, our bed frames stood on their ends, and clothes and other things were just everywhere. The guys had outsmarted us and found a master key to all the rooms. They had all kinds of fun disarranging everything. It was like a broken puzzle that needed to be put back together. Even our shower curtains were missing, and our toilet paper too! Oh my, what a disaster. As you can imagine, there were plenty of laughs and screams. They guys had gotten us back – and they did a good job.

That night we slept without our mattresses, but instead on couch cushions. As Carina and I finally crawled into bed at about midnight in our somewhat put-back-together room, we laughed about everything that happened that night. We were wired. Since all the boys were asleep, we snuck down their hallway and into their bathroom with the intention of getting them back. But they guys had prepared to be repaid by hiding all of their toiletries in their bedrooms. We ended up using an old thing of toothpaste to write, “watch out” on their mirror. Nothing has happened yet in the area of payback, but we all know that the prank war has officially begun…