New curtains, flat-screen telly and a barn owl

My heading sounds like the lyrics of a song or a story title. It's not. This is life in our world here in Mwadui.  

Last week, friend Rob kindly took me to Shinyanga to make a few private purchases. Grant and I wanted to buy a flat-screen television and I wanted to look for curtains for our lounge. 

Rob could be mayor of Shinyanga. Having lived here for the past eleven years, he knows everyone important in the area. He's also an excellent negotiator when you need to buy something as expensive as a telly.  He took me the Samsung shop and when the shop owner tried to sell me a generic set called Zek, Rob told him to find a Samsung and we'd be back in a couple of hours. 

While we waited for the telly shop to find the appropriate set, Rob took me to a smalll shop which sold "ready-to-hang" curtains. He waited patiently in his car, and I ended up haggling with the three men in the shop about how many curtains I needed (they couldn't understand why I would need twelve drops/lengths for four windows - wouldn't four drops do?) Then it was counting out the hooks, rings and I also asked them to cut the curtain rods in 2.5m lengths. Again, they wanted to know why I couldn't just take the 3.5m lengths that were available.  Finally, the shop assistants carried my purchases to Rob's car, secured the rods on the back of his pick-up and loaded the parcels in the cab. BTW there wasn't a great selection of patterns, textures or colors. I just took what was available in the quantities  required.

We returned to the Samsung shop where the correct set had appeared as if by magic; Rob haggled with the proprietor until the price was acceptable to all of us and we walked out with the flat box containing the Samsung flat-screen tv. 

Ultra-bling curtains now adorn our lounge windows 

Program descriptions are much easier to read now! 

While sitting outside with the cats last night, as usual I  watch the dozens of LBJ's (Little Brown Jobs/Birds) in the huge trees overhanging our garden. There are weavers, sparrows, sparrow-weavers, starlings, pigeons and doves. They all sit and watch the cats who are lying close to the feeders I have in the garden.  When we come inside the with cats, the birds swoop down and get their last meal for the day. Last night however, the birds were making much more noise than normal. I looked up wondering if there was a snake in one of the trees, as I could hear the twitterings were more like alarm calls than their usual happy songs. 

Then I spotted it. Sitting quietly on its normal branch almost above my bedroom window, was our resident barn owl.  Almost invisible in the gathering dusk, but watching carefully for a tasty morsel of a young bird perhaps? Or was it just waiting for the gheckos to make their appearance once our security light came on? 

 Our resident Barn owl had the smaller birds all in a twitter last night

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