Three evenings a week a group of men come to our house to exercise with me. Mashayamombe asked me if he could come over to exercise one day and of course I said he could. Then it became a group of six men. I found an exercise machine in a storage container and repaired it and put it on the veranda and the men love to use it. I made a pull up bar and hung it up, as well as a heavy punching bag. We work out together and have become friends and are breaking down racial walls. Again, this is something unusual in the community and is new to everyone.
We love to watch the sun set in the evening. If I miss it I feel like I’ve missed out. I will often just stand on the back veranda to watch it set, which takes about 2 minutes from the time it hits the horizon, then go back to making supper. It’s really nice when Carole and I can have a cup of tea or coffee on the veranda and watch it together and chat. After the sun is gone the real show begins with the sky turning bright red and purple. In the spring when there are wildfires burning everywhere the sunsets are especially beautiful, another paradox in Africa, the danger and destruction of the fires against the beauty of the sunsets. The veranda really is my favourite ‘room’ in the house. Reading, watching sunsets or thunderstorms, exercising, praying, watching passersby on the path, it all happens on the veranda.
We don’t have electricity in our house without a generator but I put off starting it because of the noise, but it usually gets started before we make supper as the sun goes down around 5:45 and it’s pitch dark by 6.
