brotherly love

We have moved into our house and we are approaching a sense of normalcy now. Not a moment too soon, that's for sure. We're finally getting into a normal routine, even drinking coffee every morning. It's nothing fancy, really just cowboy coffee brewed in a pot of water. But it's legit, non-instant coffee, and it makes a big difference when you're cooped up with the same stinking deadbeat brother for weeks on end. No mango tree unfortunately, but Luke is back to his routine of sitting in the early morning sun until it gets too hot to bear and retreating inside. That African sun is no joke, let me tell you.

Our house also has a family living in the back quarters for now, which has been fun because it means we have some kiddies to play with. It's less fun when they start running around the back yard yelling and playing at 6 in the morning, but you take the good with the bad.

(What you Africans call Football)

(What we Americans call football)

We do a lot of reading around here. Something about the combination of (a) no TV, (b) no decent bars and (c) a "flexible working environment." Luke is reading Sometimes a Great Notion right now, and starting to talk like an ignorant, half-witted lumberjack. I am working through East of Eden, which will provide a closing quote that captures our current situation well:

When two men live together they usually maintain a kind of shabby neatness out of incipient rage at each other. Two men alone are constantly on the verge of fighting, and they know it. Adam Trask had not been home long before the tensions began to build up. The bothers saw too much of each other and not enough of anyone else.

Let's just say it's a good thing those kiddies are around. Something about these little kids playing together takes all the fun out of my fantasies of violence.

(See what I mean?)