Miscellany from Lusaka

This is a picture of the African pied crow. Crows similiar to this one break the dawn with their harsh "ar-ar-ar-ar" or "karh-karh-karh". I actually think that they use both of these sounds. They are quiet until the dawn starts to break and then you hear them. They are actually quiet beautiful and they do mate for life, which gives you the added advantage of having two of them nearby. They like the peak of the church roof as their day-time roost so we have them throughout the day. Another positive is that they do not start until dawn, and we do not have the sound of sirens throughout the night as in Seattle.

All of the Jesuit communities appear to have working cats. The cats do a good job in keeping the property free from rats and other rodents. The St. Ignatius cat population just increased by four. The cats are somewhat skitish around us, but they have an uncany way of arriving at the door when fish is cooked.

Today I picked some red mangos from the house garden. We have both red and yellow mangos. The flavor is great and far surpasses the green fruit that makes it to Seattle stores. The magos are quite small but delicious.