The cows rear their ugly heads... again.

So we went for a little meeting at the Ministry this morning. Granted, I looked rather cute in a new dress. But that still doesn't excuse one of the Directors from bypassing the whole, "Good morning" thing to launch right into the "Who do I pay my 300 cows to?" [referring, of course, to the bride price which he would pay for my hand in marriage to become his second (or maybe third or even fourth) wife].

I've asked one of my colleagues about how to deal with this whole situation, because it is constantly coming back to the cows with this guy. It's a bit difficult to be professional with him, and get down to business when I know that the first thing he thinks about whenever he sees me walk into his office is marriage and cows. My colleague advised me to just completely ignore his remarks about cows and marriage. He said don't joke back about being worth more cows, or about how difficult it would be to negotiate with my father... he said just completely ignore it. So that's what I did today. Unfortunately, no one else ignored it! Sigh. It felt really rude to just ignore him while he was talking about me... but then, it's rather rude for him to proposition me each and every time I see him, too.

Anyway, here's a photo of the dress I was wearing today - I guess I can see why he's so dazzled by my beauty :)

Just a note about the little bridge and the tukel in the background... I sort of feel like our compound is turning into a little tourist village. Kinda of like "Disney Africa" or something! The house has been made by "real" Africans (not Americans trying to build something in an African style), and yet it's quite a bit bigger than most local tukels, and also built up on a concrete pad, which has been there for ages. So it's not quite like the local houses, but almost like a caricature of the local houses! And then yesterday, this really cute little bridge sort of sprung up out of nowhere. It's such a cute little bridge, made from the scraps of wood that was found in the junk pile. As I was sitting on the cute little railing, I kept thinking that any minute, a mechanical hippo was going to lunge out of the water.

But it's really a wonderful addition to our compound. It's all been built for one of our colleagues who divides his time between this city and a couple of other places. But he's so far been a bit homeless. So this is going to be his new home. I love it that we have a touch of "the village" on our compound now. Instead of a wild jungle in front of our house, we are taming the forest with a real garden, complete with our own cute little bridge!

At least the bridge will help all those 300 cows keep their feet dry.