Help Support New Libraries in Swaziland

“The library is a good place to spend time in. I say this because of the books that are intresting (sic). For the library to be opened is good for all of us. In reading the books it gives your mind some new words and other vocabulary sentences. There are books that you will read them for fun and some for knowledge. Do not be indifferent in reading books. Good luck, happy reading.” Form 1 student (equivalent of US grade 8)

The new library at our local high school has been a phenomenal success. The photos in this posting show Mcebo helping to register the new books

and students enjoying the new library.

Hundreds of books have been checked out since the library opened in June. One Form 1 student often checks out a new book each day. The teachers tell us they have seen a definite improvement in their students' exams and writing skills. Recently, a Form 3 girl was jumping up and down at the excitement of finding a book she wanted to read. We have several book clubs going affording us an opportunity to work directly with small groups of students. The High School received some books that were too young for those students, so we brought 3 boxes to the local primary school that lacks a library; whenever we bring a “box library” into classes at the primary school, the students eagerly swarm, delighted at the chance to read a book. At recess the students beg us to read to them.

This year Katherine (with Mark's help) is part of the Peace Corps' Books for Africa Swaziland Committee helping volunteers start 30 new libraries around the country. (We will not apply for a new library in our community this year.) The books are donated, but volunteers must raise half the shipping costs, this year $7617.

We are requesting readers of this blog to donate to Books For Africa to support our efforts and bring the joy of reading to the young people in Swaziland. We are convinced that improved English will help these students move from dependent poverty to becoming self-supporting citizens. The link to donate is:  https://donate.peacecorps.gov/index.cfm?shell=donate.contribute.projDetail&projdesc=15-645-001

Please make sure you include your name with the donation. The default for this site seems to be “anonymous”, and we were not able properly to thank many of you who donated last year.

We are well into our second and last year as Peace Corps volunteers. There have been many highs and some lows. Our work with libraries is one of our proudest efforts. Please help us continue this work.

We wish a happy Thanksgiving to all our friends and family who are following our blog.

Katherine and Mark

A Halloween Trick

     Technology is the toughest obstacle we've faced in the PC, starting from our first application and then endless medical review, and especially after we arrived: maintaining phone and internet access and keeping our computer operable. 2 weeks ago the 5^th Horseman of the PC Apocalypse descended upon us when our computer froze into a loop we couldn't break. Many invocations of task manager and hard booting were to no avail, as were attempted interventions by the PC tech manager. We've now spent 3 full days and many worried hours visiting the best computer servicing location in SZ, who managed to fix the problem after several days of tests, and then literally days of downloading programs that did not survive the assault. We've now mostly returned to functionality – we think. I'm still getting used to the photo processing program I'm using now, and I'm not sure I'm compressing the pix as I should – you can let me know. The struggle continues. And we have no understanding of the cause of this early Halloween trick!

     We caught a Halloween celebration back on Saturday, Oct. 25, because that was when the new group could join us. Some of our group went all out on decorations. Boy can some of those new folks party – most of them till 3:30 or 4, a few all night; I know, cause I saw them still at it when I got up to pee, then went back to bed.

Then Katherine made a presentation the next Friday, Oct 31, to the new group about Books For Africa and had housing (and a hot shower!) at the training facility, so I joined some of our gang at a hostel to celebrate the real Halloween. I was glad to be at each, and I enjoy getting together with the gang, but it's not the same as when it was new and exciting a year ago. We're going to be ready to leave in 10 months.

     The school year is winding down. Grade 7s (in the primary schools) and Forms III and V (high school; roughly sophomores and seniors) have already started national exams, and all other grades and Forms start school tests next week, so this is the last week of classes. The students will still come to school, but there not be classes, so we won't have an opportunity to teach. So over the next month we will try to get some activities going on which we have been trained, that dramatize for them how infectious HIV can be and give practice on making good decisions. We'll see. It's called Grassroot Soccer, and is quite clever, using sports as a hook for the kids' interest; it gets at the behavior change which is the key to what we are trying to do. We will call it Grassroot Netball, because girls are our primary target; they are more vulnerable to HIV, and seem more willing to try to change.

In addition to our class teaching – 4 5^th grade and 3 6^th grade classes - we've been busy tutoring some Grade 7s and Form IIIs on their literature and English comprehension exams, and that has been a kick – some smart motivated kids, reading some very provocative literature on growing up, race, families, and sexual abuse. But that too is over now. The Form Vs will finish their exams this week and next – the girls are letting their hair grow so they can have extensions attached (prohibited at rural schools). And some of our favorites, who first introduced us to the school, will be gone.

      And here, by popular demand, is a picture of Matthew Hunter Coyle in his Halloween Pumpkin costume – he is sometimes known in this hemisphere as Litsanga Lomncane Kumnandze – the Sweet Little Pumpkin.

Martha records his gurgles and chuckles on WhatsApp and sends them to us. All who have heard them – fellow teachers, students, strangers on khumbis - have been charmed. Smart fella, that one, and very melodious!

“For unto us a [grand]son is born”

     We interrupt our usual programming for a special announcement: Last Wednesday, October 15, our daughter Martha gave birth to our first grandchild, Matthew Hunter Coyle, in Washington, D.C.

     She called us early the next day and told us his birth was more exciting than they had anticipated. The afternoon of the 15^th she had contractions 4 minutes apart, so her husband Tyler drove her to the hospital, but they sent her home. ½ hour after getting home her water broke and contractions were coming every minute. They sped back, Tyler driving carefully, using the horn liberally, while trying to assist Martha who was lying in the back seat screaming as Matthew's birth became more imminent. At the hospital she could not sit in the wheelchair. Baby Matthew was born at 10 p.m., less than 10 minutes after their arrival. 7 lbs 6 oz. 20.5” She did it just on Motrin – no time for anything else!

     I was in the Swazi capital, Katherine back at site, at 2 p.m. our time Thursday when Martha tried to reach us. It took 3 calls to reach me, and the same for Katherine, because of thunder storms across the country. It was 8 a.m. for Martha; she sounded exhausted, hoarse, and so proud and happy, with her Little Bundle there beside her.

No phone call has ever made us so happy.

     Here is Matthew, 1 hour old:

And here he is 2 days later, at home, with a shirt we'd sent from Swaziland.

       When Martha told us in March that she was pregnant we were of course over-joyed. But both of us, without saying anything to each other, also felt personally, selfishly, very sad to miss the physical, tactile joy of our daughter's pregnancy and the first days of our grandson. We remember the morning after she called us with news of her pregnancy was one of our worst classes, with the large 19-year-old boys in the back of the 5^th and 6^th grades mocking us and disrupting, and we walked home wondering “Why are we here?” Others have stepped forward to celebrate for us: my sister gave a baby shower, and so did Tyler's mother and aunts. Our daughter Martha is a quick study and very cool customer, blessed with a clever, loving husband and a wise and helpful mother-in-law, so our presence in Maryland would be wholly superfluous. Except we hate to be missing this.

       When we left a year ago for our two year service we knew we would miss important events and turning points, and we have. Katherine and her father, age 94, knew it was very possible they would never see each other again, and spent 4 good days together in March, 2013, when he felt well; he died quickly last December. We missed family and friends' weddings and Katherine's Dad's interment; pictures, messages and calls from our family and children have filled us in. Katherine foresaw a possible pregnancy and knit pink and blue sweaters before we left; she pulled out some special blankets and clothes she had stored for 3 decades and gave them to my sister before we left, who passed them on. So intellectually Katherine was way ahead, but the reality still surprised us.

        We will go back to Maryland to have 5 days over Christmas with the 7 (!) of us – our son and his wife will come down from Boston. And my sister will join us – 8! Then, when we get back to Swaziland, there will be only 7 or so more months. Soon after we get back we've scheduled a trip to Cape Town and Stellenbosch before the new school term starts, anticipating a need to have something fun to look forward to. Fortunately, we are very busy here now, with classes and tutoring, some splendid kids whom we'd like to see launched successfully to the next step, and some more libraries to get established. And some good friends. We gather with many of the other volunteers at a backpackers this coming weekend to celebrate Halloween, and it's always fun to be with the gang. But when things don't go well – a bad night of sleep; a bug invasion; we step into a big fresh chicken poop in front of our door; a snake scares us; a class doesn't go well – we are quicker to get blue and start thinking “Do we have to keep doing this?” But so far, we are determined to stick it out here until our 27 months service is completed – there is still work we want to do here. We are, however, sure Matthew Coyle is going to need some serious grandparent attention when we get home.

Visitors from Denver!

     David and Maeve Franklin visited us this past weekend. They are friends through Katherine's 3-days-a-week “Walking Group,” which has been tremendously supportive of our effort here in lots of thoughtful ways. Both Maeve and David were born and schooled in South Africa, receiving medical training in Cape Town, but they left for the U.S. nearly 30 years ago. Their South African perspective was of particular interest. They are here for 2 family weddings in the province of South Africa that is just south of Swaziland, and for a visit to their summer home in the Eastern Cape.

They went with us to the two primary schools where we teach.

They spoke about medical careers, and then they met a ½ dozen of our favorite students we had assembled in the High School Library to talk about medical training and careers.

David and Maeve visited our local shebeen and sampled some home-brew, which they left behind, generating much cross-border good feeling.

We had lunch at our hut.

Notice the picture of Walking Group's Farewell Party 15 months ago behind us, beside Katherine's right ear.

     The Franklins brought some treasures to make our life here easier, carefully selected by Walking Group and my sister. These thoughtful deliveries from home make our life here easier and are very much appreciated.

     The Franklins then drove us 2 hours to the nicest game reserve in Swaziland, Mkhaya, where strenuous efforts have preserved “white” and “black” rhino and lots of other game.

     Mkhaya is very high end, and we were well fed and treated beautifully. We slept in thatched-roof huts with stone walls up to about a hard high, open to the bush above that, lit by kerosene lamps and lanterns. They brought us coffee and tea and biscuits at 5:30 a.m. before the 6 a.m. game drive.

     We talked with the Franklins about Denver news, changes in South Africa, retirement, religion, our work, other travels in the area, politics, birds . . . . David has a very quick eye and a long lens.

Bird Of The Day

     BotD honors had to go to fine multiple sitings of the purple-crested turaco, which David calls loerie, its Afrikaans name. A nice green with a bluish-purple head, it flashes a bright red under-wing when it flies; David was emphatic that the Swaziland national bird deserved BotD honors, and how could we assimilated Swazis disagree - the king wears 5 of its bright red feathers in his official traditional garb. It won out over stiff competition from the black-headed oriole with its gleaming yellow body, black head and red beak, and black and white edged wings, and also over the bearded woodpecker's black and white tummy stripes and red-crested head.

     Sunday we drove 1 ½ hours to Mabuda Farm; David is distantly related to the current owner! They had planned an outdoor braii, but had it inside because the weather was cold, windy and damp. The Mabuda Farm owners are at the far end of this picture, with Maeve and David and Katherine. Closer are 2 interns who had been training at the local hospital with Dr. Pons, an ophthalmologist there, and her parents who were visiting. This is the dining room in the enormous main house, which was built in the 1930s and has been in Helen Pons family since then.

     This was a really nice visit, with many flavors of home to enjoy while we visited with the Franklins and also in coming days.

condom demonstrations at the shebeen

      We have arranged for Population Services International to deliver condoms to us and, better yet, directly to supply our major distribution points. In visiting at our site with PSI they were interested in an alternative to our biggest distribution point at the local bar. Near the bar is what is called here a shebeen, which is an Irish word I'm told meaning an informal, unlicensed place that sells “home-brew”, a sweet fermented sorghum drink. We were told in training to avoid shebeens, and our only association with this one had been to see its denizens stumble around back (right by the road we travel) to pee. The PSI rep was tall, self-assured, and Swazi, and he took us to the shebeen, where we met the owner/manager (a woman, which I think is typical). The customers were quiet and polite, if a little stupefied. I enjoyed some home-brew with them, and we agreed to return Saturday afternoon for a condom demonstration.

     We didn't arrive till around 4 because of an event at the Refugee Camp, and the clientele had not become more lively with the passing time, but they were older than the bar, the absence of the pounding music of the bar enabled us to talk with those there, and we saw one woman we knew, the secretary at one of our schools, whom we like and who has been helpful to us.

     We pulled out our models and condoms, a customer volunteered to do translations and Katherine demonstrated on the models the use of the male condom first, then the female, then we answered many good questions.

       As in dining halls I've observed for US primary schools, high schools, colleges, and graduate schools, the men at the shebeen mostly sat together, and the women sat apart. After our demonstrations for the men, we went up to the women's end, and started our demonstration there, but several women, including our friend, told us quite nicely to stop. They said they are widows, and this information was not useful for them; they were passed this stage in their lives. Not easily deterred, Katherine said they could use this information to be sure their children and grandchildren were being safe. They were not interested. We backed off. My guess is we are older than all of these women, but many of them were lame, missing teeth, significantly over-weight in some instances, and all rapidly losing ground in the struggle with mortality.

      Our translator came up, led us back to the main group, and publicly thanked us, very eloquently. I think he was genuinely appreciative, but I was also coming to understand that they expected us to buy one of the small (probably 1 ½ quart) plastic buckets of home-brew they pass around. We get requests for money a lot more compelling than this all the time, and we mostly just brush them off as I did this one, saying we're volunteers, not paid, and we're giving our time. I went inside to see the fermentation process, bought a bucket of brew for the two of us and, after we'd had a swallow, one of our new friends took it off our hands, and it quickly started around the circle. Which was fine. Katherine said she was burped all the way home. I liked it.

      Sunday we planned to ride around 20 kilometers to the homestead of another volunteer, but shortly after we started K got a flat, I couldn't repair it, so she walked back alone. When I got home after a long, hot, dusty, dry ride into a fierce headwind we worked on some siSwati exercises we've set for ourselves and, upon finishing that, found the kitchen area was infested with ants; there's a crack in the wall, and if you leave unwashed plates out for a few hours, the ants invade. We washed and moved everything, then sprayed and exited into the late afternoon heat. Not what I'd planned for the end of the afternoon! In the increasing heat we've been drinking and generally using more filtered water, and I did a 2^nd processing overnight, and awoke to find I'd overfilled the reservoirs and flooded the kitchen table, seeping underneath the plastic cover, which is worse than it sounds because the kitchen table is made from composition material like cardboard, and I'm afraid it will fall apart if I do this much more. After teaching 2 classes at the “poorer” primary school, which did not go very well – they could recall few of the most elementary things we'd covered (the 4 fluids that can transmit HIV) and instead talked and joked among themselves - we went back to the High School to meet some Form IIIs selected by the teacher as needing special help for their exams. The Principal had sternly lectured the students at morning assembly on the importance of a big push for their final exams for Form III and V, which start this week and extend through October, but then he sent so many of them home for failing to pay their school fees (including the refugees, whose fees are supposed be paid by Caritas, a Roman Catholic charity funding the Refugee Camp) that classes were canceled for everyone. We rounded up 2 of the 5 Form IIIs we were to help, and had a pretty good session with those two.

     Sometimes this country is too much for us!

The Trip of a Lifetime: Part 4 – Maun, Old Bridge Bacpackers

     Arriving in the dusty tourist and agricultural town of Maun after the luxury of Gunn's Camp was a big change. A van met the plane, picked us up with our luggage, drove us to the terminal, and we walked away, with our backpacks, on our own again.

TIA Moment: No cash!

    We always had to be careful to get cash whenever we passed an ATM, especially in a new country. We'd been in Bots nearly a week, but only passed an ATM twice, each time hitting it for our withdrawal limit, so we really needed to re-supply in Maun. There was an ATM right outside the airport. I fed in my card and PIN, and the screen went blank. Hmmm. Katherine tried hers. Same. We started trying to figure how far we could get on the cash we had left, plus credit cards where they might be accepted. We walked a little further, spotted another ATM, and, ah, the sweet sound of those little wheels inside spinning out Motswani Pula. We knew it was the last Saturday of the month, and we'd seen a similar pattern in Swaziland, where some ATMs run out of cash the weekend after pay-day.

    In Maun we stayed at a backpackers hostel PCVs recommend, but we got the upscale tent-on-a-platform overlooking the Thamalakane River, which drains the east side of the Delta, with ensuite open-to-the-stars HOT showers and potty. Although the ablutions at Chobe Waterfront had an impressive-looking solar apparatus, Katherine got 1 sort-of warmish shower while we were there, and the boys' never warmed up at all; we showered quickly, in the hottest part of the day. And Gunn's, despite the wine glasses, white table cloths and fluffy towels, didn't really have hot water for its showers. So after a week of cold showers, the hot showers at the backpackers in Maun, for which we paid 1/10^th of the daily cost of Chobe camping and 1/40^th of the Gunn's cost, were quite welcome.

     In Maun we did an all-day mokoro ride, a morning bird walk/mokoro ride, and a hot dusty trip into town looking for the fabric we'd seen on women at Vic, but the fabric in Maun was essentially what we see in Swaziland; the Central African women must have a source we haven't discovered yet.

BotD: African Barred Owlet

     Our bird guide in Maun had a really sharp eye but no binoculars, and few teeth on the left side of his mouth. As we walked through a grove he stopped and pointed, and then carefully described where to look. Neither of us saw, with “binos” as they're called, what he was seeing with his bare eyes, and the bird flew. He called it, spotted where it returned to, and painstakingly guided our searching, until we, with our binos, spotted a perfectly splendid little brown owl, with white-speckled circular patterns around its eyes and over its head, white-fringed feathers on its body, and then large white spots like epaulets on its shoulders.

Oh yeah! It's hard to spot many raptors, and owls are especially difficult.

TIA Moment: “May I borrow me your binos?”

     Our guides on the all-day mokoro trip were Whiz (named, he said, for an American singer; could have fooled me.) and Extra (we did not ask the derivation of the name; the names of many Swazi children reflect the circumstances of their birth – the name of the PC/SZ Manager of Safety and Security (a full time position and, for some of these small young women in remote sites, he's very important) translates as “another boy”). Neither had binos, and shortly into our walk Extra, who seemed to be sort of a guide-in-training, asked could he “borrow me your binos” (a turn of phrase also common among the Swazis, whose language has only one word thata means both lend and borrow.) Then he asked for the small bird book Katherine was carrying. He did not offer to return them, and seemed to expect to walk with them during our excursion. We got them back and borrowed them to him when he asked.

BotD: Pied Kingfisher

(with an honorable mention to 6 Little Bee-eaters)

     We saw Pied Kingfishers all through Bots, but they are still special, with vivid black-and-white markings and a ridiculously long bill; hyper-active, darting/hovering/returning to perch and then diving for small fish. But at the backpackers at Maun a family of 2 seemed to have nested in the bank 1' under our tent platform and spent all day fishing (successfully, then bringing their catch back to the vines in front of our chairs and gulping the little guys down like nachos at a Super Bowl party – alas, that would have been the best part of the last SB I got up at 1 PM to watch in February).

They're noisy: K - “I never thought I'd ever say 'oh, just another kingfisher!'”

     In the colorful world of Bee-eaters, Little Bee-eaters are the (relatively) drab poor relations, with only a yellow throat and green back to show for themselves, neither terribly bright. But one evening at our Maun backpackers 2 perched on a slender twig 10' from our porch, then 2 more, with the twig bobbing up and down as each landed, then another and another until there were 6 of them, huddled together in the fading light as if for warmth.

    We went on the all-day mokoro ride, and then had dinner with a young German couple who were traveling southern Africa by public transportation. They were in the tent next to ours. He'll start at PWC in audit in Cologne in October.

We bought them an excellent Namibian beer (Windhoek – Namibia was colonized by Germans) and asked them about how people from the old East Germany are regarded by those from West Germany; with tribalism at the root of so much discord on this continent, I'm curious about how some groups get along, others don't.

     We cooked 2 nights in the communal kitchen with 2 South African couples about our age who were driving 4,000 miles around southern Africa. The wives were sisters, raised on a remote farm without electricity at the base of the Drakensberg Mountains in the eastern part of SA. The girls had gone away to boarding school at age seven – 3-month terms with a single visit home per term. The 2 couples came over to our porch for cocktails

and explained SA to us: those of English and Afrikaans descent barely notice the origins of each, this despite some English concentration-camp atrocities just over 100 years ago during the 2^nd Boer War and English opposition to the Afrikaans' imposition of apartheid more recently. One husband is of English descent, the other Afrikaans. In the deep south of the US I think some are still fighting the Civil War, 150 years later – how's that work? Relations among whites, blacks and, I suppose, coloreds, in SA are still developing, but are far better than they would have been without Nelson Mandela; what a precious gift that man was for this entire region.

     And then, alas, a flight back to Jozie, overnight at a hostel there, and early the next morning the Gautrain into town to the international khumbi rank

 

followed by a 5 hour ride to Manzini and 1 hour back to our town, some grocery shopping and a ½ hour walk home, heavily loaded, including with many wonderful memories.

The Trip of a Lifetime: Part 3 – Gunn's Camp in the Okavanga Delta

     After 3 nights camping on the Chobe Riverfront we returned to the main city in the area, Kasane, and flew in a small plane (4 passengers) to Gunn's Camp, in the middle of the Okavanga Delta. Gunn's had 6 tented platforms and a reception/dining area, on a series of small islands in the marshes formed by the Okavanga River spreading out and evaporating, leaving practically no water to flow south into the Kalihari Desert.  For the 6 tent/cabins, so 12 "clients" there were 24 staff on site; it was delicious to be pampered – clean sheets on real beds, good meals served on china, spectacular dawns and sunsets over the marsh.

(Did you notice in that top picture, fine South African white wine with lunch! Ohhh, I could get used to this!) The wildlife wasn't nearly as abundant as at Chobe, but the guides were more sophisticated, and made it very interesting for us, and you know, 3 or 4 elephants can be as interesting as 100.

     For instance, who knew that the male impala servicing a breeding herd always poop in a pile in the same place, time after time, while females poop around anywhere. When a rival male comes and poops on the other male's pile, the 2 have to fight and often the male with the herd loses, having lost weight and strength attending to 2 or 3 dozen does. Don't you hate it when that happens? But our guides held out hope – often the defeated male, driven out and disconsolate, rests, eats and gains weight, and wins back his place with the herd. I'm eating all I can. Really.

Bird of the Day: Wattled Crane

     The Wattled Crane is a big bird (seeing a pattern here?): 4' high, with a gray back, white belly and neck, yellow bill with a red base, and long white wattles hanging from its chin! (Urine samples have been demanded from the design committee submitting this one; wattles? Red base to the bill? Really?!) Our Bird Book describes it as “vulnerable . . . uncommon and localized,” with only 8,000 globally, 2,000 in Africa!

     At Gunn's our guides could identify birds by their call, and could call them in, and tell the different kinds of nests. They also babied us, insisting on coming to our cabin/tents to get us for dinner, after dark. But seeing 18” elephant footprints in the sand outside our tent one morning did make us appreciate the attendants' attentions. On a walk our guide pointed out lion prints in the sand, going the opposite direction from ours. A few steps on he pointed out that the lion had then gone back the other direction, so the lion was now apparently ahead of us. I noticed after that the guests all walked close together.

     One of the pleasures of our trip was the people we'd spend a few intense days with and then move on. Here are clever handsome Belgian newly-weds who had been self-driving 3,000 miles, camping through Namibia and then Bots, having adventures nearly getting stuck fording rivers, and who now stayed 2 nights at Gunn's. The first night at Gunn's they chose to camp on a nearby island – with 4 attendants! Segolene had never camped before she'd met Benjamin 8 years ago. He'll start with Boston Consulting Group in Brussels when they return.

    Giorgio, a courtly and witty old-world widower, 81,who was from northern Italy and had an old-world grace, carried a well-thumbed copy of Birds of Southern Africa, stained and wrinkled in some places, many of the pages kind of curled. That told us all we needed to know about him. He reminded me a little of Katherine's Dad, but from Parma.  His wife, an avid birder, had died, and he was there with Eleanor, a new acquaintance only a little younger than he, who had no English, the lingua franca of southern Africa, nor, as far as I could tell, any interest in birds. . He was, of course, charmed with Katherine. 

      We carried everything we needed for 2 weeks in our backpacks, and had to pack with care. I'd pulled up weather forecasts for Vic and Bots before we left and noted a hot spell while we were in Chobe, followed by a cooler patch, but had not focused as much on the implications of a day/night temperature swing of around 48ºF. At the last minute Katherine chose to jettison an insulated jacket, and it became clear that presented a challenge. We borrowed a fleece jacket from our organizer before we left for the Chobe Waterfront, but at Gunn's she was really cold. She is very hardy. Not that she doesn't notice the cold (and other afflictions from living in southern Africa), but she doesn't let it get her down. Here she is one morning, on our porch at Gunn's, catching the dawn over the marsh

BotD: Meyers Parrot and Bennett's Woodpecker

     This has to be a tie between 2 fine “life birds” for us. Our plane out was a late one – 3 PM, so after lunch, with no activity planned (yes, it's a little like summer camp), we set chairs in the middle of our small island behind our cabin/tent and studied the jackelberry tree above us, which was full of life. Guides had pointed out both the Meyer's Parrott and Bennett's Woodpecker on our walks, but we've got our standards, and had seen neither with sufficient clarity to claim a sighting. But here we nailed 'em both. Meyer's Parrot with green belly, blue vent and yellow shoulders and an improbable yellow crown. Bennett's Woodpecker with a red crown and mustachial stripe, brown and white barred wings, and speckled belly. Ahhh.

No pix of either – these guys are tough to catch.