Tim left this morning to stop in at a literacy workshop in town and to run some errands. Shortly after he left, I remembered something I needed to tell him before he went to pick the girls up at school.

We got a cell phone this week so I thought I’d give him a call. Three times I got a recorded message from the phone company that the call couldn’t go through. I called the phone company and they told me he must have the phone turned off. Rats!

Then I remembered that one of the errands was a stop at a hardware store for paint. I called the hardware store and asked for the warehouse. When the clerk answered the phone I explained I was looking for my husband. “Have you seen a white skin man, balding, mustache, wearing glasses and buying paint?” I asked.

“No” said the clerk. “There was a guy in here earlier, but he was with a woman.”

“Well” I said, “if you see a man like I described, can you ask him if his name is Timothy? And if he says yes, please ask him to call home.”

Ten minutes later, the phone rang and it was Tim. Even though Honiara is the capital city, it still often feels like a small town.

One of the things that often doesn’t fair well in the tropics is leather. Three weeks after our arrival, Tim’s leather shoes are covered with mold! I wiped the mold off one of the shoes so you can see the contrast. In the closet you can see a pair of leather slippers and sandals. They don’ t have mold on them. Some types of leather seem to grow mold easier than others.

Most of the time we wear rubber flip-flops outside and are barefoot inside.