LEAF-go-VSO   

Xin Fang Lake

Situated a few kilometres south of Simao, Xin Fang Lake (actually a reservoir) is a 15 minute bus ride from the College. A favourite activity for us, and the locals, is a barbeque picnic in the trees at the water's edge.

At the local market Freda helps purchase sweet potatoes for baking. The lake is 5 minutes from the bus terminus up 234 (Lesley counted them) concrete steps in the dam embankment.

On a sunny day the water is a beautiful green under the trees, which offer plenty of shade during the 20 minute walk to a nice quiet picnic spot. The girls have sticks to help defend themselves against the giant spiders which lurk in the trees. More of them later...

Freda and Edie enjoy playing at the waters edge. The local red soil produces a mud eminently suitable for making mud pies. More of that later too...

Ahhh, the giant spiders...this girl used a forked stick to harvest them in a gruesome sticky webby mass. She was, apparently, going to eat them later...honestly!

Ahhh, the mud pies....excellent stuff for wrapping around eggs, potatoes, fish, chickens, etc. prior to baking in the embers of a fire. Two of Lesley's students show us how it's done.

The end result. The mud case had to soaked off in the lake to get the egg out intact - as we discovered when this one cracked in half and got covered in mud (left). On the walk out from the lake we met an ex-school mate of our President, Mme Du, who was out digging up some plants to use as herbal medicine.