Goodbye to Barbara

My neighbour Barbara has died. She was diagnosed with cancer, multiple myeloma around two years ago. This a cancer of plasma cells in the bone marrow. It does not have a good prognosis and even less here with the cost of chemotherapy being out of the reach of most people. When people say "she died following a long illness, bravely borne," that was Barbara. She had to spend most of her time in Santiago having dialysis as her kidneys failed almost as soon as she was diagnosed and as time went on her bones started to crumble. She must have been in tremendous pain - pain management not being the best here. She was no more than 50 years old and was the centre of our little campo, always laughing, helping people, and is sorely missed.

While her husband Miguel was away with her in Santiago last week, I was feeding his dog and his chickens.I had no choice over the chickens as if I didn't feed them, mum, dad and 13 babies would come to the gate and squawk at me till I fed them.

No to be outdone, we have  a few chickens here with babies. Here is Pollo Negra with her nine chicks, eight are black and one white! The other black ones are all keeping warm underneath her.

And at last the wall is finished in the front garden. Danilo decided we needed two gates, one large one on one side, in case we need to get vehicles into the back of the property and a small one for me to get into my veg patch on the other side. I thought gates looked like well, gates. This is a series of sticks held together with barbed wire, but it works and will double up as a washing line for my knickers and socks.

Now just the little gate to go and Lobo can be allowed out of the dog house.

All fine on the book front. The title is "Life After My Saucepans" and then a sub heading of "Lifting the Lid on Living in the Dominican Republic". I have done the front and back bits and sent off the photos and some reviews of What About Your Saucepans? so now just waiting for the editor to get back to me and keep on working on it.