Just desserts

It is an interesting fact that most Africans are protein starved. In my time in kenya I used to see them capturing flying insects at night around the street lights where they then fried them to sell in the market next day. Obviously in areas where there are big lakes fishing is done and fish as small as your little finger are sun dried and sent all around the provence. Lakes are now totally overfished and destroyed.An Elephant killed on control or being in the wrong area was quickly cut up and biltong made from the meat.

A story here, I was in the Game warden house one night and the Askari came in and said there was a runner outside. The game warden called him in and he had a cleft stick with a letter in the cleft. He had run/walked all day up into dusk from the coast near Mombasa and was covered in dust.

Barry the warden read the letter and laughed, it seems a Hippo was raiding the crops from the river and the letter had asked the warden to come down and shoot it. This was nearly midnight but the warden said, 'Lets go' so we piled into the Land Rover and travelled through the night to the village. It was dawn when we arrived and the Headman came out to meet us. Asked where the Hippo was he pointed to the pool by the village and sure enough there was the Hippo. It was duly dispatched in the water and as it was shot half the village jumped in the water and tied ropes to it pull it in.

The warden said to the headman what are you going to do? and the man said, 'Eat it'. The warden then said , 'But your Muslims and it's not Halhal'. The head man replied, 'Not to worry Bwana, it's a fish and lives in the water'.

By this time we were rolling on the floor laughing.

Curious this, "desert" as in arid wasteland the " s" is pronounced like it's a "z" but so is the other word with 2 "s" s, as in "just desserts".

Usually, a double letter is the soft version, like the double f in Ffestiniog. The single letter is normally pronounced in a hard/ harsh sort of way, but my first example appears to break the 'rule', hence I said its curious.