San Xavier Mission and Sonora Desert

Early Sunday morning we all set off for the Mission San Xavier del Bac, about 10 miles from Tucson in the middle of a large Native American Reservation. The Mission is a wonderful example of Mexican Mission architecture, a gleaming white structure in the middle of a beautiful open location, a mixture of desert and cultivated land, surrounded by a rim of distant mountains. It was Palm Sunday and we each received our strips of palm, which Chidi and I wove into crosses, as we had learned how to do on many Palm Sundays in NIgeria. Father Eusebio Kino, who is celebrated for his mission work in California, came here in 1692 and established the first Jesuit mission. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Jesuits fell out of favour and were forcibly replaced by the Francisans, who were considered to be more reliable and loyal to the Mexican / Spanish governments. The current buildings were erected in the late eighteenth century, but they have a baroque style and feel, with the heavily decorated interior a blend of gold baroque like paintings and wall reliefs, and more folksy Mexican sculptures and paintings. If you have a health problem, you pin an image (or melagros) of that affected body part to the shrine to San Franciso - many of them are like little gold charms: I wished I had an image of my arthriticky knee! I saw a car key pinned there, so maybe someone was worried about engine trouble... To finish our visit, Zaria, Freya, Chidi, Oksy and I lit candles at the shrine to Mary, a new experience for Zaria and Freya - Freya was a little reluctant to leave her candle behind. http://www.sanxaviermission.org/

Fortified with some delicious fresh iced donuts which Kate's Aunt Jean had sent to us (from a shop that has been making donuts in Tucson since the nineteen-thirties), we set off for the Sonora Desert Museum. We had an excellent time looking around at some of the many exhibits of plant and animal life as well as geology and caves.http://www.desertmuseum.org/

We entered the museum on guest passes and so far, through the generosity of Chidi and Kate and other relations, we have benefited from guest passes for all our admissions in Tucson, including even the use of the Gym at the Y.

On the way home, we stopped at a shopping mall, while Chidi, Zaria and Oksy did some food shopping, James popped into a store to get some trainers, and Freya and I had a sleep in the car. I find it so strange that we live in the centre of Tucson but there are no corner shops and no convenience stores, so I can't just run round the corner to get something we might have forgotten.

Today James has gone to spend the day at Kate's High School and Zaria is with me recovering from a sore throat. Zaria and I have swept the patio and boiled eggs to dye for Easter, and later, when Oksy emerges, we'll see about getting a bus to the University of Arizona to visit the museum there.

I saw a humming bird in the garden :-)