Life Without a Recipe

GAPS Experience, cont.

2012-01-17T18:42:00.000+03:00

We continued our GAPS diet for New Years Eve. I only added some cheese and wine, which are both GAPS approved. We quickly moved through the rest of the steps in the next few days because we didn't have any bad reactions and just continued on the full GAPS diet. For a few days, we felt really great. I had a lot of energy at work, even in the afternoon. Then Thursday evening, we were both completely wiped out. Rémy had gone to play basketball which was what made him so tired. I went to work the next day and was still really tired. I left early and came and worked at home. We decided that maybe our bodies needed carbohydrates, so I ate some rice with coconut milk. Then I got diarrhea and figured out that I had a parasite that was making me so tired. It wasn't the diet. I took a treatment for the parasite and almost immediately felt better. At this point, we'd already eaten oatmeal and Rémy was all too ready to be done with diet, and so we decided to be done with it. We were on it for a total of 12 days. If we thought it was really helping us, we would have continued. However, we don't have any of the symptoms that GAPS is designed to treat, so our motivation was small. I was trying to cure my stomach problems, but I think these were well on the way to being cured even before we started GAPS. It seems that our 12 days with GAPS did help to clear out some stuff and I think it was beneficial, but it will be more beneficial to us to continue the changes to our diet we had made already: eating lots of sauerkraut and kimchi, soaking whole grains, eating more honey than sugar, etc.

I do have to say that I'm super excited that my stomach problems have gone away. The other day when I got to work I realized that morning I had been 1) in a hurry, 2) stressed out, and 3) drinking coffee. Normally this is a sure cocktail for throwing up before I leave the house, but I didn't throw up that morning. In fact, I still haven't thrown up since I made these changes. I still have felt it in my stomach when I've been stressed, but it hasn't made me feel nauseated which means I can continue working.

Anniversary Fire

2012-01-03T19:40:00.001+03:00

All of my friends here know that pretty much my biggest fear is being caught in a burning building, the apartment where I live. I live on the fifth floor, and there isn't a fire escape or anything. I'm constantly thinking about who I will call to come save me. Some friends are unsympathetic, some tell me that I shouldn't worry because the building is made out of concrete.

New Year's Eve, my deepest fear came through. About six-thirty, the electricity went off. This is fairly normal; it usually comes back five minutes later when they turn on the generator. This time, however, I heard a strange "pop" coming from the area of our newly installed air-conditioner. I didn't see anything strange though. After about fifteen minutes the electricity didn't come on so Rémy went downstairs to see why not. While he was downstairs, I heard a small explosion in the kitchen. I went over and saw that there was fire coming out of the wall. I stayed calm for a little while and thought about what to do: don't throw water on it, smother it. Ok, but how? How do you smother a fire coming out of a wall a few feet above your head? As I started looking for some sort of blanket, two things hit me. 1) It was completely dark. All I had was the lantern I was carrying. 2) All I was wearing was a bathrobe. (Another fear of mine is having to flee my apartment for whatever reason naked or almost naked). At this point I thought I should call Rémy.
Rémy came back up while I was calling him. Then it got a little panicky:
"Don't throw water on it."
"Why not?"
"I don't know, you're not supposed to throw water on an electrical fire."
"You should leave."
"I'm not wearing any clothes."
"Grab some clothes."
"Leave!"
"I'll just go in my robe."
"Grab some clothes and go!"
Then Rémy threw some water on it, crisis over. He said later that he knew the electricity was off, and so figured it would be fine.
It was New Year's Eve though, and our entire building didn't have electricity. We wanted to leave for our party, but didn't want to have any more bad relationships with our neighbors. We called our electrician and he came out. It took him almost two hours just to isolate the problem so that the rest of the building could have electricity, even though we didn't. He then came back on New Year's Day and worked for another five hours to fix it. Most things are back in working order now, at least we can use our air conditioner.

So on one hand, my fear came true and I lived through it. I shouldn't be fearful anymore, right? On the otherhand, I now know I was right to expect this. This reminds me of one of my favorite Scripture songs:
"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior."
Isaiah 43:1-3

Our Experience with GAPS

2011-12-30T21:48:00.000+03:00

I know that most people who regularly read my blog won't be too interested in this, but I know at least one person who wants to know how this is going. Maybe there are some others out there too. My husband and I decided to do three weeks on the GAPS diet. It was going to be three weeks of the Intro diet, but we don't have any problems with allergies or anything (and we're hungry all the time) so we're moving through the different stages quickly.
Stage 1- we spent two days on Stage One, eating just vegetable and meat soup. We added sauerkraut and kimchi to the soups which made them taste a lot better. I wasn't really sure how legal it was, but it seemed fairly legal. We felt fine, although we were kind hungry.
Stage 2 - the morning of the third day, I woke up around 5 am and threw up. I guess that's the detox. Glad to know it's working. I didn't feel that great all morning and I realized that it was good that I did this when the office is closed, instead of trying to work. We only spent one day on Stage 2 because we didn't have access to many of the added foods, like fermented fish. (Or maybe we just don't want to eat fermented fish, I didn't really look into it.) We added eggs into our soups and made a "casserole" which wasn't that great.
Stage 3- We've spent two days on Stage 3, or maybe I should say 1 1/2 because we had grilled chicken for supper, which brings us into Stage 4 already. Again on day 4 I woke up and five a.m. and felt horrible. It only lasted about a half an hour though and I was able to go back to sleep. The last couple days we've felt fine, only hungry and tired. My husband hasn't shown and detoxing symptoms. Apparently he is a lot healthier than I am, although I suspected this already. Thankfully he's really good at sticking to things, so even though he needs this diet less than I do, he hasn't cheated at all.
Tomorrow is our anniversary, and New Year's Eve. It's hard to imagine celebrating with only our vegetable soup, so I think we're going to jump ahead in the diet a bit. We'll stick to GAPS legal foods, just not necessarily ones that are in Stage 4.
It's a lot of work to make enough soup to keep two people full all day, so that is what we've been doing over break. You want to know how my Christmas break was? It was great, I got my house in order, and I made my body healthier. (We got an air conditioner for Christmas...woohoo!)

Thanksgiving

2011-11-30T17:17:00.001+03:00

We went to the Ambassador's house this year for Thanksgiving. It was really fun. There were hors d'oeuvres outside including olives stuffed with whole cloves of garlic. I thought they were great, but people kept coming up to me and warning me that there were whole garlic cloves in them.

We had really great people at our table who were really into the holiday. We all went around and said what we were thankful for.

Of course, what Thanksgiving blog post would be complete without a picture of the food. The day after we left for Ollombo for the weekend and we got another Thanksgiving dinner with the people we stayed with there. This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for two great meals that I didn't have to contribute anything to.

Ollombo

2011-11-30T17:00:00.001+03:00

I went with some friends this last week on a road trip up the North Road. We went to Ollombo and stayed with some really nice missionaries who fed us really good food.

This was our trusty driver with his trusty pick-up truck. There were a few scary moments on the way up there, but that was because of oncoming buses swerving to miss pot holes. He let me drive quite a lot, so I got some more practice driving a stick shift.

We went to go see an ostrich farm outside of Oyo, which is where the President is from. It also allowed us to see the President's cows. They even have Beware: Cow-crossing signs up there. Woe to he who hits the president's cows.

We went on a ride up what the locals calls "the President's river" in a dug out canoe which was really nice.

I even jumped in and swam a bit. No one else would join me though.

More on food and daily life

2011-11-10T16:36:00.002+03:00

I talk a lot about food on my blog, I know. There are a lot of reasons for that. First of all, I like food a lot. Second of all, good food is hard to come by here, especially on a limited budget while working full time, so I think about it a lot. Also, I have a hard time thinking of subjects I can and should talk about publicly.

In a previous post, I talked about all the noises you could hear in our apartment that come from the street below. Another one of these noises is women yelling, "AVOCAT!" (meaning, avocado) When I first heard this, it took me a long time to figure out what they were saying. They yell with a really high and nasal voice, so it's hard to understand. My husband had not noticed this particular sound, so when I pointed it out to him he ran and found the lady and took this picture from our balcony. You can see the lady walking down the street with avocados in a basin on her head and a baby strapped to her back. I don't know what she's carrying in her hand. You can also see that the man in the orange shirt is carrying something on his head. He's selling little plastic bags of water to drink (good for people to drink water, not good for the environment and keeping our street clean). On the bottom of the picture, notice the little breakfast cart. There are several people who sell French style (or maybe just Brazzaville style) omelets on the street. They'll fry them up right in front of you on a little kerosene burner. There are also coffee carts which sell tiny cups of instant espresso.

Yesterday the lady I sent to by groceries couldn't find avocados, so this morning when we heard the lady yelling "AVOCAT!" my dear husband threw some clothes on and ran down five flights of stairs and around the corner to buy three avocados. I've been thinking a lot about our diet recently because the people around me talk about nutrition a lot. For several years now I've agreed that it is better to eat real food than processed food. I'd rather eat real butter than margarine because it's more real and less processed, for example. Unfortunately, butter here is really expensive and margarine is about half the price, so it's not that simple. I've been challenged more recently about thinking about these sorts of things, which is why one easy thing I can do is eat more avocados. They are yummy, good raw real food, and they are generally pretty cheap. They aren't as cheap as it seems that they should be in Africa, but still, a good deal for the price.
I've also started making my own sauerkraut because it's super yummy and apparently really good for you. I felt very African pounding my cabbage, and my husband agreed so he felt he should take a picture. It's not really the same: pounding manioc leaves in a huge mortar and pestle v. pounding cabbage in a metal bowl with a rolling pin, but you get the idea.

Daily Life

2011-11-07T18:47:00.001+03:00

Here are a few random pictures from our life here in Brazzaville:

There are a lot of plantains here. They are good, but here they don't do much with them other than fry them or boil them. We have eaten this really good meal at a Cameroonian restaurant with plantains where they are more than just a side dish. In Puerto Rico where we went on our honeymoon they make something called mofongo. At the restaurants there they all seemed to be the same, but looking at recipes on the internet there seemed to be a large variation. So I made the version you see in this picture. It's basically mashed plaintains (like mashed potatoes) with lots of garlic. The tomato sauce had spices like cinnamon and cumin in them. It was super yummy!

Our little apartment has many strong advantages and many strong disadvantages. I keep reminding myself that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, especially given the current housing situation here. One of the advantages is that we get to see really amazing sunsets almost every day. The sunset this particular day was particularly cool with all the lines coming out of the center.

Almost every Saturday we get together with friends to play games. Sometimes it's just us and the Koukas, sometimes there are a few other guys who join us. This week we played Rook. It's fun to have found people to play Rook with, although there are a lot of other games we play to. The Koukas went to a wedding that day and looked so cute in their matching outfits!

Taquitos

2011-09-08T11:59:00.001+03:00

I made the taquitos last night that I had been dreaming about. I was extremely satisfied with my creation. I made a chicken filling with fajita spices and green pepper, tomato, etc. Then I just wrapped it up in one side of a pita bread and fried it. Accompanied by homemade guacamole, salsa, and "sour cream" (i.e. yogurt), they were delicious.
I didn't experiment with making corn tortillas. I decided I was too tired for experimenting. I do work full-time after all. I thought I'd see if the easier route worked. It did, so I'll stick with this for now. It was actually a really easy dinner. Not very healthy though, unfortunately; especially accompanied by fried plantains.

Making chips and salsa

2011-09-07T12:14:00.002+03:00

With a lack of new tv shows to watch last night, I set out to spend the night cooking. I made roast chicken with an Indian vegetable sauce for dinner. It turned out really well. I also canned salsa for the first time in Congo. I did it once when I was in the States, but this is a very different process, not having access to all my mom's canning jars and lids, or any proper canning jars and lids for that matter. The salsa turned out pretty decent. It's about like a Pace salsa, which has never been my favorite store bought salsa, but here it's better than nothing. I'll improve it next time.

I also attempted to make corn chips from a recipe on line. They were not that good, although they did inspire me to keep trying. I'm also determined to make homemade taquitos. I would need to make the tortillas, or use pita bread. I'm going to experiment with pita bread, and with making tortillas but not cooking them before rolling them and frying them. Otherwise, it would be way too much work.

Home improvement

2011-08-21T21:59:00.003+03:00

I finally was able to get some curtains up in our kitchen. I wanted to get them done before it gets hot again, to block the sun from heating up our kitchen/dining room. I bought the green material here and lined them with some other curtains that I had bought in South Africa.

This is our somewhat new kitchen table we had made. It's a really nice size for four people. (We actually have four chairs, but we keep one in the bedroom so we're not tripping over chairs all the time.)

The Sape

2011-08-11T19:14:00.004+03:00

There is a well known phenomenon in Congo call Sapology, or locally, le Sape. I won't say too much about what it is, or it's history, because there are other people who have written about it better than I could. You can read about it elsewhere on the Internet.

There were some reporters from a well known newspaper, The Wall Street Journal I think (forgive me if I'm wrong, Mr. Reporter), who came awhile back to do a story on the Sapeurs here in Brazzaville. We tagged along on an outing to a local bar which is known as a sapeur hangout. We basically just sat and had drinks, and every once in awhile some well dressed men (and a few women) in colorful suits would walk in a strut about the dance floor.

One of the important things about le Sape is the idea of the three colors. When choosing an outfit, three colors must be chosen and well coordinated in everything from the pants and suit jacket to the details of the socks, tie, and pocket handkerchief. What's interesting about this is how this has become normal among regular people who wouldn't think of themselves as Sapeurs. It is always the socks that stick out to us Americans. In America it is important for the socks to blend in with the shoes and pants. In Congo, the socks match the outfit. So with a red shirt and jeans and black shoes, you should wear red socks. If you have a yellow tie, wear yellow socks.

Basketball

2011-08-11T18:51:00.003+03:00

Here are some pictures of the basketball ministry that Rémy is doing in Brazzaville. He started it with students from one school, but they are on vacation now so they meet at a neighborhood court. There are about 6-8 teenagers that come.

Registries in Kinshasa

2011-08-11T18:46:00.002+03:00

Wedding registries have made their way to Kinshasa, not online though. At one of the nicest stores in Kinshasa, couples can make a list of what they would like for their wedding and then put it on the wall of the store.

Kinshasa

2011-07-14T12:34:00.008+03:00

In June there was a long weekend, so we took advantage of the occasion to go see family in Kinshasa. We always take the "rapides" boats which are either pontoons or speed boats which carry people across the river. Of course they are always carrying much more than the seven person limit listed beside the driver. The other option is to take the ferry, pictured here.

The family we stayed with live on the outskirts of Kinshasa, near the airport. To get into town, it takes a long time and it's really hard to find transportation. One day we were fortunate to get a direct bus that looks similar to what you would expect a public transportation bus to look like,

with proper seats and things hanging from the ceiling for people to hold on to who didn't get a seat. Unlike the subways in other countries, there aren't any people playing guitar and asking for money. Instead (apparently this happens everyday on this type of bus), someone stands up in their seat, turns around and leads the passengers in a church service. It starts out with singing, in which I was surprised to see that a lot of people participated. This was followed by a sermon and a prayer. Then at the end, an offering. What kind of church service would be complete without an offering? An hour and a half later when you arrive at your destination, you've already been to church.

Trip to Mbaya

2011-04-06T17:09:00.006+03:00

Here's some pictures of the area north of Brazzaville. I thought it was a pretty area of the country.

Once we arrived, Remy and I set up our mosquito tent in the cement room we were given, and then we were advised to put something on top us to protect us from the droppings of things living in the rafters.

On the way there we passed this truck that had overturned. At first I was alarmed, until I realized it had been there awhile. It was still there when we returned a week later. I'm sure it will be there for awhile.

Jonathan-Rémy

2011-03-30T19:40:00.003+03:00

Last week I went to Mbaya with a team for language documentation. As we were hurrying to pack up to leave, one of the team members came and said there was a woman who wanted us to name her baby. I looked at Rémy. The woman had asked him, but he was brushing his teeth, so he referred her to me. The woman said that the baby had been born three weeks ago and didn't have a name yet. Why not ask the strangers who came to stay in your village for a week? This has never happened to me before. I felt like we should put some thought into it, but we didn't really have time. We found out it was a boy, and I looked back to Rémy to ask him what we should say. He decided on Jonathan. I said, "Why not Rémy?" And so he said Jonathan-Rémy.

Here he is, the young Ngangulu boy who is the namesake of my husband and my 6-month old nephew.

Noises around us

2011-02-27T19:32:00.003+03:00

We live in a very noisy neighborhood. It is very populated, and that makes it very lively. It also creates certain annoyances, but that is not what I want to talk about. Because we live on the fifth floor, the noise is not that bad. It does carry up rather well, so that often if someone is banging on something down on the street, we think it is someone knocking on our door.

One of the most interesting noises is the "Orchestre Bana de Poto-poto Matiti Mabe." This is the name of a band that practices in the foyer of our building. It's outside, right below our window, so it is very loud, even at 5 stories up. Their name can be literally translated "Weed Children of Poto-poto Band." Weed also has a figurative sense of something powerful and strong, so that's probably the sense they're going for. They are a really good band. Sometimes I enjoy listening to them, sometimes I don't, for example at 8:30 pm when I'd rather watch a TV show.

Other noticeable sounds are boys selling little plastic bags of water. They walk around yelling "mai, mai, mai," which to me sounds like "mine, mine, mine" and reminds me of some movie I can't quite place. They also yell out "eau pur," which should sound like o-pur, but ends up sounding like o-p-o-p-o-p.

Our house

2011-02-23T16:41:00.005+03:00

Slowly but surely we are setting up our house. If you want to see what it looked like before, you can revisit my post with pictures from before we moved in.

This is a view of what I would call the front door. You can see the door at the top of the stairs. This leads out onto the roof, and then there are the sliding glass doors to get into our house. We painted the walls a very light green. It was lighter than we had hoped for, but as least the walls are freshly painted. It does look green in certain lighting.

This is the kitchen looking out on to the rooftop. Our next step is to get a smaller table. This is one we are borrowing, and although it is a nice table, it takes up our entire kitchen.

This is the kitchen corner of the kitchen/dining room. We just had the "cabinets" made this weekend. The shelves function as a pantry, and below the microwave are pots and pans.

Here are a couple pictures of the bedroom. We painted the walls steel blue and put up curtains.

There's one more room, which will be like a living room. However, right now it's just storage, so I'll wait to put pictures of that up when it's organized.

Turning point

2010-10-20T10:52:00.005+03:00

It's true that Brazzaville does not have all the advantages that Nairobi does. There aren't any movie theaters, the restaurants are limited. However, there are advantages to living in smaller capital city with a small American population.

This weekend we had an American gospel group, Turning Point, visiting Brazzaville thanks to the American Embassy in Congo and something called the Jazz at Lincoln Center. They are from Atlanta. The government changed their original schedule so they were in BVZ early and had a free night on Friday. Our embassy friends asked if we wouldn't like hanging out with them, so we invited them over for dinner that night, as we had already planned to have taco night. It was funny that night because they have been traveling for several weeks now around Africa, and apparently all they've drank is water and Fanta (probably Coke also). I had just made some Raspberry Tea that night. Nothing special, it was just a Crystal Light packet, but they were so excited to have tea. They enjoyed it so much that Sunday night at their concert I gave them some proper sweet tea as a present.

I saw them sing three nights in a row, they were so good. The first night they sang at Villa Washington, the American Cultural Center/Embassy clubhouse, with a local group of orphans. That was fun. Then the next night we were invited to a private concert at the Ambassador's house.

Tuesday night there was a public concert at the French Cultural Center, where they sang with a local gospel group. It was so amazing. They have amazing voices, and their style combined classical and gospel music, with some added electronic stuff done on the keyboard/computer. The last night when it was combined with the choir, they also sounded amazing. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it turned out to be the best nights of worship I've had since arriving in Brazzaville. It was publicized as a cultural exchange, but I think that for many of the people in the audience, it was a night of worship.

That night at the Ambassador's house, Jessica and I managed to unwillingly dress like twins, complete with ruffled sleeves and blue earrings. That got many comments.

Obama cookie

2010-09-24T11:20:00.002+03:00

In Kinshasa this last weekend, we went a couple times to a really nice ice cream shop. At first i thought it was really expensive, until Remy reminded me that the franc in DRC is only worth about half the franc we use in Brazzaville. Then I figured it was a good price. Here Remy is eating Obama Cookie. It's chocolate ice cream with little chocolate cookies in it.

Congolese flowers

2010-09-21T22:29:00.006+03:00

I got lots of flowers for my birthday. They are quite different than flowers one usually receives in the US, so I thought some people might enjoy seeing pictures of them.

2010-09-03T01:17:00.002+03:00

Whenever you want to get clothes made here, you have to first go choose your fabric. To do this, you almost always go to Rue Mbaka. Interestingly, this is also the street where I will live when I get married. The fabric part is maybe three blocks long, of store after store that look like the one you see in this picture. There are rows of fabric hung on the top half of the walls, and stacks and stacks of fabric on the floor. We walk into store after store trying to find fabric that resembles something we have in our mind, or that inspires us.

The difficult thing here is that it's hard to distinguish the stores, so if you want to go back and buy something you had bought earlier, it's hard to find it again. Some stores are bigger than others, some have painted the walls like the one in this picture, but mostly they are very similar.

Kimba

2010-09-02T11:46:00.005+03:00

Here are a few pictures from our trip to Kimba in July. The first picture is where we stayed. The building on the right is the church. The building on the left is the evangelist's house where we stayed.

This is just a picture of the country side that I took from the car window.

2010-09-02T11:39:00.002+03:00

I know it's been awhile since I've written. I've been really busy with work lately, and then after work I'm often busy making dinner for 5 people...myself, visitor, roommate, roommate's boyfriend, and fiancé, and often there are other people that stop by and end up joining us for dinner. My roommate's boyfriend just left, but the visitor's husband is arriving on Saturday. Then, when I have time to be on the internet, I'm trying to buy plane tickets and plan a honeymoon.

If you want to hear about what we're doing with work these days, you can read Carla's blog about her trip here.

Mma Ramotswe's Botswana

2010-07-22T23:04:00.008+03:00

I decided to take the #1 Ladies Detective tour of Gaborone. It was just a day trip. I thought it would be kind of cheesy, but it actually turned out to be really interesting and I saw more of the city and countryside than I would have otherwise.

So for those who like Mma Ramotswe, here's her life. For those who don't, here are some pictures of Botswana. This is the Francistown Road that she always takes when she goes from Gaborone to her native town of Mochudi. It's actually now the old road, and there is a new Francistown Road that is a bit more like a highway.
This is just at the turn off to Mochudi. It is the train tracks where her mom was struck by a train and died. (Sad, I know. It's just a story though.)
This is the church where she went to Sunday School and married Note. (I confirmed, it's pronounced Noat-E. I learned a lot about how to pronounce things in Setswana. It's rather difficult. The name of my hotel was rather difficult, which was a problem. Thankfully it was right next to a huge, easy to pronounce hotel.) It's a Dutch Reformed Church.
Here is the school where she went as a child. Now it is a rather nice museum that explains the history of the village and the tribes in the area. It was really interesting.
This is the view of Mochudi from the hill where the school is. This hill is where she takes Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni when he is depressed.
And here it is, the agency itself! This is where the mini series was made. I guess they are still filming. My guide said there are now 11 books, so there are a lot I haven't read. We couldn't get very close because it was all fenced off and locked. This was an actual "mall" (a grouping of small stores) around the area where her agency would have been. It's been deserted because they built a new mall nearby, so this was turned into a filming lot. He said they'll probably be back in September to film. They had to postpone a bit since Jill Scott (Mma Ramotswe) had a baby. It looked pretty run down. I don't know when the last time they filmed was, but I'm sure they'll do lots of maintenance when they come back to film.
This is the area where Mma Makutsi lived with her sick brother. It is interesting because apparently it is Gaborone's shantytown. I'm sure it's not an extremely agreeable place to live, but I thought that if that's where their poorest people live, they're doing really well as a whole.
They do seem to be doing really well as a country. I was really impressed with the university. It was the nicest I've seen in Africa. The houses all seem really nice and there are really nice roads and lots of malls. This is the result when a country has natural resources and their leaders actually care about their people. Botswana has lots of diamonds, and everyone benefits through things like really nice roads, good electricity, and good schools. I can see why Mma Ramotswe loves it so much.

2010-07-19T22:30:00.004+03:00

Remy's birthday was June 30. For his birthday, I had this shirt made for him. It turned out really nice.

We went out for dinner at Mamiwata (Mermaid) for an awesome dinner right on the Congo river. We could see Kinshasa on the other side. Notice anything about my dress?

I guess that it's hard to see in that picture so here's a close up.

New apartment

2010-07-19T00:08:00.003+03:00

Here's a few pictures of the apartment my fiancé and I just rented. He's going to live there in a couple weeks with a roommate, and then I'll move there when we get married. It's really small, although the pictures from the outside make it look bigger. It's a really good price though, pretty good location, and it has this awesome rooftop patio that we get all to ourselves. A couple friends have already started planning parties there, or said they're looking forward to our housewarming party.
It's right in the middle of the really busy market neighborhood, so the streets are really busy and noisy during the day. However, I didn't really notice it being noisy at all in the apartment because it's so much higher. It's also in a very Muslim neighborhood, which will be interesting.

The kitchen isn't equipped at all except for a sink, but it's big so I can set it up with stuff and have a nice big kitchen which I'm excited about because it's really hard to find kitchens in Congolese houses that are big enough for a stove and a fridge...and this one has such an awesome view!

Bangui

2010-07-01T19:50:00.005+03:00

Here's a couple more pictures from Bangui. The near side is the Central African Republic, and the far side is the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Keeping the streets clean

2010-06-24T16:52:00.001+03:00

In Brazzaville there are sometime crews of people downtown picking up trash and sweeping the sidewalks. It’s a nice effort to try to keep the city looking nice. (Although I’m told it’s actually a German NGO and not the government who hires these people.) There is still a lot of trash around though: lots of plastic bags and yogurt containers. They sell drinking water in plastic bags here, and they’re usually just thrown on the street when people are done with them. Today however, with all the plastic bags and other trash littered around this city, the trash crew was out today in the middle of the day sweeping the sand up on one of the busiest streets in the city. Not with one of those motorized street cleaners like in Switzerland, but groups of people standing in the middle of traffic with small brooms and a trash can. I’m not sure I will ever fully understand that logic.

Registries

2010-06-02T21:55:00.002+03:00

One of the common stories of people having counter culture shock has to do with too much choice. A lot of times people who have spent any amount of time in another country, especially a developing one, have a hard time dealing with the amount of choice we have in America. The most common examples I've heard have to do with cereal or yogurt. This particular thing doesn't bother me anymore. I know that we have a large amount of choice when it comes to buying cereal in America. I experienced a minor form of this sort of shock earlier today.
I was looking at some wedding stuff today, and I thought I'd look into starting a registry. I know it's early, but I was tired and I thought it be a fun, laid back activity. There are few things that I will register for, but I thought that there a few things I know I want to ask for/buy in America. One of them is cutting boards. I thought "I'll just open up a registry and pick out some cutting boards. That will be simple." Wrong! It was not simple. There were around 200 cutting boards on the Bed, Bath, & Beyond website! There were a huge array of wooden cutting boards, and a huge array of synthetic cutting boards, and two other categories that I didn't even look at. Why are there so many cutting boards? Then I moved on to bed sheets. There was also a huge choice in that category, so then I gave up. I'll just wait and do that later, cause with our internet connection and the ridiculous amount of choice, it wasn't going to be an easy task.

Central African Republic

2010-06-02T19:56:00.006+03:00

I spent the last 10 days in Bangui, the capital of the Central African Republic. It has a "Hollywood sign" that towers over the city on one of the hills. It even lights up at night. Apprently Bangui's nickname is "the flirt."

Some aspects of it felt like we were more out in the village. We stayed at a Catholic Center. There were chickens running around...

...and there were goats. These goats were funny. One day, they all went and stood on a concrete slat. They may have been trying to get out of the rain, but it wasn't raining at this exact moment, and why did they all want to stand on concrete?

For years, the only thing I knew about the city of Bangui was that there was a place to get ice cream. So when we first arrived, we went to the Grand Cafe to get ice cream. It was okay, but there is better ice cream in Brazzaville.

My room had a glow in the dark crucefix. Not really sure how I feel about having a green glowing Jesus hanging above me...

Brownies

2010-04-29T01:54:00.003+03:00

Brownies are the one thing in the world that I have always thought were better out of a box. All the home made brownies I've ever eaten were either too cakey, or too fudgey. I've never really understood people that said that home made brownies were better than ones out of the box, they just can't compare. This isn't very practical if you don't live in the US though. So tonight I really started thinking about this...surely there is a recipe out there for brownies that taste like ones that come out of a box, surely. So I did a Google search for "box brownies without a box." This surprisingly gave me a lot of websites for cameras, but hidden among those camera websites was a blog with a brownie recipe. It was a simple recipe with ingredients we had, so at 9:45 tonight I decided to try them. I had a lot of doubt that they would turn out like brownies, but it's not hard to find people around who will eat chocolate in whatever form. So even if they didn't turn out like brownies, somebody would eat them.
The verdict...a success! They actually taste like brownies out of the box! I wouldn't go so far as to say they are BETTER than box brownies, but they are a perfectly acceptable substitute in a country that does not have an entire aisle at the grocery store devoted to cake and brownie mixes.
I'm very excited about this.

Hip-hop concert

2010-04-27T15:33:00.003+03:00

All of Brazzaville's hippest young people (including my friends and I) were out last Thursday at the French Cultural Center for a hip-hop concert. It was a lot of fun, definitely worth the $2 we paid to go. There had been some sort of contest, and these were the winners. It was a concert, but I think it was also the final round of the contest.

These guys below were pretty cool. They incorporated an instrument. They also had really interesting pants on. I took more pictures, but I can't get them to load now, so I'll just start with this one.

It was interesting to see how the different groups incorporated different languages. Some of them rapped in French, but many of them also used African languages. The crowd really liked it when they rapped in Laari, which is one of the main language groups around Brazzaville.
It was also fun to see how groups of hip young people dress here. A lot of guys were wearing hats. There was a lot of Dolce & Gabbana around, and some brand called Uncut which I'm told was a French clothing line that went bankrupt. Mostly it was just stylish t-shirts and nice jeans.

2010-04-27T15:14:00.002+03:00

Dodo told me that this is a descendent of the Dodo bird. They still exist. I think it does look like the drawings I remember seeing in school.

the customer is never right

2010-04-05T23:41:00.001+03:00

A few nights ago, I went to a Lebanese restaurant here in Brazzaville with some friends. Most of us ordered manaiche, which has been called a sort of Lebanese pizza. It doesn’t really taste like pizza, but it is a round flat bread with various toppings on it. There were two new kinds on the menu that nobody had heard of before, one was basically hamburger and one was apparently cheese with a Lebanese sauce on it. I asked the waiter about them several times and then eventually ordered the one with cheese. All of us who had ordered the manaiche had planned to share so we could try a variety of different kinds. When mine came, it was the hamburger one, not the cheese one I had ordered. It looked like it would taste ok, so I didn’t care a whole lot except that when I mentioned to the waiter that this wasn’t what I ordered he said, “yes it was.”… What?! Is he telling me I’m wrong? What about “the customer is always right” ? He left and brought everyone else’s food, and then started arguing with me about whether or not that was what I ordered, which just fueled the fire of my American sense of privilege as the customer in this restaurant. He offered to change it for the other one (without admitting he was wrong), but I couldn’t accept this either since I expect that that three dollars means more to him than it does to me, and because I was pretty sure it would come out of his paycheck. So I just said forget it and mildly brooded as I ate my hamburger manaiche. Looking back, he did seem perfectly willing to change it, so maybe I just should have let him. Unlike what happened today…

Today we went to this hotel north of the city to go swimming. This is supposed to be a pretty nice place. It’s on the river, and we had to pay $10 to swim there. We thought we’d half to pay $20, but apparently that’s on the weekends. So anyway, fancy swimming pool…nothing to eat. Before noon we asked for the menu, but after we looked at it they told us none of it was available. There would be maboke later and saka-saka (manioc leaves, eaten often here and in the DRC). Still, this wasn’t available until 3 o’clock. When we officially ordered we asked if the maboke came with anything for the 3000 cfa ($6) price they quoted us. The waiter said that yes, it did come with a side. Then he asked us if we wanted kwanga, bread, or fried bananas. We all ordered fried bananas. So then when the bill comes, we all owe 4500 because the waiter says that the bananas were not included in the price. It was only the kwanga or the bread that came included with the maboke. The waiter did not think this was important to mention to us at the time we ordered, and again, insisted that it was us who were wrong. “YOU must have misunderstood. YOU didn’t understand me right.” Even though all four of us who ordered, including the two Congolese who were with us, all understood the same thing. This time, unlike the last waiter though, offered no solution to the problem. He just seemed really offended that we didn’t want to pay and said “who’s going to pay for this then?” Of course, in the end, we paid…50% more than we were expecting to.

I’m so fed up with restaurants here. They’re expensive, not really that good, and the service is rarely decent. Good thing I like to cook. I’m having fun searching for recipes that I can make with things here and thinking of people to invite over. The next exciting meals I have planned: grilled fish, fish curry, and homemade basil pasta J.

2010-04-01T13:33:00.000+03:00

I screamed in the middle of the market the other day. I bought some whole fish, which I was quite proud of myself for doing. (The next step is to actually cook them, which requires cleaning them. I’ll let you know how that goes.) Afterwards, as I was waiting for a friend to finish her shopping, I started wandering around, looking at what other kinds of fish I could buy. The fish that I bought was frozen. I found some other fish that looked fresh, as in, not frozen. They were also much larger, and in a basin, not just sitting on the table. I asked about the price and the lady gave me a long fork thing to show her which one I was interested in. When I didn’t take the fork, she poked one, which moved. This is when I gave a small cry and jumped backwards, into my porter. Apparently these fish were still alive. I don’t know how long they are intended to stay alive, since there was no water in the basin, but at least at 8:45 in the morning, you can buy very fresh fish.

Barbershop

2010-03-27T17:13:00.002+03:00

Here's one way to get your haircut in Brazzaville...walk down to the corner and ask the shoe repairman if he has time to cut your hair. If he says yes, then he grabs a chair and sets it under the tree, wraps an old sign around you (signs here are often fabric with letters painted on), and then cuts your hair. I guess this photo is zoomed out too far to see all the writing on the sign. There are also barber shops, but they are kind of hard to find downtown, which is where I live.

2010-03-22T19:35:00.003+03:00

Here are a few interesting things I ate last weekend. A group of us took a daytrip out to a piece of land where we could go swimming in a stream. On the way out of town we bought a few things to eat (even though we had also brought food):

This first picture is of what they call asparagus. It's grilled, and then you peel back all the charred layers and beneath there is a white strip that is something like white asparagus. It was very bitter, but not bad. It might be good if it was cooked in some kind of sauce, but that would be a lot of work.

This was one of the versions of liboke that they had. It is ground pumpkin seeds with a little bit of hot pepper in it, and wrapped in leaves.

We also ate liboke that was just pieces of fish. That was pretty good also. Liboke seems to be the word that they use for anything that is wrapped in those big leaves and then cooked.

Air Travel in Congo

2010-03-11T01:01:00.000+03:00

I just got back from a trip to Nkayi, which is a town west and a little bit south of here. To get there, we flew to Dolisie and then took a taxi (for three hours) to Nkayi. I was a little wary because in the DRC we always just flew with MAF (the missionary pilots) and weren’t allowed to fly any Congolese airlines. I guess this Congo has a better flying record than the DRC. The flight going there was fine. I think the pilots were British, the steward was definitely British. He didn’t really speak much French so it was very entertaining watching him fumble through the safety speech.

Coming back was much more difficult. We thought that we could fly out of Nkayi, but when we went to go buy tickets we were informed that their insurance had expired and so they were not currently flying out of Nkayi. We had finished with our work and our hotel in Nkayi was not that great, so we decided to go to Dolisie and try to leave a day early. We got to the airport about 7 am, and it doesn’t really open until about 7:30. We give the money to someone who says they will buy our tickets for us. This is one way of doing it here. The guy came back awhile later and says that if we add $10 we can get on the TAC flight, which is earlier in the day, whatever, we give him the money and he came back with the tickets. Interesting thing about these tickets though, they didn’t in fact have our names on them. It was actually two tickets and one receipt which was supposed to function as another ticket, all which had someone else’s name them.

We checked in with these tickets, got through security, and waited at the gate for our flight. The flight was supposed to be at9 am. At 9:05 someone walked in and said “the flight is cancelled.” That’s it, one sentence…no explanation as to why, no advice about what to do next, just one sentence, “the flight is cancelled.” So we rush around only to find out that all the flights, even on the other airline are cancelled, and we should just come back the next day with our tickets and baggage slips still on our bags and everything will be alright. When I later asked the guy at the airline desk why the flight was cancelled, he said it had been rented out. The plane was rented out to go somewhere else, yet they were selling tickets and didn’t tell us this until 5 minutes after the plane was due to take off?

So the next morning, at 7:00 am, we showed up at the airport, with our tickets with other people’s names and them and dates from the week before. So we shuffled around from line to line, trying to not make the police mad by not obeying their orders, but also making sure that they weren’t shoving us to the side while they let all the VIPs pass. We actually did get checked in once we started following their orders. When I got to security, the man was actually checking the names on the tickets against our IDs, and so he noticed that mine was different. He pointed it out, but we explained it by saying the airline didn’t have any of the blank tickets to fill out, so they just gave us that one which had previously been filled out. This was good enough explanation for the security guard so he let us pass. The plane eventually came, a much larger one than normal, and we all got on.

The problems didn’t stop then though. When we got to Brazzaville, it was pouring down rain. They wouldn’t let us off because it was raining. They eventually brought over covered stairs so we wouldn’t get wet on the way to the bus. Since it took us 45 minutes to get off the plane, we thought maybe our baggage would be waiting for us when we got to airport. No, we had to wait another 30 minutes or so till our bags came. You’d think that a country that is in a rainy season for six months out of the year would be better prepared for rain, but helas, it was not. Then we walked out into the rain, through deep puddles, to get a taxi. You have to walk to the other side of the parking lot to get a taxi because they aren’t allowed near the terminal. When we got to the taxis, they wouldn’t let us in. They said they were waiting for people, but my colleagues are all say it’s because they don’t like getting their taxis wet or dirty. So there we were, in the middle of the parking lot, with our luggage, in the pouring down rain, with no umbrella or rain gear. Eventually we called some colleagues who were nice enough to come get us. We made it home seven hours after we first arrived at the airport, seven hours for a 45 minute flight. It’s still faster than driving though.

Oh what a night!

2010-03-02T16:23:00.002+03:00

I finally got a good night's sleep last night, and I think there are several things that factored into this. First of all, I bought a mattress. It's hard to imagine someone being more excited about buying a mattress than I was. The mattress that came in my room was just a thin foam piece on some wood slats, not very comfortable. I did some mattress shopping during the weekend and had decided to buy an "orthopedic" mattress, which just very good quality foam. However, on my way to buy it, I happened across another kind of mattress which was a spring mattress with a very thin foam mattress cover on top. It was $100 less and really comfortable.
Mattress shopping here is different than in America. There aren't any mattress stores with the mattresses fixed on beds, ready for you to try each one. Every once in awhile you pass a store and they have a mattress leaning against the wall by the doorway. There is usually only one per store, and the store owners here try to cram as much as they can into their stores, so there's not much space to lay the mattress down. In one store, the guys laid it down on the sidewalk outside for me. I got several strange looks as people walked by and saw me laying on a mattress in the middle of town, but it wasn't as big of a spectacle as I would have imagined. I was glad I tried them out though, because the first spring mattress didn't have any padding on top so I could kind of feel the springs.
I also think I have been sleeping better because I brought the floor fan into my room. It's pretty hot here at night right now. It's so hot for me that I'm tempted to take a nap each afternoon, but that also makes it difficult to sleep at night so I'm trying to fight that temptation.

Highlights of my 5 day trip across the world.

2010-02-27T16:22:00.002+03:00

After starting in Tulsa, my first stop was in New York. I love New York. Some lady on the street who said she was a sunglasses designer recognized the brand of sunglasses I was wearing and stopped me on the street to ask me if they were Dana Buchman, which they were. I just bought them at Kohl's, but apparently they're designer enough to be recognized in NY. Then I found a Zara, which I love. I found a shirt on sale there that I could wear in Africa, so I bought it. Interesting thing about New York, they don't have sales tax on clothes under $110. They do, however, have sales tax on food, or at least on sushi. I saw the World Trade Center site. New York still has there subway system marked that it goes to the WTC, 9 years later, even though it doesn't go near it anymore. That was a little confusing for me, and when I asked the guy on the subway if that train went to the World Trade Center, he looked at me like I must be from another planet. Wherever that train let me off, it allowed me to see a bunch of other shops and I eventually made it to the 9/11 memorial site, which basically just likes a big construction site. You can kind of tell in the skyline though that there seems to be something missing.
After a day and a half in NY, I had an overnight flight to Casablanca, and then an overnight flight to Brazzaville. On my last flight, I had the window seat and the guy sitting next to me insisted on sitting in the middle seat instead of moving to the empty aisle seat. He eventually moved over a seat so we weren't so crowded when I asked again, but not before asking me to marry him. Welcome back to Africa!

2010-02-27T16:05:00.003+03:00

Before the last leg of my trip, I had a day long layover in Casablanca. The airline company gave us two meals and a hotel room for the day which was wonderful. It was so nice to be able to shower and rest after an overnight flight.
Here I am getting henna done. The lady has a mixture of henna in this syringe thing. She drew a nice pattern on my hand and wrist, which I kept on there until it dried. Then when it was dry I scraped it off and had a pretty pattern on my hand. It's mostly faded now, so it lasted just under a week.

These are the friends I made that day, one from Sierra Leone/America and one from Mali/Canada. After taking a nap at our hotel room and eating lunch, the three of us walked around Casablanca together. It was really nice to have some people to explore with.

English as an official language

2009-02-04T08:49:00.003+03:00

I was shocked to get back to America and find out that Missouri had voted to have English as an official language. I have always enjoyed telling my friends that America does not have an official language, and it still doesn't, but there are several states that do and Missouri has now become one of them.
I recently read an article for class by Joshua Fishman entitled "'English Only': It's Ghosts, Myths, and Dangers." It was very helpful in thinking about this topic. Basically, it calmed any fears because it explained that having English as the official language hasn't done anything to actually change laws or how they are interpreted. People who don't speak English still need services that they cannot be denied. Practically nothing will probably change in Missouri.
Today I heard English being compared to Wal-Mart: a monster that devours anything in its path as it take over the little guy (or something like that). People all over the world want to learn and speak English, so why do we think that people in America do not want to? Knowing English opens up a wide range of opportunities in eduction and for jobs. There are businesses in Switzerland and Scandinavian countries where employees are required to speak Engish at the office. Except for isolated groups, all ethnolinguistic minorities lose their mother tongue almost completely by the second or third generation. Because of the large amount of Hispanics, it may take another generation for Hispanic immigrants, but they will learn English.
I believe (and so does Fishman) that America would be better off if we would celebrate bilingualism. If we encouraged immigrant groups to learn English as well as retain their mother tongue, we would have that much more knowledge to choose from. Every language is a creation of God, reflects His glory, and contains knowledge and a worldview that doesn't exist in English. The more diversity we have, the more knowledge we have for building our country and the more we reflect God's glory.

Save the Endangered Languages

2009-01-14T02:38:00.002+03:00

This is what I'm studying. I found this video interesting if you want to learn more about how cultures and languages around the world are in danger of becoming extinct.

Origins of Chinese-American food

2009-01-14T02:35:00.002+03:00

I always suspected that Chinese food that we eat here isn't at all like Chinese food in China, but never really had any facts to back it up. I found this really interesting talk though that explains where Chinese-American food came from. Check it out.

Restaurant comparison

2009-01-10T20:33:00.003+03:00

I stopped at IHOP on my way down to Dallas to meet with someone. Since I was going to be driving through lunch, I thought I'd buy something to eat so I wouldn't have to stop again. I was very suprised to to see that the cheapest things on the menu were $6.99. I thought I could get something small, but didn't really see anything. (To be clear, I did just glance over the menu; I didn't read every item.) Then with coffee it's up to $8.5 or $9 easily. I ate the whole dinner and left with nothing.
Then, yesterday, I met up with friend at a swanky restaurant in downtown Dallas, the kind of place where they don't put cents on the menu, everything was $8 or $10. I got a sandwich for $8 and water. That came with a salad and there was a free meatball and some bread included in the deal. I ended up taking half my sandwhich home as leftovers.
So the swanky restaurant downtown was cheaper than IHOP off the interstate. I don't really understand this. The quality of the food and the atmosphere was much nicer at the place downtown, so I guess I won't be frequenting IHOP very often anymore, not that I have been to it that often in the first place. There aren't really many situations in which one would be choosing between the two, but it's lesson that appearances can be deceiving when it comes to restaurants.

2009-01-10T20:27:00.001+03:00

I just confirmed on www.usnews.com that my high school, Joplin High, received the bronze medal from US News, meaning it's among the best high schools in America, and the best high school in the area. I guess this is why I'm so pro-public school. It was free, and I was well-prepared for college. Go Joplin Eagles!

2008-12-07T18:15:00.004+03:00

In the spirit of a late Thanksgiving, here are some things I am thankful for....
1. Hot running water straight out of the tap. No cold showers, no waking up early to turn on the hot water heater, no boiling water to do the dishes...just nice hot water directly from the tap.
2. Being able to hang out with my friends at whatever time I want.
3. Theme parties...being able to find what you need to have interesting parties....like making bread men for St. Nicolas...
Yesterday was St. Nicolas Day, so we made little men out of dough, as is apparently the tradition in some parts of Switzerland, and had a party with several friends and it was so nice. I was almost sad at the end of the night because I'll have to leave here again. I am going home though, so I'm not too sad.

2008-12-07T17:54:00.003+03:00

One offen sees funny or striking things on the buses in Nairoibi. Driving around the city on our last days, we saw this bus that apparently didn't live up to it's name at some point...

the election from Kenya's perspective

2008-11-05T09:02:00.002+03:00

I haven't been in Nairobi for much of the election, so I'll just guide you to read what one of my colleagues who has been living here has written. Having arrived in Nairobi last Thursday, I've been able to see what it's like without having had to hear it for too long. I watched the news last night on TV (not something I do often in Kenya). For the 45 minutes I watched it, they talked all about how Kenyans are supportive of Obama and showed video from all over the country of the parties Kenyans were having to follow the elections. One town even had a mock election so they would have the chance to vote in the US election. On the news they said that if Kenyans were able to vote, 97% of them would vote for Obama...not only because of his heritage they insisted.
It's just been confirmed that tomorrow is a national holiday here in Kenya. I hope that doesn't mean my haircut will be cancelled.

Government bureaucracy

2008-10-21T20:46:00.003+03:00

Often in the morning there is a group of men that sit in front of our office, or under the mango tree next to it. They work in the office next to ours. I don't know why they don't sit in front of their own office. We exchange greetings as we walk in, but never much more than that. Finally last week we decided to ask them more about what they do. The head guy explained to me that when someone wants to put money in the bank, they first have to come to this office which gives them a piece of paper which allows them to deposit money in the bank. I asked him why they weren't at the bank which would make things easier, to which he replied, "I don't know, it's something the government created."
The other guy was there shed a bit more light on things. I think he really wanted to convince us that they do work. It seems it actually has something to do with taxes, like the businessmen have to come declare what they're putting in the bank so that they can be taxed. Then he talked about how they tax people who paint their buildings, but he didn't charge us for the painting on front of our office because we're neighbors...(and the fact that it's a department of the church, which is the more likely story.)

Rainy Sundays

2008-10-13T20:06:00.002+03:00

Here's a picture of some silly girls who started walking to church when it was extremely overcast, without a raincoat or an umbrella. It started raining about a third of the way to church so we took shelter in someone's outdoor kitchen. The ladies there didn't speak French but they were very animated and started dancing and singing for us in their seats. When the rain let up we continued walking in the drizzle so as not to miss church.

The Picnic

2008-10-05T22:36:00.004+03:00

Why do things always seem to get better right before it's time to leave? Fun has finally made it to Isiro. Our friends have been organizing a picnic for a long time, and it finally took place today. It was a picnic like church picnic...everyone going to a park and eating and playing games. It was kind of like a carnival though, because you had to pay to get in and buy food and such. Anyway, it's the first time they've done it and it was a big hit. Everyone had a really good time, which doesn't happen often here.

It was buy a lake which I didn't know existed until about two weeks ago. It was on the property of a soap factory just outside of town. The soap factory doesn't run anymore, like many things here, because this is a strange place where things go back in time. One could go on a ride around the lake on this raft. I didn't get a chance to do it before the rain.

About 4 o'clock in the afternoon it started to rain, which continued for about 45 minutes. This is fairly normal since it's the rainy season here, but common opinion was that it was witchcraft. Apparently the organizers only got permission from the owners of the soap factory, but they didn't get permission from the Chief of the area the picnic was in. He saw the bus (actually a huge truck because busses don't exist here) leaving town to bring people to the picnic and was upset that no one told him about it. Therefore, he made it rain to ruin the party. Apparently while we were all huddled under the tents, someone went a poured a bottle of beer into the lake in order to make it stop raining. This didn't work the first time, so they did it a second time and shortly thereafter it quit raining which convinced most of the people there that it was witchcraft. Afterwards, there was a nice full rainbow....

Everyone seemed really excited about the rainbow. We tried to take the opportunity to talk about the rainbow as a symbol of the promises of God, but to no avail really. So it seems there will be more picnics in Isiro, but we won't be around to enjoy them really. Nor will I be around to develop the friendships that seemed to blossom today. I suppose there will be picnics wherever I am next year though.

Mechanics in the bush

2008-10-05T22:19:00.003+03:00

We were back in Ibambi last week. There were people there from all over Congo that we needed to talk to, so we were there for most of the week for work. Before leaving, we finally thought we had found a mechanic who we could trust, one that did a good job and didn't overcharge us. I brought the motorcylce there the day before we left and just said we were going on a trip and needed a tune-up, and pointed out a couple things I knew needed fixed. Well when they returned it, the mechanic said the problem was the spark plug, so they put a new one in and told me to take the old one with me in case the new one didn't work.

It turns out the new one didn't work, but the old one didn't work either. Obviously, that's why they replaced it. So we find ourselves 8 miles outside of Isiro (a considerable amount here) and the moto quit working. Our chauffeurs got it working enough to get us to the 9 mile mark, where we stopped here...

This would be the repair shop in the bush, just some old tools and an anvil on the side of the road. The chauffeur was trying to replace the new spark plug with the old one. He just grabbed what looked like random pieces of metal to me and started to work "like they did during the war." He was able to get the spark plug out this way, although eventually a man did come with a bag of the actual tools we needed. They couldn't get the old one to work though, so one of the drivers had to run back to Isiro to buy some new spark plugs, which took about an hour.

2008-09-27T09:00:00.007+03:00

Here is the first installment of pictures from my vacation with my parents. It was tons of fun, and by the end I finally felt relaxed and ready to go back to Congo. When I got back, I found that Congo was still Congo and was quickly just as stressed out as the moment I left, but I only have a month left. Back to the trip...
We spent the first few days in Congo, and took a trip out to the village to visit my friend's dad, the Chief. The Chief gave my dad and I a sheep for our birthday, which had to travel back to Isiro on the back of my motorcycle.
When we got back to Isiro, our faces were covered in dust. I've taken several long motorcycle trips here, and I've never arrived with my face so covered in dirt.
The second week we went to Uganda. I saw a few fun animals that I hadn't seen in Kenya before like elephants...
...and crocodiles.

There's plenty of giraffes in Kenya, but I thought you'd want to see this picture. My dad said it was his favorite Kodak moment of the trip.

Two nights we stayed at a safari lodge overlooking the Nile. The Uganda portion of the trip was really centered around the Nile...a boat safari, Murchison falls, white-water rafting (best rafting I've ever done). This is a picture from outside our room at the lodge.

Viva la Congo

2008-09-23T13:11:00.002+03:00

I just got back from an awesome vacation with my parents. There will be more to come on that trip. Meanwhile, check out this awesome video of the Beattie's trp to Congo.
Viva la Congo!

2008-08-23T09:25:00.002+03:00

My night guard is now the proud owner of a Kansas City Chiefs coat. He needed a new coat so I went to the market the other day to buy one. I couldn't find the place that sells lots of coats and was have trouble finding any. Then I look over and there in the middle of the market screaming "buy me, buy me" was a Kansas City Chiefs coat. It's exactly the sort of coat I was looking for. I negotiated the lady down to $7 and I'm told I paid a bit too much, but I paid what I planned to pay on a coat so I was happy. The night guard was also really happy to have a new coat.

Why did the chicken cross the road?

2008-08-22T08:28:00.003+03:00

So I don't know if you've ever thought about the joke, "Why did the chicken cross the road?" but there really is something to that joke. Chickens love to run across the road, and it seems to be for no other reason that just to get to the other side. Even if you live around chickens in the US, I imagine they're mostly in hen houses, so you don't really experience this phenomenon. Here, the chickens all run freely so everyday as I'm riding the motorcycle I see chickens lining the road. They're just there, hanging out, until I almost have reached where they are. Then they dart out in front of me and run to the other side of the road. I never hit them. They seem to know what they're doing, but they're constantly running in front of me across the road.

Goma

2008-08-16T09:57:00.005+03:00

At the end of July I was in Goma for 10 days for work. Goma is a city in the DRC on the border with Rwanda. This is a picture from the hotel where we had lunch. The hills you see are actually Rwanda. Someone offered to take us there on his boat, but we didn't have time nor a visa. Goma was pretty amazing though.

This is the hotel we at lunch in. We were pretty awestruck when we walked in. It's like, "Toto, I don't think we're in Congo anymore." We found a little grocery store that had all kinds of good stuff...butter, cheese, apples, chocolate. We introduced our Congolese colleagues to apples which was fun. When they ate them they said, "We know pommes de terres (apples of the earth=potatoes), but these are pommes du ciel (apples from heaven).

There's a volcano in Goma and it erupted in 2001 which destroyed a large portion of the town, but people are busy building up on top of it. This is strange for us because Isiro is not threatened by a volcano, or rebels, but no one here has money to build houses like you see in this picture. They're all over Goma though. There are gas stations in Goma covered in tile, so different from Isiro. We took public transport for the first time in Congo which was fun. It was a pleasant experience, more so than in Kenya.

2008-08-10T15:18:00.003+03:00

We entertained a chief this week. It was nice, but very stressful. One doesn't want to mess up having the chief at one's house. One of our friend's dads is a chief. We actually know a lot of people who have a chief for dad's. There are several levels of chiefs, and chiefs tend to have lots of children so it's not uncommon to meet someone who is the son of a chief. In this case, it's a really good friend who's dad is the head chief of one of the largest people groups in the area. He calls on Monday to say he might bring his parents by. Monday I was really busy and didn't really have time to think about entertaining a chief. Thankfully, he didn't come on Monday and we made a plan whereby we would prepare a chicken and some plantains and put it in the fridge. Then whenever he shows up, all we have to do is heat it up. Well, Tuesday he still didn't come and I ran into our neighbor and asked him when they would come and he said the next day at 8:00...8:00! Panic. We can't serve chicken and plantains at 8:00 in the morning. Thankfully our neighbors had lots of eggs that they let us borrow, so we served scrambled eggs, bread, jam, and cheese...with coffee. It went well. I think it was good for us to have someone come to the house who we could make a fuss over.

Corn

2008-08-10T15:03:00.002+03:00

Here I am eating corn from our garden. It's delicious. The season didn't seem to last long, but for awhile it was really nice to pick some corn straight off the stock and roast it over the fire.

2008-08-01T13:10:00.002+03:00

I got an email from my mom the other day with one line: not much on your blog lately. It's true, but I've been busy. I'll try to make up for it in the next few days. I plan on doing not much in the next few days except for things like that. We got back to our room Wednesday after working in Bunia, and the adrenaline left my body, and I felt the effects of being wound up so long. In the month of July we went to Todro where we did six days work in three days (next time we'll know better), came back to Isiro where we had a week to prepare for the next trip, and then went to Goma, and stopped off in Bunia for a couple days. During this time we finished four dictionaries and made almost finished a fifth. Not bad for a month's work I'd say.

2008-06-24T18:10:00.002+03:00

This is a scene from the front of the church we last went to in Isiro. Right next to the pulpit were all these phones plugged in. The church had a generator going so they could have their precious electric guitars, so I think everyone in the church who has a phone took advantage of the opportunity to charge it. There probably are actually more people than that who have phones. If I get the chance, I'll do some research to find out who actually gets to charge their phone. Is it first come first serve? Is it only pastors, deacons, and evangelists?
This is the same church, by the way, where the worship leader talked for several minutes after we were introduced about how very pretty we are, and how very young we are, and you too can serve the Lord, even if you are very pretty and very young. Glad to be able to be an example to young pretty girls everywhere.

My new do

2008-06-24T17:30:00.004+03:00

Here's the latest in my series of braids, standing in Ibambi.

This style I'm told is called "des gros bébés," which means the fat babies.

Pizza

2008-06-08T22:25:00.002+03:00

I made pizza today! In a skillet over a charcoal fire...I hope you're impressed. I was quite excited. We've talked so much about how we should get an oven so we can make pizza, but never have. I didn't think pizza was possible until I saw a link to an article about making grilled pizza and I thought, "I can do that!" I can't really do that because we don't have a grill, but I did it in a skillet and the result was quite good.

Garlic

2008-06-07T12:24:00.003+03:00

I came back with from Nairobi with four things of garlic. (what is a thing of garlic called anyway? the small thing is a clove, but the ensemble?) Why would I bring garlic back from Nairobi you ask. It is not because I think my housemates are vampires, as someone suggested. Here you see a garlic comparison. The one on the left is Congolese garlic. The one on the right is Nairobi garlic imported from China. One clove of Chinese garlic is basically the same as the whole thing of Congolese garlic. Those miniature cloves are absolutely no fun to peel.

Riding through town on motorcycles

2008-05-18T22:13:00.002+03:00

Everyone in town pretty much knows that there are two white girls that live here, that are almost always together, and that one is called (something like) "Angel" and one is called "Marlen." So often when we're riding around town on the motorcycle we'll hear random people call out "Angel" or "Marlen." Sometimes they call out the right name, sometimes they don't. What's interesting is that even when we're both on the motorbike, we'll only hear one name.
This weekend I was riding around by myself, and I was driving by the taxi drivers in the market part of town, I got a: honk honk, kiss, "ou est Marlen?" (Where is Marlene?)
It makes me wonder...

2008-05-18T15:28:00.002+03:00

Here I am standing outside of church with the new dress I just had made with the cloth my friends in Brazzaville gave me. Even though you won't see someone here wearing the exact same outfit as you, you will often see the same cloth. It's fun having cloth that no one else has! I'm quite pleased with the outfit, although it has these interesting ruffles at the back of the skirt that I'm not too sure about.

When I showed up at the tailor's yesterday, I said to him, "do you have something for me?" To which he replies, "your dress is already finished." He then proceeds to iron it and put two zippers in. This didn't bother me though, because I was prepared this time. I now know that a tailor will never finish an outfit until you are there. It never fails. Everytime they call or send a message to say the outfit is ready, and everytime I arrive they grab whatever it is and start ironing, or sewing in the zipper, or finishing the hem. In Bunia, I had to go there three times before I could actually leave with my clothes.

Bananas for breakfast

2008-05-18T15:15:00.002+03:00

Every morning, there are always a ton of people sitting outside our office. I think they work in the office next door, but they usually sit in front of our office. They don't ever seem to have a lot going on, so whenever I'm hungry I ask them to do me a favor...send the kids with bananas my way. There's always kids walking around with various things on their heads...bananas, peanuts, fried doughnuts, avocados and mangos when they're in season.
This particular time, I bought an avocado, 6 bananas, and a capful of peanuts for about 35 cents. I've quit worrying about eating breakfast in the morning because I know I can always get a banana at work.

2008-05-14T22:42:00.007+03:00

When you need to get out of Isiro, there's not many places to go. We managed to get out of town for a day though. We went out to someone's fields. Exciting, right? First stop was the desert. This was just a patch of soil that Marlene wanted to show me where crops don't grow.

In order to get to this desert in someone's fields, you turn in here. You see the path, don't you? Don't you want to take your motorcycle in there?

Next stop was the river. We followed the river until it got really muddy and I didn't want to continue any longer without shoes on. It was nice to be lost in the rainforest though.

We tried to find a place to throw down a blanket and read, but couldn't find any place where there was shade and a place to sit. Palm trees aren't very good at giving off shade. We eventually ended up sitting in this church for awhile. It was nice. Nobody bothered us. That's rare.

Loudspeakers in church

2008-04-26T09:33:00.004+03:00

Across the street from our office, there is a church that likes to do lots of outreach. It's nice to see a church doing outreach, because there don't seem to be many churches that do. The problem is there seems to be this philosophy here that everyone should always want to listen to preaching, so it's okay to blast it in the street. This church has these prayer meetings something like three times a week, and they keep the doors open and blast, on their poor quality speakers, the service. Several different people, including the pastor, have come over to talk to us the last week, asking us to come visit the church or with their various requests. Each time we've asked them if they could turn the volume down and keep the service to themselves. Each time they agree and say they'll turn the volume down. In reality though, it's getting louder. Yesterday we noticed that there are now three huge speakers outside the door to the church, and they're now pointed directly at our office. I guess we're going to have to try another tactic. It'd be one thing if it sounded nice, but it doesn't, and it's sooo hot in our office. There's no breeze, no windows, so working late afternoon is becoming very unpleasant. At least our work these days is pretty mindless and doesn't require much concentration.
Along these lines, our church wants to buy loudspeakers. One of the main reasons we go to that church is because they don't have loudspeakers, so I don't know what we're going to do when they get them. They've given out envelopes for a special offering for these loudspeakers, and they've made sure that the four white people at the church received them, but none of us plan on giving any money toward the cause. We're all very against loudspeakers at church in Congo, so this could get interesting. The church isn't that big. No one has a problem hearing the sermon, but it's a prestige thing. There are lots of prestige things here that I just don't understand, and this is one of them.

Reasons why Bunia is better than Isiro

2008-04-24T20:28:00.004+03:00

Not to say Isiro doesn't have an advantage or two, mainly the security, but Bunia has quite a few advantages.
There's nothing like this in Isiro.

Best tomatoes I've ever had, and check out the green beans, and cucumbers, and green peppers...vegetables that aren't leaves!

It's hot!

2008-04-23T17:18:00.000+03:00

2008-04-20T22:30:00.002+03:00

There is a new cat in our yard. It's a white one with golden spots, and it sits out in our yard and whines. Our night guard wants to "assassinate" it, because it's wild and he says that because it's whining, that means it's the cat of a sorcerer. I told him he could not assassinate it (which he would have done with his bow and arrow) and then asked others there opinion. Everyone else just brings up the point that our "chat" is a "chatte" (she's female) and the other cat is just out looking for some lovin'.
The whole cat situation has just taken an interesting turn though. Marlene heard a cat meow, and then turned to see the two cats heading down to my room. We went and chased them out, but it took a bit of chasing. I'm not going to allow wild cats roaming around the house, especially if they want to go in my room. We'll see how this goes.

2008-04-19T20:51:00.003+03:00

This is my neighborhood in Isiro. I put a similar picture up back in August with a circle around a house, saying that's where I was going to live. I didn't actually move into that house, so here's my actual house, with a circle around it.

Back in Nairobi

2008-04-15T23:11:00.011+03:00

We were back in Nairobi a couple a weeks ago for some R and R. Despite Nairobi's lovely restaurants and shopping malls, it does have one huge downside...the traffic. The green truck you see on the right here had broken down and was completely blocking traffic. So what do you do in this case in Nairobi? you drive on the sidewalk!
Back to the good things though. This week in Nairobi was all about seeing people and eating. Eating is so much fun in Nairobi, except when you eat out every meal and are still full from the last meal when you're walking into the restaurant for dinner. We were able to hit up all our favorites: Ethiopian (left), Korean (right), and Java House. So many spices and vegetables! It was bliss.
We did get out of Nairobi too. We went to Naivasha for a day and spent a nice day enjoying the scenery and getting out on a boat.

Hippos and flamingos are always fun to see!

And the weather in Nairobi is always nice! The sun just seems different there.

We saw these guys, and others like them, on the highway back to Naivasha. They found a truck to pull them up the hill. Makes life a lot easier it seems.

We have a shower!

2008-04-14T20:39:00.002+03:00

We got a shower! It's so wonderful, it makes bathing so much more enjoyable. We actually got it a month ago, but I haven't had internet, electricity, a working camera, and access to my bathroom, all at the time, since then. It's on a pulley, so we can heat up water, lower the bucket, pour hot water in, and have a nice hot shower. We even have a shower curtain! We're really living it up here.

Pics from Isiro

2008-04-10T17:58:00.003+03:00

Here are a few pictures from Isiro. The top one is from our friend's tailor workshop, where we had taken refuge from the rain. The bottom one is the main street in Mendambo where the markets are and where we do most of our shopping.

Swimming in Congo

2008-04-07T18:08:00.001+03:00

I'm working in Bunia for the week, and finding that Bunia has many advantages over Isiro. For example, at the market I saw green peppers, cucumbers, big tomatoes (as in normal ones for our non-Congo readers), cauliflower, lettuce, lots of potatoes, and beef. We were like a couple of country-bumpkins walking around the market. "oh, look at those peppers! oh, look at the tomatoes!" Also, I was standing outside church by myself for a few minutes, and no one talked to me. It was so weird, and so nice.
One of the big advantages here is that there is a swimming pool. It's kind of outside of the city. We went Saturday, not sure what to expect. When we arrived there was no one there, which we were excited about; then we wouldn't have to worry about being in a swimming suit in Congo. It didn't last. Soon after I changed and got in the pool, a group of seven Russian pilots showed up. They tried to take up as much of the pool as possible, in various types of swimming attire. The most disturbing were the boxer briefs with red hearts all over. They mostly left us alone, and it was so nice to go swimming. Then when we were done, I went to change and when I came out the pool was surrounded by Congolese soldiers toting machine guns and RPGs. Awesome. They cleared the pool because some Major was getting married and wanted to take pictures. Turns out it was quite a nice bunch of soldiers, and they even let us take a picture of the bride and groom. You kind of wonder th!
ough why they need RPGs to take wedding pictures.

2008-03-19T23:38:00.002+03:00

Our chicks have all disappeared. It's very sad. I already had in my head what I was going to do with them. I guess that's why they say don't count your chickens before they hatch. Although, in this case it's don't count your chickens before they grow up. There are various theories, but we don't really have any idea. It seems unlikely that a hawk would have eaten them all plus the mother in one night. We've asked the neighbors, and that didn't get us anywhere. Can you steal a chicken and 7 chicks in one swoop? I don't know. They weren't sleeping in their hen house, and I had just said that we need to start making sure they go in their house at night, but they were gone by this point. I just hadn't realized it yet. Our other chicken had one little chick, so we still those two wandering around.

I'm so out of touch with the whole pop culture scene. When I was in Kampala a couple weeks ago, we went to see a movie at the theater. I hadn't heard of anything that was showing, or anything that was being advertised. That was weird. So now I have internet here, and the last couple days I've been listening to Today's Big Hits on Yahoo!Radio, and I haven't heard of any of the bands that are played. I think I've heard of maybe 10% of the people and bands that come up.

International Women's Day

2008-03-11T09:44:00.004+03:00

Saturday was International Women's Day, or as they say here in Congo: La Journee des Mamas. We showed up at the stadium with one of our Congolese friends to join in the festivities, although we didn't really know what they were. We were supposed to meet at 10am, but I had lots of problems with my zipper (zippers they put in clothes here are really poorly made) so we didn't make there until 11am. We showed up in our Congolese finest, and planned to join the parade.
So then we're told that you have to have a uniform, and you have to have a banner. There were all these different women's groups who had bought the same fabric and made matching dresses. We didn't have a uniform, but they invited us to walk with the Protestant women. It was kind of a mismatched group, so our clothes didn't make us stick out so much.
There wasn't much to the parade. It was just bunches of women walking in front of the authorities and the crowd. It reminded me of when I was in New York in 2001 and we went to this St. Patrick's Day parade that we thought was going to be really cool. They said it's the second biggest St. Patrick's Day in the world, but it was only a band, and then a group of Irish people walking down the street, and then another band, and then another group of Irish people, over and over. Our parade didn't even have bands in the parade, although there was a band that played music for the women to walk to.
It was kind of fun to do though. We didn't stay for the whole thing, that would've been really boring. We left 20 minutes after we were done. Then everyone has a party afterwards. Supposedly the men are supposed to cook, but I don't know any that actually did. One of our friends invited us for dinner, which was nice, but I'm pretty sure he didn't actually do the cooking. They say the women are supposed to give the men money first to buy the food, but if they don't then the men don't have to cook.
As I was waiting for my friends to show up, I got a lot of comments like, "Hey, you're also a mama?!" I didn't really know how to answer that, but at least for one day I admitted to being a "mama." (And now I have running around in my head...get on the floor and move your booty, mama.)

2008-03-01T22:06:00.000+03:00

"and were at their wits' end.
Then they cried to the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress.
He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed.
Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven.
Let them thank the Lord for his steadfast love, for his wondrous works to the children of men!" Psalm 107:27-31

I'm in Kampala for a week.

2008-03-01T22:01:00.001+03:00

I was told by one of my Congolese colleagues last week, "You are very wise. You should continue to be wise like this. You think like a man. Congratulations."

This was one of those situations where I didn't really know how to take the comment, but since it was meant as a compliment, I decided to take it as one. I think like a man.

Chicks

2008-02-25T19:31:00.002+03:00

We have 8 little chicks! They're so cute! We've had two hens running around our yard for about a month now, and a couple weeks after we got them we noticed that one was sitting on her eggs. We were just starting to doubt if there really were little chickens in them because we don't have a rooster, but today I peeped my head in and saw the abandoned house in the back full of the cutest little chicks ever. So now we've proved that you don't have to own a rooster, even in the "city" to get chicks. The roosters just find the hens.

2008-02-23T11:12:00.002+03:00

Now that I can interact with my blog a lot more, I decided I really needed to update my profile. First of all, I don't live in Nairobi anymore, so that needed to change. (Blogger only had one Congo on the list of countries, not really sure why that is.) I'm not really much of a coffee drinker anymore. I mean, I still drink it every morning, but I don't drink it much during the day and I actually prefer tea. Before it started getting up to 105 degrees F everyday, I had to have a cup of tea every night after dinner. And let's be honest, I'm not doing any salsa dancing here in Congo. Some Congolese music has sort of a salsa beat to it, and I have to fight every urge in me to not start dancing cause well, that just doesn't seem like a good idea.
But what do I change it to? Who am I? This is the question I have been asking myself a lot lately. Who do I want to be? What kind of missionary do I want to be? The people in this area are mostly used to rather old single missionaries, and don't fit into that category. I knew who I was before I got here, but I really can't be that person in this situation. Who am I in a culture where everyone defines me first and foremost by the color of my skin? where I feel like I want to be in a support group with Lindsey Lohan? where the people I trust advise me just to stay home, but I feel like the only thing I do know for sure about myself these days is that I cannot just stay at home?
So for now I'll just stick with telling you what I'm not, and when I figure out who I am, I'll let you know.

Christmas photos

2008-02-23T10:28:00.007+03:00

Christmas cookies we made thanks to package from mom.

Dinner.

Our Christmas tree.

Sorting through rice at midnight on Christmas Eve.

Rory, when we first got her.

2008-02-23T10:14:00.001+03:00

2008-02-23T10:08:00.003+03:00

I'm going to put up some of the pictures I wanted to put up long ago but didn't have the ability to. This is my huge bed that took up 2/3 of my huge room. I have recently dismantled it now though, and just have a single mattress sitting on top of some other mattresses to raise it off of the ground. I'm much happier with the current arrangement. I'm starting to actually like our house now.

2008-02-22T21:14:00.002+03:00

I got my hair braided last Wednesday. It wasn't nearly as much fun as I thought it was going to be. It was torture actually: sitting on the ground in 100 degree weather while someone pulled my hair for four hours, listening to tons of people stand around and talk about me with no one actually talking to me. But helas, it was over and everyone here loves it. Well, everyone that is except one old white guy, but that doesn't bother me. It's quite convenient. I always feel dressed up, like I'm going to prom or something, and I haven't had to wash my hair in 8 days now. I don't know how long it's going to last. I've heard I have to keep it in somewhere between one and three months, but if I make it to three weeks I'll be happy.

We have internet!

2008-02-22T21:04:00.001+03:00

We just installed internet at our house in Isiro...it's the fastest internet I've seen yet in Africa, so get excited. You can look forward to seeing all kinds of fun pictures now, and bring on the email attachments. Now, if you email me something more than 400kb, I'll actually read it.

hunting wild animals

2008-01-29T22:58:00.000+03:00

There seems to be this idea in town that we want to buy exotic animals. Our
neighbor asked us a long time ago if we were interested in buying a parrot
because his dad had trapped one in the forest. Then a few weeks ago I
arrived home and there were two men I had never seen before trying to sell
Marlene a parrot. It was small and gray, and I couldn't understand why they
thought we'd want to pay $80 for such a thing. Then today at the office
someone showed up and was knocking furiously on the door. I've figured out
that if someone keeps knocking without giving you time to answer, they're
trying to sell something. At home it's usually charcoal, but today at the
office it was a viper. Apparently these guys were walking through our
neighborhood and people told them to go sell it to the white girls, so they
went to our house and our guard told them we were at the office. I don't
know what we would do with a viper, especially a $50 viper. They did open
up the sack and let us see it. It looked kind of thin and sick, which was
probably how it got caught I guess.

Headlines from the last few weeks

2008-01-20T23:25:00.000+03:00

MARLENE GOT 3 BESITOS FROM THE U.N. GUY AT THE OFFICE
The U.N. guy from Uruguay walked into the office while I was at the market
and gave Marlene 3 besitos, to which our Congolese colleague laughed and
responded, "you all are very interesting!"

ANGI BAKED BREAD
Angi made actual bread (with yeast) and cinnamon rolls for the first time in
her life. She was told it was passable but to keep trying.

WORKERS AT MAISON DONDA HAVE FORMED A UNION
The three workers at the Maison Donda where Marlene and Angi live have
formed a union. At the new year they got together, appointed a
spokesperson, and asked for a raise. Being that they asked for a 50% raise,
they were turned down.

SUBSCRIBER'S TO THE TOWN ELECTRICITY ASK THAT THE ELECTRIC COMPANY INCREASE
RATES
A meeting was called for the subscribers to the town electricity in Isiro in
order to discuss how we can keep Isiro lighted. For the first hour the
representative from SNEL (National Electric) pleaded with the subscribers to
pay their electric bills because if they don't then the town will not have
any electricity. During this time, many subscribers complained that at $35
the rates were too high. SNEL presented the facts: with the status quo and
everyone paying their bills, SNEL would lose $3000 a month. In the end, it
was concluded that a company cannot continue if it loses $3000 a month so
everyone should pay $45 a month.

SOCCER GAME ALLOWS ICE CREAM TO BE EATEN IN ISIRO
Marlene and Angi received some ice cream mixes for Christmas this year, but
since they only have electricity for three hours a day their freezer
functions more like a refrigerator than a freezer. Today the African Cup
started, and at the SNEL town meeting, subscribers convinced the company
that they should turn the electric on one and a half hours early in order
that everyone can watch the soccer games. Angi and Marlene took advantage
of the opportunity to freeze ice cream.

ANGI AND MARLENE HAVE HIGH TEA
Wednesday and Thursday were public holidays in Congo remembering the deaths
of two past Presidents. Thursday the girls were invited to high tea. It
was an elaborate breakfast at 3 p.m., which included speeches by everyone in
order to welcome in the new year.

Our new kitten

2008-01-06T14:13:00.001+03:00

We got a kitten. Well, it's been a couple weeks already. I wish you I
could show you a picture, but I can't really do that. She's all gray and
really cute. We named her Rory because we had just watched an episode of
Gilmore Girls where Kirk gets a cat a names it Kirk. So we wanted to name
it Kirk until we confirmed that it's a girl. Then we thought we could name
her Rory because it's a cute name, and we're in Africa where people name
their kids after people they know, and, let's be honest, we spend a lot of
time with Rory and Lorelai. Turns out this is a really bad name in a
multilingual, non-Anglophone context, but what can you do. Being linguists,
we should have thought about this more. When people here her name they
either just stare at us blankly or come back with "lory" or "roly."

Kenya

2008-01-06T14:02:00.000+03:00

I got a text message on Thursday from the number 999 on my Kenyan SIM card
saying: The Government of Kenya advises you not to take part in any
unlawful assembly that may result in violence! ...Good, very sound advice.
I assume that they would give the same advice if they knew I was in Congo.
Seriously, suddenly everyone seems to be happy that I'm in Congo and
not Kenya. Strange how things change like that. Please pray for the
situation in Kenya to calm down.

New Year's in Congo

2008-01-05T00:05:00.000+03:00

New Year's Eve was pretty laid back. We decided to run the generator so
that we could actually stay up until midnight. We watched a movie. At
midnight we heard a fog horn and I got lots of "beeps." New Year's Day was
different than at home. No sitting around watching football all day. Most
people went to church in the morning, we skipped though. We went to visit a
friend and showed up just as his family was sitting down to eat, so they
invited us to eat with them. That was at 2 pm. Then at 3 pm we were
invited to another family's house for dinner. We walked home from there and
ran into someone we know who invited us to a restaurant with friends. That
was another huge meal around 10 pm. It was very weird seeing everyone
celebrating on New Years Day. I thought the party was over, but it was just
beginning. A new year has begun. It's time to be thankful to God that we
lived through 2007 and that He has given us a new year to enjoy.

Christmas in Congo

2008-01-04T22:04:00.000+03:00

I haven't written about Christmas yet because I really wanted to put
pictures up, but I don't think that's going to work. I went to the place
where I can use a bit faster internet and it just didn't work, so I'm giving
up on that idea.
Our neighbor gave us a lamb for Christmas. He told us he was going
to do that a long time ago, so a couple days before he sent someone on a
bike to the village to get a lamb. It hung out in the yard on the 23rd, and
Christmas Eve day we killed it. "...like a lamb that is led to the
slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened
not his mouth" (Is. 53:7). Lambs really don't say anything before they are
killed, at least this one didn't. Pigs and chickens are very noisy when
they are being killed, but the lamb let itself get tied up to a tree and had
it's throat cut without making a sound.
I didn't actually touch the thing, but I did watch...and take
pictures. Now we have a picture for "to cut the throat" for our dictionary.
We also have "to skin." It was very productive day.
This was a very tiring couple of days. We gave our househelp a few
days off, and so we were doing all the dishes and such that we usually don't
do. Plus, we spent the morning making Christmas sugar cookies and trying to
get the house clean enough to have a nice Christmas dinner. So after a full
day of house work and taking pictures of the lamb, and cooking the lamb, at
10 pm we went to church. Our church has Christmas dinner together and so
they spend all night Christmas Eve making the dinner. We got there really
late, which wasn't that late actually because they started several hours
after they said they were going to. I spent two and a half hours sorting
through rice, taking out stones and hard bits. Then I went home at 12:30.
Meanwhile, Marlene stayed the whole night and came home at 7 am, just in
time to change and get back to the service. We didn't actually go until
10am, an hour late, because we opened presents before hand and were tired,
and we knew the service would be five hours and so thought it okay to arrive
late. We got home at 2 or 2:30 from church (and that was leaving a bit
early), took a nap, and then started preparing our own Christmas dinner. It
was a Congolese-British Christmas dinner. We had the lamb a la Congolaise,
lituma (smashed ripe plantains), and stuffing. For dessert we had custard
with Christmas pudding. We also had Christmas crackers, another British
thing. We had two Congolese friends over and it was funny hearing them talk
about the plastic red and green crowns that came out of the crackers.
And that's about it. The city gave us electricity for Christmas.
That was nice. It allowed us to use the Christmas lights mom sent. It also
reminded me of a song: I'm dreaming of a bright Christmas, just like the
ones I used to know. Where the Christmas lights glisten, and children
listen, to hear songs on the radio.

Snakes

2007-12-31T13:26:00.000+03:00

I got out of bed this morning to tell the night guard he could go home, and
he showed me this snake that had almost attacked him in the night.
Apparently he awoke (he has no problem telling me he was sleeping even
though he's not supposed to be sleeping) because he felt something on his
head. The snake had crawled across his head! So he shone his flashlight on
this thing he had felt and saw that it was a snake, and that it was
poisonous. So he smashed its head with the machete and left it in the
middle of the yard to show me in the morning. After showing me, he flung it
on the fence where it was left hanging.
Then when Marlene and I were both up I showed it to her. We saw
that it was still moving. Not a lot, but every once in awhile it would lift
its head and coil a bit. When our Lingala teacher showed up at 8, I noticed
that it was off the fence. It was coiled on the ground, still moving! So
our new Lingala teacher says you can't just bash the head, you have to cut
it in to pieces.
This is where I save the day! I walked over and grabbed the machete
and started hacking the snake to bits, except the machete wasn't that sharp
so it didn't really cut the snake, it just kind of dented it. I thought,
I'm going to have to really give it a good whack, so I really came down hard
on it...and all this white stuff sprayed all over my arm! Then the teacher
says something about how it must have been full of eggs...Eww! I screamed
and ran in the house to wash off my arm, and then we had our first Lingala
lesson with the new guy.

2007-11-29T23:22:00.001+03:00

Here are some pictures from the last few months of Congo. (Below) Our friend Marie brought some marshmallows back from France, so we had a s'mores night. Our Congolese friends had never seen a marshmallow before. We didn't have any graham crackers, but we found some cookies in town that worked okay.

2007-11-29T23:08:00.001+03:00

So here I am cooking dinner. The flash lit up the picture, so it's not as noticeable that I'm cooking with a headlamp. (And along those lines, I didn't leave the house with that outfit on. I think I was just trying on the skirt. I have a shirt that matches :)

2007-11-29T23:01:00.000+03:00

This is the view from our front porch. The sunsets are beautiful, so we sit here pretty much everyday around 6 o'clock.