Project

This country has vast populations who are far from "the grid" of transportation, goods, services. So ideally the health system is set up to handle simple cases in rural health posts, referring to bigger centers as the need warrants. Needless to say, there are many barriers to its success.

There is little effective medical or nutrition care for children 0-5 yrs old, which is where malnutrition hits the hardest, so our work attends to this effort. We have tin-roof, almost tent-like clinics set up along side the state clinic buildings in various rural towns. Each site is staffed with a team of about 11 who triage, teach, weigh, register, consult, monitor, give medicines, and finally give plumpy-nut rations and mosquito nets to the children who come to our clinic.

I supervise two such clinics that lie to the north east of our town. They lie 100km and 60km from here, and in a place with few cars, that is a log way to travel on foot or animal. Their source of goods and services are the weekly markets that gather in various towns between. We see a mix of ethnicities: Peuhl, Tuareg, and Haoussa. So I can't speak much to the women who come, much more than the greetings in Haoussa. The staff are always trying to teach me their respective languages J besides my wanting French.

Since we know nutrition isn’t just as simple as sufficient calories, we also run the pediatric and maternity wards at the hospital in town as well as prenatal care in some rural centers. We also have an intensive therapeutic feeding center for children referred from our outlying clinics who are in serious trouble with nutrition and related illness.

The clinic set up is simple, the numbers served is impressive (thousands and thousands in yearly total), and offer tangible witness to the problem of malnutrition. Besides the physical need, our presence here is advocacy.

My work takes the role of a connector, communicator, supervisor in the project. Since I don’t speak the local languages, I could do very little directly with our beneficiaries. I oversee the work of the local staff, serve as a connector back to the base, and offer a perspective of an expatriate and as a (well-taken care of) volunteer, to compliment the perspective of our national colleagues.

That's a taste of what I am doing here.

Nutrition

Nutrition

I have not written a lot about our project here. Since this blog is public, I remain pretty general.

It is true. It is hard for all the kids (and adults) to get good nutrition here in the Sahel. The main staples are millet and sorghum and beans and around 80% of the population lives off the land and animals. It is a lifestyle that waxes and wanes with the provision of the land and weather.

The limited nutrition from eating only starch grains and little else is one issue, since kids need animal fats and proteins to grow properly. But factor in, then, the process of GETTING the food. Crops here are planted, travelled to (easily 2 hours to your field by foot or donkey cart), tended, harvested, and processed all by human power. Once the food portion of the crop is harvested by hand and carted home, stored or sold, then you go back out to harvest the stalks which, laced together in tight formation, construct your home and grain storage for the next year. Oh, let's not forget you still have to pound the grain to get it off the stalk to prepare the meal.If you do the math of energy consumption, this demanding lifestyle often leaves the human wanting for calories.

Why not drink lots of milk and cheese, you might ask? Well, the milk and meat production of the animals is directly linked to the availability of water and nutrition for the herds, which is parallel in its harshness to humans. The Sahel is not exactly a forgiving place to live.

So it ain't easy and handing out sachets of peanut paste is not the one and only answer. Families are large here, averaging about 7 children per woman, and up to 4 wives per man. In this environment, you can start to see the challenges to having enough to eat, let alone educate your children, let along take them for health care.

Sand

…makes things disappear
Living with the sand as my floor has piqued my interest in archaeology. You would never imagine how many and how quickly things get buried completely in the sand. A pen dropped can disappear in seconds if a careless foot pushes it deeper in. On market day, countless droppings litter our hoof-printed main street. By day's end when I come back from the outlying towns, they've remarkably disappeared…It helps me understand that a whole civilization can be buried in time, simply under foot and wind.

…reveals all
Walk as lightly as you please, but sand will imprint who was there and where they've gone. Just by observing the sand at my feet, I have picked a lot about my cultural surroundings. It's easy to tell if donkeys or goats or camels passed there and which way they were going, and if the truck passed through before or after them. At our house if the guards swept the sand during the night, leaving only neat brush strokes, I can tell if I am the first one up or not.

…is a chalkboard at hand
I hardly give a thought now to bending down to spell a word in the sand. Everyone does it. It's quicker than hunting a piece of paper and pen and erasing is easy. It also makes a nice artist's palate.

Open Air

(a picture of me and some friends on my 29th birthday)

There is something about open air that I just can't get enough of.

Given a choice between in or out of doors, I would undoubtedly take OUT-- mosquitoes, evening chill and all. It's hunger I have known since I was under 4 feet tall that has persistently drawn me closer to the Equator, where life in the open air is more possible year round .

Breezes past my face—the weather forecast; sun angles, tree shadows, and animal sounds—the time of day; sun and stars orient the four coordinates; seasons march on, by no effort of ours, marking years and the relentless passage of time, helping us to remember; tree tops suggest how to dress for the day; midday wind relieves suffocating heat…and whips me dry, sending me to search a watering hole.

Being out of doors reminds me I am not alone here, with the sounds of playing neighbour children, friendly greetings and aromas of meal prep. Breezes teach me to dance and bird songs prove that it's worth singing, period. Open windows put me at ease. Nature's palate of infinite colors expands my vision to infinite possibilities, lifts the spirit to joy and gratefulness.

This thirst for open air and colors became poigniant one day looking out my third grade bus window in Pennsylvania. As a nurse hopeful, I realized how I loved color and that if I had any say, that the four walls of a whitewashed hospital would be my last choice of where to work and live.

So here I am in Niger. I let the breezes, that are blowing my papers, ease the frustrations of a hard day; I smile at the sun that solely lights our clinics. I push dusty hair out of my face, happy that the weather had a play in my day. All these flavors answer an appetite that has shaped and drawn me towards life in the open air.

When I feel the pulse of the ecosystem I live in, there is no way I can think that it's meaningless, or that I am God. When I consider the heavens, the stars and moon You have put in place…

Ode to Postal Letters and Those Who Write Them

It was a midweek morning, in the land cruiser, geared with backpack, teammate, chauffeur, and we had already driven to our Pediatric unit at the hospital and the nutritional intensive care center to pick up anyone ready to return to their villages. Before we left town, I dropped back by the Base to hand something to a colleague…and to my delight, I was handed an envelope with my name on it. Instinctively, I squeezed it (like a Chompo bar) and smiled to know that it contained a pack of letters. I could not wait.

It was like Christmas. I opened my present like my sister opens care packages- Rip! Snort! And then she gobbles all the yummies all at once and it's so great! It was just like that. I bounced and jolted along and read them ALL in the back of the vehicle. I laughed, I teared, I re-inflated with joy and showed off the scribble-art by my niece.

I read every hand-written word; I visited your houses, your hammocks, and gazed from familiar hilltops; I looked at art on your walls and stopped on the landing of the stairs; I enjoyed your back yards and the neighbors; I started to feel the pulse of my country again; I visited my old work place and rambled through favourite haunts of home.

My gaze came to the end of the last letter…and lifted to the shimmer of pale prairie grass interrupted by dusty green thorn trees and animal herds passing by...and I soaked it all gratefully in. It was as if a big gentle light had slid onto stage and had shed its light on my day. My heart had filled quickly with this flood of love and brimmed-over all day.

The coolest thing was how perfectly preserved your thoughts were. There was no deterioration or settling during shipment! It mattered not a lick that the election already happened or the news was not "new". It was as fresh and dear as the moment you penned it. Like old journals, they are written in a different time, yet able to transport readers to the very present moment of its inscription.

The discourse of the seemingly "mundane" is not mundane at all! It's actually the "real" story most often untold. It's the beauty of life that is so easy to glance over and miss. So congratulations on writing some of history that has never before been written!

Editor's Note: Last week I asked the post man if anyone in this town gets as much mail as I do. He laughed and said "No". The post woman at the desk who'd worked in the system for 20 yrs said with the coming of the cell phone, the post has slowed to a trickle.

All Part It

Death seems to be part of life here. The newborn we brought from the health center to the hospital, whom I held against my skin to help him regulate his temperature, and whose brave and loving mother gave him drops of precious breast milk, died this morning. That makes me sad, even though he hardly had a fighting chance to begin with. She will probably ride back with us to her village on Monday, empty handed. I can read her eyes. I wish I could speak Haoussa.

My last Grandmother was buried and commemorated this week, and even though it’s good and right that she is at rest, I feel a mist of sadness hanging on after the sun has burned the chill out of the air.

Living here one is quite often aware that life holds few guarantees. The nearness of the elements and their power are constant reminders: the fierce energy-dense sun, the wind that brings dust and protein-rich grasshoppers, the ornery but nutritious and milk-producing animals, the open air breezes that allow you to survive the heat, and yet demand that you face the winter’s cold unprotected. Your fields may produce or they might not if the rains don’t come; The chance for employment means you leave your fields, but the pay may not be enough; the chance to study may be available, but then there may be no job to use it.

There’s no doubt about it that life is, at best, precarious. Something I appreciate about the atmosphere of Africa is that this precarious situation doesn’t stop the music we’re dancing to. You dance in the face of any odds, under the rule of any thumb, inspite of the pain of life’s losses. My western mind might interpret that and say “Life is too short, so live it up”. But being here, I wouldn’t strap the idea of time-pressure on this culture. Perhaps they’d say that “Life is life, so celebrate because it's good to relax and enjoy living!”

*any Africans reading this? How do you see it?

Misty Morning

Trust me, you really can picture Niger. Imagine with me: it’s morning and we’re driving on a road (okay, not paved) in the country, perhaps like the one that runs past my sister’s house in Illinois. There’s some undulation that gives relief to vast landscape stretching away under a big sky. As you might expect on a fall morning, a white shroud obscures the road and trees ahead and a fresh chill in the air has made you think about an extra layer. Knowing that it’s fall and it’s rural, your peripheral vision scans the roadsides for critters or animals whose path you might be crossing. Later on, the route will bring you past big fields of perfectly straight rows of corn stalks, harvested and brown perhaps with scraggly other plants along the edge. Your agenda for the day is full of activity, and it’s that and the routine of the commute that stirs a pleasant mix in your awakened mind….

…Now “Pause” this scene:

Switch color palettes for the sage, metallic, earthy and sun-baked tones; change the mist to 100% less humidity and close your window when you drive through it because it’s dust and not fog, kicked up by cattle herds; shrink and enlarge the roadside deer and foxes to make camels or goats, fatten some to become cattle, and let the dogs as they are (they chase cars and lose here too); change the crops to sorghum and millet which look awfully much like corn stalks; let bean plants vine and shade the ground; thin out the tree branches and add long spines between the leaves, and add a spare tire to the top of your vehicle (you're going to need it)…

…Press “Play”- you’re in the Sahel, in Niger!
The traffic you'll pass, I’ll admit, is not comparable. The majority is by foot, then donkey cart, public bus, motorbike, then bicycles, then big delivery trucks, and then by car. Yesterday outside our base office, two vehicles passed two other vehicles all at the same time- making 4 total and they weren’t NGO vehicles! It almost seemed like a two-lane road and made quite an impression in my memory!

On Blogging

Just so "my readers" know, I write these blogs not as someone who has something more important to say than the general population. I'm rather a private journalist, a tourist writing home, a girl on an adventure. My hope is that these reflectings are read like a newspaper or periodical of interest- fascinating one's imagination with yet un-travelled horizons.

I am doing some work that needs to be done here in Saharan Africa, just like you're doing wherever you are. Suddenly since I am in Niger, sanitizing my water bottles and all the novelties of daily living becomes an item to write about. Admittedly, that is one of the reasons I came!-for the buzz that I get from variety (the spice of life). But it is just as interesting as you boiling baby bottles or picking up your kids or searching for the root of a problem at a meeting, or working for the best of your clients at work. I just consider myself lucky to get to be doing the daily stuff in a setting that gives me some thrills, and quenches (and whets) some appetite I have.

The funny thing is, I could have written a blog for the last 5 years with stories one might gasp at and think, oh how noble, or what suffering she encounters, how important the work! But it was happening in our own back yard, where we are often numbed to the art and earnestness of life, by quotidian realities.

Here, I encounter the same things we all do—resistance to change, lazy motivation, "murphy's law" at every turn, daily routine that becomes normal and then annoying, and also brilliant ideas, generous collaboration, and things that actually work! I surmise that, the world over, our lives are all baffling and beautiful, and very often, that in the very same moment.

Besides being an outlet of reflection for my own soul, I hope this "journal" (French for "newspaper") can be an uplift to those who read.

A lifting of the eyes, to notice surroundings, piquing curiosity of the Divine
A lift of the heart, to take courage for living
A lift of the hand, in partnership with others
And a lift of the spirit, to ponder all these things like treasures in the heart.

Hee Haw

No wonder donkeys are the butt (or should I say ass?) of many jokes. They are such laughable creatures! The little buggers are cute inspite of themselves. They have a bulgy mouse-brown body, perky ears, cow-ish tail, and a dark grey cross that saddles their behind and back.

They are a dime a dozen in these parts, but there remains a lot I don't know about them, such as where do they originate from? I am pretty sure that the desert is not their birth place. I also have not figured out why the heck they make the sound they do. I was marvelling at the ridiculousness of the donkey music the other day and finally lighted on a way to describe it.

Let's go down to the market place just down the hill from our house on a Friday afternoon where the place is swarming with people and animals and honking motorbikes and dust. Grab your stick and let's kidnap all the tail-swishing meter-high brownish-gray beasts of burden who are parked by the bridge. Try to be casual as we carole them all out of town and discreetly onto one block on 5th Ave in New York City. Now block off the street and let them start their braying and hgeee-haawing.

"You're crazy!", you might object. But seriously, other than the lack of carbon emissions and upper class passengers, probably no one would notice a difference because the Nigerién donkey chorus would just sound like a regular traffic jam. And just as loud, just as stubborn and a lot more funny!

Hebdomadaire Two

(other things I do each week)

Floss.
Okay, I'm lazy.

Correspondence
Sunday mornings are blessedly quiet here and I make sure I never miss that time. I borrow the guitar and pull out my hymnal from my home congregation and follow my nose and the Spirit through scripture and song. Even just the silence and the morning breeze are a welcome correspondence with God. Weekends are also a time to catch up on letters, emails, blogs, news if the internet connection serves us.

Play
My legs tell me that I just need to break out in a run sometimes! So I channel this urge in various disguises:

running to catch a Frisbee
flying a kite
dancing
jumping rope at sundown
doing Tai Bo/aerobics at sun-up
declining a ride in the vehicle and walking back

Teach a little English class
As word of it has spread by mouth, there's lots of interest (it probably has nothing to do with the fact that we're the 2 single women on the expat team), but it's a handful that actually show up regularly. This has been fun to work with my English-speaking team-mate on a few creative lessons that we teach to whomever and whatever level comes. It's held in the late evening, midweek, after a full day's work. Nevertheless, as P and I lock up the office and trudge home together we often grin when we realize that we were energized by the little 'reunion'.

Le Souvenir

Voilà. Il et arrivé le moment pour ecrire un blog en français. Pardonez-moi de vous derranger, mes amis qui ne parlent pas le français. Peut-etre vous pencerez que 'Ooh la la! Elle parle bien le français!' mais, mes amis qui parlent le français peuvent voire bien mon vrai niveau de comprehension. ça va.

Aujourd'hui c'est le samedi, ça vous dire que un bon changement de routine. Chaque weekend, idealement j'ai le liberté pour faire tous le chose je voudrais faire pendant la semaine, mais je fais pas, à cause de le charge de travaille et le fatigue- chose comment lire, etudier, ecrire, jouer, cuisinir, lire, etc. Cependant, le moment de liberté arrive...et je relaxe, et je pert le motivation. Quelque choses ne changent pas, ne'st pas?

Je voudrais donner un grand remerci à mes colleagues et camarades ici aux Niger parce-que je sais bien que c'est pas facile pour ecouter a quelqu'un qui parle pas bien ton lingue. Il prend de patience et energie et temps. Néanmoins, personne m'a traité mal. Dans le moment de frustration, c'est le rire que nous aide. Comment un colleague gentil m'a dit, "ça c'est ton souvenir du Niger". Bien sure.

oh yeah. about the tired part (addendum to "Sick and Tired").

I know that I am normal because I got tired. On Wednesday I was exhausted to the point of tears.

Tired:
from not being understood
from not understanding
from not being informed
and tired from continuously trying to frame the right questions to get the information

This kind of vulnerability is like the exposure of one's neck and head on a freezing day- you can lose a lot of heat. Graciously a teammate "offered me her scarf" to conserve the energy and at my point of brief tears took me into her office, and let me warm up and spill my thoughts in my mother tongue.

On Friday it was to the point of laughter. At the end of 5 days of full-press French, a 2-hour meeting in French, then a 2-hour video conference translated into fast French, then I got home 9:30pm and heard the TV announcer chattering away in French as if that was acceptable (how dare she!)...and I blurted, " Can everybody just STOP SPEAKING FRENCH! It was a good laugh.

Global "Warming"

If this battered term could invoke images of a global-good-mood, that is how I would describe my world the day the news about our next president was wiggled to the farthest reaches of radio and satellite waves.

I think we've taken an important step and not a single person whom I have met since leaving my home country would disagree. I got hugs and cheers and text messages and laughter and claims of familial relations to the new leader! Experiencing this moment in history as an expatriate has been very enriching and has afforded conversations I would never otherwise have. Yahoo for this kind of warming!

Sick and Tired

It's confirmed: I'm normal. Tuesday I got sick and Wednesday I got tired.

Retrospectively, it is good sometimes for a nurse to get sick so s/he knows how it feels, why a child cries with a fever, or gets fussy and doesn't eat. And why a person seeks caring attention when things aren't well. Every day I throw terms around like nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, fevers in the night and lack of appetite without a blink of an eye. Now I can enjoy a fresh reminder that it's not fun and that it's worth throwing those terms around with a hefty measure of compassion.

It's also a great booster for gratefulness- for health and the miracle of our bodies and the One who gave them to us.

Hebdomadaire

(things I do about once a week)

Rehydrate. It's impossible to stay hydrated at an optimum level throughout the week because I spend long hours on dusty roads with no toileting options in sight, or more precisely, out of sight. And so I have to plan my liquid intake. It's hard to keep up with the liquid loss in between. So on weekends when I stay much more at the house, I drink and drink and drink and pee and pee and pee…

Sanitize my water bottles. Its not safe to be anywhere without my water bottles- one a Nalgene and the other what looks like a yellow gasoline container. This holds a good gallon and a half and I never leave for the bush without it full, plus my liter Nalgene. The locals stitch woven sack cloth around these containers for insulation (very effective). So each Saturday I wash them and let the Sun do it's mighty antimicrobial work and then I'm ready to go again for the week.

Spend a day in the office. Most days you'll find me working in the nutrition centers, currying supplies and information, observing the care given at each station (triage, registration, health promotion, height and weight, consultation, pharmacy, nutrition distribution…), managing employment details, connecting the rural centers to the Base, and being the transfer nurse for sick children referred for hospitalisation. A day in the office on the other hand, gives me a chance to make arrangements with administration, and catch up with all the things that require electricity or a computer or communication.

Have a meeting with my colleagues who supervise the health centers- two other nurses, a midwife, and a health promoter. It has previously been held at the end of the week, but I requested to change it to a morning time the day before because by week's end, the French in my brain is good for nothing and I can't contribute or follow.

French homework. Every weekend I make myself write sentences that expose the mistakes and confusion that I ran into in the course of the week, and then I search for a friend to help me climb over those linguistic roadblocks.

Hang out with locals. Weekends are a mix of refreshing personal space and also a chance to find local friends to experience the local culture. Last week I took a neighbourhood walking tour with our weekend cook; I spent a Saturday morning with my favourite family at the post while they did their normal Saturday things- washing the dishes, cleaning out a storage building, washing babies, rinsing the rice, etc. All of this takes place in the open air, under the big tree outside their sleeping quarters. Such company with the shade and the breeze blended with kids and three languages and laughter was a rehydration solution for my soul.

Favorite Things

Like my hero Maria VonTrapp, sometimes I simply remember my favorite things…

I love breezes blowing across my face
Open air markets
Waking up slowly
Night skies and constellations that I know my family will see in about 6 hours
Morning light
Health
A meal extended to me
Cool sand on bare feet
Real but improbable situations
Good jokes shared
The existence of hundreds of languages in the world
Common ground
(Really ridiculous and impractical) animal sounds (i.e. guinea fowl and doves and donkeys)
Hand greetings (this is a immensely important, generously warm, and positively jovial part of Nigerién culture)
A candle flame
Dancing
People who love me

…and then I don't feel so bad. That being said, while favourite things are comforting, the depth and joy of life are not based only on if my favourite things "happen along" my path. In fact it is all these "favourite things" which remind and convince me of God's presence in our current living. And so also the existence of Faith and Hope and Love.

Not Kidding

They're not kidding that it will get colder here! I have had a hard time believing it...but last night I was persuaded. Sleeping on the terrace with no more than a sheet for cover, it got down to 20 degrees Celcius!

Getting ready for the day and anxiously waiting for the sun to warm things up, I had to talk myself out of wearing a sweater, since I knew what midday sun can do.

I could tell that the town was waking up later and more slowly because of the cold. The sounds of waking and getting about that waft over living space walls was definitely behind the norma times.

I made a big conversational deal over the change in temps, but I was overreacting, judging by the local response. "Yeah, but it'll get much colder," they said "Colder than Europe!" one promised.

That said, it was a brilliant sun-rise and a heart melting -set today.

Sweat Update

Adaptation is an amazing natural phenomenon. I run around in 40 plus Celsius shade and forget to think about how incredibly hot that is until someone asks "et la chaleur?" (hows the heat?)

I mean of course its hot, but I'm in Niger and that’s normal. My body has adjusted. I don’t sweat the way I did on arrival. Well, it was also hotter then. I actually prefer to wear long cotton sleeves if I can because then if I'm in the sun, it's not blazing directly on my skin.

The other week, we had a big rain storm blow through and with it went perhaps 10 degrees of heat. The next day when the air was fresh, I worked in a longsleeved collared shirt that is 70% polyester and a rayon skirt. Unbelieveable.

Harvest

The "recolte" or the harvest is gathering momentum. Donkey carts leave town each morning with laborers of all ages bound for the surrounding fields. Each family has their plot that has been passed down by family lineage, so like our properties, they know very well the boundaries that mark their fields. Huge sacks bulge with the grains winnowed from their cane like stalks and excess is sold to the government stock warehouse. This is sold to those who don’t have fields. In a big family or if you are orphaned, not everyone gets a "champ" (field) handed down to them and they must make a living another way or rent a field from a friend or pay someone to herd a flock of goats for you and spend your days driving vehicles for NGO's (like my driver).
Friday's market was obviously swollen with the harvest in progress. Almost exclusively sorghum and millet. Other veggies are potatoes, yams and "traditional potatoes" which are hearty and a satisfying sweet. Melon types are also grown here, like summer squash, watermelon, cucumbers. I think the tomatoes come from Nigeria. Beans are the other local crop and are dried and stored like the grains in beehive shaped buildings with a pointy thatched roof. Each family has one to store their winter food safely from the birds.

P.S. You might be surprised how much the fields here resemble the fields of drying corn at home. Here they harvest the grains off the top, and the stalks are made into fences and buildings and roof covers, to replace the decrepit ones from the previous year's harvest.

Regular People

You know what I like about the world? Everyone who lives on this big ball is just regular. That's why I love travelling to new places…to find out the same thing. It's a kind of personal research project I've had over the years, a longitudinal study.

Preliminary findings show that there's a handful of personality types that can be found the world over, but dressed in a myriad of colours, mindsets, and families. It’s a recipe for infinite and dynamic flavour!

People here are just regular, like you are, like me. Not to say that I don’t notice the skin colour differences (because I stick out), but often, if people didn’t notice me for my skin color, I could forget about it and I often do, kind of like the heat, until someone reminds me.

People here remind me of people I've worked with, grown up with, been neighbors with, people I have respected and wanted to get to know, people who annoy me, people who have an attitude about everything, people who are generous, people who try to keep things covered up, people who are whipping smart, other people with really simple processing, people who love where they live and people who have dreams of change.

One of the regular people that I've come to like is my driver. He is one of those great locals who knows the lay of the land and all the secrets of the town, and who has a few of his own. He is one of those dependable workers who will not assume what is not his responsibility, but will take reliable care of what is his work to do. He's given me some good advice in that regard. He's around the age of my oldest sister and he has a wife and three young daughters. I ply him with any curiosity that comes to my mind as we drive to and from the rural health centers. I have learned so much about how things work here, from him.

Over the hours, he has patiently adjusted to figuring out what I'm trying to ask or tell; that has served us well when I needed an assistant for delivering an already deceased premature baby in the back of the vehicle.

On days that other team members go to my two clinics, I let them sit up front, to give his ears a break from my broken French :)

Rejuvination (addendum to Team Life)

Birthdays are celebrated perhaps with a cake or special meal or a movie. Farewells may include an invitation to the many national staff here in town, a meal of couscous and meat sauce and sodas and music.


I have been thankful to find friends on the team. Eventually there is a way to connect in some way with each one, but there are also some other young women who like to do the same things I do, like play guitar, go for a picnic, visit neighbours, hang out at the tailor shop, do Taibo in the morning, drink tea with the guardians who work at the house, make popcorn, play scrabble in French!

Another diversion is that my friend from Holland and I started a weekly English class for our colleagues who want to learn English. I'm not sure what I'm thinking, that I can teach my own language using a languge I speak not very well. But its an excuse to enjoy people and have a creative project to work on.

(Hmmm..I guess I'm still me, all the way over here in Niger :)

Team Life

It's been good to be on a team again. This project is a big one, and may not be typical, but enjoyable in many ways. Technically the international staff (like me) is about 15, but in my 5 weeks here we have seen a lot of transition. Three staff finished their term here, two went on vacation, one got sick and is recovering at home, and another got sent to an outlying town where we are seeing literally over half a thousand clients each day and there was a need to open an intensive care unit there for the sickest malnourished children. Normally they are referred here to our town, but that is over 100 Km by rough road and it was not feasible for many families. So that has made our team feel suddenly small and gives chances to connect with randomly assorted combinations of the group.

We each have our own rooms among three houses, two on one property. The main area is where two meals a day are cooked for us and our stock of food and drinks are. There's a TV here, which is annoying, but enjoyed by some. The front porch is a comfortable hang out place, usually in the relative dark, to avoid too many bugs. Most people eat at 1pm for lunch and they make a plate for those of us who are out at the health centers to eat when we get back in town. Supper is then at 8pm and usually shared by most everyone.

There are dynamics that change and ebb as people come and go. In general, the new blood is always good. We also frequently have visitors from the coordination team or other consultants who come to the project for several days.

All in all, its pretty tranquil and easy to get along. One can participate in the team life or recourse to one's room or go out and find friends in the neighbourhood.
In the milieu of our work, it's a positive sense of teamwork despite our differences and inequalities and languages.

Market Day

Friday is market day. As the daylight rises (around 6am) so does the buzz and clatter of the „grande marchee“. Many vendors travel in the night before and set up their stalls with vegetables and bags of spices, dried fruits, woven mats (great for sleeping on!), chinese flipflops, packaged pasta, bolts of fabric, and slaughtered livestock. Fuel is poured by funnels into liter wine bottles and vended to motor travelers, tailors pump their treadles all day and good are exchanged for FCA's (the currency), most haggling done in Haoussa. Camels and donkeys are parked everwhere in and out of the shade. Children hawk fresh street food in basins on their heads while women drop batter into frying oil along the street.

Everyone sees more business on Fridays, including us health providers, although ours is the only free gig in town. I like the energy boost that market day brings to town.

Miracles

That´s what children are. It was my second day here and I needed to go somewhere besides the house and the Base office. So I wondered up around the corner of our house. I greeted a little girl who fell in stride with me. I realized we were walking toward her house. Around the corner, to my delight, I came upon a favorite play spot for the kids. A few boys with bikes were pumping the pedals down the slight incline and then doing stunts and wipe-outs in the sandy basin. A pair of smaller boys were pretending to be „voitures“ (cars) with empty bike tires they were rolling and the rest were watching from the side. My presence soon collected a posse of them and I just enjoyed their presence. I couldn´t think of any way to entertain them. Just being with them set the world back on its axis and made the mercy of the setting sun even more glorious.

They spoke very little French, mostly Haoussa, but we learned each others´ names. They passed mine around like a new item they'd discovered and were fingering.

I hope to find them there again.

Needless to say, I miss all my little nieces and nephew at home. To their parents who are reading this, please give them a squeeze from me.

Why Pee When You Can Sweat?

Temperature in the shade yesterday was 41 celsius. Today in the sun we watched it rise to 50.2 degrees celsius! We didn't wait for it to climb higher because we thought it might melt!
Needless to say, shade is a valuable and well-utilized comodity around here. Between the hours of 1 and 4pm there is very little movement.

I can tell though that I have adjusted to the level of heat because I can tell that it is cooler than it was the week that I arrived and the locals agree.

Desert-ed?

Right now, it is surprisingly green and there are quite a few trees, mostly spiny acacia trees. Currently as we drive to the health centers, there is pale green grass stretching away under the trees, and occasionally a large puddle oasis, but I´m told that in a month or two, it will be mostly sand and the lake\puddles will disapear. The real desert is many hours by rough road north of hear. Right here, we are truly in the Sahel.

Despite the hot dry conditions, I planted a garden. Okay, a small one, but seeds in the ground nonetheless. A vendor down the street actually gave me a handful of seeds that I don´t know what they are. I put them on a wet napkin one night to see if they germinated. Well! Funny that I should wonder- within 12 hours they had all broken their seed coat and pushed out a small sprout! And within 3 days in the sandy ground, they were standing an inch tall and green and sturdy with two leaves! They were miles ahead of my collard greens and savory, which were timidly showing green in this new environment.

I still don´t know what kind of plants they are, but i am eager to see because...they are all I have left. One bitter night, the grasshoppers came through and mowed down my baby garden despite the protection of a shade basket. However, they left the local seeds alone. I´m told that the plant, that I suspect it is, has a bitter leaf and is edible, but not very palatable.

On vera. We'll see. If nothing else, perhaps they will grow quickly enough to be a Christmas tree in December :)

Small Town Sahel

So I live in a small town. We have one main dusty drag through town that runs all the way to bigger cities multiple hours south and north of here. All the motorbikes buzz up and down this road, the grand market, the hospital, the artisan market, the mosque, the NGO´s, and lots of little entrepreneurs who sell fuel, or produce, grains, mechanics, phone products, street food, and tailors, lie along this route. There is much more to discover yet of course. Quite a few people live here and most of the expanse of Dakoro is residential. It spreads out in every direction from the main street.

We do have a post office here. There is one postal number for the town and then just add the name or where you work and that should do it. Mail leaves twice a week, so it´s not exactlz busy, in fact Ive never seen another soul there except the post man and his family. They live right there behind the post. They are some of my favorite people to visit. The kids are adorable and took me as a friend instantly the first time I dropped off a letter.

The lay of the land is not hilly, but undulating so that one can´t see all the way down main street. And don´t imagine any tall buildings because everything is one level including the hospital. Imagine mostly mud-brick walls with painted metal doors that lead into the dwelling space of people.

Many families of several generations live together on one big property with few enclosed buildings. Mud-brick walls divide living spaces of goats, people, kitchens, etc. It´s common that families consist of multiple mothers with one husband, so the numbers of brothers and sisters are usually at least in the teens. When they marry, they will likely find their own space within the same family housing and start their family there. Some who have the means find their own house.

So even though this is rural, the population numbers aren´t small. The outlying villages where I work have numbers like 52,000 and 46,000 and they are significantly smaller than Dakoro.

The Hoppy Sound of Rain

Something I like about Niger is the common class of insects. I haven´t seen a mouse, rat, snake or worm to speak of (none of which I am particularly fond for their slithery-ness)...but what I have seen are primarily hoppy critters.

Here the grasshoppers migrate in droves! When they arrive, it´s more like a plague than anything else. The evenings when they are in town, you will be sorry for even daring to THINK of the word „lumiere“ (light) because they will maraud you in a blind frenzy. We pay steeply for even turning on a light and most often revert to sitting around in the tranquil dark, watching the blizzard of „crickets“ (as they call them here) flurrying above the light outside our gate.

Sitting inside a screened room with a light, it sounds like pattering rain, the interrupted flight pattern of grasshoppers meeting my screen. When I walk anywhere that they have settled, I feel like a celebrity with crowds of millions making way for my coming, scattering in every direction. Then in few days, the evenings are once again bug free since the gang of hoppers has moved on to another destination. „Crickets“ are food here, so you´ll find kids catching bags of them at the electric lights. But most people wait to cook the big ones that come in December. Those guys are the size of Jimmeny Cricket- a good 4 inches in length. Bon Appetit!

In general bugs are big here- so big that you cant really be caught off guard because you can see them coming. Beetles are half dollar sized, for example.

The other hoppy critters here are toads. They are everywhere at night. I think they´re cute, inspite of their squashy, intrusive selves. They just hop right on into anywhere thats open, like under my bedroom door...and then they´re stuck with me for the night- thummph! Thmmph! Thumph! Against the closed door that they just came under and now would like to hop back through. A scary sound for my first night here, but cute when I realized who it was.

I´d take hoppy over slithery if I have the choice.

Sur La Route

I spend a lot of time on the road. My job takes me around a circuit of approximately 240 kilometers In the villages of Soly and Goula are found two health centers in the area surrounding our town. These are existing state-run health posts but, we additionally provide nutrition and basic pediatric care for children under 5 years and prenatal care in some of the centers. I serve as a supervisor for the staff in these two centers.

So imagine with me a landcruiser (Toyota of course) leaving town by the dusty main route. I am prepped for the day with water, the supplies that the CSI´s (health centers) have ordered, and an emergancy box, for whatever might come up along the way. To my left is my driver who knows the route like the back of his hand. He is well known all along the route which is a great advantage to our safe passage. In the back we may have several parents and children who have been discharged from the services we provide within the local hospital (nutrition, pedicatrics and maternity) and are returning to their homes. There may also be other teammates who work in health promotion or water and sanitation who may also be going to the CSI.

Each morning the fleet of vehicles and teams depart from the base here in Dakoro and fan out to our various centers. A large portion of the team also works here in town at the base, or the hospital, or the intensive care for malnurished children, or the supply chain and logistics. It´s an impressive operation.

Each CSI serves many surrounding tiny villages, so parents come from far by foot, by donkey or by camel. Just like most people in the world, parents bring their children for health care when they notice a problem. Here is is most commonly malaria, intestinal and lung infections, anemia. These illness are common, but much more deadly and serious in kids that have little nutritional reserve. So we treat them, of course for the illness, but enroll them in the weekly or bi-weekly nutritional and educational program. If a child is urgently sick, the vehicle we came in becomes an „ambulance“ to take them back to the medical services we have in Dakoro and I become the nurse who accompanies the transfer.

I unfortunately cannot communicate directly with most of the clients because I only (half) speak French and not their local languages. However, all our local staff in the centers speak both, so its no problem.

I make my rounds and attend to details and watch over how the care is given, what are the training needs of the staff, etc. There is much to learn and absorb. I hope I can get up to speed quickly enough to also contribute to the good of this project in 6 months. I really could´t ask for more patient teammates.

Gecko Schmecko

Ladies and gentlemen, these are not geckos. What we have here are serious lizards en force! They range anywhere from 5 to 12 inches long and from blend-in brown to bi-colored purple and yellow. They can be found on any sun-facing wall where they love to soak up the rays and eat insects live and whole. They are fast buggers! Thankfully, they squiggle away from creatures that are bigger than they, such as me. But they are surprisingly bold, for how soft-shelled they are. While they are mounted on the sunny walls, the slinky reptiles make this jerky pumping motion up and down with their head and torso.I haven't yet figured out why. Other than their tails, their bodily movements are rather anguler, taking stock of their surroundings left and right from 45 degree angles.

I have grown quite accustomed to them- frankly I have no choice in the matter. They are simply co-habitants here. They live in my ceiling, and one morning I found a nice large turd on the mat on my floor- evidence of a lizard roomate. C'est la vie.

Packing

That's what I'm doing. and truthfully, I can't afford time to blog right now.

However, I may draw your attention to my misspelled-namesake that's hitting the headlines in the meteorologic realm, and that may give a glimpse of the state of my room and the interior of my brain.

Ciao for now- I must get back to it.

Seam Stress

Yeah- I'm not one. My Mom will tell you- sewing has always caused me (undue?) stress. And now, as an adult, I can tell you that nothing has changed!

For some odd reason, it does not sit well with me to perpetuate the strange fact that my apparel is fabricated in a far-away land--far and foreign from the fibers that grow near me. Call me crazy, but the practice of companies paying pennies to regular people, but on another continent who feed their families on factory steam, to run machines that construct clothing that "fits" our styles and growing bodies, and then pocketing the mark-up profit seems a little ridiculous.

The truth is that any other way of enrobing ourselves has slowly become unthinkable and totally impractical in our current lives. *Let me add this disclaimer that I grew up with many homemade skirts and dresses due to the patience, creativity, and dedication of my mother. But many of us can hardly thread a machine to make the stuff we cover our bodies with.

To top (pardon pun) it all off, my shirt then needs to be tagged and packaged and shipped or flown over an ocean or two, boxed and driven by semi's, unloaded and unpackaged, inventoried, price inflated and then displayed not only in the store but by radio, TV and ads in my mailbox before I can be certain that this is the shirt for me! This process that has become an acceptable way of dressing ourselves is something that I cannot really "never-mind". I do mind.

So in my preparations for jetting off to Africa (now who's got the carbon footprint?), I put my fair-trade foot down and said dogummit, I can make my own clothes. or at least I can know who made them for me. True to form, I opened my little jaw and squarely bit off more than I could chew, considering the waning weeks of preparation. But bite I did and swallowed a bigger-than-palatable pricetag at the fabric store. I gulped and realized- okay, this hurts but I guess that's what I was trying to prove- that shirts really don't cost $10. (I could branch off here to the truely painful price of fossil fuels, but that's another conversation.)

Next I approached two friends, who have the Skills I lacked, with bolts of cotton, a pattern, and my measurements. I felt a bit sheepish in asking them and I'm not sure why. I guess it's hard to ask for something that could inconvenience someone else. All the same, I felt that I was honoring them; I would love to wear something they'd made- like packing a friend in my suitcase.

With my departure date looming nearer, I decided to check in with the local professional seamstress and have her also start buzzing away on my new wardrobe (and my wallet!). Draped in her own designed garments in her workshop in the fabric store, she exuberantly convinced me that with a little help from their in-house instructor, I could sew those pants up in 2 hours and the result would be cheaper!

Really?! I thought. Can she be serious? Can it be that even I could spin out some cool clothes from a sewing machine? (I'm more comfortable with duct tape, staples, screws and glue.) In a matter of minutes, she had me convinced to try, overcoming the memories of my failed attempts in highschool.

Let me make this story short: There is a pair of pants now hanging in my closet. And no one in China made them. But I have reaffirmed that I am and never will be a seamstress. I'm thinking, just to kick some megacorp ass, of wearing them on the plane, and proving that I can porte my handmade vestiments in public, lumpy and all.

Thanks to my incredibly patient mother, I can sew to save my life and cover my body. But I can assure you, no one in China would pay to have it shipped there.

Here follow some snapshots of the village, corresponding with the previous post of reflections. Enjoy the trip!

Le plateau

walking paths

hills surrounding the plateau (photo taken while I was "lost")

I will follow you

pathside beauty
flower bright spots

Natural beauty outside my room

surgery

nursing school grad ceremony
(they are singing and slowly dancing to the front)

pre-school children and a multi-tasking mother
(this is a photo from Moz)
we lived on the edge of a plateau. "my" mango tree in view.

Village Reflectings

When the MAF Cessna plane landed in [the village], I had no inkling of what I might encounter on a plateau in southwestern Congo. These are the beautiful and baffling wonders that I found there:

A curious community presses in around the arrivals at the airfield; visitors are laden with enthusiastic welcome throughout the visit; fascination with size and skin color; flirting with the newcomers; laughter at outsider's adjustment to the village; the pace is relaxed here; interpreters absorb much in helping us; locals are patient with French language attempts;

The scent of Plumeria wafting through screens and porches; bright spots of flowers wherever one walked- by hedges, lonesome footpaths, back yards, blooming trees; silence that beckoned me outdoors and cradled the laughter of children, the women's voices in song, the morning bell, the greeting of a neighbor, the call of a bird, the motor of a plane afar off, silence that let us hear the wind rustling palms and mangoes, silence that lulled me to sleep at night; the intriguing geography of a plateau and the crops it affords; the challenge and adventure of transportation; the speed at which word-of-mouth travels and weaves a tight community for better and worse; morning walks to the water source...or the river!;

Nutrition that crawls and swims and flies and runs and grows and dries; fruit that is plucked and pealed and squeezed and sucked, and drips of refreshing sweetness; women who labor long; women with enviable posture and composure under meter-high head-loads of laundry, produce or goods; women who can DANCE!; homes kept simply; tables that are extended, seating shared, meals that are spread and blessed and enjoyed; stories that are related, ideas exchanged, worlds glimpsed, memories made; gifts given; sundown at 5:30; dinners and evenings by candlelight;

Churning feelings that boil to the surface during a day at the hospital, during surgery; baffling decline from a bygone era; assumptions exchanged silently across cultures; gulfs of perspective seemingly unbridgeable; many languages layer the communication barrier; paucity of vision; zero stocked supplies; limited treatment; human care for payment only; ubiquitous dysfunction in practice, generators, labs, lights, solar panels, abandoned buildings, refrigerator, land-cruiser, misinformation, data, reporting, leadership, initiative, pro-activity; human service workers focused on material needs; elusive evidence of the sense of ownership in the health of the individual and the community; goals glaringly absent; looking to outsiders for something, anything, everything;

Mishaps and breakdowns taken in stride (literally in stride for 25 km!); laughter abundant; refreshing camaraderie with colleagues; bonding adventures; multi-lingual lessons and jokes; teamwork in new surgeries and topics; sharing the grief of death; breastfeeding back to life; nurse-to-nurse in-depth bilingual conversations;

Graduations celebrated by young and old; exams completed; evening fires tended; meals provided for those who have journeyed; chickens free ranged; tasks dropped for welcoming visitors; laughter carried across the courtyard; original music harmonized; tithes humbled and offered with dance and praise; children valued and cared for and bountiful; playing cards reinvented from worn paper; innovative footballs and fields; an ingenious guitar made from an oil-can strummed along footpaths; gentle smiles shared; hopes expressed; perhaps hopes misplaced; faith shared across gulfs; life connections begun; irreversibly connected.

DRC

I must begin or I never will.
Inconveniently, words seem to elude my grasp during profound moments and experiences. It's baffling how quickly time and space can influence the memory/reality of those intense times. Hmmm. That probably means that I'm human.
I'm thinking right now of some experiences I've had in the last 2 months.

Some of my hesitancy to find those elusive words sprouts from the precarious position we have as citizens of this world. In my particular case, my European ancestors sailed the sea and I was born on land that had become known as the United States of America; I am of the "white" or Caucasian race; and I have also been endowed with amounts and types of resources that land me in "middle class" of the above categories. (I cringe even to inscribe these labels on my name plate because like unsolicited emails, they come attached with sinister "viruses" of ignorance and inequality, but, so be it for this point of discussion.) In addition, I am squarely in a handful of "upper class" world residents who have access to pretty much any and everything I need or want.
Don't even ask me how that happened.

...And yet they did! They asked. They demanded. They begged. With their welcome. With their goodbyes. With their pleading eyes. With exorbitant prices. In their over-attention to our ills or missteps. With their wordless hand motions from belly to mouth. They asked us in private conversations revealing very special requests for urgent personal needs. They asked as they flirted. They asked outright in blunt conversations. We talked as colleagues in an attempt to equalize. They asked among the table full of pastors. They asked as we boarded the tiny Cessna. ..And I ask myself. I demand of the world. I rage at WHY IS LIFE SO UNFAIR????!
*See Editor's Note

That's hardly a new question for me, perhaps for any of us. The essence of the question flashes my memory back to childhood, in color. At a single-digit age I remember wrestling with that question...and many other weighty problems for that matter. (So for anyone surprised at my going to "poor" places in the world, this has been a looooooooooooooooooooong time coming. That's about one 'o' per year.)


The glasses I wore for my visit to this peculiar village in DRC were fitted with lenses of Potential and Respect. In less than a week, I boiled over in the middle of hospital surgery and consultations, unable to absorb the painful realization breaking slowly over my consciousness: that
since I'd stepped off that plane, the villagers swarmed to me and assumed, or understood from prior experience, that the lenses I looked through were for Pity and Rescue, and they interacted with me accordingly.** It felt like they were forcing other glasses on me and plastering me with labels (not the least of which "Mundele!") without inhibition!

Thankfully, the latter P&R lenses are being re-ground to fit a new frame of mind. But the oppressed and manipulative ambiance was too much to bear without having any stabilizing ties and bonds of relationship with the people in whose homeland I was a guest. Without those cords, I am only another outsider to be sacked for all the inequality I'm worth. I realize that connection, trust, interdependence (give and take, and dignity) are as vital as blood. And what do we know from history? That blood and love are perhaps the strongest bonds in the universe.

*Editor's Note: This blog was composed on a full stomach.
**This is my assumption.

Something Cute to Watch

I got to watch my niece Cream Puff last night- her first true "babysitting" experience where the parents left the keys and phone numbers etc with me. She gave her Mom a reassuring giggle as she went out the door (good timing, Cream Puff!) that everything was going to be alright. And it was. We had a little dance party, book and play time, checked the yard and garden and stuffed our faces before a little walk. She never cried a peep! However, I could tell her usual energy waned as her bright little brain was processing " I trust you and you sound like her...but you're not my Mom!"

The reunion with her parents was something cute to watch. Once she was swept into the arms of Dad and Mom, her energy of gushing giggles and flappity wiggles lit up just like the screen of battery-powered laptop when you plug it into the wall.

And today I personally measured her 8-month-old thighs: 10.5 inches in circumference EACH! Yeah baby!

Cream Puffs

*Lest the sight of a text-only blog turns you off, fear not- PHOTOS follow*

This past rainy Saturday was the day my sister and family moved to town. I rode my bike the mile to their little apartment and found the unload already in process. Bypassing the stream of friendly and grunting helpers, I promptly made my way to the interior to find my niece Cream Puff desperately awaiting my constant attention. She first melted my heart with her gush of giggles and then we made our inspecting way over to the kitchen for edibles of interest.

Let it be known that without fail, when at the home of M&C one finds oneself to be deliciously and generously well-fed and accompanied with good music. This morning was no exception. Even though the clock had recently struck 8:30 and even though they'd only lived there a total of about 15 minutes, it was already true. Cream Puff and I found a glistening box of...donuts! on the beginning-to-be crowded countertop. And, well, I made myself at home. Cream Puff got her sweets in a processed form, later.

The move-in process was impressive. The pack-job from the night before had been done in flawless reverse order of today's installation. I hardly lifted a finger and well, they did a great job! But hey- I was grunting too. I was lugging a 7-month old who is in 1-yr old clothing, ok?

In a matter of hours and a few meals later, their one-bedroom apartment looked better than my own room, which I moved back into a week ago, which I explain thus: 1) my brain operates differently and 2) I'm moving "in" and moving "out" at the same time. Most importantly, what a blessing it is that we can afford to have sturdy roofs over our heads. Yahoo!

Welcome to town you guys!

Cream Puff and her uni-curl

That's what I'm talking about

Uncle Jake! What a guy.

Good crew = Quick business

Niece and I on our 7-month reunion, at her birth site

Periscope

I feel like I'm holding a periscope- I can finally see, or at least peek, around the next corner! That's exciting and glaringly soon.

This new landscape in view is temptingly tangible and demands that I organize practical things. Parfait! that's what I like to do. And yet, I've just come through some intangible and difficult-to-summarize experiences in the Congo. The challenge for me this month will be to turn that periscope around...

*Editor's note: Dragonfly has always wanted a periscope. If any readers know how to make one, feel free to inform the blogger.

Voilá

Is it possible to "expect the unexpected"? To me that phrase grasps at the mystery of trusting in/living into God's Presence in the world. I feel like I am on the crest of a wave that might be full of those mysteries.

Monday of this week found me making myself finally at home again~ baking whole wheat bread (scarce in Moz and DRC), squeezing fresh lemonade, washing clothes, receiving friends~ an ideal welcome home. I was settling mentally in for a nebulous month of discernment and deliberating and decision-making. And then the phone rang.

The aid organization for whom I'd interviewed in February was calling to offer me a post in Niger for half a year, working in malnutrition. This took me very much by surprise for I had been planning to put my application on hold because my French is not up to full speed.

But they beat me to the punch; they've decided to take a risk on me, if I'm ready to risk language immersion. The fact that the placement has few security risks, makes this possible. The short story is that within 24 hours, I said yes and within 24 more, they confirmed it. So much for a foggy August! This next step came bursting into focus with a "take it" or "leave it" choice. I took it.

A friend once gave me a quote that I keep on my mirror: When you come to a fork in the road...take it. (Yogi Berra) The decision was not made that randomly, but the spirit of carpe diem is there. The cummulative processing/praying/exploring done with my community these last months came to rest on that moment. The recruiter declined my request for extra time to consider and I had to decide. Voilá! I'm off to Niger.

*Editor's note: The accent over the a in the title should be slanted instead to the left. I can't find the keyboard shortcut for that one. Please pardon my French.*

Marriage

He's gone and done it. My twin and only brother got married this week. Look how beautiful they are! We had one shot at a sister-in-law and I'd say we've done real well :).
Welcome to the family, Anita.

Sibs
My sisters and I
Congrats, Dave!
The clan.

Locator

It's a small world after all. If anyone wants to locate where I was in the Democratic Republic of Congo, you can see a satellite image by typing Kajiji (the village) or Kinshasa (the capital) into "Google Earth". If you don't zoom in too closely, you can see the lay of the land and the plateau of Kajiji.

Landing

I've been landing since Monday. The air was choppy over DC and not a little scary to float a big plane through, but we made it down alive. Since then I've hardly spent an hour in my little rented room other than sleeping for a few.

Actually, I've had the rare treat of spending most hours with my blood family, celebrating the marriage of my only brother. There were about 9 hours where all 12 of us were in the same place- the first time in years...and now there are 13 of us.

So I've been landing slowly- spending time in Kinshasa (Congo's capital city) after leaving Kajiji; spending a few days in London after leaving Kinshasa; spending a night with sibs after landing in D.C., and now spending time in Pennsylvania after the wedding, reunioning with extended relatives. It has been such a gift to be with my parents and sisters and their husbands and kids.

Yet I am not yet grounded until I've spent time in the presence of my friends...and that I am eager to do. The people who have prayed for and wondered about me, encouraged me and listened, and kept the home fires ablaze and dreams alive--these next few weeks are dedicated to you.

Following are some pix of my travel modes in the last month. The above picture is the little Cessna that flew us to Kajiji.

A boat to the coast of the Indian Ocean in Mozambique:
A drive through a game park in Moz (stay in the vehicle!):
Traffic in Kinshasa:
Kenyan Airways (super service!):
Walking to the Kwenge river with Congolese colleagues:
All in a day's walk:

Café Village

Tired of processed foods? Come to DR Congo!

On the village menu:

Fresh water eels- dried and skewered
Bush rat- also skewered
Caterpillars- easy to harvest from burned trees, crawling out of the pot or dried from last season
Grubs- fat and juicy as a small cucumber, but more wiggly
Bird- freshly struck by passing motorcycle
Chicken foot- be prepared to crunch and chew and block out your knowledge of anatomy (see photo)
Gazelle- size of tiny deer, the prize of a happy hunter



All foods on our menu are locally grown, free-range, no pesticides, no antibiotics, no artificial coloring or preservatives.

Homegrown and hand-picked!

All dishes served with a side of fufu (thick paste made from manioc root) or rice, and greens.

Inquire in person for more menu options. Dishes served all day long.

Bon Appétit!