Gym class!

put your right foot in and shake it all about

What does gym class with 50 third grade PHC kids look like? Just picture a room full of energetic smiling African girls and boys doing cartwheels, splits, bridges, playing Simon Says, and dancing the hokey pokey. This morning Caitlin and I started teaching special classes for the PHC kids at the center. The goal is to give each class at the center individual time with us interns and to expose the kids to electives they aren’t taught in their classroom. The first PHC gym class was definitely a success! It was a little hectic but the kids did learn a few things, wore off some pent up energy, and overall had a great time.

attempting the splits

I was in my element jumping around and doing cartwheels with all the kids. Now that Caitlin and I have taught a whole gym class of 50 kids completely in Sango, I feel like we can take on anything!

the third grade class we taught today

an Afternoon with African teenagers

If you ever invite a group of teenage Central Africa girls over to your house be sure to have plenty of chocolate, hair bands, thread for friendship bracelets, and body wash on hand.

The past couple Monday afternoons Caitlin and I have had a few girls from the sewing class over to our house. Yesterday we had a group of five girls over: Petula, another Petula (it’s a popular name here), Wiliame, Audrey, and Nadia. It was fun and definitely an interesting clash of cultures.

First on the list of things to do when the girls arrived was to take a grand tour of our house. Our house isn’t very big but compared to where they all live it’s probably pretty nice and we have indoor plumbing! The bathroom is always an attraction. We’ve had to teach several girls how to flush our toilet. Next we hit up the chocolate: homemade brownies from Heidi! The girls laugh about how Americans love chocolate so much but I’m pretty sure they love it just as much. How can you help it?

Williame doing my hair!

Next they decided it was time to do mine and Caitlin’s hair African style: lots of little braids! Of course, we didn’t have the special rubber bands for our hair so we had to take a trip to the market to buy some. I’m sure we looked funny, five African girls and two white girls, laughing, talking in Sango, skipping and singing all the way to the market. We got what we needed plus some bread because we had to have something to put our nutella on (the brownies weren't enough to satisfy the girls' chocolate cravings).

The rest of the afternoon was spent hair braiding, making friendship bracelets, wandering around the house cleaning, and taking showers. Yeah I said showers. While I was out having my Sango lesson and Caitlin’s head was getting braided, some of the girls decided they wanted to try out our shower. By the time they’d started there wasn’t much we could do about it and by the time they left our whole house smelled like body wash and our bathroom was covered in water. Those girls were very clean and full of chocolate by the time we sent them home and Caitlin and I looked a little bit more Africa with our hair all braided up. It was a good time.


p.s. David- the friendship bracelet you gave me before I left for Africa has started a new fad among the orphans. They all want to learn how to make bracelets just like mine... especially the boys because I told them you made mine.

Knitting 101

I decided that I am going to join the technical training sewing class at the PHC center. Why? I think the better question is ‘Why not?!’ I will learn to make all sorts of neat stuff, be able to practice my Sango, and build relationships with the 20 or so teenage students that are in the class. Sounds like a good deal to me!

learning to knit!

Today was day one of carrying out this brilliant plan and I learned how to knit… sort of. I’m not so sure knitting is my thing. Mostly I just spent a lot of one-on-one time with the instructor. She’s great! I sat by her all morning while she taught me (in Sango) how to knit. I’m not actually sure what I’m making but after a few hours of my first knitting lesson I’ve got about half an inch done on whatever I’m making. I am very proud of that half inch of whatever it is! Not to brag or anything but all the girls in the class told me I’m doing great and that my knitting looks really pretty. (That’s not saying a whole lot though because they’re quick to praise anything I say or do whether it’s deserved or not… that’s probably why I like hanging out with them.)

“Na devant… oko… use. Na peko ni… oko… use… Ay! A yeke nzoni ‘ape. Mo lingbi ti leke ni?” That is pretty much the extent of my Sango usage while I was knitting. Counting stitches. Messing up. Asking for help. It was fun. Most of the kids were busy working on projects so it was a pretty quiet day in class but whenever someone said something I’d start doing translation in my head and I’d forget what stitch I was supposed to be doing next. So far, knitting and talking Sango aren’t a good mix.

On top of all this, the area where the sewing class is held is right next to the kitchen area where the women cook lunch over fires. The smoke was thick today and kept getting in my eyes and making me cry. So anyway, that was my whole morning: learning to knit, crying, asking people to fix what I’d done, knitting, laughing, and knitting some more. I would say it was a successful first day in the sewing class.

A few of my sewing class buddies

back to work

Now that the holidays are over and the new year has begun, it’s back to work for me! There’s plenty of work to keep me busy for a long time. My ongoing project is to contact all the sponsors and send them a note and picture of their PHC child at least once this year. Another part of my internship is being the on-the-ground photographer and news updater for PHC. I really enjoy this part of my internship.

Right now we are working on a textbook drive to raise money to purchase more schoolbooks for the kids. In most classrooms they are sharing one textbook between three kids. It might be a good way to learn sharing skills but it’s not ideal for learning math and reading. The PHC classrooms seem a bit crowded with 50 kids per room all sharing textbooks, but it’s much better than the government schools. It’s not uncommon for government schools to cram as many kids in as possible having over 100 kids sitting anywhere they can find space to sit.

 

While Project Hope and Charité wants to help as many orphans as possible, it also has a commitment to giving the kids a quality education. That’s why we’re working on getting our kids more textbooks.

 

Dzanga-Sangha Rainforest

Even missionaries in Africa need vacations sometimes. Over new years Caitlin and I went on a trip down to the Dzanga-Sangha wildlife preserve in the Congo River Basin to do some gorilla tracking, elephant watching, exploring, and to get a needed break from the city. It was great! We didn’t want to leave Africa without seeing any wildlife so when we had the opportunity to tag along with Brigitte (our German friend who works for UNICEF) on a trip to Bayanga, we jump right on board!

the road leading into the Dzanga-Sangha national park

Bayanga is approximately 480 km southeast of Bangui just north of the equator. It is located towards the north end of the Congo River Basin rainforest (the second largest rainforest in the world) and is home to many endangered and threatened species and the pygmy people.

the crew of pygmy trackers, bantu guides, driver, and tourists

We made the trip from Bangui down to Bayanga in a record nine hours thanks to our official UNICEF truck, speedy driver, and diplomatic flag and we spent three full days seeing the sites of the rainforest.

Day 1: Elephants

Our first day in Bayanga Caitlin and I woke up early to go for a couple mile hike through the rainforest. We followed our pygmy guide along the river and then along a road to a little village. As we walked along our guide kept pointing out elephant tracks. He told us that the elephants were all headed to the bai to eat. Bais are marshy clearings in the forest that are rich in minerals. The actual word bai is a Ba’aka pygmy word meaning, “where the animals eat.” Elephants and other animals come to these bais to feed. The elephants dig holes all over the bai to get the best minerals.

elephants at the bai

mom and baby

After seeing so many elephant tracks on our hike we couldn’t wait to see some elephants in person at the bai, which was our next adventure. To get to the bai we drove into the forest a ways and then hiked through thick trees and underbrush, streams, and mud following trails and the tracks of the elephants. When we finally came to the clearing, there were somewhere around 60 elephants, a heard of forest buffalo, and a couple sitatunga antelopes. I could’ve watched the elephants all day they were so spectacular! I couldn’t believe I was actually seeing so many real live elephants with my own eyes in the African rainforest!

a baby elephant chasing a forest buffalo

"dole" is the Sango word for elephant

sitatunga

Day 2: Gorilla Tracking

Gorilla!

Western Lowland Gorillas are on the endangered species list. They live hidden deep in the rainforest but they are hunted for their meat and their habitat has been threatened by logging. They are some of the most interesting animals and having the chance to see them in the wild is something people travel great distances to do. It took us over an hour of driving down an old rutted logging road to get to the base camp of the gorilla researchers. They have been following a family of gorillas and have habituated them so that people (like me) can go watch them. From base camp it took us about 1 ½ hours of hiking to find the Makoumba gorilla family. It took a little longer than it was supposed to because there were some elephants in our way so we had to take a detour. Once we got to the gorillas we had a great time watching all the gorillas playing together. The silver back (the leader of the group and the largest gorilla) even came down from high up in the trees to take a nap.

The Pygmy Forest People:

After gorilla tracking we visited a pygmy village. The pygmy people who live in this region of the forest are called Ba’aka. They still live in their traditional way surviving off food grown, gathered, or hunted in the forest and living in little forest camps. They are very interesting and beautiful people but, sadly, they have been very mistreated and misrepresented much like the Native Americans or the Aboriginal people of Australia. We always had an Aka pygmy guide with us whenever we went into the forest to hike or track down animals. They know their way around and are experts at hearing elephants, leopards, gorillas, or any other types of forest animals even from a long way off. I felt very safe following a pygmy through the forest.

the Ba'aka live in forest igloos

the whole village

Day 3: A Trip Down the River

The Sangha River is a main tributary of the Congo River. The lodge where we stayed was right on the river so our third day in the rainforest we decided to take a dugout canoe and a couple Ba’aka guides down the river to see waterfalls. It was a perfect day for it! The cool breeze blowing through my hair, the warm sunshine, the water plashing against the wooden boat, the fragrance of flowering trees, the fresh unpolluted rainforest air, and the sounds of tropical birds all made me wish the boat ride would never end! We stopped to hike to two different waterfalls. They were gorgeous!

my bungalow on the river

dinner!

Sunset over the Sangha River

Having seen another part of the Central African Republic I feel like I understand the African people I’m working with a little bit better. Africa is a place with rich culture and a complicated balance (or lack of balance) between keeping traditional culture, survival, and living in the modern world.