makala making, museums, mocaf, and my mom

tourist |ˈtoŏrist| noun

A person who is traveling or visiting a place for pleasure

I’m pretty sure there’s no word for “tourist” in the Sango language. If by chance there is a word, I’m quite sure it rarely gets used. Bangui may be the capital city of the Central African Republic but if you’re on the search for entertainment this city is probably bottom on the list of places to visit.

This is why I feel quite triumphant at the fact that in the past week my mom and I have successfully pulled off being Bangui tourists! Leave it to my mom and me to accomplish the impossible. I played the role of tour guide, activities coordinator, and translator while my mom was the sightseer. (Hopefully we weren’t too stereotypical but then again, who’s to say what a typical Bangui tourist looks like?!)

Like all good tourists, we did our fair share of shopping. We hit up all the markets from centre ville marche where we bought fresh pineapple and watermelon to Kilometre cinq, Pk 12, Be’Afrique Art, and of course the tourist catch all: the local artisan market where you can buy dead butterflies, colorful African dresses, elephant hair bracelets, carved wood statues of hippos wearing hats and all sorts of other great things all for a beautiful price if you’re any good at bargaining.

We had African clothes special made for us. Now we blend right in!

Raymond receiving his "kamba"

Sunday morning was our cultural experience full of music and dance. Raymond, my best friend from PHC, invited us to go to his Flambeau ceremony. In the Central African Grace Brethren churches there are groups for the young people that are along the lines of scout clubs or awana (the group for boys is called Flambeau and the girls group is Lumiere). At this ceremony the kids are awarded a kamba, or scarf, and become official members. It’s a big deal and involves a whole lot of marching, singing, dancing, photographing, perfume, and joy. Being white people, we were treated as honored guests with front row seats in a church crammed with proud Central African relatives. It really was an honor to experience this special ceremony.

Sunrise over Congo and the Ubangui

To satisfy our adventurous outdoor spirit, my mom and I went on an early morning hiking expedition down to the Ubangui River to catch the sunrise over Congo and to watch the fishermen at work. It was beautiful! (However, if I were handing out a survey after this hike I probably would have received a very low tour guide rating. I’m sorry to say that in the excitement of my “tourist leading” I forgot to keep in mind that my sightseer is in the over-50 age range and not acclimated to the heat. Sorry Mom!) By the time we pulled ourselves away from our perch out on the rocks and made our way around the mountain trail, the sun was already scorching hot!

mixing the dough

Tuesday we focused on the culinary scene with a private cooking demonstration at Marie Claire’s house. We learned how to make makala, sweet dough rolled into small balls and fried in peanut oil. The final product is the African version of a donut hole and very yummy. The process involved first hopping on a crowded green bus and going to the open-air market to buy flour, baking soda, yeast, sugar, and salt (which happened to be right next to the stalls selling all sorts of animal parts covered in flies). We bought a whole lot of flour and as Marie Claire bartered the price down and the vender added more and more flour to the sack and I just stood there wondering how exactly we were supposed to get all our goods home. I shouldn’t have worried. When Marie Claire was finally satisfied with the price and the amount of flour she scooped up the huge sack of flour and balanced it gracefully on her head and weaving her way back through the crowded market like there was nothing to it. Well of course… why hadn’t I thought of that?! At Marie Claire’s house we not only learned how to make makala, we also learned the art of making a cooking fire. Marie Claire’s daughters couldn’t stop laughing when they realized how uneducated we all were on African cooking and fire making!

Caitlin ready to make some makala

Wednesday morning we went to the Central African Republic Museum to learn all about the country’s history and culture. Yes, believe it or not, Bangui does have a museum. If anyone who knew anything at all about proper museum preservation and maintenance wandered into this place they’d probably have a huge heart attack but my mom and I overlooked all this and enjoyed our personal guided tour. It’s not a very large museum but it was interesting none the less and our tour was the extended version due to the fact that the information had to be translated from French into Sango for me and then I had to translate into English for my mom. We were just trying to get our money’s worth. It was pretty easy translating: “And this over here is a document the first president signed… and here is a gorilla someone shot and stuffed 50 years ago… and these are musical instruments Africans use for ceremonies…” Going through the museum reminded me of how culturally rich Central Africa is and still is. The things in the museum are things like you’d see in an American museum covering ancient civilizations or National Geographic like aboriginal cultures but here in Africa it seems strange that these things are in a museum because all you have to do is walk outside and go a little out of town and these things are a part of modern every day life.

Our last activity was a tour of the Mocaf factory. Mocaf is the company that produces all Central African beverages including Castel beer and an array of sodas. Factory tours are not a norm here but my friend Sophie (the US ambassador’s daughter) knows one of the French managers so we pulled some strings and got a private tour (too bad the tour was all in French). The factory happens to be the only factory in the whole country and it’s not large, only around 150 workers total. That should tell you something about the shape of this country’s economy.

Between all these activities, our trips to the pool, meals in the air conditioned Grand Café and fancy French restaurants with live music, I feel like we pretty much nailed the whole Bangui tourist thing. Mission accomplished.

Visitors

I am sitting in a white cement walled office, the fan whirring over my head, one dim tungsten light making funny shadows on the walls, African material hanging in the windows blocking out “the real Africa,” the heat still close to unbearable even though it’s already pitch black outside. Caitlin’s on facebook, Matt is in the corner probably looking up world news online, and my mom is sitting in a chair next to me journaling. I’m attempting to send photos of cute PHC kids to Barb and Brenda in America via email, which means a lot of sitting and waiting because I think our internet was designed to force you to learn patience. Multitasking and writing a blog while I wait for emails to send seems like a good use of my time but for some reason I’m not feeling super inspired sitting here sweating in a hot office.

Do you ever feel like you have so much to say that you don’t even know where to start so you just don’t even try? Sometimes I have trouble deciding what to blog about because there’s not a whole lot going on but recently there’s been so much happening I don’t even know where to begin.

me and my mom at Boali Falls

Hey wait… did I mention my mom is sitting in the same room as me? …in Africa!!! Yep my mom is pretty cool and came all the way to the middle of Africa by herself just to see me! If that doesn’t make someone feel special I don’t know what would.

Actually, this past week has been very full of visitors. A team of awesome church leaders from Lititz, PA and Delaware, OH came to visit their Hand-in-Hand orphan schools. The way the Hand-in-Hand program works is that one church in the States partners with a rural church in the Central Africa Republic making it financially possible for the church here to host a school for the orphans of their community. The school provides orphans with a basic education, food, and also helps meet the kids’ spiritual needs and give them hope for a future.

Billie with a teacher

Africa seems like a long ways to come for one week just to visit a school but it’s worth it because of the huge impact it has on both the people coming and the churches here. Having the supporting church send people to come and encourage their partner church in the Central African Republic makes churches and orphans here feel so honored and gives them a sense of value and worth. It’s one thing to simply send money, it’s a whole different thing to be committed to praying and encouraging and truly partnering with people in Africa to the point where you will travel half way across the world just to meet these people and spend time with them. All the people the team visited here were so encouraged to know that the partnering churches in America truly care enough about them to come all the way to Africa just to see them and the work God is doing among them. There’s a huge difference between words and actions and when it comes to giving people hope and a sense of worth it takes more than simply sending a check. Just like it means a lot to me that my mom would come all this way to see me and encourage me in my work and just like it speaks volumes of how much she loves me, so it is with the Hand-in-Hand partnership.

doing my job at Bodali. I had to make a list of all the kids in class and then take individual photos

Me and John- an Africa coworker

kids singing for their visitors

recess at a hand-in-hand school

we went to see hippos but they were on holiday

mom taught sewing at the PHC center this week

Mom with some sewing class kids. They love her!

So there's a little taste of what's up in the CAR this week. I need to get out of this office and spend time with my mom now!!!

Sometimes Life isn’t all Beautiful

Blessed are the orphans? Blessed are the people mistreated and misrepresented by oppressive and corrupt governments? Blessed are the poverty stricken people that live in crammed neighborhoods full of tiny mud brick houses along dusty pothole covered roads? Yeah, I guess. According to Matthew 5:2-12 (The Beatitudes) a lot of Africans are top candidates for being blessed.

I’d like to think that the world is pretty much good and beautiful and that everyone gets along and bad things rarely happen. I’d like to think that everyone has the opportunity to live a good full life filled with happiness and joy. I wish I could believe it’s true.

If you’ve read anything about Africa in the news lately (or tried living in Africa) you quickly realize the world is full of corrupt governments, poverty, sickness, death, sadness, restlessness, rebels, and generally not good things and that there are a lot of people who live in awful circumstances. I generally like to focus on the positive but I’ve been thinking a lot about the hard realities of life for Central Africans. (I also usually like to keep my blog entries short so I apologize but this blog is going to be breaking more that one of my rules of blogging).

Why have I been thinking about this? And why did I mention the Beatitudes? I’ll get back to that but first let me introduce you to a few people in my life right now and I think maybe you’ll understand.

Petula is one of my technical training sewing class friends. She’s a beautiful 15-year-old Central African girl who always wears jeans and perfume, is very good at knitting, and who seems to be a little hard around the edges. Petula has been a huge help to me as I’ve attempted to learn how to knit and I’ve made an extra effort to get to know her. Both of Petula’s parents have died so she lives with an older brother. He never went to high school so he earns a living for the family driving taxis. Petula tried high school but for some reason quite so now she’s in the PHC technical training. Petula’s story makes me sad but the saddest part is that it is the story of so many young Central Africans. There are so many kids here that have lost their parents, are being raised by siblings, and who don’t have a whole lot of options for their future. What encourages me about Petula is that she at least has PHC and the people there to provide her with love, role models, and hope for a future. There are so many orphans without this.

Marie Claire is my Sango language instructor and my African mother. I have spent a lot of time with this woman struggling through Sango lessons, exploring the city, laughing, crying, and chatting in Sango. Marie Claire can speak Sango, English, French, her village language, and a little bit of Spanish. She has a degree from Bible school (she was the top of her class but she didn’t receive any awards because she’s a girl) and has a passion for teaching and counseling women. She is very intelligent and wise. I look up to her a lot. I went over to her house for lunch last week. It was strange. The normally bubbly Marie Claire seemed very worn out and rightfully so. Women here work hard. She didn’t eat with us because that’s not the custom in Africa. She prepared our food and served us while we just sat there and ate good African food.

Marie Claire and her family (which includes nieces and nephews that are orphans) recently moved to Bangui to look for work. Her husband doesn’t have a job right now so pretty much their income is the money Marie Claire makes teaching Sango to Caitlin, Matt, and me. Her youngest daughter, little Gigi, is an adorable 5-year-old with downs syndrome and she is quite a handful. Another one of her daughters, Leticia, has severe burns from during the war a few years ago. Marie Claire has seen pain and experienced more heartache than I can imagine. Her mom and dad separated when she was a baby. Her mom married another man who beat her to death (literally) leaving Marie Claire an orphan. Marie Claire told me the other day how much she appreciates having a husband who loves God and treats her well. Everyday Marie Claire takes care of her family preparing food for them over a fire, washing their clothes with water pulled up from a well, and making money for her family by teaching Sango. This is her life and she’s grateful for it but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Again, Marie Claire’s story is not unique.

Odette comes to my house every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday morning to sell fruit and vegetables. Her son, Raymond, is one of my all-time favorite PHC kids and the smallest 13-year-old high schooler I have ever met. He watches out for me like a brother, always helps me catch the right bus, makes sure I greet the right people, and teaches me all sorts of useful and random things. Odette told me because Raymond is like a brother to me she is my mother. (I’ve been pretty successful at finding African mothers!) I don’t know much about Odette because our chats are never long. I was shocked when I first found out that she is a widow and a grandmother because she looks so young. I was really sad when Ginger told me she has AIDS and a few of her children have already died from it. I’m praying that Raymond doesn’t have AIDS. You know how some people say that people with AIDS have it because of the choices they’ve made? For many people that couldn’t be farther from the truth!

It fascinates me how some people get to live awesome lives full of happiness, prosperity, and “good luck,” while other peoples’ lives seem just the opposite. My dad always tells me life is what you make it and it’s your choice whether you’re happy or not. That’s true, but there are lots of things we have absolutely no control over and no choice in. Some people have great lives and some people struggle. I wish it weren’t this way. It doesn’t seem fair.

I hate that there’s so much imbalance, tension, sadness, heartache, pain, corruption, and violence. It all leads me to the conclusion that there must be something so wrong with this once perfect world that God created and there just has to be something better out there. And there is. The world is definitely not as it should be and even the best of lives is far from gleaming and perfect. Life could be so much more but this is a fallen world. Fallen but not without hope.

There will come a day when God will set things right. There is something so much better coming that it’s hard for us to even imagine it! When I see all the sadness here it makes me long for heaven. And I think this is why Jesus says in the Beatitudes that the oppressed and sad are blessed: they live each day with a hope for something better. There’s a longing in their hearts for a day when things will be set right and God will not disappoint that longing. He will bring joy, gladness, justice, peace, and everything that is truly good. In all this I’ve been convicted of the urgent need to live with the knowledge that God is stronger and his goodness is far better than anything that we call “good” in this world. The things of this world will disappoint. God won’t. The oppressed and poor are blessed because their hearts long for what is truly good and satisfying. Their hearts long for heaven. They know better than anyone that all is not right and beautiful and they live with a real hope that God will one day turn things right again. I pray that I learn how to live each day in light of that hope.

Yesterday the sewing class had a special devotional time. During this time a lot of the students stood up and shared, with tears streaming down their faces, the struggles and problems they were facing. It broke my heart listening to all that these kids have been through and are going through and knowing that there’s very little I can do or say to make a difference in their pain. The sewing class instructor read these verses from Psalm 34 to encourage the orphans and I think it’s a good quote to end on:

“When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the Lord delivers him out of them all.”