top twelve

Of course it’s when all sorts of interesting things are happening that I don’t have time to update my blog. The past couple weeks have been very full so I’ll just give you the highlights. Here are the top twelve things from the past dozen days:

1.    Finishing part one of the Christmas project. With a little help from some PHC high school boys, we managed to get all the Christmas bags packed and pretty much all the photos taken before Barb, Christy, and Brenda left on Thursday.

2.    Being a guest speaker on the Radio. Last week Barb, Caitlin and I were interviewed for a “True Love Waits” program on the radio. It was cool! (Now I can say I’ve been in North American newspapers, I’ve been on South American television, and I’ve been on Central African radio!)

All set up to go on the air

American girls eating African fish at a French restaurant

3.    Eating out at a French restaurant. I tried crème brûlée for the first time and it was as good as it sounds.

4.    Figuring out the bus system. Now that Barb is gone, Caitlin and I get to venture out into the world on our own! We have figured out how to ride the busses and catch taxis. The kids at the PHC center like to help us out.

Paterne peeking out of his classroom

Me and Paterne

5.    Picking out a sponsor child for Kristine and Sean. Telling Paterne, a spunky little 10-year-old, that my sister and her husband were going to be his sponsors and giving him their picture was one of the best things I’ve done since coming to Africa. Paterne has been asking for a sponsor and it made him SO happy to have a sponsor!! Now every time he sees me he gets the biggest smile! (I like Paterne because his favorite thing to do is play soccer. We kind of got into trouble for playing soccer in my office and being too loud. Oops!)

6.    Decorating for Christmas. Now that I’ve got Christmas lights strung around my living room and a tiny little tree my house is all ready for Christmas.

7.    Going to a concert at the Alliance Française. There were a couple African choirs performing Christmas songs in the outdoor theater palm trees wrapped in Christmas lights, and if that wasn’t enough to put me in the mood for Christmas, Santa showed up too!!!

8.    Making friendship bracelets with Nicole. She is the 16-year-old daughter of one of the Central African pastors here. A while ago she asked me if she could come over and have me teach her how to make friendship bracelets because she liked the one I was wearing. So she came over and we had a good time hanging out and chatting in Sango.

9.    Watching a French movie at Brigitte’s house. Brigitte is a German woman who works for UNICEF. She invited Caitlin and me over to her house to hang out with her and a co-worker, watch a movie and eat dinner. Even though I don’t know much French it was still fun!

the Bangui sign

10.  Hiking up the mountain to the Bangui sign with Wilfried, Jeff Gill and Mark Simms. We left home at 5:30am yesterday and hiked for about two hours total. There’s a beautiful view of the city from the mountain! We had a big breakfast at Wilfried's house when we got back.

the group fearless hikers (minus Jeff who was taking the picture)

11.  Making chocolate chip cookies! I decided that in honor of Tim Hock’s birthday on Sunday I would make him cookies with American chocolate chips and brown sugar. It reminded me of home and made me so happy!

12.  Hanging out with PHC kids... always a highlight!

Hanging out with my little friends!

PHC Christmas Project

Christy packing

Only 20 days until Christmas and here in the Central African Republic we are busily preparing!!! Christy and Brenda, two PHC volunteers, arrived in Bangui Wednesday night and we have been hard at work on the PHC Christmas project ever since (with the exception of a few trips to the pool and a couple breaks to eat Rosalie's homemade ice cream). It seems a little strange packing gifts and listening to Christmas music when it’s 95 degrees outside. 

boxes full of sardines

There are two parts to our Christmas project. The first part involves packing the Christmas gifts that we will give out to all the orphans in the PHC program the last day of school before Christmas break. Each drawstring bag has a notebook, a big crayon, a bracelet, a little ball, sardines, rice, sugar, and coffee in it.

all the goods

In this culture when you give someone a gift it is usually shared with the whole family. The idea in giving the children food is that they will be able to have a Christmas meal with their family. Many of these kids’ families don’t have much food so it will be very exciting for these kids to be able to take something home for their families that they can all benefit from and enjoy.

Brenda behind the camera

hard at work

The second part of the Christmas project is having each orphan color a Christmas card and get their picture taken to send to their sponsor. Brenda and I are in charge of the photo taking part of the project. It gets a little hectic when you’re working with hundreds of kids who aren’t good at standing in lines but it’s fun making them smile!

coloring her Christmas card

a proud little girl with her picture of Mary and Jesus

dressed for Christmas!

We have three days to go and we’re over halfway done with packing the 1,100 bags and we only have about 250 more individual photos to take. I can’t wait to actually give out the gifts in a few weeks!

‘tis the season for celebrations!

Nzoni Matanga! Bon Fet! Happy Holidays!

Today is Independence Day here in the Central African Republic. It’s one of the biggest holidays here and this year is especially big because they are celebrating 50 years of independence from France. They have been getting the city ready for this holiday for weeks now! There has been a lot of painting and cleaning and flag hanging happening all over Bangui and I must say the city is looking pretty good!

Caitlin and me with our German escorts Wilfried and Berno

Wilfried and Berno took Caitlin and me to the huge Independence Day parade this morning. We didn’t stay for the whole thing. It is probably still going on. For some reason Africans love to march! We stayed long enough to watch all the military march by. There were lots of big strong men with big scary looking guns!

Tim teaching me how to carve a turkey

Last week's holiday was Thanksgiving and I got to have two American Thanksgivings: one with the missionaries here and one at the US ambassador’s house. Both were good! We even had someone bring us turkeys from the US for our missionary Thanksgiving!

Me and Ginger enjoying our food!

our "fancy" thanksgiving at the ambassador's

The next holiday is Christmas. Tonight there is a team of two ladies flying in to help us get ready for the PHC Christmas project. We will be packing 1,100 Christmas bags full of gifts to give out to the orphans in our program on their last day of school before the Christmas holidays! It’s going to be a busy week!

Fulani

This week has been really interesting. Dr. Mike Taylor and Ryan Bowell from the GBIM home office are out for a visit as well as Rick, a dentist from Michigan. Caitlin and I have had the privilege of going along with them a few evenings to visit and eat with prominent African men associated with the mission and their families. It is so inspiring watching how these people live and hearing their stories.

Fulani people are very distinguished

What has been most interesting to me has been learning about the Fulani people. On Friday Dr. Dibona, an African doctor we spent the evening with, took us to visit a Fulani village on the outskirts of Bangui. The Fulani are a Muslim ethnic group who are nomadic cattle herders. They are one of the world’s most unreached people groups and there are only a handful or less of Fulani Christians in this country. At dinner tonight we met Yaya, a Fulani convert to Christianity who shared a little bit with us about how he came to Christ and the struggles and persecution that came with that decision.

The Fulani are a very private community and it was a big honor to sit and eat with their chief or "Baba", one of the most powerful Muslim men of the tribe. After eating our sweet pasta and hot sweet milk (which Fulani children brought to us on trays balanced on their heads), the chief showed us around the village and let us take pictures. I felt like I was in the middle of a National Geographic photo shoot.

the whole group with our Fulani hosts

My knowledge of the Fulani people is still very limited so I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

the "Baba" of the village with some of his family

all these Fulani kids sang a special song for us. It was really cool!

kids with their writing tablets from Koran class

they all wanted their picture taken with me 

the orange on this girls fingers and face is from henna

showing off the Arabic writing on his tablet

they learn French in their regular village school

a young Fulani boy

Camping trip

What is the difference between camping out in the middle of nowhere in North America and camping out in the middle of nowhere in Africa? The number of people in the middle of nowhere!

heading out of town in our Toyota!

Get out of our way camel!

On Monday, Ginger and Barb (two missionaries I’m interning with) took me, Caitlin, and a team of six visiting sponsors “up country” on an overnight camping trip to visit a Hand-in-Hand orphan school. The Hand-in-Hand orphan schools are the rural schools run by village churches for the orphans in and around their village. Once you are outside of Bangui it really does feel like you are in the middle of nowhere. The villages seem so tiny but as soon as you step out of the car every kid in the whole village seems to flock to you and the village doesn’t seem so small then! Everyone has to shake your hand and all the little kids yell “boundjou, boundjou!” which sounds like the French word for hello but it really is the Sango word for “white person.” The visiting Americans were all saying “Bonjour!” back to the kids and waving very enthusiastically. Those of us who knew what they were actually saying were all thinking, “Yep, we’re white and please stop yelling that or else more people might come out to gawk at the silly looking white people who drove into your village waving and smiling like they’re in a parade.”

a little girl peeking in the church window

We didn’t set up camp outside because of all the onlookers. Instead, we set up camp inside the Bosemebele church building. There were still little kids peeking in through every window and doorway so we hired a guard to do crowd control.

the girls' tent all set up!

I love camping!

Barb enjoying African food

The people of the church at Bosembele are so hospitable! Pastor Dole’s wife made us a traditional African dinner of gozo, rolls, rice, and some meat in a red sauce. It was actually pretty good but I was glad we’d brought along ramon noodles. After a lovely dinner eaten by the light of our flashlights, we all ventured outside to sit around the campfire listening to African campfire stories about hunting for snakes and possessed man-eating hippos. Nothing like a few good scary stories right before laying down to sleep in the middle of the African bush!

It turns out that it was a very good thing we camped inside the church because halfway through the night it started pouring rain! It was raining so hard that water was dripping in through the tin roof and leaking into our tent. The rain was nice, though, because it cooled everything off and covered up all the squeaking sounds of the bats. The bad part about the rain was that the “outhouse” was very muddy the next morning. I was very proud of myself for not slipping and falling into the hole.

At the orphan school the sponsors gave out beanies babies, flip flops, and tennis balls and man were those kids excited! Caitlin and I had work to do taking individual pictures of each kid. This job is fun but it makes things tricky when the whole village is watching and the little kid getting his or her picture taken is really nervous. It is also an added challenge making sure you don’t get random kids going to the bathroom in the tall grass in the background of your photo.

happy kids playing with their new toys

I know this is making you all want to go camping in Africa now! It really is fun. 

We also got to stop by the falls at Boali again. All sorts of little boys like to hang out around the falls so that when tourists come they can be their guides and make some money. A little 11 year old boy named Samson decided that he was going to follow me around the whole entire time we were there. We went exploring all around the falls since it wasn't raining this time. I think this is one of my favorite places to visit!

crossing the bridge above the falls

hanging out with my African "body guards". Samson is on the right.

Overall it was a successful trip. Ginger managed to only kill two chickens on the drive home and we all made it back to the mission station safely. And let me tell you... even though I love camping, the warm shower, dry clothes, and homemade pizza when we got back couldn't have made me more happy!

A little glimpse of heaven

Since coming to Africa I have attended a church service preached in English translated into Sango, a completely Sango service, a service preached by a German man (which was mostly in English and a little bit in German), and this morning I went to a French service. 

Even though it's a bit annoying not being able to understand what is being said, seeing people praising God in other languages is such a neat reminder that the God I worship is God of the whole world and worthy of all the praise and adoration the world has to offer! I can't imagine what heaven will be like!

I took a quick video in church this morning. I tried to upload it on here but it was taking too long so maybe I'll try again later. 

Expectations and Extremes

Before I left for my internship my dad told me that living in the middle of Africa would be like living on a huge beach without the ocean: hot, dry, sunny, and sandy. (Being a beach lover who had the option of going to grad school in Hawaii, this was supposed to make me feel better about choosing to live far away from the ocean in the very middle of a “hot and dry” continent). Well Dad, as it turns out there is way more water here than there is beach. You were right about the heat, though.

Now that I’ve been in Africa 2 ½ weeks people are asking what I think of it. It’s interesting to me how perceptions and expectations are so often different from reality.

class

one of the Bosembelli schools

On Thursday I got to go “up country” to the village of Bosembelli to photograph some kids at a couple Hand-in-Hand schools. These are rural schools for orphans that are run by the Grace Brethren Church in the village and are more what you’d expect an African school to look like. The orphan care center in the city is very different. Besides working, I also got to be a tourist and see the waterfall at Boali. It was beautiful and very wet.

The falls at Boali

Me and Caitlin very wet from the rain and spray of the waterfall

looking down on some lower falls

A lot of people asked me to come home with pictures of elephants, giraffes, monkeys, lions, and gorillas. Believe it or not, there’s not much wildlife here. All the animals in and around Bangui have been eaten. But I couldn’t let you all down so I found some real live monkeys to take a picture with!

me and a monkey!

there are at least two monkeys in CAR that haven't been eaten yet!

 The Central African Republic is a country of extremes. For example, it’s been so wet recently because it’s the rainy season but I’m told that come springtime when it’s hot and humid we’ll be wishing for rain like this and rain won’t come for months. The scenery is full of extremes as well. In the past few days I have been in the colorfully cluttered city, driven through the suburbs full of dirty red brick houses built right on top of each other, and out to sparsely populated villages.

There are extremes in people too. Friday morning I was hanging out with orphans and widows (who aren't very respected in this culture) and Friday night I was attending a classy party at the US ambassador’s house surrounded by wealth and prestige. It certainly is an interesting country and I would have to say my experiences here so far have been different than I expected them to be. I'm still processing what I think of it all.

p.s. the US ambassador and his wife are super nice! They have a grand piano (probably the only one in the country) and they told me I can come over to their house and play it whenever I want to! This made me so happy!!! I certainly didn’t expect to find any pianos in Bangui, let alone a beautiful grand piano that I can play whenever I want to! Things being different than you expect can be a very good thing!