Red Tables + Jewelry Making + African Orphans

It’s an interesting combination. Here’s another interesting combination: fair + trade. The motivation behind the jewelry making + African orphans is to begin a micro enterprise sort of thing with a few of the students at Project Hope and Charité so that they can learn a skill and generate some income. The words fair + trade have a couple definitions, “trade carried on legally” or “trade in which fair prices are paid to producers in developing countries.” I can’t vouch for the first one being true but the second definition is the goal of this whole operation.

I have been the middleman between my African co-worker Stephane and the Fair Trade Consultant Team (that’s what I’m calling them) in the States. It’s been an interesting process. After weeks of international skype meetings + emails + trips to the market, today was the day that things finally got rolling. The red tables are where it's all happening.

Here are some pictures from the first training day with the kids and one last interesting combination for you: banana leaves + glue + gloss + fishing line.

Stephane doing some demonstrating

cutting the banana leaf into strips

rolling up a banana leaf to make a bead

applying the glue and gloss

stringing the beads

coming soon to a fair trade store near you!

How to evaluate a Taxi

I don’t have a car in Bangui. I don’t mind. The process of getting from one place to another is more interesting when you don’t have a car. I ride around in taxis a lot since it’s a 10-kilometer distance to get to the orphan center.

The past few weeks I’ve gone “under cover” interviewing taxi drivers and critiquing their taxis trying to find a good reliable ride to work.

What are the criteria for a “good” taxi? This can be tricky. My taxi evaluation checklist changes depending on the day and the type of experience I want. However, there are a few basic things you should know to look for when evaluating a taxi.

Inspecting the vehicle:

1. Does the Taxi have four wheels? If a taxi has four wheels it’s in business. For a lot of people the evaluation ends here… I’m a bit more demanding.
2. Can you get in and out of the car? It’s usually a bad sign when you have to reach through the window to open up the taxi door from the inside. However, it’s even worse when you can’t get out and have to reach out the window to open the door. To avoid potentially getting trapped in a taxi with a taxi driver you don’t know (and to avoid the embarrassment of pulling of the handle to a door that won’t open from the outside) I recommend always reaching through the window and opening the door from the inside upon entering a taxi.
3. Can you see out the windshield? Ideally the windshield should be free of cracks but that is very idealistic. I’m ok with settling for a taxi with a windshield you can see out of and doesn’t look like it will break in a million pieces the next time the wind blows.
4. Does the taxi function properly? Meaning, does the car sound “healthy” or are there lots of crazy noises coming from all over the car making it seem like the car may break in half or the engine blow up at any moment? Pay attention, some taxi drivers are quite clever and try to cover up the “unhealthy” car noises with loud music. Don’t let yourself be fooled!

Interviewing the driver:

1. You can tell a lot about a taxi driver by what’s painted on his car and pasted to the windows. Paying attention to these things will give you a good preliminary assessment of the driver. For example, if there’s a Bible verse on the bumper you know he is at least a little bit religious; enough to think that a Bible verse could protect his car. If, however, there are words like sexy, hott baby, or cutie sprawled across the back window you can assume the diver will tend to be a bit egocentric. Other things you might see once inside the car include, but are not limited to: McDonalds happy meal toys, images of Miley Cyrus and Chris Brown, and Chinese good luck charms… interpret accordingly.
2. Ask questions about anything and everything. If you are going to be putting your life in the hands of a chauffeur, you have the right to know everything about him. These questions may lead to in-depth conversations about family, politics, or culture and may even lead to photo albums. If, during this stage of the interview process, the driver appears particularly distracted from the task at hand (getting you safely from point A to point B) they have failed.
3. If the taxi driver asks you to marry him at any point during the trip cross him off your list immediately. (Unless of course you are looking for a Central African husband in which case you will need to move on to a more focused evaluation. I’m sure there are a lot of perks to marrying a taxi driver including having a personal chauffeur and a husband who earns money.)
4. Quiet taxi drivers who don’t like to talk much can be good. However, before filing his phone number with your list of reliable taxi drivers be sure you can understand him when he does talk. Calling a taxi driver you can’t communicate effectively with is more frustration than it’s worth and rarely works out.
5. The last part of the interview is testing the taxi driver’s integrity. This happens when you pay them. I’ve found it is best just to give them the going rate. If they demand more do as you please but cross them off the list. No one likes a taxi driver who tries to overcharge.

Two taxi drivers so far have successfully made it through my evaluations. One, a spunky driver named Africain, made it past the interview and vehicle inspection (there were no cracks at all on his windshield!) but failed in the follow-up after he tried calling me Monday at 6:30am. Taxi drivers who interfere with your sleep are not acceptable. That leaves one. He seems quite promising.

a long blog post without any pictures of cute African kids

7:00am—It’s one of those rare overcast mornings. Ellen is out of town so I’m not going for my typical early morning run (I’m not allowed to go running in Bangui by myself) and PHC is on vacation so I don’t have to go out to the center to work. I turn off my alarm and fall back to sleep.

7:45am—Oops! I jolt awake realizing there are probably already at least two people waiting at my door for me to wake up.

I quickly pull on my below-the-knee length skirt and go unlock the door for Giselle, our house help. A few minutes later Odette is sitting on my porch announcing her arrival, “Amy! Mbi ga awe!” Odette comes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday selling fresh fruits and vegetables. “Mo lango nzoni?” she asks. Did you sleep well? Yep and I’m still half asleep. Thanks for asking.

I eat my breakfast of mango sauce, the African version of apple sauce, along with my daily dose of malaria medication and by 8:30am I’m in the office taking care of emails and odds and ends for work.

9:30am—Isaac, our day guard, comes into the office to inform Caitlin and me that we have visitors. Visitors? Who? My mind is still not in Sango mode. From his explanation all I gather is someone named Tambe, kids from Project Hope and Charité, and someone died. This doesn’t sound good! I quickly check the PHC student master list on my computer trying to figure out which of the over 1000 PHC kids might be coming to visit or possibly be dead. It is mango season after all and there have been a lot of deaths recently due to people falling out of mango trees (but no PHC kids that I’ve heard of).

I go outside to greet the visitor, praying that nobody has died. It’s a PHC girl who has been asking to come over to my house for weeks. In general I try to avoid letting anyone who asks come hang out at my house. That would get really crazy really quickly! The thing about Africans, though, is that they are persistent and don’t like taking no for an answer. “Mbi ga to sala kwa-ti-li ti mo,” the girl with the last name Tambe told me. She came to do my hair. I’m very relieved that no PHC kid had died. Apparently Isaac was trying to tell us our visitor was the daughter of a Grace Brethren pastor who had died and she’s a PHC orphan. I guess I’m not used to people getting introduced by who their dead father was.

9:45am— Despite being slightly annoyed at the interruption in the middle of my work by this persistent little 6^th grader and the cousin she brought along, I quickly finished up my emails and go to get my hair done. I sit in my living room in front of Oulda Tambe for the next hour getting my hair braided up while Giselle mops floors and dusts around us quietly humming African hymns.

11:45am—Oulda is almost done braiding Caitlin’s head now. Giselle is finishing up our laundry. Oulda’s cousin, Ornella, is eating peanuts out of a Scotch whisky bottle and I am sitting here with them with a head full of braids pretending to do work but actually writing a blog that I will upload later when I have internet.

Noon—They’ve finished Caitlin’s head and have now informed us that they don’t have anything to do this afternoon so they’re just going to sit in our house if that’s ok. Um… no it’s really not ok. A few minutes of awkward silence and peanut munching. Caitlin and I have work. How do you politely tell Africans who invited themselves over that they need to leave?

12:18—They finally got the hint. Well not exactly. We tell them we have to go back to work in our office. “A yeke sengue si i gwe na mo ti douti kete na bureau?” No you can’t come with us to sit in the office. You need to go home. We can’t go home. Our house is far away and we have no money they say. How did you get here? They come without asking and won’t leave until they get money for a bus home. Oh and hey… while they’re at it… “I have a ceremony at church on Saturday and I wanted to ask you if you can buy me new clothes. I don’t have any nice clothes to wear,” Oulda informs me. “Pardon, mbi lingbi ti vo fini bongo ti mo ape.” Seriously? No I am not going to buy you new clothes!!! If I bought clothes for every PHC girl who asked me I'd be broke in no time! We pay for their bus ride home.

12:20—I’m sitting in the corner of the finance office that belongs to Caitlin at the moment. It’s closed today. Isaac is back. He informs Caitlin that Gabin is here to talk to her. NO!!! She rolls her eyes. Be sure to tell him he can’t get money today she tells Isaac before he sends Gabin in to “talk.”

12:27—Gabin is leaving the office (with money). Persistent. That’s what these Central Africans are.

12:45—I think I've worked enough for one morning. Giselle is finished with cleaning our house and washing our clothes and dishes. I’m hungry. Maybe I’ll go back home, lock the door, and eat some mango pie. Hopefully nobody else comes to visit because that would mean I’d have to share my mango pie.

love?

A teenage orphan girl recently asked me why my parents love me. My first thought was, “why would she ask that?” It seems like a question with an obvious answer but as I attempted to answer I honestly couldn’t think of a good reason. I think my response was simply because I was their kid and parents love their kids but for some reason that answer seemed inadequate for a girl who doesn’t have parents and is desperately wanting to be loved.

There are a lot of people in my life, including my parents, who really love me. The orphans I work with have picked up on this. They are incessantly complimenting my things and my usual responses are, “Oh, my mom made me this skirt- she’s pretty great.” Or “My friend made this friendship bracelet and gave it to me before I left for Africa so I wouldn’t forget him.” Or “My little sister gave me this for my birthday.” Their typical response: “They must really love you.” If love equals someone giving you stuff then yes, I am very loved.

Sophie wearing a heart necklace she bought herself

Most of the kids at the orphan center don’t have many good examples of love in their lives and you can tell they crave it. They don’t have the example of their parents’ love because their parents (at least one of them) have died. Most of them live with family (a grandma, an older sibling, an aunt or an uncle… someone who has taken them in by necessity) but they are not all treated with love and orphans in this culture are given very little and are always the last to receive anything. The kids in our program are cared for but that doesn’t mean they understand love. One of the best examples of love these kids have is the love their sponsors show them.

I’ve realized there is a simple element to love that many of the PHC orphans struggle to understand and I struggle to explain. There is something about it that doesn’t add up in our minds. Like, for instance, why my parents love me because even though they’re my parents they don’t have to love me. Or why God loves a whole bunch of dirty African orphans and widows (and commands us to do the same). Or how about why someone in America or Europe would choose to love a kid in Africa they’ve never met and show their love by sending money and letters and gifts. Why does anyone choose to love at all? I think the answer that I am struggling with is the fact that LOVE IS A CHOICE.

Merveille wants me to be her mother

My parents and friends don’t have to love me and there is no great reason for them to love me but they have chosen to and they show their love by giving me nice things and taking an interest in my life. There is no reason anyone has to support and show love to an orphan in Africa they’ve never met but there are hundreds of people who decide that they have been given so much and in return they will love someone who might not receive much love otherwise.

There is also no reason at all God should love any particular person or care about what they do but he does. He chooses to love us and he holds nothing back. He shows us his love in lots of ways but his biggest display of love was giving us his son. God didn’t have to send his only son to earth but he chose to because of his love for us. He set the example of what love is (John 3:16) and now we love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). The desire to love and be loved is part of who we are.

Love is a choice. Love is an action. Love gives without expecting anything in return and true love does not go unnoticed.

So, my family and friends and everyone who has shown me so much love, I just want to tell you THANKS! The example of love you have been in my life is having an impact on a lot of kids’ lives here in Africa. And for all you sponsors reading this, thanks for choosing to love the orphans of the Central African Republic. These kids love you back more than you could imagine!

Learning the ways of African women: Cooking Edition

So a yeke legue ni ti awali ti Beafrika. This is the way of the women of Central Africa. 

Marie Claire, my Sango teacher, decided that if Caitlin and I are going to become good African women we not only need to speak the language but we need to learn the ways. Life for Central African women involves cooking. A lot of it! So yesterday we got down to business and spent the afternoon learning how to cook African style.

A pet peeve of mine is cookbooks without pictures. I'm a visual learner and if we're dealing with food, I need to be shown. Good news... African women don't use cookbooks without pictures when they cook. They don't use cookbooks at all! They learn how to make the traditional African food by watching their mothers and grandmothers and older sisters and neighbors cooking. Just my style! So I'm sticking with the African way and you're getting the picture book edition of my cooking lesson.

Step 1: Go to the market and barter for your ingredients. (unfortunately I can't get pictures of this. You'll have to use your imagination. Just think along the lines of crowded, dead meat smell, hot, loud, and colorful.)

step 2: prepare the nyama (meat)

cleaning the bagara (beef)

step 3: cut up the onions

our pot full of meat and onions! (yes I did use a big knife and no I didn't cut myself!)

Step 4: add a little oil and water and put the pot on the fire.

the outdoor kitchen

veke (okra)

Step 5: cut up the veke which will eventually get added to the meat and onion sauce along with some garlic, salt, and magic cubes. (yes, that's really they're called... magic cubes... or maybe it's not. It might be Magi. I can't remember. I think they are just bouillon cubes... but with a little extra magic) 

an enthralled onlooker

step 6: pound the gozo (manioc root) into flour

the cooks checking on the meat sauce

step 7: mix the gozo with boiling water

Marie Claire makes this look easy. It's not.

Gozo is made from the dried root of manioc plants and is rather gooey and bland. It's usually eaten with some sort of sauce and is staple food for the Central Africans. They love it!!!

Our fresh cooked gozo

the final product ready to be eaten!

There you have it! Seven simple steps to a tasty African meal. 

Living it up in Bangui: my random weekend

Bus ride from the orphan center to the market at Kilometer Cinq: 125 cfa

Knock-off Haviana sandals: 800 cfa

Lunch for 5 from a roadside African restaurant: 2,600 cfa

A couple dozen mangoes: 600 cfa

An hour of tennis lessons at the Bangui tennis club: 3,000 cfa

Orange sodas and fresh rolls at Café Phoenicia: 1,700 cfa

Boat ride on the Oubangui River: 2,000 cfa

Dinner at the restaurant on the rocks: 5,000 cfa

Hot chocolate from the Grand Café: 1,250 cfa

The experience of it all: priceless

Maybe I splurged a bit this past weekend but it was worth it. There are some things you just can’t put a price on. More than once I just couldn't help but laugh at my African life.

Here are a few snapshots of my random African weekend:

Christelle, Lisa, and Mylene

1) Me crammed in the back of a little bus with three high school PHC girls, a goat, a dead monkey, and a whole bunch of Africans all chatting it up in Sango as we head to the market to go shoe shopping.

2) Getting my hair braided by Lisa, Christelle, and Mylene. The process was a bit painful and I looked a little ghetto when they were done but whatever.

3) Overheating in the humid 100-degree weather. I was comfortably settled on my porch reading a book on Saturday when all of a sudden my phone started making strange ringing noises. I flipped open my phone and read the warning message: Calls or applications should be shut down to cool the phone. You know it’s really hot when even your phone starts freaking out about the heat!

Blanche in front of a random memorial

4) Playing tennis with Blanche. We should probably stick with soccer because it was painfully obvious we’re not tennis players. The workers at the tennis club laughed at us a lot but Blanche and I had fun and, thanks to all the coaching, by the end of our hour of tennis we could actually keep the ball in the court.

me and Blanche: Tennis experts!

5) Waking up freezing to a thunderstorm Sunday morning. It’s supposedly dry season but it rained for hours straight and I had to pull out my sweatshirt. I was supposed to play in a sports ministry soccer game at the university for True Love Waits but that didn’t happen and Heidi said it was raining too hard to go to church so I read, watched Psych, and ate pancakes instead.

6) Bartering for mangoes. It’s mango season and there are people darting all around town with long sticks picking mangoes off the trees and then selling them. There’s a row of mango vendors a couple blocks from my house. Why they all decided to sell mangoes at the exact same place I’m not sure but it made bartering a whole lot more fun!

7) Going for a walk with Matt and Caitlin that turned into a trip down the river. We met a random guy by the river who told us he had a dugout canoe and could take us for a ride at the great price of 2,500 cfa each. I had nothing better to do so I bartered him into taking all three of us out on the river for a total of 2,000 cfa.

out on the river!

Matt, Caitlin, and me

8) Eating out at the Ubangui Hotel restaurant on the rocks. Shortly after ordering we watched an African head out to the market and then come back after a while with the ingredients for the food we’d ordered. Nothing like fresh! Good thing there was live music and a beautiful view of the river to keep us entertained while we waited.

The Ubangui River

This is Africa.

Nothing happens fast and things rarely happen as planned. It’s random. One day you think you might die from overheating, the next day you’re wearing sweatshirts and making campfires in your driveway to keep warm. You barter for a pile of mangoes from a bunch of goofy young boys and then turn around and spend twice that amount on one cup of hot chocolate at the café down the road.

I’ve decided it’s best not to overanalyze life in Africa… 

Love it. Hate it. It’s easiest just to embrace it.

(p.s. 460 cfa = $1.00 us)

Bonne Fete de President!

Today François Bozizé was re-inaugurated into the Central African presidency… a great excuse for a national holiday (which was declared yesterday) and much celebrating. There wasn’t school today and around noon when I wandered down the normally lively streets to a café for lunch I could hear the inauguration speech blasting out of radios and televisions. Our guard, along with half the city, was decked out in the don’t-shoot-me orange Bozize campaign garb for the special occasion.

our guard listening to Bozize on his radio

There really has been a lot of hype and orange lately. I don’t actually know why people get so excited about Bozize. It’s probably his good looks and charisma. Or maybe the people were just excited the elections are officially over and they don’t have to worry about them anymore. The elections were originally set for April 25, 2010 and they only just got around to it last month.

I realized today I know pretty much nothing about President Bozizé… except that he lead a rebellion in 2003 against the last president and starting a civil war, which ended with him seizing power and becoming president and I’ve also been told that he doesn’t pay his government workers. Great guy. In an attempt to fix my ignorance and figure out why everybody loves Bozize I hopped onto the internet to do some research. I was not disappointed by Wikipedia’s long article outlining his life. It’s basically a list of military attacks, fleeing, him seeking refuge in France after a prison sentence, taking over Central Africa and ultimately becoming president. I still don’t know what he’s done as president. Not much I guess.

Bozize. photo credits to google images

But good news! He’s got plans for his next five-year term. In one of his quotes from the swearing-in ceremony today that I found online Bozize said, "For my second five-year term [or maybe it'll be a six or seven-year term if I can successfully postpone the elections again], my most absolute wish is to consolidate tirelessly the work of national reconstruction undertaken since the leap ahead of 2003." I have no idea what that is supposed to mean but it sounds positive.

What I do know is that after Bozize came to power his rule established a form of peace. After experiencing the terrible events of the civil war (I guess that’s what you’d call it) not very long ago, peace is something the Central Africans do not want to part with. I am praying, for the sake of these people, that this country will truly continue to experience peace and I, along with most everyone else in this country, am praising God that these elections were so peaceful (there’s a reason to celebrate). Happy François Bozizé day!