Ex-CIA Residence?

Well, well. I'm told the house I live in was the abode of Larry Devlin, the ex-CIA Chief of Station at the time of independence. You may have heard of his memoirs, just published, titled "Chief of Station, Congo," where he says he did NOT kill the charismatic independence leader, Patrice Lumumba, or have him killed, for being too close to the Soviets. He did tell the nice Army Colonel, Joseph Mobutu, that the U.S. would support him should he take over in a coup. But that's really quite different from having someone killed. Right? So, I live in his house. I had assumed it was of much more recent construction, but I'm told a lot of work has been done on it recently. I hope they got rid of the ghosts... I haven't had as much time to write, because I've been helping out at the embassy, working on Special Self-Help (SSH) projects, and those of the Democracy and Human Rights Fund (DHRF). These are 2 to 3 dozen small grassroots projects that the embassy funds directly, in amounts between $500 and $25,000. The SSH/DHRF coordinator is a tale unto herself, a third-generation missionary who speaks local languages as well as English, and prefers local rural life to the big city life of Kinshasa. She's the ideal person for the job, because she can really weed out the people who submit made up projects to get free money. It's a slow learning curve for me: today I spent ALL DAY writing one page! Well, I also had to read, re-read, and re-re-read at least a hundred pages of proposals and reports to extract the material for my one page. I was doing the write-up on one of the DHRF projects, and what I wrote was so great that I know you're just dying to read it, so I'll copy it below (also, the project is really interesting). But, you know what? I think I'll wait until the guy sends me the pictures. I'll finally have some pictures on my blog! Plus, I just realized the text still needs tweaking (aarrgh! That means I'll have spent more than all day writing one measly page. Well, no matter. I'll pick up speed as I learn the trade. I don't get paid anyway). Still, I can't wait to post this story, because this is the kind of good news you never read about in the media. Hm, that reminds me, I promised you the end of the coconut story. Well, on Tuesday (yesterday) I went to see that vendor, and she had coconuts. Green coconuts. Young coconuts. Really, really young coconuts. In fact, they were tiny, about the size of a large avocado. And the water in them was bitter. So that was disappointing. But she said that she was going to try again. And she did have a rather nice-looking breadfruit! But neither she nor the driver, nor my cook when I brought the thing home, know what they call it here. And the cook, André, is waiting for me to show him how to fix it. Meanwhile, André had also found some green coconuts, but his turned out to be very ripe. So HE's going to try again! Feels good to give people goals! But seriously, there is severe malnutrition in this country, and breadfruit is dropping from the trees? What's wrong with this picture?