Gouter-Partage and other stuff going on

Our Gouter-Partage was a success. In all, 112 tickets were sold, more than planned, and some of the goods for sale disappeared really fast.

Picture: French Ambassador, his wife, Sr. Georgette, and Y.T.

I printed about 80 flyers with breadfruit recipes and gave them out. We served breadfruit chips with hummus and guacamole, and coconut water and watermelon juice to drink. It was crowded, but people enjoyed it. The sisters had baked dozens of cakes for the bake sale, and sown lots of bags and dresses. They sold eggs, orange wine (made from fermented orange juice), avocadoes and breadfruit.





Picture: Breadfruit, avocadoes, coconuts and eggs (chicken and quail) for sale.



Sr. Cecilia, who is Japanese, made sushi with a friend from the Embassy of Japan. Sr. Zofia, who is Polish, made pastries.

Sam played, the orphans sang (much better than at any of the rehearsals).

Picture: Sam watches as Sr. Seraphine (from India) leads the children in an a capella song.


We showed slides of the village with the water problem. (Scroll down to see the pictures on the post "The Sisters and the Well"- I finally got them uploaded.)


Lessons learned: have the vending period first - that's where everyone rushed when they arrived. Also, forget the sit-down part, because the tables took too much room, (and were a lot of work to set up!) and people love to mingle, look at the paintings on the walls, go back to the vending tables, etc. And perhaps, set up a tent in the garden for some of the sales.

This is a Nativity by one of the artists, Mulamba. The bluish area is due to the reflection of the flash, which I tried to patch up with Paint.

On Friday, a group of four or five people will bring some food and maybe clothes to La Grace de Dieu. I hope this is the first of many visits. One of the people will be a Marine from our Security Guard detachment. They have a Toys for Tots program every Christmas, and also like to do a construction project, so they'll see if this orphanage suits them for both activities... It certainly needs all the help it can get.

I've been trying to get a security clearance for the Office Management Specialist job at American Embassy Brazzaville, but someone input my SSN wrong so I haven't even left square one of a process of mythical length and complexity.

Meanwhile, I'm doing some translations for the CDC on avian flu and chicken raising in Congo. What I've learned is that in Kinshasa, Lubumbashi and Bukavu, people live with their chickens, especially the local breeds, which are "débrouillard" and "brave" but "malpoli". The chickens are kicked out of the house in the morning, fend for themselves all day, finding their own food and water, occasionally getting into fights, and are allowed in at night - any chicken not locked inside at night "belongs to the thief." Improved imported breeds are tame, passive and sweet, but need special feed . Some people have both local and imported chickens, and in this case, the local chickens are allowed to eat the imported chickens' feed, a sign of "African solidarity."

In Bukavu, people who were escaping from soldiers when the wars started in 1996 had to get rid of their chickens, because you can't hide while carrying a chicken. They're too noisy.

As I write, the war has started again in the east, after months of tense immobility on all military fronts, and intensive traveling, visits, conference calls and cable-writing on the diplomatic front. Let me know if there's any news coverage where you are.

Yesterday at the International Women's Club meeting we had two presentations: one by an Italian photographer, Angelo Turconi, who came to Kinshasa in 1968 as part of his wild-youth project of driving from Italy to Cape Town and back. In Kinshasa he was told he needed a special "mining permit" to travel to Lubumbashi, his next destination. The permit took three weeks to obtain and was good for four weeks... from the date of application! So he tried again, asking for a six-month permit this time. While he was waiting, he explored the hinterland of Kinshasa, taking exceptional photographs. Most expats living here at the time, he says, never left the city. They flitted from formal cocktail to formal ball, talking only about the next social event. He said it was something out of Kipling's India. In 1968. To make a long story short, he was captured by the beauty and friendliness of Congo (outside Kinshasa, he emphasized), for which his passion has evidently not lessened, though now he is retired and lives part of the year in Belgium (he met his wife, a Belgian, while waiting for the "mining" permit).

The second presentation was from a group of Dutch spouses of employees of the Bralima brewery, who got together last year and took a primary school in hand, raised funds at home in the Netherlands, fixed the building, bought school supplies, and realized that the children often came to school hungry, so they now also supply a breakfast for the teachers and children to share. This year they have added two more schools to their project.

Their website is at http://www.enclasse.org/. The photos you see here are pretty typical. In a city of 6 to 7 million inhabitants, half of whom are under age 20, schools should be an absolute priority. But they are in this state of decay and poverty, and many children don't get to go to school at all...