Tomáš

Tomáš was reading my blog the other day and he complained to me that he is not mentioned very much. I told him I would write a special post just for him. So here it is, all about Tomáš. Tomáš is a seminanian from the Czech Republic. As you can see from the picture below from Christmas, he is about 1 foot taller than me. He is also ridiculously skinny. We probably weigh in the same neighborhood despite the foot of height difference. I recently discovered that he is my age. It turns out his birthday was just last week, although he did not bother to tell anyone about it until 2 days after the fact. This was disapointing because he robbed me of an excuse to have cake. We have the exact same sense of humor so I find him to be very funny (except for the not telling us about his birthday joke because I really love cake). In fact, because we so often think of the same joke in a given situation, we have divided jokes into evens and odds- I say even jokes and he says odd jokes. Let’s see, what else is there? He works in the Cyber Cafe all the time, but never talks about it, so I don’t really know what he does all day. He likes to eat three things: potatoes, eggs, and pork. In fact he made potatoes and eggs every time he cooked for himself for the three months prior to Lydia and my’s arrival and still insists on this meal at least once a week. He is very excited to start cooking pork, which will happen as soon as he can find the mythical man that sells what we have been told is “pretty good pork.” The only directions we have to find this mythical man is that he (and his pork) is “la-bas,” which means “there,” but since we don’t know exactly where “there” is, we do not have pork. In truth, Tomáš is not very excited to begin cooking pork, even if we are able to find this mythical man, because he never gets excited about anything. In fact, he claims he has never been excited in his life. Since I've only known the guy for 6 weeks now, I think that basically wraps up all I know about Tomáš. I hope you all (especially you,Tomáš) have enjoyed learning more about Tomáš. 

Road Trip!

This past Sunday I experienced my first Congolese road trip. Sr. Daniela, Lydia, and I went to Ariwara, another town about 30 miles away, to visit the community there and check out the sites of the city. 30 miles might not seem like such a significance distance as to designate a road trip, but this relatively short distance took us over two hours. That is because the roads here in Congo are really special. For those of you who have been to Disney World or Disneyland I can descibe the trip like this: think of the dinasaur ride at the Animal Kingdom where you travel back in time to pick up a dinosaur or the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland- both of these rides take place in a big bouncy jeep-like vehicle. Now strip away the darkness and the dinasaurs and Indiana Jones and make the ride last for 2 hours. That is the trip to Ariwara.

When we arrived, dusty and shaken, we were heartily welcomed by the kind sisters at the Ariwara community and shown around the convent. The sister’s there run a “big” hospital that we toured. The hospital is basic with many people crowed into each ward, but it is the biggest in the region and provides the only health care. My favorite part of the hospital was the maternity ward where there were several brand new adorable babies. After the hospital tour we had a tasy lunch of...goat meat! Mmmm. We also had cake!!

After lunch one of the sisters took us to the Ariwara market. Ariwara is bigger than Aru and the market there is huge...they even have almost real stores. They have all sorts of food, clothes, shoes and many other things. The market was fairly quiet since it was Sunday, but even the quiet Sunday market was much bigger than Aru’s daily market. It was enjoyable to stroll around and see the sights, but Ariwara has a different feel than Aru. Aru is small and friendly whereas Ariwara felt much bigger and more stand-offish. I can only imagine what a Safeway will feel like after 2 years! When we returned from the market the sisters insisted that we eat some more cake before leaving.  Which made me very happy because cake is my favorite food and I don't eat enough of it here.  Then it was time to go home so we climbed back in our Indiana Jones mobile and bounced along for 2 hours.  

The drive back was glorious, the sun was setting over the African savannah and I would swear you could see a lion peeking out of the tall grass waking up from his late afternoon nap. Although Ariwara is only 25 miles away, the landscape transitions from the mixed forest-grassland of Aru to to the desert, so the drive offered a variety of breathtaking panoramas. I enjoyed seeing a bit more of the Congo, but I also fully realized how difficult it is to travel in this country. This is such a shame because it’s incredible beauty could be so much more appreciated if it were accessible.  It was a nice treat to get out of Aru and visit another community, although the strain of travel has me looking forward to spending next Sunday at home! 

Pictures!!

Enjoy a few pictures!!  I would like to add some pictures of the house and surrounding area soon, but I left my camera in Ariwara for the sisters to use and I only have these Christmas pictures saved. 

The Christmas Eve with Lydia, Diggy, Tomas and Sr. Angela

My Community- Tomas, Lydia and Me

Culinary Delights

Okay, here it is. The number one question that has been on everyone’s mind. What do I eat? 

Rice, beans, pasta, eggplant, avocado, potatoes, bread, peanut butter, and eggs.

That’s it. I hope you have enjoyed this post.  


Okay, we also eat pineapple, magoes, and papaya. But really that’s it. The food here is, shall we say, limited. And so is our ability to cook. Our kitchen consists of a 3 burner camping stove on which we are supposed to make food for 3 (and soon to be 6) people using little more than the above ingredients.  
Our conversations for dinner go something like this:
“What should we make for dinner?”
“Hmmm...maybe (insert potatoes, eggplant or eggs)? And maybe some (insert rice, pasta, or beans)” 
“How should we cook it?”
“We could fry it. Or boil it.”
And so we do.

Cooking here is fun. And eating here is boring. Saying that I am tired of the food after 1 month of a 2 year stay would be a bad sign for the rest of my time, so I’m not going to say that I am tired of the food. I will let you draw your own conclusions as to my feelings towards food. But to suffice it to say that the only time I am moderately excited to eat and moderately satisfied after eating is on Sunday mornings when we break out the JIF peanut butter to put on our bread rather than the local natural peanut butter we have every other day for breakfast. As for lunch and dinner, every day we just eat different combinations of the above ingredients. And there are not that many different combinations of the above ingredients that one can make, especially when it all has to be cooked on the stove top with a rather nasty version of cooking oil.  

Looking over this post I realize it has a bit of a negative spin. There are really many other things available to eat, such as floppy carrots (but my feelings towards floppy carrots deserve their own post) green pepper, spinich, spinich’s bitter younger brothers (which I call non-spinich spinch), squishy tomatoes, green onions, cabbage, and...I think that about exhausts the market. On a positive note the avocados here are AMAZING and we have TWO avocado trees in our yard. Meaning that in a few weeks time, I’ll be eating guacamole everyday with every meal. Which is about as exciting as it gets here. 

Life is cruel. Between the time I wrote this and was able to post it a man came by our house and cut all the branches off the avocado trees. So now we have 2 naked avocado tress and no avocados. Sigh.  

Merry Christmas!!

Celebrating holidays in a foreign country is always special.  For example, Thanksgiving is always in adventure in finding the right food and sharing this American holiday with locals.  Christmas is a wonderful holiday to celebrate abroad because each country has it's own special traditions, but the center of the holiday remains the same.  Here in Congo, I had a wonderful experience for my first Christmas.  

First, of course, is the weather.  Even though I spent last Christmas in Guam basking in the 80 degrees heat and humidity, I still am not used to the idea of Christmas being so WARM.  Everything feels different, even the traditional music sounds different (maybe because they sing in Lingala here...).  Another major difference here is the lack of twinkly Christmas lights.  Or any lights at all.  On "store" at the market had some tinsel and a small Christmas tree and the nuns went all out at the convent with Christmas decorations, but other than that, there is very little in the Christmas decoration vein.  But still it is Christmas, and a beautiful one at that.  

Sr. Angela (the VOICA director) and Diggy (a VOICA volunteer at the office in Rome) came to visit us to see how the Congo volunteer site is set up and their visit just happened to coincide with Christmas.  It was actually very nice to have these visitors because it added to the holiday air...and they came laden with gifts from Rome (including nutella!!).  

Christmas Eve started bright and early with me mixing up a tasty batch of Brownies to bring to the sisters for Christmas day.  I had to bake them bright and early so they could be put in the oven at 7:30 am.  Why the early baking hour, you ask?  Well, we don't actually have an oven, so we rely on the kindness of the bakery for our baked goods.  And the best time to bake in an over that is busy with bread all day is before it's busy with bread all day.  And that is at 7:30.  I dropped off the brownies with the baker to be magically baked and went on my merry way.  Everyone went about their business with a jolly air saying "bon fete" left and right.  Everything closed early too so we had the afternoon to cook and prepare for our Christmas Eve feast.  We all (and by we all, I mean practically all of Aru) attended "midnight" mass at 7 pm.  It went on for about 2 hours and included copious singing and dancing.  The altar servers did a jaunty little jig during the gloria and kept of the dancing for most of the service.  At the end of mass, the entire church erupted into a joyful dance hall with people dancing in the aisles.  We danced our way out the doors and over to the convent where there was even more joyful dancing and singing.  Eventually we made our way back to the volunteer house where Lydia, Tomas, Diggy, and Sr. Angela enjoyed our feast (including my family specialty of Grandma noodlies, brought all the way from Denver).  We really went crazy for the feast and made some instant chocolate pudding adorned with the edges of brownies I couldn't get out of the pan in one piece (apparently making brownies in industrial bread ovens requires some finesse).  Since it was a holiday, we also sampled some of the local beer.  As for how the beer tastes, think keystone light, but not as good.  The water, I mean beer, was made up for by the rest of the feast, especially our brownie-pudding, and the good company with which it was enjoyed.  After our feast we followed a more European tradition and opened presents beneath our tiny Christmas tree.  By the time we were finished it was nigh on midnight, by far the latest I have ever stayed up in Congo!!  So we went to bed, but of course we were not expecting Santa to come because we don't have a chimney or cookies (although we did have some floppy carrots for the reindeer).  

Christmas morning dawned bright and early and thoroughly enjoyed sleeping in past 8 (o, goodness, what's wrong with me, I can't believe I'm excited to sleep in past 8!  8!  I used to cry when I had to be up by 8 and now I WISH I could sleep so late every day!!)  Well, anyway, I slept past 8 and then we had a community breakfast of pancakes.  Although, as it turns out, leavening IS an important ingredient for pancakes, so we had crepes.  Which were quite tasty if not quite so fluffy and not quite so good at absorbing our precious Aunt Jemima syrup.

Lydia and I brought a local girl with hydrocephalus to mass at 10 so she could participate in the Christmas festivities.  And as a side note, it is not unusual at all to attend mass twice on Christmas.  In fact, most people who went on Christmas eve went to the 7 am mass as well.  In typical African fashion, we were about 20 minutes to late, but no worries, we didn't even miss the opening prayer.  After mass we headed over to a big party with both the communities of sisters.  The feast included rabbit, fish, potatoes, legitimate American catcup, a number of other vegetables, cake, and of course, some tasty brownies.  After dinner Sr. Annemarie started the stereo up for some dancing.  And when Sr. Annemarie starts the dancing, you better gear up to be there for awhile because she can dance all day and all night long.  After our dancing it was time for Christmas nap.  Then back to the sisters for more eating, more cake, and a little more dancing.  After a strenuous day of sleeping, eating, dancing, sleeping, eating, and dancing I was ready for bed.  

Sharing this Christmas with my new community, both VOICA and the sisters, was really wonderful.  Everyone was filled with joy and celebration- I didn't even attend 7 am mass where I told the dancing was even more exuberant than at the vigil.   It was a day to really enjoy both the communities I feel so blessed to be a part of.  It was difficult to be so far away from home and I missed all the my Christmas traditions with my family, but I also discovered the joy of participating in the traditions of others.  

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!! 

You Will Go to the Source of the Nile and You Will Eat Goat

Sunday we were invited to join the secondary girls’ school end-of-year outing to Uganda. It all came about on Saturday morning when we were told that we could go on the trip to the source of the Nile in nearby Uganda and that we would have goat for lunch. Surely, that was all the information I needed! Which is good because that is literally all the information we were given.

The bus was to leave at 6:15 am, African Standard Time. And so, right on time at 8 am, we were off with 40 school girls to explore the Nile. We made it to the entrance of the national park in just about 4 hours. We were all excited by the sight of monkeys in the tree at the entrance, it seemed a sure sign that there would be more animals to follow inside the park. Lions, hippos, elephants and more!! Oh the excitement was ripe. Then we turned around and left the park. It turns out there is a complicated set of rules that one must follow if one is going to be allowed into this particular national park in Uganda. And we had not properly followed one or more of these stringent regulations. Rumors flew left and right speculating the exact reason behind this trip’s quick demise, but since most were flying around in French, I can’t really say what the reason might have been.

The day was not, however, a total disappointment. The bus took us back to the nearby town where we had a lovely picnic of goat and potatoes overlooking the Nile river. Actually, the goat was quite tasty. It may have even been delicous had there not been several goats bleating for thier lost breathern 10 yards away. But no matter, because there is simply no more pleasant way to spend a Sunday than feasting on goat and potatoes on the edge of one of the grandest rivers in the world.

Teaching Woes

People assume because I am able to speak English I am a qualified English teacher. The truth is far from this. In fact, I have no idea how to teach English. I know this is true because I have now been an English teacher for one week. I have been assigned to teach 5 classes at 3 different levels at 2 schools here in Aru. I teach the first class (which I believe to be somewhere around 6th grade) at the Cannossian run girls’ school, and the 4th (maybe 10th grade) and 6th (12th grade, I think) at the other local school.

My first lesson was with the 1st class on Monday. It should have been easy since this is the first year they have taken English and their level is very basic. And since I am taking over in the middle of the term, the former English teacher even shared his curriculum plan with me. I was supposed to teach the girls how to use this, that, these, and those. So the first thing I did was get out a book for teaching English, incidentally it is for Italian students, so much of the explanation is in Italian, and taught myself how to use this, that, these, and those. Unfortunately, I did not entirely grasp the concept of these tricky words until half way through my first class. First note to self for teaching English: make sure I understand the English grammar myself before trying to teach it!!

On Tuesday I was to begin at the other high school with a 2 hour lesson in the 6th class followed immediately by a 1 hour lesson in the 4th class. I had briefly met the former English teacher of these classes, but I did not have anything so handy as a curriculum, a book, an idea of what level the students are at, what they are supposed to be learning, or where, exactly, the classrooms are. And so I was filled with dread. I learned that it is actually possibly to make yourself sick with fear. Indeed, sick enough for several people to ask me if I might have malaria. Although, sadly, not so sick as to have to stay in bed and miss class. Sr. Daniela took me to the school where I met the teacher again and he gave me a book (a miracle!) and I was even shown where the classroom is. My students were very polite and kindly showed me in their notebooks what they were learning. Then they were very patient as I flipped through my newly acquired book in confusion desperately thinking about what I should do next. Truly, I’m not exactly sure how the next 2 hours were filled with English, but eventually it was time to leave and meet my next class. They too were quite polite and patient with my utter confusion and lack of anything to teach, other than jabbering on in English about anything. With a mere 20 minutes left and me really out of things to do with these attentive students, a torrential rain storm came in saved me. For, I learned, it is impossible to teach when it rains. Because it is dark when there is no sun, so no one can see, and it is loud on the corrugated metal roof with no ceiling to insulate the noise so no one can hear. As soon as it stopped raining enough, I fled the classroom in jubilee. And that was my second day of teaching.

Luckily, the situation improved throughout the week as I was able to look through my precious book for teaching English and come up with some kind of lesson plan. I also learned that the students here are really very good and quite different then in America. They are all quiet as I stand for 20 minutes with my back to them writing text on the board and diligently copy everything down. They politely stand up when called upon and do their best to speak English. They run and fetch me chalk from the office when I break all my pieces in the first10 minutes and erase the board for me so I have enough room to write their homework on it. In fact, they don’t even laugh at me when I trip over the holes in the floor. Now it is Christmas break so I have 2 weeks off to regroup. I hope I am able to gain some understanding of the system and curriculum so that I can actually be of some use to the students and really improve their (and my own) knowledge of English.