It is too much- I will sum up.

My time here has taught me many, many things. Bad French, for one. I don't have the strength in my feeble typing fingers to go through the full five months. But this is a condensed "Sparknotes" of sorts, for what I've learned here.

I have learned, first and foremost, of the hopelessness of humanity (in a worldly sense). This wisdom was given to me after many nights lying awake, furious with the world and it's brokeness. Finally I realized that my hope was lying in the wrong place. This has made all the difference in the world to me.

If your faith doesn't lie in a person, what is it to you if they make a mistake? What is it to you if they don't listen to reason? We have not been put on this earth to fight the world into begrudginly accepting Jesus as their/our savior. We are here to live a life of active worship to Jesus, and those who see how we carry ourselves and desire to be like us, will.

It is difficult to express the amount of joy this gives me.

I have learned more recently that God will take care of me financially. I never liked the concept of college debt. It seems contraindicated to go into thousands of dollars of debt so that you can maybe get a job. But through this trip, God has taken care of me especially well in the area of finance.

The first story about that I've already written, in the post "Why I Believe God Exists."

The second story is much longer, time wise, and shorter, story wise. Over all these five months, I've been rationing my food supply to about four dollars a day. Actually, that's not exactly right. I've been rationing my everything supply to four dollars a day. So when I went out and bought a souvenir for someone, that cut into my week's spending.

So the first of God's provisions for me is that I didn't starve. To the contrary, I actually gained weight while I was here.

The second provision was that at the end of my time, I had about 1500 dollars left over. That's after souvenirs, guest house stays, and the trip back up (which was expensive).

I'm not actually sure if he's aware of it, but my plan is to give the excess to a local pastor, who is trying to build a church to house his growing congregation.

So those of you who donated to get me here, not only did you succeed at that, but you built a solid percentage of a church. On his behalf and of course my own, thank you.

Those are the big spiritual lessons.

I also learned about giving over to God the problems I have with people. This revelation is owed to my co-worker Igor, and my inability to speak French at the time.

I learned how to be an adult among adults, and not just a teenager, because there were no teenagers to be teenagerish with. That was difficult at first, but I think overall, it made me a better person.

I learned not to drink the water.

I learned some fairly decent French. I can only talk to people who realize they're talking to someone for whom French is a second language, but I'd say that's solid progress.

And finally, I learned how to abruptly end a blog post.

Wrapping Up, Part II

I could not have asked for a better last week here.

My African Friends Havel and Joela have hung out with me several times, and we'd talk about computers and ipods and bla bla bla. For my going away, they decided to throw a party. Joela said that there would be six people. There ended up being ten, but you'll hear no complaining from me.

We pumped some music, sat, and tried to overcome language barriers. They all spoke a small amount of english- I think I spoke better French than they spoke English, with the exception of Joela.

They also brought over some traditional African food- Taro leaves, chicken, rice, and some manioc root. Remember how I didn't like manioc when I first came here? It grows on you, especially if you season it correctly (little bit of soy sauce, little bit of mayo). I made Sloppy Joes, which were a hit.

I also had a going away dessert time with all the missionaries. It was very sweet (ha- get it?), but also sad to say goodbye to the people who have become my family in these five months. They had me say a few words, and then they all said how much they're going to miss me. Mr Paul specifically mentioned how he was skeptical of a kid my age and the length of time spent here, and that I had very much exceeded his expectations. Miss Deb (the pediatric doctor) said that my mother should be very proud of me. The Thelander kids made it very clear that I would be missed. I will miss them too- who now will kick my butt weekly in Super Smash Brothers?

It was nice.

Now I'm at the guesthouse again, nothing to do but ponder on my time here. That, and get in fights with tortises. (Josh Curry for King of Quality Segues 2012)

So the guest house has a tortise in the backyard- I think it either keeps the grass down or eats the clippings of grass. Anyways, I saw it out there, and figured I would go take a look at it. I meandered over, and he saw me. He surveyed me for a bit, and then started breaking land speed records over the two meters that seperated us.

Many seconds later, I started getting uncomfortable. This turtle was pretty clearly charging me, despite the looseness of the definition of "charge" in this particular instance. I have no idea if tortises are friendly. He could be eager to cuddle, or lusting to once again be familarized with the taste of flesh.

I had plenty of time to formulate a plan- I decided to take off my flip-flop, and offer it to him, to see if he was attacking. After a little more waiting, he arrived.

When he hit the flip flop with his face (yes, literally) his neck jerked back into his body. Then he slowly extended his neck to smell the shoe. His breathing was labored from his recent sprinting session, and it was an odd thing to hear- made him very alive in my mind.

Once he had smelled it, and deemed it unsatisfactory in some unknown aspect, he started pushing against it in an attempt to get to me.

He was impressively strong, for an animal about the size of my head. So strong in his legs, in fact, that his head was forced back into his shell, pushing against my flip flop.

Not knowing the personality of this tortise, I decided I had had enough. I stepped back, and he kept charging. I went inside, and he kept charging.

Then I imagine he forgot what he had been charging, paused for a moment, and started eating grass again.

He has a good life, that tortise.

Wrapping Up- My last days with new friends.

I could not have asked for a better last week here.

I have been truly blessed. In the last three days alone, my ability to comprehend and speak French quickly and correctly has skyrocketed. I'm a ways from fluency, but I can communicate comfortably. Today I accidentally answered an English question in French, as a reflex. I give all the glory to God for that- I think He has seen fit to allow me to grow especially close to the guys that I work with these last few days, and I've had a fantastic time with it.

For example, today we were working on patching up the road into the hospital. Brutal work, but very satisfying, since you can see clear progress, and since it's the sort of work you feel personal need for (driving up the hill to the hospital was literally painful).

With my impending departure looming over our last few days of work, Olivier and Jaures decided that I needed to find a wife, toute de suite, here in Gabon.

So while we were breaking our backs lugging sand, cement, and gravel here and there and everywhere, they were stopping any potentially elegible female walking along the road, and asking her if she would like to marry me, and what a good worker and father I would be- saying that she could leave with me to go to the states, and wouldn't that just be great.

All of this through fits of laughter- I literally had to sit down. It was hilarious watching them shamelessly hawk me off to these completely baffled women, some of whom had little kids with them.

Then they sit down with me to explain to me what a good life married life is, and too be honest I couldn't understand most of it, because they were laughing too hard to speak clearly. Nonetheless, the sight of two grown men so overcome with giggling was hilarious, and I understood enough of their subject matter to get a good laugh and a red face.

Then I took all the guys out to eat at lunch, which was a hilarious disaster.

For a long time, it was tough for me to talk and interact with Gabonese (or Malian- we have a lot of Malian shop owners around here) when I'm trying to buy a product or service, because they do not feel the need to make the sale like an American does. Furthermore, if there's a problem with the sale, they feel no pressure to fix it in order to make the sale. What sells, sells.

This puts the unassertive American consumer in an awkward position.

I learned how to deal with this one time when I was getting cokes for Olivier and Mr. Paul. I had just come to get cokes for the other guys and myself, so I knew for a fact that there were 3 or 4 cold cokes in the fridge.

When I arrived the second time, the kid who works there was stocking the fridge. I asked him for a cold coke, and he said that there were none.

Normally, I wouldn't fight that, but I was buying the cokes for someone else, first of all, and second of all, I knew the dude was lying right to my face.

So I argued with him, and he, knowing he had been caught, gave me the cold ones.

You must, as the consumer, push to get what you want.

Anyways, I told you that story to tell you this one.

I'm in a similar situation with this "taking the guys out to lunch" thing. I'm paying good money for food for someone else, so I feel that I have the right to demand decent service for my friends.

I warned the guy in charge of the restaurant ahead of time that a lot of people would be coming at lunch, so that he would have time to get plenty of food.

Then, when we showed up, he didn't have two thirds of the things his menu claims he has. (fish, chicken, and meat, he only had fish, which no one ever orders).

Furthermore the restaurant owner knows this stuff- he knows this group individually by name, we've been there several times.

So everyone of our group was rolling on the floor laughing, as we had this incredibly one-sided argument about whether or not it was acceptable for him to be unprepared.

In the end though, it worked out. The guy went and bought porcupine in town, and we all had that.

Porcupine is like a cross between squid and beef. Think beef, with the texture of crumbly rubber. Not super tasty, but a fascinating experience.

While we were at the restaurant, Jaures discovered that I would be leaving Lebamba not next Wednesday (my flight date), but this Friday. When he heard that, he grabbed my hand in a handshake, and dejectedly tilted his head down. It communicated a lot, in a manly no words kinda way.

This blog post is already too long- I will continue it another time.

What I've Learned

I've been losing sleep over the last few nights, because I have 18 days left in this continent. When I come back people are going to want me to say things. I don't exactly know what things I am going to want to say.

I am vexxed by the complexity of the issues here in Africa. They're not fixable. This removes the possiblility of an honest rallying cry. I've heard rally cries about Africa. They're nonsense- Humanistic visions of a future filled with peace and harmony, saturated in guilt- as if it's every rich person's fault that people are starving. The only thing humanity can do to Africa is make it more western or more eastern. Trust me, both the west and the east are doing their best out here in Gabon, and both are making strides.

The problem is the corruption. The corruption birthed of human evil. The weed in the field, which if pulled up, will destroy the good plants around it.

The problem is actually just evil. I think Africa has a way of pulling back the curtains on life, and exposing the skeleton bones of what's going on. Evil in the United States is cloaked, or made beautiful, or joked about. But in Africa, the evil is raw.

In movies and television, evil is a thing. It is the bad guy. It is an entity seperate from the good guys. But in reality, evil is the filth we cover ourselves with, that we consume ourselves with, that we plant in our own hearts, where it grows outward through our veins and vanities to become a part of us.

No matter how many Konys you kill, there will be more. No matter how many dictators you overthrow, there will be more. Because at the end of the day, dictators are no more than people whose evils are centered around thirst for power.

So what I'm saying is, although a lot of unsavory things happen here, Africa is nothing but a gritty version of what is happening all over the world. People are evil.

This by no means implies that we should therefore not do anything- quite the opposite. But I think a new attitude is in order.

We need to shed the humanistic worldview that has formed a sedimentary crust over the Body of the Church. Humanity is hopeless. We the Church cannot, and will not, fix the world. We need to stop focusing on physical problems.

"For our struggle is not against flesh and blood..." Ephesians 6:12

One of my major challenges here was watching people disrespect the work we do. They have nigh upon zero respect for the money and work put into the hospital- they throw garbage around when garbage cans are but a few steps away. They horse on the preposterously expensive water fittings (that the hospital provides for free) They throw plastic bags full of waste into toilets, and then when the toilets inevitably clog, they just continue to use them until they are literally piled high with filth, caking the walls and floors.

But what I've come to realize as of recent is that the desperate frustration, and occasionally, the hatred, that I feel in the face of that is nothing more than my tendancy for humanism collapsing on itself.

The true Christian faith has no hope for humanity. The Christian faith hopes that humanity, as it falls, will choose to fall at the foot of the cross.

The Clunk Heard 'Round the Cave

There is currently a team of college age kids (hurray, people my age!) at Bongolo. They are here on behalf of Envision (a missions group) to help clean out a bunch of buildings.

Today, however, we decided it would be fun to check out a place called the Leopard's Lair. This was supposedly where the leopards hung out, back when there were in fact leopards here. It's a tiny little cave, formed in the side of a very steep hill (you can't stand on it without holding onto something.)

We traversed down, swinging from tree to tree like observant Georges of the jungle, and finally arrived at a giant rock formation, which was about 35 feet high, and almost unnaturally square and flat sided, jutting out from the face of the hill. Joanna Thelander mentioned that this is most likely the place where locals performed human sacrifice many years ago.

We came to a large split in the rock, wide enough to walk through, but not comfortably. We followed that to a sort of porch like room- open to the sunlight on your left, and leading up into a cave on your right.

I went ahead with another guy into the cave, just to make sure nothing had decided to inhabit the little cave recently (that same guy had been there an hour or so before to clear a path and make sure we could find the cave) Luke and Sarah, who I believe are 9 and 8, also went with us, trailing a bit behind, and then a girl named Keisha came behind them.

When we were going in, Luke was initially in front of me, but I put him behind me. He asked me why, and I said, "If anything happens in there I want it to happen to me and not you."

Foreshadowing, much?

Bret, (the aformentioned "guy") climbed up onto the higher level, to give people a hand up so they could see. The room is maybe 15 feet tall, and 10 feet in diameter. I was still on the lower level. Sarah and Luke were nearish to me, and Keisha was maybe 3 feet to my left.

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what happened. Bret stepped some way somewhere, and a big ol' rock fell down.

It was about two feet by one foot by 3 and a half inches.

I think I blinked- then I saw a little flash of white, then my head started hurting, and my neck felt squished, like someone was playing accordian with it. My only thought was "is this really happening?"

At this point, it gets a little blurry for me. The way Keisha and Bret tell the story, it went like this:

The rock broke over my head. Straight in half. My karate instructors would be proud.

The rock missed hitting Sarah by about 6 inches.

I bent over and took a step to my right, to try and avoid getting hit more.

Then apparently I straightened up, saw a flashlight, and started walking toward it. (cuz that was the brigtest source of light.)

Keisha saw that I was in a state of shock and headed me towards the exit.

I remember feeling a trickle of thick warmth coming down my face, and thinking "there's no way that I am ok right now"

It was at this point that I started saying (over and over and over again) "I have to go, I have to go..."

I made my way out of the cave, and gained the ability to think. We didn't have any bandages, and so thinking about the fact that headwounds can lose a lot of blood, I whipped my shirt off and pushed it onto my face.

Several things happened then that were really remarkably convienient.

First of all, Keisha is a nursing student. She knew the basics for head trauma. She checked me for concussion and all that jazz.

Second, Joanna's phone got reception, at the mouth of a cave, deep in the jungle, in a valley. She was able to call for someone to bring bandages.

Third, Bret is actually Superman. That whole Clark Kent thing was a falsified diversion, to hide his identity. He ran up the hill (the one you can't stand on)
to get the stuff from the person Joanna called, and then essentially fell down the hill to bring it to us. He had to do the falling with a bunch of stuff, so he only had one hand to catch himself on various trees as he tumbled.

And Fourth, the rock didn't hit little kids! Remember that foreshadowing I was talking about?

God really protected me. Dr. Thompson said the whole thing could have very well killed me, and here I am writing a blog post.

Panga- Camping on African Shores

The waves lazily meander to their happy deaths at shore, becoming bright white bubbles floating along the coast. The grass rustles, pestered eternally by the naive wind, which cuts through the screened porch without thought.

The distance is dizzying, and the blurry blues of sea and sky call into question the beginning and end of both.

Above the ceiling, bats peep away their grievances with one another, bickering day and night.

A lizard crawls across the vast expanse of screen in search of nothing in particular. Having found it, he scurries back the way he came.

The sea heaves an eternal sigh, never pausing to take part in the trivial act of inhalation.

The strip of green trees between the grasslands and ocean looks like a monk's haircut, blue baldness stretching out to eternity. I am perched on that monk's nose.

We went to a church service on Sunday, which was in a cement building across the road from a little cluster of wood and tin shanties. These are separated by a bit of distance from the rest of the village, more wood shanties and a couple nice cement buildings. Maybe thirty structures in total, if that.

I use the word shanty because for me it calls to mind a sort of seafaring motif. These villagers are hardly seafaring, despite their proximity to farable sea, but the things that they scavenge off of the beach often make their way onto houses. Nets, buckets, plastic stuff, etc. Furthermore, the wood used to make the houses takes on a weathered driftwood look, either because they got it off the shore, or because of the salty atmosphere.  If it were not for the people, the village would look like an abandoned fishing town.

I digress. Church. We drove up just as they were starting singing. There were two women, one man, one girl slightly younger than me, and a guy about my age. Also a large pile of children, varied ages, all elementary to early middle school. I found the demographics curious.

I got the standard awed look because of being a giant. We sat directly behind the kids. The kept peeking at me and then hiding their faces, giggling and embarrassed.

One chunky little girl, toddlerish age, gave me an unabashed stare. I blinked at her and smiled.

The face she returned can only be described as flirting eyebrows. She looked at me, serious as a heart attack, and waggled her eyebrows, maintaining her grim facade. I laughed as silently as possible, and a game was born, except now she smiled when she made eyebrows, knowing that it would get a reaction out of me.

Meanwhile, the pastor of the church was delivering a message in French. He was dressed in an understated pinstripe white and tan shirt, and khaki pants. He spoke quietly. The woman next to him translated into Nzebe, the local language, shouting every bouncy consonant-heavy word into the soul of all twenty or so audience members. She wore a bright green and blue dress, with ribbons of spicy yellow running about. the two of them were quite the pair.

There was also a little girl with a bump on her belly. It was concerning. It didn't seem to cause her pain though, and she seemed to have a fun time poking it. That was a weird combination of worrisome and adorable.

The beach is the sort of picturesque paradise that's been written about so many times that it's tough to say something new. The sand is white, and as fine as sand gets. When you stomp down on the dryer stuff, it makes a protesting squeak, like wet rubber brakes. The sand is graduated from soft powder near the trees to perfectly flat hard surfaces at the edge of the water. The sand constantly moves about, but never changes shape.

A while's walk down the beach, there are piles of volcanic rocks, with a glistening black shell like bubbly oil, and a center the color of dirty blood.

There's a non-permanent stream cutting across the beach in a preposterous diagonal. Small sandbars make water hills, which seem to defy gravity staying upright. In the deeper portions, the water takes on a tea color, which is decomposing plant matter washed out from the treetops. It actually smells nice, like tea,  but very subtle.

Juxtaposed against the bright white of the beaches, the dark green of the jungle, and the lively blue of the sea, is the dull white, gray, and black of driftwood logs.

These massive logs get cut down somewhere inland along the river, and are drifted out to the ocean to be picked up by big rigs. Some miss the mark and hit the beach.

Alone, these logs would look very dreary, but next to all the other colors of the beach, they add unique character to an ocean's edge that would be otherwise cliche.

Of Languages and Learning

A lot of the interactions I have with the people around me are essentially desperate efforts on my part to comprehend new things. The guys I work with kinda know my vocabulary, and so they speak, to me, a dumbed-down french that's very easy to understand. Other people not so much, but I can usually understand if the person is persistent. Luckily for me, the people around here are incredibly persistent. Even if I want to give up on a translation or a conversation, well that's just too bad.

One of the better examples happened when I was shopping in town. I had finished my shopping, so I was waiting in the car for everyone else. A little boy came up to the window and started babbling away, before I had even opened it. I rolled it down, and tried to slow him down and see what he wanted, but his message was far too urgent to waste time on clarity.

The phrase "Je di" which means "I say" or "I am saying" is a fairly common one, but I had never heard it used more than I did that day.

Sometimes, he would say it directly after saying it, just in case I missed it the first dozen or so times.

Eventually, once he started using nice friendly words like "car" and "live" and "doctor" I figured out that he was saying that 1. He lived in Mouila, and 2. His doctor was Dr. Renee (who is currently stateside) and that this was her car.

Tres important. Very important. And it probably took him about ten minutes to communicate that.

With the guys, when jokes can not be easily translated, we resort to mimicry as our comedy. We mimic Mr. Paul, we mimic all the missionaries, we mimic each other. It's good fun.

For example, one time, Luke Thelander, the elementary age son of one of the missionary couples here, was shadowing Mr. Paul to learn whatever he could, and to flesh out his homeschooling.

I had made a joke a couple days ago, telling him that he couldn't rip my shirt because I only had 5 shirts, and five months to live here, and therefore one shirt for each month.

Luke asked me, in his young voice "Is that this month's shirt?" I responded "Yup" and he laughed, "hehehehehe".

Olivier, without looking up from his work, replicated as closely he could our voices and words. It sounded something like

*high voice* "bli bla la mah sheer"
*super-duper-overdone-deep-voice* "Yup"
*high voice again* "hehehehehe"

Still though, since not everyone is in on the joke, we try and keep it between the guys and Mr. Paul, just to be polite.

Today I was walking back to the garage at the end of the day with Olivier. I had eschewed my shirt for the day, as it was soggy to the point of dripping.

Mr. Paul's wife Meladee saw me, and in a sing-song voice, said "Someone's gonna get burned!"

I mimicked her sing-song tone, and said "Someone already is!"

Olivier thought I was teasing her, and made the noise and face you make when a kid takes his pants off in a church foyer.

Luckily I found a way to translate that I was agreeing with her, not mocking.

Last story.

I was working with Jaures. Jaures knows a lot of basic english words. Mostly nouns though, so he's not much of a speaker.

He got my attention, and said "Time is Money!" which sounded like "taim ees mohnee". I asked him who said that, looking for the answer Benjamin Franklin. He knows a lot of random facts, and I was curious to know if he knew that.

He looked confused. He made a hand motion that we make often, slowly flipping his hands over to say "what are you talking about?"

I repeated my question.

He paused for a few seconds more, and then said "question?" in a voice that indicated that he meant "is that really a question?"

I said yes, a little confused.

He paused a bit longer. With a voice confused by my confusion, he said "...me."

Sunrise, Sans Peace

The other day, I decided it would be cool to see a sunrise out here in Africa. There is a hill that lends itself to sunrise watching just a short walk from my house, so I decided to mosey on over early one morning.

Key plot point- All the preceeding night, I had heard dogs barking and running around. We've had a bit of an infestation lately. The dogs here can be pretty nasty/dangerous, so I brought a machete, just as a worst case scenario sort of thing.

Turns out the sunrises here are pretty lame, because the mist rises up as the sun does, and blocks out any view.

The mist was however pretty interesting to see, and from that hill (which also has a giant radio tower with a ladder on it) I could see for miles in a couple of directions. The African plains were covered in a fluffy, chilly blanket of white.

Since I was busy viewing vistas, (and did not spend my whole time up on the nice safe radio tower) I had been praying that if God allowed dogs to get near me, that he'd at least give me some preparation time.

I was up on the radio tower when I decided that this sunrise thing was a bit of a lost cause. I had left my machete down on the ground. I climbed down, getting a little dizzy from the height.

The second my foot hit the ground, I heard the most gut-twisting howly charge-bark I have ever heard. It was territorial, it was grumpy, and it was getting closer.

My first thought-

"dogs travel in packs."

My second thought-

"that was like... the perfect amount of preparation time"

So I snagged my machete, whipped around, struck a ready pose, and started thinking about strategy for fighting a pack of dogs.

All of this is in the expanse of about two seconds.

When my eyes adjusted to the distance and picked up the dog shape, I realized the dog was not so much charging, as it was galumphing.

It was also shaped like a barely oblong submarine with sticks coming out of it.

It was the fat, ugly, lovable dog that belonged to the Pastor of the local church.

So here I am, sputtering and trying to push down my caveman instincts, while trying to pull out my "make this stupid dog shut up because it's six o' clock in the morning for crying out loud" instincts, which is a very specific file, and difficult to search for on such short notice.

At this moment, Dr. Dave Thompson stepped out of his front door, all dressed in jogging attire. He witnessed quite a sight.

Hard Work and a Serious Little Dude, Part II

The next day I happened to be wearing sunglasses. At one point I was sitting on a bench, and I motioned for him to sit next to me. He did. We just kinda sat there quietly for a bit. Then just as I got up, he reached up and touched my sunglasses, which were hanging on my shirt collar. So I let him borrow them.

My sunglasses, which are large even for my face, looked like triangular computer monitors on his.

He none the less donned a serious "cool" face. I actually forgot my camera that day, so this picture of him is from Thursday.

Slightly off-kilter sunglasses are totally in right now.

However, I needed my sunglasses back, and wasn't quite sure how to say "If I don't have my sunglasses my eyes will be crunchy by the time I go back to the states."

So I decided to make him a trade. I had brought my balloon animals with me as well (a backpack is a very handy thing) so I pulled those out and asked him his favorite color. He chose red. I asked him if he liked dogs, and he nodded. So I pumped it up, and twisted him up a dog (much to the amusement of every person in seeing range.)

The glasses were soon forgotten entirely.

After a while of him making the dog bounce along the pavement, float in the air, twist in half, and pop back into shape again, the tired canine burst.

The old guy in the blue shirt took an interest in the remaining pieces. He tried to blow up the end piece with his mouth, but couldn't, so I gave him the pump, and he made a little caterpillar lookin' thing, by pumping up the balloon little by little and tying it off after each section. It was fun watching him and Serious Dude  interact. I don't think they were related though- kids are kinda public property around here.

At this point the project had a new direction, but had not yet obtained a plan. So at very least we were only searching for a seemingly invisible pipe under dirt, instead of cement. Still pretty discouraging.

Finally, on Thursday, we found the pipe we were looking for, and once we had that tiny bit of info, we were able to formulate a plan. Now, not only are we working with purpose, but our purpose is something that will affect the hospital for many years in a significant way.

However, we still have to dig crazy amounts of dirt in insane temperatures/humidity.

By Friday, we had essentially routed the whole thing. That was a beast of a project, and it's nice to look at it now and see how much improvement has been made.

Also, on Friday, I saw SLD smile, for the first, and as far as I know, the last time. Turns out the secret is off-roading in wheelchairs.

Hard Work and a Serious Little Dude.

I started writing this on Tuesday, but I just kinda kept writing each day. This is the first half.

It has been a very difficult week so far.

We're working on a frustrating project- that same pipe that broke two times? broke again. So there's the initial frustration of that, but then things started piling up.

In order to fix the pipe for good, we decided to find where it went into the cement, attach an elbow joint, and circumvent the problem altogether.

Simple, right? No.

We had to follow the pipe by smashing up the cement. At first, we thought this would be a short, though difficult and destructive, job, with an added bonus of helping us figure out how the pipes work. All of those were true except the first one, and so far, the last one.

For the last two days we've essentially been tearing up the hospital, at the cost of our hands, and we've pretty much learned nothing. We start again tomorrow.

HOWEVER

I was able, because of all this crazy work, to meet a little boy. I don't know his name, in fact, I've never heard him talk, but we've become friends, based on our mutual love of my sunglasses.

The first day, he just stared at me while I was working. One of those big, wide eyed, little kid stares. Kids are never subtle when they want to look at something. If they want to, and they have the ability to, they will. It was that kind of stare.

After a while, I said "bonjour! Ca va?"

He stared at me. And nodded. But not a lot.

From my experience with Gabonese children, I knew that this was significant. The fact that he would respond to me at all is impressive. That might be a personal thing more than a Gabonese thing, because I am in fact a scary white giant.

At the end of that day, I offered to shake his hand, and bid him a good evening. He stared at me.

Then he extended his tiny little hand, and we shook.

To be continued...

Pluie

I feel the need to talk once again about the weather. I think I did it a disservice by cramming the entire description into a paragraph. To make up for it, I will write a short post just about rain.

The Sami people have hundreds of words for snow, and one could easily come up with a comparable amount of words for rain-related things here in Gabon. There's day rain and night rain, rain you can work in and rain you can't walk in. There's lightning that assaults your eyes and ears, and there background lightning going from cloud to cloud that looks like a moving strobe light, and makes no thunder at all.

It rarely rains during the day here, and if it does, it's usually a light rain. I like it when it rains during the day, because it keeps everything cool. It's sort of a happy drizzle, sprinkling itself about. It's best to do tough work, like moving dirt, in that sort of weather, because of the lack of direct sunlight and occasional breeze. When the rain gets a little bit more intense, we work inside on projects like car maintenance and painting.

The night rain is like nothing you have ever seen before, assuming you've never seen it before. Because of the darkness, the lightning is just that much more dramatic. Unlike the States, where there tends to be a couple flashes of lightning every so often, the lightning here is fairly constant. The cloud to cloud lightning never stops; flashing softly behind cloud cover, but makes no sound. The big lightning bolts are incredible. I've only seen two directly, but they are the largest, brightest, and loudest pieces of weather I have ever seen. Truly incredible. The sound is something like a cross between a bullwhip being cracked, and an avalanche. It starts with a giant snapping sound, but then descends into a low rumble.

How does one end a blog post tidily, once one is out of things to say?

I Dance the Mamba (Get it?)

So I was getting ready for bed. I should have been asleep about half an hour before this, but I wasn't. I had just changed into pajamas (read: boxer shorts). It was time to brush my teeth, so I meandered out to the kitchen on my way to the bathroom.

I glanced at the floor, and wondered who put the rubber snake there.

Then I realized I am currently living alone.

Then I figured it probably wasn't really rubber.

At this point my whole body seized, and I got that electric tingle in the back of my neck that lets you know that the adrenaline is coming.

I decided it was a good time to put on some pants. Keeping my eye on the snake, I tossed on a pair of jeans, and started looking around my bedroom for a weapon. Unfortunately, Mr. Snake was chilling between me and my two machetes. Bummer.

My bedroom didn't have any weapons. Literally the most dangerous object in there was a plastic coat hanger. Except, and this is probably a miracle, a hammer.

Let's talk about the hammer. I had borrowed that hammer from the garage, because I wanted to experiment with using it to open coconuts. The claw for the outer shell, the head for the inner. I had actually finished using it for that, and decided a machete is better. Furthermore, I had looked at it and picked it up at one point with the intention of taking it back, but then I set it down, consciously, and I don't know why.

But there it was, my sole weapon in fighting off...

A Black Mamba snake.

I actually just found out that that's probably what it was. Black Mambas are one of the most venomous land snakes in the world. It's also possible that it was a black tree cobra, which is also venomous.

So I pretty much just started whacking at it. It moved away from me instead of attacking (which I'm pretty sure is insane, that's not really standard M.O. for venomous lizards, but I'll take what I can get) and I hit it a couple times in the body before finally finishing him off with a whack on the head.

As he oozed blood onto the floor, I thought about a Bible verse given to me by a friend on the day of my departure.

Luke 10:19- I have given you authority to trample snakes and scorpions and to overcome the power of the enemy, nothing will harm you.

Tomorrow we're going tubing down the river! Woo!

The Gabonese Family Unit

I've gotten a lot of questions about how a Gabonese family works. That's kind of difficult to answer, because families are unique, but I can give you a generic idea.

Assuming we have the full gamut of members, father, mother, brother, and sister, the latter two multiplied by whatever, the Gabonese family works thusly:

The father usually has a job. Weirdly enough, however, this does not make him the major breadwinner of the house. An average job around here pays about 500 francs, equivalent to about a dollar, per hour. That's not really enough to support a family, it's more supplemental income. That money, best case scenario, goes into clothing, maybe spices for cooking, house upkeep, that sort of stuff. Worst case scenario, the money turns into alcohol. I forget the figure, but the alcoholism rates in Gabon are scary.

The mother typically farms the family plantation, washes the clothes, takes care of the kids, sells whatever excess from the plantation, and cooks the food. Women around here are tough cookies. Their neck muscles are particular proof of that fact. Although here in Gabon they do occasionally do the traditional "carrying a basket on your head" thing, the more common method is to make the basket into a backpack of sorts, supported by a strap that goes around the woman's forehead. The basket, which is usually about two feet long and about a foot and a half in diameter, is filled with whatever they dug up at the plantation that day. Manioc root, a popular dish around here, has the density of soggy rubber, and it's entirely possible that that's all they harvested that day, which means those baskets can weigh as much as 50-60 pounds. They walk miles with those things strapped to their heads.

Another interesting culture difference is that the women here smoke pipes. Not men. It would be kind of weird if a man smoked a pipe here, in an equal and opposite fashion to America.

The kids can go to school around here. Often, however, it takes several years more than it would in America for a child to get through high school, either because they are needed to help around the house, or because they need to be held back.

Interesting anecdote, one time I saw a little girl who couldn't be more than 6, down by the river washing clothes. By herself. There was a man and a woman a ways off that could've been her father and mother, but I'm not sure. The little girl had an incredibly organized and methodical way of washing the clothes, it was fascinating to watch her work so quickly and efficiently. I would actually estimate her age at 4, maybe 5, but she'd be a small 5 year old.

Adding a part here- Grandparents- Treated with more respect than they are in America, less than in traditional Asia. Generally speaking. I think the Grandmas still work like crazy people. Not sure about the Grandpas, though I've seen grandpa aged men walking along the road with machetes, which suggests hard work.

Families live in a variety of house types, depending on income, financial wisdom, and other factors. The very wealthy live in wood-based houses, like we usually have in America. You must be wealthy to own a wood house because you must use expensive hardwoods, such as the African Padauk, or else your house will be eaten by termites. A fairly wealthy family would have a house made of cinder blocks, which stands up nicely to the weather. Depending on what's important to that family, it may be finished with stucco, or just left bare cinder blocks. Both work about the same, a stuccoed house just keeps a little bit more weather out, and makes the whole thing look nicer. A poor family would have a mud brick house. The mud here, however, is pretty much pure clay, so those are still not awful houses, but they don't really last very long, and the sticks that support those mud bricks are pretty easily eaten by termites.

Shortest Post Ever

Today all the guys were talking about licenses, and whether an American license would work in Gabon (yes). Whilst talking, my license came up, so I showed it to the guys. When they looked at the back, they asked what my signature and all that stuff meant, and I explained the organ donor concept to them, which left them disgusted and enthralled.

Later, after a bit of fast talking/arguing between the guys that I didn't entirely understand, Olivier asked me if it was possible for a white person's organs to work in a black person and vice versa. I actually have no idea what to think about this, all I know is that it surprises me that that's a question.

I'm leaving this one up to ya'll to ponder.

A Cavalcade of Abbreviated Accounts

Talk to your children about Titular Alliteration. It's an addictive habit.

Parents- The Anti-Bad-Literary-Habit.


This is a bunch of stories that don't really fit anywhere, and don't really have any point. Just kinda interesting stuff.

Someone died in their hospital room. The way the Gabonese show grief around here is by screaming and whipping their body about spasmodically. If that wasn't enough, a small crowd gathered around the room's door, everyone trying to get a peek at the drama. I remember feeling a mixture of contempt and shame at what seems to me to be a pretty classless move- like this person's death is some sort of show. I have yet to feel resolution for that.

The way I met the little dude from my profile picture- I was lending the camera to my friend, and just sitting in a desk while he took pictures. All the kids were stealing glances at me. This particularly bold kid looked at me, looked down shyly, and then mumbled the quietest "Goo-moornen" he possibly could. It was about 5pm- that's probably the only english he knows. I said Good morning, and then did the high five trick. (Ask for a high five, pretend that it hurt a lot for comedic purposes) He seemed genuinely concerned that he had hurt me. Also I think he was scared to touch me, until the camera showed up, at which point he whipped his hand over my shoulder.

A bunch of little kids playing along the road "shot" me with bamboo machine guns. I pretended to die, much to their delight. The Gabonese guy I was walking with, who is also my pastor, seemed embarrassed. It was pretty racist I guess, but maybe he was embarrassed by me goofing off. I haven't the foggiest idea.

There are two little girls around the hospital who I recognize and who recognize me. We wave at each other. Sometimes they smile. I always smile. Gabonese people are kinda shy I think as a general rule. Also very stoic in expression. Not that they're afraid to laugh, but standard facial expression is not happiness.

The weather is somewhat dichotomous. Or perhaps trichotomous, assuming that's a word. It's either sunny, and brutally hot, but there are no bugs, cloudy, and pretty temperate, but bugs swarm you constantly, or raining with intent to kill. It's always humid, like 85-90% (not kidding) and it's a rare day when my shirt is not a bit soggy by the end of it. Not from the rain. Yes I drink a lot of water.

The most impressive thing about this place for me personally is the size of the leaves. They. Are. Enormous. I could literally lay down flat on a banana leaf, and my body would not touch the ground. I've been meaning to take a picture of that. They also have a thing called "elephant's ear" which is an elephant ear sized leaf growing on a tall stalk. I'll snag a picture of one of those too.

Dinner at a restaurant is pretty cool. My favorite restaurant that I've been to here is conveniently the one right by the hospital. They have a sort of mix-and-match menu. You can get fish, chicken, or beef (assuming they have any of those three) on your choice of rice, spaghetti, or manioc. No matter what you order, it comes with a big glob of mayonaise, and as much hot sauce as you wish to endure. Mayonaise on spaghetti is actually fantastically delicious.

I have some weird mark on my hand that's a funny color. I had a doctor check it out, it's probably nothing serious, but it is sticking around. It's the guys' theory that I'm turning black. Please pray that we figure out what it is.

Cement, Comedy, Confusion, Non-Alliterative Personal Growth

In Lebamba, everyone knows how to mix cement by hand. Seriously. Everyone. They apparently come out of the womb, recipe in hand. Furthermore, There Is No Other Way to mix cement. If you stray from the recipe even by a bit, there's a good chance life as we know it will come to an end.

Given that, it's somewhat difficult for me to help mix the cement, as I have not been brought up in the ways of dogmatic cement mixing. Whatever kind of underwear they wear out here is never so efficiently twisted as when I mix cement wrong.

Story example: For the recipe, first one lays down a pad of sand. Then, one puts however many sacks of cement correlates to however much sand you have. Then, one cuts open the bags of cement, and then flips the cement onto the sand.

One time, I saw the guys cutting open the cement bags with a shovel. They aimed the point of the shovel at the edge of the bag, and then stabbed. Not an efficient method, but it worked. I thought that this was the way, and so the next time we mixed cement, when it came time to cut open the bags, I jumped forward, eager to apply my new knowledge.

I think literally three of the four guys yelled at me in unison. Not like an angry yell, like a "what are you a crazy person?" yell.

Then one of them with a pocket knife stepped up and delicately sliced the bags open. Clearly, this was the way.

After laugh-crying myself to sleep that night, which is a fascinating experience I recommend highly, I got to thinking.

These people don't need me.

The only thing I have to offer, as far as my human self, is western thoughts, western ideals, western money. And even if those things do help in a ridiculously significant way, i.e. they live the rest of their lives in comfort, they can't help with any sort of permanence. They can't take it with them when they go.

My help here has no intrinsic value, it is the reason behind the help that is what makes it valuable.

I am not the savior of these people. It sounds obvious when you say it like that, but I think subconciously, that's sort of something that we as Americans think. We are the rich. We will give money to the poor, and then they will be happy. Go us.

But as Christians, we're not called to be the savior, we already have one of those. We are called to be the messenger. If the most effective way to send a message is to help (and it often is, as actions speak louder than words), then so be it. But we are not called simply to help. We are called to show the love of Christ. This is good, because that means we can apply it anywhere- you don't have to go to Africa to be a Christian. People in America might not need help like people in Gabon, but they certainly need love.

It's a bird! It's a plane! It's the 44th President of the United States of America!

I have to introduce the Gabonese concept of Barack Obama with a story. The first time I heard his name in this country, I was in town with Mr. Paul and the crew. We had just dropped off some gigantic boards to be planed, and so we were waiting by the truck. I was hanging out with the guys, Mr. Paul was off figuring out costs and whatnot.

One of them, Igor, pointed just behind me and said "Barack Obama".

Now, I'll have to put the story on pause for just a second to put you in the correct frame of mind, that is to say, mine.

The entire crew I work with speaks French, with the exception of Mr. Paul and myself, who both speak only English (effectively). To bridge this gap, there's a lot of joking around, using the few French and English words everyone knows. Igor is the biggest jokester of them all, by a good bit.

So naturally, I assumed he was kidding with me. I laughed, and arched my eyebrows in a sort of genial, "yeah, sure" manner.

His face became more serious. Unfortunately for the sake of communication however, I was aware of his amazing ability for Poker Facedness.

He pointed again, said "Barack Obama," then indicated drinking, and then dancing.

Well now I was thoroughly confused.

I asked him, in French, if he was talking about a club. He said yes, then "Barack Obama" again.

So, piecing together what I have so far, Igor, the Eternal Jester, was telling me that the President of my country was drinking and dancing at a club in Lebamba, Gabon.

So I'm laughing again, because, y'know, comedy.

But now the rest of them get serious faces.

They point again, and say "No, that is Barack Obama."



Ladies and Gentlemen, Barack Obama is the name of a nightclub in Lebamba, Gabon.

And this my friends, is their ode to him, among other things. I've also seen his face on Grocery bags that say

"Thank You"

and then below that

"BARACK OBAMA"

And it had a picture of him. On the grocery bag. Barack Obama is a sort of unlicensed superhero over here. Slap his picture on something, and it's got instant cool factor.

Of Praise Bands and Mafia Gangs.

You know that Uncle you probably have or had, that reached out and "stole" your nose? and then he always says something to the effect of "haha! Got yer nose!"

This title is like that Uncle. Haha! Got your attention!

But seriously. Lets talk about praise bands. Mafia gangs in a bit.

Everyone has heard of the classic African praise style- A Capella, clapping, in a mud hut, with harmonies aplenty. Those are lovely, but you've heard of them, chances are you've heard them, and there isn't much more I can say about them.

I'm here to talk about western-influenced praise band style worship- I think there's more for us to learn there, in a practical sense.

Mafia time- I've decided to use a gang of mafioso's performing a shakedown to translate the sound I'm describing into a picture, for your imagination and amusement.

In the classic mafia scenario, lets say there are four guys. There's the big guy, the one holding a weapon menacingly, the normal looking one that highlights the oddness of the other three, and the one with a brooklyn accent that does all the talking.

The "classic" (classic here meaning, the one I just came up with in my head that happens to work for my metaphor) mafia shakedown can be related to a praise band thusly:

The big guy in the back is the bass. He doesn't say much, but he sits in the back nodding in agreement to what brooklyn accent guy says. He makes you take it seriously.

The one holding the weapon is the drummer. He punctuates the words of brooklyn accent guy by thwacking a rusty pipe against his palm. Or... some scary blunt object. Work with me.

The normal looking guy is the keyboard. It's normal. It's background sound. It is the canvas upon which the paints rest- there's texture, but not much color.

And brooklyn accent guy is the guitar. America's favorite instrument. Whether acoustic or electric, this instrument tends to do the most talking, musically speaking.

This is all well and good. Similar instruments are used here. The key difference I want to draw attention to is the blend.

In America praise music is very guitar-centric. African praise music has no center of attention. The bass, drums, keyboard, and guitar all speak their parts. They take turns, to a certain extent, but each is always moving in accordance with the others. Their volumes are equally audible, and each player is the master of his or her instrument. This gives the music a full, rich, gutsy sound that moves the audience. American praise music sounds skeletal in comparison.

I did not understand a single word of the song. It was in French, sung over nearly dead speakers very quickly. But the music spoke of a praise that words could not. I think we could learn from the vivacity of, and hard work put into, African praise music.

Foods You Have Probably Not Eaten

Organized by the order in which I remember them.

Manioc- This is Gabonese health food. A common ribbing amongst the guys I work with is "what's the matter? Didn't you eat your manioc?" The Gabonese eat every part of this plant. The leaves are like a bitter spinach, which isn't too bad, and very healthy. The roots are gigantic, have no nutritional value whatsoever, and taste like sour rubber. They are valuable, however, because if you eat it, you won't be hungry for the rest of the day. Probably because the manioc is too busy bouncing around in your stomach to move on to the rest of the digestive system. Manioc root is much tastier with hot sauce and soy sauce. Still pretty weird.

Plaintain- When green, banana shaped potato. When yellow, less tasty banana.

Breadfruit- Edible a couple of ways- mature and immature. Similar to a plantain, if you eat it when it's green, it's very potato-like. If you eat it after it's changed from green to brown, It's a sort of semi-sweet fruit. So far I've only had a chance to eat the green stuff, as breadfruit fries. I cut them into big flat squares. Since breadfruit has holes in the part you eat (imagine a cross section of bread- very similar, hence the name) that's the best way to cut them for frying. I've heard of recipies involving breadfruit, butter, and brown sugar that I'm interested to try, but so far I haven't seen a ripe one available.

Spiky Pear- This is the weirdest fruit I've ever tasted. It's kind of a cross, flavor wise, between pear and pineapple. That's not weird. The weird part is the texture. It has the texture of beef jerky. Except slimy. Which doesn't make it sound appetizing, but in fact it is delicious. It's also enormous. The French term for it is "Heart of Beef" which describes it's size and shape. It's green, and has little spikes all over it.

Tuna Fish with an expiration date from 2009- Yeah. It was delicious.

Itangas- These are tough to describe. They're about the perfect size to fit in a closed fist, and are bright purple. Some people say they smell like turpentine. They kinda do.  They have a large pit inside. To cook them (they're no good raw) you boil water, then remove it from heat and pour it over a plate of itangas. The skin bleaches a tiny bit, and then they're ready. Then you put either salt or sugar on them (I like brown sugar- the flavors meld well) and eat the green inside part and the purple skin off of the pit. Very tasty snack.

Powdered fortified milk- is actually better than the carton milk. Similar tastes, but the powder stuff is a zillion times more reliable and less scary. Kind of annoying to have to "build" every glass of milk you make, but worth the work to avoid instant death by milk. Cuz that's a lame way to die.

Raw Peanuts- Did you even know there was such a thing? Turns out that they're not really nuts, they share a family with peas. When raw, the meat of it is very similar to raw sugar snap peas. Yum. Also very good boiled.

That's all I remember right now.

Personal update thang- I'm doing pretty well. French is coming along at what feels like a snails pace, but I'm able more and more to understand people, and even have discussions with people who only speak French. I will post soon about the Gabonese love for Barack Obama, which is hilarious and bizarre.

A Day in the Life

I usually wake up at 6:45. 7 if I'm super tired. I make breakfast, which usually consists of a PBJ or oatmeal, cuz they're easy to make.

I have gotten into the habit of making coffee, then keeping it in the fridge. This serves two purposes. One, I don't have to make coffee in the morning, and two, cold is better than hot. We've got enough hot to go around here.

Then I head out to work with Mr. Paul. We meet at 8, get assignments, and head out. This is where the "fly by seat of pants" portion of the show comes, because we really do everything. Everything tends to remain in the categories of construction, plumbing, electrical work, demolition, reconstruction, redemolition, re-reconstruction, and mowing, conveniently.

That snarky bit about re-reconstruction comes from my first job. We had to break a sidewalk open (while people walked around us, apathetic to our swinging sledgehammers) so that we could fix a leaking pipe underneath. PVC piping has no standard of quality here. You can break it by caving it in with your thumbs.

So we smashed up the sidewalk, fixed the pipe, reapplied cement, added a nice little ramp. It was lovely. On Monday the pipe broke again.

So you have to take pride in your work, but not get too bummed out when you are forced to smash it up again.

Then we have an hour for lunch, I make food, it's tasty, we do more work, I come home for dinner, and I play banjo and work on my French.

And for fun I've been experimenting with the various exotic fruits and veggies I have available to me.  Plantains, breadfruit, (haven't made that yet but it's next on the list) coconuts, a spiky pear (which is bigger than my head, waiting for it to ripen up) and papayas. All tasty so far.

That's about it for a normal day.

People have asked me questions.

The ants from the picture are from the village I first went to church at. I probably won't be returning, because I got so many boufoutoe bites that it looked like I had the measles. I mean, I usually look good in polka dots, but I made an obvious mistake in bringing only striped/plaid clothing, and that's just tacky.

The education here is really pretty good, although it's not uncommon for a person to not get out of high school until their early twenties. Other things take priority over an expedient education.

Deaf people are around, but I don't think there's a huge ministry for them. I don't think there's an abundance.  I don't know if they know sign language, American or otherwise. I actually asked about that. Eye problems seem to be pretty common though.

5'8" seems a common height for a man.

That's all I got, folks.

Apparently I'm a giant.

This Sunday I had my first real "village" experience- The Africa that everyone hears about. I went to church with Miss Karen, one of the Doctors here whose name escapes me.

She said it was going to be an hour drive. There was one other passenger, who spoke only French. Away we went.

Then we picked up 5 people.

When we got there, we pulled a clown car style exeunt all. The first thing I noticed when we arrived was a dog licking it's paw. It had no fur on it's paw, and I could see a part of his bone.

The village children quickly shooed him away, and proceeded to marvel at my height. There was not a single door in the village that did not require me to practice the limbo.

When I get back, ya'll are goin' down. Luau style.

We sat in a house for a while and I wished I spoke French. Everyone kinda talked around me, and I caught random small words. I really wish I could have talked to the kids- all I could do was make goofy faces. That seemed sufficient for their tastes.

They had weird decorations.  One of them was some sort of dead thing. Except I wasn't really sure what it was.

It was just a pelt. Looked sorta rodent like, and very "not Chuck Testa." It was rotted and sagging off of the mounting piece, which, ironically and with poor juxtaposition, was marvelous. The wood here is really nice. I can't stress enough though, how nasty this animal-carcass-sans-animal was.

I asked the oldest kid what kind of animal it was, with my limited French. He squinted at it, and then hopped up to take a closer look.

He reached his hand out.

I cringed.

He... reached a bit further...

More of the aforementioned cringing.

He settled back. "I don't know" he said.

"Oh. Ok." I said, relaxing.

His curiosity still unsatisfied, he reached up and gave it a good feel.

The flies decided that it was time to leave.

He still didn't know.

Then it was time for church. I got the seat of honor, up in the front. I'm not sure if they gave me that seat because I was new, or because I couldn't see them staring at me if I was faced forward. Not that they were particularly shy about it.

It was a marvelous show, and I'm sure it would have been even better if I had understood a word of it.

When they sang, I couldn't really sing along, one cuz I couldn't understand it, and two, their melodies were significantly more complex than any western song I've heard. I couldn't even hum along. They rocked it.

I stood, and smiled, and clapped along, and felt conspicuously caucasian. And tall. And front-rowey.

After that was done (or something- to be honest I never knew exactly what was going on) I went to Sunday school with all the little guys.

The teacher (Miss Karen) told the story of David and Goliath. I proved to be a convenient teaching tool. When they were told that Goliath was as tall as me and a half, their eyes just about popped out of their heads. They spent the entire rest of the time (which was dedicated to coloring) sneaking glances at me and giggling furiously. I made more silly faces, and a good time was had by all.

Later we (Miss Karen, the pastor, his friend, and myself) went to eat at someone's house (again, never really sure what's going on, so I can't tell you whose house it was.)

The food was frightening to my sensitive western palate. I like to think I'm a pretty good eater, and I ate it all with a smile on my face, but that smile was not birthed of my gusto.

Most of it was just bland. I can do bland. The plantain was interesting. There was some other tuber-root thing, and something like a potato.

Goodness I loved that potato.

The last item on the menu was Gazelle. People tell me that gazelle is just like deer, but this must have been cooked some odd way, because it smelled like death.

People say the word gag all the time, but it's different when it's an involuntary reaction instead of melodrama.

I was also served Pomplamoose, which is a Gabonese-made grapefruit soda.

That soda pretty much allowed me to eat all my food. I don't think I could have gotten it down otherwise, and after having someone be so kind as to feed me, I didn't want to be rude just because I'm bad at eating African food.

The toughest thing right now is the language. I'm getting sick of not being able to talk to people. Every French speaker I talk to says I have very little accent when I speak, but my vocabulary is pretty small. Please pray that I can expand it quickly.

The trip down was crazy. African driving is very scary. The thing that impressed me, however, is the dichotomous quality of the roads. There are no mediocre roads, no "middle of the road" roads, there is just potholes-you-could-fit-a-buick-in type roads and wait-are-we-still-in-Africa? roads.

There are lines on the roads. The good ones. The lines don't mean much though. And every time you hit a stretch of well-paved road, you just want to get to the end, pop it in reverse and drive it again.

We drove through a lot of little villages. This is a developing country, so you see the poverty of their houses juxtaposed with some kid walking down the street listening to his iPod. Weird.

I get the sensation that no one is really starving here. Things are tight, but this is the jungle. It's lush with vegetation, there is food everywhere. That got me to thinking about spiritual hunger. The Newmans, the missionary couple that I drove down with, say that here in Gabon, people are incredibly hungry spiritually.

So I'm kinda... reeling right now I guess. I don't know what to think. There's no distinct "Oh no, look at that baby starving," but there's clearly a need here. But there's that much need anywhere... I dunno. I'll get back to you, but I fear that there is no easy answer. Maybe my brain is just beat from travel. There has been so much to see, and my tiny world has grown so much, that I don't really know where to put myself anymore. And there's too much information being thrown at me to think about each thing in a linear path. So whenever I have enough time to think, I just kinda space out.

Obviously, God has this all under control. And maybe He's demonstrating to me that not everything can be thought into submission. I dunno. Don't, however, take my tone to be forlorn or despairing. I'm happy to wait upon the Lord. I'm just tired. And when I think about this kinda stuff, I get all... Soul Searchy. #adventuretimequotesamidstexistentialquandries

Today we did some pest control. You're probably thinking I'm about to tell you some horror story about giant rats and bugs the size of your palm.

Nope.

Shooting dogs with rifles.

So. That was interesting. I'll spare you the details, but it was brutal. Dogs are very vocal about pain.

There's a flip side of course. Dogs in this country are flea and disease-ridden pests, and getting rid of them is good for the people. Still though. Pretty tough to watch.

After that we went to a restaurant that is right on the Hospital property. I had rice and beef. Absolutely massive amounts of food. Puts a garbage plate to shame.

Later today we go to the market.

heya

sorry this took so long. they keep me busy around here, and the internet is butts.

I mean, it's a miracle that we even have it, but trying to upload pictures and blog posts is a bit tedious/nigh upon impossible given the tiny bits of free time i can grab now and then.

This place is beautiful. Truly stunning. When I get a free day I will try and capture it for you all. there's this one video that i want you all to see especially, but uploading video may actually be impossible. so maybe i'll save it for 5 months from now.

The people here are treasures, every one of them. The guys I'm working with especially, are fun, jokin' around, warm, welcoming people.

One thing I've learned is the power of being welcoming. It's phenomenal. Paul introduced me to all the guys, and of course there's a pretty obvious barrier between me and the Gabonese French speakers. But as we left the garage, one of them, Olivier, just reached out and gave me a hearty pat on the back.

And then I knew I had been accepted. It was wonderful. So that's what I've taken away so far.

Flying

This airplane is maybe 100 feet long. There is one walking aisle, between two rows of seats. The couple in front of me are talking in a romantic language. They have a tiny son whose head is constantly twisting right and left. My head brushes the ceiling. The steward is also the co pilot. Friendly guy. I mentioned I was going to Africa and he said "right on."


The windows are shaped in an oval that reminds me of portal. I think I'm the most interesting looking person on this flight. Not that that's anything to brag about, these people are just incredibly Canadian looking. 


Did I mention how tiny this plane is? For reasons too ironic to sufficiently explain, I'm concerned that this means it won't be able to defy gravity sufficiently. As if gravity and the plane are about to get into a fight, and my prize boxing champ has been skimping on protein shakes. 


The lady they keep in the speaker is begrudgingly mumbling incomprehensible safety tips. Oh gosh we're moving. I just learned that the guy in front of me is catholic, despite our language barrier. 


I can see into the control room. There's no door. I can't decide if they couldn't afford it or didn't have the room for it. We've been moving around so long on wheels that I wonder if we're just gonna drive there. 


Ooh. Acceleration power. Haahahahaha we're not on the ground. The baby's face in front of me is delightful. It's overcast. Aces of the pacific style. Like swimming in gray milk. Every so often I get a wave of vertigo. My butt is buzzing. I chose a seat way too close to the engine. Remember that. The kid in front of me staring at me, wide eyed. Not quite scared. Just curious and a bit incredulous. His father is holding on to him so tightly, I wonder if the wide-eyed look is involuntary. 


We just breached the clouds. Noise canceling headphones are good, but they filter about half the noise out. We're leveling out, which means the engines are quieter. Turbulence. Daddy seems to be getting more comfort from junior than vice versa. You can tell if the plane is going up or down. It's distinct. Banking hard is fun. The clouds look like a foamy field of white. I almost expect to see cows hanging out on them. We're going down. Someone in the back is cheering. This is wicked rough. Wow. Hitting the ground is brutal. On the ground now. It's dark out.

Taco Night

I like Tacos. Not so much detailed planning. I can handle the latter, however, so long as it is in conjunction with the former.

Tonight, the Curry family had dinner with that most delightful of couples, Dave and Diann Conquest. After feasting on tacos and chatting about various Africa-themed things, they helped me pack up all of my things (and sent along a few treats for their family.)

Their daughter Joanna Thelander is the woman who I initially talked with about going down for a mission trip.

*full circle!*

Then we had a delightful session of prayer, being thankful and asking for blessings and whatnot. It was good.

So now I'm packed. Chilling with my family for the last time in a while, and tomorrow I leave. My mom is spazzing, just a little. I'm a space cadet. Maybe I'll realize how crazy this is when I'm thousands of feet above the ground.

Africaboy, up, up, and away!