congo

Introducing Baby Jenie

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Our maid Viviane was a bachelorette when we moved here four years ago. I’ve never asked her how she managed to avoid marriage before age 26, in a country where early marriage is common and girls start having babies in their teens. I also don’t know the circumstances of her marriage, which came as a total surprise to me. One Monday she casually told me she was married over the weekend. I asked her why didn’t she tell me earlier; I would have liked to come to the wedding. She shrugged and said it happened quickly, and it was a small affair. The Viviane I’ve come to know is a very strong, proud woman. She’s not the type to ask her mzungu boss to come to her wedding just so she can score an expensive gift.
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Giving Thanks

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There are times when the pickings feel pretty slim around here. Us expat wives responsible for the weekly grocery shopping have gone through long dry spells when we can’t even find flour, sugar, or vegetable oil at our local mining-camp store. Stinky frozen fish, yes. Moldy cabbage, usually. But even then, don’t count on it. Nearly everything we’ve thought was a “regular” item on the shelves has run out at one time or another, and there’s no telling when it will be restocked.

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One Person’s Trash Bag is Another’s Treasure

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The garbage bin outside gets emptied once a week, almost as if we were living in a real city with real city services. I’m not sure what the trash guys do with all the bins after they load them onto a flat-bed truck and haul them away, and I don’t think I want to know. But a few hours later they return an empty, semi-clean bin to each house, and for that I’m grateful.

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Mole Monday

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As I’m standing in the kitchen Saturday night cutting up a whole chicken — something I never did before moving here, by the way, I mean why would I when a normal grocery store sells them in convenient little pieces already? — I’m thinking of my grandmother, and the story she told recently about butchering a turkey for Thanksgiving one year because she thought she and her daughters ought to know how to do it. My chicken arrived already dead and frozen, thankfully, but I’m picturing my grandmother in the kitchen with me anyway, offering tips as I cut through joints, separating legs from body, drumsticks from thighs, breasts from backbone. I’m making chicken stock, using a whole chicken instead of just spare parts in order to get a super-rich broth (plus shredded breast meat for enchiladas later). Two more whole chickens wait in the freezer for their turn under the knife. This stock is slated for tomorrow’s mole negro sauce, to accompany those other two chickens at a dinner party on Monday.

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Raining Figs

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Waiting for the heat and humidity to break and for Rainy Season to officially announce itself present. The sky is dark with heavy clouds but has been teasing for weeks. Our part of Congo, south of the equator, is dried up and dusty, having had no rain for the better part of six months now. The air is hazy and brown, whether you’re looking up from the ground, or down from the windows of an airplane as I was a few days ago. There’s not much to look at.

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Ebola Hapa

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Yesterday, the DRC and WHO announced that Ebola is here. But not here here, and not Ebola Ebola. There are a lot of buts involved in explaining this… which I know you probably don’t want to hear. It must be frustrating to hear me sounding cavalier about this topic — though it’s not at all how I intend to sound, because believe me, I have quite a healthy respect for my own mortality and can often sense impending doom (even when utterly unnecessary). If Seb and I felt at risk, we would be out of here.

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Introducing Baby Seb

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This story is dedicated to my cousin Megan, and her adorable new arrival. May your futures be filled with happiness, health, and all the livestock your hearts desire.

No, the ladies who called me fat the other day weren’t onto something. (Sorry to disappoint, Mom, Dad, and Grandma!) There’s a tradition around here of naming new babies after one’s boss. As a result there are lots of Congolese children running around with American names like Jeff, Eric, or Bob, instead of Swahili names like Ilunga, Mpala, or Lamba Lamba.

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Hapana Ebola Hapa (=No Ebola Here)

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Thank you to the friends and family who’ve contacted me to ask about the status of Ebola here. I love that you’re thinking of us and definitely owe you an update (especially after so recently complaining about giardia!). You all had done your homework, too, mentioning that it seemed to be far away from us. Those of you who haven’t contacted me probably also noticed it wasn’t too close. So I say nice work everybody, we have a total geography WIN here!

Whichever camp you fall in, you’re right. It IS far away from us. There are no reported cases in our little DR-Congo, nor any neighboring countries. This reassurance, of course, overlooks a few key facts, like: Ebola was discovered in 1976 in this very country; it’s named after a tributary of the Congo River; and, somehow, the current strain affecting West Africa (out of five possibilities) is the “Zaire” strain, or the same one that usually strikes here. Yikes. Ahem.

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