Mylene's birthday, Kinshasa--May 2008

May 9th, 2008

New word for the day: bribe (in lingala) = coca-cola Well….not a bad day. The power was off half the night last night but I woke up and jumped in the pool first thing this morning….to cool off ( someone else was in the shower and I couldn’t wait). It’s mylene’s birthday tomorrow, she wants to go see the monkeys (at least that’s what I understood) so we might go out somewhere or other then…I haven’t been out in the town yet (sorry, the city) so will be interesting to see what we can see, although I have feeling most of it is going to look just like every other African country’s big city that I’ve been too….with maybe even a few reminders of India. Why are all poor countries so similar….

It’s raw, patient, constant, but unpredictable, new, desperate, ridiculous, peaceful, strange, kind, but limited, learning, changing, continuing...

I shall add more descriptions when I think of them, maybe when I see a little more and live here a little more…want to see how much I can see that it is….well for now that’s Congo.

May 10 2008

Joe is a polish uncle Philip....of course he’s a little different, because he’s polish I suppose. No, anyways, we celebrated his and mylene’s birthdays today (his is in a couple days)…and they both told their life stories.

Mylene is an amazing person, and she’s been through and done a lot in her life.

Joe’s was interesting too…seeing as he was born and raised in communist Poland. Listening to their stories you can really see why they decided to serve the Lord, because for them it was really the best and more fulfilling thing they could do.

Joe, Mylene and cheese cake

The cheese cake was good…well a little sweet and more meringue than cheesy, but good, especially considering what my mom had to work with…

 

My hair is cut, as of today of course, and my mom very kindly did it for me. Didn’t come out exactly how I wanted, was quite frustrated with it for a little while (one side of the bangs came out cut quite differently than the other) but it doesn’t actually look so bad, it will grow anyhow, and my mom did quite a nice job otherwise.

Felt like a bit of a waste of an afternoon, especially when I was so worried about it, but I’m glad I just did it, it looks nicer than before when it was all scraggly.

Apparently they have a contact to cut hair (whom I just found out is rather good) but I wasn’t sure about trusting my hair to one of the hairdressers here (I thought they’d only cut black people’s hair) but anyways we’ll try them next time maybe. 

Hair cut

Our yard

I looked up the Congo and DRC today (to add to my ever growing list of new interests of information, I don’t know when I’ll ever catch up with it all) and I think I have a few thought new words to add to my little list. Stricken, untimely, regretted, abused, lowered, still un-sinking, needed, resourceful (ok a little double-meaning for that one), clinging, stubbornly proud (I’m afraid the last ones refer at least to our guard, who besides in other things, won’t come and ask us for food….too proud for that apparently…and if we won’t bring it to him at the time he likes to have it, will say that he doesn’t want it at all. The problem was that tonight we completely forgot to bring him some dinner after ours….and so when my mom remembered at 11 o clock….of course far too late to reasonably give it to him, still she felt so bad that we had forgotten about him that she felt we had to still go give him some dinner. Of course he said he didn’t want it, they probably had just woken him up, but I think they convinced him to take it in the end, he hadn’t eaten all day….shame poor guy, anyways there’s the explanation of stubbornly proud at least).