We made it on Google Earth!!

For most of you the idea of being on Google Earth is old hat, but those of us in Port Gentil (used to gazing at a hazy whirl of cloud when looking for our town) are now sending emails back and forth with glee about the fact that we can now ZOOM IN to our little world down here! Join me in my excitement and take a look:

So this is Gabon, with our town of Port-Gentil sticking out into the ocean on the tip where I've placed the yellow circle.

And here's that point up close, which is called Mandji Island. The east side of the island (looks like peninsula here in pic) is where Port-Gentil is located. As you can see, the Atlantic coast is on the western side of the island, and the town itself looks out onto a very large bay to the east that eventually leads to the mainland (which is too far to see with the eye when at the beach). The island itself is only a few kilometers wide and maybe 25 kilometers from north to south.

And our house is the brown roof, just below the yellow circle. For those who care, our roof was redone this summer and is now similar to an orangy Italian or French terra cotta tiled roof. I'm looking forward to getting a new-and-improved Google Earth one day that shows the new roof and the swimming pool in the back yard (which is OLD, so this picture dates back a while, for sure).

But more importantly is our private island (which still needs a name) that looks out onto that magnificent bay!! As you can imagine, the white edges in the pic are the sand and the dark curve is the vegetation. Our cabana wasn't yet built on it when the picture was taken, but I hope it too will one day make it onto Google Earth! (See blog post entitled Island Cabana for pictures of us on the island)

So that's pretty much all there is to show here since our little town is less interesting from above than from street level. I'll get some shots of downtown Port Gentil in here soon! Meanwhile, plan that trip to come play on our island with us!!

Exotic Myasis!!

So is it just me or does the name Exotic Myiasis sound quite, well...exotic? And lovely. Could be the name of an island, right? Or a delicious recipe from Greece. Or perhaps even the name of a new kind of bathing suit. Anything, and I mean ANYTHING but THE LARVA FROM A FLY THAT IMPLANTS ITSELF UNDER YOUR SKIN AND GROWS INTO A MAGGOT!!!!!!!!!!! Right?

Well, anyway, you get the point, and after one year in Gabon this crazy maggot thing has now started happening to us!! It started when I decided that having our maid wash, machine dry and iron my bathing suits was a bit over the top and that a simple rinse and re-wear would be just fine for me (I mean, I'm far from the J. Lo of Africa). To be honest, Ines looked at me funnily when I told her to stay away from my bathing suits, but I thought nothing of it at the time. Turns out you in fact DO need to have your bathing suits (and underwear and socks and sheets and pajamas) washed, machine dried and ironed in order to avoid any possible Exotic Myasis occurring to you from larvae lurking in the fibers. Well, I won't tell you where my larva ended up implanting itself exactly, but suffice it to say that I was wearing a bikini when it happened.

Then about a week after I managed to pop the MAGGOT out of myself (still alive, mind you), Jourdain started to show signs quite similar to the itchy bump I had acquired, but this time on his wrist and on the lower left side of his head. Two at the same time--the poor kid!! After loads of poking, squeezing and very loud screaming from numerous family members at once Olivier and I managed to pop two Exotic Myasis (or is Myases the plural?) right out of our little 4 year old. The worst is when you pop it out and the damned thing just keeps on wiggling. OK, OK, I'm sure that's enough description for many of you.

In an effort to better understand what it was that was invading our bodies over here I ran to that handy Google icon in my toolbar and typed in "Africa fly maggot skin" and came up with the very pleasant sounding "Exotic Myasis". With 133,000 sites mentioning all or some of these words I guess our little family problem isn't all that rare after all. I felt in good company if the people at Google knew what this was all about!

Below here I've copied an abridged version of one particularly descriptive site I found. I say abridged because I've pasted the drawing of the beast rather than the actual photographs they also show. The link to the entire site is at the bottom of this post for the more curious and strong-stomached among you. - ENJOY!

(PS I'll be sure to post more pictures of us at the beach next blog in an effort to help take your mind off this one)

EXOTIC MYIASIS
Introduction

Myiasis is the invasion of living tissue or organs by the immature stage (maggots) of flies. Every year several species of exotic diptera are imported into Australia in the subdermal layers of the skin of overseas travellers. Patients returning from overseas present to their doctor with painful furuncular lesions, often unaware that the cause is a maggot.

http://medent.usyd.edu.au/fact/myiasis.html

Free Toilet Paper Anyone?

Living in Africa you can easily see what life must have been like long ago for our ancestors in Europe. One example of this is that I'm often hit with the original meaning behind many commonly used expressions that are so old they've become nothing but quaint expressions to most of us living in the developed world. Take "it fell off a truck" for instance. The other day I was driving along behind yet another truck that was about to kill me and the kids with its unattached goods floating around in the back. At first the bouncy packs of toilet paper seemed harmless and I even calculated how much money I could save this month if a few packs met with my windshield (prices here for such luxury items are probably 4X the price they cost back home). It was, however, the large bags of rice staring at me as they hopped up and down in the back there (to the right in the picture here) that made me nervous enough to pull over to the side of the road for someone else to take my spot facing the firing line.

As I grabbed my camera to catch the truck in action I realized that when you get a hold of something in Africa that "fell off a truck" you're definitely dealing with stuff that fell off a truck.

The Case of the Missing Tail

Now I don't want to blame any one dog in particular, but recently (and I am willing to accept that this just may be a coincidence) while we were dog-sitting Lilly for our friend Carla our cat Moushi's tail got mysteriously broken. The vet told me it looked like the result of a bite and he wanted to amputate the thing down to a stub as he thought it would look prettier. I informed him I preferred to think of Moushi's comfort and balance rather than worry about my social status reflected through the cuteness of my cat's tail. Luckily for Moushi (aka "Moushi-Mout-Mout") my persistence paid off, and he ended up only loosing 1/3 of his tail and has everything bandaged up nicely like this:

Twin brother Pousse (or Poes if you're Dutch) is less than impressed with Moushi's new look, as you can see here:
While I know many people might say that it's a bit unfair of me to blame Lilly the visiting dog for poor Moushi's predicament since we too have our very own dog (Mooie who replaced Koumba after she met with a car one dark night). In an effort to clear any confusion though I thought I'd let you make up your mind by having a look at the two dogs in question. First up is Mooie, who clearly could never harm a poor kitty tail:



And then there's Lilly:









Well OK, so she doesn't look exactly like that, but you get the picture.

African Jack-o-lanterns

During the week leading up to Halloween I began a search for pumpkins by asking around if anyone had seen any for sale or did they perhaps know someone who would know. (Pretty much everything here is carried out through word of mouth.) I remained optimistic until the very end, as a number of Gabonese actually knew which vegetable I was talking about and mentioned that they had seen them for sale in the past, but couldn't remember where or exactly when it was....

The day before Halloween I gave up the search though and went for the next best thing - watermelons. Our Wednesday replacement guard Hervé was in for a surprise that day when he was told we needed his help in creating a spooky-faced-hollowed-out-watermelon that we would later put a candle in and place on the fence in front of the house. Once I drew a picture of the face he understood generally what it should look like but still seemed confused as to why anyone would do this and what was that candle idea all about?

See here for Hervé's bemusement:
I wasn't too sure what the final result would be once it was dark out and candles were lit, but we all had a lot of fun working on our new jack-o-lantern concept. Of the 4 of us though only Hervé likes watermelon, so he lucked out and got to eat all the contents.
He may not have understood why we would waste such a perfectly good fruit, but he sure was a good sport! Here is our first creation:

And our two halloween beauties that afternoon (Hervé got really into it and came up with the idea of carving out a hairline, as can be seen on our friend on the right)
When I first set them out in front of the house to "scare the neighbors" -as Jourdain and Cilia had explained to Hervé'- I was moderately satisfied, thinking that somehow orange just looks better and these are not terribly authentic looking.....until I set the candles in them and .........

in the end they looked just as good as any I had ever made in the past!!(With the exception of Hervé's hairline which was in fact a great idea!!)

Loango Park II

More scenes from Loango. Come see it with us!!

Above - on the river Below - spot the croc!

Getting to the lodge can take longer than expected

Above - stuck in deep sand Below - driving into the river to board our boat
Looking over the list of activities upon arival at the lodge I saw a canoe coming towards us from a distance. While watching them approach I complained plenty to Diane that we were not informed by staff that this was an option for us and that I really would love to canoe through the mangroves too, blah blah blah and how unfair. Within just a few minutes I realized the ladies I had been watching were possibly not canoing down the river for leisure purposes....

A true mix of French and African cultures in a village en route to the lodge

Birthday Guy

I sure wish I knew how to get this film to work, rather than post this as a picture!! Anyway, happy birthday, Papa/Bubba from the 4 of us in Gabon!!

Loango Park I

A while back Olivier and I spent the weekend with our friends Didier and Diane walking through the jungle and savanna at Loango Park, a (or should I say the) nature reserve here in Gabon. As you can see here, it was elephant season that period, and while I may look all giggly here hangin' with the elephants, I was in fact pretty scared and telling Ol to hurry up and take the picture already! These guys are known as "forest elephants", which are chocolate brown in color and live in the jungle most of the time, coming out in the savanna to graze from time to time. While they are not as large as the grey elephants from Eastern Africa I'm used to seeing in children's books, they appear slightly less cuddly in person than what I had imagined, and they made threatening noises and gestures when we approached at times. Needless to say, this is the only picture of me and elephants in the same frame.

The resort itself is first rate, and definitely a surprise gem in the middle of this country (with oil reserves why bother to seek out tourists?). While the water in the river was brown, it had a golden tint given off by the numerous minerals that give it its color. For any of you planning to visit, this is definitely the place to spend a long weekend, as each season brings with it a new set of wild animals to see (leatherback turtles in Dec/Jan, elephants in March/April, followed by hippos and later whales and dolphins in August/September). The jungle treks are quite an experience too, with monkeys jumping from tree to tree up above throughout your walk.

The Dutch man (former Shell Oil hotshot I hear) who owns the resort has set up many projects to protect the local animals, including what they call "Gorilla Island", which is an isolated area where gorillas caught in the wild to be sold on the market are taken and slowly rehabilitated with the cooperation of a Dutch gorilla/monkey zoo in Holland. It all sounds nicer than what we saw (they are cooped up on the island), but it was amazing to see these lowland Gorillas up close. When trying to cuddle with a 3-year-old gorilla (Cecilia's age and not much different in temperament) I got smacked and bitten a bit, as can be seen here below. Luckily Cilia never got into biting very much.

They've got a wonderful site too, so spread the word and maybe tourism in Gabon will one day be affordable:
http://www.operation-loango.com/

PEGS!!!!!

While in the States this summer Cecilia received a package in the mail from her Zha Zha enclosing what has become BY FAR the most fabulous thing she has ever received (from her viewpoint, in any case). As the packaging was Italian and I couldn't figure out the actual name of the toy, we just decided to call this "The Pegs". Anyone and everyone slightly related to her was coerced either through unadulturated pink-cheeked cuteness or incessant harassment by our little dictator to "COME DO PEGS WITH ME NOW! PLEAAAAAAAASSSSEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!"

After two full months of Cilia partnering up with every grownup she could find, I have now painstakingly gone through all photos of pegs in action and am single-handledly awarding the gold medal in peg playing to: my sister ALISSA!!!! (please see above photo to see true peg-talent)

And here is a sampling of Cilia and relatives in action (either with The Pegs or enjoying other arts and craft projects):

Island Cabana

While I was in the States with the kids a group of very active friends here in Port-Gentil managed to rent an island just off the coast (part under the Drablier name and the other section under Doeff), gather lots of wood, palm leaves and ideas and begin (with Olivier and two other couples) to build a beach cabana on our very own private ISLAND!!

Now that I'm back I've joined in the construction process by um.... helping the other women glue shells all over the posts in an effort to decorate our weekend gettaway! (See pic of my incredible efforts). More explanation later, but for now, enjoy the pictures and start planning your visit soon!! (PS the pretty decoration featured below is not my own creation. I'll need a bit more practice before getting as good as my friend Diane who has done this kind of thing before)