Peanuts

My father keeps asking me if the kids and I fell into a hole during our walk in June, preventing me from blogging ever since. The imagery works pretty well for me though, in that we left for a long summer vacation requiring eight flights in total, followed by some serious ineptitude on my part involving a new digital camera and a switch from PC to Mac. Needless to say, the learning curve has been impressive, and I'm still not out of the hole.

Meanwhile, as each day passes there are new and exciting African experiences occurring to us that I'm not writing about. Today, however, I had an experience that made me decide to get back to blogging. While it wasn't particularly noteworthy for anyone actually living here in Port-Gentil, it left a very African image in my head that I thought I ought to try to describe for friends and family who have yet to come visit us down here.

As I was driving through town this morning I swerved to avoid hitting a jaywalking woman balancing an enormous tray on her head piled mile-high with peanuts. And I don't mean little bags of peanuts or anything, I mean thousands of individual peanuts stacked carefully one on top of the other reaching an unbelievably delicate peak balancing up there all on its own. While I've never actually counted that many peanuts before, I would venture to guess there must have been a good 3,000 of them on her head. Not that I had time to count. As my car turned sharply and this woman's near-death flashed before me, I was left with a lasting image of thousands of peanuts strewn from one side of the busy street to the other. Good thing that part was only my imagination.

School Walk

Before moving to Gabon it never seemed to me that going for a walk was much of a big event. You grab your keys, everyone gets their shoes on and you start walking. Here in Port-Gentil, however, a "stroll"-- however short it may be-- is always a pretty big event.

First you've got to consider the heat. For 10 months out of the year the relentless sun and heavy humidity prevent you from spontaneously going outdoors for exercise.

Secondly, it's important to keep in mind that for those same 10 months giant mutant mosquitoes try to eat you alive whenever you find yourself outdoors, even going after the space between your fingers!

And thirdly, there's the issue of infrastructure, or lack thereof, in Port-Gentil. Roads are riddled with potholes the size of small airplanes, causing cars to veer aaaallllllllllllll over the road in an effort to avoid falling in. Now whether it's the constant heat or the overall mentality in town, or just general confusion, I dare say I've noticed that many a Port-Gentil driver is only able to focus on one issue on the road at a time. This of course means that if you happen to be walking along the side of a road with many potholes (sidewalks being a rare luxury in town) you are pretty much taking your life into your own hands. Or putting it in the hands of some random driver, which I can guarantee you is a very scary thought.

This year though is the first time the kids and I have stayed in Port-Gentil for the winter months of June and July. Suddenly temperatures have "plummeted" to somewhere in the high 70s/low 80s F (25-27 C), and with mosquitoes less apt to survive "the cold", taking a walk has suddenly become a possibility and a fabulous change of pace!

So on the last day of school for the kids last week I decided to pack Noah up in the stroller (which is a rare thing to take out on the streets here) and go get Cecilia, Jourdain and their buddy Yann from school BY FOOT!! Here's a shot of Jourdain at school at the end of his last day as a first grader!
I discovered it's about a 30 min walk from our house to the school, which is nothing to brag about in many countries, but in Port-Gentil if you set out on a walk across town with three kids and a baby and manage to make it home with nothing but a knee scrape or two, you've managed a pretty big accomplishment as far as I'm concerned!

On the walk the kids took turns pushing the baby in his stroller,
which seems pretty routine, until you actually start walking and noticing things like the hole in front of Cecilia in this picture. Throughout our walk I ended up shouting a lot of things like, "LOOK OUT FOR THAT BIG HOLE COMING UP!"
Here's a close-up of Cecilia's close call above.


At one point Jourdain pointed out this haunted house. He's been watching a lot of Scooby Doo reruns lately and I have to say I think he's got the idea just right.
Then it was Jourdain's turn to push the baby. And Cecilia was right there to point out yet another possible disaster.
Jourdain made us all laugh as he got stuck on a pole in the middle of the sidewalk. What is it doing there anyway?
As we walked home I figured out the best route for us, which pretty much follows a straight line, and there's even a good part on very quiet streets with a bit of a sidewalk area. Our trip involved only one major fall involving tears and a bit of a bruise, but by the end we figured out what we need to be looking out for in terms of danger zones and large, gaping holes along the way. In the end the five of us made it home just fine, and the kids and I all agreed that we just may start doing this a bit more regularly once school starts back up in the warmer months.

I Pledge Allegiance

Last week Jourdain's school organized a fair that involved his being on stage dancing around with the flag of his choice on his back. I arrived at the show to discover he had chosen, drawn and colored in the flag of --- Panama. When I asked him curiously what made him pick that particular country, he said "Look at it Mama! Can't you see Panama is America! It's the American flag!!" Oh boy.

At home a few days later I decided to print out a copy of the American flag for Jourdain and Cecilia so they may one day recognize where part of them comes from. Cecilia was so excited when I handed it to her that she ran off shouting, "YAY!! JOURDAIN, LOOK! A GABONESE FLAG!!"Looks like I've got my work cut out for me.

Sunday Doldrums in Port-Gentil

It is at this point that I should officially announce that our kids are (and please read this with a long, whiny, nasal tone) "sooooooooooooooo sick of going to the beach on the weekends". I have no words for how shocked I am every time I hear this. For someone whose entire childhood summer vacation highlight was jumping around in a freezing cold lake on a hot day in August, I just cannot imagine how anyone in their right mind could find it dull to spend a weekend on a deserted island in the tropics.

Ok, let's see. We bring a few dogs,
and our new puppy.


We bring our friends,and our parents' friends,
who we get to cover in sand as they try to rest.

We kayak,
and snorkel,
and enjoy the sun and sand with our parents and baby brother.
But couldn't we just do something else for once on the weekend? Hmm... I'm thinking of making them start mowing the lawn for a change.

Cloth Shopping

In Port-Gentil there are very few places to buy ready-made clothes. Not one single clothing chain is in town (or in the whole country, for that matter), and most shops selling women's attire seem to sell a few pieces here and there of last summer's leftovers from Europe. If you happen to spot a nice skirt hanging randomly on a rack, you'd better hope it's your size, and if not, well, there'll be another shipment of odds and ends coming into town in another month or two. Needless to say, our family tends to shop for clothes once a year when back in France.

There are, however, loads of seamstresses in town and a seemingly endless number of Senegalese men selling gorgeous African cloth all over the place. Put the two together and you can get yourself pretty snazzed up, African style. Here's Dialo who I tend to buy fabric from pretty regularly. In his hand is some material I chose the other day for a few little African dresses I'm having made for Cecilia. I'll post her in her new outfits once they're ready.When you enter any of these fabric shops (or rather tin-roof shacks) you walk right into a wall of individual swaths of material, each marked with a family name and specific event to be attended. Some say "Baptism", others "Funeral", but clearly this is where you go to buy the material for the outfit you need to wear on a very specific occasion. See here:

Here's a closer look. The material in the middle with green and blue hearts is what you'd need to be wearing if you were invited to the Moussavou family wedding, for example.In Port-Gentil (is this the same throughout all of Africa?) everyone attending a family event is dressed in exactly the same material, but in whichever style of dress their seamstress made up for them. I'll try to get a shot of a crowd dressed like this one day. Meanwhile, a few "artistic" shots of some fabrics around town:

Playtime

One of the great things about living in the tropics when you're five years old is that 12 months out of the year you and your best friend can sneak off outdoors during a rain storm, get naked and play in the mud for as long as you want - or at least until your mom finds you.

Survivor GABON!

Well at least somebody in the States has discovered how exciting and exotic Gabon, Africa can be! The makers of the US TV show Survivor are apparently over here (where? where?) getting things lined up to film the next season on a beach in Gabon! (I'd be willing to lend them our private island if only they'd ask.)

Check out the preview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY6Hb-1ffKs

And an article:
http://hollywoodinsider.ew.com/2008/05/jeff-probst-tal.html

Filming begins at the end of June and the show will air in September. Ask me how badly I want the interpreting job on this one!!

Now if only I could help the announcer learn to pronounce the name of the country properly...

Walking

My friend Mary (in white tee shirt in the picture below) and I each added a baby to our respective families at the same time last summer. Soon after returning to Gabon with baby I realized that every time I found myself driving along the waterfront in town I would see Mary power-walking along next to my car! (Well, maybe not the same speed, but you get the picture.) A few weeks and a whole lot of drive-by disgrace later I got up the courage to join her three mornings a week for 10K walks.

One day at the end of our walk Mary asked me if I would mind having "a very nice, old woman" join us in our walks once in a while. Figuring my pace was pretty slow anyway, I said of course she could join. "Oh, but she walks very quickly though," warned Mary.

The next morning Mary and the "old woman" (woman in red shirt below) showed up at my door to start our walk. Hmmmm....I thought to myself, I guess Mary considers late 50s to be "old".
Our new walking buddy told me her name was Lillian, and as soon as we headed out I realized she was in much better shape than I was. Both Mary and I had to pretty much jog to keep up. Here's a shot of Lillian walking:

About a half hour into our walk Lillian began talking about her daughter who's in her late 40s, and I started wondering how young she must have been when she had children. Trying to calculate quickly while keeping up with her pace, I tell Lillian she must have been quite a young mother. That's when I learned that this amazingly fit, very talkative, speed-walking French woman is 74!!!! I of course spent the next hour of our walk pumping her for information on HOW SHE DOES IT! To summarize, she walks 20-30 kilometers a day, eats small meals and uses normal facial cream from the supermarket. I'm not sure I can manage all that walking into my schedule, but I can say I'm definitely hooked on walking now and I guess I don't need to change creams.

Here are a few typical scenes of what we see on our morning walks through downtown Port-Gentil. In these shots Germaine, a Gabonese friend of Lillian, is joining in.

Mr. Obame

I'm teaching English these days to a great number of French-speaking Gabonese oilfield workers. They all work on rotation on the oil platforms out here, and for those of you not directly embedded in the world of oil, it may make you chuckle to know their official job titles are Roustabout and Roughneck. Even better, though, is hearing someone describe his job with a French accent. I mean, try saying "I em a Ruffffnek" as if you were Pepe Le Pew and tell me it's not kinda cute!!

The students are all very eager to learn, as they work for a large US firm and have to work with Americans quite a bit. One of my favorite students is named Elvis, so of course when we had our lesson on body parts I just had to teach him the world pelvis. Another student is named Parfait (Perfect) Obame! Not a bad name, I must say, even though he swears he is no relation to the future president of the US. I'm thinking I might not want to take any chances and give him an A anyway...

Libreville

Jourdain, Cecilia and I needed to make a day trip recently to Libreville (the capital city) to renew our passports. Although we transfer through Libreville airport four times a year to get from Manji island (where Port-Gentil is located) to Paris and back, we had never actually seen any of the city itself.

The bumpy plane ride to Libreville was nothing new, but excitement was still in the air for the young pair who got to skip school for our outing! (I should add here that our poor little 8-month-old Noah is going to have to wait for his US citizenship, as this trip is just a bit too, um, adventurous for me to want to take him at this point.)
As usual, the kids scooted right up behind the pilots to watch them magically work those levers and dials as they do. I myself prefer to pretend none of this is happening while I look the other way, pray for no turbulence, and simply hold my breath until we land 40 minutes later... Of course I do this all while keeping my "mom is calm and in control of the situation" face. As we took off over the ocean towards Libreville our plane headed directly over our private weekend-getaway island, which is the long fish-shaped vegetation surrounded by white sand to the right in the picture. Towards the bottom of the island, on the right, you'll notice a square of sand with a small black dot set into it. That's our cabana and the clearing around it. The black water between the island and the mainland is a deep river that winds around and heads inland just out of the picture.

This was our first day-time approach to Libreville, and it was only then that I realized the city is not quite the thriving metropolis I had always assumed it was.
Once in town though, and on our way to the embassy, I understood the city was at least big enough for a billboard boasting the past 40 years of dedicated public service of President-for-life Omar Bongo.
The city, it seemed, was even big enough for a second billboard advertising the "40 years of economic and political decisions" of President Bongo, resulting --naturally-- in "peace and stability".As our taxi drove us on to the embassy I couldn't miss the next billboard explaining that Bongo and his wife are helping in the fight against HIV AIDS.
Most importantly though I discovered that Libreville is so thick with propaganda that if I kept on taking pictures of it all I might not have much memory left in my camera for the rest of the day's events.

The three of us needed new passport pictures, so we stopped en route at a crowded photography shop. Once inside I turned to see Cecilia next to me holding her breath for so long that I thought she might pass out. "How can you STAAAAAAAAAAND it, Mama???? Can't you SMELLLLLLLLLLL how much it stinks in here?" I thanked God no one in the shop understood English and quickly told her not everyone has a shower in Libreville. At the US Embassy things smelled a bit fresher, but as we were the only ones in the room there was much less entertainment to keep the kids occupied.
We put our coloring books to good use...
and made up for the boredom with a quick pizza and swim before catching our bumpy little flight back to Port-Gentil.