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)

Beach life

So here is a shot of my foot and the "crowds" at the beach here the other day. (Double click to enlarge and see this man is throwing out a fishing net) I'll be offline for a few days traveling to the States with the kids as of this afternoon, so thought I'd leave you with a few pictures of our weekend activities (and where Olivier will be spending his spare time when the kids and I are gone!). This is to show you why we actually don't complain about the potholes and traditional African architecture you saw in my past posts here. Weekends here make up for a lot of the African inconveniences!

World Cup - African Style

Here's so you can get a feeling of what the World Cup viewership is like in town here. If you've read my Amadou & Mamoudou blog below you'll know this is Mamoudou and his buddies from neighboring houses.

While many of you sit around on cozy sofas with drinks and snacks, or others are inside a neighborhood pub enjoying the general friendly football atmosphere, we here in Port-Gentil don't need to actually watch the matches (thank God). I just check in on these guys out in the street to see what the score is every once in a while. Or even better, I send Jourdain and Cecilia out for me.

Le Grand Village

I tend to take loads of pictures of us all lounging at the beach each weekend, but until yesterday I had never attempted taking shots of the daily African life we see in Port-Gentil. Many friends and family have asked me what things LOOK like here, so I loaded the kids and Ines up in the car yesterday and drove into her neighborhood where she took shots of her neighbors and the local market from the passenger seat while I drove on pretending I didn't know what she was up to. Needless to say, we got yelled at by plenty of people who thought we were trying to take pictures specifically of them. (Click on picture of woman selling bananas to get a feel for this.)
We stopped the car numerous times to show them that no, we were actually taking a picture of the FOOD in the market, or the BUILDING that people just happened to be walking in front of. It wasn't an easy sell, but having Ines with me helped (two small kids in the back seat didn't hurt either).

One exception was a man who came up to us and asked us to take a picture of his boat in the canal (first canal picture, closest boat) and was then so excited by the image on my digital camera that he asked me to please be sure to print out a copy for him. I told him I would do so as soon as I got to my father's, where I'll be heading next week for a vacation. The guy can't wait for my return.

Keep in mind this is a part of town you have to actually go into to see, as the main street of Port-Gentil and the areas the expats (and middle and upper class Africans) spend most of their time in don't look nearly as "traditional" as this. You might also want to know that when Olivier reads this blog tomorrow it will be the first time for him to see this part of Port-Gentil too!! The kids and I go to this area--called "Le Grand Village"-- almost daily, to drop Ines and her children off at their house or to buy local products or veggies at the market. It's entirely safe, with the only offence ever carried out against me or the kids being a SERIOUS price hike as soon as we step out of our car.

Amadou & Mamoudou

After our first week here in Port-Gentil Olivier told me he found it "a bit scary"as to how long it took me to get used to having domestic help. In my opinion, though, it's not the getting used to that's worrysome, it's the going back to real life that scares me! We'll have to do all those things everyone hates doing - like bringing out the garbage (or washing your car, mowing the lawn, sweeping up fallen leaves, or even making your own bed..... the list goes on and on!) We have friends in town here who've been traveling the world like this for some 25 years, and they tell me the hardest part for their kids when they went off to college was to understand that their dorm rooms were not the "self-cleaning" type they had always known.

So, this blog is dedicated to two men who have become very important to our family in the short 8 1/2 months we've been here so far - AMADOU and MAMOUDOU. Since everyone knows how we got here, here's the short history as to how these guys ended up here.

Port-Gentil is a small, calm town located on the Atlantic coast, at the tip of what from a distance looks like a peninsula. The land is actually cut off entirely by rivers and waterways (including a beautiful, seemingly limitless bay), making this a very small island (30 miles north-south by 15 east-west I believe) populated by the local Gabonese, the expat oilfield peronnel and their families (us), and a few thousand men from much less affluent African countries, all here to carry out the "non-office" work that the Gabonese refuse to do. And that's where Amadou & Mamoudou come into the picture. They were hired by Olivier's company to "guard" the house, which in some countries I can imagine it's essential, but here it's more a form of providing employment and ensuring your guard mingles with the neighbors' guards and provides a general feeling that all is well and there's not much to steal in our house anyway.

• Amadou (from Mali) works at our house house during the daylight hours. In addition to 'guarding" the front gate, his tasks include pushing the kids on their swings, taking Cilia for a walk to the local store (small shack down the road) to get a lollypop, watering the plants (as seen above), feeding the Koumba the dog, washing our cars, and much more.
  
• Mamoudou(from Senegal) arrives in the evening and takes his TV set out into the road in front of the house, invites all the other guards from the neighboring houses, and watches the kids play in the dirt while watching TV (World Cup right now). I've learned it's best for me and my nervous system not to actually watch Jourdain and Cilia play out there, but to tell them not to drink anyone else's water, and then give them a good scrub when they come in. I just assume everything is cool if they don't have diarrhea the next day. All I know is they go out looking like little foreigners and come back as dark as the Gabonese kids they play with.

As for Olivier, he's completely confused as to which guard has which name, and shouts out a general "BONJOUR/BONSOIR (mumble mumble)MOUDOU!!" when he comes home. I try to explain "AMA during the day, MAMOU at night." Nothing works.

For a map of Port Gentil and its location on Manji Island, click here:

Weekend Beach BBQs

Many people ask us how we're handling life in Africa, assuming, it seems, that we live in a grass hut. In answer to that I must say that life is actually not bad at all here on the equator! We're enjoying this crazy expat life filled with social activites like meeting with friends at one of our homes for a wall-projected movie each week (closest movie theater is a plane-ride away), or last-minute sunset barbeques with friends, kids and all the newly-adopted stray puppies we've taken on. It's a bit like being back in college, only the food's better and there aren't any mid-terms. It feels a lot like I imagine life on those US sitcoms where neighbors pop cheerily in and out of each other's kitchens to snack and share the latest chit chat. Very social, and very laid back. What more could we ask for, really? Even if we do have to live in a grass hut.