Our Congo x-mas tree




A view of the inside of our new home--our downstairs living room




View looking out our bedroom window

Jensen as the human x-mas light holder

Hello Everyone,
I was going to try to send a quick blog entry before we left on vacation, but now we have left, and are sitting in the Kenya Airport, in Nairobi. We have an 8 hour layover, before boarding our plane for London, so I thought this would be a good time to write my blog entry. In less than 24 hours, we will be reunited with our best friends from AZ! We are all so excited, especially the kids. I will write again, after our trip, but right now, I want to share some thoughts about our life in the Congo, and some observations that I have made about the culture and the people here.

Last time I wrote, I mentioned that we had moved into a new home. All has been going well with the new home for the most part, but unfortunately, we traded one set of problems at the old house, for a new set at the new house. Our biggest problem at the new house is that we have at least 7 windows that leak during the storms. As you know, we are now in the rainy season, which means we get at least one big storm everyday. When the storms hit, the windows leak. Now, I’m not talking about little leaks. I’m talking about water flooding all over the floors. Fortunately, not all the windows leak at the same time, as it depends which direction the storm is blowing. And fortunately for me, I have a full sized washer and dryer because otherwise I would never have enough dry towels to clean up all the mess. A couple of weeks ago, we came home during a huge storm (hail, thunder, lightening), and I walked into the house, and there was water all over my kitchen counters, under the microwave, and all over the floor. Everything is made so poorly here, that none of the kitchen counters are sealed up next to the wall, so when the windows leak, all the water goes down behind the counters, and then comes out from under the cabinets onto the floor! Another family here had the same problem with their house (but even worse than our house), but they put up awnings, and now the problem is solved. Unfortunately for us, the company does not want to spend any more money on these houses to fix them, so we’re sort of stuck with it. Oh well, we still like this house better than the old one.

This house seems to stay much cleaner than the last one, and that makes me happy. I’m not going through cleaning wipes like crazy anymore. I do also have a house cleaner, and that is a great help. His name is Papa Kabila, after the president here. He’s not the best cleaner, but he does clean my floors really well, which is great because we have a lot of tile! He also does a really good job of making sure my trashes are never full. He’s so funny though. Instead of pulling my trash bags out and throwing them away, he dumps all the trash, and then washes the bag, and then puts it back into my trash can! It must be a Congo thing because one of my friends said that her house guy does the same thing.

Another funny thing about this house is all the keys I have. I literally spent one entire day trying to figure out which keys went to which doors, and then labeling them. There are 3 keys for every door, and there are keys to everything! The laundry room, the bathrooms, every bedroom, the living room, dining room, garage, utility room, front door, back door, kitchen, bedroom closets, etc. There are no locks that you can turn—you just have to turn the key in the lock to lock a door, even on the bathrooms. And, all the locks turn backwards. Instead of turning to the right to lock something, you turn the key to the left. I’m still trying to get used to that. I had always used the “righty tighty, lefty loosey” rhyme to remember which way to turn things, but now that no longer applies. I carry 10 different keys on my keychain, and of those, I use at least 8 of them on a daily basis. What’s sad, is that to me, this shows the kind of mentality that is here in the Congo. Everything has to be locked up because stealing is so rampant. One of my friends was telling me how her house worker was stealing the rubberbands that she uses on her braces! I have not noticed anything missing yet at my house, but I do keep my important things locked up. The things that often go missing are things like shampoo, soap, and toilet paper—things you might not notice right away. The way the Congolese see it, is that we have so much, so we should share it with them, and if we don’t, then they should just take it. They don’t really see it as doing something wrong.

Something that I think is really interesting, but actually a little sad is that Dustin says he feels safer here than he did back in AZ. We lived in a nice neighborhood in AZ; it’s not like we lived in South Phoenix! I asked him what made him feel safe here, and he said, “We have barbed wire around our house, and a guard guarding our house, so I know that no bad guys can get in”. How sad that we had to move to the Congo for Dustin to feel safe.

The next few things that I want to write about are just little things that I have observed about the local people here.
You hardly ever see any men with beards
Hardly anyone wears glasses (regular or sunglasses)
I rarely see any old people here
Very few of the Congolese people smoke (I think because they can’t afford it)
I have only seen one person here who looks as if he has severe mental issues (sort of like some of the crazy, homeless people you might see on the streets). He always stands on the same corner, looking pretty disheveled, and always appears to be talking to himself, or to no one in particular.
It’s interesting because as we drive down our street, there are African people everywhere and the stores/houses are pretty dilapidated. If I was back home, I would think I was in South Phoenix, and I would be scared for my life. But here, this is just life in the Congo, and I never feel nervous or unsafe.
Men hold hands here, but not because they are gay. It is a sign of respect. You rarely see men/women holding hands, or 2 women holding hands—just 2 men.
The roads here get worse and worse each day because of the daily pounding of the storms. You really can’t get anywhere without a 4-wheel drive. It’s just so funny what we take for granted (good roads) and what they accept as normal. The roads that we travel on daily here would be closed off in the States, until they could be repaired.

Well, that’s about it for now. The Kenya airport is not the greatest, but we now only have 3.5 hours left to wait until our flight leaves. Our luggage was supposed to get checked through all the way to London, but Bill just checked on it, and so far, they can only find 3 of our 4 bags. I hope they can find the last one. Nothing is worse than starting a vacation off with missing luggage. At least we’re going to a big city where I know we can buy things, if need be. Well, Jensen and I are off to check out the stores in the airport. Will write again after we get home from our trip.

Oh yeah—one more thing. I was going to try to do online Christmas cards, but haven’t quite figured out how. So, if I don’t end up getting it figured out, I just want to wish everyone happy holidays and a happy new year! I’ll try to put some pictures in here.

Laurie