That's a little personal, don't you think?

Hello everyone,
Well, it’s 3:00 AM here, and another major storm has hit. It’s impossible to sleep through it (though the kids are). The thunder sounds like a sonic boom—it literally shakes the whole house. The rain coming down is so loud that it sounds like you are standing in the middle of a waterfall. I keep thinking the ceilings are going to cave in any minute and the rain will come pouring in. I haven’t seen any rain flooding in through the windows yet, so that’s a plus!

Speaking of ceilings caving in, I have another story about that. For the last several days, we have had no hot water in our house. We have 4 small water heaters (about 20 gallons each) that heat water for the different parts of the house. Unfortunately for us, three of the four were not working, which meant no hot showers, and no hot water to wash dishes. The one heater that was working, went to a shower that was broken, so we couldn’t use it, so cold showers have been starting our days. For dishes, I’ve been boiling water (it’s not like I’m not boiling water anyway) to wash them in. We found out that you can’t just replace the element in the heaters, you actually have to replace the entire heater. So, we got new water heaters, and 2 of them needed to be installed in our attic, above my bedroom. So for the last few days, I’ve had several Congolese men up in my attic, trying to get these things installed. And, as is typical Congolese fashion, before they even get them fully installed, they’ve already cracked both of them, so now they are leaking.

Now onto the caving ceiling part of the story. As they are installing the water heaters, I am in Dustin’s room, which is adjacent to mine, putting away laundry. I look up and see red, rusty water pouring out of Dustin’s ceiling, down his walls. Luckily I was there because the water was about to hit his dresser where he keeps all his souvenirs that he has collected so far from our trips. And he had a whole bag of Webkinz stuffed animals sitting under the dresser as well. All of it would have been ruined, had I not quickly moved it out of the way. As I’m moving stuff out of the way, there are pieces of paint and plaster flying all over the place, making me feel like the ceiling was about to cave in. Whatever they were doing up in the attic, was apparently right over Dustin’s room. Well, they got everything installed, repaired, and cleaned up, and we once again have hot water!

Here’s another funny story, not related to anything—just funny. My friend’s driver was sick (thought he might have malaria), so my friend told him to go to dispatch and arrange another driver for her, and then go home. When he got to the dispatch office and told them he was sick and needed to go home, they looked at him and said, “You’re too fat to be sick—go back to work”. And they were not kidding! You have to understand that there are very few overweight Congolese people. And this guy is one of the few that is overweight. He’s probably only about 20 pounds overweight, about the same as the majority of Americans. But to them, he is fat. Could you imagine having someone tell you that???!!! Anyway, my friend ended up going down to the dispatch office and telling them that if they didn’t get her another driver, then she would drive herself around. Well, that got them moving fast, as we are not supposed to drive here, and her husband is one of the big bosses here, so they knew they would get in trouble if she was out driving herself around.

It’s so different here, regarding things that we consider to be personal information. One of my other friends went on vacation. When she got back, she said she had eaten out so much that her stomach was sort of bloated. Her driver looked at her and said, “Madame, vous etes grosse”, which translates to, “Madame, you are fat”. Could you imagine someone working for you telling you that?

And another time, I was in a store with a friend of mine. My friend walked out, and the guy behind the counter asked me if she was my daughter. I said that she was my friend. And he says to me, “Oh, you look much older than her”. And he acted like he was telling me something nice! And another customer walks in, and joins in the conversation, and agrees, saying, “Oh yes, I can tell you are much older than her”. They were smiling and happy, like they were giving me this great compliment. I just smiled, and said thank you, and left. For the record, this friend of mine is 13 years younger than me, but still, not young enough to be my daughter!

I still need to write about our field trip, but think I will save that for another post. In the meantime, I want to direct you to another website. The kids’ teacher, James, has created his own webpage here, and on it, each expat kid has a link where they can put their own information and pictures. Eventually, each kid’s page will also hook up into their own blog, but they are still working on that part. The website address is: http://sites.google.com/site/tfmdrceducation. Once you get to the home page, down the lefthand side you’ll see a link to the students’ pages. When you click that, it will take you to another page, where each kid is listed with his/her picture. Then you can click whichever kid you want to read about, and it will take you to their page. I would encourage you to read James’ page as well. James has put a lot of little picture slide shows on the site, so you can see more pictures of the kids, their friends, and how they spend their time here. He is also more daring about taking pictures of things that we are not supposed to, so you can see a bit more of Lubumbashi than what I have shown you. I encourage you to look through the whole site. Let me know if you have any questions about things that you see on this site.

Guess that’s all for now. I guess I should try to go back to sleep now—it’s 4:30 AM.

Cheers!
Laurie