Back in the Congo

Hello Everyone,
We’ve been back for just over 3 weeks now, but it feels like much longer. Sorry it’s taken this long to post a blog entry, but it’s been a bit of an adjustment being back and getting settled in our new location and new home.

We are now living up at the mine site, in a small city called Fungurume. The house that they were building for us was not ready when we got here, so they moved someone out of his home, and put us here. They moved him into a nicer house than the one we ended up with, but his new house only has 2 bedrooms, so it wasn’t able to work for us. The house that we now have is a tiny, 3 bedroom house. Unfortunately, it reminds me an awful lot of the first house we lived in when we first arrived here last year. It has a big yard, which Kami likes, and we have fruit trees again (banana, avocado, and mango). However, our house is situated directly next to the national road, which means we get a ton of traffic, noise and dirt. Kami likes to sleep on the kids’ beds, and she is so dirty all the time that I have to change their sheets every single day!

I do have a house cleaner, which has been nice because of the amount of dirt that is here. Although, I’m not sure how long the house cleaner will last. He started coming to our house right after we moved in. The company will typically send a cleaner in when people first move in to help clean up from all the moving mess. Well, he’s still coming (3 weeks later), and hopefully he’s getting paid by the company because I have not set up any type of agreement with him. I think they just forgot about him over here, and he seems happy coming here, so I’ll just let it continue until they take him away. The house is small, so I should be able to handle the house cleaning. But in the meantime, it’s nice not to have to.

The other house, the one they are building for us, likely will not be done for a few more months. At this point though, I just don’t think I want to move again. The other house would be nicer because it would be away from the national road, it would be quieter, and it would be new. But the thought of moving again just does not appeal to me at this time. I’m still not even all the way unpacked at this house. There is no place to put anything—the house is full! And the other house, would be even smaller! At least everything works at this house, and we don’t appear to have any major leaks anywhere (though I guess we’ll have to see once rainy season starts).

The kids absolutely love it up here! They love having no guards at the house, and being able to come and go as they please. All of their friends live close by, so when they are not in school, they are out and about playing with their friends. They filter in and out of the different houses, stopping for snacks or drinks, and then they are back out playing in dirt piles. And there are lots of dirt piles! There is construction going on all over the site. It is not the safest place to be, as there is heavy machinery all over the place, huge dirt movers everywhere, and big holes all over the place, some with “danger” signs roping them off, but others with nothing whatsoever around them. Honestly, it’s an accident waiting to happen, but there is really nothing I can do about it except educate my kids on the dangers of it all.

Speaking of accidents, there is a clinic here, and there are a couple of doctors here who speak English. I haven’t met them yet, and hope not to have to! As before, for any major problems, they will fly us to Johannesburg. So far, all of us have been mostly healthy. I have had the “welcome back to Congo” stomach illness on and off since I’ve been back, but nothing that is keeping me down. Jensen was sick the first week of school, with a fever for a few days, and then a stomach virus, but seems fine now.

The kids started school on August 31st, if you can call it a school. The company was supposed to build an International Baccalaureate school for the kids, but they scrapped those plans. Now what they have provided us with is a room where all 9 expat kids do their individual online programs either through the Mesa Distance Learning Program, or through the University of Nebraska. There is one main teacher who helps the kids with their programs and another who is mainly there to help with the upper level Math classes. I am in there daily for 2-3 hours, mainly helping Dustin stay on track, but I will also help others, as needed. Like last year, I am the only parent who volunteers on a regular basis.

It is really beautiful up here, and it will get even prettier when rainy season gets underway (about November). Unfortunately, there seems to be more bugs up here, which does not thrill me. And, although I have not seen any, I have already heard several accounts of people encountering snakes (hissing cobras)! There was even a house up here that they nicknamed the “Cobra House”, as they kept finding cobras in it! I just hope it wasn’t this house! There is also a monkey that lives up here. He moves from house to house, tormenting the dogs. Kami goes absolutely crazy when she sees the monkey in the tree, crying and whining, and dancing on her hind legs. The monkey sometimes throws things at her to torment her further. It’s quite a scene. Our next door neighbor has a cat, and she says that when her cat is in the tree, the monkey will come and groom it! She also said that the monkey once grabbed her cat, as it was falling out of a tree, and helped it back onto a branch. I’ve gotten a couple of pictures of the monkey, but no good ones yet.

There is a gym here and tennis courts, but they can’t seem to get us a decent grocery store or an internet connection in our home. Our internet is spotty; sometimes we have it, and sometimes not. It does not sound as if they are going to remedy this problem any time soon. I frequently have to go to the school, or to other people’s homes to get connected.

When we first arrived, all that they had in the way of a grocery store was a tiny little room with a few packages of pasta, some peanut butter, cookies, full cream milk, candy, alcohol, soda, water, cigarettes, and a few other indiscernible things. Nothing that you could feed a family on. Now they have moved the “grocery store” to another location, slightly bigger than the first. Supposedly they are going to have a much greater selection of food here, but of the 2-3 times I have been, there is nothing really that I would consider buying. Some of the things they are stocking just make no sense. For example, I saw them get a big order of empty ketchup and mustard squeeze bottles in, like this was a restaurant supply store or something. I mean, there is no reason that any of us would buy something like that. And they mentioned that they would be getting hair color in, for those of who dye our hair. Well I can tell you right now that none of us are going to buy some funky brand of hair color. We all bring our specific colors/brands over with us from the States. I wish they could instead get some food that I could actually buy to make for my family! As it is, we are currently living on food we brought back with us from the States, and food that I stocked up on before we left for the summer. We are able to order certain things like bread, cheese, eggs, ham, etc from the kitchen, so I have done that, though had to pay $30 for 2 pounds of cheese, and $20 for ½ pound of ham. Ouch!

It’s hilarious what we have to do to get those things from the kitchen. First we go to the “grocery store” and pay for the cheese, ham, etc. They give us a little slip of paper to then take to the kitchen. The grocery and the kitchen are not near each other. Once at the kitchen we have to find a guy named Osam to give our slip of paper to, and then he goes and fills our order. Half the time he is not around, so they tell us to go look for him in his office. If he’s not in his office, then someone calls him to tell him to come to the kitchen. He eventually shows up. I suggested to him that he have specific hours for us to come to get food, so that he wasn’t always getting interrupted throughout the day. But apparently he did not think that was such a good idea, so we continue with this asinine method.

The water here is supposedly purified, but I don’t trust it, so I continue to boil and filter it myself. What comes out of the tap is awful looking stuff with white chunks of who knows what in it. No way am I drinking that!

The latest news we have just found out about is that the company is no longer going to provide us (wives, kids) with phones. I honestly wonder who is making these policies, as they don’t think about things like safety. I mean, what if one of the kids gets in an accident? How am I supposed to get help? I don’t have a vehicle to drive, and the clinic is not close enough for me to carry an injured child to. Yesterday a pipe in my friend’s house burst, and her whole house was flooding. I’m not sure what she would have done if she did not have a phone to call for help. Also, a lot of times I need to handle business things (banking, etc) on the phone, if I can’t get it taken care of online. It’s not like we take advantage of the phones. I never call the States just to chat with people—only to handle business matters. And the kids use them to check in with me when they are out and about playing with their friends.

It’s sad because I am now feeling like a prisoner here. They’ve moved us into tiny houses, provided us with no internet, taken away our phones, and given us no way to get off the mine site. We have essentially been cut off from the world. Internet was our main connection to the rest of the world, but now I can't even get that consistently. I feel powerless to do anything about it because anything I say will likely get Bill in trouble. Most everything they have said they would provide for us has either been taken away, or scrapped (the IB school, golf course, etc). I’m just glad that the kids are enjoying it here. It’s interesting that the more free they feel, the more imprisoned I feel.

Sorry to be such a downer, but at this time, that is how I am feeling. I’m sure the feeling will pass, but it’s where I’m at right now. So again, I would like to remind everyone to not take for granted all the little things in life, like having at least 5 different grocery stores close by to buy pretty much anything you could want, and having high speed internet. Although, I really should not complain, as most of the people here would be happy to have a tenth of what we have. Unfortunately, it’s hard when you’ve had something, and then it gets taken away.

Well, hopefully my next entry will be a bit more uplifting. Hope everyone is well!

Cheers!
Laurie

P.S. Sorry no pics at this time.