Goats, Flooding, Etc.

I know I haven't written on Congo Scenes for a whole week. I apologize, especially for leaving you with an emotional downer. I was struggling with the distance between us, but I am happy to report that once Sunday passed, I was back to my regular self. Thank you to everyone who wrote to encourage me.

Here's a brief glimpse into last week. Picture this: I'm on the way to work, and just ahead of us in traffic, is a beat up, rusted-out, no windows bus, probably half the size of a standard school bus. It was jammed with people. On top of the bus was the usual stack of canvas-wrapped boxes, stuff, whatever. Next to this pile, were three live goats leashed to the baggage, trying their best to not fall off with every lurch of the bus. I whipped out my little camera, only to discover that there were 7 or 8 more goats strapped to the rear of the baggage. If I hadn't gotten the photo, you probably wouldn't believe it!

On Thursday night we had a terrible rain storm. Severe flooding occured in many areas surrounding the Kinshasa area. I took my Canon with me to work on Friday and took some random photos out the window of the car. The damage was really devasting to the flimsy construction.

Friday afternoon Abbey, fellow colleage, and I took our Mitsubishi out for my first test drive. It's steering wheel is on the right (British), but the roads are all like the states, so I felt a little dyslexic. I was able to manuever around the stalled vehicles, multiple holes in the road and various bottle necks of people and traffic. Pretty cool, eh?

The English Club watched "Blood Diamond" yesterday at the Embassy. Although it is a difficult film to watch, it is well-done and shows quite accurately what some of the issues are here in Africa. I was surprised that the students seemed to appreciate its message. My primary teaching lesson this week revolved around a monolingual English Dictionary of American English, complete with CD-Rom. Teachers and students alike were very eager to obtain one for themselves. A good dictionary is a rare commodity. I probably could have sold 200 of them.

Oh, one more thing that I need to post on this blog. The U.S. State Department has requested that we issue a disclaimer in its behalf, that it is not affilitated with this blog and is not responsible for its content. There you have it. Best to you this week.