Sunday, March 13, 2011

Happenings


[This was written last night.]

We’ve been so busy these past few days; I haven’t had time to write an update! Let me see if I can get everything in…

Taylor and I have made a new friend. Sopo is his name. He is a choir director at a church about 20 minutes from where we are. Taylor has been giving him lessons on the didgeridoo, including how to make it.  Then Brenda told him I sang, so he invited us up to work with his choir. We went there bright and early this morning to practice with them. Taylor taught the choir to beat box and I sang a little for them, we are going to combine everything eventually. It should be a pretty cool thing. They are the best choir around, and Sopo is the best choir director around, so it’s a lot of fun working with them. They are so open to new things, and they are SO talented! I couldn't wipe the smile off my face today watching them. I can’t wait to see what else we get to do with them.

Yesterday we went to a clinic with our English speaking Congolese friend, Henri, and our Canadian friend, Amy. They are both doctors and have had really good training, so they are doing what they can to help this small clinic out. And I mean small. The clinic had three rooms: a waiting room, an examination room, and a room where people are kept overnight if necessary. It was quite an experience, both awesome and heartbreaking. The people from that area are so poor, we could just tell from how they were dressed. The clinic hardly has any money coming in, either. The people who get treated don’t have money to pay for it, so the clinic can’t keep up on supplies. The doctors don’t know to wear gloves when dealing with blood, or they just don’t have any, which is really dangerous, especially in a highly infected HIV/aids area. The one table they had in the examination room was just a wood table with a piece of foam over it and a blanket. That has to be FULL of germs. Amy told them they need to put plastic over it, rather than the blanket. There is an outbreak of Measles right now in that area, so whenever anyone sits on that table, they are being exposed to that disease because of the blanket. And, with their immune systems already compromised, the risk is even greater. It is a very cool thing for Amy and Henri to be helping out here. The doctors are learning a lot from these two and their clinic will be greatly improved.

In other news, Taylor is still a romantic on the other side of the world.  We went on a walk Wednesday, and it looked like it was about to rain. I told Taylor we should turn back because we had the camera with us and I didn’t want it to get ruined. He says, “Truth be told, I’m taking you out to lunch”. He took me to the Orchid which is a really nice hotel with a restaurant we had heard a lot about. And it was a beautiful place... It was the nicest place I have seen in Congo so far. We sat outside on a covered patio overlooking Lake Kivu at first. They took our orders and got us our drinks, and we just sat and enjoyed the view. When our food was ready, they took us to a table inside. We ordered a burger and fries as sort of an appetizer and a pizza to split. Well, that’s what we thought we ordered. Turns out they thought we wanted to split the burger and fries, and each of us got our own pizza! That was an expensive miscommunication.  It all worked out though, we ended up taking it home and eating it for other meals.

As we were leaving the restaurant, we stopped at the front desk to call a cab because it was raining. We were flipping through the guest book sitting there and Taylor found Ben Affleck’s signature, dated February 2! We asked the lady about it and she said he was here! In the same restaurant we just ate at! So crazy. She also told us Angelina Jolie was here a few years back. Who woulda thought?

We have met a lot of English speaking friends from our English speaking Bible study. We actually have hung out with them the past two nights, we watched Red last night, and played ping pong tonight.  We have a lot of fun with them.

Tomorrow we are going to church about an hour and a half away, and then hopefully we’ll make it back in time to meet with our friends again for Bible study. Tomorrow will probably be a long day for us, so hopefully everything goes smoothly, Lord willing! But of course, we never know how things are going to turn out in the Congo!

And now, it’s time for bed. Six o’clock comes awfully early! Goodnight!

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