Explosions in Brazzaville

I'm currently in Bangui, Central African Republic, for some meetings.  At 8:15 Saturday morning, I got a call from my husband saying that there had been an explosion and there was a huge "mushroom cloud" in sky.  Looking at pictures, not really a mushroom cloud, but a large, possibly scary cloud nonetheless.  He called back 15 minutes later to say that there had been two more explosions, and that he had no idea what was going on.  By now you've probably read the news about the munitions depot starting on fire.  It's caused damage all over Brazzaville.  Here is the damage from our house.

Rémy had been sitting at that table all morning studying.  In the Lord's mercy, he had gotten up to take a shower when the first blast hit.

This chair fell over from the force.  Rémy also said that he was kind of knocked over from the force of the blast.

Out of 12 doors in six sets of sliding glass doors, only one shattered.  This is a blessing. It could have been much worse. It's also a blessing that of all the doors, this one is the only one that does not get hit by rain when it rains because it is sheltered by an overhang.

 This is how Rémy temporarily fixed the door. I think he did a good job, especially since he didn't destroy the box, but taped it up there whole. I love that Rémy has totally embraced the usefulness of duct tape.  Unfortunately he informed me that this was the end of our duct tape.  If anyone has ever thought of sending me a care package, that would be a good one. Just buy some duct tape at the store, put it in a padded envelope and stick it in the mail.  Then you can feel good about yourself that you blessed a missionary so that they can fix their windows when munition depots blow up in their city.

 This is outside our building. You can see the glass that has been swept up into piles on the street.

Thanks to Rémy for taking these pictures.  Please pray for the people of Brazzaville as they put their lives back together. Many many people lost their homes and businesses, and now must find a way to continue on without the benefit of things like insurance and FEMA.

GAPS Experience, cont.

We continued our GAPS diet for New Years Eve. I only added some cheese and wine, which are both GAPS approved.  We quickly moved through the rest of the steps in the next few days because we didn't have any bad reactions and just continued on the full GAPS diet.  For a few days, we felt really great.  I had a lot of energy at work, even in the afternoon.  Then Thursday evening, we were both completely wiped out. Rémy had gone to play basketball which was what made him so tired. I went to work the next day and was still really tired.  I left early and came and worked at home. We decided that maybe our bodies needed carbohydrates, so I ate some rice with coconut milk.  Then I got diarrhea and figured out that I had a parasite that was making me so tired.  It wasn't the diet.  I took a treatment for the parasite and almost immediately felt better. At this point, we'd already eaten oatmeal and Rémy was all too ready to be done with diet, and so we decided to be done with it. We were on it for a total of 12 days. If we thought it was really helping us, we would have continued.  However, we don't have any of the symptoms that GAPS is designed to treat, so our motivation was small. I was trying to cure my stomach problems, but I think these were well on the way to being cured even before we started GAPS.  It seems that our 12 days with GAPS did help to clear out some stuff and I think it was beneficial, but it will be more beneficial to us to continue the changes to our diet we had made already: eating lots of sauerkraut and kimchi, soaking whole grains, eating more honey than sugar, etc. 

     I do have to say that I'm super excited that my stomach problems have gone away. The other day when I got to work I realized that morning I had been 1) in a hurry, 2) stressed out, and 3) drinking coffee.  Normally this is a sure cocktail for throwing up before I leave the house, but I didn't throw up that morning.  In fact, I still haven't thrown up since I made these changes. I still have felt it in my stomach when I've been stressed, but it hasn't made me feel nauseated which means I can continue working. 

Anniversary Fire

All of my friends here know that pretty much my biggest fear is being caught in a burning building, the apartment where I live.  I live on the fifth floor, and there isn't a fire escape or anything.  I'm constantly thinking about who I will call to come save me.  Some friends are unsympathetic, some tell me that I shouldn't worry because the building is made out of concrete.

     New Year's Eve, my deepest fear came through. About six-thirty, the electricity went off.  This is fairly normal; it usually comes back five minutes later when they turn on the generator. This time, however, I heard a strange "pop" coming from the area of our newly installed air-conditioner.  I didn't see anything strange though. After about fifteen minutes the electricity didn't come on so Rémy went downstairs to see why not. While he was downstairs, I heard a small explosion in the kitchen.  I went over and saw that there was fire coming out of the wall. I stayed calm for a little while and thought about what to do: don't throw water on it, smother it.  Ok, but how?  How do you smother a fire coming out of a wall a few feet above your head? As I started looking for some sort of blanket, two things hit me. 1) It was completely dark.  All I had was the lantern I was carrying.  2) All I was wearing was a bathrobe.  (Another fear of mine is having to flee my apartment for whatever reason naked or almost naked).  At this point I thought I should call Rémy.
     Rémy came back up while I was calling him. Then it got a little panicky:
"Don't throw water on it."
"Why not?"
"I don't know, you're not supposed to throw water on an electrical fire."
"You should leave."
"I'm not wearing any clothes."
"Grab some clothes."
"Leave!"
"I'll just go in my robe."
"Grab some clothes and go!"
    Then Rémy threw some water on it, crisis over. He said later that he knew the electricity was off, and so figured it would be fine.
    It was New Year's Eve though, and our entire building didn't have electricity. We wanted to leave for our party, but didn't want to have any more bad relationships with our neighbors.  We called our electrician and he came out.  It took him almost two hours just to isolate the problem so that the rest of the building could have electricity, even though we didn't.  He then came back on New Year's Day and worked for another five hours to fix it.  Most things are back in working order now, at least we can use our air conditioner.

    So on one hand, my fear came true and I lived through it.  I shouldn't be fearful anymore, right? On the otherhand, I now know I was right to expect this.  This reminds me of one of my favorite Scripture songs:
"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you;
I have summoned you by name; you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you.
When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned;
the flames will not set you ablaze.
For I am the LORD your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior."
Isaiah 43:1-3

Our Experience with GAPS

I know that most people who regularly read my blog won't be too interested in this, but I know at least one person who wants to know how this is going.  Maybe there are some others out there too.  My husband and I decided to do three weeks on the GAPS diet. It was going to be three weeks of the Intro diet, but we don't have any problems with allergies or anything (and we're hungry all the time) so we're moving through the different stages quickly.
Stage 1- we spent two days on Stage One, eating just vegetable and meat soup. We added sauerkraut and kimchi to the soups which made them taste a lot better. I wasn't really sure how legal it was, but it seemed fairly legal.  We felt fine, although we were kind hungry.
Stage 2 - the morning of the third day, I woke up around 5 am and threw up. I guess that's the detox.  Glad to know it's working.  I didn't feel that great all morning and I realized that it was good that I did this when the office is closed, instead of trying to work. We only spent one day on Stage 2 because we didn't have access to many of the added foods, like fermented fish. (Or maybe we just don't want to eat fermented fish, I didn't really look into it.) We added eggs into our soups and made a "casserole" which wasn't that great.
Stage 3- We've spent two days on Stage 3, or maybe I should say 1 1/2 because we had grilled chicken for supper, which brings us into Stage 4 already.  Again on day 4 I woke up and five a.m. and felt horrible.  It only lasted about a half an hour though and I was able to go back to sleep.  The last couple days we've felt fine, only hungry and tired.  My husband hasn't shown and detoxing symptoms.  Apparently he is a lot healthier than I am, although I suspected this already. Thankfully he's really good at sticking to things, so even though he needs this diet less than I do, he hasn't cheated at all.
Tomorrow is our anniversary, and New Year's Eve. It's hard to imagine celebrating with only our vegetable soup, so I think we're going to jump ahead in the diet a bit.  We'll stick to GAPS legal foods, just not necessarily ones that are in Stage 4.
It's a lot of work to make enough soup to keep two people full all day, so that is what we've been doing over break.  You want to know how my Christmas break was? It was great, I got my house in order, and I made my body healthier.  (We got an air conditioner for Christmas...woohoo!)

Thanksgiving

We went to the Ambassador's house this year for Thanksgiving.  It was really fun. There were hors d'oeuvres outside including olives stuffed with whole cloves of garlic. I thought they were great, but people kept coming up to me and warning me that there were whole garlic cloves in them.

 We had really great people at our table who were really into the holiday. We all went around and said what we were thankful for.

Of course, what Thanksgiving blog post would be complete without a picture of the food. The day after we left for Ollombo for the weekend and we got another Thanksgiving dinner with the people we stayed with there.  This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for two great meals that I didn't have to contribute anything to.

Ollombo

I went with some friends this last week on a road trip up the North Road. We went to Ollombo and stayed with some really nice missionaries who fed us really good food. 

 This was our trusty driver with his trusty pick-up truck. There were a few scary moments on the way up there, but that was because of oncoming buses swerving to miss pot holes.  He let me drive quite a lot, so I got some more practice driving a stick shift.

 We went to go see an ostrich farm outside of Oyo, which is where the President is from.  It also allowed us to see the President's cows. They even have Beware: Cow-crossing signs up there.  Woe to he who hits the president's cows.

We went on a ride up what the locals calls "the President's river" in a dug out canoe which was really nice. 

I even jumped in and swam a bit.  No one else would join me though.

More on food and daily life

I talk a lot about food on my blog, I know. There are a lot of reasons for that.  First of all, I like food a lot.  Second of all, good food is hard to come by here, especially on a limited budget while working full time, so I think about it a lot. Also, I have a hard time thinking of subjects I can and should talk about publicly.  

     In a previous post, I talked about all the noises you could hear in our apartment that come from the street below.  Another one of these noises is women yelling, "AVOCAT!"  (meaning, avocado)  When I first heard this, it took me a long time to figure out what they were saying. They yell with a really high and nasal voice, so it's hard to understand. My husband had not noticed this particular sound, so when I pointed it out to him he ran and found the lady and took this picture from our balcony.  You can see the lady walking down the street with avocados in a basin on her head and a baby strapped to her back.  I don't know what she's carrying in her hand. You can also see that the man in the orange shirt is carrying something on his head. He's selling little plastic bags of water to drink (good for people to drink water, not good for the environment and keeping our street clean).  On the bottom of the picture, notice the little breakfast cart.  There are several people who sell French style (or maybe just Brazzaville style) omelets on the street.  They'll fry them up right in front of you on a little kerosene burner.  There are also coffee carts which sell tiny cups of instant espresso. 

 Yesterday the lady I sent to by groceries couldn't find avocados, so this morning when we heard the lady yelling "AVOCAT!" my dear husband threw some clothes on and ran down five flights of stairs and around the corner to buy three avocados.  I've been thinking a lot about our diet recently because the people around me talk about nutrition a lot.  For several years now I've agreed that it is better to eat real food than processed food. I'd rather eat real butter than margarine because it's more real and less processed, for example.  Unfortunately, butter here is really expensive and margarine is about half the price, so it's not that simple.  I've been challenged more recently about thinking about these sorts of things, which is why one easy thing I can do is eat more avocados.  They are yummy, good raw real food, and they are generally pretty cheap.  They aren't as cheap as it seems that they should be in Africa, but still, a good deal for the price.
      I've also started making my own sauerkraut because it's super yummy and apparently really good for you. I felt very African pounding my cabbage, and my husband agreed so he felt he should take a picture.  It's not really the same: pounding manioc leaves in a huge mortar and pestle v. pounding cabbage in a metal bowl with a rolling pin, but you get the idea.

Daily Life

Here are a few random pictures from our life here in Brazzaville:

     There are a lot of plantains here.  They are good, but here they don't do much with them other than fry them or boil them. We have eaten this really good meal at a Cameroonian restaurant with plantains where they are more than just a side dish.  In Puerto Rico where we went on our honeymoon they make something called mofongo.  At the restaurants there they all seemed to be the same, but looking at recipes on the internet there seemed to be a large variation.  So I made the version you see in this picture.  It's basically mashed plaintains (like mashed potatoes) with lots of garlic.  The tomato sauce had spices like cinnamon and cumin in them.  It was super yummy!

      Our little apartment has many strong advantages and many strong disadvantages.  I keep reminding myself that the advantages outweigh the disadvantages, especially given the current housing situation here.  One of the advantages is that we get to see really amazing sunsets almost every day.  The sunset this particular day was particularly cool with all the lines coming out of the center.

     Almost every Saturday we get together with friends to play games.  Sometimes it's just us and the Koukas, sometimes there are a few other guys who join us.  This week we played Rook.  It's fun to have found people to play Rook with, although there are a lot of other games we play to.  The Koukas went to a wedding that day and looked so cute in their matching outfits!