Adventures in Shopping and Cooking!

I must admit, making the transition from the “Land of Wal-Mart Supercenter, Costco and Sam’s Club” to the “Land of a Thousand Specialty Shops” is a bit daunting at first.  However, I’ve found a couple of shops nearby to provide me with the groceries I need, and the “Grand Marché” in Pointe Noire has anything and everything, IF you know where to look!  There are literally hundreds of shops, many with identical items for sale at slightly different prices!  Depending on the shopkeeper with whom one has developed a relationship, the prices can sometimes be discounted quite nicely.  Janice has been here long enough to have her favorite venders in the market, so she took me around yesterday and introduced me to some of them.  We also found a new vendor who gave us an excellent price for some of the beautiful African fabrics we are using, so God was definitely directing our steps!   We were able to quickly find the essentials we were looking for, beginning with a safe place to park her vehicle!  The area in front of her favorite fabric vendor was completely clear, a very unusual thing for a Saturday morning!  Monsieur Omar agreed to keep an eye on the vehicle while we did our other shopping.  He even sent one of his employees to purchase a mosquito net for me, since the shop for those was several blocks away!  Praise the Lord for His provision, even in the smallest things we need!

The fruits and vegetables here are abundant, and fairly inexpensive.  I have already tried a fresh pineapple, fresh mango and fresh papaya, as well as the local, sweet bananas.  But one of the most amazing things I have come across is the avocados here!  They are huge! 

I was given one to try, so I decided to make guacamole… I had peppers, onions, salt and a “citron” (not sure if it’s a small lemon or lime, but it was sure good!) so I had all the ingredients.

  

When I purchased the small red peppers, the lady warned me that it was very hot (très chaud!), but coming from the land of jalapeños, I wondered, “…how hot can it be?”  So as I was chopping up the first half of the pepper, I popped a very small piece into my mouth and chomped down on it…. OH WOW!!!! WAS IT HOT!!!!  I grabbed a bottle of water and guzzled it down!   I decided then that half of the pepper was plenty for my guacamole instead of the whole thing like I first intended!  (Just so you know how hot it really was, an hour later my upper lip was still sweating!)  Anyway, the guacamole turned out really good, and I made a discovery that I’ll keep using… if you put one scoop of mayonnaise into your guacamole, it doesn’t turn black!  (It also helps if your peppers are a little too hot!)  Nice little trick, since that ONE avocado made a lot of guac! 

I had found a Lebanese flatbread earlier in the week that I used instead of a tortilla, added some cheese, rice and beans and voila!  A burrito! It was quite tasty, if I do say so myself! 

         

 Bon appetit!

Lesson learned: Just like everything else on the mission field, flexibility in the kitchen is the key to success! 

First Impressions...

I made it!  Here I am in the Congo Republic, unpacked and ready to get going…  The trip was mostly uneventful, I had a very long layover in Paris, so I booked a dayroom at a hotel inside the airport and got a nice, long nap!  I arrived in Pointe Noire (with all my bags!) on Monday morning, February 7^th at 7am, and it was already steamy… of course, I had just left the ice and snow of North Texas, so anything over 70 degrees felt steamy to me!  The missionaries met me at the airport, along with a lady in their church whose job it is to help people through customs… After she worked her magic, no one even looked at my large number of huge bags, we just picked them up and carried them to the cars!  Praise the Lord! 

After unloading the bags into my new home, Janice and I went on a shopping trip to the huge Pointe Noire market… I’ll admit that was a bit overwhelming for me on my first day in Congo, but Janice said I was a trooper, and she was impressed that I stayed awake all of my first day here.  That night, we were treated to a steak dinner by some folks from Houston working here in the offshore oil business.  We also got to watch the Super Bowl!  We were all very careful not to look at any news so we wouldn’t know the outcome ahead of time.  It was a very nice way to begin my time here – good food, new friends and a great football game! 

I took the next couple of days to unpack and find my way around, taking another couple of trips into town to check on internet availability and to do a little shopping.  Traffic here is terrible!  A trip to town is a real ordeal, especially after torrential rains!  On Thursday, I was introduced to the girls at the school where I’ll be working for the next couple of years.  They are delightful girls, eager to learn and usually smiling…  But, as typical teenagers, they can be a bit moody…  Janice and I just  have to make them smile again… that’s pretty easy for me, since my French is still so bad, we laugh together at my pronunciations!

On my first Sunday here in Pointe Noire, I arrived early for the service, in time to hear the worship team rehearsing… As most of you know, I love good worship music, and I am really impressed with the quality of the musicians here.  Gary (the pastor) wanted to add a song to the service that would go well with his sermon, but the worship team didn’t know the song.  It was a song I knew, and I was sitting in the back of the church just singing it along with him… He asked me if I could play it on the piano, I said, “No, but I can sing it!”  I thought he just wanted me to teach it to the worship team, but instead, I was drafted to sing in the service!  So, I suppose it is no surprise that on my first Sunday in Pointe Noire I ended up with a microphone in my hand!

School is meeting four days a week for a while during the rainy season – Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.  Having Wednesdays off for a while will help me to acclimate to the pace and the temperature!  Today I have made curtains for my living room and have actually cooked something!  My laundry room is only halfway useable, the washing machine is installed and working, but the dryer is not hooked up yet… So, laundry is waiting, since drip-drying is out of the question in this humid climate! I think Saturday will have to be laundry day, since it is a terrible shopping day… all the stores close at noon on Saturday!  I found a little market within walking distance, so I can now get some things locally without having to find a taxi!  I don’t know how to tell them where I want to go yet anyway!  I’ll close by posting some photos of my new home! 

My front door with outdoor kitchen in background





Laundry Room



Bougainvilla outside my gate



My living room with curtains I made!

....and this one is for Caleb... here's my "Crafty  Chameleon!"


 

Overcoming obstacles...

It seems I've been doing a lot of that lately!  The latest obstacle is the weather!  Who would have dreamed that SNOW would be the obstacle of the day!  Here in Texas, we don't usually have a snow "event" that lasts more than 48 hours, but we have now had snow on the ground since Tuesday morning!  I really thought that the Super Bowl crowds would be my biggest obstacle, but.... at least I'm trying to get OUT of town, and not coming in!  I'm ready to go, my traveling clothes are laid out, all is packed, including my carry-on bag; all that remains it to put my computer in it's bag and get on out the door!  So, goodnight world, I'm heading to bed, hoping my last night in this house for a while will be uneventful and restful...