Settling into life in Bangui

Wow, internet! A couple months ago, it was a normal everyday commodity, but now it's a somewhat rare luxury. Often I think of something I want to blog about, but I can't because we don't have internet access at home (at least, not right now). That is okay, because (this one is for you, Dad)--"Real life happens offline." And indeed, we have been fully enjoying real life, without having the internet much of the time. But while I have it (here at our organization's center in Bangui), I will take advantage of it.




On February 11, we flew from Yaounde, Cameroon, to Bangui. It was supposed to be a direct flight that got in early in the evening. But instead, it turned out to be three separate flights that took us from Cameroon, to Togo, back to Cameroon, and finally to Central African Republic. You can imagine our happiness when we finally saw the Oubangui River out the plane window; this is the river that runs between CAR and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the city of Bangui is on this river.

So! We are settling into life here in Bangui very well. We have been here over a month already. Our colleagues have been so helpful to us. A few of them live next door to us, and they have taken us shopping, showed us around town, and connected us with church, prayer meetings, and so on.

One thing we are enjoying is getting to know people at church. We have started attending a church that meets right beside the place where we live. It literally takes about two minutes to walk to church. A small group of adults and children (plenty of little children!) meets for worship and teaching in Sango; they gather under a picnic-shelteresque building and sit on wooden benches. They are so welcoming and we look forward to getting more involved with our church and the people in it. One of the women at the church, Solange, is also our neighbor and has come over a couple times to visit. Last time she came over, we made lemon cookies together:

Most weekday mornings, our neighbor Beth and I go out for an early morning walk. At 5:30 in the morning, the town is already bustling with people of all ages; so we are far from the only pedestrians walking along the sides of the road.

My favorite part of the walk is the last stretch, when we walk for about ten or fifteen minutes down a dirt road through our neighborhood. We pass a small market where people are just opening up little shops selling plasticwares, flip-flops and some packaged items, and where some people are setting out vegetables to sell. Many people are out sweeping their yards so that the dirt will be completely smooth with no leaves or mangos lying around on it. At one particularl yard, there are always a bunch of little children who wave at us and call out to us, "Bonjour! Bonjour"; they seem excited to see us every single day.