if you give a moose a muffin

Sherri, thank you for the stack of paperbacks you sent us back when we lived in Dallas. They proved perfect and lightweight for carrying in our suitcase to Africa!

Over the past couple years, I picked up some nice hardcover books for John at Half Price Books, but what exactly was I thinking to buy such heavy books? When it came to bringing hardcovers with us, only a couple kids' books won out, among them the boys' small Bible the Tolivers gave us (which John loves to read every day, mainly because each page begins with a large, colorful capital letter that he can "read" himself) and Ferdinand. If you have never read Ferdinand, please go out and buy it now. It is one of the books you need to buy, not just borrow from the library. I even found it in Latin years ago at McCawbers' Books in Saint Anthony Park; I still wish I had bought the Latin version, because it was so cute.

Okay, back to the paperbacks we brought with us (the ones from Sherri). Among them is a series of similarly-themed books with wonderful, very detailed illustrations; one of the books in this group is If You Give a Moose a Muffin.

Well, John loves these books. I think that the detailed pictures in them are why he loves them so much. See, for John, it's really unsettling if the words on a given page talk about anything that is not also included in the picture on that same page.

For example, today I was reading John some poems out of A.A. Milne's book When We Were Very Young. One poem talked about some cows who walked into a pond to drink water. The poem referenced a bird, and also some fish. The small picture on the page had cows, water and a bird in it. BUT, there were no fish in the picture. How did the artist miss this detail? This was a very big deal to John. "Where are the fish, Mama?! Where are the fish?!" he asked me with great concern in his voice. I tried to explain that the fish were under the water, therefore we could not see them. But ten minutes and a dozen poems later, he was still asking me, "Mama, where are the fish?!" Ah, two-year-olds.

another move...another goodbye...

"I'm never going to move again, ever!" Adam declared emphatically as he plopped down on the bed in the office of our new house, after two days of single-handedly moving all our stuff from one house to another.

Yes, we just moved again--our third move this year (there were actually four, but I am really only counting three, because one of those moves involved living somewhere for only two nights total). This move was not very far--we were moving from one side of a duplex to another house just steps away. But it was a difficult move because Adam had to do it all himself; I was mostly laid up in bed and trying to watch the two little boys, thanks to spraining my ankle while falling off a step on the day we were originally going to start moving.

In any case, we are here now, in the new and bigger house. The office (pictured partially above) may turn out to be one of my favorite rooms in the house, because I get my own desk, and because two sides of the room are almost completely lined with windows. Maybe having such a great place to study will actually make me start liking to do sit-down desk work? We shall see.

The sad part about moving into this new place is that it was only available to move into because it was just vacated by a couple of our colleagues who had already become pretty special to us, even though we've only known them for two months as neighbors. Will and Judith (on the left) really helped welcome us and help us settle into Bangui, as did Beth (on the right). I'm happy to say that Beth is not moving away at the moment; she is still our next-door neighbor (we were sharing a duplex with her until now), and we are so happy to have her here.

It was a melancholy day, saying goodbye to Will and Judith and watching them drive away. After talking over it, Adam and I concluded that probably part of what made it sad was the fact that our group here is so small anyways. The smallness of our number contributes, I think, to the closeness everyone feels. And the gap when someone leaves is felt keenly.

Hmm...makes me think of Tennyson's line from In Memoriam, "I hold it true whate'er betide, I feel it when I sorrow most: 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to had loved at all."

Well, maybe that is a tad melodramatic for the situation, but the basic idea holds true. We sure feel blessed to have had a couple months to get to know Will and Judith, to experience their kindness firsthand, and to observe with what gusto and optimism they and their three children have lived their lives here in this country. Even though our time here only overlapped for a little while, we are thankful to have had it together.

rainy day and budu making

Rainy season isn't here quite yet, but there is still an occasional downpour; we welcome it, as it cools the weather off considerably. John likes playing in it, and it's also handy for filling up buckets with water when the city water isn't running. John likes to help out in the kitchen, and one of the things he is learning to do is grind spices, like chunks of salt, peppercorns, and garlic, with the local style of mortar and pestle.

We decided to combine some Sango language learning with learning how to prepare some local greens called budu. So here is a photo of Madame Selonkoue, our wonderful Sango language helper, showing us how to prepare budu as she explains (and we record it on video!) in Sango.

The first step of making budu is probably the most labor intensive. Here is Adam preparing the budu for cooking. You tear the leaves and upper part of the stem off the lower part, which you discard. Then you wash the leaves well before you boil them, drain them and cook them with onion, oil and spices.

Here is just a random shot of some beautiful flowers I bought from a vendor on the street. They were actually starting to fade by the time I thought to take a picture of them. I loved the vibrant red and yellow hues!

Busy Playing

That is a good way to describe John's average day, or at least a large percentage of his day. He plays a lot, but he does it with purpose. He focuses all his attention on doing his chosen activity, be it coloring, swinging, building with legos, or doing a puzzle.

It used to be that when John was very quiet, he was getting into some mischief; sometimes that is still the case, but often, he is now quiet because he is focusing on finishing one of his puzzles. When he finishes his puzzle, he immediately dumps it out and starts over. Unfortunately, he usually decides he is tired of doing puzzles at a point when all the pieces are out of the puzzle frame, instead of in it:

Here is John on Valentine's Day, eating heart-shaped pancakes. Also, this is a pre-haircut photo:


This is John on our front porch lining up his cars. This is generally the precursor to him methodically pushing all the cars off the edge of the short wall and into the plants beneath the wall; in fact, that is what he did right after I took this photo. Also, you can see here that he got his hair cut:

Although he is so busy with things to play with, John does manage to find a little time to help me out around the house. One of his favorite activities to do (I think it makes him proud that he is helping) is to prepare budu for cooking. Budu is a local green; you basically have to tear the leaves off the stems before cooking the leaves. John will sit with me for a long time, carefully pulling each leaf off the stem. However, he invariably gets bored after a while and decides to start being funny, at which point he starts throwing the leaves into the trash and the tough stems into the bowl of leaves. So then I send him off to go play again.

"Dkdkdkdk!" (or, news from Sam)

Sam is starting to babble plenty now, especially when he notices someone's paying attention to him. A favorite thing (word? phrase?) that he likes to say is, "Dkdkdkdkdk!" Try to read that aloud to know what it sounds like. Maybe it's a tribute to Uncle David and Aunt Kelsea? I'm not sure, but it is cute.

The one really recognizable word that he says frequently is, "Bye bye!" accompanied by waving. He seems to know when to use it now, too. The funny thing is that was John's first word, too.

I often carry Sam around on my back during the day, because he likes that much better than being by himself. But from time to time, he is willing to have some "alone time," which he spends lying down, sitting, or rolling/lunging to reach desired objects. He also likes to ride in our indoor swing (which was installed by Neil--he and his family usually live in this house that we are temporarily staying in):

If you look closely, you might be able to see some of his teeth; he has eight of them now:

He still likes to suck his thumb:

He really is as sweet as he looks:

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.

Bangui Bound

We are in the midst of packing right now (again) :) Tomorrow evening we are flying to our "final" destination...Bangui. We have had a good time here in Yaoundé in our Africa orientation and are excited about finally reaching the place that we've been preparing to go to for several years now.

Despite our own excitment for this new city that we're traveling to tomorrow, it is good to know that Bangui is certainly not our final destination. Hebrews 13:12-13 says,

"So Jesus also suffered outside the gate in order to sanctify the people through his own blood. Therefore, let us go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured. For here we have no lasting city but we seek the city that is to come."

Nevertheless, John is a good example of how we are all feeling inside.