Loving Africa

  As I have been reading through my journal again, I have rediscovered that many of my best and favorite stories and pictures are from May and June. The feast of the Ascension is one (not a lot of story, but quite a few pictures).  The evening before the feast, Canon Sigros wrote the feast day schedule on the board. It was kind of a combination of a Sunday (10 a.m. Mass, then lunch on the terrace) and Thursday (Adoration), while being very much a day of its own. Additionally, he printed the day's menu and the "functions liturgiques": a list of everyone involved in the liturgy, and what each one's role was. To my great amusement, my very Scotch-Irish name made it in: I think Canon was taking cue from how they do things at the Institute seminary, and wanted to have some fun. He did plan a very festive lunch for after Mass. Alas, he had bought a bottle of Malibu rum and wanted us to make a cake from it, but we didn't have any eggs at that point. So we had ice cream. ...

I can explain. The day after that depressing Friday was another "off" day, with people being sick, the schedule being unusual, things just feeling wrong. I was, however, able to get to town with Maman Ngnigone and Faith, finding soap and toothpaste at the supermarket, which was a rather fun outing, and everyone was at aperitif and dinner that evening, helping things to start look up.  The Truckload On Sunday, we finally had a normal day until the evening. The man who had driven Canon Fragelli to Libreville came back (Canon Fragelli was in the military hospital in Libreville at this point) with all the things the Mission needed from Libreville: meat (chicken breasts -- unpackaged, so we just threw them all in one of the big blue trash bags and put that in the freezer; chicken franks; and kilos upon kilos of ground beef); copy paper; ink (for the printer); a couple washers and driers, I think; a box of supplies for the dispensary; some big plastic thing (it looked like the wind...

  The month of May started with the lovely feast of St. Joseph the Worker May at the Mission started out with business as usual. My journal talks about trying calaba, as they called it, which was the silly experience of tasting something that looked like a rock and being surprised to find that it tasted like (and is) clay. I learned to say "bolo" and "marambuga", which are greetings in the Gabonese language Punu. The continued power cuts resulted in my building a little shrine one evening, and I surprised myself when, having to use water from a bucket to brush my teeth during a water cut and then dropping my toothbrush on the floor, I didn't contract any diseases (to my knowledge). My friends the Bambinette always like to take a picture or two after Sunday Mass:  Their hair would stay the same for weeks, then you'd see them after a day and it would be completely changed. Canon Fragelli had recently returned from another trip to Italy, during which he had vis...

These guys were everywhere, only usually much bigger Those who receive my posts via email would have recieved the first version of this post this morning; it has been edited a bit and I am republishing a better version here.  My experience in Gabon was not one string of unabated happiness.  We had a rainstorm after Easter that flooded our "dorm" hallway. The power was out in the first picture.  The complaint shouldn't have been about not having water; the water was there, just not where we wanted it to be. My backpack is on the left in the second picture. It sat in the water, in a wet and humid climate, a bit too long. This resulted in a dreadful, musty smell (only in my bag, not in the whole dorm), requiring me to wash it thoroughly, which was not a bad thing to do.   This was missionary life! And honestly, there is a degree of satisfaction in some of these situations, but that's usually with the more dramatic ones like this, or writing by candlelight. The day-...

When I did have/take the time to write in my journal, it recorded my experiences well much closer to the moment they happened. There is an extensive entry on cooking I would like to simply quote. I feel that it's not so much about the food itself, though, as the experience of navigating life in a completely foreign situation. The random French throughout is how it was written.  This is dated "mercredi 28 avril 2021" (Wednesday, April 28th, 2021):  "On Saturday evening, I asked Martha if I could make Sunday dinner. I had gotten the idea that I could do a version of Million Dollar Chicken [a somewhat insane dish of a whole chicken, seasoned with salt, pepper, lemons, thyme and garlic, which is then roasted on top of sliced bread with olive oil and a glaze made from crème fraîche, onions and more lemon.]. Anyway, Martha said yes (I was happy because I think as a result, she got to go our visiting on Sunday), and on Sunday afternoon, when I asked if there was anything I ...

These events, which occured one on the heels of the other, deserve their own space. Never a dull moment! Alas, there are no related pictures. One Sunday in mid-April, I saw an email from AirFrance telling me that my departing flight in June had been changed. I would now depart Libreville at 11 a.m. on June 24th, a change of 24 hours. OK, fine, that works. On closer inspection, however, I found that my connecting flight in Paris had not changed, and I was still scheduled to fly out of France at 10:35 a.m. on June 24th. Given my lack of ability to bilocate, this was not going to work. I spent Monday afternoon attempting to fix it online while borrowing data off one of the candidate's phones (and subsequently using it all up, I think). After a while, it became clear that I would have to call them, and that it wouldn't work with WhatsApp. A good deal of time went into searching for a "no wifi calling app" with no luck; I finally sent them an email and called it a day.  Th...

This photo was taken after Easter but is otherwise irr-elephant. After the Octave, the Easter season lasts for another six weeks. Life went on at the mission, and left me with plenty of stories.  The Dress The day after my birthday (very aptly named "Low Sunday", as we come down the liturgical mountain from Easter), Canon Fragelli told me at lunch that we would go to the tailor that afternoon. It was then that I realized that the fabric he had given me on my birthday was destined to become a custom-made dress.  We drove to the market after lunch; Canon dropped me and Martha off to go see the tailor, whose shop was directly across from the "Hobby Lobby" where we had gone on the feast of St. Benedict. The tailor was a Muslim, so we waited quietly for him to finish saying his prayers on his rug. As he led us into his shop, he seemed to want to think my name was Marie. Martha told him no, "La c'est Sarah". This was followed by a smile, nods, and "C...