Big sister Molly

Molly loves babies. Anytime she hears a baby crying she looks concerned and says “baby!” (Which is quite often!)

She loves to help feed and entertain Eileen and she can easily make Eileen smile and laugh.

Right now one of her favorite books is a really cute one called "Everywhere Babies."

Turtle 1 and Turtle 2

Modern conveniences home tour

Since I have a foot in both worlds, sometimes I feel like I'm roughing it or toughing it, but in reality, most people don't get this kind of luxury.

Our refillable "sink" for handwashing is a real nice contraption. Just dump clean water into it and dump out the dirty water from the bucket down below.

That burner is where we have been doing all our cooking the past two months. It's a bit of a downgrade from the setup we had before but it will be modified when Eileen starts moving.

Our one water source, which is currently off unfortunately. This is where we get water for washing dishes, clothes and baths. We haul in drinking water in our car from farther away.

My "dryer" is a good old fashioned clothesline rig-up in our yard. I have a love-hate relationship with those hot sunny days...

Our most luxurius luxury is, of course, our fridge:

and the pantry shelf would be a close second. This also serves as dish storage. To date, we only own one breakable dish, which we don't use anymore. Everything is metal or plastic. We never break anything! Molly loves helping and knows how to put dishes away on the bottom two shelves which she has permission to access.

And last but not least, my dish washing station:

The Boys

Molly had a visit from some of the neighborhood boys; children of friends of mine. We were all pregnant together and Molly was the last one born of a slew of 2019 babies. She was the only girl so she’s in pretty high demand as a future wife.

Makoua

We took another Sunday afternoon drive. This time we went north, destination a small village outside of Makoua where we visited cousins. The roads were great.

We stopped in Owando to get food and take a picture at the famous president school.

We had an adventure getting back when twice we thought we were almost out of gas in the middle of nowhere, but we got to the station for a refill thankfully.

But then we had to pull the taxi home which was stranded outside of town. Three guys and a motorcycle with no headlight, a rope and a broken down taxi... we made quite the parade coming into town after dark. On the road north

Elondi

We spent last Sunday afternoon going to a village about 2 1/2 hours away where some of Orcxance’s distant relatives live.

The roads are pretty terrible but Orcxance did a great job navigating all the intense potholes and washed out places and we didn’t get stuck once, although I’m sure we came close many times. Orcxance wanted me to try driving too so on the short stretch of road that’s not bad, I drove.

We enjoyed talking and listening to pop Congolese music and admiring the scenery and talking some more during the 5 hours we spent on the road.

We didn’t stay there long because we didn’t want to get back too late. The whole time we were there people just kept giving us food. We didn’t actually eat there but we came home with fish, pondu, mosaka, mfufu, koko, juice and soda. Most of this is the traditional kind of food that’s cooked in the village way. I cannot cook many of these things properly so it’s a treat for Orcxance to get to have it cooked by someone else (although he can cook it himself just fine) and thankfully we have a fridge so the food will last several days.

It took Molly a few minutes to figure out what to do with the crowd of children who came to stare at us; but pretty soon she was running around chasing chickens and trying to sweep the yard.

The last hour we were driving in the dark but despite some road challenges we made it home safely. It was a really fun trip and the girls did well, all things considered.

Fish Farm

Recently we went to a fish farm not far from our house.

It was a really beautiful place with lots of interesting plants, banana trees and of course water and fish.

There were 5 or 6 mini ponds and we did some fishing too.

Orcxance cooked up the fish for our dinner that night.

We got someone to take some pictures of us and ended up with a “normal” photo and then a silly one. It wasn’t even on purpose.

We also went for a walk through the jungle to a small stream where Orcxance helped Eileen cool off.

There were some places along the trail where Orcxance found it easier to just carry the stroller, baby and all.

By the time we got back home we were extremely dirty and sweaty but we had a really nice time.

Also, the guy who runs the fish farm gave us a big bunch of bananas and the fish we caught for free.

He showed me how to transplant the banana shoots and let us take one home to try in our own yard. Each plant dies after producing 1 bunch of bananas and about 5 or 6 “baby shoots,” which can be transplanted and then they bear more fruit. I think it takes one shoot about 6 months to produce but I’m not sure.