Mocha's Birthday Party

Mocha is the Thelanders' dog, and yesterday was her fourth birthday.  To celebrate, Sarah Thelander made a doggie birthday cake out of peanut butter and dog treats.  After school the kids and Meladee Davis and I gathered on the Thelanders' porch to sing to Mocha and watch her eat her cake.  

The Bad Dog

It was a sad sound, a dog yelping piteously from somewhere in the jungle.  Most likely he was caught in a trap.  I would have been sadder if the dog had been of good character, but he was not.  He was one of several renegade dogs who regularly plunder the garbage pits of Bongolo, scattering trash all over the beautiful hillsides.  He also kept the missionaries awake at night howling at the moon.  Worst of all, the dog was aggressive, charging those who tried to scare him away.
     Paul Davis, who takes care of Bongolo maintenance, finally had enough of this dog and went after him with a gun!  The dog somehow eluded Paul, leaving him to pick up all the trash, day after day.  Until the day the dog got caught in a trap in the jungle, and gave himself away with his howling.
     I heard the dog howling from somewhere in the jungle between my house and the Thelanders' house, and I remembered a trap I had seen there.  I happened to see Paul and mentioned to him that I knew where a trap is, and that maybe the dog was in it.  He called the African workers and Josh, a short term worker, and they all followed me to the trap in the jungle.
     The howling stopped as we neared the trap, and I wondered if maybe the dog wasn't there after all.  Then I saw him, his front paw caught in a wire slipknot, wedged between two crossed sticks.  When the dog saw Paul with the gun, he barked angrily.  I put my hands over my ears and looked the other way as Paul aimed and fired.  The dog died instantly.
     I felt a little badly leading Paul to the dog, facilitating the dog's death.  Usually I am an animal lover, as my brothers would testify.  I guess I could have gone down there by myself and tried to cut the dog loose somehow, (as a child I would have) but he was aggressive, and I'm not sure he would have let me get close to help him.
     He probably would have needed medical care, but there is no animal hospital hereabouts.  And he would have needed to be tied up all the time to keep him from coming back to Bongolo, getting into the trash and menacing the missionaries.  Sigh.  Poor dog.

The Edible Cicada

A cicada landed on our school window.  "Look, children," I said, "this bug spent seventeen years underground, and now he's finally woken up!"  The children looked at the cicada, amazed and awed.  I continued, "That is why you must always be nice to cicadas, because they are so special and amazing."  Just then along came a big lizard who gobbled up the cicada before our eyes!  The children and I gasped in unison and in shock.  I'm sure we felt badly for the cicada but we all burst out laughing and saying, "I can't believe it, the lizard just came up and ate him!"

The Thankful Lady

This is what my family calls "The Thankful Lady."  She has always hung in our kitchen, reminding us to be thankful for our food.  It is what some would call a "sacred object," not in the sense that we worship it, but because it has special meaning for my family.
     Now that my parents are packing up to leave Bongolo for good, it is one of the things I will keep, because it reminds me of something important.
     I think sacred objects are especially important to missionary kids because we move around so much.  I think it is important to have a few special things to take with me to new places, to remind me where I come from and who I am.
     Besides the Thankful Lady, I have a small plastic gecko from my brother Jeremy that goes with me wherever I go.  I stick it up on the wall to remind me of home, where geckos abound.  Another sacred object is "Panga Man," a 6-inch wooden carving my brother Josh made for me when he was in high school.
     My move to Gabon two years ago was unplanned and unexpected, so almost all my sacred objects got left behind in Cambodia.  That is one of the reasons I am going back this summer, to sift through my stuff and find the little things that remind me of home wherever I go.

Still Cookin'

Our rice cooker is really old.  We have had it since I was seven years old, and it still cooks rice.  The rice pot has a leak in it, so now we keep our rice in the freezer, so that the coldness of the rice will shrink the pot and close the leak.  The plug has a loose connection, so it has to be held in the right place by a bowl.  And the cook button doesn't stay down on its own, hence the chopstick.  But it STILL cooks rice.  Amazing.

Following Jesus

This Easter I went to a baptism at the river in a little village called Mandji.  I followed the African Christians down to the river and watched Grace get baptized.  It reminds me of another time I followed a group of African Christians to a river to be baptized myself, when I was twelve years old.  I'm thankful for the African Christians I've known in my life.  They've been an example to me of what it means to follow Jesus.

The Way We Were

Here we are, circa 1978, about two years after we first arrived in Bongolo.  I don't remember much from those early years besides playing with my brother Josh.  Dad worked at the hospital and Mom stayed home with us most of the time.  We had a house helper named Justine who would watch us when Mom went to the hospital once a week.  Mama Justine used to carry my brother around on her back in a kind of sling.  Now she is elderly and my brother towers over her.  The picture below is of my whole family, after Jeremy was born, right before we returned to America for the first time.

Friday Fun Day

Fridays at Bongolo School are for crafts and Arabic Tea.  This Friday we painted designs on small mirrors, painted egg-carton flowers for Easter, made Arabic Tea on our bunsen burner, made carp kites out of newspaper, and carved soap.  This picture is of Luke and Sarah with the soap donuts they carved.

Jonah Ant

 Have you ever had an ant in your ear?  Maybe not, but I did when I lived in Cambodia, and nothing could get it out.  My friend Heather suggested flushing it out with water, which worked, but even better was her inspiration for this story.  "Maybe," she said, "the ant is praying."  This was a reference to Jonah, and made me laugh so much that, after I got rid of the ant, I drew these pictures of "Jonah Ant."

Bongolo Church

This is where I went to church as a kid growing up in Bongolo.  The benches were hard but the view out the windows was great.  Birds flew through the open windows.  My two brothers and I sat through long services in French and Yinzebi, the local language.  We didn't understand much, but I felt God's presence there.  We mostly drew or read the Bible during church, and our parents explained the message to us on the way home.  As an added bonus to all that time drawing, the three of us siblings now know how to draw.  But more importantly we learned to sit quietly in God's presence.

Quite Possibly the Worst

"I apologize for the soup, Dad."  Dad looks at the soup.  It is green, but being a missionary and my father he tastes the soup.  The soup heaps up on the spoon like a living thing.  Dad somehow swallows it.  We all put down our spoons as I ask Mom, "so should I just throw it out or try to redeem it?"  "Throw it out,"says Mom, but did I listen?    
 No, I made the soup into a quiche, thinking to cook the spinach into submission.  This is quite possibly the worst thing I have ever cooked--worse even than the time I made ocra bread.

Sunday School Art

I just wanted to show you the beautiful pictures the kids color in Sunday school.  They are so creative!

The Truth About Papayas

Some people say that papayas smell nauseous, but thanks to my friend Lisa Nicky, I now know the truth about papayas.  She cut a ripe papaya into cubes and froze it.  Then she put it in her blender with milk, sugar and cocoa powder.  A few minutes later we had chocolate papaya gelato!  You couldn't taste the papaya at all, but it gave the fruit shake a smooth gelato consistency.

Bongolo Kids

This is a picture of the Bongolo kids when I was a kid, around 1985.  All the kids in the photo were missionaries' kids.

Here is a picture of the kids who live on the Bongolo mission station as of 2012.  Most of these kids are the children of residents who are training in surgery down at the Bongolo Hospital.  They speak French and attend the local national school in Bongolo.  Luke and Sarah are the only missionaries'  kids in the picture.  They are home schooled by their mother (bottom right in the picture) and myself.  Bongolo has really changed since I grew up here, and I think the change is a healthy one.

Sunday School

On Sunday mornings I help with Sunday school at a little village church.  There are usually 20-40 children, ages 2-12.  We sings songs in French, listen to a Bible story, learn a Bible verse, and color a picture.  I love the open expressions on the children's faces as they listen and learn.

Flowers that Fall from Trees

In Bongolo, there are flowers that fall from a tree by the road.  I don't know what they are called, but I enjoy them every day.  They've been falling in that spot long before I first came to Bongolo as a two year old.

Arabic Tea

Arabic Tea really brings back memories of high school, when our class used to sit around drinking tea and singing or talking for hours.  We had three "rounds" for the tea: the first we called "Life" because it was so bitter.  Not that any of us had experienced much bitterness in our lives.  The second we called "Friendship" and it was bittersweet.  The third was very sweet, and we called it "Love."  Who knows where we picked up our names for the rounds of tea, but I've faithfully passed it on to the two kids I teach.

Arabian Nights

Have you ever read Arabian Nights?  I read it to find stories to tell Luke and Sarah in school.  Some of the stories are too scary, so I modify them, but most are fine.  It is about a girl who marries a vengeful king who intends to have her killed the morning after their marriage to insure her fidelity.  But the girl has a plan to save her own life.  She tells the king a bedtime story, leaving out the ending, so that he will let her live another day in order to hear the end of the story.  Her plan works so well that after 1,001  nights of stories, the king falls in love with the girl and lets her live.

Bifudu bites

Ahh, bifudu bites, the little red dots left behind by tiny black flies called bifudu.  If you should come to Gabon, you too can experience bifudu bites.  For some these bites itch but I myself am immune because I grew up here in Gabon.  I've been bit so many times that my body has given up fighting whatever is in the bites. 

Esther

Say hello to Esther, the baby who I watch five hours a week.  She is eleven months old and getting ready to walk.  Her favorite word right now is "ba."
     Esther's dad Eric takes care of the mission bookkeeping, and Wendy, Esther's mother, is an ophthalmologist at the hospital.

Luke and Sarah

This is Sarah and Luke Thelander, who I help to home school.  I teach them Art, English and Science.  They love to do crafts, bake and explore the rain forest.  Their dad is a surgeon at the mission hospital and their mom home schools them and coordinates the comings and goings of visiting doctors.

Hello from the Rain Forest

Hello from the rain forest of Gabon, West Africa!  I live in a little community called Bongolo, surrounded by rain forest and a river that hurries by.  Here in Bongolo there is a church, a mission hospital, and the missionary compound where I live and work.