Mixed bag

Today, we're at N'Zao, where there's an American mission hospital with wireless internet access (youpi!), about 7kms from the N'Zérékoré, the capital of the Forest Region, around one and half hours from home. We're taking a break from Macenta for a couple of nights, staying at the Catholic Mission in town. Here's a mixed bag of stories of life in Macenta.

Snake killed

Ascension Day was a day off for us, and despite it being August, the heaviest month for rain, there was a dry moment which allowed us to take chairs and table out into the back garden to eat with our young footballer friend. After putting chairs and the table back in, he mentioned in passing that he saw a snake in a bush not far from the house. We asked Moriba, our day guard to kill it and he did so by lunging at it with a long pole. Not enough meat on it for a meal for two, unfortunately.  

Fête des Nations

As we make up part of a multicultural expatriate team (British, Congolese, Swiss and Ivorian), we celebrated our various nationalities with a ‘Fête des Nations’ or international party, where each family/person brought a meal (as the ackee and saltfish brought over from the UK last year had already been eaten, Sarah plumped for a beef curry with naan breads) complete with meat and fish for barbecuing. Our Ivorian colleagues brought achéké (grated, fermented cassava served with hot pepper sauce and fish). All very tasty, or as the Guineans say C’est doux dey! (It tastes good, doesn’t it?) The PROEspoir or 'Project Hope' team is the biggest team in the country, consisting of three families with 10 children, two couples and a single lady, Martha, who has been here for 21 years. We played a number of games and Sarah representing Great Britian, did a quiz on the Queen. Our Ivorian colleagues were surprised to know that, according to an official website one can actually shake the hand of the Queen ("That's not possible in our country, your hand would be chopped off"). For the Swiss contribution, we did a spot of yodelling and leaping around the BBQ and continued the dancing led by our Ivorian colleagues. You can check out Eric’s contribution in these photos. What a scream!

We wanted to post more photos but the server is very slow here!


Your help needed

We're planning to be in the UK next year for our home assignment but we need somewhere to live from the start of September until early November. Ideally, we would like to be in the West Midlands area, preferably in Birmingham or not far from Birmingham, so we can participate in activities at our home church, Bearwood Baptist and be within a reasonable distance of our churches in Wales and West Midlands regions. Unfortunately, the International Mission Centre for BMS is likely to be booked up as it's the start of the new training year. If you can help us with this, please let us know by email. We encourage you to publicise this request in your churches. Thanks!

Blessings and have a great weekend, until next time!