Today i went to see maman marie, the social worker, and took the time to look at the pictures of malnourished children they saved over the years. what she told me was so upsetting i have to share it with you as well. i knew that children die today in congo because of malnutrition but i had no idea malnutrition itself could be caused by pure obscura

Wow. it’s been nearly 8 months since our last update. it’s been awhile, but we are still here and we want to continue to keep you abreast of our latest adventures. but before we do, i guess we should start with what we have been up to since our last posting: • nov 18 –dec 10 – we travelled to maryland to spend some time with the family, e

If you have known me for a while, you are probably aware by now that i am a fan of lists. i just came up with a new one: the expat web sites list. it summarizes all the sites i have found so far tailored to the expat community. there is a lot of us out there! i wish i had known that when i was 15 and i was wondering who exactly i was, french, inter

While it may look quite intimidating at first to take a taxi in pointe noire if one focuses on the way they drive, the lack of published information on prices and the difficulty of explaining where one wants to go in the city, since there are little to no street names, it stays the most convenient way of getting from point a to point b. i found out

This morning, i was victim of my first, and hopefully, last attack in pointe noire. as i was driving back home, just before turning the corner onto cote sauvage our expat neighborhood, driving on paved and safe roads, a guy suddenly left the sidewalk opposite to us and threw a big rock at the car. he could have caused serious injuries if he had eit

Sunday october 4th, 2009. mae now talks about herself as a third person. she will say maye this and maye that. she likes to add madenn to all her sentences, almost as a grammatical component or a fill word. she has not fully mastered how to place words in the proper order in a sentence yet and add all the keywords of a message together one after ea

Being responsible for the house maintenance, i have noticed that there are very specialized workers in pointe noire. we have the guys who come and clean the air conditioning units once a month. by hand, using a damp cloth and a bucket. we also have the guys who come to fix the internet connection. the guys who come to fix broken doors or handles. t

Mae is starting to talk, repeating many words and expressing herself well enough to minimize the crying and screaming she has used so far to get what she wanted. here are a few of the words she can actually master as of today june 9th 2009. i have tried to put them by order of first appearance. she can say the following clearly: papa = papa; enco(r

When time allows, i like to go and walk on the beach with the girls. it is just across from the house so it is easy to decide to get some fresh air on a whim. we don't walk far, from one end of the cote sauvage to the other. it usually takes us a half hour if we stay on the paved road but on sundays, i take one extra step and actually go and walk o

Tonight there is a very sorry fellow on the plane back to europe! he surely didn't see it coming... and the price of his mistake is probably hard to swallow. one week ago, i received the following email from a friend: ----- original message -----from: hidden for privacy reasons to: hidden for privacy reasons sent: tuesday, may 19, 2009 4:26 pmsubje