Today was another jam packed day of fun things. We did a little work in the morning to kick things off, and then had fun. Don't worry, I'm not slacking! It was Kara and Stephanie's last day here though. They leave tomorrow on a flight to Brazzaville in the morning and hopefully make it in time to catch their evening flight out on Air France. I anticipate a busy day in the hospital tomorrow, and being the only one left, probably will be doing a lot -- but you never know what's going to happen. Anyway, we kicked things off with meeting Dr. Kiong at the pharmacy at 7am to do inventory. We spent the next 3.5 hours counting pills, separating out the expired medications (have to figure out which ones are still "ok"), seeing what other supplies we had, and making lists of things needed to restock. They've been wanting to do this for a while it seems like, so it was nice having the man-power to knock it out in a couple hours. After that we headed to the English/French church service, and I played piano with the worship team. Dr. Wegner was able to make it and he played acoustic guitar this week. They also asked me to share something during their "Fabulous Five" -- 5 minutes of something fabulous to share with them. So I shared one of my favorite prayers:
Prayer of St. Patrick
Christ as a light, Illume and guide me
Christ as a shield, overshadow me
Christ under me, Christ over me
Christ beside me on my left and on my right
This day be within and without me
Lowly and meek, yet all powerful
Be in the heart of each to whom I
in the mouth of each who speaks to me
This day be within and without me
Lowly and meek, yet all powerful
Christ as a light, Christ as my shield
Christ beside me on my left and on my right
Amen.
I then spent a couple minutes talking about what it meant to me and how I hoped it would encourage them moving forwards. Henri interpreted into French for me. That was actually difficult. It's hard when someone is interpreting your every word....I talk fast usually, so having to pause and let him translate, I kept losing my train of thought. Also, some of the words didn't translate too nicely into French I guess, so he had to play around.
After that I headed over to the Wegner house for lunch with everyone. It was a leftover day, which was great because we had a smorgasbord of stuff to eat. Delicious. Some more mango....yes! Caleb (Wegner boy) calls me the "mango theif." After we finished lunch Anna gave us some tips that she's acquired on re-acclimating to life back in the US, and how sometimes it can be hard to fit into your own culture after you've adjusted to another. Guess we shall see. Maybe I'll start trying to barter for my groceries at WalMart. "I see that it costs five dollars, but I only want to pay you three......"
After lunch I headed over to Amanda's house to meet up with the girls. We had finally convinced someone to take us out on a boat, though it almost didn't quite happen again. We went to find Gilvy, one of the locals from Impfondo, his dad works for the hospital I think, and his mom said he wasn't around and he would be back sometime "soon." Amanda explained that the people here really hate saying no to you, so often they will say yes and then just not show up. I guess they don't like disappointing you in the immediate, just later. But, Gilvy showed up! We walked about 10 minutes to his boat, which he keeps chained up in the river. At first he was saying that all 5 of us could get in, plus Sparky the dog. Yaaaaaa, bad idea. The boat nearly tipped before we even pushed off. So we decided to send Amanda and Stephanie first with him, and then he came back for Kara and me. He asked if I wanted to try standing and paddling opposite end of the boat as him, to which I of course said yes. Kara wasn't too happy about this as she was convinced that I would tip the boat. Close....but it didn't. It is pretty tough initially to keep your balance, but once you get the hang of it, it's not so bad.
After we caught up with the rest of them he let me paddle the boat around a bit by myself, and a bunch of the locals in the river were giving me tips. They all wanted to take pictures with us, especially with the girls. One guy kept proposing to Kara, and Amanda agreed that he could have her for like 50 goats, and he agreed to throw in a diamond ring. I think we were negotiating the price for a while and then settled for a picture. It was pretty entertaining. Then they wanted me to take some pictures of them doing front and back flips off of a tire that they had in the water. They put the tire at the edge of the sandbar, right in front of a slightly deeper part, and then all run and flip off the tire. I agreed to try and did a front and back flip off the tire, and they were all shouting that the "Mondeli was strong!" Some of them were also laughing a great deal because it wasn't exactly the greatest flipping, but hey I tried. I thought I was seriously going to break my neck, back flipping off of a tire into a pretty shallow part of the river. But, still walking, so that's good. It was a great way to connect with them though. I can't speak French, but running and flipping off tires -- there's a connection that happens. It's like the other day when I played soccer with the kids. You can connect without language doing things like that.
We made it back in time for Sunday Night Live, and there was some confusion with both the projector being needed and the Somatous bringing a guitar. So they gave me this other guitar to play, which was pretty horribly warped and hard to keep in tune, and the chords sometimes just came out weird as the neck was twisted.....but we were able to play some music and I just sang louder to cover for it. This will be my last time here on Sunday night, so it was good to play some music and have some fun with the group. Kara and Stephanie leave in the morning, so hopefully their plane arrives.
I'll post some pictures and some videos of our fun in the river, so check back for that later. Thanks again for reading.
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