Our travels home....

Late Thursday night on March 4, we boarded Air France airlines to fly back home to the USA on Friday, March 5 in Cleveland, Ohio. Our travels and all our connections (Bangui to Paris, Paris to London, London to Chicago, Chicago to Cleveland) went really well, and we are so very grateful that our luggage arrived at the end of our destination with us! We are grateful for your prayers during this time of our travels ~ please know how much we feel them.

We have come home, yet again for a time of medical leave....this is something we will continue to keep you informed of, as we know more.

Thank you again for reading our blog ~ enjoy!

Time with friends....

Time with friends...

On Wednesday (March 3), our dear friend Heidi invited us over to her home to enjoy time together during a most delicious meal of Korean beef that her house-help Jonathan made. This is my most favorite meal at Heidi's for a lunch meal! It is served with white rice, stir fry of; onions, green peppers, green beans and carrots, and of course the deliciously tender and very well seasoned beef! Our most grateful thanks to Heidi ~ for my dear friend, for her gracious love and hospitality shown to us.

A rose is a rose....

~ A rose is a rose ~

This is a flower that I've enjoyed seeing bloom again and again while we have been in Bangui, it's called a Porcelain Rose. To view this flower a little better ~ double left 'click' your mouse, and it will enlarge the image. The flower petals appear waxy looking, almost glass like.

What's that?!!

part of a palm tree ~ where the palm tree seed grow

palm tree seeds that are used to make palm tree oil

As I walked through the center a couple of weeks ago where we live, one of our guards was very carefully, yet efficiently removing these palm tree seeds out from within this huge prickly thing that grows under the leafs of the palm tree (1st picture above). Curious, I proceeded to ask him questions as to why he uses this knife to extract the seeds from this huge thing, he said if you only used your hand to extract these seeds, it would continue to cut you over and over, each time you tried to get one of these seeds extracted. I also asked what the process was like and how much this large bowl of already extracted palm tree seeds would make (2nd picture). I would approximate this bowl of seeds to be about 2 foot in diameter. He said the it would produce about 1 liter of palm oil for the use of cooking! The process he described to me was very lengthy and so time consuming....this is when, I'm so very grateful that I can go to a local little grocery store in Bangui to purchase a cooking oil right off the store shelve, already prepared and reading to use, rather than going through this very time consuming and tumultuous process just for cooking oil ~ however, this is how our Central African friends live.

Our local laundry mat

~ Our local laundry mat ~
(in our own shower)

And, our laundry machine....our own elbow grease! During the Bangui city 'power-cut', we needed to roll up our sleeves and put our own elbow grease into washing our clothes ~ here, you see Trace hand washing his work clothes.

To wash, we simply take a little laundry soap, mix it while the water was flowing out of the shower hose into a large plastic tub, dunk your clothes in and start to squishy, squishy, like your washer machine. Next, of course the rinse cycle....squishy, squishy with clean water, repeat if necessary.....ring out well....hang clothes on laundry line! Voila, your wash is done.

Karen's dream job....

Coffee anyone?!

This would be my dream job!....This little traveling coffee stand can be seen going up and down the street of Boganda in Bangui! This gentleman sells the well known instant coffee of Nescafé ~ a coffee that I have grown very fond of since we arrived in Africa (mostly, in making 'iced coffee).