First Impressions

Africa is so different from what we're used to in the United States, that it's difficult to know where to begin, or what to include. Angela and I arrived here in Libreville on Thursday night, and stayed in a guesthouse used by missionaries from the Alliance Church. The streets were a warren, with walls around the houses and apartments on the street, and people all over the place, kids playing in the street, and adults selling food they were barbequing on the side of the road. There were also all sorts of stands, most commonly selling cigarettes like Marlboros and Dunhills, and then a few other miscellanious items. People drive like maniacs here, and we've already seen two or three fender benders.
Our second day here the guest house operator, and our main contact over here, Arnie Solvig, was driving us somewhere, and a car stopped in the road to talk to the driver next to them. As it was only a two lane road, traffic was halted- it wasn't really a huge deal, however, because there was a traffic light a little ahead, and it was red. Arnie started honking wildly, waving his arm out the window for the car to go, and the two drivers in front started yelling in French (I won't say that again, just assume it's French), and finally one of the cars drove away. Arnie then proceded to pull up next to the car and a mintature argument enfolded, window to window.
Our first morning here I was awoken at around 4 o'clock by rooster after terrible rooster screeching and gargling their African cu-cu-cu-cakoo (or whatever), where they wheezed the end out. A few hours previous we fell asleep to people shouting, dogs fighting, and tribal drums played over a radio.
There are 7-10 foot walls around everything, and the tops often have broken glass and spikes layed over the top. It seems like most of the white people have guards at night as well. Angela and I have one named Drahmine..(sp?), who sleeps outside our apartment building. When we woke up and went out to school this morning, Drahmine was rolling up his sleeping mat and sheathing a knife somehwere in size between a bowie and a machete. The guards I've met are all very nice, and if you give them some CFA's, they'll go buy you bread and something to drink. The bread they sell around here is great, you can buy a big loaf on the street for about 25 cents, and they have an amazing drink here called D'Jino, which is sort of a carbonated lemony-grapefruit juice.
If you buy a bottle of D'Jino or Coke, which come in about one liter glass bottes, you keep it, and a big truck will come around every night and refill your bottle for you. Sort of like an African milkman, from what I understand. I haven't tried it yet, so I'll fill you in on that process as soon as I've tried it.
Angela and I have eaten twice now at a restaraunt down the street from us called Comodore, and each time I ate a Schwarma, with a small bottle of D'Jino. The first one was beef, and the second one was chicken, and the had snuck french fries inside. Delectable. The Comodore is Lebanese (there is a very large population here), and a schwarma is like a gyro, sort of, with lots of garlic, and, I guess sometimes they jam fries inside. We also got hummice as a side our second time there.
Right now I'm just writing surface sorts of things, but there's a lot of things going on that are hard to bang out, and are going to take some time to think over. For instance, obviously, we are stared at everywhere we go. We're the only white people that I've seen in the entire city our 5 days here except for the missionaries and people who work at the school, so everyone is naturally curious about us. Going though large crowds can be a little nerve-racking at times, especially once when we went by a bus-station (I think it was. There was definitely a bus, but there were a lot of other things going on as well.), and a large section began chanting soemthing at Angela and I. (Angela thinks it was the word white. I had assumed before that it was some sort of honor, for me. Perhaps they had heard I was coming? Surely not...and yet....)
Our second floor apartment is very fun, luxriously spaced, a large patio that you can see the ocean from, where different lizards run around, accompanied by our neighboor's cat "Poofy," who has twice ran into our house, and been followed in by our neighboor Rodika, who is very kind, and also our apartment was very flooded last night. The water turned off in our building, and when it came on in the night, the washer started pouring out onto the floor, so that we awoke to an inch in three rooms. We used towels to mop it up, and then squish it into a bucket. I tried to find a mop, and was told they don't use them here.
No sign of any snakes yet, unfortunately, although I did get to pick up a dead spitting cobra someone had killed earlier. It's not very big, but we'll post a picture of that later.
I suppose that's enough for now, hopefully you begin to get an idea of what it's like here. Everything is different, but we're learning so much, from the practical to things like patience and understanding. We miss everyone very much, and we'll update with a video tour of the apartment (merci, adam for the idea) and some pictures later this week. Cheers.

Also- If my feelings sound mixed, guess what?

Don't Drink and Skype

Finally. It's 1:10 on a Monday afternoon, and in approximately an hour and a half, my family is driving me to Detroit Metro, where we will meet up with Angela's family, and off we go. I've never flown internationally, so I'm excited about that experience, and then it's the start of a whole new year overseas.
I brought eight dollars worth of Life-savers and various candies at the Pump N' Shop, and I have bought several books over the past week that I'm excited to get into. Among them are: The Woman Lit By Fireflys (Jim Harrison), The Shadow of the Sun (Ryszard Kapuscinski), Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy), The Complete Poems of Hart Crane, and Brighton Rock (Graham Greene). I haven't read any of them, and I've never read anything by Thomas Hardy. So.
Well the main reason I wanted to jump on the old blogger was to put a plug in for Skype, for anyone who is interested. It really is an amazing program, and I'm sure some of you are familiar with it already. It's a video telephone that works through the internet, and it's completely free. No joke.
Simply go to www.skype.com, and download the program. From there it works a lot like instant messenger, you add contacts, or you can search for them by their e-mail address, and you can see when your contacts are online, and so on and so forth.
Now if you want to do the live video while you talk, obviously you will need a web-cam. I recommend going to Best Buy, they had lots of options when I went, and I bought one for my parents that works wonderfully, and was only 29.99. You can just talk to someone if you have a microphone, and don't want to do the video-feed. I actually recommend not using the video-feed if you think you might be tempted to drink, and then decide to start drunk-skyping people. I imagine that the akward silences that come about from that sort of thing would be magnified by about ten.
I can't stress enough that this is a free service that allows you to make international calls, with live video feed. Very cool. If you do decide to get it, feel free to add Angela and I as a contact, I believe our user name is simply "Brett and Angela Strickland." I'm not sure how often we'll be on, and keep in mind that Libreville is 5 hours ahead of Eastern Standard Time...but that being said, hope to see you on at some point.

ready to go

Tomorrow evening we are flying out of Detroit and will land in Africa the next day - after a short layover in Paris. Very exciting! We have our passports, started our malaria medication, and are ready to go! After a week delay we have received our Visas - Praise the Lord!

The act of measuring the elapsed time

Here are some pictures from our Going Away BBQ at Brett's house up in Michigan. It was great to see everyone.

Currently figuring out the timing of things seems to be a hobby of mine. We found out Monday that there could be a delay in our Visas that we needed in order to leave Wednesday at 7pm. Tuesday the could be a delay turned into there is a delay. Since then we have played with different options of when is the soonest we can leave while leaving enough time to get our Visa and not cutting it too close to the start of school. Tentatively that time is August 22. Its has definitely added some extra excitement to the whole going to Africa thing. Which makes for a lot of excitement considering we were pretty stoked to begin with.

The good news is that today we recieved a call saying that they processed our Visas and they should be on their way back to us. We thought we would be in Africa now but I am learning to let go of trying to figure out the timing of everything - The timing is Gods Zechariah 14:6-7

- Angela

Here is a glimpse of packing. About a month ago on a visit home we went to Sams Club to load up on non-perishable food, toilet paper (apparently it is a good idea to bring your own), toiletry items, and whatever else we saw and thought we could not do without. Apparently we could not do without a box of 6 bottles of Salsa.
Someone then let us squeeze our bins onto a Seaport container going across the Atlantic full of
[Here is a picture of my parents, Brett, and me on our packing day.] Building Supplies - Thanks Dad! We sent it off hoping that it would be in Africa around the time we arrive a month later. In a week we will know if the bins arrived before us. I figure if they are not there when we arrive then they will be a nice big "care package" to receive in our new home.
Today Brett asked me if I could believe that in one week we will be in Africa for almost a year stay. I cannot, however, I am curious to see when reality will hit.

- Angela

Pack it up Pack it in (Let Me Begin)

Yes, as you can see, I did decide to introduce my premier post with House of Pain lyrics. Fitting? I believe so, and on two levels: 1) I really am actually packing it (my clothes) up, and 2) I am asking you to let me begin. You would think packing up all the clothes you would need for a year (or 10 months) would be a little bit stressful, perhaps somewhat complicated, but I just started about an hour ago, and to be honest, I'm feeling pretty close to done. As I type this, I'm thinking "I didn't put in any underwear," but a few pairs of those will only take a few minutes to round up, and if it's as hot in Gabon as it's suppose to be, the "round up" is going to take even less time. I threw in 5 polos, 5 short sleeve button downs, a gray wife-beater I found (classy me!), one pair of khakis, and three ties. Some more items will make it in my duffel bag as the next week and a half slides by, but I believe I have a pretty strong start.
The question I've been getting the most from people about this whole business is, "Are you nervous?" I suppose I am a little bit, but wherever that worry is, it's being smothered under a controlled mass of excitement. I'm not only excited about all of the new experiences Angela and I are going to take in, the ones that will naturally come with traveling to a different culture, to a different part of the world, I'm excited about the chance for reinvention.
It seems like when people leave home to go to college, they're allowed to leave behind who they were before. If there are things about yourself you don't like, you have the oppurtunity to change them and better yourself, whether it's habits, personality traits, or simply the friends you keep.
Now, at 23, I'm past most of that, and am fairly secure in who I've become. But there are other questions cropping up at this stage, forcing me to wonder who I am now as a writer, as a christian, as a husband, as a friend, as someone who is interested in their personal health, in their enviornment, in a future family. And those questions, while challenging, excite me. So I'm grateful for the chance to try and shine some light on them, 5,600 miles away in the dark continent. Cheers.

Packing Up

Hey! Brett and I are starting a blog TOGETHER! This is the very first entry and we are excited to see where it goes, and how this joint project of ours evolves. Two thousand and seven has been a full year and there is only more to come! A year ago Brett was in Alaska fishing for salmon and I had moved to Kentucky to teach. Seven months ago Brett and I got married in Ohio, one month ago we left Kentucky and in two weeks we will be boarding a plane for Africa. Whew! Life has been full but exciting and we can hardly wait for the next step.
School starts in August where I will be the PreK/Kindergarten teacher at an English speaking International School and Brett will be teaching ESL (English as a Second Language). We have yet to see our apartment but have had it described to us. We will have to post some pictures once we get there. Our apartment is on the coast of the Atlantic Ocean and we are within walking distance of the school where the backyard is the ocean.
We were told to come to the school with flexible feet and can hardly wait to board the plane and begin our year in Africa. God has continued to provide for us in the big and small things making it possible for us to go. Brett and I will both be making posts on the blog and are working out the kinks of differentiating between them. Thanks for checking out our blog, and we are excited for more to come.

- Angela