Poem on a Wednesday

Listen

with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feelings we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

By W.S. Merwin

Life in Libreville II

Poofy—our neighbor Rodika’s white cat—knows who robbed us in the wee hours of Friday morning. I know this, because Rodika, told me last night, while we both stood on the small landing between our two doors, watching Poofy pace quick circles around us and between our legs.

“Why not you go and wake Brett,” she said sternly to him, rolling the ‘r’ in my name. She turned and crouched down, making rapid pawing motions at my door in a decent impression of what Poofy actually does. “Wake up Brett, wake up.” She stopped and straightened up. “He knows who it was, but I do not know how to make him tell.” She shrugged.

“Hm,” I said, nudging him with my toe. Poofy can be quite the magnificent bastard, pooping on our balcony all the time, urinating in the hall, and mewling loudly outside our windows, but this one really took the cake.

Instead of finding out about the burglary from Poofy ahead of time, I found out the next morning. It was 6:40, and I was having some trouble getting out of bed.

“Brett,” Angela called from the living room, “Can you come look at the fridge please?” There was something unusual in her voice, and asking me to come look at our refrigerator seemed a strange request. I was unhappily thinking big brown jumping tarantula.

“Am I going to need my glasses for this,” I yelled back as I kicked off the covers.

“Can you just come here please!” Something was definitely different. When I walked out of the bedroom, through the hallway, and into our living room, I saw what it was. Angela was standing by the refrigerator, her hair still wet from the shower, and at her feet was the chain and padlock from our iron grate. The lock had been cut. The curtains were open, which we were careful to always keep closed at night, and the sliding glass door was open about a foot. There were pry bar marks on it.

“We got broken into last night,” Angela said, tears welling up in her eyes.

It was a strange feeling. Someone had been in our house the night before, doing basically whatever they wanted. I turned around and looked at the room behind me in a new light. What was different? What had they taken? I had taken the computer into the bedroom with me, and Angela went to check on our ipods. They were both there. The only thing missing was a little bit of money from a make-up bag that had been pulled out of a drawer.

Now I don’t want this blog to turn into an episode of Touched by an Angel, but I will point out these few facts. About twenty feet in front of the glass door is our dining room table. On the table, I had left 25,000 CFA, which is the approximate equivalent of 50.00 US Dollars. The money was untouched, left in the same neat stack I had piled it into the night before. I would say the thief had left the money, because it was petty cash, and they wanted the big score, except that they had gladly taken the money in the make-up bag, which I believe was only around forty dollars. And they had taken nothing else. In fact, it looked as though the intruder had not been in the apartment for longer than five minutes, and had never made it past the dining room table.

Maybe someone woke up (Our Guard, for instance? Anyone?), and spooked the thief. Maybe Angela and I made a noise. But nothing like that bothered the fellow(s) who had carried a ladder over to our wall to climb over, then carried the ladder to our porch, climbed up, cut the lock on our iron grate, pried open the glass door, and slipped into our silent living room. Whatever happened, he walked right back out, leaving a stack of bills neatly piled on the table.It’s strange, I’ve heard that sometimes after people get robbed, or had their homes broken into, they have a hard time getting to sleep for a while. Last night, I slept pretty heavy.

The mean streets of Libreville

Not the best guards. (Poofy, and his un-named sister.)

Christmas, Paper, and Fireworks

First things first - Christmas! Although Brett does not have many things to say about Christmas I have a lot! - but will be brief for blogging purposes. Mom, Dad, and Larisa flew into Libreville the first day of Christmas Break and were able to spend all but a couple days of our 3 week break with us. It was great to take them around our little area in Libreville and then spend time in Bongolo.

Larisa was able to do her Cross Cultural Nursing Practicum at the Bongolo hospital which included many adventures and things she never would have seen at a hospital in the states. Dad was able to get quite a bit of work done on the building project he is managing on the Bongolo Hospital campus and Brett was able to relax, write, and work some with my Dad on the building project. Mom and I were living the Little House on the Prarie life cooking meals, washing dishes by hand, drying the clothes on the line in the attic, and of course a lot of talking. It was great to spend so much time hanging out with family all break and in the evenings at Bongolo! ( 4 months is a long time!) We were also fortunate enough to have a good phone line over break so we could call our family in Michigan and Seattle to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and catch up with them as well! God Bless us Everyone!:) - Tiny Tim

Brett and I also celebrated our Paper Anniversary over break. The big 1 year:)





The truth is we spent part of the day on a mini tour of the hydroelectric plant that supplies electricity to the hospital compound. We could think of nothing more romantic OR everyone was going and it sounded fun! Either way we had a great time in Bongolo!

Fireworks were a big part of our New Years Eve celebration. We flew back to Libreville on New Years Day and spent New Years Eve with friends in town. Since November we have been hearing firecrackers popping all around our apartment, and New Years Eve was no exception. They were going off in the street and then on the tin roof of the house we were in. People were actually throwing them over the wall which of course prompted our host to throw his stash into the street as well. It was a loud night but quite entertaining! The night ended with our own fireworks show of fireworks I don't think are legal to sell in the states.
A belated Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all!

Brett checking out the rainforest. I was not with him on that hike!


We saw Jakes picture on someones desk in the eye clinic on our tour of the hospital!
- Angela

Life in Libreville, A Brief Re-Hashing

The school’s director is in Bangkok for a recruitment fair, and he made a last minute decision to stay for an extra few days, because apparently he couldn’t generate much interest from teachers looking for new jobs in exotic locales. The substitute the school had hired to fill in couldn’t stay additional days, and so I had to give up doing E.S.L. for the afternoon, and teach Jr. High Science.

I have to tell you that I am not much of a science guy. In high school, my experiments often did not work, my glass tube would not bend when heated, and I don’t like wearing goggles unless I’m machine gunning from the back of a World War II airplane. I do, however, try to be a team player, so at 1:00, I headed up to the third floor.

“Ok,” I said scanning the notes that had been left for me, while the class sat quietly, with the occasional titter. “Ok…” There were two sets of instructions, both in equally terrible hand-writing, and with conflicting instructions. I saw that the old sub was supposed to have started Unit Seven, but for some reason she had gone AWOL, and started making up her own lesson plans, lingering on Six, and adding a test, from what I could tell. She had crossed out the original lesson plans I was supposed to have started, and switched them with her old ones.

“Everyone turn to page 156,” I said, opening the teacher’s manual. More giggles ensued, and I said, “Funny funny today,” right as I opened up to Unit Seven, and two pictures, side by side: The Male and Female Reproductive organs, in all their terrible glory. I froze. Carefully I turned the page. “The Menstrual Cycle,” in bold letters at the top of the page. I tried not to react, and with my head down, I glanced up, and the class exploded with laughter. I was unprepared for this situation. “Stop,” I snapped, “Everyone quiet down.”

The reason for the old sub’s lesson plan insubordination was abundantly clear. She had been a coward, although a resourceful one. She had doctored the lesson plans so I had no idea what I was walking into. All I had seen on the plans were phrases like, “Class may work on science fair projects,” “Worksheets 51-54,” “Class reads aloud 7.1.” Nothing along the lines of, “You’re the new sex-ed teacher, don’t be too surprised.” Let me also add that the class is comprised of eight, seventh and eighth grade girls, and one seventh grade boy. Not in this lifetime, mon amie. Not in any.

“Ok,” I repeated for the third or fourth time. “Let’s be mature about this. I want you to read 7.1 silently, and then I have some worksheets for you to do.” I paused, and then added, “And if you have any questions, talk to your parents tonight when you get home, or ask Dr. Moras when he gets backs.” More giggles started to bubble up, and I held up one hand.

“But Mr. Strickland,” one of them whined, “That’s almost ten pages.”

“It’s won’t take you that long,” I told her, “Anyway, a lot of it is diagrams and pictures.” I winced as the class, once more, began laughing uncontrollably.

I don’t have much to say about Christmas Break, and the month or so we haven’t updated. We had a fantastic time, and did a lot of new things, and on December 30^th, Angela and I broke the first year of marriage barrier. Also, two days ago I saw (and poked multiple times) an eel trapped in a tidepool, and a dead African Boomslang, which was very cool.

Here are a few pictures from break. Enjoy.

This is a church we went to down in Bongolo. After church, the first people stop and greet whoever is coming out, and once you get greeted, you join the line and greet those behind you. Pretty soon the line becomes a circle (A circle of life, dare I say?), with everyone clapping and greeting people. It was fun to be included in.

Angela and I, nominees for biggest Dorks of 2007.

Don't wear yourself out checking this blog

Hello! This could be the last post for a while, I think Angela and I are going to be taking a small break from blogging over Christmas. I could be wrong. Angela's mother, father, and sister Larisa are flying in tonight at 5:40, and we're not going to drag them to the school so we can check our e-mail and blog. Then on Monday, we're all flying down to Bongolo, which is a Christian Missionary Alliance (CMA) Hospital.
I'm excited about that, because it's in the rainforest, which means more chances to see wildlife that is non-existant in Libreville (although Wednesday I saw a Barn Owl fly over my head. It was very cool). I may have said this before, but Gabon has a terrible (read: pretty much no) road system, which means loggers have not been able to get into the interior much. Because of this, Gabon is still something like 80% untouched rainforest, which is the largest concentration of virgin rainforest, with Brazil not too far off. A guy named Micheal Fay (I think that's how his last name is spelled) walked across the entire country a couple of years ago, which was approximately a 2,000 mile trek, and National Geographic made a documentary about it (which I actually haven't seen). So with any luck, I'll be posting a picture of a Gabonese Viper on here one month from today.
That being said, have a merry Christmas everyone, a happy new year, and we'll post pictures in early January, when we're back.

My Musical Niche

After a listening to a lot of different music, over a decent period of time (I would say I’ve been listening to good music, consistently, for about four years. There was a transition year that went from my senior year of high school, to halfway through my freshman year of college, that I’m not counting), I think I’ve found a musical niche in Country music. Not that I was ever looking for one, because I wasn’t. But yesterday I was listening to Hank Williams Jr. sing, “All My Rowdy Friends,” and I realized that out of all the other music available to me, that’s what I want to listen to.
I know it’s not exactly where I fit with life circumstances, because I’m not from the South, I’m not poor, and unlike the main characters in Williams’s, “A Country Boy Can Survive,” I cannot brew my own whiskey or smokes—but I find the music relaxing, and enjoyable to listen to. Every once in a while I relate to the songs. Now, I should say that I’m using the word “Country,” rather loosely, and contrary to what I’m sure most people are thinking, I’m not specifically referring to the likes of Garth Brooks and Tim McGraw, although I certainly enjoy both of them—they’re actually more toward the bottom of my list.
Country music, like all musical genres, has a lot of sub-genres, the names of which you will probably only hear, either if you spend time talking about music with other people (labels help clarify discussion), or do some investigating. For instance, singers like Garth Brooks, and Tim McGraw, are called neo-traditionalists. The music that really appeals to me is the older stuff- guys like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Gram Parsons, Townes Van Zandt—and then the newer, alt-country music—such as Ryan Adams, Okkervil River, and, dare I say, Bright Eyes and Iron & Wine (I dare). It gets debatable with some bands/artists, but I would say both the latter are folksy enough to fit under the alt-country label.
If you just angrily exclaimed, “That’s not country music,” without thinking through what you said, you may be at a point where you refuse to listen to reason from me. Perhaps you felt an immediate rage take over, and have written this off as artsy-fartsy. If that is the case, before you read any more from me, here’s a few lines from Alan Jackson, who says it pretty well:


Well the folk scene's dead, but he's holding out in the village

He's been writing songs, speaking out against wealth and privilege

He says I don't believe in money, but a man could make him a killin'

Cause some of that stuff don't sound much different than Dylan


Really, it doesn’t. That’s from, “Gone Country.” I would tentatively say that newer music—the alt. country—is somewhat more appealing to me stylistically, and lyrically. It’s modern, so I relate to it on a more immediate level. The older stuff, I appreciate the style, the stories that most songs tell, and how they often interweave with the life of the actual song-writer.
I was reading a story about Merle Haggard, and how he went to a concert by the late Johnny Cash. After the show, he went up to Johnny Cash, they talked for a few minutes, and Merle Haggard said, “I really enjoyed your show at San Quentin.” Johnny Cash was surprised, and said he didn’t know Haggard was playing with his band than, and Haggard told him he wasn’t-- he was in the crowd. Merle Haggard was incarcerated something like nine times, and did 15 years in San Quentin. Also interesting, he was later pardoned by Ronald Reagan, who was than Gov. of California. Interesting stuff. If you found any of this the least bit intriguing, here are two things to check out. The first is an essay by Nick Hornby (He wrote the movies About A Boy, and High Fidelity, and is also a music critic.) about the Ryan Adams song, “Oh My Sweet Carolina,” which is one of my all time favorite songs, on every level.


http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/song/hornby.html


The second item to check out is on Marc Buwalda’s blog.
Follow the link on your right, and scroll down to his November 14th blog entry entitled, “Leave Me Alone! I Like My Hootie CD!” It has some good insight on acquired taste in music, and why, out of my many years of listening to music, I consider only four of them worth mentioning. Cheers.

Cheetah

Some friends have a turtle as a pet in their back yard that we discovered after being here a couple months. We finally got to see it the other week when Dad was here so I thought I would post a couple pictures of the little guy.

Don't let Cheetah fool you - he is not really eating. He is just inching his way towards his real goal. . .

Pushing Brett off of the sidewalk! Kind of a crazy picture but a fun one to share. I am curious to hear what Brett says to me about the post.

- Angela

Thanksgiving

Palm Trees, flip flops, and hot weather have created a new feeling for Thanksgiving this year! We went over to Sablier - a neighborhood across town - and got together with some friends for dinner. Despite the absence of cold weather, Christmas commercials, and family we had a great Thanksgiving here in Libreville. Here is a picture of our Thanksgiving feast!

I know it is way past Thanksgiving time and onto Christmas but I hated to post nothing from Thanksgiving!

- Angela

Girl Fights and Sao Tome

I was debating on whether to update about recently finishing Far From The Madding Crowd, by Thomas Hardy, or Angela and I's recent trip to Sao Tome, when a series of angry shouts from the street interested me enough to stand up, and look out the window.
I was on the second floor, so I had a clear vantage over the wall surrounding the school, to where two groups of girls stood facing each other next to a little road-side stand. I know they were two separate groups, because half of the girls were wearing white shirts and bright turquoise skirts, and the other half had white shirts and navy skirts. Each group seemed to have a "spokesperson," who would shout and shake their finger in the other's face. This went on for two or three minutes, when a boy wearing only whitie tighties ran out from an alley and grabbed one girls arm. She put the palm of her hand in his face and pushed him (he looked thirteen or fourteen, so no toddler, and old enough to be wearing pants), and while she was distracted the other girl went to town, first landing a few solid punches before settling on an impressive looking choke.
My first instinct, perhaps unfortunately, was to find someone to show, so they could watch as well, but this presented two problems:

1) I did not know who to show. I played with the idea of tapping the two seventh grade girls who were talking behind me, but somehow it seemed inappropriate, and
2) I did not want to leave the window, and miss something good.

They fought for a few minutes, with the young gentleman in his underpants dancing around everyone like a trained monkey, until some adults came and tried to get in between to break it up. If the fighters were anything though, it was persisitent. One would run away, and circle around behind the group, then rush in for a surprise attack. Anyway.

Sao Tome was great. Saturday, we had a taxi driver takes us 30 minutes along the coast to a mostly abandoned beach, where we swam in turquoise tinted water, so clear that fish could be seen out in the lagoon.
For those of you that don't know, Sao Tome is an island nation off the coast of West Africa. It's tropical, they speak Portuguese, and their national currency is the Droba, although the airport would not accept it. Here are some pictures.






These two are taken where we went swimming. The first one reminded me of Lost.


A Golden Orb-Weaver spider.

A few pictures of the hotel we stayed at for two night.
Very nice, Angela!

Today I was checking my mail before school started, when another teacher sidled into the lab and began hovering around me. If he had papers, he would have been shuffling them. After a minute or so of being ignored, he leaned in close and whispered to me, approximately, this: “I am busy. Can you do P.E. by yourself today?” After a long pause, during which I opened another e-mail, I said: “Ok. Do you have anything planned today?” No, shockingly, he did not. I said sure, and minimized my mail so that it could not be read. Ten minutes later I was outside sipping a cup of coffee, and watching the kids play an international version of capture the flag. About halfway through the game, one of the girls got her foot caught in netting of a soccer goal (the students use them as prisons), and stood hopping on one foot, struggling to get it out. A little fifth grade student saw the plight, and ran over to help, just as the caught girl fell over, pulling the back posts of the metal soccer goal out of the ground. The whole thing started to fall forward just as the little fifth grader arrived, and the top bar came down right on the bridge of her nose, pushing her little glasses sort of up into her face and knocking her down, and of course completely bowling the older student over, and trapping her in the net. I had to laugh, it was so comical to watch. My reaction time isn’t so quick in the morning either, and I was kind of hoping the fifth grader on her knees with her face in her hands was covering her embarrassingly loud peals of laughter. The other students swarmed over like concerned ants, righting the soccer goal and gathering around their downed comrades. “Ok, ok,” I said as I made my way over. I told them to get back to their game, and pulled the older girl’s leg (she was still struggling like a caught fish) out. Then I took the little fifth grader up to the office, put some ice on her face, and got her a drink of water. Twenty minutes later, I saw her gingerly making her way down the fire escape. Very funny. Other news, our apartment flooded for the third time this week, but it really wasn’t that big of a deal. We soaked it up with towels, shoveled it with dust pans, and poured it down our stairwell in big plastic buckets. It was because our water-heater had broke in the night, so we got a new one installed on Tuesday, courtesy of our landlord.
Here are the pictures- for once, I have delivered. The top photo is obviously Angela, with her multi-cultural classroom. They are in the process of show and tell.

This is Angela on her October 19th, celebrating her big 2-4, with a big Jean Philleas. (I think that's how it's spelled.) We were at Tivoli's, a place we really enjoy.

This is a photo from a time we were trying to drive to a beach that was suppose to be incredible, called Santa Clara. The roads outside of Libreville are awful, and if it wasn't for the giant four wheel drive Mercedes SUV we were in, we would have gotten stuck like everyone else we passed. You can see me in the side mirror, considering what road we should take. (We choose wrong, and never ended up making it to Santa Clara, although we did come upon some French Military running excercises in the Jungle.)

Me at a different beach we ended up at.


Angela and I at Vicki's, a CMA Missionary here.

Finally- would you want this guy making your pizza? I think not.