Overall, our time in CAR was excellent. Despite the chaos around us, a coup attempt in Chad, violence in Kenya and now unrest in Cameroon, CAR is still behind but I see reason for hope. Maybe not on the country level, but at least on the local level, change is slowly taking place and it is encouraging. The nutrition garden is doing better than I expected and looks better than I had hoped. There is a lot of hard work going on and Nadege is giving good leadership in the garden. She has kept records for the past year of what food goes to the nutrition centre daily as well as keeping daily work records. I have a hard time doing that. The nursery looks good despite a severe dry season and a nursery manager who is very new to the job. The new ‘Chef de Centre’, Benoit, is a very upright man who is giving good leadership to the project and his staff. Despite the usual complaints about the head of the project, the guys are very thankful for the spiritual direction that Benoit gives them. Each morning starts with prayer and devotions, led by Benoit and there are obvious signs of the impact in their lives. This was especially evident in the lives of Chrysler and Eloi, our travelling partners.
My travellingpartner, Miss Vicki
Most of our time was spent travelling around the South-West of CAR visiting cooperatives that were formed during our time in CAR. I had been to visit most of the gardens and cooperatives in 2006 so this was a good follow-up to compare how things were going. While many gardens were disappointing in their upkeep there were a few outstanding gardens and despite the harsh dry season, fruit was being harvested. Bayanga was most impressive and we definitely saw the fruit of our labour as well as that of the other missionaries that had spread fruit trees around the pygmy villages. Not only did we see trees fruiting, we saw people walking down the road carrying large jackfruits, peels on the side of the road and fruits for sale. What a joy!
Passionfruit from a coop member in Boukere--delicious!
When we weren’t travelling Vicki spent time working in the nutrition garden or with Ann in the medical depot. I spent many hours meeting with the project staff, helping plan work for 2008, dealing with worker issues and encouraging the Chef to keep up the good work. In the afternoons we visited gardens and fish ponds and even spent one afternoon in a fish pond, pulling out lily pad plants that choke out fish in the pond. We must have spent near 3 hours in the water without a thought for what else might be in there with us. It wasn’t until I got home and told Darren what we did that he asked how many leeches attacked us. LEECHES! Good thing I didn’t think of leeches or I may never have gone in the water in the first place. Yikes! Vicki goes to bed quite early so I spent many evenings with Clarisse, and we even had a couple of sleep over’s. We had a good time catching up, sharing times of laughter, crying and prayer.
Me and Anna, a year older, but still tiny as ever and still my baby!
Leaving was very hard, made even more difficult by the fact that I did not get as much quality time with Clarisse as I had hoped given the amount of travelling we chose to do. The weekend before we left I did all my packing and had all the project staff over for lunch. We had a great time eating, laughing, and trying not to cry as we said our farewell formalities. We ended our time with a slide show on my laptop of photos from ECHO and family Christmas photos. It was a special time for all of us.
