Dinner chez the Bel Air

Yesterdays was Saturday the 27 of Oct. I met so many new people. First we need to leave the building to let the guy come to spray insecticide outside and inside. We plan to go with 3,000,000 CFA to pay for the plane tickets at Ethiopian airline who refuse to accept check or credit cards. In Ethiopian airline office a chinese girl Zhou Xiao jye call me, "Aunty what company do you for here in Congo". After I talk to her with my helpless rusty chinese her colleague showed up from behind the office counter and we continue to talk in french which was easier for me but I don't want to forget my chinese so I ask their phone number and promise to call them when they have a break. They said they work 6 and a half days a week and only have half day holiday which is Sunday afternoon. And they have to work one whole year to get one month holidays to go back to China. Wonder if anyone else I know have such schedule. The 6 and a half days work week was mainly doing their own work and they have to spend one an d a half day to work on week end mainly to correct the work of teh congolese. They found that to be more effective than teaching the locals to do thing correctly which they find helpless and too much time consuming. I think this is scheduel for unmarried people. Don't know what is the schedule of the married people who have family.

Then we went to look for houses again with Jean Claude the courtier of Myriam who ask for taxi money again. But now he got lucky because Franklin paid for his taxi .So ,off course before he leave he started to ask for transport money to go back home. Now Franklin should know better not to pay from the start but I took the wallet away and tell him to walk home. In the end he left. I was thinking of the caddy at the golf course in Poinet Noire , how they like to get a ride in the car to go home or get a free ride from Diosso back to Pointe Noire. We have places enough in the car for them to come with us but after we said yes all the other guys jump in also and it won't take long bebore the car get overloaded with people hanging from every part of the car to get a free ride. As long as they can arrive safely there will be no trouble but if something happen to any of them we will be deep trouble. That's why we are told especially for a rented car that they will not insure the passenger we take in the car. That mean we should not take people with us more than we can be responsible to take them safely to the destination.

This is another reminder that I need to get the chauffeur's driving license copy at the Europcar rental next week. AFter we got our ethiopian airline ticket we went to the market to get flower for Sylvie for diner to night. It was great to see big big bouquets of rose de porcelain. So difficuly to find in Pointe Noire because they don't like sea breeze. Rose de porcelaine grow well here near the river.

The guy sold us 3 bouquets for 3000 and he also charge for emballage. Typical of the local they never say before how much thing is going to cost. They expect that we will always pay for whatever price they ask. White people are like elephant ,teh local reason that they need to tear them apart inpieces.

I plan to have the chauffeur take a look at wicker shelve on the way to the market. Will take a look at that on Monday.

Evening we went to diner. we have french onion soup and racqulette. Wonder if this is correct spelling. We heat cheese in in the center piece heater like fondue swiss or chinese fondue and we just put the melted cheese on saucesages and other thing in the plates like broccoli, potatoes, ham ectera. Swiss seem to have many system to do this. Like the meat we got at Pi Sumalee hotel also look a little bit like that. We have a long conversation about life in Africa. All the guests are grand voyageurs who have been to many countries in Afrcia. They particularly like Namibia and South Africa. To see the whale in the tip of cape of good hope looking towards india ocean one need to go there before December so sometimes between October to December. This are the most animal lover group I met so far. They really enjoy talking about about their encounter with animals in their natural habitat and how entertaining it was to see them in nature and how different it was to see them in the zoo, in captive. We are fortunate to be in Africa and still can have this kind of encounter. Animals once roamed the continant of Europe and Asia also but today we only see less and less of them in scattered reserves or in the zoos. Africa is the only continent left in the world where we can really see them as our equals. Not absolutely equals because we have a car and drive fast but peopel in Africa are so knowledgable about leaving the animal alone in nature that we feel like we are one with nature rather than some one looking some creatures from the safety of the other side of the fence. Still there is one animal that man still cannot capture and put on display in teh zoo. That is whale.

The detective book of McCall Smith make me want to go to Botswana and South Africa again. the first time we went with the kids we did not really see it as intimately. So this is one place we will certainly go back and I will definitely go to Kinshasa and Namibia before we leave this continent.