Soleil Elikya Larsen
Born December 30th at 8:40 AM
20.9 inches
8 lbs, 14 oz.
The full story and many, many more photos still to come...
Friday, December 31, 2010
Soleil Elikya Larsen
Soleil Elikya Larsen
Born December 30th at 8:40 AM
20.9 inches
8 lbs, 14 oz.
The full story and many, many more photos still to come...
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
Christmas at Gamboula
Though there was no snow and though there was no Christmas conifer and though the rest of our family was thousands of miles away, we did have a very merry Christmas.
When my family was in Congo when I was a kid we had a tradition of doing work projects during the afternoon of Christmas Eve before opening gifts later that night. Not my favorite tradition at the time but a good one to emulate. This Christmas Eve I got to help pass out soap, rice, sardines and sheets to the patients at the hospital here. I manned the pushcart as we wheeled our way through the different wards. Read this post from the Danforths, another missionary family here, to find out more: Merry Christmas!!
Driving Santa's sleigh
On Christmas Day I woke up a little earlier and walked just outside the mission to buy some beignets from a roadside stand. Once back at the house we had a breakfast of beignets, pineapple and Nescafe instant coffee. We read the Christmas story from Matthew and Luke--another family tradition--and then moved to our Christmas tree in the living room. Yes, we did have a Christmas tree, put together from the tips of some cut palm fronds. We even had some presents "under" the tree, received unexpectedly from some of the fellow missionaries here. They included this baby hat and a few other baby clothes which qualify as her first Christmas gifts...and she hasn't even been born yet!
Our Christmas tree
Baby's 1st Christmas present
In the afternoon we relaxed together and that evening all the missionaries celebrated with a big meal at the Danforth's. Instead of a Christmas ham we enjoyed a Christmas goat. Also stuffing, corn pudding, dinner rolls, green beans, cranberry sauce, etcetera, etcetera. Fortunately we were able to save some room for dessert. For that we walked over to the Wester's for coffee and pie--five different kinds of pie. We also did a White Elephant gift exchange where we parted with a bag of mints and a holographic Obama belt and received a scented candle and a Norwegian finger-warming mug.
The highlights of the day were talking to our parents for about fifteen minutes each. And though we couldn't be in either Denver with Michelle's family or in Wisconsin with mine, we were happy to celebrate with each other and with the missionary families of Gamboula, most whom I have known as my friends' parents since I was a kid in Zaire. God is good and while we look forward to celebrating with our family back in the US in the future we are happy to make some new (and very different) memories too.
Sunday, December 26, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Monday, December 20, 2010
Hippo Hunt!
On the night of Thursday, December 9th I was invited by Kim Cone, one of the ReachGlobal missionaries here at Gamboula, to come along on a hippopotamus hunt. Naturally, I was very excited. No matter that we would be leaving around 5:15 the following morning. So I was awake by 5 AM and after a short walk to the Cone's house was ready to go. Our guide from the government wildlife bureau arrived with a letter from the regional sous-prefet giving Kim permission to bag a hippo. Hippos (and elephants) are protected in the Central African Republic and cannot be shot without special permission from the authorities. In this case, the CAR Independence Day celebration on Saturday called for a round of hippo to be served to the "bigwigs" in town for the occasion. With permission in hand we set out for the river.
Our transportation was an Alpha jeep, one of those put together through TouchGlobal and shipped to missionaries or ministries where roads are bad or virtually nonexistent. In this case it was the latter. There used to be a decent road from town down to the river due to a tobacco plantation down there or tobacco transport or something of the sort. It had since devolved into a one-track path mainly used by motorcycle taxis. The Alpha handled it well, though, shaving back the undergrowth on both sides and filling our laps with leaf shavings and litter and insects. A tree frog ended up on the windshield.
We arrived outside of a village on the river and parked in a recently cleared and burned garden. A short walk later and we were on the river. Our party of three had by now grown to about seven. We had left for the hunt early to avoid becoming a main attraction and drawing a crowd. The men that were along, however, were much needed. Once we arrived at a popular hippo hang-out and saw no hippos, scouting parties started out in both directions by canoe, searching for hippopotami. We waited for about two hours and then went back upstream. Kim went with three men from the village by canoe to do the shooting while I waited with the others, now about ten or eleven. Soon enough there was a single shot and short while later a canoe picked up myself and a few others and deposited us on the other side of the river where Kim was standing.
A few things about hunting hippos. Sure, it sounds easy enough to kill a hippo. These animals are not small nor are they considered to be particularly fast, elusive or smart. After all, their brains are not much larger than a man's fist. But that's the problem right there because that is the hippo hunter's target. And hippos don't really spend much time outside of the water. The vast majority of the day is spent not only in the water but underneath the water, surfacing every five to eight minutes for a quick breath. When they do come up for air it is only their ears, their eyes and their nostrils that breach the surface of the water, and that for generally no longer than 10 seconds. So for the hunter it is a waiting game. Not just before the shot but even after. Once the hippo is shot it unfortunately doesn't simply do a barrel roll and float there waiting to be pulled to shore. If it is done in by a clean head shot the hippo will go straight to the bottom. So then you wait until he begins to bloat and slowly resurfaces. This takes no fewer than 50 minutes and can even be as long as two and a half hours.
Once I arrived on the other side of the river we waited, standing on a reedy mat of grass that was slowly sinking under the weight of the crowd. We waited. A hippo was seen not much farther upstream and there was speculation that it might be the same one that had been shot at. It had gone down immediately after the shot but perhaps had moved on underwater and unharmed. So after a couple hours Kim went off the to the other side and set up for another attempt. He took the shot but it looked to be a bit in front of the hippo. Still we waited and no dead hippos surfaced. So we moved back downstream where another hippo had been sighted. Getting there involved a combination of canoe rides and walking along the banks in ankle-deep muck and clay that threatened to suck the sandals right off our feet.
Once at the new hunting grounds Kim took another shot and the hippo vanished. More waiting. And then we noticed another hippo a little farther downstream. Coincidence? I think not. He went off again by canoe and took another shot. The hippo vanished. More waiting. An hour passed. Then two hours. It was growing dark.
We finally called it a day and left for the truck, leaving the crowd of villagers (which had grown to about eighteen by this point) with their butchers knives still waiting for the pink belly of the beast to break the surface of the water. We arrived at the truck in the moments immediately before complete darkness fell and drove back to the mission.
Kim said that his scope was probably off. He had sighted it in the week before for one kind of ammo but had run out of time to sight in for the kind he wanted to use. He felt bad for not having been able to show me a dead hippo up close. I didn't mind. It was a good experience. I spent most of the day waiting, standing in muck or in water or sitting on shore surrounded by people I couldn't communicate with. I should have brought lunch too. But, hey, I got to go on a hippo hunt in Africa and of course, I would do it again.
I don't know what the government "bigwigs" ate on Saturday but I don't believe it was hippo.
Our transportation was an Alpha jeep, one of those put together through TouchGlobal and shipped to missionaries or ministries where roads are bad or virtually nonexistent. In this case it was the latter. There used to be a decent road from town down to the river due to a tobacco plantation down there or tobacco transport or something of the sort. It had since devolved into a one-track path mainly used by motorcycle taxis. The Alpha handled it well, though, shaving back the undergrowth on both sides and filling our laps with leaf shavings and litter and insects. A tree frog ended up on the windshield.
We arrived outside of a village on the river and parked in a recently cleared and burned garden. A short walk later and we were on the river. Our party of three had by now grown to about seven. We had left for the hunt early to avoid becoming a main attraction and drawing a crowd. The men that were along, however, were much needed. Once we arrived at a popular hippo hang-out and saw no hippos, scouting parties started out in both directions by canoe, searching for hippopotami. We waited for about two hours and then went back upstream. Kim went with three men from the village by canoe to do the shooting while I waited with the others, now about ten or eleven. Soon enough there was a single shot and short while later a canoe picked up myself and a few others and deposited us on the other side of the river where Kim was standing.
A few things about hunting hippos. Sure, it sounds easy enough to kill a hippo. These animals are not small nor are they considered to be particularly fast, elusive or smart. After all, their brains are not much larger than a man's fist. But that's the problem right there because that is the hippo hunter's target. And hippos don't really spend much time outside of the water. The vast majority of the day is spent not only in the water but underneath the water, surfacing every five to eight minutes for a quick breath. When they do come up for air it is only their ears, their eyes and their nostrils that breach the surface of the water, and that for generally no longer than 10 seconds. So for the hunter it is a waiting game. Not just before the shot but even after. Once the hippo is shot it unfortunately doesn't simply do a barrel roll and float there waiting to be pulled to shore. If it is done in by a clean head shot the hippo will go straight to the bottom. So then you wait until he begins to bloat and slowly resurfaces. This takes no fewer than 50 minutes and can even be as long as two and a half hours.
Once I arrived on the other side of the river we waited, standing on a reedy mat of grass that was slowly sinking under the weight of the crowd. We waited. A hippo was seen not much farther upstream and there was speculation that it might be the same one that had been shot at. It had gone down immediately after the shot but perhaps had moved on underwater and unharmed. So after a couple hours Kim went off the to the other side and set up for another attempt. He took the shot but it looked to be a bit in front of the hippo. Still we waited and no dead hippos surfaced. So we moved back downstream where another hippo had been sighted. Getting there involved a combination of canoe rides and walking along the banks in ankle-deep muck and clay that threatened to suck the sandals right off our feet.
Once at the new hunting grounds Kim took another shot and the hippo vanished. More waiting. And then we noticed another hippo a little farther downstream. Coincidence? I think not. He went off again by canoe and took another shot. The hippo vanished. More waiting. An hour passed. Then two hours. It was growing dark.
We finally called it a day and left for the truck, leaving the crowd of villagers (which had grown to about eighteen by this point) with their butchers knives still waiting for the pink belly of the beast to break the surface of the water. We arrived at the truck in the moments immediately before complete darkness fell and drove back to the mission.
Kim said that his scope was probably off. He had sighted it in the week before for one kind of ammo but had run out of time to sight in for the kind he wanted to use. He felt bad for not having been able to show me a dead hippo up close. I didn't mind. It was a good experience. I spent most of the day waiting, standing in muck or in water or sitting on shore surrounded by people I couldn't communicate with. I should have brought lunch too. But, hey, I got to go on a hippo hunt in Africa and of course, I would do it again.
I don't know what the government "bigwigs" ate on Saturday but I don't believe it was hippo.
*No hippos were harmed in the making of this blog post*
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