Remembering

This week Laure's husband, Jean Baptiste died. I think my favorite memory of him is from an afternoon when Adam and I were taking him home to have dinner with the family. Along the way we got stuck in traffic and Jean Baptiste got out his phone to make a call. The kindness and joy in his voice made me think he had just reconnected with a long lost friend. Intrigued, I switched over into my French brain so I could eavesdrop and realized he had just called Laure to tell her we'd be a little later than we thought.

I don't know if I've ever heard a lovelier conversation between two people. And the subject was nothing more than waiting a little longer to put the food on the table, ma chérie.

We learned a lot of things from Jean Baptiste, but I think we'll remember most to speak a little sweeter to each other.

On Saturday Laure gave birth to a baby boy. She named him Jean Baptiste.

Tweet

Friday List!

Sarah's List:

For what feels like years (because I think it has been at least 2) construction crews, led by Chinese men in their Chinese hats, have been working on a tiny two lane bridge nearby. With some excellent motivation from the Francophonie, they've finally finished it. And it's named after, drum roll please, Dag Hammarskjöld. This is extremely convenient for me as I've recently become obsessed with the conspiracy theories surrounding his death. Read all about them here. Catchy name for a bridge, right? 



If we have to have packaging, it may as well be thoughtful.

I will always have the image burned in my brain of the poster that hung in my high school sex ed class: a crotch, in tight stonewashed jeans with a padlock and chain wrapped around it. I was so sure that poster would show up in this awesome slideshow. Because we all know the most effective contraception is a really bizarre poster on the wall of your classroom. Worked for me.

Wait. The Civil War was in color? Rare historical photos: Part 1 and 2!

It's true. Perhaps there are some Mama ailments by design. Or the NYT has been reading Mama Congo. 

My favorite memories of listening to This American Life are from my late night commute on the Cairo Metro to and from grad school. I laughed. I cried. As Egyptian men stared wondering what was wrong with the white girl. These two recent episodes are Ira Glass gold. Send a Message and P.I. Moms.

I'm pretty sure I wrote this piece about celebrating "the subtle joys of festivals of numerical coincidence." It's exactly how I feel about such dates. After all, we did choose to have our baby on 7/11/11. But it's not so cool when you live in the date/month/year world.


Jill's List:

Living overseas, it seems that you meet a lot of people with vague, pan-Brit-opean accents.  You're never sure where exactly they are from.  (I usually guess they are just closet Yankees.) Sometimes, I too try saying things like "uni," "posh," and "knackered," but then realize that this is difficult with an American accent.  Read this article for more on the temptation to sprinkle one's vocabulary with adorable British-isms. 

Thanks, Jo!

I've been thinking a lot about New York City.  Someone suggested I should watch this documentary.  Or this one.  Or this one.

Also, thinking about Cape Town.  As in booking my tickets for December.  So, naturally, I'm looking at applicable style blogs.  Like this one.

Holy Francophonie!  We're hoping to go to the Stadium and visit the "village" this weekend.  Photo Minute moments, here we come...

Tweet

Meeting Madeleine at 10 Centimeters

Last weekend we celebrated the first birthday of Menorah.

Madeleine & Menorah

And the 1st Anniversary of a wild adventure for Jill and Sarah. About a year ago I asked my French tutor Tchic if I, along the new girl in town (who also happened to be our favorite labor and delivery nurse) could come to the birth of his daughter.

Tchic & Menorah

 That's not a weird request, right? For whatever reason, Tchic was game.

So on the day Tchic's wife Madeleine went into labor, he gave us a call. Moments later Jill and I were bumping down narrow dirt roads, rolling down the window for every stranger to ask directions to the tiny clinic. We finally found CELPA, which was not more than a cinder block building and Tchic waiting for us outside.

As Jill and I sat waiting for permission to go in, I thought of an old study I read that said anyone could gain access to top secret locations by acting confident and carrying a clip board. I demanded Jill put her stethoscope around her neck. "Just do it! Act confident. They'll let us in." And sure enough, even though regulations prohibit the father of the baby from entering the delivery room, two white girls who had never met the mother were ushered back like royalty.

We first met Madeleine at 10 centimeters pushing her  heart out on a rusty table half her width. The room had to have been about 95 degrees. Everyone was dripping sweat all over each other. Mind you, I was fresh from having Annais so I brought what I thought any woman would want during labor. A fan and a cooler full of ice packs.

Jill got to work doing her thing and I tried my darndest to keep that woman cool. I remember thinking I wish I knew the words for "freezer burn" in French so I could confirm with Madeleine that I wasn't freezer-burning her temples. In retrospect I think that was the least of her worries.

It turned out Menorah was a big baby weighing over 9lbs, and it wasn't a pleasant labor. At one point a nurse was up on the table practically jumping on Madeleine's uterus to get her out. I was so disturbed I swear I started having sympathy contractions.

Nonetheless Jill and I kept shouting our best French labor coaching phrases. The nurses and doctor thought we were truly ridiculous. By the expressions on their faces, I'm quite certain they thought the ice packs and cheerleading were the strangest things they'd ever seen. It was clear they were not there for emotional support.

Finally Menorah was born and took her first giant breath after Jill sucked her nose out with the same bulb syringe I brought from Ani's birth at Martha Jefferson. Babies forever bonded by bulb syringe.

Afterward we escorted ourselves out, kind of wondering what on earth had just happened. And imagined Madeleine (who we were not convinced even knew who we were) being totally confused too. Who were those crazy white girls? They just appeared and disappeared!

A few days later Tchic confirmed Madeleine was truly grateful for the support and was not suffering from freezer burn. Menorah is a healthy, happy girl who I hope has no memory of the broken "French" cheers shouted at her mother during her birth.

Note from Jill: Wondering why she's named "Menorah?"  According to Tchic, it's to signify light after the seven years of "darkness" (a.k.a. no babies) between his older son, Ariel, and new addition, Menorah.  And no, Tchic's not Jewish.  

Tweet

Friday List!

Jill's List:

I remember seeing this book before we moved to Kinshasa and then trying to buy it and finding out it could be mine for only $7,848.19 + $3.99 shipping.  This is not a joke.  See for yourself. I guess it is hardback...  But, it's haunting and I still want to read it.

We had to give back some of the furniture we have loved over the past year.  It's not all that bad - it gives us an excuse to have a look around this place and see what we can find.

Happy to use some of the rad "thank you" cards I bought at this great spot last summer because a lovely mom from school made me a chocolate salami!  

Yeah, PBS!

Weirdest craft project ever.  Beautiful blog.  Weird craft.  Seriously.

Beautiful flying houses.  I keep thinking that there are so many colonial shells around here that would be perfect for this project.

This might be our Halloween this year.  Except, I can't find any paper bags...

We swear we just found out about this very sweet blog in Kenya! Mama Congo loves Mama Mzungu and hopes we can share the rights to the expat mama blog name trend...

And.  Just discovered this Congo-centric blog.  Anyone know anything about this project?

And, still always reading this, this, and this for perspective.

The Francophonie is coming!  The Francophonie is coming!  Stay tuned...

Photo by J.H. on a Saturday drive.

Sarah's List:

Man, I'm always nervous when we check in our bags, but there's something about those stickily-perfect luggage tags that makes me think everything will be okay. Design genius.

“Gee, I would enjoy this banana so much more if I didn’t have to take off the peel,” said no one ever. Want to incur the wrath of an angry mob? Pre-peel bananas and package them in plastic. Design fail.

Last year we got South African satellite television just so we could watch this guy. The title of his book almost makes us want to re-up our subscription.

Their are lots of confusing words out they're. (Ha!) Fix 'em here.

Best of: Street Art.

  by  TOTORORO.RORO 

Is giving birth easier for animals? Yes it is. And no it isn't. And what's obsession with dolphin births?

  by  M.-J. Taylor 

Thinking up my own Dear Blank, Please Blank.

Tweet

Role Mamas

On Tuesday, I promised Elias that if he finished his homework with minimal groaning we could go for a quick bike ride before dinner.

We were walking through campus, Lou on my back, Elias pedaling ahead, when I heard rustling to my left.

I looked over and saw Mama YouYou standing beneath the startfruit tree.  Fruit was dropping to the ground at her feet.  I looked up and saw Mama Vida in the tree.  High up.  Like really high up.  Her sandals had been dumped at the tree roots and she was hoisting herself higher in the branches.

Mama YouYou burst out laughing when she saw me.  She knew how bizarre it must look:  two middle aged women climbing trees in the late afternoon.  Maybe she was even worried about what I would think as an employer.  Doubtful.  Mama YouYou is pretty much the most self-possessed person I've ever met.

Mama Vida started laughing too, and soon, the soles of her feet appeared and she jumped down, handing me a starfruit to take home.  She warned me that although LouLou used to like them, she hadn't been too keen recently.  Mama YouYou told me to eat up, because pakka pakka is a great source of Vitamin C.  She crunched into one herself, taking big bites, rind and all.

LouLou toted her pakka pakka all the way home.  Dropping it only twice.  I feel super glad that she got to see Mama Vida high in that tree. What better role model?  What better role mama?  A fifty-something grown woman kicking off her shoes and going for the good fruit. 

Note:  Not even Mama Vida is perfect.  The other day, I found her telling Charlotte and LouLou that they weren't to play with Elias' toy motorcycle "because this is for boys."  Sigh. 

Tweet

Flying with Toddlers: Whac-a-Mole with Wings

For some reason there's been a lot in the news lately about babies on planes. Remember these flying parents of newborn twins who famously handed out goodie bags to fellow passengers?

Please. Everyone (well everyone with children older than infancy) knows that little babies are a piece of cake on a plane. You feed them and they sleep. And if not, well their lungs are too small to make much noise. The roar of a jet engine easily drowns out any screaming newborn. Oh, and they can't yet walk.

Dear Goodie Bag Parents: It's easy now. In a few years you're going to need to pass out cash. Also, you had time to make goodie bags and type cute little notes? And I'm really jealous that your assigned seat number ahead of the flight matched the one you were actually given when you boarded. (In reality, flying with children is more like this: Wrestling 23 pounds of human and maintaining the alertness of a ninja for 12 hours).

Adam and I have entered the world of flying with a toddler and a 2-year-old. This can best be described as playing (read: suffering through) a 24-hour game of whac-a-mole. Except we're operating in a 1x1 foot space and the moles are a lot bigger. When we board the plane we have an entire arsenal of tricks. The first step is to threat assess the fellow passenger in our aisle. With one lap baby, our family of 4 only gets 3 seats. There's always one poor soul sitting in that 4th seat next to us. Do they seem like the kind of person who can be easily charmed by chubby baby cheeks? Are their clothes too nice for stray, sticky baby hands? Etc.

I congratulate this mom of a 6-month-old and 2-year-old for getting her $3.99 back from the TSA for her confiscated peanut butter. Like she said, you need your peanut butter in a baby-plane crisis. The exact thing has happened to us. I can still hear the thud of our peanut butter hitting the bottom of the TSA trash can. P.S. Since when is peanut butter a liquid?

Often after the plane lands, a grandmotherly type will fulfill her role as the veteran parent and tell us what a great job our kids did. We graciously accept the compliment on their behalf, but we're really thinking, "Are you serious? That was some expert parenting you just witnessed. Did you see those moves about 7 hours in when these kids were seconds away from simultaneous meltdowns and we balanced 4 meal trays, 2 babies and 5 petit sachets of French cheese on our laps?"

x4 plus 2 kids.

  by  Jota_BRAZIL 

Now, I am in full support of child free zones on airplanes. It's called flying First Class. Good luck keeping kids out of Economy. When I fly without kids, I quite like hearing crying babies. It reminds me that they're not mine and I can relax.

On our last flight, just as we all got settled in our seats, the flight attendant came to tell us she found our family another spot. She walked us up the steps to the second level of the cabin. I gave Adam a panicked look and said, "We can't sit upstairs, it's too quiet, we're too far away from the engines. People will kill us." We found our seats anyway then sized-up the woman in the 4th seat. We apologetically said hello and she said nothing. Adam whispered to me, "Great, she's a real barrel of laughs." It took a few minutes to realize they had geniusly seated us next to a deaf woman. That's right, the one person we could not possibly disturb with our noise. We breathed a sigh of relief and thanked Air France for their expertise, once again, in handling families with babies.

Tweet

Friday List!

Sarah's List:

Really, really glad I don't have to learn how to speak English. If you're a native English speaker, a poem to make you feel thankful.

Anyone ever heard of Hippo Paint? Search a picture of anything, and you can paint it. "The web is your coloring book." I literally had to rip the computer away from Adam painting his search for "big noses."

Nice little slideshow on changing names, from The Last Name Project.

Retronaut. I cannot get enough of slightly old pictures. For example, check out the evolution of Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever. It's amazing what taking out a few Indian headdresses and adding a few bows will do to modernize a book.

Had our traditional Drunken Risotto this week. I know I said the house chef got the night off for our anniversary, but I lied.

  by  nebulux76 

Totally, totally entranced by these photos. The tiling on the floor, the clunky strollers, the high-tops. It must be 1989.

And I would link to Playboy Magazine's article ranking my alma mater as the #1 Party School, but our employer hosted internet filters out such nonsense as "playboy" and "party school." But I really just wanted to read the article!

Jill's List:

Worked really hard to get this to download.  And it was worth it.  I'm not saying any more right now...

   Shout out to EpiPens!  They save people's lives.  If you know you are seriously allergic, or might be seriously allergic to something, GET AN EPI PEN and carry it with you all the time.   End of nurse-rant.  (Thanks, Mom, for shipping EpiPens to the Congo last month....)

 Oh, Goma.

Photo by Emily Cavan Lynch

Some German friends recently told us about these plastic bikes for kids, which they described as "necessary."   Basically, Euro-Big Wheels.

Photo from Babyccino Kids

A fellow teacher brought this magical find to my office (see below) today.  Almost enough to make me start believing in gnomes and fairies.  Ornithology experts - any ideas as to the creator of this kapok-lined nest?

AAANNNND.  Happy, happy almost-birthday to our own Sarah!  Go 30!

Tweet

When It's Not Worth It to Go to the Doctor

Sometimes, it's just not worth the trip to the doctor.

Case Study #1:

Last year, Elias managed to gash his head during French class (of all the dangerous places).  He had a neat, inch+, long, gaping wound and instead of going to the doctor...we'll, I fixed him up myself.  Today, he has a pretty little scar right above his left eyebrow.  He loves that scar.

Before anyone gets too worked up, let me just say that this was a well-informed choice.  Had I been in the U.S., I probably would have taken him to the doctor for a few stitches.  But, I'm not in the States.  I'm in Kinshasa.  Where we have perfectly reasonable doctors and hospitals more than capable of stitching up my kid. (And another facility just for serious emergencies.) But...the drama of it (the traffic, the wait, the uncertainty that anesthetic would be used, etc.) just wasn't worth a cosmetic scar.  I had a nurse-practitioner friend come check it out and after a lifetime living and practicing in the Congo, she agreed that my home patch-up job was an okay choice.

Case Study #2:

Neighbor James (remember him?) came over the other night.  At first, I couldn't tell what was wrong.  He still refuses to divulge the dirty details, but somehow, he managed to really screw up his finger.  It was swelling and James was an uncomfortable shade of green.

He was really worried that it was broken.  Over ice packs and deep breathing (and I threw in a Tembo for old-school good measure), we considered the facts:

• It was late afternoon on a Thursday.  This meant that a.) it was probably the second shift at the nearby hospital with the xray machine, which could mean a long wait and and b.) there was always the option to go the next morning if things were looking bad.  
• James could easily bend his finger.  This comforted me, or at least convinced me that the finger wouldn't fall off if we delayed.  

I have no idea why Johan is wearing a tie.  Don't ask me.

Now, for my second disclaimer of this post:  I told James I would go with him to the doctor that minute if he would like.  Happily.  Really.

But, I also supported his hesitation to immediately run to the doctor over his finger.  Maybe if it were the States, James would have jumped in the car and tried to make it to his family doctor before the office closed.  But, in Kinshasa, we decided to wait.

I buddy taped that finger to the one closest, prescribed RICE, and told him to check in with me in the morning.

In the morning, we admired the various shades of purple a finger can turn...and looked at it repeatedly from several different angles.  But, James could still move it and the pain was significantly better.  So, we made a splint and wrapped it in a florescent green bandage to soothe him.

The fact is that, living here is way safer for us than most would assume.  We have the luxury of choice in non-life-threatening situations.  We can hem and haw about whether or not traffic and lack of anesthetic is "worth it."  Because, if we really need to, we have the money, the transportation, the connections to get the help that we need. Most people around here don't even consider the option because there isn't one.

James' finger is still a little weird.  And, as an old arthritic man, he may grumpily curse my support of his decision to not get an x-ray.  And Elias might grow out of his Harry Potter stage and hate his faint forehead scar.  But, the way I look at it (after-the-fact), these details are reminders of what Kin is all about.

Tweet