Thursday

Wednesday night was not a good night. I experienced what could be travelers’ diarrhea most of the night. In the morning, Vernie had some Imodium that I took. I felt so bad I stayed behind and slept the entire morning.

Even though I didn’t feel good I decided to go on the afternoon trip that Jim had planned for us to Boali Falls, the site of most of the power generation for this city. On the way we stopped by the ICDI office so we got to see that for the first time. Interestingly, it is right across the road from the Presidents mothers’ home. But the road is very bad. You would think he would take better care of his mother.

Boali Falls is about 2 hours outside of town so we got to see some of the country. The road was very good considering what the streets in Bangui are like. There were still lots of people walking next to the road. In addition, it seems like all the kids like to hang out right on the edge of the road. At first that’s pretty scary with all the cars and truck flying by. But that’s just life here.

We passed through several checkpoints but Jim is so well known here that the soldiers just wave him through. There is even a toll stop costing 500 franks for a car. That’s about a dollar.

Jim pointed out some sites where ICDI has drilled wells, some Grace Brethren Churches, and all kinds of trivia related to the food they eat here and how they grow it. It seems that the food stapes here are peanuts and something called gozo, made from the root of the matioc tree. Gozo has almost no nutrients but in the bad times they survive by eating lots of it. Jim and Bob both say that it tastes terrible as well.

Jim wanted to show us one of the generating plants but no matter how he asked the men there, they couldn’t let us in. When we got to the falls, 5 or 6 young boys were outside and went inside with us. One of them was carrying a machete, trying to be discrete. He kept asking me something like “1 time?”. I understood that to be asking if it was the first time I visited. So I answered “first time”. These kids hung on to us while we walked down to a fantastic view of the falls. The falls were flowing really well so they look great. I will upload some pictures when I get home.

When we were leaving the falls, there was a soldier, complete with rifle, that tried to get Jim to buy him a drink. He argued that he protects the falls and keeps it secure. Jim explained that he lives across the street from the president’s mother so what would he want Jim to tell her about his trip to the fall. Jim said he would tell her that the soldier tried to bum a drink from him. The soldier just laughed as we all just walked by him.

Jim stopped in a small town at a coffee shop. The menu, even in French, indicated that was their main offerings. We bought bottled Coca Colas. Jim said they were about 75 cents each. They were even cool. Amazing to think that there we were so far from home enjoyed the “the real thing”.

Jim then stopped at one of the churches. The pastor was not there but the choir was practicing. We enjoyed their singing for a while before leaving. Jim translated what they were singing about.

We also stopped at a couple of guys who were pushing these carts carrying wood. They let us take a picture of the carts and talked a lot to Jim. One of the micro-enterprise things that ICDI has done and plans to do more, is to provide a way for someone to buy one of these carts. They cost about 150 dollars but many of the people rent one for 10 dollars a day. Jim wants to give individuals a way to buy one. These carts are used to transport all the wood from the bush into the city. Everybody uses the wood for cooking. The typical kitchen is a little outside building and they do most of the cooking over an open fire. Sounds like camping out, I know, but this is everywhere, along the street, in the neighborhoods. Returning back to Bangui, I didn’t count but there must have been a couple hundred of those being pushed toward the city.

The entire afternoon I felt like I had a fever and was even having chills. I got a couple of aspirin from Ray and that helped.

We got back to the guest house about 6pm and had dinner. After dinner, I explained how I was feeling to Bob and he asked this lady, who is a nurse, and staying in the guest house for a while to come over and take my temperature. She found that I had a 101 degree temp. The symptoms I experienced are very malaria-like but they agreed that it’s too early for that to occur, plus I’m taking one of the best medicines for it. So we decided that I would go to bed and take some Advil during the night and see how I feel in the morning.