Field Trips, Christmas, and Aubergines (pronounced: Oh-Burr-Jeans)

Back Row (L to R): JR, Olivia (the intern), Pito
Front Row: Alicia, Dan

Written by Alicia:

We officially went on our first field trip with Pito (our French Instructor) on Friday.  We went to one of the huge markets here in Libreville.  We usually take teams there to expose them to the culture, but it was a lot different having Pito and JR there to point out and name off different things for us in French.  Interesting French vocab word:  A potato is called “une pomme de terre,” which means “an apple of the earth.”  We learned lots of new names for fruits and vegetables.  We saw traditional medications (aka: herbs and spices) that some Gabonaise still use being sold.  We spotted pheasants, ducks, and chickens getting ready to meet their doom. We practiced our bargaining skills in French, and I bought a nice pair of aviator sunglasses for 2,500 CFA or about $5.00.  It was a lot of fun, but very HOT and humid!  We ended up having a huge storm that night, which cooled things down…for a little while. 

Dinner with Friends

We had a lot of our long lost Gabonaise friends over for dinner on Saturday. We had a potluck, which included chicken, rice, beans, aubergines (a purple and green vegetable), plantains, and lasagna (made by us).   They were so excited that it was our first time hanging out again since we’ve gotten back, and that Dan and I were finally married.  (Everyone here seems to love that concept.)  Don’t worry, as usual, they prayed for us to be blessed with many children in the near future.  They are big on kids here!  They loved looking at our photo albums from the wedding.  One of the nurses (Arican) is always talking about trying to find a wife, and Maman Jeanine (another nurse) slyly suggested that he should marry the woman who caught the bouquet at our wedding!  Haha.  (So, Trisha …if you are reading this, you have a potential husband waiting here in Africa if you ever want one J). 

Operation Christmas Child

Dan Typing

Some people have the Christmas tradition of filling up a shoebox with toys, coloring books, and toothbrushes to be sent around the world to a young boy or girl in the developing world through Operation Christmas Child. The Gabonese Christian and Missionary Alliance Church distributes these boxes through its 60 churches in cities and villages across the country. In our blog from our previous trip, http://www.gabon2009.blogspot.com/ we shared a story about how the generosity of Operation Christmas Child opened doors for a church to be planted in a village that had previously been skeptical of Christians. This year we saw the boxes in the warehouse at the Alliance Seminary and were in awe at the amount of boxes! This year they were given three shipping containers full of them to distribute! There are going to be a lot of very happy kids in the next few weeks!

 Half of the boxes had already been distributed when the picture above was taken, and we are hoping to see some of the boxes being distributed in person.

A few other updates:

Alicia Typing...

French is going….well.  We worked a lot on sentence structure and vocab this past week.  Dan and I are officially residents of Gabon.  We received our Carte de Sejour’s (essentially a Green Card) on Saturday.  We went to the beach on Friday, and I successfully ordered my first plate of fries on my own in French.  We are traveling down to Bongolo on Wednesday.  Bongolo is the hospital site we will be moving to in the middle of April.  Pray for safe travels and no motion sicknesses on the 8-hour car voyage.

Love,

Dan & Alicia Lewan

Bonjour Mon Amis!

Written by Alicia:

Well…we started French this past week.  We have come to conclusion that learning French makes our brain feel like they have been repeatedly punched, taken out and stepped on, and then put in a blender.  Learning a new language, as an adult is gruesome…especially a language that makes many noises that we have never heard or have made in our lifetimes.  With that being said, we are learning A LOT, and we can say that we recognized 10 x more words in the church service we attended this morning than in past services.  This is a small victory in and of itself.  It is crazy how fast and how much we are learning.  A week ago, we could barely mutter a few phrases, but now we can introduce ourselves and others, tell them we are married, talk about our family, and tell people where we are from.  J

Our instructor is really awesome.  His name is Pito, which is Spanish for whistle…really random, I know.  The week before he started teaching us French, he taught a Japanese couple, who spoke no English, how to speak French fairly well.  He is definitely an awesome teacher.  He also likes to teach us little “gabonisms” throughout our French lessons, so we are learning lots of things about the culture here.

Speaking of culture, let’s just talk about the driving here.  It is intense!  The horn is not just used for emergency purposes but also, to say, “hey, I’m here,” “move out of my way,” or “hey, I know you!”  Driving can be stressful, especially when a two-lane road quickly becomes a 4 or 5-lane road, and pedestrians cross the road whenever see fit.  (For the record, Dan and I haven’t started driving out here, so we have a driver/business agent, JR, who drives us everywhere). 

Anyways, we were on our way to the airport yesterday, and our car overheated and broke down.  We ended up blocking traffic in a congested bottleneck construction zone on Libreville’s busiest road.  So people are already honking their way through and trying to combine their cars into one lane (aka: about 2-lanes), while JR valiantly was trying to resuscitate the car.  Leanne and Hannah (our housemates) came to our rescue in our Land Cruiser. Dan, Hannah, and JR pushed the car to the nearest gas station while I steered.  (I guess all those spring break trips driving 15-passenger vans are starting to pay off.)  People were honking at us the whole time.  Not sure if they were saying, “hey, move out of the way” or “better luck next time”.  We are never really sure what the Gabonaise are trying to communicate with those car honks.

We went to Nzeng Ayong for church this morning.  This is where we helped a lot with building their new church last time we were here.  When we arrived, the pastor recognized us and asked if Dan and I were finally married.  We said, “Oui” and everyone cheered and they made us stand up and they continued to clap for us.  They were excited that we had finally tied the knot.  It was really cute, especially since we had our matching ensembles on.  :)


Au revoir!
Alicia & Dan

The Real Work is About to Begin!!!!

Written by Dan:

After a week of getting settled in…

Alicia and I will begin our French training. We met with out teacher on Sunday for a course orientation and an assessment that determines what learning style we have.  (Surprisingly, Alicia and I have the same learning style.) Our teacher spent ten years working with the American peace corps and has assured us that after a our two months of training we will be able to speak, write, read, and understand French. Class will be 3 hours a day 5 days a week!  We are excited that it includes life application field trips that let us go out with the instructor to buy things in the market, grab a taxi, go to the post office, and eat at restaurants! The program is supposed to be very application-based which I think is very cool!

This week we also got to help the Libreville Envision team host a small film crew from the CMA, they are on a three-week journey documenting the work and mission of the CMA in the Congo, Gabon, and Burkina Faso. Yesterday we accompanied them to Hope House, an orphanage operated by the church here. It was great to see the kids again and play some soccer in the front yard with them. When Alicia and I were here in 2009 we spent a lot of time at Hope House and were very pleased that their new house is MUCH better than their previous residence.

We are settling in well, and wish us luck with learning French! J

Birthday

Written by Alicia:

Today was my Birthday!  It was really fun and interesting spending my birthday in Africa.  I missed having my friends and family around, but my new friends and family here helped me celebrate.  We had some fellow missionary friends come over (Alace and Sam Straw).  Leanne and Hannah are our roommates and fellow associates in Libreville.  They also helped me celebrate my dinner.  They helped cook taco salad dinner (one of my favorite meals).  Dinner was followed by a home-made cake made by my wonderful hubby J. 

Our time in Africa has been…very relaxing so far.  In fact we have already gone to the beach twice.  Dan got to help out some locals bring in a huge net from the sea.  It took about two hours of hard work, but they brought in a lot of fish!  Dan was really excited about it!

This past week we have  been working on learning French using Rosetta Stone.  We are officially beginning our French lessons on Monday with our Gabonese tutor.  It will be good to finally begin!  We cannot wait to start being able to communicate with the people here.

Peace and Love,

Dan and Alicia Lewan