Mystery Vans, Driving, and Passe Compose

Dan in our Land Cruiser.
Please take not of the snorkel on the Right side of the car.
This car was made for the rough terrain of Africa.  

Driver's Ed (Africa Style)

(Dan Typing)

In the months leading up to our departure to Gabon one of the challenges I knew I would be facing would be learning how to drive a stick shift… Now I had “learned” how to drive a stick from my buddy Eric in his Honda Accord about four years ago, it was a great introductory lesson and I appreciate Eric letting me abuse his clutch for an afternoon. Let’s just say I had a hard time getting out of first gear and never graduated out of the parking lot…

Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago and I find myself in a similar training situation, this time my instructor is Steve Straw the pilot for Bongolo’s medical aviation program and my training vehicle is our 20 year old Toyota Landcruiser. This thing is a beast! It’s got a straight 6 diesel engine, a heavy-duty leaf-spring suspension, four-wheel drive with independently locking differentials, a winch, and a snorkel. Essentially this thing was built to go over and through anything and is built more like a truck than an SUV. After a brief demonstration by Steve I took the wheel and picked it up very quickly, I still stalled out a few times but overall left the lesson feeling very confident, especially after stopping and starting on a hill!

Now after Driving a few hours on the journey to and from Bongolo (where much to my embarrassment I stalled at a police check-point) and a day criss-crossing Libreville in congested traffic I feel like I have been driving a manual for years! I feel very blessed to have had such an easy time learning and have already told Alicia that we should get a manual when we get back to the states, I love it!

Mystery Machine

We had our first hamburger while here in Gabon.  We bought if from the "Mystery Machine" (pictured above)...it looked very similar to the van in Scooby Doo.  The "restaurant" was right on the ocean, and the hamburgers we had were very...interesting.  Apparently the Gabonese picked up the French way of putting an egg on their hamburger.  Good news: no one got sick!

This is our first sunset we have ever seen in Gabon,
because when we were here in July/August 2009 it was overcast
the entire time (since it was their winter).  Absolutely gorgeous!

Just another trip to Hope House.

Carolyn Thorson is one of the nurses at Bongolo hospital that was up in Libreville for a visit.  The kids are (from L. to R.) Grace, Josue, and Jeremy

 Update on Bongolo

Alicia typing…

Last week we traveled down to Bongolo (our future home come April 18^th).  The roads are getting a lot better, and as Dan already mentioned…he got a lot of good practice driving.  It was really fun to meet our future co-workers/friends/family members J

Besides meetings, we got to do a few fun things while we were down there.  We spent some hours chipping away the paint of the mission pool that has been out-of-service for a year.  In about an hour of non-stop work, we decided that one person could chip away about a square foot of paint.  Oh man, is it going to be a long process getting that pool up and running.  Let me tell you though, it will definitely be worth it. 

(As a side note right now…it is about 6 PM here in Libreville and it is over 90 degrees with humidity so thick you could cut it with a knife.)

Anyways, we also got to tube along a river for 3 hours in the middle of the rainforest.  (For those that went to CMU, think Chip River, except 10x cooler).  This float along the river was strictly business (that is a lie)…because we were scoping the river out as a potential fieldtrip for Bongolo hospital visitors J.  For the record…there will definitely be more river floats in the future. 

Other updates:

French is starting to click....a little.  We are understanding more and more every day, and we are learning A LOT.  We are working on past tense (passe compose), imperfect (imparfait), and future (futur) verbs.

We have officially been here for as long as we were here for our past trip to Gabon (40 days).  Isn't that crazy?  It seems like we just got here.  Last time in 2009, by day 30, we were getting ready to go home and see our family and friends.  As history repeats itself, needless to say, we are really starting to miss our family and friends again.  I think reality is starting to settle in that we are going to be here for awhile....

Thank you for following our blog, we are encouraged by the numbers we see of those who are viewing our pages.  (We have 2,500 views so far).  It really helps us to know how many people love us,  support us, and praying for us.

Love,
Dan & Alicia