David's first entry
Trip Start
Aug 01, 2008
1
12
63
Trip End
Jun 30, 2010
Pointe Noire,
Congo
Sunday, August 10, 2008
This is my first entry on the website, so welcome to David's viewpoint.
The weekend is drawing to a close and today was a day of interesting firsts. I played golf in the Congo this morning, with a couple of the Schlumberger guys on the board of the school association and another guy from a different oil affiliated company. We were out there at the crack of dawn, just us and a small crew of caddies. Apparently, most of the expatriate world in Pointe-Noire is out of town on vacation. In addition to our caddies, we get a sweeper who carries a broom and sweeps the "brown". There's no greens in Congolese golf. Instead, there's a sunken pit of hard dirt ringed by concrete blocks. It's a bit like miniature golf. Meanwhile, out on the fairways, it's winter rules -- preferred lies, which means the caddy will pinch together whatever scrub of grass or weeds are nearby and rest the ball on the tuft. Swing away!
On the way home, we were stopped by a policeman for no reason, so that he could check the driver's papers and the car registration.
In the afternoon, the boys and I went around the corner with Lyle, our yellow lab, looking for fun. We had tennis rackets with us, and Oscar and Henry climbed a roadside mound of dirt (a common sight around here with all the building going on) and proceeded to smash it with their rackets in an attempt to cut down the mountain. After about a half an hour of this, a young boy who we'd seen before came out of his house and I succeeded, with the help of a local guard, in creating conversation among the boys and convinced the boy to bring out his soccer ball. Then his parents brought out his mini 4x4 and the boys all had a good time riding around the sandy road.
This led to a tour of our neighbor's home and an afternoon of conversation. The parents are an interesting blend: Olga is Russian and her dad is Congolese. Julien is Romanian and his brother Eogen. lives with them as well. So we chatted in many languages and drank a local beer called NGOK, which means crocodile in Kikongo, one of the local languages. I also sampled some prune vodka from Romania. Their older son, Jonathan, is five, and their younger son, Joan, is 14 months. Olga is an administrator at a local clinic and Julien is a mechanic. So now we have friends in the neighborhood. They promised us that Oscar and Henry will be fluent in French within a month or two, and we will be by the end of the year. Eogen is their proof, as he has only been in the country for a year and speaks pretty perfectly by now.
Tonight we had dinner at Twiga ("giraffe" in Swahili), a seaside restaurant. We discovered there is more to it than we'd previously noticed -- a full-sized pool and a kiddie pool with a bar and a ping-pong table. They have pretty good thin crust pizza and, of course, seafood galore.
