Ambitions

                 This morning we were able to sleep in a bit, a recovery from our 4 days of travel. (Sleeping in here is like sleeping through a construction zone…roosters crowing since 5am, workers talking outside my window from about 6am, and a cacophony of babies wailing from the clinic.) Then we went to the supermarket and went to visit Clement’s godfather. The works as an advisor to the Prime Minister and showed us plans for utilizing waterways for food transportation, as well as, the construction of railroads. The other element in the plan is pivot irrigation of the plateau where Francoise’ farm is located. He also said they home to bring the food production up to international standards of cleanliness and stop importing food. I think the waterway transportation will be extremely useful but I have many doubts about their plans for pivot irrigation use… I think they might be able to raise food production standards in the next ten years but storage is the main problem (after distribution) because there is not reliable electricity. Despite my enormous sense of hopelessness at their food distribution system, I find it amazing that this man can be so ambitious and actually is working up plans to fix something that is broken in this country.

                 For dinner, we are going to Nancy’s house. I tried the poulet a la moambe (chicken in peanut butter) which was great with cassava bread. After returning from Nancy’s, I met another friend of Patrick’s, Jean-Pierre, who works for Shell Oil and speaks English. He was very nice and adamant about me learning French. Today was a day of celebration for Flory, not only for his 20^th birthday, but also receiving his marks from secondary school exams saying that he passed! At the end of secondary school, students must take a national exam before applying to university. He plans to study information/technology.

A Little Tired