Daily Archives: April 24, 2004

We have a furnace that produces heat and hot water.  We will not have to sit so faaaaaar from our friends tomorrow.  We are catching up on washing dishes, clothes and ourselves.

Lacking a convienience like hot water sure does make one appreciate the things that make life easier for us. 

We had a great evening visiting our friends with the Congo/Belgian connections.  An evening in almost 100% French (a few anglicisms thrown in of course for ggod measure).  Well at least we call it French – more Belgian actually since we alll like “nonante” and “septante” better than “quatre-vingt dix” and soixante dix”. 

C’s parents from the Congo are visiting them for three months.  He was a company doctor for one of the mines down in Lubumbashi.  A quiet dignified man.  His wife is a lot more like C – full of life and talk.  To folks from Lubumbashi, we were from the bad area of the country- Equateur- Mobutu’s old territory.  Relates back to the massacre of students that took place in about 1988/89.  (you can see I am a historian – not!)  But we got over that quickly.

I discovered that C and I have a lot more in common than I thought.  Sometimes well educated Congoleses women can be very pretentious.  Not C.  She has the same approach to housekeeping as I do and we all sat around the kitchen table to visit – like most Saskatchewan farm families would.

Fernand introduced Leo to some local poison.  I think it was a bit toooo strong for Leo.  He took a sip and almost gasped.  Diluted his coffee with it and then it seemed to go down OK.  Guess who drove home!