by Fenton Rees

October 17, 2015

The big electrical switch-er-roo happened on Saturday as planned. I was helped by the main Gabonese maintenance man (Olivier), the medical director / surgeon Dr. Thelander and his son Luke. No smoke, quite boring. Just one hiccup with some lights not coming back on due to some of their funky wiring (those unknown unknowns). So PTL. And if you prayed, THANK YOU. On Monday we will finish up a few minor items we didn’t get to. So phew, that is a bit of a monkey off my back.

First Big Rain: The rainy season is officially here; it rained cats and dogs for 2-3 hours last evening. This was not Washington drizzle, but full on tropical downpour. It did cool the evening off somewhat, but made it more humid today.

Pat calls herself the Queen of Canned Cooking. Tonight for dinner we had canned salmon, canned beans, and couscous for the main course. Then for dessert it was canned apple sauce with a little cereal sprinkled on top. Yum Yum! The salmon came from China; not exactly good “Copper River” salmon, more like copper tainted river! The beans (France) were …… well …..canned (and French cut). We have had three tries with bags of frozen vegetables, and two of them had apparently been thawed and refrozen a bunch of times and smelled like they had fermented as well. In Africa, “buyer beware” takes on new meaning. So canned beans are better than that.

The canned apple sauce (Belgium) was actually quite good, just a little tarter than in the US.
The canned potatoes (US) are also quite good; we have had those quite a few times and they are better than you would think, but they came in on a container from the US and there are only a few cans left. The European cans somehow make it here, look quite battered, but are in fact intact.

All for now,

Blessings,

Fenton & Pat.