1. There is an entire country off the coast of Gabon. It’s called São Tomé and Príncipe, and it’s the second-smalled country in Africa (after the Seychelles). It’s an archipelago of 12 or so islands, the two largest being São Tomé and Príncipe. According to my guidebook (the only one ever published on Gabon, as far as I can tell), the islands were formed from volcanoes, and were unsettled when the Portuguese came in 1470. All the islands comprise 386 square miles and have about 165,000 people, and they speak Portuguese.
2. There are a lot of Chinese people in Gabon. According to an article from the nytimes, Gabon is running out of oil, and to compensate for its lost income it’s allowing Chinese logging companies into protected forest. Not good. But anyway, the hospital has anywhere from 3-6 Chinese men out of 26 beds, all with malaria, none speaking any French. There’s a lot of charades going on on rounding.
3. There are many things I like so far about Africa, but hand-washing, line-drying, and then ironing all my clothes (botflies get killed by the heat) isn’t one of them. I think I’m going to take my chances and put most of my clothes in the hospital’s industrial-sized washers (with notoriously hot water).
AH! A bug just fell down my shirt. Ok, zen with the bugs, zen with the bugs, zen with the bugs…
3 comments:
You are going to be fit to survive any obstacles life has in stock for you! And be a great housewife, doing laundry the old-fashion way.
That is, of course, my ultimate goal.
BOT FLIES. oh liz. you are a stronger woman than i.
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