Odors and Allergies

Isn't that a gorgeous flower?! I had never seen daisies with blue centers before, but my friend Lori had these growing in her yard when we visited her family in Kenya. Flowers are in my "favorite things list," along with fabric stores, new books, handwritten letters, and coffee. One of the things I don't like about the prospect of moving is starting over planting flowers in a new yard, but it is also one of the things I look forward to. I was just beginning to gather some flowers and fruit trees in my yard here when we found out we would have to move. If we find a place with enough space, I will dig up my frangipani tree and take it with me because the blossoms smell so nice.

This is one flower I won't be digging up to take with me or purchasing at the market for our next yard. It's called a Lantana plant and we recently discovered that Daniel is allergic to it and has a reaction every time he brushes up against it. I'm sure you've seen this plant and other color variations of it in the U.S.

Last week, Daniel had another interesting allergic reaction. I had purchased some locally grown peppers, a hot variety that is called pili-pili. Daniel saw the peppers laying on the counter and picked one up to smell it. I told him that peppers have oils in their skins that can burn if you touch them and then rub your eye and made him go wash his hands. I guess when he smelled the pepper he bumped his lip because a little while later we were watching a video and Daniel stopped the movie and asked "Does my lip look swollen, because it feels funny?" He looked a little like Will Smith after his character ate the shellfish in the movie "Hitched." His hand was also swelling. Benadryl is Daniel's new best friend.

Besides the pepper fiasco, we had an experience that was both amusing and unique to Congo, I'm sure. When we bought our jeep a year ago, it had this sticker on the windshield:

This is the equivalent of what we called "city stickers" where I grew up. My parents got one every year for each of their cars. If you didn't have one, you could end up paying a fine if you got caught. Even though we purchased our car in 2011, this was the current sticker at the time.

Then word got around that there was a new sticker, and the police were stopping cars that didn't have the correct one. Getting stopped by the Kinshasa police is not something everyone longs to experience, so we got a new sticker. I paid $110.00 for the newer, less-outdated-but-already-expired sticker that now says I am current through 2010. That amount included a $10 penalty for being late to buy their late sticker. Seriously. If you visit Kinshasa, don't be deceived if it looks like a million people are driving around with expired stickers. If it is blue, it is "current" regardless of the dates printed on it.

We are still searching for a home to rent and would appreciate prayers. We were talking wistfully the other day about what an amazing place we could get for the same amount of rent if we were searching in the mid-west U.S. Some things we used to take for granted in the properties we rented when we lived in the states are:

light fixtures
built to code
switches and outlets all work
water and electricity at least part of the day
no missing tiles or torn linoleum
closets
cabinets
no leaks in roof or plumbing
screens on the windows
toilets that work
hot water heaters
kitchen sink
door knobs (yes, we have viewed homes that were missing doorknobs)

Most of the homes we have seen so far have had very few of those items. It can be discouraging. We are definitely not looking for perfection, but hope for something that we can make feel like "home." Something cheerful and not gloomy. We have to leave this house in just a few weeks so we are starting to feel pressed for time.

A house we looked at this week that had lots of "issues." Most of the rooms had a lot of mold and water damage. They had a bucket under the kitchen sink to catch the leak and a dead rat was floating in the dirty water. Between the rat (the second one we found at this house), the droppings, and the mildew this kitchen smelled - interesting.



We are very, very grateful to have power today after going without for almost 72 hours. Yesterday the SNEL workers came to my gate ten minutes after finally getting my power back on and asked how it was. I told them that I had two phases (we are supposed to have three). They demanded $25 for "tape" to fix the third phase. After I paid them, they turned the power back off to "fix it." Four hours later the power came back on and we still had two phases. Sometime during the night it went off again and when it came back this morning we were down to one phase. A little while ago we bumped back up to two phases. Sooooo..... we are hoping that since we have to move anyway, maybe we can find a place that gets better electricity. The first thing I did when we got power was start laundry. The second of course, was to bake brownies!