Africa: the basics

Hello!
I'm abandoning the book reviews for the time being; instead, I'm going to talk about my childhood in Africa.

I grew up in the purple country roughly in the middle (Central African Republic)

I'll start with the basics -- when I was very young (around 3 or 4), my mum and dad moved to the Central African Republic, to translate the Bible from French into a language called Mpyemo. It's a very local language; we lived in a village called Bilolo. Bilolo was also known as Adoumandjali (Fall of the Pangolin). We weren't the only missionaries living there; the Festens lived on the other side of the village. I've mentioned them before in the blog. To me, the Festens are like family; my sister and I referred to Brad and Maria as Uncle Brad and Aunt Maria, and their daughters (Kylie and Christi) referred to our parents as Uncle Paul and Aunt Jo, so it became natural to see them as like cousins. Helped along by the fact that for most of my childhood, I've not had a close relationship with my biological cousins (dad's side).

Little me and even littler Karys walking down a dusty road! (She would have been two at the time.)

The Festens, plus another family friend. Left to right is the friend (Aunt Becky), Christi, Aunt Maria, Kylie and Uncle Brad

We made frequent trips to Bangui (the capital city) for work-related reasons; the memories I have of the journeys can wait -- to paraphrase Dumbledore, "They are thrilling tales, and I wish to do them justice." Why am I paraphrasing him randomly? Because he's a great man, full of wisdom. What I will say now is that Bilolo is located in the southernmost tip of C.A.R, while Bangui is roughly 300 miles northeast; that should give you an idea of how far we had to travel.

I've seen that sign up close!

We also had a cat in Africa; emphasis on had. The cat ran away and disappeared, when I was around five. So I don't even remember her. 

Sparky the cat. RIP Sparky.

Some other friends of ours in Africa were the Turks; they are related to the Festens. 

The Turks -- Aunt Leanne, Uncle Luke, Benny, Bobby and Timote. Benny is the tallest of the children, and Timote is the shortest. 

The Turks lived in Gamboula, right on the border of Cameroon. In fact, they're still there; passports were apparently misplaced on the journey from Yaounde (capital city of Cameroon). Due to a combination of lockdown and being unable to cross borders without passports, they can't go back and retrieve the passports, resulting in them being stuck in Gamboula. 

Timote's my age; in fact, we were best friends growing up. Growing up, Timote was exuberant, enthusiastic and full of life; in the picture above, he's the one in red shorts roaring at the camera. He's now wise, compassionate and understanding on top of that zest for life. And Timote's still the closest thing I have to my best friend; I have lots of friends, close and less close, but Timote and I grew up together, to a degree. 

Regrettably, I can't really remember the times when we were younger, but I can clearly remember the last few months we spent time together, before my family got evacuated from C.A.R; over the Christmas holidays, 2012-13. My family and the Festens spent the holidays in Gamboula. While the adults were in Bible translation meetings, Karys, Timote and I hung out a lot; we once created a play, called The Adventures of Landrius and Shiran. Some plot elements were stolen from Hamlet, such as the main character dying and imploring his best friend to tell their story. It was a fun play, though unfortunately we never wrote it down, and the people who watched it didn't think to record it. We also played a sort of time travel game one afternoon; if I remember correctly, it somehow led to filling balloons (the ordinary kind) with water, to see what would happen. Spoiler alert, they burst. 

The Three Amigos: Timote at the back, Karys in the middle and me in front

We were at school together, sort of. In Yaounde, there's an elementary/primary school for the children of missionary students, called FES. Karys and I attended whenever we were in Yaounde, as did Timote. Kylie and Christi did as well, I believe. One thing I remember quite clearly was a project the we did on Venn diagrams; as a demonstration of how Venn diagrams worked, Timote, Karys and I represented three categories. Timote was a boy, naturally, Karys was a Murrell and I was both male and a Murrell. Straightforward? Not necessarily; Karys mumbled her line, so it sounded like "I'm a girl!", so my line "I'm both!" was rendered incomprehensible. 

Random stats:Distance from Bilolo to Bangui: Roughly 300 miles (around 18 hours of driving).

Distance from Bilolo to Gamboula: Roughly 136 miles (8 hours of travel).

Number of puppies our dog had: 18(!!)

Time of sunset in C.A.R: 6:00 PM

Number of years spent in Africa: Total of 8 years we spent there.