MISSION: NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE

As painful as the decision was, I decided to invest in a new camera. I like taking pictures and there are so many pictures to take in Gabon! Seize the day, I figured, and thus I went and seized. Or at least tried to seize, for it proved to be at least as complicated as getting anything done in Libreville. Luckily, I'm trained in not giving up.

My Dad was kind enough to accompany me on this sad occasion which required getting rid of a large part of my savings. He knows I could not have done it alone. Consequently, we met up in one of the biggest shopping malls in Europe (you think I'm using a hyperbole to enhance the effect of my prose but I am not and it really is). The day before I had seen Sony Cyber Shot and Canon Power Shot proudly displayed in one of the big shops and was inclined to purchase the latter. Sadly, overnight my Canon disappeared.

My Dad generously offered to take me to another shop belonging to the chain, in another shopping mall. We spent thirty minutes in a horrible traffic jam. Wasted another quarter of an hour trying to park. There was no Canon in the other shop but by then I'd decided to buy Sony anyway. My Dad and I got the camera, the memory card and even a nice little bag to fit all that. We moved to the till. My card didn't work. Error. My Dad had forgotten his.

On our way home I tried to get money from one of the cash mashines but it said that "transaction was not possible". Error. We went home, picked up my Mom and a card that would work and went to yet another huge mall, not far from our house, which also boasts the same cheap chain of shops (now you see Warsaw as the land of shopping malls and you're not very much in the wrong). The Sony camera was there but it cost 200 zł more. My heart sank.

My parents suggested going to a small photo shop, also in the mall. It turned out that the camera was there and on offer with an eight GB memory card. I also found a much cheaper bag. And a very helpful salesman, who explained a lot. My Mom's card worked. Now I only need to give the money back.

And I was naive enough to think that everything was easier in Europe... But all's well that ends well, I can't wait to try out my new toy!

KASIA'S GREAT COOKBOOK: CARROT CAKE

I got this recipe from the official Carrot Cake Master, Lucinda, and I tried it out today. Turns out the cake is easy, quick and very tasty. The latter of course I'd known before. By the way, I'm having so much fun cooking and blogging, I'm starting to worry that reports on my culinary explorations will become a regular thing...

Cake ingredients: 4 eggs, 250ml vegetable oil, 350g white sugar, 350g flour, 2 teaspoons baking soda, 2 teaspoons cinnamon, 2 teaspoons baking powder, 2 teaspoons nutmeg, 2 teaspoons vanilla extract, 250g grated carrots, 100g chopped hazelnuts.



Preparation:

1. In a large bowl, beat together eggs, oil, white sugar and vanilla.









2. Mix in flour, baking soda, baking powder, salt and cinnamon. Stir in carrots.





3. Grease and flour a large pan. Preheat oven to 175 degrees. Bake in the preheated oven for 40 to 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean. Let cool in pan for 10 minutes, then turn out onto a wire rack and cool completely.





Icing ingredients: 125g soft butter, 225g cream cheese, 500g confectioner's sugar, 1 teaspoon vanilla extract, 100g chopped hazelnuts.






In a bowl, combine butter, cream cheese, confectioner's sugar and vanilla. Beat until the mixture is smooth and creamy. Stir in chopped nuts. Frost the cooled cake.







Keep your father away from the cake or else it will disappear too fast! Enjoy!

Merry Christmas everyone! Have a wonderful Christmas Eve!

KASIA'S GREAT COOKBOOK: PIEROGI

It's Christmas and Christmas is all about cooking. So today, as the title suggests, we shall take a close look at how one of the most important Polish dishes is made. And one of the few I can actually prepare. Here goes, ladies and gentlemen, pierogi z kapustą i grzybami!

Dough ingredients: 3/4 kg of flour, a pinch of salt, two eggs and some water.






Stuffing ingredients: chopped sauerkraut, mushrooms, salt and pepper; all cooked together until it's brownish and soft.





Prepare pierogi:


1. Mix all the ingredients, kneading until the dough resembles pizza dough, maybe a bit less soft but definitely elastic.

2. Roll out the dough until it's quite thin and cut out round pieces - we always use a glass.







3. Put a bit of stuffing onto the dough.








4. Fold the dough and make it pretty.







5. Boil some water with a pinch of salt and a spoonful of olive oil. Boil pierogi for about 3 minutes after they appear on the surface. Don't forget to stir!






6. Last but not least, my favourite part: happy consumption. Serve them boiled (possibly with a bit of lard on top if you dare) or fried. Enjoy!




Task for tomorrow: carrot cake. Not typically Polish but I'll keep you posted anyway!

THE PERFECT TREE

I'm not really in Gabon right now but I somehow rather took to this blog and I hope you'll forgive me for this slightly off-topic entry. I got to Poland last Friday after an exhausting, 15-hour long trip. It's cold and snowy. -14 degrees, normally quite bearable if uncomfortable, suddenly prevents me from going out. I feel tired. But I'm home! Home! And right in the middle of Christmas preparations. To that end, my Mom is making bigos and my Dad and I, as every year, hit the icy road to find the perfect Christmas tree.

Buying a live tree is a family tradition. Never has there been an artificial one in our home. I know what people say about ecology and stuff but these trees are grown for Christmas and they are there to be bought. So we buy them. My Dad and I usually go to at least five places before we find something we like. We're rather picky, the two of us. There is no general tree market, so we just drive around until we see a place that sells trees. We get out of the car, complain loudly about there being no pretty trees whatsoever and leave quickly, because we know we will need to visit several spots. That's tradition.

When we finally find something we like, we haggle. I'd always thought my Dad excellent at this procedure. Today, however, he gave up quite quickly, while I, the Libreville handcraft market survivor, wanted to go on until I got the price I wanted. I was on the verge of shouting: I don't care about your wife and children! You give me this for 80 zł or I'm out of here this minute!, when my Dad said we'd take it for 85. I guess Africa did really change me.

Then we bring the tree home and my Dad puts it in its stand. He then, alone, puts on the Christmas lights. Afterwards my Mom and I come in. We always hang too much stuff and the tree looks ridiculously colourful. I love it. We decorate it together. Some ornaments are new (my Mom gets new things every year) but some of them, like the ballerina in the picture, are the ones I made with my Mom when I was little.

And then we look for a place to put the tree in the small living-room. There never is a good place so the tree ends up in an awkward corner in which it doesn't fit, as it always turns out bigger than anticipated. I love that, too.

And then the flat smells good. And then it's Christmas.

EQUATORIAL CHRISTMAS

Even though it feels like August, it's definitely December. My calendar says so, my friends say so and the children at school are already high on the Christmas atmosphere (which makes them unbearable, by the way). So, Christmas must be near.

Every year, somewhere around late November, I get this warm, gingerbread feeling. It means Christmas is coming and it's time to start working on my the gift list. I like the freezing cold outside as long as it's cozy and warm inside, I like the long evenings and decorating my flat. When it comes to Christmas, I'm surprisingly traditional. That is why it's so difficult for me to accept the fact that it's December. Here, Christmas doesn't really exist. No Christmas spirit plust weekly trips to the beach mean it's must be August.

Gabon does its best, of course. Some shops are decorated with Joyeux Noel signs all year long (and some with Happy Easter). I think the owners simply consider the decorations pretty enough to keep them for ever (it said Merry Christmas on the window of our train compartment in October). Big shops are decorated with different kinds of ornaments and you can even buy a real Christmas tree (which would probably survive two days in this heat). In one of the supermarkets we saw an African Santa with a very fake beard, sitting under a very real tree and taking children onto his lap. Just like America.

Trees along Bord de Mer street have been wrapped in colourful fabrics (apparently, a big improvement compared to last year, which saw blue plastic bags attached to palm trees). And I've done tons of Christmas activities with the kids, including singing We Wish You A Merry Christmas until my ears fell off.

And still, it's not the same. It's all fake, unnatural, like the Santa's beard. I'm happy to be heading for Poland on Thursday. All the essential Christmas ingredients are waiting for me there.

TURTLE WEEKEND

One of the many things I didn't know about Gabon is that, according to National Geographic, five of the world's seven species of sea turtles come to this remote coast, making it one of Africa's most important sea turtle nesting grounds. And all this going on within a 20-minute boat ride.

For some time now there was talk among our friends about going to Pointe Denis (the patch of land cutting into the ocean I can see from my window) to see the turtles. I have never been interested in turtles really, neither have they been high on my list of the wildlife I wanted to see (a list opened by the gorilla by the way, which, I'm starting to believe, does not exist; it's all just a huge worldwide mistification to attract tourists). But we signed up for the trip of course because being outdoors has really become our thing and we take every opportunity to do something fun.

We thus took the boat to Pointe Denis last Saturday, our backpacks full of food, sleeping bags, our inflatable IKEA pillows in cute colours, mosquito sprays, tent... Typical camping stuff. The plan was to get to Pointe, walk through the savannah and forest to a hotel/lighthouse called Phare de Gombé (a walk we'd already done before), have a picnic, walk a bit more and put our tents up on beach, in a deserted turtle scientists' camp.

The walk was great, the forest amazing, the savannah hot but beautiful, the beach deserted and blue and golden and green. We saw a lot of elephant and buffalo tracks, but sadly no animals. There were several old turtle nests on the beach, which was rather promising. We put up our tents on the terrace of one of the cottages (which seemed a fantastic idea later on, when the rain came) and went to see another savannah nearby. On our way back it started to rain heavily, and when we reached the camp we swam in the ocean, its surface suddenly so changed by the raindrops. It was great. At night, around 9 pm, we set off in search of the turtles.

The night was stunningly black. It was cloudy and without moonlight there was nothing but our torches to light the way. We walked in the direction of Phare de Gombé and reached it without seeing a single turtle. We thought it might have been a bit early, so we had a drink at the hotel. Back at the beach, we soon found a fresh turtle track (which really looks very much like a tractor track) and followed it. We found an enourmous, around two-metre long seaturtle, digging her nest, grunting and looking as exhausted as a turtle can. We were in awe. This creature was so big, so graceful, so beautiful. We stood there, right next to her, and watched her lay her eggs. Then we accompanied her back to the water, taking a few pictures. It made us feel guilty, because the light disturbed her a bit. But we couldn't stop ourselves, can you blame us? She was amazing.

We walked on and saw another turtle, a bit smaller but very big nonetheless. The whole procedure repeated and we walked the turtle to the sea. We were exhausted (it had been a long day in which we walked for about 20 kilometres) but very happy. Even more so beacuse we hadn't expexted this to be so exciting. We went to bed with big smiles on our faces and passed a terrible night on the flat wooden floor of the terrace, getting no sleep whatsoever and ending up with 700 mosquito bites each. But I still think in was worth it.

More pictures here.

ONE SORTIE FOR ME, MADAME!

So, what do you think? Exit or no exit? Yes, I got the visa in the end. One sortie, one retour - not the visa I wanted. I described my second visit to CEDOC in the previous post. What you don't know is that there was a third and a fourth.

The third time we went we were already resigned to the idea of a simple one-time visa. Sulking, we entered the CEDOC gates once more and tried to get inside the building. The soldier guarding the entrence, one hand firmly grasping his machine gun, sent us away to the "waiting room" - a set of wooden benches outside - claiming there was no space inside. After a while he called a bunch of people in and we entered with them.

I don't know if I've told you this but the place looks a bit like a bank, with employees behind a counter and three rows of wooden benches, bloody uncomfortable, by the way. The queue is attentively sitting on the benches and the newly arrived are supposed to sit at the end. There is virtually no space on benches, people squeezed in a manner that makes a can of sardines look like a spa. When the person leading the cue is called to the counter, a self-appointed queue manager tells everyone to get up and move, which they do without really getting up, probably afraid of losing their seat to one of the impatient-looking men waiting nearby, ready to jump into an open spot in the middle of the queue. Madness. I was part of it for nearly two hours.

Afterwards everything went smoothly. They took a photo of me (completely unaware that the photo was being taken) and told me to come back the following week. We came back, impatient-looking, and jumped into an open spot in the front of the queue, catching the unsuspecting queue leader off guard. We got my passport back in no time.

Good news is, I'm going home! And no power cut (still a daily phenomenon) or water cut or CEDOC employee can ruin that for me.

The picture I posted with this entry is something I found on the internet when I tried to google sortie. It's by a person called Niki de Saint Phalle and when I saw it I instantly thought of Gabon and CEDOC.

CEDOC 2: THE SEQUEL

Remember CEDOC? The famous place I wrote about in connection with my carte de séjour? Well, here comes part two of the CEDOC odyssey, entitled Visa de Sortie.

You are probably not aware that getting out of Gabon is as difficult as getting into Gabon. You would think that once in the country, with your stay legal and all, you can start breathing normally and enjoy yourself. Well, you couldn't be more wrong: you cannot leave the country without an exit visa: you will be stopped at the airport and not allowed to board the plane. Since Christmas is approaching, we started going about the whole visa business last Saturday.

There are two types of visa de sortie:
1) one entry - allows you to leave the country once and come back, it's quite simple to get and costs 70 000 CFA (105 euros) and only two visits to CEDOC.
2) multiple entries - it costs 120 000 CFA (180 euros) but is valid for six month, during which you can leave and come back whenever you want.

Now, we could of course settle for the first type and have it done soon enough but the problem is we want a multiple entry visa. In case I need to leave quickly (emergency? health problem?), I want to be sure there is no paperwork impeding it. We thus went to CEDOC on Saturday morning, equipped with:
- a corresponding form
- copy of my and Jandro's passport
- copy of my and Jandro's carte de séjour
- a sort of a covering letter
- a letter of recommendation from Jandro's boss.

The clark looked incredibly normal. A nice guy, I thought. Indeed, he was very nice. Please go to the till and pay. We went. We queued. We were informed by a bearded female cashier that we didn't tick a box on our form and had to get back to the guy who'd sent us to pay. We got back. The man was still very nice and very nicely waited for us to tick the box. We ticked. Please sit down, he said. Suddenly, his face underwent a sharp transformation: he was no longer a nice guy, he was a Gabonese CEDOC employee.

- Very well, madame. Where do you work?
- I don't.
- Very well. Madame, if you don't work, why do you need this kind of visa?
- To go to my country.
- But this kind of visa, madame, - he said smiling ironically, - is reserved to people who work. Who do important things, like your husband. That is you, sir, I presume?
- Yes, it is me.
- This kind of visa facilitates professional circulation. You are not entitled to it.

We tried to explain that we have a recommendation from An Important Person but he insisted that it was impossible. Obviously, he was waiting for a bribe. We didn't offer it.

- What is your name, please? - Jandro asked.
- No, no, that is unnecessary. In the end I do not decide this. Cross your fingers. Maybe yes, maybe no. Don't be too optimistic. Come back on Wednesday.

We went there today and found out that I was not granted the visa. Of course, we can always get the simple one but I don't fancy the idea of not being able to leave the country on a whim. So we'll try another option of getting the six-month visa, let's see if it works. Cross your fingers. Maybe yes, maybe no.

Sometimes I love Gabon and I feel grateful to be here. Sometimes, however, it seems absolutely ridiculous. And sometimes it makes me sick. Today is one of those days.

I PRONOUNCE YOU BOSS AND TENDERNESS

Last Saturday two of our friends got married (congratulations yet again!) and we had the pleasure of sharing this special moment with them. It was touching and the scenery couldn't have been better: a tropical beach at sunset. She was wearing a lovely African frock, while he sported a very cool African jacket. I was moved and thought it very romantic but the reason for my describing it here is different: they were married by the Mayor of Libreville, according to the Gabonese law. And this is what I want to tell you about.

The Mayor kept us waiting. It must have been quarter to five when he finally started the ceremony, originally scheduled for four o'clock. He was wearing an official uniform and arrived with a rather intimidating bodyguard. Bonsoir, he said, insisting on using the Gabonese form and stressing that he would not use the French Bonjour instead (the Gabonese use "Good evening" for both evening and afternoon, while the French say "Good morning" all day long).

He started the ceremony by reading out the adequate passages from the Gabonese law. We therefore found out that it is the man who is the head of the family and makes decisions, the chef, the leader. The woman is to follow him, live with him, take care of him and listen to him. There you go.

Having read this, the Mayor informed us that both bride and groom had opted for monogamy. You see, in Gabon, before he gets married, the man chooses "the family book", which can be either monogamous or polygamous. Whatever his choice, he must stick to it in the future, it cannot be changed. We were told nowadays many couples go for monogamy; however, some men choose the polygamous "family book" even if they are not keen on marrying more than once: it's so that they can threaten their wives if they are not obedient ("I'll take another wife! I'm allowed to!"). The Mayor thus posed the question few European people have a chance to answer: "Do you confirm your choice and opt for monogamy? Or are you willing to change it?" Both said monogamy was just fine.

In every decent romantic comedy the real lover has very little time to get to church and save his girl from marrying the villain by shouting out "NO!" when the priest asks whether anybody opposes the marriage (it usually does happen in church in films, doesn't it?). Here in Gabon he would have no problem. The Mayor asked this question and, to our great surprise, did not carry on. He waited. He insisted. "Nobody is saying anything. Why? Do not be shy! Nobody opposes the marriage? Are you sure? Not even a little finger in the air! Why?". I felt like somebody was going to say "Yes, yes, I oppose, I oppose strenously!" in order to get the man to move on.

And then it happened. He married them. And then... decided to give them advice. He congratulated them on taking the step so many people fear nowadays and I thought that quite nice. Afterwards he talked for what seemed like ten to fifteen minutes about the importance of roles in their relationship. He is the boss. She follows him. He tells her what to do. She takes care of the house. The importance of saying "I'm sorry". And how it's her who should normally say it. You know, the usual stuff. Only that he was dead serious.

A couple of unmarried guys told us later that it would be rather cool to get married in Gabon: it puts the woman in her place and it's all legal.

What followed was a lovely religious ceremony and a very nice party. We wish Vania and Thomas all the best - and thanks for letting us be a part of your special day!