Hi Lizzie here, thanks for reading this and hope all is well with you. Well as I said in the last post I am here at the progamme base with Pete and all is going well. I did feel a bit strange the first few days just getting used to being so remote in the middle of the Congolese jungle !! The town is about the size of a UK market town with one main high street and is mainly comprised of  low buildings. Around the edge of the centre are different villages which have a very rural feel just a stones throw from the jungle.

Below is a photo of Pete enjoying a cup of tea outside our little annex and the two photos below that are our immediate view:

                             

In spite of fairly sleepy immediate surroundings it had all been quite busy ; Pete has alot going on with his job and I have been in the office every day doing a handover of the logistics work with my predecessor  (well she is still here for another couple of weeks which is a good thing !) and trying to help where I can. I have also been meeting my new colleagues, getting to know the area, practicing French, researching a media article and acclimatising - it is 36 degrees in the shade today !!

Yesterday Pete and I went for a bike ride (after he had fixed the brakes) in the town and out in the countryside, we must have said ‘bonjour, ca va !` at least 50 times and had the same in return - there are a surprising number of people out and about. On our way back after a particualy vigourous ‘bonjour, ca va !` and ‘trés bien !’ exchange with some children at the side of the road we noticed that the the large group of people walking towards were being unusally silent and we quickly sussed out that we were about to ‘bonjour, ca va!’ into a funeral procession. We dismounted and walked solomnly through the crowd – there was a large group at the back however who were singing and dancing, still part of the same group, which was a surprising contrast.

Last night Isabel, who works here as well, had the brilliant idea of making pizza and once we had the dough and toppings sorted it was just a case of popping them in the oven. You can see this is the photo below, it is made out of old oil drum with fire above and below the ‘pizza oven’. They were really tasty and we even tried to make one with cheesy stuffed crust which was, I think, a success !

We all finished off the evening with a board game called Settlers – I think I am becoming addicted ! 

And finally some local wildlife....a colourful lizard.