mont buet.

We spent Saturday morning and most of Saturday afternoon painting and helping Tim and Amanda Kelly and their family move into the upstairs rooms of the mission house. Tim and Amanda previously oversaw the guest house at Bongolo Hospital, but are currently in Libreville for language study. They’ll be here until December, then they’ll be back in the US on home assignment.

We took a break in the afternoon to travel to Mont Buet, translated, “the market.” It was similar to the open-air market I went to Russia (renok), though I’m not sure the US has an equivalent. A craft fair might be the closest thing, but its really not the same. It was incredibly busy, so one of our primary goals was just keeping up with the person in front of you! We also bought fabric to make African outfits.

While there, we walked through the meat market, which is filled with raw meat of all kinds, including lots of fish. The smell was pretty horrible, even to me, and I was terrified I would brush up against one of the tables and actually touch the fish (if you know how I feel about fish, this will make sense to you). In a way, it also underscored the differences between the things that Kelli is interested in, and the things I'm interested in – I was focused on navigating through it as quickly as possible without looking around too much, and she was looking for some of the animals she’s dissected over the last several years.