Ibambi (by Jennings)

(All photos in this post were taken by our friend D. Wright and are used with his permission)

Ibambi is what you think of when you think of Congo: lush forest, green everywhere, palm trees, cassava plants, chickens running around, houses made of sticks and mud with grass thatched roofs; kids laughing and running and playing. Gorgeous, fertile, humid, peaceful.

I am here to work with a local translation team, to finish checking the book of Matthew so they can publish trial editions. I am staying on what used to be a mission station, in a “Centre d’accueil” (conference center) built by a German organization. The housing for guests is starkly different from the housing of the translators who live on the same compound. The center housing is a row of single rooms, made of brick and concrete, with a tin roof. There is a lot of wood (mahogany, I’m told) – wooden ceilings in the rooms, wooden shutters in the windows (no glass), wooden doors. Even the outhouse has wooden seats with wooden lids to keep the flies out! The translators have stick and mud houses with thatched roofs. People hang light cloths in the windows and doorways during the day, to keep flies out and to let the breeze through.

There is a big, open grassy area where kids gather to play football. I have not seen so many smiling, happy kids in a long time.

They also put in a bore hole and pump, so water is readily available. I have my own bucket, so I can get water for bathing or washing clothes whenever I want. The center staff will heat water for me if I ask. And the head translator is providing me with filtered water for drinking.

Pounding greens with a mortar and pestle

The local staple food is manioc. The leaves are pounded and cooked (with copious amounts of palm oil) in a dish called “sombe” (sohm-bay). The root is cut up and fried in oil, or pounded into a powder and cooked with water to make foufou. Groundnuts are also plentiful – we’ve had them for breakfast and for snacks.
There are (or were) large palm oil plantations nearby, and coffee plantations. We have local coffee in the morning, along with groundnuts and beignets fried in palm oil.

There are dozens of varieties of banana in Ibambi

After a rain, the termites come out, and people collect them - a delicacy!