Saturday 13th

Right, Nicola is stranded on the other side of town because it's raining (it rains hard here, and the roads in the residential areas are bad; everything shuts down when the heavens open), and so I have taken it upon myself to start today's blog entry on her behalf. This isn't entirely altruistic; the electricity has failed and it's getting dark, so I'm relying on her laptop battery to outlast the power cut and light my way. Ironically, one of the things that she asked me to bring over from the UK was a solar powered lamp for times like this, but I ran out of space and prioritised a selection of flip flops and pashminas over more practical items like torches, medication etc.

Slept badly last night, firstly because it was unreasonably warm, and secondly because a nearby church had a very raucous prayer meeting until 3.30am (I actually thought that there was some kind of civil unrest and was praying for protection over our house until a spontaneous call and response of 'hallelu - jah, hallelu - jah' broke out just after midnight). People in Nic's neighbourhood are up and out of the house at around 5am, singing, drumming on jerry cans etc, so there was a 1.5 hour window in which I could relish the absence of human noise and count the holes in Nicola's mosquito net.

This morning we took taximotos to the top of town (I've felt fairly reticent about using these funny little motorbikes since we saw that SUV plough into the side of one, but they are cheap and fast and there's nearly always one to hand when you want one) to a café with a name that I can't pronounce or spell, to meet Natalie.

Nicola has told you about Natalie before, but just to recap, she's a refugee from the DRC. She's in her early thirties and has five kids. Her husband left her, so she's raising the children solo. She's been living in a refugee camp since 2001. And she speaks French, so Nic translated for us, as my French is tres mauvais.
What struck me most about Natalie was her incredible attitude. She basically said (imagine a French Congolese accent) 'I live, therefore I can work. And there are others in the camp who are more vulnerable than me, who need my help. So I work to help them'. She said this with no hint of self pity or stoicism, but with a kind of measured determination.

Natalie makes jewellery which ITeams sell in Canada. She's also involved in an association that grows vegetables for the sick and elderly people in the camp, and has tapped into the camp's economy by providing a hairdressing service and a phone charging business (ITeams provided a generator). In other circumstances I could imagine her running a business, or leading a ministry, but as it is she's doing the best with what she has to make a difference in her community.

Nic – In the afternoon Jash came round to do some African drumming with Suz. It was very noisy. Then in the evening we went to a restaurant called Top Tower. It was very high up. Thus concludes Saturday. I'm feeling a bit irritable, so all the blog entries I write now, hopefully a whole weeks worth, will be short and in all likelihood, well, a bit short (The hopefully applies to the quantity not to the attitude).

I just did the spell check on her blog entry and there were seven, I repeat seven spelling mistakes. Yes, there is an 'l' in vulnerable. Nice one Suz.