Gabon First Year

Pre-Volunteer Experiences in Gabon

And now on with my story-if you don't like long ones, don't continue...

CHAPTER 1

Flying to Gabon
I, with 18 other pisciculture (rural fish culture agents) and agriculture (integration of agriculture and animal husbandry) Peace Corps pre-volunteers, flew to Libreville, Gabon in October, 1998. Nineteen excited, hopeful, overly inquisitive volunteers-to-be, quickly sharing our lives' stories and realizing we were to become brothers and sisters to each other for the next two years. We knew this, yet knew nothing.

Wow, what a wonderful last taste of the western world: Swiss Air offered free mixed drinks and three meals a day plus snacks. Somewhere over the Sahara we were able to see the most awesome, expansive stretch of desert any of us had ever seen. Periodically we noticed what we imagined were lone tents on the bare sands. Beautiful.

Arriving in Libreville, the capital of Gabon, after an 18 hour flight, we were welcomed by Peace Corps workers and, collecting our bags, were ushered like sheep into a completely new world. Obviously the first test was to reject 20 plus offers of assistance to carry our luggage by crowds of boys. Some of us were more than happy to use what little French we had learned so far, and quickly realized how little we did know. Gabon's French is completely different from school French! Having come in at night, Peace Corps kindly sent out for pizza, a treat in Gabon, and quite another experience for us. Have you ever had fish pizza? I thought not.

Staging in Oyem, Gabon
One day later, we descended via Air Gabon into Oyem, in northern Gabon, to see a crowd we thought at first were people come to greet us, then realized it was to mourn the body that had come along with our luggage. So many torn hearts, people weeping and screaming their laments. Our Cartes de Sejour (work permits) held tightly in our fists we took a night in town to experience Gabon night-life. The restaurant offered crocodile, porcupine or what was called just viande, "meat". Yumm, uh, I'll have some spaghetti. Of course the flavor in the spaghetti comes from the palm oil sauce (or soup) so, uh, can I have some napkins to soak some of it up? We recognized our need to quickly acclimate to many things, including diet.

Our first week was spent at the Peace Corps owned farm complete with six ponds of the fish Tilapia nilotica (la carpe), turkey and chicken coops, rabbit, hedgehog (herrison), and porcupine hutches, a plantation and garden, and places to learn, cook, and sleep. We also were familiarized with 1.) the bucket bath "shower" that was a tin surrounded cement block big enough for you and your bucket, and 2.) the latrine, a cement slab with a central hole covered by a board (to keep the chickens out). Removing the board to use the facilities required much courage at first until our noses and stomachs got accustomed to it.

We met our trainers, Africans from all around the continent, a wonderfully diverse group! Each of us was sent to live with a Gabonese host family in the outskirts of Oyem from Sunday through Thursday. We came together on the weekends in town to exchange stories. I was chosen to stay with Maman Ada Ona and her four children (PHOTOS). I really lucked out: she was very sweet. Every afternoon I came back from language classes to a plate of food from the night before covered with a cloth. I wish now I could have visited her toward the end of my two years in Gabon, but I couldn't. I would have liked to tell her how much I appreciated her kindness.

We were successfully sworn (PHOTOS) in December 16, 1998 but the night turned tragic as a fellow volunteer in the health program in Oyem was murdered after we went home from an evening of celebration. I am deeply sorry for her family and friends and will never forget. The following day all the volunteers from the northern province gathered in Oyem and prepared to be evacuated to Libreville. Her friends native to Oyem were left to mourn without us. It was horrible.

OK, one more page, you can do it!!! On to Two Years in Gabon (Page 3)

Done with Gabon, go to my Index

Back to Gabon Overview

The Gabon Flag

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