A Real P-day

Today, after seven months on our mission, we took our first P-day! We have never really found anything we wanted to do or see, so we just continued to work. But today, we had both reached our limit with what we were working on and it was P-day. So we decided to go for it! A real P-day! We got in the car and headed out to see the sights of Lubumbashi.

Grand cathedrals are always a good place to start as a tourist. So, we went to a big church that we pass often. We knew nothing about it, except that they have been painting and hanging fabrics all week, so it looks pretty good for the Easter weekend. It seemed a good place to start.

We discovered that it's a Greek Orthodox Church. It is very impressive, quite refined and beautiful.

We were amazed at how ornate and elegant it is, in an Congolese kind of way.

Then we passed through town and on to the huge Catholic Church. They are celebrating their Centennial year in Lubumbashi. Hard to imagine that they have been here for 100 years.

We expected something "NotreDame-ish." But it was just a cavernous, barn-like stucture.

Above the doors, where you see stone relief in European cathedrals, there were interesting wood carvings telling Bible stories in very African ways. There were lions and crocodiles in the carvings. I don't remember them in the Bible, but I liked these rustic carvings very much.

The other "tourist attraction"that we knew of was a museum. So, we decided to give it a try too. It looks very weathered and dreary from the outside.

But inside it's quite interesting. It has a little natural history museum. Naturally, I had to read every word of every sign. Almost every one said something like "because of the wars........... whatever animal or thing it was, was nearly extinct or no longer available. War has taken a terrible toll on the Congo.

We found out that Okapis are found only in the Congo. They are a cousin to a Giraffe and have strips like a Zebra only on their back ends and legs. The bonobo (pygmy chimps) and Mountain Gorillas are also only found in the Congo. They are all nearly extinct because they were eaten during the wars. They call the meat of the monkeys "bushmeat." These animals were once found in the thousands in the Congo, but now only a few survive in remote areas. There are nearly no animals of any kind in the Congo because they have all been eaten. It's very sad what war and poverty have done to this nation-its land, it's animals, it's people, and everything else.

There were also masks and explanations of their cultural meanings. Most had to do with the rights of passage into adulthood.

Then we went to another part of the building where art work by present-day Lubumbashi artists is displayed. It is really quite nice art and all of it reflected life in the Congo. It was fun to spend a few minutes in a room full of beautiful things.

There is another part to the museum where you pay an entrance fee. The price for admission was 1000 Congolese francs. That's $1. We decided to save that part of the museum for another P-day. It will be nice to have something to look forward to doing.
So, this was our P-day, actually our P-hour, which is how long it took us to see all that we could find to see in Lubumbashi.

Now for the crazy Congolese twist. As we exited the museum building, I saw a lady sitting at an open window with a stack of small blue books. She was thumbing through them trying to find a certain one. Then upon finding it, she handed it through the window to one of the people standing in the grassy area out side the window. As we got closer, we discovered that it is the place where you pick up new passports. We have been looking for the passport bureau for some time with no success. So, there it was, in the museum. Sounds right for the Congo, doesn't it!?! We decided to see what the process for obtaining a passport really is like. New missionaries now go to Kinshasa and wait for two weeks, live and work with the missionaries there and wait to get a passport before leaving for their missions. The lady told us to go to a building "a cote" and pointed out the window. As far as I can tell, the term "a cote....." means "someplace in that direction fairly near"....... some other place. It's a frequently used phrase that usually tells us nothing at all about where to go. But we headed over "a cote" the building next door. When we entered and asked about passports, they told us to go to the back of the building to find the passport bureau. Surprisingly, we actually found it! Brent quickly got in and out of the office with directions for getting a passport in Lubumbashi! They said that it takes 3 weeks and $173, which is less time than it took at home when we all went to France. Now, if it really works this way, a miracle will have happened for us and the new Lubumbashi mission--all because we had a P-day.