A Good Saturday

Today was a great Saturday! We laughed when  Brent and I discovered that it was such a good day that each of us wrote about it in our journals.  This will tell you something about the fun available in Kinshasa.
After 10 days, where we flew over 2,000 miles on six flights, visited four cities, held four 5-hour zone conferences and at least a couple of other meetings per city, traveled quite a few miles on  crazy roads, crossed the Congo River twice,and then held two more zone  conferences back to back in our home in Kinshasa starting the day after we got home, we were pretty tired. We seriously needed a break. It was the day that we had planned for a nervous breakdown, but we decided to head off to the grocery store instead.  We didn't have much food in the house because we had been gone so long, so this trip was really also a necessity.  We decided to be bold and go to two stores and really stock up.  We got to both of them without any police harassment, or traffic jams and found everything for which we were looking.  We even saw that Magnam Ice Cream Bars have come to City Market.  Sadly at $27 for 8, we passed on them.  But there were great veggies, even broccoli., which we didn't pass up!  We decided not to even look at prices and just go for them.

All washed and bleached and ready to eat. YUM!

Having had that kind of success, we decided to press our luck and look at two bakeries that have recently come to our attention. One was the discovery of the French couple who lives in our building and work for the church, the Van Hauvermats. The other is a new one that just opened on the corner where  "the nice policeman" stands. We've been watching them work on it for a couple of months and it looked great from the outside.  Thankfully, it's the nice policeman's corner or we'd probably have pass on it no matter how good it looked, knowing police would always be there.  To our joy both of these bakeries were fabulous.
Many things are improving in Kinshasa lately. Some streets are being repaired, things are getting painted and new businesses are opening up.  We've been told that it's because the International Francophone Conference, with  leaders of  French-speaking countries all over the world, is being held here in October.  I guess it's like having the Olympics in your city.  Lots of good things are happening and we hope that they will stay that way. We are however, very sad that they have torn down many marchés and chased away a lot of street vendors, including the souvenir marché, which disappeared while we were on our trip. We don't know what will happen to those merchants whose stands were destroyed. Their livelihood is gone if they can't find another place to sell their wares.

Back to our Saturday outing. We went to the two bakeries and looked around. Each was fabulous, with a wonderful selection of delicious looking French breads and pastries.  Were we dreaming? Is this France?
There was even a little café in each store. We decided to buy a small selection of goodies, like croissants, pain au chocolate,  bread, tarts and an eclair.  We took them home, cut each in half and did a taste comparison test. There were no losers! Every one was a delight!
It was just a very fun day.  Having found these nice, new, clean places, where things look and  taste like they were made in France, we'll be back.   We'll probably gain a few pounds after this discovery, but we are thrilled!  Saturday was just the kind of day we needed.