congo gold

Democratic Republic of Congo and its civil war was highighted on 60 minutes today. The country is rich in natural minerals such as copper, some metal needed for computer chips and gold. The gold is causing war. Men, women and children dig into mountains for less than two dollars a day to find minuscule nuggets of gold. They are managed by various militia that fund a war with the mined minerals. The gold is sent to Uganda, who sends it to Dubai where it becomes jewlery, is sent to the US and ends up packaged in plush boxes and opened on Christmas morning.
5 million people have died in the Congo.

STTN

She has done it twice. From 10.30pm until 7.00am. The first night I woke, looked at the clock and registered the red numbers - 6.47. "She's done it" "You didn't have to get up?" "No. she's done it." And there she was askew in her crib, sleepy grins with red rimmed eyes. I felt fantastic. She had been waking up once or twice a night. I would feed her and she would easily return to sleep, but the interrupted sleep had a greater effect on me than I thought. It was my first full nights sleep since August 9th. She is, without doubt, the greatest squidge. I don't know if it will continue, but I'm thrilled that it happened.

On my plate

On my plate today was:

Slices of organic chicken breast meat
An organic chicken leg
Three roast potatoes
Two brussel sprouts
Two roasted carrots
Hominy
Stuffin (Stuffing cooked in a muffin tin)
Green bean casserole (not so good)
Sweet potato mash
Cranberry sauce
Poultry gravy

All homemade over two days. It was followed a couple of hours later with a slice of apple pie and cream. A couple of hours after that I returned for another small plate of all the above and another slice of pie.

A quiet Thanksgiving

It is the day before Thanksgiving and we are not with family. It is just the three of us, at home in Philadelphia, thousands of miles from anyone who shares the same genes as us. We did go to Kansas a couple of weeks ago and shared turkey and Keith's incredibly sweet sweet potatoes with family. Now it is just us and it seems too quiet.

The Road

We finished reading the road tonight. It ended on an image of mountain trout. Fish that had the history of the world marked on their backs, including the tiny portion that included man. The boy does not represent God, he represents hope, innocent hope. That is why the man continued, to save the boy, to save hope. Without hope for something better or something more then life is extremely difficult to live. Everyone hopes for something more, something better, something to stay the same. The woman had lost hope and she couldn't continue living.

The writing was so beautifully raw. The dialogue consisted of one or two word mutterings back and forth - lots of "okay" and "i don't know". It was conversations of two real people, the bulk of the dialogue being left in the spaces around the words, the things not said. The image of the road - always present and always leading them on. The idea that they had to keep going as long as the road kept going, as long as hope kept going.

Winter walk

It felt like winter today. On the afternoon walk, I power walked through cold rain and nasty gusts of wind. But I was cosy. Rose was nestled against me in the carrier and we were both cocooned in B's enormous red raincoat. I probably look a little frightening; hooded and strangely obese. Occasionally I hear sweet sighs from my little girl and I cannot help but lay my hand on her back. Gus still tries to take advantage as I do not have a clear view down to him. He gets yanked more these days, our baby days. He manages to find morsels of god-knows-what in the decaying leaves. We return home quickly - the walks understandably shorter than their summer counterparts- and enter the artificial heat. A winter bonus.