The Central African Republic

Here are two views of Bangui, the capital. My favorite is the cathedral seen through the Bokassa era Roman arches, when Bangui was the capital of the Central African Empire. The other photo is of Avenue Boganda, the main road connecting the downtown area with K5 (K-Cinq), the commercial district five kilometers from downtown.

Most of the cars driving down the street are old yellow Toyotas working as taxis. The taxis operated more like buses, driving up and down a particular road. You would flag down a taxi, squeeze in the back where you could, then just tell the driver where to stop.

This is the Peace Corps office that was located just up the street from the center of Bangui. I used to spend a lot of time here, mostly coming to meet Kathy for lunch or to try and help out with a computer problem. My big contribution was crawling around throughout the entire office running cables to hook all of the computers and printers together in a local area network. I was pretty dirty by the time that I was done, but we got everything up and running.

This is the American embassy in Bangui. I worked here and really enjoyed the experience. The embassy staff was outstanding and we had great leadership from the very top, Ambassador Robert Gribbin. The ambassador was a good softball player, a fact that can be statistically verified by the complete scorecards kept by his wife, Connie, at our weekly games.

Kathy and I volunteered to teach English one night a week at the US Information Agency office right next door.

This was our local watering hole. The bar was located at the market nearest to our house, just across from the Hotel National. It was a small market, just a couple of stalls with women selling vegetables, a man selling bread, and Adoum grilling up fresh meat.

Every morning the bar's owner would buy blocks of ice and place them in the body of an old refrigerator that she had in her bar. She would then lay bottles of beer over the ice and cover everything up with some wet burlap so that the beer would be cold by afternoon. Once people started dropping by, she would set out some small chairs and tables and start holding court. She would tell jokes and stories, gossip, and keep everyone in her place lively and entertained.

Meet Nicholai, our guardian. Yes, we had a guardian who watched our house and kept an eye on things. We used to spend many afternoons talking about the issues of the day, democracy, currency devaluation, life in the States, and local politics.

In the photo, Nicholai is mixing up some gozo (cassava), the staple crop in the CAR.

My favorite memory of Nicholai was the day of the first presidential election. The president at the time, General André Kolingba, had agreed to hold elections. I talked to Nicholai early in the morning and he told me that a replacement guardian would be coming at noon so that he could vote. I said fine and asked him if he would be back later in the afternoon. Oh no, he said, voting takes a while. I have to go home, get cleaned up, change my clothes, have something to eat, then go to the polls. He took it seriously, he wanted to make sure that he had on his best clothes so that he could go and cast a ballot. His replacement never came so I went outside and he gave me his baton so that I could "guard" the house. It was the least I could do to support of a man who passionately believed that democracy would lead to a better life for his family.

Toward the end of our two years in CAR, the American Embassy began to downsize and we were asked to move from our house by the university (which had been rented by the Peace Corps) to a house along the Ubangi River that was owned by the Embassy. It was an amazing house with gardens and a porch that looked out over the river. This is what we used to see each morning over breakfast.

The best two weeks that I had in the CAR was going with Kathy to N'Délé, the village where she had been a volunteer two years before. It was an incredible place and we were treated with gracious hospitality by everyone that we met. N'Délé pas loin.

This is the University of Bangui, it was located about two hundred yards from our house. I do not think that it was ever really open while we were there, at least not fully open with classes being taught. There were plenty of students around however, mostly trying to find ways to get by when the government was unable to pay their bourses (or pay any other government salaries).

These are two of the the main hospitals in Bangui, the capital. The top photo is of the Central Hospital, and the bottom one was known locally as the Chinese hospital. If memory serves, the Chinese hospital was financed by the People's Republic of China and then supported by Taiwan after the CAR recognized changed its recognition policy.

This is a statue in Berengo, the former palace of Jean Bedel Bokassa, the self-declared Emperor of the Central African Empire.

This is the BEAC building, the Central African office of the central bank that coordinated the money supply in the Franc Zone. During most of our time in CAR, the exchange rate between the Central Africa franc and the French franc was fixed at 50 to 1, then currency was devalued to 100 francs to the French franc. The explanation was that the devaluation would spur economic growth by making Central African exports cheaper, plus stir domestic production of many goods by making imports more expensive.