I have such a hard time knowing what to write posts on, life is life out here! the good, bad and ugly all become normal....... not always easy but normal!

Evan told me to write a little bit about the ugly yet slightly humorous side of our week. I am not necessarily agreeing but here we go................

As a lot of you know Congo has presidential elections coming up in November, with elections comes an increased number of demonstrations in Kinshasa. To anyways be ready for any situation TASOK practices something called a Code Yellow drill. This code yellow drill is when Kinshasa is unsafe due to demonstrations turning violent. On Thursday the head office called a code yellow drill at 2:00 pm, we all went to our homerooms and as teachers took roll call to make sure all students were accounted for. 15 minutes later ( practice drills never take longer then 10 mins) a piece of paper was dropped off to all homerooms explaining that the demonstration down the boulevard had turned violent and they were not letting anyone in or out of the TASOK compound. So we sat at school until 3:30 until the danger died down.
I think the hardest part of the entire lock down was the unknown? We had no idea how long we would be there and knowing the kids were across the campus and I couldn't go to them! Thankfully we are all safe and that is all that matters!

That was mine and the kids adventure, now for Evan's adventure this past week.

On Friday Evan was driving around Kinshasa running errands for work and coming to pick up the kids and I from school so we could look at more houses ( long story). During his travels he was stopped by the traffic police for an alleged infraction, I think they said he didn't use his blinker or something like that! We have always been taught to just keep going so Evan tired but soon his car was surrounded with police and one jumped on the hood of the truck. While this was all unfolding another police was ripping the plates off of Evan's truck and running down the boulevard with them! I am not entirely sure of how the story unfolded from this point and Evan isn't home so I will try my best.
I know that Evan was taken down to the police station, but this was 45 minutes after they had already stopped him and to my knowledge there was a lot of name calling and yelling ( everybody yells out here..... everything revolves around drama).
By the time they had gotten him into the police station they had come up with 4 or 5 different infractions ( anything to get more money). Oh, I need to back track, Evan has the chief of police's phone number so he called him and the chief talked to the police but they didn't believe Evan that is was the chief of police, they said Evan had called someone and told they to act like the chief of police.
When Evan got to the police station he had called the chief twice and wasn't getting anywhere.
So while Evan sat in front of the judge he called the chief again and then the chief said he would call the head of police at that station from his own phone instead of Evan just handing them the phone. About 5 minutes later Evan was handed his license and a very bent up license plate back and sent on his way, without an apology I might add!
Very thankful that Evan has some good connections at times like this!

** I may have told the story wrong so Evan may need to correct me.