This young man is enjoying a drink of water on a hot afternoon in Pointe Noire traffic. If you look closely, in his left hand he has live birds that he walks out into traffic to sell. They are green and look like parakeets. We are told they trap the birds to sell for food. Young men (mostly, a few are women) walk through traffic at the busy intersections selling snacks, water, pens, gum, clocks, watches, sunglasses - all kinds of things, because it can take a long time to get through an intersection and so the opportunity for a sale is great.
This is a cosmetics store that is quite nice, and shows the very common process of the 2nd story being built (it may take years to complete) while using the main floor and the wood posts(little tree trucks and branches) that hold everything up while it is being built.
This is a lumber shop - at night, the wooden doors are closed and locked. It is next to other businesses and is only the 4 shelf areas showing and a little area on the left. The Congolese people are very entrepreneurial and do amazing things with very few resources. This is the kind of shop where the people earlier in our blog bought the wood to make their home.
These are two amazing women in our home branch. They asked me to show them how to make cookies and cakes. We made a chocolate cake, white/vanilla cupcakes, and sugar cookies that we could do lots of things with, like roll in cinnamon sugar, white sugar, or put a piece of chocolate into the middle. We had a great time. There was one more sister who had left when I took this picture. It took us 4 hours because I have only the little oven on the right, with only one shelf in it. We made whipped cream, which they had never had, to show it could be used on top of the cake instead of frosting - powdered sugar isn't available here.
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