A Congo Birthday

Aside from music and the strength of relationships, one of my favorite things about life in Congo is the incredible fabrics! Local fabrics are brought from all over West Africa (I’ve heard it said that Dakar is the ‘Paris’ of African fashion…), and sold in 6 meter lengths (or 6 yards sometimes). With 6 meters, there is are endless possibilities for clothes. Combinations we’ve used: 2 boys shirts + 4 boys pants, long women’s dress + men’s dress shirt to match, or 2 women’s skirts +headscarf + fancy shirt. Endless. I’m serious.
So here are the kitenge the boys picked out for my birthday:

And then they took me out to a new Indian restaurant in town. I’m usually not too thrilled about foreign spicy foods, but we have been there a couple times already and I was drooling over the possibility of yet another order of coconut curry chicken. It’s slightly sweet, very creamy with a tiny kick to make it interesting. But it would already be interesting just for the fact that there are huge chunks of chicken breast, which you cannot buy here. So we hung out, drinking cold sodas and waiting for the creamy goodness to arrive…

It’s here! The pictures may not do it justice, but I assure you it was delicious! (just ignore the guy with beer in the background) And I prefer posed pictures, while Kent, who obviously had the camera, prefers to catch people off guard.

…and as a tribute to his tenacity I post an action shot just for Kent. Anna and I enjoying hot cheese naan with our coconut curry:

One side benefit to Kent snapping pictures a mile a minute, is that we sometimes get some incredible shots. Anna was in the mood for posing, and this one is my favorite! Who needs presents?

Some friends came with us, Joey and Kathleen, and all the pictures we got with these wonderful friends look much less than wonderful. But they came, ate and had fun with us! (it’s almost a good shot of our car sadly enough…)

Then we relaxed at home, enjoyed the day, and ended a light dinner with an indulgent ‘Tres Leches’ cake (inspired by thepioneerwoman.com). It’s essentially a sponge cake soaked in sweet cream and topped with whipped cream, so it’s not for anyone on a diet or anyone with a heart problem for that matter! But Kent went out of his way to make a fantastic cake just like I wanted – what a guy! After her first bite, our British friend called it ‘gorgeous’! I agree.

The butterfat at its best:

Here’s what Anna thinks:

Won’t my mouth open a bit wider?

A Congo Birthday by Kimberly is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International