Central African Republic

Allo! Al’s plaas?

This means “hello, all is well?”… The African language has a lot of similarities with the Dutch language.

                                                                            

Central African Republic is a landlocked country in Central Africa and has an estimate population of about 4,5 million.

It borders Cameroon in the west, Chad in the north, Sudan in the northeast and the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Congo in the south.

The scenery in the north is mostly dry and rather barren where in the southwest you will find the Tropical Forest along the rivers. Central and more to the south you have wide savannas and highlands in the west. The overall climate is tropical with a long monsoon season.

The capitol is Bangui which inhabits 630.000 people.

Central Africa has been ravaged by conflicts for over more than 20 years, i.a. the genocide in Rwanda and the many wars in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. These conflicts have left deep scars in the region, with an enormous number of victims, tremendous damage and major poverty as a result.

Bringing peace to the region in general and the countries mutual is one of the biggest challenges, since this can only be established by solving a lot of other different issues first. Such as the accomplishment of a democratization process, the battle against aids and hiv, an honest cultivation of the natural resources, accepting humanitarian relief,…

This is why Celine and I decided to become acquainted with the local volunteers so our visit would also have a meaning other than cultural. We were determined to focus on helping and listening.

Our vision was (and still is) that when you visit Africa with an open mind, you can really connect with the locals. You will learn from it, inspire people and get involved. This appealed to us more than just visiting the country, waving hello and goodbye and pretending to be sympathetic. We wanted to spend our time usefully and help people!!

For this we first contacted a number of organizations in Belgium who are committed to helping these developing countries, because doing this on our own would have been virtually impossible.

So we were about to commit to a good cause for a week, reserving only 1 day for visiting the Manovo-Gounda St-Floris park.

We engaged ourselves to a social project in an orphanage where we attended to the children and organized all sorts of activities. In return they told us all about African dancing and singing, their past and the beauty of their country and we were surprised to learn that all these children need are a bit of love to open up… We will definitely miss the children!!

                                                  

The whole experience made us dwell over the existence of life and how easy we sometimes have it, without realizing it… Our nightly conversations had a little more depth than usual…

And we end with adieu, which of course means “goodbye”.

Lots of love Aurélie! Xx