"Wayne Harrison" wrote in message
news

"riverman" wrote

. I'll be out fishing by noon,
since at precisely 6PM, the sun plummets below the horizon once again,
just
like every other day in the year, and if there are afternoon rains I
might
find myself stranded in a mud forest until dawn.

if i were you, myron, i would run as hard as i could, get in the
fastest
car i could find, get on the fastest airplane in the congo, and forever
leave that hellhole, right now.

Well, I gotta say that Congo isn't really the hellhole that people have the
image of. I guess I might be suffering from the Stockholm Syndrome a bit,
but just yesterday I was walking downtown, window shopping with SWMBO
(looking at shoes...) and thinking that it was starting to look like a
rather normal town. We stopped in at a Chinese restuarant and the manager
knew us, so we got a great lunch for half-price, then went to a bakery and
got fresh-baked rolls and bread. Stopped at a confectionary on the way home
and got some fresh baked sweets. When I got home, I had an email waiting
from the British Consul and her husband (the Senator to the national
government, from Eastern Congo) inviting SWMBO and me to spend a week at
their luxury home in Goma next week, and promising to arrange an overnight
hike up to the top of the volcano, a gorilla walk, and I can join a medical
team for a 2-day trip into the jungle to check on some remote villages. All
in all, there IS stuff to do, and being white and connected to the school
(SWMBO is the #2), doors get opened for us all the time. So its not ALL that
bad. Of course, there is the other stuff, but its not all other stuff.

obroff: do the tilapia fight as good as they taste? if so, you're
gonna need a marlin rig.

NO, damn it all!! It was like dragging them in by their bottom lip. They
fought about as hard as a stick. I was really disappointed. For the record,
they like EHC on top, and green beadhead WB down deep, stripped fast. You
could barely feel the takes, and I kept stripping and kept wondering 'is
that a fish?' right up until I hoisted them out of the water. Not so much
fun to catch, after all.... :-(

--riverman