On Monday, we got our first real taste of Malabo. In the morning, David took us to a gift shop that performs money exchanges in the back room. This saves us from paying the bank fee, but I’m not quite sure what benefit the shopkeeper gets. The shop front held glass cases displaying animal products that are illegal elsewhere in the world—ivory carvings and handbags made from crocodile and python were prominently displayed, as can be seen in my attached photo. I knew coming into this trip that I would encounter products like these, but to find them so early on was disheartening. After we had exchanged our money, David took us to one of the better supermarkets, Hermanos Martinez. The selection was much more diverse that I had anticipated, although the brands were often unfamiliar. Also for sale was quite a decent selection of Chinese foods—Malabo has a high Chinese population. I picked out some food that would be easy to prepare and provide decent nutrition and went to the register to pay. Unfortunately, my total didn’t come out evenly, and my cashier seemed annoyed that I had no change. She gave me back only 125 CFA instead of 250, though I didn’t notice at the time. David later explained that it was common for grocery stores to not worry about such trivial amounts, and that I was lucky to get anything back at all.
After a lunch of salami sandwiches, we met the students from UNGE (the National University of Equatorial Guinea) for the first time. Only three of the four in our program could be present, but each had their own unique backstory: Baltasar was born on the mainland in a small village and attended Texas A&M for three years, Amancio was born on the island in the city of Luba, and Eladio is from Annobon, a small island far from the rest of the country. All three of them speak English fairly well, and will be taking classes alongside us at UNGE. We were split into groups and given a scavenger hunt designed to take us to important landmarks in Malabo. I was grouped with Baltasar and Michelle, and we headed off to our first objective: buying phone credit. When we had arrived in Malabo, we were each presented with a basic cell phone. We are expected to have this phone on us at all times, but since all the phones here are pay-as-you-go, we need to buy credit for them. Baltasar took us to the headquarters of the major cell phone company, where it was simple to exchange CFA for an equivalent amount of phone credit on a scratch card. Afterwards, we headed for the central market. Located in the north of the city, one can find almost anything for sale in the central market—I saw various fruits and vegetables, meat and fish (covered in flies), home appliances (mostly shoddy Nigerian brands), and more clothes and jewelry than I could ever want. After purchasing an onion, we headed out to the three cultural centers: the French, Spanish and Equatoguinean. All three were quiet, but I took a picture of the list of events for the rest of the month. Our last stop of the day was la plaza independencia, which contains Malabo’s historic cathedral. I was a bit uneasy about taking a photo, but will be back for sure.
Upon our return, we were greeted by our cook Herminia. David said that she was once a co-owner of a café in town, but left due to differences with the other owner. She prepared some sort of apple salad, fried plantains, sautéed chicken, and macaroni in a cream sauce. Her food was amazing, so we agreed to hire her on for dinner three days a week, a choice I doubt we will regret. After dinner, we settled down and did some catching up on the internet, which is surprisingly usable despite the slow speed. It is nice to have such a consistent connection; it makes one feel not so far away from the rest of the world.

From my limited experience, flying anywhere is always exhausting, but I wasn’t quite prepared for the two 9 hour flights that brought me to Malabo, Equatorial Guinea. After a night of frantic packing I drove myself to the airport, praying that my bags would not be overweight (they were, by pretty much the exact amount of gear that I was bringing for the BBPP), I finally arrived at the gate and met with my fellow students. After discussing how prepared/unprepared we felt about the next three months, we boarded our plane for Frankfurt. Lufthansa puts any American airline I have ever flown on to shame: the food was good and plentiful, service was great, and the wine never stopped flowing. After watching my inflight movie, I faded in and out until we arrived at Frankfurt Airport. Although we were all exhausted after the long flight, we decided that we must share a German beer, even if the local time was 7 AM. To kill the rest of our time before our next flight, we perused the variety of stores around the airport—I picked up a copy of the Hobbit, and a pocket English-Spanish dictionary.
Our final flight was a combined flight—we had stops both at Abuja, Nigeria and Malabo. Luckily, I had a window seat so I could attempt to watch the scenery as I fell in and out of sleep. I managed to keep myself awake to watch us cross onto the African continent, but promptly fell asleep upon the emergence of the Sahara desert. I then slumbered until our landing in Abuja, when the majority of the plane cleared out, leaving perhaps ten people in economy class. The final leg of our flight only lasted about an hour, but most of the scenery was covered by low clouds. As out plane landed I got my first taste of how wet EG was going to be—the plane seemed to be surfing on a small body of water as we landed. We exited the plane, and passed through customs without major incident. As we were readying our bags for departure, one of my fellow students was approached by a belligerently drunk man who pointed at her bag and asked for 2000 CFA (about $4). Luckily, our RD David was there to get him to leave, and we barely managed to pack all our gear into the BBPP Ford Explorer. As we drove out of the airport, we could see Mt. Cameroon across the gulf, but David warned us on taking photos, the EG government isn’t fond of foreigners taking photos of government structures. We also spotted a plane graveyard—not the most welcoming site.
Fortunately, the student house is only about a ten minute drive away from the airport so we didn’t have to endure the cramped quarters in the car for long. The student house is larger than I had anticipated, the living room and kitchen are spacious and my bedroom, while lightly furnished, is more than adequate. Shortly after our arrival, David took us to one of his favorite restaurants, a place he calls “half-chicken,” after his favorite dish. Daring to be different, I ordered the pepe soup con carne, which was a savory soup with four chunks of meat—surprisingly tasty, but I think I’ll try the chicken next time. Afterwards, we made the trek back to our house and made our beds. We have to sleep under mosquito nets as an extra precaution against malaria which is a minor annoyance, but nowhere near as annoying as the rooster who decides to start calling at around 2 am, or the fruit that falls on our house at random times. Anyway, I slept well the first night, and look forward to the rest of the week!

I've attached a picture of my first view of Africa, it was pretty exciting for me, even if nobody else on the plane seemed to think so.