Tuesday, June 11
Jun. 12th, 2024 01:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gottawonderToday I am grateful for:
More rain, though it didn't need to come in the form of an aggressive storm.
Before it rained, I was able to do a fair bit of mowing while I let everyone out into their pastures.
I worked with Dandy for a little while, and he stayed with me the whole time, instead of leaving to go around the perimeter of the round pen. This is good progress.
By then my Sweetie got home (a little early) from work, and he needed to pick things up in the yard in anticipation of the storm.
I asked if he thought it was too bad to go to the barn, and he thought it would be fine, it would blow over quickly...
Well, the drive to the barn got pretty exciting about half way there, the rain was very forceful, there was lightening, and pretty hard to see the road.
I got to the barn, and though I might just wait for maybe 15 minutes to see if it blew over, as it often does very quickly. R came out to tell me there wasn't any power, and she thought there were more storms coming.
Well, the drive home was fine, just normal rain. I probably could have done ground work in the arena.
Oh well.
We had time to watch an actual movie tonight, so we watched "Hustle", which is more or less a remake of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels". It was a lot of fun.
Very similarly to Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, The Republic of the Congo was once inhabited by pygmy people, then Bantu people settled.
The Portuguese arrived in 1484 for trade, and of course began taking slaves.
Then it was part of French Equatorial Africa, and it gained independence in 1960. "It was a Marxist–Leninist state from 1969 to 1992, under the name People's Republic of the Congo (PRC). The country has had multi-party elections since 1992, but a democratically elected government was ousted in the 1997 Republic of the Congo Civil War. President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who first came to power in 1979, ruled until 1992 and then again since after his reinstatement."
For a while during the German occupation of France in WWII, Brazzaville (capital city) became kind of "France in exile", and a lot of infrastructure was built, and a lot of France's administration for the management of it's colonies moved here.
Today it has a semi-presidential system, with both a president and a prime minister.
Also like Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, it has some oil reserves that give the country some economic stability, but the same kind of drastic inequity that leaves many people very poor.
There is coastline to the Atlantic Ocean, savannahs, rainforests, and mountains. So, once again, a wide variety of ecosystems. They also have gorillas.
Not sure about other kinds of human rights, but Wikipedia says "Some Pygmies belong from birth to Bantus in a relationship some refer to as slavery.[59][60] The Congolese Human Rights Observatory says that the Pygmies are treated as property in the same way as pets.[59] On 30 December 2010, the Congolese parliament adopted a law to promote and protect the rights of indigenous peoples.[clarification needed] This law is "the first" of its kind in Africa.[61][needs update]"
The economy is mainly propped up by oil and gas. There are also diamonds. In contrast, most of the rest of the economy is subsistence agriculture and handicrafts. There is a lot of potential mining that is not currently developed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_the_Congo
https://youtu.be/xEW_fjNuXNE?si=Xo1J_vx8JXzZPlT3
More rain, though it didn't need to come in the form of an aggressive storm.
Before it rained, I was able to do a fair bit of mowing while I let everyone out into their pastures.
I worked with Dandy for a little while, and he stayed with me the whole time, instead of leaving to go around the perimeter of the round pen. This is good progress.
By then my Sweetie got home (a little early) from work, and he needed to pick things up in the yard in anticipation of the storm.
I asked if he thought it was too bad to go to the barn, and he thought it would be fine, it would blow over quickly...
Well, the drive to the barn got pretty exciting about half way there, the rain was very forceful, there was lightening, and pretty hard to see the road.
I got to the barn, and though I might just wait for maybe 15 minutes to see if it blew over, as it often does very quickly. R came out to tell me there wasn't any power, and she thought there were more storms coming.
Well, the drive home was fine, just normal rain. I probably could have done ground work in the arena.
Oh well.
We had time to watch an actual movie tonight, so we watched "Hustle", which is more or less a remake of "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels". It was a lot of fun.
Very similarly to Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, The Republic of the Congo was once inhabited by pygmy people, then Bantu people settled.
The Portuguese arrived in 1484 for trade, and of course began taking slaves.
Then it was part of French Equatorial Africa, and it gained independence in 1960. "It was a Marxist–Leninist state from 1969 to 1992, under the name People's Republic of the Congo (PRC). The country has had multi-party elections since 1992, but a democratically elected government was ousted in the 1997 Republic of the Congo Civil War. President Denis Sassou Nguesso, who first came to power in 1979, ruled until 1992 and then again since after his reinstatement."
For a while during the German occupation of France in WWII, Brazzaville (capital city) became kind of "France in exile", and a lot of infrastructure was built, and a lot of France's administration for the management of it's colonies moved here.
Today it has a semi-presidential system, with both a president and a prime minister.
Also like Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, it has some oil reserves that give the country some economic stability, but the same kind of drastic inequity that leaves many people very poor.
There is coastline to the Atlantic Ocean, savannahs, rainforests, and mountains. So, once again, a wide variety of ecosystems. They also have gorillas.
Not sure about other kinds of human rights, but Wikipedia says "Some Pygmies belong from birth to Bantus in a relationship some refer to as slavery.[59][60] The Congolese Human Rights Observatory says that the Pygmies are treated as property in the same way as pets.[59] On 30 December 2010, the Congolese parliament adopted a law to promote and protect the rights of indigenous peoples.[clarification needed] This law is "the first" of its kind in Africa.[61][needs update]"
The economy is mainly propped up by oil and gas. There are also diamonds. In contrast, most of the rest of the economy is subsistence agriculture and handicrafts. There is a lot of potential mining that is not currently developed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_of_the_Congo
https://youtu.be/xEW_fjNuXNE?si=Xo1J_vx8JXzZPlT3
