Our project at JFK hospital has begun. Here they are putting in a new ceiling and walls in the natal Intensive Care Unit.
We went out and checked on a past project where members of the church were given Coco and pineapple plants in order to raise cash crops. This is a picture of a cocoa pod which eventually is made into chocolate. It takes the trees about 3 years to bare fruit. They have to be started in an area with partial shade and then once the cocoa trees grow up you cut down the shading trees
Here is a pineapple field. It has just been harvested. The big challenge here is keeping the weeds and vegetation low. This field has just been cleaned.
Both of these projects were moderately successful. The challenge is fertilizer. It is really expensive here. Natural fertilizer from cow and horse droppings is not very abundant because there aren't very many larger animals here.
We kept picking up passengers as we visited the different farms. I think we had eight people in the cab and three in the back.
We finally got started after receiving the funding for our water project for 10 different villages. This was the initial meeting where all the village leadership came together to learn what their responsibilities will be. In the picture the county commissioner is speaking. All sorts of other government officials were there also. The meeting lasted for about 3 hours. Actually it seemed to be a pretty effective meeting.
Both Cheryl and I had to speak. After I had spoken about three sentences I noticed that everyone was looking at each other and finally they spoke to one of the organizers and said they couldn't understand what I was saying. I then tried speaking at about 1/2 speed and they said it was perfect.
This is by far the most popular childhood toy.
Every 6 weeks some of the young missionaries get transferred to different areas. All of the senior missionaries with the exception of us are involved in transferring them to their new locations. Since they were all in town that evening we got together for a meal. It was at the new Turkish restaurant we found last week. The meal was great
We got three specials and split them with everyone. Lamb, chicken and beef. Surprisingly the lamb was delicious.
This is one of six fire stations in our county. There are probably close to 2 million people in the county.
We were visiting a woodchair manufacturer next door and parked by the fire department. For some reason they wanted to take our picture with them. There aren't very many people that look like us in this country
We are going to buy about 400 new chairs for one of our school projects. Most schools have piles of old broken chairs. Most students set on broken chairs. We think this chair will be substantially stronger. It's made with hardwood and is glued together and uses dowels. They cost only $25 a piece. Metal chairs are about three times more expensive but don't last three times longer.
After 6 months we've gotten used to life here. Driving a car here is so crazy that unless you experience it yourself you can't understand it. But we're used to that now. Everything is so inefficient. To transfer money in a bank takes a month. There are beggars everywhere asking for money. Whenever the traffic slows there are vendors walking through the traffic Lanes trying to sell you things like boxes of kleenexes, computer charging cables, fried banana chips and other food items that we have no idea what they are. Now it all just seems like home.
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