The Trapani's in Liberia

This is a lady in the Harbel Branch. Cheryl found her a pair of reading glasses that was her correct magnification.  She was quite happy.  Every Saturday we sweep and mop all the tile floors in our apartment and on our balcony. They are surprisingly dirty. This time of year there's lots of air pollution from burning of fields and dust because it's the end of the dry season. I have to change the water in the bucket about six times because it gets so dirty. The balconies are really bad. We never have our windows open and yet it gets dirty inside. This was the temperature during our church time today. 90 degrees with a feels like temperature of about 108 degrees. Luckily they had fans inside of the building so there was a little relief. The surprising thing is that some members of the branch had suit coats on. When we get home from church we are tired. Ansu Dulleh, the executive director of the National Disaster Management Agency made an appointment with us to get acquainted. The...

 We are buying a trash pickup vehicle for the city of Totota.  This is the one they want. Diesel powered with a three ton lifting and dumping capacity. The problem is we just can't directly buy it. The purchasing department in Ghana has to purchase it through one of our registered purchasing companies in Liberia who then have to purchase it from the actual store. The problem is that a few weeks ago they had 7 and now they're down to two. There is no new shipments for a few months. The city would really like the vehicle before the rainy season starts in one month. They have lots of old piles of trash to pick up. We are also purchasing them twenty four sets of rain boots, shovels, raincoats and 12 wheelbarrows.  5 years ago in Timor Leste we taught English classes. The couple after us did the same but no one has done it since then. A new senior missionary couple has started them up again. It's been hard there because of visa restrictions. Couples can only stay there for 30 ...

This pepper is called pepe. A hot pepper that's extremely popular here. Many of the farmers in our farm training project are raising it as one of their crops. It has good resale.  The farmers either sell it themselves at local markets or bag it in larger quantities and sell it to wholesalers.  Currently we're in the dry season and it's harder to grow so prices are higher. One of our project's training topics was field location selection and watering techniques. When done properly you can raise a good crop in the dry season. Farmers usually struggle to afford seeds for future crops. Our training class taught them how to efficiently produce their own seeds. The effective farming techniques the participants learned  has allowed them not only to produce productive farms but as a byproduct they are able to hire a lot of the local villagers. Here are the villagers weeding. Villagers make about $3 a day and have their lunch meal provided.  Few of the fields we visited were ...

We went on a bicycle ride through the town of Victoria Falls. We had two local guides to direct us.  Cheryl standing on the banks of the Zambezi River. This is the river that flows over Victoria Falls. It separates Zimbabwe from Zambia. We went on a walking Safari with Dean as our guide. He had a rifle, pistol and a knife. He grew up in Botswana on his family's farm. He has an English accent. When asked if he had ever had to fire his weapon on a walking safari he told us a story of how he had to kill a charging elephant. The story was frightening because the elephant got so close that when it finally fell to the ground it knocked him over and the two people on the walking tour with him were right behind him but were untouched. With perfect timing a herd of elephants including a large bull elephant appeared about 100 yards from us. Dean got really nervous and was starting to sweat heavily. He told us where to run to if the elephant started charging. The large bull elephant turned an...

  We drove eight hours to Jackson Doe hospital for the ceremony to conclude our humanitarian project with them. About three hours each way were on dirt roads. Driving on dirt roads is not fun anymore. It was a nice ceremony in front of the hospital with the administrators. I was asked to speak and it was recorded for a news broadcast. It is available on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/share/v/joRcRtrZBShU2WZi/?mibextid=hxI7PO This is one of the two operating tables we donated.  They were so anxious to receive them that within thirty minutes of their delivery there was a patient being operated on one of them.  We donated a wide variety of equipment such as incubators, warming tables, X-ray equipment, ultrasound equipment, and a laser scalpel. Altogether there was thirty two pieces of equipment. We took a trip to Victoria falls. It is one of the seven wonders of the world. It was impressive. The waterfall is about one mile long. The sound from the water was thunde...