Another sad disaster has struck the country

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 church donated a substantial amount of money and time helping with the tanker truck explosion a few months ago.  Ansu wanted to make sure that we were on his list of resources when the next disaster occurred.

Sadly, the focus of our meeting changed. In a rural part of the country there is an abandoned gold mine.  It is an underground tunnel mine the local villagers illegally go into it each evening to salvage whatever gold is left over. A couple of nights before our meeting as many as 100 of them were mining when a rainstorm caused a mudslide into the main shaft. 16 bodies have been recovered, including two pregnant women. Two survivors have been recovered. Everyone else is still inside. 

Because the government is still in transition they still do not have a budget and so there is no money available for a rescue operation. Officials can't even get gas money to drive their vehicle to this remote location. The army is on site protecting the location and there are people with shovels trying to excavate but they need large earth moving equipment to get in quickly. We are in the process of trying to get them some quick gas money.  We will see what we need to do after that.

We visited some of the villages where we have provided wells and latrines. Part of the project required that the villagers were trained on hygiene. Not so easy to do because they speak different local languages and many of them don't read. The company that's doing the project for us has hired an acting group that visits the various villages and puts on dramatizations of good hygiene practices and consequences if you don't do good hygiene.  It's pretty basic stuff like washing your hands after the bathroom and before you prepare and eat  food.

This is one of the hand dug wells that we provided to the villages. Hand dug wells are preferred to the ones that are done with a borehole because they're much cheaper to build. The problem is you can't go too deep. This well is about 35 feet. Our contractor waited to the end of the dry season to dig the well so they would be sure that they would reach the water table when it is at its lowest point. They dig the well about eight to 10 feet lower than the water table level.

Unfortunately they weren't so successful with the boreholes they had to construct for some of the deeper wells. They had three dry holes. They went down to 160 feet and struck imperturbable rock. They're going to have to move the well site from the center of town to a more remote location.

I have had my fill of off road driving for the rest of my life. The truck went over this log bridge quite easily. It's still in the dry season so we didn't have any mud problems.

We had a nice Easter service today. My inspiration from it was not to underestimate the happiness of the resurrection and the atonement.