Saturday, July 19, 2014
This has been another interesting week. Our translator, Flavien Kot, has been sick this week and we spent several days in the mission office. I love staying busy and it’s more of a challenge when we’re not actively involved in developing projects. We were able to spend some time on our school desk projects. There are two schools we are considering, both from the Catholic Diocese. Other advisors have counseled us to use the Catholic Church’s infrastructure; they have great connections and no money.
The two schools we’re considering are diametrically different.
- Bukanda School is an elementary school located in the middle of six remote villages and accommodates about 250 students. They have no desks and sit on bricks or stones on wooden planks for desks. They are the poorest of the poor. We have visited this area to consider refurbishing hand pump wells. Most of the wells that have been developed in the past are no longer working because no one takes responsibility for maintenance.
- Maisha-Karavia is a progressive school with a wonderful principal who could easily fit the title of champion. We’re always supposed to be looking for a “champion” who can shepherd the project. This guy has built 10 new classrooms in the past year and needs 400 new desks. He has received a $50,000 grant from the government because they have recognized the contribution the families have made. We proposed matching their desk commitment dollar for dollar and still need to present our proposal to Johannesburg. He said he would have 3 quotes no later than Tuesday and would have a formal letter of request including a listing of the school and parent commitments. He is super, considering that we have spent much of the week chasing down 3 proposals for the Bukanda School.
Probably the most memorable event of this week was our dryer fire. The power has surges and is totally unreliable here. Our laundry room is in a separate cinder block facility. I was doing laundry and had put a load of garments in the dryer around 9:00 and returned at 10:00 pm. The smoke that came billowing out of the laundry room about blew me over and I can still smell the burning garments. The heat was so hot, it melted the sheet metal off he top of the dryer and the metal door was melted off its hinges. We lost about half of our garments, but I was grateful because my previous load was all of my white shirts.
Our landlord was so responsive that the very next day, he bought a new heavy duty dryer and had the room repainted. I took a few pictures of the fires before our guard, Samuel hosed it down with water. I’m sure it was electrically caused and it was a bit of a scare It could have been so much worse; no one was hurt, no property other than the dryer and garments was damaged and it wasn’t my fault.
Something else I’ve been working on this week was updating our emergency plan. Elder Clawson has been responsible and he is going home in a couple of months, so he’s delegating his assignments. It coincided with the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner and the Gaza strip turmoil. We have a national election next November in DR Congo. Last time they had a national election, they sent all the non-local missionaries (all seniors) to Johannesburg for 3 weeks. Mom and I felt a little badly that we’ll already be home by that time.
Another new event has been driving on our own. We still do not have a vehicle, but with a new mission president who doesn’t yet drive, we have been driving more. Our translator also didn’t have his annual inspection and insurance stickers updated, so we have driven to the project sites with a mission vehicle. This week has been especially fearful because there are police patrols everywhere. We are told they do this twice a year; they are checking all the stickers and there are roadblocks everywhere.
Another fun thing we have been doing this week and another delegated assignment from Elder Clawson is shopping for the missionaries. Every missionary who arrives receives certain supplies and someone has to keep the storehouse stocked with those supplies that include:
- Blanket
- Water bottle with a filter
- Rechargeable led lights
- Pillow and sheets
- Umbrellas
- Mosquito net
- Electrical power strip
- Emergency food bucket and first aid kit
Mom is the new quartermaster after volunteering for this job. Can you imagine any man trying to teach mom how to shop? It was fun and we have gotten to know the downtown area much better after spending time downtown.
We have also enjoyed walking with Brent and Celeste Atkinson. They live in the same complex as us and we try to walk almost every evening. Elder Atkinson has been a victim of police extortion twice in the past 10 days and he prefers to walk over driving. We have been walking downtown the past 3 weekends and we take our back packs. There are two senior sisters who are a few years older than we are. They asked us to take them walking to downtown and we did last week and they wanted to go again today. They are real troopers and have enjoyed being among the people more. They were told not to walk early in their mission and have not had this experience . We have seldom felt threatened and enjoy both the exercise and the opportunity to see more of the people and the culture.
Our mission president will be making the same Luputa, Mwnene Ditu, and Mbuji-Mayi trip during the next 10 days that we did earlier. His wife is having a very difficult adjustment period and this will be a real wake-up call for her. For us, everything looked better after our return; it’s all relative and we recognized that for the Congo we were extremely spoiled with our living conditions in Lubumbashi compared to these locations.
The weekends are our most challenging times because we have too much free time. Sundays are a 3-hour meeting in a language we don’t understand and Saturdays have become more bearable by immersing myself in cleaning projects. I clean the floors every weekend because of the dirt and dust that accumulates with the open louvered windows. I do almost all of the laundry and try to help out with the dishes. It helps me stay occupied and involved.
I’d have to say we have started to settle-in a little more. You have to become blinded to your anxieties and cling to one another like never before. Mom has been so strong. She is a great cook as you all know and having familiar food is a comfort. We have never spent this much time together and we are adjusting more with each passing week. She has taken over the organization of all the project files and correspondence and reporting. She continues to say, we never could have worked together in your office, but we are working together here and it is working.
One unnerving bit of information is that we may have to move. The humanitarian couples are treated as separate and apart from the regular missionary efforts. We have secured an office in the mission home simply because it was vacant, but by the end of August, another couple is coming by the name of Drapers. They are personal friends of the mission president and we have been put on notice that we will probably be losing our office. We were given the option of having our office in our home or moving into the mission home upstairs apartment where the kitchen could be used as the office. The Clawsons currently live there. We decided we absolutely need the social interaction with the other members of the mission staff and want to be around them. This means giving up a very nice home for a cramped apartment. We currently have two bedrooms, two baths, an office, living room and a kitchen. The new arrangement would be a kitchen(doubling as an office) downstairs, a bedroom and bath with a living room upstairs. It’s still not bad and we need the social interaction.
I think we might have lost our nice living quarters anyway, because a new doctor is coming by the name of Miksell from St. George. He is 76 and recently had double knee replacement surgery and cannot negotiate stairs. We’ll try to remain flexible and keep you updated.
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