Thursday, May 14, 2015
John Mwingira arrived at our
hotel at 9AM with a Hertz rent-a-car and driver. We would drop off the driver back at Hertz
after a bit. The medium-sized SUV has
4-wheel drive in case we get stuck in a puddle since they are in the middle of
the rainy season. The vehicle is kind of
dingy and well-used, but it drives along just fine and the air conditioning
works. The weather was tolerable, with
the sun only coming out once during the day.
It is muggy, though, but nonetheless better than the weather we had when
last in Ghana.
Elder & Sister
Wilson and John Mwingira at the home and also district office where Isabell’s
used to live. After seeing John we
realized we knew him from years before.
We first stopped at the mission
office/housing for E/S Wilson. We are
familiar with this house because E/S Isabell lived there when we were in
Tanzania in 2004-2006. I remember it
well since it was the place where we went after I got a case of heat exhaustion. Sister Isabell fixed me up with fresh fruit,
juices and a fan to sit in front of. It
was during the hottest time of year, February.
It was that same trip where I thought I would expire on the plane going
back to Nairobi. It can be unbearably
hot that time of year.
The first community
wanted more available water so that they wouldn’t have to pay the owner of this
water point as much as they do now. They
did not have great need. We spent a long
time walking all over the area to see that they had other water points to draw
from also from this same owner.
After we visited
with the Wilson’s, we went to the car rental place to drop off the driver and
continued on our journey. We went to a
place where they wanted a new borehole with a hand pump. We found plenty of water in the area. Some private parties have boreholes that pump
water to places throughout the community.
They want a borehole so that they can charge ½ the price of what they
pay now. It did not appeal to any of us
about their great need.
Pretty lady and her
baby boy.
Our second stop was at a
school. All they had was broken down
wells that had gone dry; one was machine drilled by the government. They did it wrong and then left it unused. It makes one wonder…anyway, we decided that
this could be a good area to do a project.
We told them our criteria and think they will be able to save the money,
get help from the government, and decide what type of water project they want—either
mechanized or hand pump. About 2,000
kids go to the school; they have lots of buildings for classrooms and have two
sessions. There are enough families
around that could contribute to the well and also use it. There are mostly dip wells in the area—they are
not clean.
This school with gobs
of children had the most useless and broken wells that were never dug deep
enough and otherwise poorly constructed.
It is always fun to be around children who are ecstatic that you are
there and taking pictures.
This all sounds like it didn’t take
very long. It appears that Tanzania has
the same problem as Kenya does—an amazing amount of traffic. After just these few stops, we still didn’t
get back to the hotel till after dark and long after our normal dinner
hour. Jim was hungry, but I was just
dirty and tired. It took forever for us
to get back to the hotel—a real endurance test, and John still had to get back
home—not close to the hotel. We are
starting earlier tomorrow and hope to accomplish more visits. As it is, we are one day behind because of
our lost luggage.
Another day, another dollar…
Love, from Dar
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