NOTE: It seems I just couldn't load the blog for November 30th. I'll try to find another way to get it posted. After two weeks, success at last. It is now mid-December.
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
It doesn’t feel much like
Christmas here but they sure do like to celebrate it; wherever we go we see
Christmas decorations—not so fancy like at home, but Christmas nevertheless.
We left at 7:45 AM for one of the
church buildings to have a phone call conference with Gary Winters, our friend
and welfare manager stationed in Auckland.
He gets an update from E/S Leben just about every week. This took a while, but it was fun talking with
him.
One of the things he wanted to
know about was what was happening with the container. I mentioned this before, but here are the
details of why we are stuck with a container full of rotted Taro: Samoa, being
very thoughtful and kind decided to send a refrigerated container to their
suffering neighbors in the Vanuatu Islands.
They were instructed to wash and peel the taro because of what happened
in the 90’s. Years ago someone sent some
taro in some bad soil to Samoa or Tonga and it left the country with a disease
that devastated their crops. Since then
these islands are very picky about bringing in anything that could ruin their
food supply. They even make sure that
trekkers don’t bring soil in their country from another one on their
shoes. E/S Leben said that they even
cleaned their tennis shoes when they first arrived here.
The infamous container
in front; in back the emergency container that the church keeps on these
islands, plus their water tanks. This is
where we had a conference call with Gary Winters.
The first mistake was that Samoa
did not peel their donation as requested.
When it arrived and this was noted, they wanted to send it back. Instead, the church decided to peel it so it
could be used. But the government wanted
the disease control people to open the container to monitor it. Instead, they
did not show up for weeks until it rotted.
There is a bit more to this story, but this red tape ended with the
church sending a couple of men here to bury the rotting food in the ground on
church property. But, the machinery was
not available or was broken. Yesterday
was a holiday. In the end, the men sent
here said that it would not be buried till next week; and the beat goes on…
Sister Leben went to
a meeting with WASH—I think with a group of NGO’s—while we ran errands to the
pharmacy and grocery store. We have a
small fridge, and want to stop paying big prices for big meals we don’t
need. We went to the forestry service to
talk to the people about the portable saw mill sent here and to Tanna by the
church to use in building the houses. We
also talked about the best types of trees to use for the structures that we are
building. Each island has a different
type of wood. We stopped by the hardware store to find what we will need to build
a prototype rain catchment here and on Tanna.
This bicycle pump has beautiful, clean water and serves about 5
families. This girl collected the water
and dumped it over her head for a bath.
We also checked out this pump
that supposedly has been working for 30 years that the government put in for about
5 families up on the hill. Their claim
that it has never been repaired is unbelievable and so no one believes it, and
yet they keep claiming that it has not been fixed once (well, maybe
once…). It is what they call a bicycle
pump because it looks like you are pumping up a bicycle tire. It is actually made in Africa, and so we
might like to try it there at least, if not here also.
We met with a man in the ministry
of lands and mines and this was a very useful meeting. He will give us the areas where there is most
need for clean water. They will also
provide a geologist to site in places that can be drilled to find the best
water and also do the water test. We
were so happy to have met him and will be able to work with the government and
other NGO’s to coordinate finding the best water sources.
We went to the
office where you buy tickets to go to Tanna.
It worked out that Jim and Elder Leben will go next Monday and Tuesday;
to save money we ladies will not be going (this makes me happy and sad all at
once). I am sad that I won’t see Tanna,
but then I’m happy that it won’t be so hard on my old body. Today I got rather heated up and began to
have a problem. Luckily, buying the
plane tickets took long enough that I was able to cool down in the building.
We quit working a bit earlier
today, by 4:00; the first thing on our minds was the pool. We could hardly wait to cool off. It felt so very, very good. I ate dinner in my room (cold cereal) and Jim
ate in the restaurant here. I feel a bit
revived.
This very large spider
is a resident of the hotel. A young
couple here told us that she had a rather large, young family tucked away from
where she was catching food; this could give me nightmares…
I think they must know
how to grow things a whole lot better than we do.
Trivia: the name of the unifying
language here is called Bislama, but it is pronounced Bishlama.
I finally found ‘the city’ of
Port Villa. I guess we had never yet been
downtown till today. It is not large,
but has everything you need. They do
have some traffic in the city, but it is not as terrible as most places that we
have been to.
Good evening from our bungalow on Efate Island. As we say goodnight we are
listening to a nice rain—I love that sound!
Love,
E/S Greding, Jim & Karen, Mom
& Dad
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