Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Dear Family & Friends,

Today we drove to the wells in the District.  Amarachi joined us so she could check up on the hygiene training there.  It is so hard and expensive to get there so this was a good way for her to check out the work.  It took four hours to visit just five wells. 

Our first stop was the amputee camp.  We were surprised to see how well they were taken care of.  Their homes were quite nice for around these parts and were all painted alike.  They were set in a large, open area.  They wanted their well refurbished so we are going to do that.  They had begged off getting sand and stone as we require at the other well sites.  When we saw the people though we were a little bit surprised that they looked, even with their injuries, rather able bodied.  Most of them had prostheses for their missing legs and didn’t even limp.  Apparently they don’t have jobs and are used to relying on everyone to help them.  I thought how this has handicapped them in other ways.    When I read stories about our injured war veterans I am amazed at all they can do for themselves.  These people have not been taught that they can do something for themselves.

Some of the amputees and their children.   They were missing one or both legs, hands, arms, or otherwise war injured. 

It is interesting to me that with the various forms of begging some make me giggle and some irritate me.  The other day as I was taking pictures at a well site a young adult man commented on my nice camera.  I said that it was.  Then he said, ‘Do you want to give it to me?’  Really?!!  For some reason the way he said it just made me laugh.  Another day a grandma had a baby in her arms carrying her towards our car.  The baby had her hand in the air in the act of begging.  I ignored them and was irritated with the adults that teach babies to be beggars.  We are grateful when we meet Africans who have dignity, the kind that tells a person they can do so much for themselves, even in poverty. 

After looking at five wells sites while driving on dicey roads, we came back to the hotel to get our Internet problem fixed.  That took an hour.  We dropped off Amarachi and decided to finish looking at the five city wells we missed yesterday.  We went to the first well and I started feeling really listless as the day had heated up and of course we have no air conditioning.  Since we were close to the hotel they drove me home.  I realized afterwards that I was suffering from a bit of heat exhaustion (wimp).  I think I sometimes don’t sweat enough.  The weather has been pleasant in the evening and in the morning till about noon.  We’ve also been blessed with fewer mosquitoes.  I recovered somewhat after an hour and fell asleep.  Afterwards I did some wash with only a bar of soap, African style--it actually works rather well.

Jim returned a couple of hours later and said they had visited three more wells.  Tomorrow we go back to pick up the last of the district wells (5) and then we’ll visit the last one in the city.  We’ll be done checking out all our 30 well sites in this area.

Love, mom and dad, Jim & Karen, E/S Greding