Odds & Ends: Money exchange—if you leave a tip of $100 you’ve just
left about $1.30--bring your cash in a shoebox!
It seems that everyone is remodeling their hotels, this one
included. We now eat in the
bar/restaurant as the main one no longer exists. We are interested to see the results when we
return. Here in Africa , most people do not own TV’s but they are all
football fans (soccer). Prince has a
little business that he calls a movie theater.
It is not like at home where he would show movies--he just shows
sports. He says it has been very
successful. He is also very close to
moving into the new home that he’s been building.
This morning Prince came by along with the last contractor to be interviewed
and Jim liked this one the best. Because
this contractor’s projects were so far away from here (he does them in many
cases way out in the bush) we don’t have to drive around in the heat to see
them. This makes my body quite happy. We will probably use Bundor and at least two
other contractors. It will be
interesting to see who performs the best so that we can develop more
contractors to use in the future and so that they keep their prices in line. We also want to see their ability to do community
development and hygiene training, which includes one of the most important
aspects of the work, sustainability.
Over lunch Prince and Jim mapped out how many wells, latrines and
hygiene training we would give to each contractor. Bundor joined them later to find out what
part he would play in the upcoming project. Soon I have to fill out the project request
forms, which questions always cause me some frustration because I don’t have
all the answers. I got smart and asked
Prince to come up with the information before I fill out the forms.
And so, one more night in this lovely hotel on a very fine mattress, and
a cleaning up or two more in their blessed shower before taking off tomorrow
after lunch for the airport. Then the
tedious 3-flight trek home on the short-long-longer flights to LAX. As Dorothy would say, ‘there’s no place like
home…’
Love, Mom & Dad, Jim & Karen, E/S Greding
One of the contractor’s wells. Even though it isn’t pretty,after 4 years it
was still working.
This cute little
boy’s mom said he had malaria but she didn’t have money to buy the medicine.
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