Wednesday, September 12,
2012
I am sitting in the dining room at the
new humanitarian couple’s lovely house in
Freetown,
Sierra Leone. It is
brand new, roomy and quite beautiful--slightly more pristine than many of the
expensive African hotels we usually stay at. Our biggest worry was
that they only had a fan in our room, air conditioning in their bedroom and
living area, but that turned out to be fine since it is the rainy season and not
as hot as it usually is. However, we are in
Africa, so things don’t always work
exactly… They’ve been frustrated about the Internet service, but
it may be the man who set them up (we heard rumor from Turay that he might tell
you he is getting you a high level service, making you pay for it, and giving
you a lesser one). Getting here to the house is dicey, first on
just bumpy dirt, then a few very steep hills. They are isolated
from all the other couples. It takes them 45 minutes to get to
their office, where the Internet also does not work most of the time.
They have to go over to the main office to do their work—and they are
also having trouble too (used the same man I suspect). So, their beautiful desk
in their oversized bedroom is rather useless to them when they lack the
Internet. The dryer does not get hot, so the clothes come out as wet as they
went in. The showers lack water pressure; in order to get the soap
out of your hair you have to have an additional container that collects water to
pour over your head. The hot water in the shower only worked once,
so obviously that needs fixing too. This morning Sister Burns said
her shower was spitting at her. Obviously, they have a long way to
go before they are truly set up so that they can work and are a little
frustrated, very anxious to get going. There are no closets in the spare room so
our bedroom looks like someone having a garage sale. We fight over the one plug
in the room. Another problem is mosquitoes. In my
jetlag mode I fell asleep quickly, but woke up to being bit. I’ll try to quit
complaining. I’m adjusting,
really…
Sister Burns in her new kitchen—very nice but not very
big. Everything is new, even her ‘Suzy Bake Oven’.
(It’s only slightly larger than
that.)
White in
Accra,
Ghana we ran into President and
Sister Roggia, who are over the missionaries in
Liberia and
Sierra Leone.
We were surprised, but they were not and expected to see us.
They were traveling with Elder Sitati and his wife and another Seventy
and flew on the same flight to
Freetown (they were in the
good seats though). We all rode over on the Pelican water taxi
together; the Eco, which lands closer to where they want to be, is fixing their
dock, which sank into the sea. Elder & Sister Burns picked us
up. It was good to see them again. They are a lovely
couple, so eager to learn and wonderful to be
with.
This morning it began to rain, hard!
Showing up at our veranda were two missionaries, soaked to the bone and
dripping. They decided to try and wait it out, not even asking to
leak water all over the house, remaining on the veranda. One of
the missionaries is one we first met in Kenema on our last trip—it is always fun
to see them again.
Elder Purcell, furthest away. You probably
can’t see how soaked through he is but his shirt is glued to him.
We met him on our last trip when he was serving in Kenema. His companion
in the middle is actually Turay’s brother who, when he began living with Turay,
was told that he had to go to his (Turay’s) church if he was going to live
there, so he ended up getting baptized and is now getting ready to serve a
mission; the other young man is the guard for E/S Burns’s gate and said he would
listen to the missionaries.
We ran our errands, taking the usual
half-day jaunt and went to the mission office, where again we could not get
Internet. Luckily, Jim had bought a new card for our mobile
Internet service, so we used that and it worked in the office and later in the
house. We are grateful to feel connected to the outside
world. Burns’s are still
stuck.
After we got home we heard from the
Mission President that the PM group needed the truck we were using back on
Tuesday, not enough time for us to go to Kenema. After much
complaining, we asked Turay to find us a rental. But the next day
they called to say that the PM guy could use the crumby truck if we would be
back on the next Thursday. Deal! We just saved about
$700 in rental costs! The couple has yet to get their truck, which
was promised to them by now. If not, we’ll be back to renting when
we return. We will need a good truck to check out the
Waterloo project, and no
one would leave Freetown
with the loaner—it has been known to be perfectly
unreliable.
We stopped by to see Turay and his
wife Dorien who had her baby girl on 9/11—a pretty baby named
Victoria. We
gave their other children Prince and Princess coloring books and crayons, and a
blanket for the baby. They fed us hot pepper soup—very tasty—very
spicy. I think I was the only one able to finish it—but I just
downed it quickly and it didn’t make my nose run too much. Turay
is always adding on to his house, and he showed us the newest addition area
under construction. OSHA would be appalled, but none
of us died in the rubble…
Turay holding Prince, his sister-in-law holding baby
Victoria with Dorien (the mom) standing next to her. Elder &
Sister Burns, holding Princess.
Thursday: We are in
Kenema,
Sierra Leone at the Capitol Hotel
after another rainy day. Jonathan and Amarachi brought their children over to
eat dinner and to meet the new couple and plan our next few days.
We’re here to do a 90-day check on our last project. We
have come not to expect much, but we always have this
hope…
In
Africa if you have a little bit of money
everyone drops off their children to these relatives to take care of.
Jonathan & Amarachi now have four more children and teenagers living
with them. Two of them are related to Amarachi and the other two
belong to his side of the family. Amarachi says that since her
mother had 16 children (yes, this is not a typo—all by herself & no twins)
she is used to having lots of people around. She likes it.
However, she does point out that sometimes it is challenging to take care
of them all. Turay also has a parcel of relations living with him,
which grows each time we see him. Turay is running for office from
his constituency (home area). We’ll see if he becomes a politician
or not…if so, we hope he is a good one.
Our drive here was muddy and
rainy. Apparently we’ve hit the rainiest time of the year.
It rains every day and longer each day than when we’ve been here before,
and it sometimes pounds like it was shot out of a fire hose. The
Grafton road is being worked on by
China. It is
being widened now and things are in the works, but it was a sloppy, red mud
mess.
That’s all for
now.
Love & kisses from Grandma &
Grandpa, Mom & Dad, Elder & Sister
Greding
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