Dear Family & Friends,
 |
Jim saw this
mosquito pond near a well and told the community to fix it, NOW. When they didn’t move he began to fix it
himself, and eventually they were shamed into helping him.
There is a curfew every last Saturday of the month till noon . The
purpose is that the people are supposed to clean up their area. If they see you on the street walking or
driving they give you a ticket. This may work on the main streets but they
ought to go to the places we do, where the garbage never gets removed! Anyway, the Randall’s came to meet the
landlord at Burns’s house so they could review some of the problems that needed
to be fixed. Even though they had dealt
with him on the phone, they had never seen him before. We were all surprised that this was a fairly
young man—hard to tell their ages, but he had to be less than 40. He was very tall, slender, and handsome and
very well educated and is going to school taking international studies. Sister
Randall told us that he is a rare landlord because he really cares about his
several rental properties. He agreed to
replace the dryer that spins around but doesn’t dry the clothes, was going to
figure out why the washing machine tries to walk out of the laundry alcove each
time it spins, and to fix a few other minor problems.
The first topic of conversation though was about the water, how the city
had cut it off. He confirmed that the
city was working on the waterline above to make improvements. He told us that it would be three weeks
before it was fixed (the date keeps getting moved back). He did assure us though that he knew this for
certain because his cousin was one of those working on this repair.
The moment that we all did a happy jig in our minds was when we heard that
he was going to hand deliver many Jeri cans to our tank! He was going to see
how much was used over a week’s time so that he’d know how many cans it would
take to keep the tank full! We were so
surprised and delighted! Sure enough, on
Sunday morning as we returned from church we saw a young man who had delivered
a number of cans of water to our tank. I
never thought that the sound of a flushing toilet could be such music to my
ears…but the shower, it was still cold.
In the meantime, we asked E/S Randall if it would be cost effective to
add a rain catchments system to the tank here and they said it would. At the mission home they have several tanks
above and some below. They catch the
rain off the roof, which goes into the tanks on the ground, after which they
pump the water up to the others above.
Thus, during the rainy season they only have to use rain water, saving
on delivery till the rains quit. They
stopped off at the mission home to see the system so that Jonathan could give
Burns’s a price for the system, which will probably be paid for by the
mission.
This councilman
tried to take credit for one of our wells by etching his name in the
concrete. Notice though that someone
else knew what he was doing and added his own words to refute what he was
claiming after the man left.
We were also told that the electricity bill needed to be paid—city power
is on about half the time now, saving fuel.
If more money is not added to this bill, we’ll be burning fuel all of
the time for the generator—just another thing to worry about making sure we
don’t run out, but then learned that Elder Randall went down to pay the bill
and load up a lot of months on the card.
Even though there are many months that no one gets electricity, they
still have to pay a monthly bill! Also,
when city power is on the microwave won’t work because the power is weak. Whenever the generator is on the lights are
brighter too. I can’t begin to describe
the rigors everyone goes through to get things done in Sierra Leone . Sister
Randall said that each couple takes on a project while here to help things run
more efficiently. For Elder Peterson
long ago it was to remove the squatters by the mission office so that they
could complete/move their wall—it took his 18-month mission to accomplish that
task. It is the same for everyone. They have a saying here, “We’ll let the next
(couple, mission president) take care of it.” Indeed, they fix some problem or
other knowing they won’t be able to fix most of the problems while here.
When we see
this, we are not inclined to help them.
If they do not clean the well, they also don’t fix it when it breaks.
We were sad to learn that Turay did not get elected. He did say that if his party gets elected in
his area, that they will give him another post so that he will have some
government job. He and another older man
were having a runoff election. The other
man had run three other times so the delegates asked Turay to give him the vote
and support him and then they’d give him something else to do. If they took it to a vote again Turay would
win; so he will campaign for his party so that if they get in, Turay will also
have a government job. Jim saved just
three wells to look at on Monday and wanted Turay to go with them as he takes a
break from the campaign.
Jonathan and Amarachi ate dinner here on their last night and then they
discussed all the things Jonathan needed to do in Kenema and then Waterloo . I
don’t think I’ve ever seen Jonathan so sad before and so reluctant to leave,
knowing the soonest they’d see us would be in 18 months when/if we train the
new couple. And because things change,
who knows if we will come back or not?
We gave long hugs and said our tearful goodbyes. That’s all, love from Africa
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