Saturday & Sunday, December
12-13, 2015
As we continue our work we’ve
noticed an uptick in the humidity. I,
who rarely sweat, have begun to sweat a lot.
Just running errands, returning to our air conditioned truck, one still
sweats and sweats. I am glad it is not
me who has to physically work on the rain catchment structures as Jim has to
do. We have had some rain here also, and
even though it doesn’t always rain for a long time, sometimes the rain is
fairly substantial, and it is summertime here.
On the other side of Efate it does seem a lot drier. On our snorkeling day on Lelepa we saw
evidences of dry underbrush, and it looked like they were not receiving very
much rain at all. But in this Port Vila
area, there seems to be plenty of rain.
Saturday the men worked on coming
up with a cost price for the structures and repairs to homes that they will be
doing over the next few months. They
just got the go-ahead on the next bunch; they are so tired of waiting for this
to begin so they are happy. They have
done some, but barely a pittance from the hundreds of repairs and structures
that they will be building. The rain
catchment project is an added one, and part of the emergency relief fund being
used for this recovery project. So they
also had to do a cost estimate for those so that the church will know the
budget for them.
Because of the
cyclone and because of all the NGO’s in town to help them out, it has created
problems of a new kind—people see what their neighbors are getting and if they
don’t get the same they are jealous, never mind that they only need a repair,
they want the full structure like their neighbor. Since rain catchment is part of this
recovery, they all want one, whether or not they have other easy sources to get
water.
In this compound, a
typical emergency fix by an NGO.
A typical local fix, in this same place.
They somehow manage. And yes, people live in these structures. The church is building one structure in this
area that they will complete with concrete floors or use their old floor, doors
and windows and siding.
Saturday afternoon we went to
investigate a water project request.
Leben’s are beginning to realize how few people need what they ask for. This group of dwellings was going to get city
water, which is clean and available all the time; and yet they wanted more
stuff. It was so easy to see that if
they got together in a group for the hookup so as to afford it, they could save
enough money in 3 months to get hooked up, and cooperate as to the water usage
off of the main valve which tells how much they use; they could have access to
clean water right there in their area.
But they had asked for more anyway (what bother not to just ask…). So, they agreed with our assessment. No other solution was as good as city water,
money-wise and in every other case. The
government is not happy that so many NGO’s want to give way too much. After all, this has been a self-reliant
country till now. We saw all the repairs
that they did on their own to their blown away house structures. The blue tarps were useful in the short run
given by NGO’s to keep the rain out.
Otherwise, they were quite capable of fixing a lot of the problems
themselves. Along come all the NGO’s sometimes
making beggars of them; they suddenly wanted more free stuff—not a good
thing.
Saturday morning while the men
worked on their cost estimates, Sister Leben and I ran errands. Last week the roofing material was shipped to
Tanna; the only problem was that they put the LDS Charities tag on the
galvanized roofing, and someone else who had ordered that, got put on our order
for color bond roofing, which is better.
The new recipient of the better stuff, happily went off with it and left
us with their order instead. The roofing
company said that they would put the correct order on the ship and pay for it,
as it should be. When we went in to see
them though, they said that the ship was full and so our roofing material
wasn’t coming again after all. Sister
Leben was tough (and of course I chimed in); she just wasn’t going to take ‘no’
for an answer. She told them to take
something else off and put ours on because we were leaving and it had to be
completed next week and so there was no other choice. She badgered them a bit till they managed to
do exactly that. We’ll see if our
shipment makes it or not. They won’t
complete the project in Tanna without it.
We also checked on our lumber delivery for the project here—last time he
didn’t bother to let us know that he didn’t have it to send, so they had to
find it and cut it themselves to get it on the job. He assured us this time that they’d have it
on Tuesday, two days before they need it.
We hiked down a path,
and then a steep one to the ocean inlet here.
There are springs next to the sea water and at certain tides people can
come and get clean spring water (it is just to the right of this picture). The problem is that the spring cannot be
developed because of ownership rights; but the people are getting city water
soon. While there children were playing
in the water. We saw something rather
unusual for here: a sea do was pulling a water skier on a ‘scurfer’ behind
it. Even Leben’s said they’d never seen
anything like that here. Across the
water there appeared to be some large hotels—they must have come from one of
those places. But it was an odd sight to
see here.
They call this a ‘bush
toilet’. At least it is a Western
toilet, but I can’t recommend using one.
A torn black tarp was wrapped around it for privacy.
This yacht has been
stuck there ever since the cyclone.
Perhaps no one can figure out how to retrieve it or can’t afford to. We went out to dinner and saw this across the
bay.
Today is Sunday and we attended a
different branch—all in Bislama once again—hard to stay awake, and in a smaller
church building. Yesterday we passed one
of ours that was open air—just plastic chairs on concrete with a roof, no
walls.
I just realized that our sweating
will be over in a week since we’ll be flying home next weekend; I usually don’t
even realize it’s over till it’s over...
Till then, love from paradise.
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