Thursday, July 28, 2016
Jim dozed off early enough but I
stayed up late working on my computer.
This turned out to not be such a good idea because after I went to bed the
Lebanese music began, well after midnight—there is building next store that
often has parties and show soccer games so it gets really loud. That kept me awake for quite a long
time. I probably slept for 3 hours, both
of us waking up at 6. We both fell
asleep for about 30-45 minutes till we got a call from Jonathan—they were going
to be here to pick us up in 45 minutes!
Scrambling and tired, we made it nearly on time.
We took Jonathan’s car, which had
Jim and I, his wife Amarachi and one hygiene training guy. In the other car that Carley’s were driving,
they had another hygiene trainer and the man from SALWACO, from the
district. He doesn’t get paid, so we’ll
give him a little something. I realized
that we knew him—he was with us several years ago before we put any of these
wells in. We were headed to the 40
Kenema District wells we did in 2012.
These are ones that went very well until Ebola decimated the
populations. In one community, 26 people
died. Others moved away out of fear of
the disease and water committees broke up and many stopped collecting money for
the water. So we have been in the
process of retraining 2/3-3/4 of them,
reforming well committees, fixing what was broken that was our fault, having
them pay for the small repairs that are needed that were just because the well
broke down, etc.
A woman taking part in
the hygiene training program. Using
pictures, this listener is supposed to describe what is right or wrong with the
picture she is holding, and then put it under the right heading, whether it is
good or bad. The hygiene trainers don’t
ever tell them what to do or how to think, but let them come up with their own
conclusions.
We drove to the
furthest one, which took quite a while to get to. The Districts around here are huge. At this water point we watched as the two hygiene
trainers taught one of the lessons to the people. We don’t understand the language, but we know
what is being said (mostly) because we understand the hygiene training
program. We spent most of the time here
of course, and then went on to see other communities that were being or had
been retrained, of course checking out their wells. Most were doing okay. Tomorrow we go to the ones that are
broken—there are just a few of those.
This is the well at the
site where they were demonstrating their hygiene training to us. Jim had requested that we see one of these
training sessions. The typical problem
was that the gates fell off because they used adobe brick instead of what we’d
requested (the community was supposed to make the bricks). Many of them were working on putting the
gates back on. But, the well was working,
and that is the most important thing.
The roads in Kenema city have
deteriorated, the ones that are paved and the ones that are dirt. The roads in the district were actually less
bumpy than the ones in town even though we drove through several streams and some
very muddy roads along the way.
Apparently, the reason that the roads in town are so bad is because the
Mayor of Kenema is in the opposing political party as the President. The Cobinah’s say that the Mayor is not very
humble and is too antagonistic to the President. They claim that if he would not be so
prideful that they probably would get better help with their roads, but he is
openly against the President so they have gotten really bad
.
I noticed a great many motorbikes
in Kenema, more than there used to be.
Cobinah’s say that they come from Freetown for two reasons—there are
less bikes here and the police hassle them a bit too much there and not as much
here.
The weather was okay today,
mostly cloudy and sometimes raining, even though it was still warm and
muggy. The weather is just easier to
take during the rainy season.
If you look closely
you’ll see 5 women with babies on their backs; I have never seen so many new
babies and pregnant women at one time as we did today, and some of them
appeared to be VERY young. It almost
seemed as though they needed to make up for all those deaths from Ebola. One woman who appeared to be about 20 was
sitting there nursing her baby. She
indicated to me that I ought to take this child and raise it because she was
not married. I assured her that Sierra
Leone would not let me take her baby out of the country, not to mention our
ages! This is one of the reasons
Amarachi & Jonathan want to start an NGO training program for girls and
women. Too many of these girls are not
married.
On the way back we checked out
all the wells along the way or off of that road, and ended up seeing I think 7
well sites. We got home in time to order
a dinner and eat an hour later because that is how long it takes, at
least. Cobinah’s ate with us. We are always surprised at what is in our
food. Some of us ordered chicken
hamburgers. What we got tasted like a
flat hot dog in a bun. It wasn’t all that
great and it was a surprise since the night before they actually got chicken in
their hamburger buns, but we were all so hungry that we didn’t care. The others had chicken and rice, and that was
very good.
While we waited and
ate it began to rain harder, pouring away, me wondering how we could dam up all
that water!
Sister Carley was quite
fun to watch. She spent a good deal of
time singing with the children, and of course they follow you around any time
you are taking their pictures, hoping to get in one of them, but the cutest
thing I saw was when she began dancing with one of the women and of course it
turned into a happy riot. I do those
things also, but when we are with a couple on the ground, one that is here on a
mission, I back off of that—this is their time to enjoy these people, and for
the people to enjoy being with them. We
are excited about this couple—they are really doing great things.
Tomorrow will be a repeat, except
with E/S Carley. They will meet with the
police again about their water project request, doing a little shopping (Sister
Carley loves to sew and wants to buy from the local shops), and then returning
to Freetown.
Another day tomorrow of coming
home feeling like a whipped doggie…
Love, from Kenema
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