Yesterday a father brought his 6 or 7 year old child to the Center because he was looking for money to fund an operation for his child. The problem is that the doctors will not tell the man the cost of the surgery. Without an estimated cost of the surgery we will not even consider helping because the surgeons can charge whatever they like; there are no fixed rates on surgeries and the families are lucky if the insurance pays for the bed. Mr. Iddrisu was the one that brought the man to the mission house to ask for help. We want to help and we will help when we find out exactly what the surgeon is going to do, approximate cost of surgery, and number of days expected for the hospital stay. The father and Mr. Iddrisu were disappointed that we did not just give the man some money or agree to pay for the surgery but that is not the way we operate. Steve told the father that when he finds out more about the surgery and the cost he can come back and we will see what can be done to help.
Zorash and I left Steve and Meri with the Child Center this morning so that we could grind the corn we bought a few days ago into cornmeal. When we left the grinding mill I told Zorash that I could not make cornbread without wheat flour; I wanted to go to the bread mill and buy a couple bowls while we were out. Zorash said that she was afraid that the mothers would be backed up in the Child Center and that Steve would be annoyed with us. Well it would take more than that to make Steve annoyed but to ease her mind we drove back by the mission house to see how he was doing. There were only a couple mothers there so we went on to the bread mill. I was excited when we got there because there was a lady sitting at a wooden table rolling out her bread dough into palm sized balls. She was going to fry the balls, walk around the town carrying them on her head to sell. I asked her if I could buy some of the raw dough and fry them myself. She was more than happy to sell us the dough. We bought enough dough balls to share with all the workers. The bread is very dense, not very sweet and a bit chewy; it is sort of like a cross between a doughnut and a bagel. We let them rise for a while before we fried them. They were delicious!
Donkey and Mr. Iddrisu hauled the rest of the cement blocks that we bought from Dawda, the mason. When he gets extra money he buys cement and gravel and makes cement blocks. When he is short of money he sells the blocks. I would rather buy cement blocks than loan him money! We already have enough blocks for the training center but we did not have enough for the toilets.
After they hauled the blocks they back filled the sidewalk that Dawda put the edge on a couple days ago. They over filled it and it will have to be raked out; I think they over filled it because they knew that when it rained it would settle.
Enjoy your day!
In HIS Service,
Steve and Kandie
