Steve is outside rotating the tires on the truck. We bought new tires for the front end of the truck when we were in Tamale earlier in the week. I told Steve that he should just take the truck to the guy that patches tires and have him put on the new tires and then rotate them but he did not want to spend that much time sitting at his shop. He still had to take the tires to the man to put the new ones on. I am happy that is not my job; the high temperature today was 109 degrees with a heat index of 114 degrees.
The air condition men from Tamale arrived this morning about 8:00. The problem was not an electrical problem. He had to replace some sort of valve; all the gas had leaked out because the valve was not working. He said that the compressor will not kick on if the valve is the problem. Even if it had kicked on there was no gas so it could not have cooled anyway. We drove it around town and it seems to be cooling. Hope that it lasts until we get back from Chereponi on Sunday!
Zorash went with us to the grinding mill and we got the weaning mix ground. After it goes through the grinding mill it is very hot; too hot to bag. The ladies that work here will bag it on Monday when they come back to work.
After we ground the weaning mix we took the sledge hammer to the welding shop to be repaired. Years ago we stopped putting wooden handles in the sledge hammers because the men slung them with such force that the handles would break. We welded heavy metal pipe handles in them. If you can imagine Nazo has broken the weld on one of the hammers twice. He is the one that is breaking the large stones and Mr. Iddrisu is the one loading and unloading them. Nazo did not come to work today; he said that his waist was hurting which means his back was hurting. I wonder why? If I slung a sledge hammer for 3 hours my back would be hurting too.
We also stopped at one of the shops that makes the men’s traditional woven tunics. The tailors do needle work on the tunics and I wanted him to do some stitching on one of the quilts that I made. He agreed to try to do the stitching so we went to the market in search of thread. We were looking for something like crochet thread but we did not find any. We found a nylon thread that they use to mend fish nets and string beads; maybe that will work. I personally think that it will be very hard to sew with but it is worth a try.
Thank you for your support!
In His service,
Steve and Kandie
