It was quiet in the Compound today; we only had 2 visitors. Papa Zachariah, one of the night watchmen, came to pick okra from the plot he had planted in front of the mission house. Our other visitor was Red; he came to apologize for the gutter pipe that he contracted for us to buy from a friend of his in Accra. Red thought the pipe was a cement pipe in actuality it was a piece of plastic sewer pipe. We need the pipe to be put in the gutter at the back of the property when we open the wall and put in a gate. If we don’t do something in the way of a gutter the entrance into the back property will always be washed out. Since we thought the piece of pipe was cement and that it would be heavy we paid too much for the transportation to bring it up from Accra. It is not that we cannot use the pipe; we can and will use it but it just kills me to know that I have been taken advantage of and have over paid for something! Of course there are no “return” policies in Ghana! Ha! Red was annoyed when he saw the pipe and he called his friend to let him know he was not happy!
This morning after we did the wash we started working on a way of organizing all the keys for the new locks and doors at Kulkpeni. There are 15 doors, 15 padlocks and 45 keys. What a mess! In the past Timothy has tied them all on a small piece of rope and it takes forever to find the key that they need. If the locks rust there is no telling if you have the right key or if it is fault with the lock. Today we painted a room number by each door and painted a corresponding number on each lock. Steve then cut small squares out of a 5 gallon plastic container. We used the soldiering gun and burned the room numbers into the plastic, highlighted the numbers with Sharpie markers, drilled a hole in each plastic square, attached a key ring and the key. Each padlock came with 3 keys. We bought large double key rings and made 3 complete sets of keys. Now if they lose one set of keys they have 2 others to fall back on. It took us hours and hours to finish that project.
Steve spent the rest of his day working on the Social Welfare report. He has to turn in a report every year so we can keep the Child Center licensed.
On one of our trips to Yendi we were stopped by a couple of immigration officers. They wanted to know if we were working in Yendi and what we were doing here and if we had been to see their commander. They were obviously new to Yendi. Steve told them that we were not working (for money) in Yendi; we are volunteers. He said yes, we knew the commander and had made a sizable donation of cement to the commander to help with immigrations remodeling project. Luckily ,we carry copies of our passports and resident visas with us and we also carry Non-Citizen cards and driver’s licenses. After we showed them our document they were warm and friendly!
Have a great day!
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
