Dawda, the mason was here bright and early this morning. He came earlier than he normally does when he is doing a job for us but then again he is not usually fasting; I am sure that the early start made the work a bit easier for him. Another advantage he had today was that they were working in the shade.
We had done part of the demolition work earlier in the week but we still had to remove the doors and casings. It was quite the chore getting the doors out of the casing because the flat head screws that held the hinges were rusted and would not come out. Finally Steve sacrificed the hinges and used the reciprocating saw and cut down through them. There is no way the hinges could have been used anyway. Once the casings were out we discovered that the original corner pillars were made from tree logs which had been cemented through the floor and well into the foundation. The logs were then filled with nails and encased in cement. From the outside you could not tell logs were inside. The header was also a log that had been encased in cement. We had to beat the cement off the logs; the nails did a very good job of holding the cement in place. When we pulled down the header we found lots of termites. The men that were helping us were very happy about the termites because they wanted to take the logs home to their baby chicks. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure!
Dawda got the wall built and got the outside of the wall plastered; he will come back tomorrow morning and plaster the inside. I am not sure how long we will have to wait to paint the wall.
While the men were working Steve was in the Child Center. I was at the mission house keeping an eye on the masons. While I was watching I was sorting baby clothes. We give out clothes pretty soon. We will probably start giving them out when the workers come back from their leave. The ladies last day to work was today. Mr. Iddrisu’s last day is tomorrow and Nazo’s last day will be Sunday. Zorash owes us a couple days; I told her that I would call her one day next week and she can come help me clean.
The nutritional officer from the hospital stopped by this morning; he came as we were trying to close the Center. He is a rather annoying guy; he would like to be in control of the Child Center but the Child Center is licensed under the Social Welfare department not the Ministry of Health. He wants to attach our records to the hospital records so more funds will come to the Yendi District. That is all well and good as long as it does not make more paper work for us. We are busy enough with our own work; we don’t need to do someone else’s work. He said that he wanted to come back next week but the Center will be on holiday. I hope that in 3 weeks time when the mothers start coming back he will have moved on to another project. Ha!
Thank you for the love, prayers and support.
In HIS Service,
Steve and Kandie
