The masons came to work this morning and they got all the air spaces where the walls meet the rafters and roof chinked. They had to divide blocks in half lengthwise to fill the space. We had to rent a scaffold for them to chink the peaks on the porches; the peaks look sort of like dormers. All in all it turned out looking good. Today’s work was just the prep work for the plastering that will begin tomorrow. Dawda said that he is going to try to hire 4 additional masons to help him with the work and another man to mix the plaster. He said that he would try to find at least 5 women to haul the plaster; he said that every mason needs his own lady to haul for him. One would think that the more people that are hired the faster the work would go but that is not always the case; sometimes the mason works faster than the men can mix the mortar. It is sort of like the concept of traffic; you can only go as fast as the slowest person in front of you. Dawda said that the reason he did not want to start the job yesterday was because he was trying to find someone to harvest his soybeans. He said that he could not find anyone and that if his soybeans crop was ruined I would have to pay for it. Ha! We will see how well that works out for him!
Mr. Iddrisu spent all day yesterday and part of the morning cutting fire belts around the wooden electric poles that are on the back property. Almost every year our fields catch on fire because someone is burning. Before we had the tall walls and the razor wire people would crawl over the wall and deliberately set the fields on fire so that they could catch all the squirrels and rats. If the fields are on fire the electric poles will also catch on fire.
Donkey was back at work this morning; they finished harvesting the Ya-Na’s corn. I told you that the Ya-Na had 300 acres of corn but I was misinformed; he had 600 acres.
When Mr. Iddrisu used the motor king to return the scaffolding that was rented today the clutch cable on the motor king broke and he was stranded. Steve went to his rescue and towed him back to the mission house. Steve just came in from outside; he bought a new cable and attached it. If it does not work well we will have to have the mechanic take a look at it. It has only been a few weeks since Red replaced it so there might be a bigger problem with the cable.
We took another load of stuff out to Kulkpeni this afternoon; Steve got the hasp on the metal door fixed and now it can be locked. Someone had removed the pin in one of the hinges on another door; Steve found a long bolt and nut and fixed the hinge. It will be more difficult for the pin to be removed now.
We got the lye soap mixed up; we buy the locally made lye soap and crush it, then we cover it with boiling water and it makes a thick paste. The cooks use the paste to cover the bottom of the cook pots to make clean up easier after cooking with firewood all day long. They will use about 7 ½ gallons of the paste during the seminar.
Nana Bekum, the evangelist that works in the Chereponi area called Steve this morning and said that they had started fighting again in the village near his house and that 5 people had been killed and several houses had been burned. This just happened last night. He said that he is not sure that he will be able to come to the seminar tomorrow and he might have to wait until Thursday to come. He said that some of the people had run away from their homes in fear and were staying at his house. Steve told him that he should just stay at his house and take care of the people who were staying with him. He also needs to stay there to protect his property. Nana is rather stubborn and he really does not want to miss the seminar but really in the whole scheme of things it might be more beneficial for him to miss the seminar.
Please keep the seminar and the people in Nana’s area in your prayers.
In HIS Service,
Steve and Kandie
