Today is a national holiday; it is Ghana’s Independence Day. She was a British colony and she gained her independence in 1957. Yendi has a parade ground and children are selected from various schools to march in the parade. Of course, as always this is our hottest time of the year; we feel sorry for the children that have to march but people are marching all over Ghana. Even the military and the police will march. We personally did not go to watch the festivities; our skin is too delicate for spending that much time in the sun!
Since today was a holiday none of the workers came to work and the mangos littered the yard. Steve and I picked them up and shared them with the old lady who we buy bread from and with Timothy Niligrini. Timothy’s wife was very happy to get the mangos. Timothy has a couple of mango trees on his property but very few of them get ripe because the kids eat them green.
We went out to Timothy house this morning to take him the money that will be needed to pay for the gravel for the church members to mold gravel blocks. Obviously there was a bit of a language barrier when Steve was discussing the building project at Kulkpeni. It was not that the men were not going to build a sleeping quarters/room but that they were not going to make it out of mud balls but they were going to mold mud blocks. They said the advantage of mud blocks is that once they are dry they can be put up in about 2 days time rather than taking a week or more and then waiting for a week for the mud to dry. We don’t care how they do it, we are just happy that they still want to do it.
While we were at Timothy’s house we met with the church leader from Yowando. He is in the process of trying to roof the house that he built earlier this year. He said that he does not have enough tin to completely roof it. Steve told him that we cannot help him roof his house or all 35 of the other church leaders would expect us to help them with their building projects. Steve gave him a small gift just to let him know that we cared about his problem.
Abenada, the late John Kanbonja’s wife, who has HIV came to the mission house this afternoon. We find it very difficult when she comes because she is usually sick and needs medicine but she does not speak English. It is better if she comes when one of the workers is here because she can communicate a little with them. Steve had to call Timothy and have him talk to her; that was a little helpful but still he could not figure out exactly what she needed because she had a list of medicines but had no idea how much they would cost. Finally Steve gave her the amount he thought the drugs might cost and told her to come back if it was not enough. He also gave her a small bag of mangos.
We stopped this morning at Mr. Adams, the fix-it man’s shop and picked up the motor he ordered for us. We are still trying to electrify the corn roasting machine. The motor we had ran too fast, when they geared it down to a suitable speed it would not carry the weight of the fully loaded machine. Mr. Adams did some research and ordered a motor that is already geared to run slowly and to pull a load. He thinks this will do the trick.
Enjoy your day!
In HIS Service,
Steve and Kandie
