Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

I have always been a big fan of the DIY type shows and it nearly became an addiction while I was recovering from heart surgery.  While I was home during Christmas last year, my parents had recorded an entire season of Tiny House Nation on the FYI Network for my brother.  I enjoyed them not only because of the decisions people had to make about what could go to their new home typically a tenth of the size of their current home but mostly about Zack's methods for finding inventive ways to get more from the small footprint of the homes.  The other part I liked about the show was many of these tiny houses were more than double and some triple the floor space of the building I was going to take over as my house in Tanzania.  Don't misunderstand I am not whining here, our doctor his wife and small child all lived in the building originally intended to be a guard shack before me.  Them and a colony of bats. One of the deals I made for moving into the structure as my...

This week was a little slower than the last couple.  Mostly due the fact I only paint the pre-school exterior after school is out for the day so after lunch (my lunch at noon not the Tanzania lunch at 3 PM). This week I had a DIY type project.  Yes I know I am doing them all myself except the concrete pours because they require a lot of people but I am referring to the type DIY project I used to do back in the states.  The pastor at the church asked if we could make an announcement board where they could pin items of interest or information.  So my memory search how I would normally do this and realized I actually had all those materials here on site.  I was not a big fan of the color choices I had extra to paint it with (silver and gold) but did not want to run out of the colors I need for the playground. A finished project this week I started with two of the old 1x8 boards used for some concrete work in the past.  After cleaning off all the c...

Barnabas at the new blackboard Friday we had a small re-dedication service with the pastor and members of the church that meet in our pre-school building, one of our teachers and the rest of our staff from the medical clinic and grounds.  Since only one member of our staff has been present for the majority of the life of the pre-school building, I decided to start off by telling the folks there the history of the building or at least what I know of the history.  Why?  Because if ever there was a building that was an example of faith I would say that building is it.  Yes our entire ministry is an act of faith in God to provide and make it successful.  But the Pre-school was probably the most visible act of faith there is.  The story starts before the building was ever built with Robert Makali, William's brother, holding a pre-school in their family home back in the days William was stateside going to college. Robert Makali and the first Pre-sc...

Sorry about not  posting last week but I am pretty certain no one wanted to hear the details of my stomach problems or how many times I had to go to the bathroom all week.  I did get some amazing sleep in:  at least two full days I barely crawled out of bed.  Fortunately all this started while I was still in town so I stayed in town where my bed was roughly 10 feet from the toilet instead of all the way across the site. I did head back out to the site this week despite not being over the effects.  But those that know me also know I typically will work myself out of an illness if it lasts too long which this one was.  It seemed to work as things started getting better on Thursday and now I feel good to go. The bad part is we are currently in the middle of a tight time schedule project with a hard end date.  We are repairing the pre-school and redoing the playground area and school starts back on July 13th.  I was expecting to have some small de...