Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

Last week was a trip to the big city for a quick weekend to pay deposits for the 2017 mission team and to visit the Christmas Fair.  It is a fun event that makes one think of similar events back home.  It was much needed as I have been preparing end of year reports and that is a strange mix of getting a lot of useless data and fighting to get useful data. I put up an offer for those wanting to go to the fair.  Several PCVs wanted to go along, which is why I will be working hard not to mention the name of the big city since they don't have permission to go there and also the reason for it being such a short trip as some needed to get back to schools since they are teachers.  I ended up with a truck full.  The trip there was uneventful but the trip back was full of people puking and a lot of stops by police to only be waived on.   The fair features various crafts, professionals and other groups on display often selling something.  There are food vendors from local restaurants.

This week had a couple special moments to it.  First it rained on monday.  If you want to know what I mean by rain there is a video below.  The noise you hear so loudly is the rain hitting the roof of my "house". The second is a visit by long time friend and engineering colleague, Frank DeVita, PE.  He and his brother-in-law have been working on starting a ministry in Kiruani.  You can learn abou their minisitry at  http://b2buministries.org /  They have a clean water bored well and are currently building a primary school in addition to the various mission teams that come over to work and preach around that area.   Frank and his contractor, Abraham, visited mid week and I met them in Singida then drove them out to our site where the three of us discussed various building techniques and ideas we have for getting rid of bats.  I was happy when they told me they could not even smell the bats in our medical buildings which is a major improvement over when I first got here.

What oh what should I write about this week.  I know what I don't want to write about because I have spent so much time trying to explain the election system, media, why people are rioting and why it is wrong that I am exhausted from the conversation.   Yesterday was Veterans day.  It was a different one for me this year.  It was first very hard to be proud of my service as I read messages on facebook after the election that were from all sides of the election and filled with hate.  A great quote from G.K. Chesterton sums up why that is so important:  "The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him." This year's celebration has also been different because I have been contacted by voices I have not heard from in many years.  Most of the people I served with and all my closest brothers have died.  So when I heard from some of the support staff from my days in service I was shocked but loved catching

Today I want to bring back an issue we have discussed in different ways in the past.  Most notable was a discussion of the electricity usage for the country vs the state of SC during the constant blackouts during last year's hydroelectric plant shut down. So this time let's talk about the specific use of a household in SC.  According to  http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/south-carolina/  the average residential home in SC uses 37.3 kiloWatthours per day.  For those that struggle with the metric system, that is 37300 Watt hours per day. With the contributions by the mission team in September, we have now installed solar powered generated electricity to all of our buildings .  Each major building and several smaller ones have their own power generating stations (not substations) totaling 475 Watts of production.  After taking in efficiency and number of direct sunlight hours I calculate that is 3.6 kiloWatt  hours per day.  So our entire site generates less than 10% of