Steve and Barnabas in Tanzania

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...

I like things I work with to be organized.  Not OCD type organization just organized so I can find things.  Sometimes that can be a problem if you don’t have the tools you normally use to organize with.  For example my “desk” is a bit of mess because I have nothing to put files in.  So they sit on top of my desk along with my books and constantly get knocked askew as I flip through them to file receipts which seems to be a major time consumer for me.  First I have to do the accounting then I have to take pictures of receipts for the folks in the states and rename the picture files once I get them on my computer so they can easily figure out what they are for then I get to file them in their folder.  I also have to keep account of all the money I spend personally for tax purposes since I have to show the money I got was what it took to live here. So the tool room has been a big headache for me.  First it is the old min-shop room and the shelvin...

Here is a young girl who helps care for the child of one of our nurses.  She is always on site with the baby strapped to her back bouncing it around and playing with it.  She saw me headed out to take pictures of the site work and asked I take one of her.  I barely got the baby in the picture too because it was so low on her back. How  does the old saying go-I would give my entire kingdom for … Well this week it would be for some really good screws.  This week I finished up painting the buildings we built late last year.  I had finished the inside last year before I left but still had the outside to do this year.  It took four good coats of the oil based paint to get a good protective coating.  The picture below is of the bathroom with the first three coats.  There are still some areas after three coats caused by the roughness of the concrete that requires going over it one last time to make sure I got it all.  The p...

Hello everyone,  it has been a while since I could get internet and power at the same time and therefore it has been three weeks since I wrote a blog.  That means this one is going to be long.  Thought about breaking it out but every time I do that one blog gets a lot of attention and the other gets very little. Christmas Staff party Things that I hope to remember to cover: Feelings about this last week in Tanzania Work Done on Site Living inside the new house Building Furniture Eyeglass Program Graduating Kids from the Pre-school Barnabas Injury Report/Update Thanksgiving with Friends Christmas Party at the Site Nduguti Crochet Class Feelings about this last week in Tanzania Going into this I realized I would have split feelings over my life in Tanzania and my life in the USA but that has not been as much of the case as I thought it would be.  While I have made some friends here and couple that are good friendships it does not really compare yet ...