Saturday, May 19, 2007

Since the lights go off at midnight I will not write a journal entry for today, today. Let’s try tomorrow.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

It’s amazing how quickly you can forget about detail for an entire day. Humans are made so shortminded, at least I can speak for myself. I had to look at the schedule for yesterday in order to actually figure out what I did, so some of this information me be fabricated. I apologize that neither you (if you’re reading this) nor I will be able to figure out what is a lie and what is a fact. I guess you could say it would be a lie if I was doing something cool because engineers are not cool. Anyway, here’s what happened yesterday:

Saturday: So I am trying to figure out whether the alarm clock on my watch actually works or not. Dave thinks it does. I think it does not. I’m pretty sure that’s why I slept in later than what I wanted to that morning. Anyways, we had breakfast, and Nene (I think that is how you spell it, pronounced “Nay-nay”) made us some wonderful pancakes. Shortly afterward, we met with James Kesselly the general manager of ELWA, Augustine, the physical plant manager, Benedict, the principal of the school, and Thomas, the manager of the hospital. They gave us an introduction and gave us a tour of the ELWA campus. This took a few hours. They showed us the location of all of their wells, some of which they were using and others they were not. They also took us inside the grounds of the hospital and I saw the location of their old incinerator and the possible location of their new one. (The hospital was surrounded by walls with sharp shards of glass on the top. I guess this was to keep people in or out of the hospital.) They also took us by the physical plant and showed us their existing cooling pond. The water in that pond was so hot, but we’re hoping that improved pressure and new sprinkler heads will improve their cooling so that they could use more than one generator at a time. This will help them to us their new radio transmitter tower to let Africans listen to the gospel. We were also shown the ELWA Academy and the tour was over. It made me excited for the projects to actually see where we were going to do them. We are hoping that these projects will ultimately help the Liberian people and that we also show them how to do it so that they can do it themselves. Ray’s said about a hundred times and I 100% agree with him, “Get a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Show a man how to fish and he will eat for a lifetime.” That is what we hope to do while we are here. After the tour, the main dish in Liberia was served to us, rice ‘n’ soup. It is really, really, good. Rice with an herb makes the rice not stick together, better than the rice at Chipotle. Ten on top there is this gravy-type stuff with meat chunks and vegetables. I really like rice ‘n’ soup. We are getting fed really well here in Liberia. Dr. Sacra came in right after lunch to have a meeting with Larry and Thomas (Drs. Zavodney and Thompson, respectively). While they were meeting, Greg, Nathanael, Alan, and Earl went to absolutely demolish the old incinerator. The top rows were very easy even I could push them over. After a while it started getting especially hard since we were using a mini-sledgehammer (1 foot handle with a smaller head). It became broken after a Barham started to use it. An employee with the physical plant, Matthew, also helped us to destroy the old pieces of cinder block. We did happen to find a couple of really old sharps still left unburned inside of it. We avoided these at all costs. We were also welcomed by a mass exodus of cockroaches, crickets, and lizards. We must have destroyed their pleasant home. We got down to the base level of the bricks when we decided that a chisel would be necessary to flatten out the base. This took the largest time out of any of the steps in this process. We used the same sledgehammer and a pick (pointed tip, not flat-edged, I tell you) so it was rather difficult to get all of that finished. In fact we only flattened out half of the old existing incinerator. We then went over to the Sacras, Goodnows, and Lamberts for a cookout. There was barbecued chicken, fruit salad, a rice casserole, and also chocolate birthday cake (a real birthday cake), because is was Chris Lambert’s and Joel Goodnow’s birthday. Everything was so delicious. I had a lot of fun there, but it got dark very quickly (about 15 minutes) as it does in Africa. We then went inside and we (Greg and I) talked with the Goodnows, Chris, and Joshua (the pastor’s son, who was a drummer, who we had met that day after work). Joshua is considering going to college and majoring in construction engineering and was looking to apply to Grace College. I told him about Calvin and Cedarville. I had a deeper conversation with Chris who pretty much told us the story of his college days until now. He was in his junior year of college at IU studying maketing and was getting ready to go to law school when God called him to the ministry. He ended up going to Fuller in LA for seminary and met his wife Andrea there. He was a firm believer in not having short relationships before marrying and even insulted his roommate for doing so. Eleven months after knowing Andrea he married her. “When you know she’s the one, you know.” He then looked for a place to go on a one-year missions experience and an organization to do it with. He first chose a NGO (non-governmental organization) in Uganda. Through the grace of God he was able to find out about the fraud that this organization was doing. It was a very popular one and well known but they were taking the donations instead of using it on the Ugandan people. The leader, he said, was the most evil person that he knew. But he was able to get out of it and found a contact with SIM and he is here in Liberia for the next six months. Later, we went over to the Sacra’s because the Goodnows’ kids’ bedtime was coming up. I checked my e-mail there. I found out today that my roommate for this year is named TBD. I guess those are his initials. He sounds foreign to me, but I hope he’s nice and he speaks English. By the way, I am having the hardest time understanding Liberian English. (I had to get that out there). That was about it for the gathering social events part of the day. Finally, I walked back to the guest house to write in my journal. I would have wrote about it yesterday, last night, but Ray Hutchison wanted to talk with me. He is an amazing man. He was such a gift of encouragement and he can talk with anyone. He was telling me about the security problems on campus and in fact a couple of nights ago a traumatic incident occurred. Tim had seen the light in the pantry go on and off without seeing anyone inside. Well, there was a man inside, with a cutlass and tied Time (Goodnow) up and put him on the back porch. His dad came and attacked him with a chair and forced him out of the house. Tim was able to get loose and he walked back into the house. All he stole was car keys, but they changed the locks the next day rendering those keys useless. This story actually made me fearful to go to bed. (Thanks Ray). My bed is right next to a window and I kept imagining a cutlass cutting through the screen and attacking me. I know it’s silly but it seemed real at the time. The heat did not make it any easier to sleep at all. I did not remember sleeping that night. I’ll come back later and tell about today’s events.