October already

It is the middle of October and fall has started.... somewhere!  Our temperatures are about the same as always and nothing seems to have changed any.  We have had some real "frog strangling, rock rolling, gully washing" downpours in the last few months.  Normally the rain storm blows in sometime in the late afternoon with lightning and thunder and sometimes a real downpour that lasts for an hour or so.  One lasted for most of the night and brought about some real flooding.  That can be a sort of disaster when you live in a mud walled house.  The walls tend to dissolve and fall apart.

I have been fascinated by the construction project going on in our culdesac.  I talked to one of the workers and he told me that it will be four floors.  They poured a concrete floor and put up stone block and concrete block walls for the first floor.  They put up concrete forms for a bunch of columns that the stone and concrete blocks are put up between.  They have at least used a lot of rebar.  I wondered how they were going to pour the concrete into the forms for the columns.   In Idaho they would bring in a concrete pumping truck and use ready mix delivered in trucks.  Here they had dump truck loads of gravel and sand delivered and a lot of sacks of cement.  They had a engine powered cement mixer brought in  which arrived in the bed of a little Peugot truck.  A bunch of the guys got around the thing and set it down and moved it in behind the corrugated fence.  All of the concrete is mixed by shoveling  in sand and gravel and cement with what appear to be large dish pans.  At first they were dumping the concrete into buckets which were carried over to the trenches for the footings and dumped in.  Finally they started using wheelbarrows.  When it came time to fill the forms for the columns they set a ladder up and a man climbed up the ladder.  Two men would alternate handing up a pan full of concrete from the wheelbarrow which he would dump into the forms.  After several pansfull had been dumped they used a gas vibrator to shake it all down and then repeated the process until it was full.  When one column would get filled they would move the ladder to the next one and would alternate the guy on the ladder.  I wish I had a good camera that could take a picture of the process.

Now they are pouring the second floor.  They erected a form with a bunch of panels for the floor and a lot of poles to hold it all up filled the entire thing with rebar and wire mesh and got ready to pour the floor.  I wondered how they would get the concrete up there.  The erected a metal frame with a trolley track on the top much like the trolley track in old bars to put hay in the loft.  They then installed an electric motor powered hoist.  Concrete is poured into a big steel bucket, hoisted up, the motor and bucket roll down the trolley track and the bucket is dumped into wheelbarrows which are then wheeled across boards and dumped into the form.  The entire process is labor and time intensive.  Labor here is cheap.  I suppose that they will just use a taller frame and move the entire hoist up to the next floor when they start there.


We have had several of our branch member sick with malaria.  We really worried about Bathsheba since she is expecting but she managed to recover and seems to be doing well.  President Okila's son was sick on Sunday with what appears to be a case of measles.  Michelle was also sick and when we called her mother to see if she has measles she hadn't broken out yet but had all of the symptoms as well as her friend Whitney.  We will probably have half of the branch out with measles by this coming Sunday.

 The white sails in the background are for fishing boats headed out to fish for Nile perch.  Gilbert Pond should come and catch these perch.  They can reach over a hundred pounds.

 

 The big bull hippo with a baby in front of him.

 The guys in the background were fishing and had several fish of different kinds which they showed to us.

 Pictures of hippos.   Our guide said that if the female has a male calf she will hide it from the male or he will kill it.  If another male comes along and tries to move in there will be a serious fight.

 Elder Clark and Sister Jorgensen looking out over the lake.  You can see one of the boats in the background.  Some of these boats look a lot less than sea worthy.  Watching the captain and his one man crew bail water out before we left did not fill me with confidence.

 

 Here is a picture of Sister Jorgensen and one of the orphans.  These are "throw away babies".  Some of them have handicaps and some are HIV and some were just not wanted or the mother could not support them.

 Our display in the park.  The Elders and Sisters got quite a lot of interest from it and a couple people even came to church to check us out.  Below we are eating ice cream and cake to celebrate Elder Clark's birthday.

We went with the Elders and Sisters to Hippo point for a District activity.  We tried to get there early enough to see the hippos on the shore but didn't make it.  We took a boat out to see them and get some pictures.  I took quite a few of the hippos and some fishermen and their catch and of some weaver birds that were making nests in the trees.  Our camera disappeared before we got them on the computer.  I asked for some from the Sisters and so will post some of the hippos.

Elder Clark went home, Sister Phiri went to Eldoret and we have a new sister and a new Elder coming in tomorrow October 13.  I lost the pictures that I took of them when our camera was "lost".  I will try to get some from the other missionaries.

We had our branch conference last Saturday and Sunday with President and Sister Broadbent the mission president and his wife.  We also had an institute training class and Prince Omondi who is the head of the seminary and institute programs for our mission was here.  It was a very uplifting and motivating conference.  I resolved to do better.

Our water went off on Saturday morning.  By Sunday night the reserve tank was almost empty and I shut off the pump.  It is now Wednesday and it hasn't been turned back on yet.  Sister Jorgensen called and was told that a water main had broken and when they dug it up they had broken another one.  It is supposed to be back on today.  I will believe that when I see water running out of the taps.  We are down to using our bottled water and hoping that it comes back on before we have to haul water.  My garden is dying in the heat.

 These men were sitting here all day long for days making smaller blocks out of these bigger blocks.  We have quite a pile of rubble out there now.  I don't know where they are using these blocks in the building

 One of our 6:30 am GRAAAAK birds  They tend to wake us up if the alarm doesn't go off on time

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 Geese parading past us at Brother Mogere's house

President and Sister Okila in front of their house up by Luanda

 OOPS!  I think I missed the road.  Now what do we do?  Turned off of one narrow cow trail and didn't quite make it onto the next one.

 Isn't that tire supposed to be on the ground?

Little boy with a very big knife and his little sister.  I don't know what he was doing with the machete.

 A big pig

 A little pig.  Notice that they are both tied at the foot.

 Elders Dobard and Keno at the equator

Elder and sister Jorgensen at the equator.

After the Picture of the stuck truck was taken we managed to get it pushed around to where we got it out.  At the next place we parked on the road and walked in.  While we were there it rained and we walked back out in the sticky red Kenyan mud.  The next place after that we drove down another cow trail and "parked here".  That was another narrow road where I missed the ditch by inches.  Getting the truck turned around in these narrow spots is really a challenge.  Most of these narrow trails are bordered on both sides by brush some of which has thorns as I found out when I got out.  I got the truck turned around finally and then had to straighten out the mirrors which had hit the brush and been pushed in.  Speaking of mirrors, I was driving through the crowd at the market and clipped a man with the passenger side mirror.  They walk in the road and won't move for a vehicle even if you honk the horn and you have to squeeze by which is made a lot worse when another vehicle comes from the other direction.

We were waiting for the bus to bring in Elder Dobard and watched people getting out of a Tuk Tuk.  A Tuk Tuk is a little three wheeled taxi and it says on the side "Capacity three".  The people started to get out and kept coming like one of those clown cars in the circus.  We counted ten people some of which were children but two were well fed women.  I don't know how they all got in or how the poor thing moved with them all in it.