Red, the part time driver, called this morning to let us know that he was going to bring a couple dump truck loads of gravel to the mission house. While we were gone this summer a road contractor started working on the road that the mission house lane “T’s” into. He removed some of the large Teak trees and scraped the road. When they scraped the road they diverted the runoff rain water down the lane. The rain water made lots of pot holes in the lane. There was one that was about a foot deep. The contractor has not finished the road; we think they are waiting for the rain to stop before they work on it again. We decided to haul enough gravel to fill the holes and to build sort of a dam at the end of the lane to prevent the water from coming down the lane. You can already imagine how we spent the afternoon. I say we but Steve, Red and Nazo did most of the actual work; I picked up stones, pushed the wheel barrow and kept them hydrated. When someone says “we are going do to such and such” Larry Underwood, our daughter-in-law Melissa’s dad, says, “We? Do you have a mouse in your pocket?” Ha! The guys got the gravel leveled enough that vehicles can pass over it. Nazo and Steve will finish leveling it tomorrow.
Late this afternoon we went to town to find Gomda the mechanic. He found some headlights for the green truck in Kumasi and he needed the money to buy them. We stopped at the house we thought was his house only to find out it was his father’s house. A little girl that was about 6 or 7 years old volunteered to get in the truck with us and show us where Gomda was. She was so cute; her English was pretty good considering all she had to do was point. We did not have to turn off the main road because Gomda was waiting for us on the street. We took the little girl back to her house and I gave her a Cedi note (about 20 cents) when she got out of the truck. Steve laughed and said he had already given her some coins. She was just beaming when she got out of the truck; she could not wait to show her friends the money. It was probably more money than she had ever had just for herself! We made her day!
Amama, the lady that helps in the house, did not come to work today. She has been sick; probably with malaria. She went to the hospital but there were no doctors so she came back home and asked a neighbor that is a nurse to help her. The nurse asked her family to go and buy an IV starter kit and some IV fluid and some medicine. Maybe she will be feeling better in a day or so.
Meri did not come to work this morning either. She sent her son Aliu who has sickle cell disease to school this morning and they sent him back home. He was having a crisis and could not stay at school. There is not much Meri can be do when he is hurting except give him Ibuprofen; if it get too bad she will have to take him to the hospital.
Thank you for all you do for us and for the work.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
