As soon as we saw Osman here this morning we left the compound. Osman is the guy that sprays the trees and I didn’t want to be around while he was spraying. The chemicals are very strong. Nazo, the day man helps him with the spraying. We bought Nazo a respirator to help protect his lungs. They look so funny when they are spraying. They are wearing rubber boots, yellow rain coats with the hoods up, sunglasses, and respirators! Nazo has rubberized gloves to wear but he never knows where they are.
We went to the market and bought rice and oil for a gift for the workers. We tried to buy cokes but the coke man was not open. Several other shops that are run by non-Muslims were also not open today. We wonder if today is some sort of Christian holiday. While we were in town we saw a group of children marching down the streets singing and carrying signs that said, “If you die today where will you go”, “Today is the day of Salvation” and such.
We finally got the plastic containers for the diaper rash ointment today so this afternoon we made up several batches. We ended up with 500 diaper rash ointments and 245 of the ointments for ring worms. That will keep us supplied for several months.
We also went to Zorash’s grinding mill and got the peanuts ground into our special “PPP” peanut protein paste. We enrich the peanut butter with powered whole milk, sugar and iodated salt. Many people here suffer from thyroid problems because of not getting enough iodine in their diets. They prefer un-iodated salt.
Gomda finished the truck this afternoon and when he brought the truck out to the mission house he brought his wife and little boy to greet us. His little boy is about 4 years old. We gave him 3 matchbox cars and a small bag of candy. He thought he was in heaven!
Red stopped by for a visit this afternoon too and we commissioned him to start making some gate type things to fix the part of the cement wall that fell down. The wall fell down because our neighbors build a cement wall and attached it to our wall. They did not allow for drainage. The runoff water from their property hit our wall and knocked it down in 2 places. We are just sick about it but there is nothing we can do. We are going to go to “plan B”. Instead of putting back up a cement wall we are going to have Red make 8 ft sections of metal fence type wall which we will embed in strong cement footer. This should allow tons of water to pass through without damaging the fence. In one place 45 feet of fence was knocked down and in another place 28 feet of fence fell down. It is amazing how powerful water can be. Of course this year has been unusual because of the amount of flooding we are having. And I thought that we were not going to have a building project this time!
Take care and thank you for all your help.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
