This afternoon Zack; one of the church leaders from Bakpaba and Timothy Niligrini came to the mission house to discuss the ongoing problem of the metal roofing sheets sitting on the side of the road between here and Buipe. He really wanted us to take the truck and pick them up. Steve told him that they would have to come up with a different plan. We found out that the roofing sheets were closer than we originally thought. They are on the other side of Tamale; about 1 to 1 ½ hours away from Tamale and about 3 to 3 ½ hours away from Yendi. Steve told them that we would help them with 500 Cedis (100 dollars) to hire a vehicle to convey them to Bakpaba. Still, finding a vehicle that was willing to carry them will be the problem. We even called Red to see if his brother that has a medium sized truck would be willing to go and get them. He said that he would get them we dickered over the price and got him down to 700 Cedis. That was the price of bringing them to Yendi; he wanted another 200 Cedis to carry them from Yendi to Bakpaba. That was too rich for our blood! We cancelled that idea and went back to the original plan and gave the church 500 Cedis and left it to them to figure out how to get the roofing sheets to the village.
Zorash said that the government had extended the number of days they were going to allot for the people in this area to register for the National Identity Cards by 4 days. They also said that at the beginning of the year they were going to make everyone renew their SIM cards for their cell phones and anyone who wanted to renew had to have a National Identity Card. These people love to talk on their cell phones; this is a very clever way for the government to ensure people want to get the card.
We loaded up all the non-burnable rubbish and took it to the community dumpster this evening on the way to Bible study. Of course before we could take it Mr. Iddrisu and Nazo had to go through it and take out anything they thought might be valuable. They always find something that they want. One man’s trash is another man’s treasure! Once we dump the rubbish the neighborhood children look through it hunting for treasures. Not much goes to waste.
Steve thought that his continuing education class this morning was going to be on Polio but when he got there they had change the topic and they learned about epilepsy and anti-seizure medication. The anti-seizure medication is supposed to be covered under the National Health Insurance Scheme but most of the time the hospitals do not have the medication and that makes the families have to buy it out of their own pockets.
A new set of very small premature twin girls came to the Center this morning; they were 2 weeks old and weighed 1.2 Kg and 1.4 Kg. (2.6 pounds and 3 pounds) they were very tiny but looked vigorous. The mother was happy with the preemie clothes.
Thank you for your love, prayers and support.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
