This project at Kulkpeni has thrown us into “Culture Shock”! We have about had it with building projects and working with people! Yesterday, when we went to check on the men that were laying the tile we had a surprise. We told them to tile the floor of each of the toilets and to lay one row of blocks around the perimeter on the walls of each room. We had calculated the tile and were able to find enough of the same color tile to do each of the toilets. Instead of laying one row of tiles around the rooms they had laid 2 rows! What, they told us that they were out of tiles, well of course you are out of tiles when you laid 8 rooms worth of tiles in 4 rooms! At that point there was nothing we could do but buy more tiles. We reminded them that we wanted the toilet floors to be sloping toward the opening in the floor so that urine and the water used to clean the toilets would flow right down into the pit. This morning when we went to buy tiles, we could not find the same color and design that we bought a few days ago so we had to settle on something that was not as pretty and it cost more money too!
This afternoon John, the mason, called and said that the tilers had finished the job and they wanted to be paid out. We were disappointed and annoyed when we went out to inspect the work. (When John poured the floors in the toilets, he took great care to slope the floors.) Some of the floors were flat; some of them were tilted to the back wall; some were tilted to the corners of the toilet. What in the world! That was totally unacceptable. We took buckets of water and poured them on the floor of the toilets to see where the water flowed to. John said that they spent a good deal of time chiseling the floors flat! How annoying is that? We asked the guy what he was going to do to fix the problem. He said that he would remove the tiles and reset them without breaking them. We did not believe him. He assured us that he would not break them. I told him to show me that he could remove one without breaking it. He said that he could do it with a machine. What kind of a machine; he said that it was a drilling machine. There is no way that would work either! He finally admitted that he could not remove them without breaking them and that we would have to buy at least one more box of tiles. I can tell it will take more tiles than that and over half the rooms have a problem. Another thing he did was he changed the shape of the toilet holes because he is not a very good tile cutter and has no pincher pliers for chipping and the fine work. When he knocked a hunk out of the tile around the hole, he just filled it with cement. He could have at least put in a small piece of tile! I have spent this whole email complaining; just call me Mrs. Israelite! Enjoy your day!
In HIS Service,
Steve, Kandie and Skeeter
P.S. Our niece Lyndie is having surgery today; please pray for her and the doctors.
The Monkeyshines
I have decided that God gave us parents just to embarrass us! I love it when Mom gets up early and lets me out of solitary confinement but really does she have to come out of the house and parade around in the front yard in her gown? It is very embarrassing! She thinks it is fine because her gown looks like a dress and none of the workers are around but you never know who might be watching and besides, I know she does not have on her street clothes! Please someone needs to call the fashion police; she needs help!
I told you that I was going to give you a full report on the intestine kabob incident! Well, Mom was able to eat the guinea fowl gizzard because she already likes chicken gizzards. She said that the chicken intestines were not bad, you know that means they weren’t good either! She said they tasted sort of like that spinal cord that is inside the chicken necks and back! Excuse me! Who eats that and how would they know what that tasted like? The cow intestine was another matter altogether! She had a hard time pulling it off the kabob stick because it was stuck down! She said that it was very “barnyardy” in flavor and she could not bring herself to swallow it! See! Even I knew that was a bad idea!
No “barnyardy” food for me!
Love, Skeeter
