It was a little cooler this morning but it did not last very long. The high today was 114 degrees instead of the 117 degrees that it was yesterday. It has been thundering but our workers told us that it is not going to rain; anyway not today. We will see how good they are at telling the forecast. My brother Paul has made an arrangement with Red, the driver, to come and pick him up and take him to a hotel if it starts to rain so he won’t have to be in the apartment with a leaking roof!
The electricity is off again. Sometimes we think that when the people at the power station hear the thunder they just go ahead and cut off the power. The power was off most of the morning. Thankfully we have a generator.
Zorash did not come to work this morning. We are not sure why she could not come but she said she would come tomorrow to make up her day off. We had Nazo’s wife and daughter come again today to help Meri and Amama clean up the mess the rain made in the house and apartment last night. It was terrible but it looks much better now. Not sure how long it will stay clean but we will enjoy it as long as we can.
They have been shooting guns all day long. A big man in our area died and his family is having the funeral today. It is customary to fire off guns as the family parade through the street; the bigger the man the more guns that are fired off. Nazo told us that this man is the guy my dad had to buy the big mango tree in the front yard from. They have a very strange custom here about planting trees. Whoever plants the tree owns the tree even if he does not own the land. When you buy a piece of property you have to find the owners of the trees and pay them for the trees. If you do not want to pay for the trees the tree owner has the right to come onto your property and gather the fruit from the tree or cut the branches for firewood or cut it down all together. My dad actually had to pay for the big mango tree twice because 2 men claimed they owned the tree. I guess it is sort of like mineral rights in some states.
The carpenters got quite a few rafters put up today but they will not be coming tomorrow because they are Muslims and most Muslims do not work on Friday because that is their day to go to the mosque.
We gave the lumber that they removed from the roof to Mr. Iddrisu and Nazo, most of it will be used for firewood but they found a few pieces that could be used for a building project.
Take care and have a great day!
In His Service,
Steve, Kandie, and Paul
