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Published: August 20th 2009
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Wednesday started a little earlier for me then most. There are quite a lot of roosters and chickens wandering around the guest house grounds (although they do seem to be reducing in number for some reason…) and this morning their dawn chorus started about an hour before dawn. This goes to show that even the chickens have the same concept of time as the rest of Kenya! Anyway it gave your humble blog master the chance to write up most of Tuesdays blog entry before the rabble woke up.
Well after breakfast, Cornflakes with warm milk (nice) , sausage, egg, and toast we met in the Library as usual and did the first chapter of Nehemiah as a quick bible study, talked a bit about the first chapter of the book we are all reading (Extreme Righteousness by Tom Hovestol) then prayed and started work.
After yesterdays shopping trip we now had all the paint, wood, electrical supplies, and tools that we needed to make a real start on the Guest House and Shiatsala School projects. We had quite a bit of sawing and painting to do so we took Phil and Simon along with the usual suspects to
Rush hour
This is the street outside the guest house at rush hour. the school, everyone else remained at the guest house to get on with the building and painting.
As we arrived at the school we found that a trench had been dug between the computer room and the nearest power box which was great so Mike, Ian, Danny, Alex, and Jeremy started laying the cable in the trench. There was also quite a bit of sawing to do so Jerry started off sawing the six 2 meter long boards we had bought lengthways to make 12 bench tops then Me (Andrew) Simon, Phil, Elias, and Anthony finished them off, with varying degrees of success. We blamed the tools and even though that’s normally the sign of a bad workman in this case Jerry agreed (well partially). The hard work was a bit too much for some though!
Mike, Ian, Danny, Jeremy, and Alex moved on to painting the first coat in the Computer room and also started wiring the sockets. It transpired that our assumptions about how the room was set up to be wired turned out to be wrong this meant that a small amount of building was going to be required to join up some of the
Its a hard life
Especially when you just had your ear bent by Jerry for making curvy cuts instead of straight ones. sockets and we had no hammer and chisels!
Back at the Guest house, Mat, Charles, Tim, Dave B, Martin, attacked the walls with the paint that had been picked up in Kisumu on Tuesday. The paint seemed to be the consistency of milk so inevitably it ended up on rather more places than the walls. Mat obviously concerned for his clothing decided to wear an all in one white coverall so he was christened telly tubby! Once the painting had been finished it was time for the cleanup. One of the advantages of runny paint was it wiped of quite easily so a bit of scrubbing was all that was required to clean the floors.
We all met back at the guest house again for lunch and when we arrived Tim Wanbunya had arrived so he ate lunch with us and we talked for half an hour about the politics in Kenya. After lunch Tim, Dave H, Jerry, Simon and Martin had a kick around with a couple of the Children that had come to the Guesthouse with their parents who were visiting.
After lunch we all resumed our work back at the school and the guesthouse.
Earlier in the day the building team had met up with the Kenyan builder Dauwdi (Who drew up the plans) and his team of labourers but a few misunderstandings meant that a bit of time was wasted whilst they worked at crossed purposes but that was soon sorted out the bricklaying started in earnest. Stuart and Mark demonstrated there skills and with their sage advice, Julyan, Alistair, Martin and even Tim managed to have a go. Well truth be told Tim only did a single brick but that didn’t stop him feeling pleased with himself Mike of course had to do one better and did 2 Bricks!
Around 4:30 there was an extremely loud thunderstorm and it absolutely threw it down for an hour or so. I was in the minibus on the way back from Shiatsala at the time and it was surprising how quickly rivers of water started running alongside the dirt tracks we were driving along. Even this suited our purposes though as it filled up the water tank we had been looking at on Tuesday so we could finally test out more of the plumbing.
As the evening drew in we all
met for dinner then after dinner we continued a tradition that Tim had initiated the night before where two people would have to stand up one after another and answer questions about themselves posed by everybody else. It has been a great success so far, giving us a chance to find out more about each other and hear the different ways people have come to know Christ. Martin and Mike were up tonight and Martin told us a bit about how his work is affected by his faith whereas Mike, after telling us how great Australia is fessed up to once falling asleep during a sermon!
Doug just happened to be around as Mike and Martin were doing their question and answer session and so spontaneous as always Tim collared him to join in so we got the hear some fascinating stories about the mission work Doug has been doing over many years and how he came to end up overseeing operation here in Butere.
After a long fulfilling day we all headed off to bed so we would be fresh for tomorrow.
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Morag Sutton
non-member comment
Isn't modern technology great?! Thousands of miles away and we can read stories and see pictures of what you guys are up to, fantastic! May God keep you all safe, esp with all this electrical work, dodgy tools (!), funny food, and zero health and safety (!!) The stories are great and it looks like you're making good progress and adapting to Kenyan life à la "take it as it comes"!