Day 52 Maralal June 29, 2011

Greetings

Well I thought it was just Western Kenya.  I am here in Maralal writing my blog by candle light.  Susan was gracious enough to give me two candles maybe the power will come back on soon.  Ken is at the training center and is not here to turn on the generator.  Maralal has been fairly fortunate and the badly needed rain has been coming down every day.  Not a huge amount but enough to give the crops around town some water.

Today did not start out so well again.  At nine am we were told our pipe would be coming in thirty minutes.  By my calculation ten minutes is an hour so we should expect our pipe around noon.  I had time to go into town and go to the bank.  Joel and I came back from the bank after ten.  The pipe finally arrived at about noon thirty.  By this time Kym had joined us and he was hungry.  He is a growing boy so I sent Joel and Kym off to lunch.  Poor Kym he had been on an eleven hour Matatu ride from Nakuru and was not feeling that well.  Kym was a real trooper today.  After lunch we started to cut and thread the mass of pipe that will be needed to make the desks.  Each desk has nine pieces of pipe and there are thirty six desks to be made.  I used my trusty stop watch on my phone and Joel and Kym were able to thread both sides of a piece of pipe between two and a half minutes and three minutes.  There are three hundred and twenty four pieces of pipe to manually thread.  By my math this is somewhere between thirteen and sixteen hours just for threading.  Joel did most of the cutting of the pipe and Kym did most of the threading.  I am not sure which is more brutal.  Kym finally conked out about five and Joel stayed with me until six cutting more pipe.  Poor Joel was using a hacksaw to cut the pipe because the battery on the reciprocating saw kept dying.  I put it on the charger and I was able to cut some more pipe after Joel left for the day.  I cut pipe until that battery stopped working.  Now the power is out and I am not sure if we will have any batteries tomorrow to cut the last of the pipe.

Joel and Kym threading pipe

The fabricated flange made with a coupling and sheet of steel with four holes

Ken and Susan have acquired a new member of the household.  His name is Mr. Binks and in his first couple of days he has managed to scare all the mice away.  Or at least we haven’t seen any.  Mr. Binks is a black cat with one white whisker.  He doesn’t like the thunder and he likes to sit by the screen door looking at birds.  He also meows a lot.  He is also a lover puss and loves to sit on our laps.  It took him a while to warm up to me but I think he now likes me and will sit on my lap.  I rub and scratch his head and under his chin.  He loves it.

Mr. Binks with his one white whisker

Tomorrow we will continue to build desks and I will be going to the school site in the afternoon weather permitting to start the electrical work in the class rooms.  We have gotten off to a slow start however I believe by the grace of God we will be just fine in our schedule.  I believe the desks will be completely finished Monday or Tuesday and the electrical I would assume could be done by that time as well.

   

Take care and God bless

Dave