Day 53 Maralal June 30, 2011

Greetings

It’s Thursday in Maralal and we are starting to progress further in the building of the desks.  The day did not start out as great as I would of liked but by the end of the day things were starting to look up.  On Monday we ordered the wood for the desk tops and the bench seats.  The owner of the shop told us that everything would be ready and delivered Thursday morning.  This morning we went back to his shop and nothing I mean nothing had been done so far.  The wood was just being delivered and it was less then a third of what we ordered.  We then agreed that he would finish the wood he received by 2 pm that afternoon.  Well we went back at 2 pm and he still had done nothing and then told us to be back at 4 pm.  It was now time for another plan.  We decided to go to another place and see if we could get some lumber and find someone else to plane the wood for us.  The problem we encountered was that the other lumber shop did not have one by eights.  They had one by sixes.  We then decided that the bench seats did not have to be one by eights and could use one by sixes.  We have sixty pieces of one by eights at the first shop and we have found someone else that could plane the wood.  So now we have a mixture of one by eights and one by sixes to make the desks in.  We will have all our pieces tomorrow and we can continue to build desks.

Back at the farm we continued to cut and thread pipe.  All the pipe pieces are cut and we are approaching the half way point on threading.  Tomorrow we will continue to thread the rest of the pipe and as the pipe is threaded we will continue to put the frames together.  Our last piece of the puzzle was the flange that was needed to attach the pipe to the bottom of the benches and desk tops.  The guy at the hardware store was able to give us a price of 170 Ksh to fabricate the piece we needed.  At today’s exchange rate this is about $1.95 a piece.  Pretty costly but without it we would have to do a considerable amount of more work.  We will start to receive the flanges on Saturday and the balance on Monday.  This will enable us to start finishing some of the desks on Saturday and the rest on Monday finishing on Tuesday.  So this look like it will be completed before we have to leave here on Wednesday.

Joel and Kym were helping again today.  Also today Lawrence joined us to help with the cutting and threading.  Tomorrow two of the helpers will continue to thread pipe and we might be joined by another helper to start and fabricate the desk tops.  We did not make it to the school today to take measurements for the electrical work because it was too late and the weather turned for the worse.  We will go to the school in the morning and start this project as well.  We have four more days to get all this work done before we leave back for Eldama Ravine on Wednesday of next week.  Seems like everyday has been a challenge but with the grace of God we have been able to come through it and make all this work to help these young children have a better environment to learn in.  The school has been built.  There are now desks being built and electricity (generator) coming.  Ken tells me that the next step is to have Peter come back and pour concrete in the three classrooms and office.   

   

Take care and God bless

Dave