Dear Family,
Friends and Supporters,
Nigeria is
just starting its rainy season. We have
had some very serious storms but I think that is the norm here. Out of our first 16 days it stormed at least
13 times. The storms are a work of God. The thunder will roll and roll and you can
see the very dark clouds and the rain but it just kind of sits there and then hours
later we will get hit with a lot of wind and some very close lightning and then
the rain. It just dumps and dumps and
hails and dumps and dumps some more. Of
course our metal roofs amplify it even more. Conversation is nearly impossible. Then it
passes on and you wonder where did all the water go? The soil here is very rocky and drains quickly,
so very quickly that in just a few minutes you have a thin skim of mud on the
low spots and gravelly dirt on the high spots.
The number of
rocks here makes you think Rockbridge County, Virginia has a rock shortage. Huge ridges, almost mountains but not to
Virginia’s standards. Huge boulders
everywhere. Ronda said the other day that they reminded her of Indian Rock up
on the Blue Ridge Parkway and they do.
It is just like God used his hands like a child does on a gravelly beach
and scooped up the ridges. At the top,
sides, and bottom of the ridges is this huge collection of boulders from
stadium size down to pebbles. The ridges
and rocks are beautiful. Can’t wait to have time to pack a picnic lunch and
spend the day climbing and exploring with Ronda.
We have been
without power company power at least 40 percent of the time since we have been
here. Apparently that is normal. The voltage swings wildly; I have seen it as
low as 166 and as high as 241 volts. It
just goes off and it may come back on in 5 minutes or 16 hours later. We do have a large generator which we run
enough to keep our fridges and freezers cold and our children’s clothes clean. We
thank the Lord for that constantly. The generator is expensive to run as you
can imagine. We have adjusted to the lack of power and we
can make coffee by heating water by gas and pouring it over the coffee in the
coffee filter. If we have coffee what else can you ask? J. Upper 80’s to very low 90’s is usually the
daytime high. At nights it cools down to
the low 80’s sometimes the high 70’s unless there is a storm then low 70’s. It is very humid at times but most of the time
it is very bearable. We have no heat or AC in any houses or buildings. It is a blessing because there is no required
maintenance or power usage. Ceiling fans
in every room though. We do have a
washer and dryer, another huge blessing!
The
mosquitoes are very numerous. We had a
war on them today in our house and the primary school. The school had literally thousands of them,
enough to require a broom and dust pan to clear the floor. Their bites are bad and
Ronda and I have bad reactions to them, welts the size of a shirt button and
they take about a week to disappear. Not
like the wimpy VA mosquitoes which disappear in about twenty minutes on
me.
They are
rebuilding the road in front of the Village.
They have heavy construction equipment doing that but everything else is
pretty much done manually. Plowing,
digging of footers, construction, etc. is done manually. No equipment involved. I rode into town with our Village Director,
Melanie, this morning and the workers had dug drainage ditches at least four
feet deep and four wide by hand probably a couple miles of it on both sides of
the road. Picks and shovels. Back breaking work. So impressive. There is 70 % unemployment in
the Plateau State. You can tell these men are grateful for the work.
The people here
in the village are wonderful. They are so very welcoming and appreciative. The children are well behaved and beautiful
and so smart. I asked one boy what he
learned in school this week and he proceeded to tell me the complete Bible
lesson for the week and everything else from reading to science. I know he had it right because everyone
connected to Rafiki does the same Bible lesson/devotion every day. The adult national staff and the Rafiki
overseas staff do devotions every weekday together. Then I lead the same lesson with our guards
every day at 4pm - so far out of my comfort zone. Even through the official language here is
English I still struggle with understanding - but then I struggled understanding
English in the US. Ronda is doing great catching
on to the language and customs and her understanding and speaking is impressive
to me as well as the nationals. Yes, I am jealous.
I have helped
fixed a couple of long standing electrical problems since being here. Our power
is 410/230volts, 3 phase, 50 cycle. We
have one power distribution transformer 200kva, 33KV to 410/230V. We only have three or four three phase motors
that I have found so far. I brought hair
clippers with me but even with using a step-down transformer the 50 cycles
cause it to vibrate so hard that I could barely hang on to them.
Our water
distribution system is more complex than our electrical distribution. We have four wells and numerous tanks, some
mounted on the ground and some mounted on towers. The village is entirely
gravity fed but we have a couple of lift pumps to get the water up into the
towers and various types of controls. We
have one working solar powered well pump and other wells are equipped with
regular submersible pumps. The road
divides the water system as well as the village which complicates everything. The water tastes great but we have to filter
it before drinking or cooking to be completely safe although the children and
national kitchen staff drinks it without filtering or boiling. I have started rinsing my toothbrush in the
tap water and have suffered no ill effects that I have noticed. Ha.
God’s
blessing is shown to us every day. The
gracious, welcoming, and friendly people are a blessing in itself. They also are smart and many of them are God-fearing
and know the Gospel well. The village is blessed with an experienced director
of 13 years (Melanie). With Ronda’s and
my arrival came another Virginian, Erica, whose father works at Grief Brothers,
a paper mill I used to work at, down the James River from Big Island about 40
miles. Small world. J
She is the Headmaster of the school and a very capable one. Ronda is gearing up for a teachers training
program referred to as RICE. She also is distributing lesson materials to
headmasters of the denominational partner schools throughout the Plateau State
of Nigeria. She was just thrill the other day when she got to hand out her
first lessons to one of the partner Headmasters.
We are also blessed to have our own nurse,
very capable in taking care of most illnesses and wounds of the ROS and of the
children. She practiced stitches on a fresh
ram’s leg the other day after one was butchered for the children’s meals. The Ram was given to the children as a gift
by the local Chief. Our kitchen staff
will prepare it specifically for our tenth anniversary celebration this week. We are also blessed with a very capable
maintenance crew in electrical, plumbing, fixing, lawn care, and gardening. This is not a throwaway society as America is;
things are fixed even the things not made to be fixed. Also we have a good labor force in the older
village boys and girls. We had one boy
who fixed four broken sewing machines so the girls could sew aprons for the
Home Economics Practical Exam that the state requires. The older boys are curious and love to
learn. I worked on a broken door latch
in a narrow hallway the other day while about 8 to 10 boys held my tools,
light, and parts while looking over my shoulder. The bad thing about it I had no idea on how
to get the locked door open with a broken key but with God’s patience and help,
a small hammer blow on a screw driver stuck into a blind hole the door
magically opened. The boys then helped replace the
broken door latch. I could go on and on
with the blessings but time to move on to other things.
God bless,
Gehrig
