Return to the Scene of the Crime

November 22nd-25th: Sunday-Wednesday

This week in Sunday school we began to practice to learn the ten commandments. Nakaramojong is an incredibly hatd language to speak and I had a really hard time trying to get my mouth around all the syllables.

That day I spent a lazy Sunday afternoon reading. Jim has a set of the Harvard classics and I have began reading The Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin. it is very interesting because he writes it for the layman, not getting too technical about the science. He also spends a lot of time just talking about the people. He is basically traveling downthe South American coast. Later that afternoon we got together for the bible study in the big house. Some Africans came again which was really fun. Pastor Al is talking about prayer which is really challenging me.

Monday Bob and I along with Lokwii Bon and Lodim Paul returned to the Bore-hole we had worked on the previous week. Because when the pipes slipped and fell we lost the pump we had to look for another. Bob knew there were some in the shipping container on the Okkens compound. However we also knew that that container was invested with wasps. Bob found a couple of bottles of insect poison and thus armed with our spray cans we entered. At first we couldn’t see any wasps or pumps for that matter. However we found them at almost the same time. An epic battle ensued. It raged back and for but the wasps got the worst of it and were forced to retreat. Indeed neither Bob nor I were harmed in the retrievence of the pump.

Upon arriving at the Bore-hole we set to work. We connected the pump to the pipe and began to lower it down. Adding pipes as we went we eventually put almost all the original pipes back in the hole. However this wasn’t nesecarry because the water level was higher then the depth of the hole. After replacing the entire mechanism the local Karamojong joyfully pumped out water. All in a days work.

For the next few days Bob, Craig and I worked to put the trusses for Jim’s house in position. Because Jim has such a large roof we had to put the individual trusses up separately and then clamp and seld them together instead of building them on the ground first. This meant that Bob and I spent most of the entire day about 15 feet up in the air balancing on top of scaffolds. During the dry season the winds here really pick up. So we are balancing atop these scaffolds trying to place these trusses and Bob is having to weld in this buffering wind. Bob compared it to someone giving him a shove.