Monday October 24

This morning we went to the worksite at about 7am after a breakfast of instant oatmeal and crousants from Sunday. There is a crew of local men working with us and they were already there. I worked mostly with Ray on cutting some wood to be used for the door jams.

This morning our big challenge was getting power for all the power tools. Since the power here is 220vac, to run normal American power tools, you have to use a transformer that drops the voltage to 110vac. They had one wired to the power pole from the power company and the saws and drills running off of that transformer. Some time before lunch, all power stopped. The transformer box was as hot as a firecracker and you could smell something not very good coming from the box. They have a small generator but it also only provides 220vac so we still needed the transformer. So until lunch we did what we could do without power.

During the morning, we had a special visit from the mayor. That is the mayor of the small district that the ICDI work site is in. He welcomed us and through Bob translating, explained how he wanted to help in any way he can. At the end, he said that time is money, so we should get back to work. We got a good laugh at that. Bob explained that his coming over to introduce himself to us is a very big deal.

At lunch, we went back to the guest house and took a breather while we got another small transformer and after lunch we were able to work using the generator connected to the transformer with a long extension cord hard wired to a power strip. They way they wire things up here is certainly not pretty and actually could be considered pretty dangerous but it seems to work, mostly.

One of the ICDI employees who is somewhat of an electrician checked the power and reported that the legs of the power from the power company was not balanced. One leg was over 300vac. That could have been part of the problem. We don’t know but that transformer may be fried.

Vernie was able to get the locks in two of the interior doors. Jim Hocking came by right at the end of the day. He is the director of ICDI. He had been shopping and had a lot of plumbing connections for use to work on during our stay.

We came back to the guest house about 6pm. It was already dark and Bob did a great job of driving back. The streets here are not very wide and there are lots of pedestrians like I mentioned before. Many of the cars didn’t have their lights on. At night, it is very hard to see them while trying to go around the oncoming cars and potholes. There are hundreds of these small minivans that are called buses that stop and go just about whenever they want. And everyone just passes other cars if they slow down at all. I couldn’t wait to get in the shower. While the water can be heated for hot showers, most everyone opts for cold showers. It really feels good in this hot and human environment. This one felt really great.

We then had another great dinner served by the local team that provides the meals in the guest house. We then had our first devotional that Bob has scheduled for us. Every evening after dinner, we will continue through the study of Philipians and have a time of prayer. Bob led our first study and we had a nice prayer time.

On our drives between the guest house and the work site, I have made a few observations. We pass by a statue on a corner, right in front of a gas station for some reason, of the current president, Bozzizo. I was told that when outside the guest house or worksite locations, we should not take pictures of things like government statues or buildings. I don’t know why the president wouldn’t want someone to take a picture of his statue. Also, we pass this very large compound with a huge iron fence around it. Inside, you can see several large incomplete buildings. I asked Bob about them and he said that Libya’s leader, Qaddafi, bought the land some time ago and never went any further with it. Its possible that he was trying to get his foot in the door here and when the coup happened that put the current president in place, he was not welcome. He still owns it but nothing has happened to it.

We also pass and Air France building. Next weekend everyone who will be flying out to Paris the next week, including us, will need to go there for tell them about our plans. That should be fun.

Another observation is how popular cell phones are here. You can buy a phone for around $75US and then purchase calling cards just about anywhere. There are little stands selling the cards everywhere you look. There are 3 different companies that offer cell phone access.

Thursday, Jim is going to take us outside the city to a location where ICDI has another work, possibly the well drilling.