January 30th

Today we’re packing up to drive back to Mongo. Apparently we’ll have company: 4 Chadian ladies who need to go to the hospital in Mongo to see the eye specialist.

On Saturday we did make it to the market, after picking up three ladies that needed to go there as well. It is too bad you can’t film this experience: the smells, sounds and activity are overwhelming! Being the only whites makes one stand out for sure! We did find the produce we were looking for and made our escape…; after lunch more work on the different projects and in the evening we watched Aristrocats on the computer!

Sunday morning we walked to church. The service starts at around nine. When we arrived five past there were two other people. We started the service at nine thirty with some 40 people present. There are no benches, but mats are laid out on the sand, after taken off ones’ slippers, flip-flops etc. you find a comfortable spot against the outer wall. The ladies on one side, the men and boys on the other side and the unmarried girls in the middle.  Always enjoy listening to the singing!

Finished one project in the afternoon and played a board game in the evening.

We have unsuccessfully tried to send pictures: the provider here is good for texting etc. but pictures aren’t going anywhere. Opening one email can take more than 20 minutes!

SO:  we did leave for Mongo  at 2 p.m. – after saying our goodbyes to Cynthia who was such a great and very grateful  hostess I (M.) never had to cook one meal during those days J, and all of her “to do” list for us got done.

 The road to Mongo was very rough, very dusty (whenever a truck would come towards us, we had to slow down to about a speed of 30 km  due to the BIG clouds of dust that would give us a total “brown out” for a couple of seconds.) Our top speed was 60 km…..  People, goats, camels, cows and chickens crossing the road makes one want to pay REAL attention!! After this shake down of about 1 ½ hours we dropped off our “hitch hikers” at the hospital. A few minutes later we arrived at the SIL compound to be greeted by Andrea who took us to our abode a 5minute walk down the main sand road for the next 3 weeks where we will be by ourselves since our new hostess Emma an American Wycliffe translators, is off to meetings on Thursday. She showed us our bedroom and our kitchen next door where we will be able to cook our meals. Our bathroom is across the courtyard so at night one hopes to not have to tackle that hike in the dark….. Since there is no running water (all the water needed has to be scooped out of barrels) and the list of instructions which was long…. Including looking after the house helps, the dog and cat and preparing the dog food, I felt quite overwhelmed by the time supper rolled around which Emma had prepared. At 7:30 p.m. we went to our very hot room to bed (a double) exhausted and slept until about 6:30 a.m. In the daylight and after a good night’s sleep everything looked a LOT brighter!!

We had tea, coffee and some of our own brought granola and walked to the SIL compound. That is where most of our work is – the main one being the move of a water tank that on one side is supported by a mud support wall which runs a gigantic crack and on the other side by a metal frame. Weeks ago Henk had asked to have a new frame built and ready for the move. We were glad to see it in storage. To disconnect all the existing pipes, lowering the water tank carefully, and then hooking it up again seems easy but with limited tools  and parts and limited man power it will be quite a challenge……. After all the pipes get hooked up again somehow, someway, the big cracks in the walls need to be filled with cement.

Right now during our first morning Henk is fixing lights at Emma’s house – our home for the next weeks. We have a little fridge which keeps water cold – when it is so hot, cold water is sooooo good !

Emma leaves for Ndjamena on Thursday and she will send some of our pictures from there so you can “picture” our blog a bit better.

January 28th

Dear bloggers,

According to our computer it’s the 27th …difficult to keep that straight. This morning we ran out of water from the cistern and that will need to be replenished today by donkey train. We do have a bunch of filled barrels, so no emergency.

Yesterday some of the men and Henk started on digging a one meter square and 10 cm deep hole; we will be building a slab to cover an outdoor latrine to be dug sometime next week. Cleaning the sand, finding gravel and cutting rebar had us busy in the afternoon. Later on Margreet and I started cutting plywood to make a desk for Adoum the Chadian translator. While Margreet was varnishing the cut pieces Henk raked together more gravel for the cement mix.

In the late afternoon the three of us walked over to Adoum’s compound: he had invited us for supper. Very much in the Chadian tradition we sat down on a mat (first taking our sandals off) and were served sweet tea. All six children were introduced and after waiting and talking for about half an hour a big platter of food came out, spiced macaroni (!!) with big chunks of meat on top,  one spoon for each one of us, and one bowl of drinking water from which all four of us drank during the meal.

The food was delicious – the fact that it was macaroni surprised us but it is purchased and served to special guests for special occasions only J  We had brought some calendars along to give to new friends here and it became part of our dinner conversation: snow covered landscapes in January and February and still snow on distant mountains in the summer…

After we got home finding the trail back in the darkness, with the help of starry skies and one flashlight, we played another game of Upwords – Cynthia enjoys the game that we take everywhere, so it fills the evening hours until we go to bed – usually at 8:30 p.m.

Saturday morning came early: Cynthia’s friend Samuel is in road construction (as well as an elder in the church) and offered his help putting all the ingredients together to actually produce the above mentioned slab so it is done right and won’t crack later on.

After that is done we will have some breakfast and drive to the next town Bitkine to get some more supplies for Cynthia’s last projects – one is making a gate to keep the goats out of the yard,  and the other one is a high desk to serve as a pulpit in the local church.

Bugs: although there are scorpions around and we keep on the lookout for them we have not encountered any yet. Mosquitos are absent in the dry season here: this is nice as we don’t need to sleep under netting which restrict the airflow quite a bit. Although it cools down at night we wake up in 30 degree weather.

During the planting season the farmers need to be vigilant about rabbits(!), rats and mice attacking the young plants.     

January 24^th

^{(Editor's note: Apparently it has taken three days for this post to come so we know what a challenge Henk and Margreet have with the internet.)}

We are entering the 21^st century: we got a crash course in texting and using a Dongle(?) for internet use. Access is slow (very slow) but available... it was because of this that we received Tim’s email announcing his engagement to his  lovely lady Melanie Peters.

Tuesday morning we were packed and ready to go at 5.30am to make the one hour UN flight from N’Djamena  to Mongo. We were very thankful for that as two years ago  the 500km took  a good eight hours of concentrated driving.

We were over the runway and about to land, when the pilot had to pull up sharply as there were people on the dirt runway; the second time around we were able to land and our friends were waiting for us.

A quick sorting out of their mail and handing over two million Francs($400) for the safe flight we got the keys for the Landrover and off we were to drive the 70km to Tchelme. There is a new road being built, which is a good thing, but nobody is allowed to use it yet. The old road, which was reasonable two years ago had deteriorated quite a bit.

We arrived safely and Cindy greeted us warmly (not too difficult as it was 35C). We discussed projects and later in the day went shopping for plywood (not to be found), hinges (yes, the right size) bag of cement (50kg heavy), screening for the windows and paint and paint thinner (somebody found it for us the next day and brought it out on his motorbike).

Interesting to watch the going-ons after we had fueled up 80 liters of diesel, one 20 liter jerry can at a time (which needed to be filled from 25 liter buckets). The Arabic counting system is quite different and it took some time to figure out the total: out came the cellphones to use as calculators!

That evening we slept for almost eleven hours: after sunset the wind started to pick up and the temperature dropped to the low twenties.

This morning we have been painting and replaced one screen. Of course the material is not the same width as the original and it took a bit of doing to attach it properly. One other window had a bit of dry rot which needed attention.

We have arrived!

While we were waiting in the departure hall in Addis we realized that our flight number and destination had been removed from the ‘list of departures’!  There were no announcements of any kind, but when everybody else started queuing up we thought it best to join. It transpired that they were combining two flights into one and even then the Boeing 777 was only half full. We flew to Abuja, the capitol of Nigeria. There the plane was cleaned, new passengers embarked and off we went to N’Djamena.

Rieneke van Rijn had volunteered to pick us up and arrived at the official arrival time to be told, finally, that our flight would arrive three hours late. Customs was easy and after our Yellow Fever documentation was checked we were ready to wait for our suitcases: that took a while but thankfully our luggage showed up (we had been able to have it tagged all the way through from Vancouver). After putting our luggage through an X-ray machine and warding off a bunch of ‘porters’ we had officially arrived in the capitol.

Quite a few of our friends are here, at the SIL center, to take part in a Translation Principles course. A great tradition is for the ‘locals’ to invite new arrivals for the first three meals. It is great not to have to worry about food right away and to be able to catch up on everybody’s lives. We excused ourselves at 8.30 and fifteen minutes later were in bed. Despite the noises around us it did not take long to fall asleep (50 hours of travel will do that to you!)

Our schedule, as of this weekend: we’ll fly to Mongo on Tuesday. There is quite a bit of work awaiting us and we might be there for three or more weeks. 

We found Waldo at Heathrow Airport!

                            Abuja, waiting for the cleaning crew and new passengers. Almost there!

Just another blog...

Just arrived at the Addis airport. Good travels. 6 more hours to go before we get there.

Our friends in Langley, Fred in particular, are dealing with ICBC on our behalf. Henk wrote a detailed report of all the happenings while we were having lunch with them.

The latest we have heard from him is that ICBC has been helpful and most likely the car doesn't have a bent axle, just bent rims.

We are well, but after 2 and a half days of traveling we are looking forward to arriving in N'Djamena. Thankfully we have the Saturday afternoon and Sunday to recuperate before travel starts on Monday or Tuesday to Mongo. 


It looks like we are scheduled to fly on a U.N. flight - hurray, we don't have to drive those 500 kms!!! (Should  add "subject to change"...)

Gloria in Exelsis Deo

Our trip has hit a few bumps!  After closing up our house and having had toast and coffee at A&W we had traveled over three hundred kilometers on good roads (dry with stretches of compact snow). Coming down the last major hill before entering the Fraser Valley we were being passed by a truck trailer. All of a sudden we were in a total white out situation and hit the left barrier first before ending up nose first in the snow embankment on the right hand side of the road. Thankfully there were no other vehicles behind us… that morning I had packed our shovel just in case. Margreet got a ride some minutes later with another driver to get to Hope and  during that ride waswithin cellphone coverage area and able to call BCAA.

Long story short: I was able to get out of the bank with the help of another vehicle and made it to Hope. It took some doing to connect up with Margreet again (phone calls to Langley,  Armstrong,  the towing company and BCAA). One look from the tow truck driver and he was off to get the flatbed tow truck as he figured  the rear axle was bent and we would ruin the tire in short order driving it on dry roads (it felt wobbly on the compact snow but there was enough ‘slide’ for the tire to be okay).

We arrived at our friends (Fred and Edel) in Langley and had enough time to have a light lunch and write up a report for ICBC, authorizing Fred to represent us: thank you for friends!!

We made it to the airport in good time. Checking in and going through security was a breeze. I (Henk) was asked to have a full body scan done…they let me loose after that, so must have not scared them too much.

Thanks for all your prayers and love…reporting from YVR.

Home Team Sharing

From Henk and Margreet DenOudsten

Many of you have been following our adventures volunteering with Wycliffe Bible Translators these past five years. Again we felt called to volunteer where needed come January.

We initially thought that we would spend two months in Senegal, but with the presidential elections scheduled for February of 2012 it was decided to postpone the invitation to a later date (year). We were shortly thereafter invited to return to Chad, where we spent time in 2010.

We are excited about meeting up with old friends and making new ones and at the same time somewhat apprehensive as we have clear memories of the heat, dust and the national food staple: millet!

Already there is a list of things to accomplish:

 Moving a water tower and get it working again, and repairing the big crack in the bathroom wall afterwards

(or overseeing this work)

- Overseeing re-thatching of roofs and re-painting inside walls afterwards (if thatch is ready)

- Consulting on some roofing problems (rotten beams) and maybe replacing

SIL compound Mongo (Eastern Chad)

- security for solar panels.

- consulting work on solar/ electrical system, especially the big charger/inverter . We could use help in two areas: making sure the current system is working efficiently, and also advice on long term planning for replacing certain parts of the system (batteries, charger/inverter, control panels etc.)

- service the generator, giving advice on how to maintain it well, and how much longer it could last before having to replace it.

- FAPLG (the Chadian organization): depending on whether their new office/ training centre will be ready; if so there may be things they could help with there.

EAST (close to the Sudanese border):

Eunice’s inverter (solar system) No doubt the list will be a lot longer by the time we arrive in January!

We are thankful that once again we have the opportunity to help in a practical way to further the work of Bible translation and to be an encouragement to the local and international Christians who give so much of themselves in so many different areas of expertise.

Come and journey with us: we covet your prayer support and financial donations are welcome as well.