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.