Feb 19th
It is Sunday morning and Henk who was feeling “blah” when he got up
this morning, has just finished half a
bottle of water with a heavy dose of salt and glucose: keeping up the salt
intake is as important as drinking enough fluids!
Since Wednesday morning our two projects progressed relatively
smoothly. Installing new threaded 3/4” pipes helped finish the water tank.
Thursday morning we made an airport(read: air strip) run: Dave Sharpe
from Australia needed picking up from the WFP flight out of the capital: he and
his family lived in this area for years and he is back to do translation
checking with his Chadian translators for the next six weeks.
The ceiling has been a bit of a different story: thankfully Margreet
was able to help with this two person job. On Thursday we got the use of a
rechargeable skill saw! (The small problem was the 110V AC needed for the
charger: one 220V to 110V inverter was found at the office!). ( First though Henk did have to clean up the wires to the
generator battery as they were too loose and badly oxidised preventing the
generator to start. ) With the crooked walls it took a whole lot of measuring
and re-measuring to get the panels in position. They were an awkward size (122cm
by 249cm) to work with. At 3:50 in the Friday afternoon Henk installed the
attic access cover and the job was done! Unfortunately practicality and
functionality had to take precedent over form and beauty.
Friday night we tried to sleep outside again but were chased inside
when the wind picked up too much around midnight.
Saturday morning saw us at the open market trying to buy red millet
(not available), pick up a blouse for Emma that one of the tailors had made for
her by copying another blouse. We did find fried chicken – turned out to be
tough as nails- a few bottles of Fanta and Coke, bananas (mushy as they are not
from this area), onions, garlic and a bone for Saka (the dog). City water is
still very sporadic with only two barrels worth this week. The temperature did
go over the 40 degrees mark this week, but this morning we woke up with the
thermometer showing a cool 29! Henk actually was trying to find the second bed sheet!
We hope to get confirmation for our Tuesday flight from Mongo to Ndjamena
sometime Monday. We are looking forward
to getting out of the dust, sand and very high temperatures for a little bit.
We don’t know yet which jobs await us in Ndjamena, but we will keep you posted!
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