Gas and Chickens

Today has been an interesting day. Monday. The day we all dread,
going back to work. This was my day.
7:55 Kathleen yelling...Rebecca get up its 8 o'clock.
Rebecca moans, gets out of bed, gets dressed for breakfast. You never
know who will be dropping by, even at this hour in the morning, so
showing up for breakfast in my jammys is not an option.
8:05 eating my cream of wheat with a little brown sugar.
8:15 group devotions with Kathleen, James, Morris (the children's
tutor) and Martha ( the housekeeper) ; (should have been at 8 but
apparently we all slept in)
8:30 go back to my room and get dressed in some going out clothes,
spent some time meditating about life and my role here and drink my
coffee
9:00ish leave for down town. Part way down the road realize empty
light is on. Decide to pull off at earliest convenience. Pull off at
small filling station. Pull up. They say, only fuel. I ask, no gas?
No gas, only fuel (I guess they call diesel "fuel" and gas "gas")
stop at next filling station, no gas. Drive for about 15 more
minutes...no gas. They have all run out of gas apparently. How can a
gas station run out of gas....it seems ridiculous to me, but not so
surprising. Finally, about 10 more miles down the road we pull into a
gas station. They have gas but are charging 35 more cents per gallon,
even though the price is supposed to be 3 dollars US. We are on empty
and don't have a lot of choice. Last time I was here, people were
selling gas out of 1 gallon glass jars. One place, their pump was
broken, so the man was siphoning the gas with his mouth. Apparently
selling gas out of jars is illegal, but you still see people doing
it. Somehow, this just doesn't seem safe.
So we are continuing our journey into town. Traffic is moving at a
snails pace and we are stuck in it for about 30 minutes. I find out
later from a man that it was because it was raining so hard earlier
in the morning. I mean, really who wants to drive in the torrential
rain. I swear, gnomes have been digging more potholes into the road.
I think today there was more than on Friday, perhaps not, maybe they
are just procreating. Oh, and of course, then there is a man on the
highway, set up with big cement blocks, blocking off one lane,
filling in holes....he has no proper signage or anything. That is an
accident waiting to happen.
When we reach our turn off, we hear sirens. The vice-president is on
his way to work. All the vehicals stop to let his convoy of about 5
vehicles through. (sirens mean someone important is coming through
and you better get off the road) We continue. When we reach our
destination, I wait out with the car, and Kathleen goes in to see
about us going and doing some interviews with potential candidates
for resettlement. As it turns out, this was not a good day, because
we were unable to go and do our interviews. The VPs wife was coming
for a special thanksgiving service. We turn around and go home. I did
enjoy visiting with the children out at the car though. I ask them
their age and names...there is apparently 200 children that go to
school at this compound, 40 of them are residents, others come from
the neighborhood. The children in residence,some of them have parents
that they live with at the compound, some have been seperated from
their parents during the war. I am looking forward to going back and
hopefully getting to know some of these kids and families. We will
return for 9am tomorrow to start our interviewing. Yay.
We get home at 12:30, just in time for lunch. Potato greens and rice,
with boney (dried fish) and some beef which the kids wouldn't eat
because they said it was gone off. I ate it, hopefully there will be
no ill effects tomorrow. I had a really yummy hot pepper with mine.
mmmm.
This afternoon I did some email. This was interrupted by the
chickens. They had escaped. I planted parsley two days ago, and in
fear of them scratching up my seed, I went out and rounded them up. A
while later, chickens out again. Apparently there is a hole in the
coup. The kids round them up this time. Josh my nephew did a patch
job on the whole. Apparently there is a second hole. I think they are
still out there putting naughty chickens back in their coop. The big
problem are the goats. While you are trying to get chickens back in,
goats manage to escape. They can run faster than the chickens. I
better go out and see if my auntly help is needed. I'll admit, I
don't feel like I have accomplished too much today.
Thanks be to God that tomorrow is a new day.