Home, Sweet Home...

Well, we made it...

We are home...  All the cliches about "Home" are true...  There's no place like it and it's where our hearts are...

The voyage to get home was, umm, cumbersome and, umm, nightmare-ishly long...  Feel free to ask us about it...  Although you should be warned: It's not what I would call a One-Drink-Story...

Although our trip is over, our stories are not...  We want to include you all into the story in a personal way...  The good news is that we came up with a great plan to do that!  The bad news is that we came up with the plan before we could talk to any of our wives (and it was a planned that was hatched and formed during a 60-hour sleep-deprived travel nightmare)...  But it just might work!

So stay tuned to the blog for at least one more post...  I want to add a few more comments and pictures that I couldn't really work into the blog while we were in Africa...  Those thoughts and some details about a get-together should be coming in the next few days...

Thanks for following along with us...  We really felt like you were part of our trip...  You can't imagine how much energy and enthusiasm you were responsible for during our journey...  We are honored that you took time out of your world to enter into ours...

Our Last Full Day…

Hard to believe we’ll be leaving Africa tomorrow…  On one hand it seems like we just got here, on the other hand we’ve been longing for home for an awfully long time…  We’ve learned a lot while being here…  We’ve been a part of a lot…  We are grateful for the things that we’ve seen and the things that we’ve gleaned…

To Africa we have given the work of our hands, to us she has given us her heart…  As much as we’ve been a part of affecting the lives of future generations, we have been affected by the experience of just being here that much more… 

Our hearts are different than they were two weeks ago…  How can they not be after what we’ve seen and heard and observed?  As soon as you step your foot into Africa you know you’re in a different land…

We’ve learned that Nigeria is a land of contrasts…  John Fette was the first to observe this…  The stark contrast between the rainy season and the dry season…  A land with abundant oil resources, but a line two miles long to fill your gas tank…  A land of friendly greetings and conversations, but with divisions so deep that they’ll burn homes and places of worship when provoked…  Nomadic tribes with cell phones…  A democracy where corruption is expected…

Our last full day was a day of reflection…  It started out with a morning hike at a place called Cherry Hills…  We drove across town through traffic, over crazy roads, and through a gravel pit to get to our destination…  And when we got there, it looked like this:

So we set out to conquer Mt. Claustrophobius!

It was a different kind of hike…  Over boulders, squeezing through tight spaces, under gigantic rocks whose only supports were each other…  The trip was, needless to say, precarious…  Here are pictures of our trek up, around and through the rock mountain…

Once we got to the top we had some time to ponder the view, our trip, our experiences, and our thoughts…

My thoughts drifted toward expansion and contraction…  In a sense, our world has shrunk – amazing to think that on one day you can be on one continent, and on the next day you can be halfway around the world on another continent and in another culture…  But in another sense our world has greatly expanded because of the experiences we’ve shared…  I’m sure it has felt this way with any great voyage…  And I’m sure it has felt different every time…  Almost like we’ve tapped into something holy – this expansion and contraction of perspectives and journeys, of wonder and knowledge, of discovery and understanding…  It is the story of history…  It is the song of our hearts…  It is the breath of God…

After the hike back down to the bottom, we grabbed some lunch and headed back to where we’re staying…  Since I don’t think I’ve ever shown a picture of the house, here is what it looks like –

The guys met for a while, and I went to grab some more video footage…

We spent the evening enjoying another wonderful dinner…  It’s bittersweet to be writing this now, knowing that the end of a great trip is coming…  But like I said earlier, we are missing home and glad to be heading there…  

Building the Future...

Our last day of work!  Definitely exciting but also somewhat sad…  We’ve been pouring all of our work effort into making a water tower that will feed the Oasis House property…  To use some of our vocabulary we’ve been discussing this week – All week we’ve been chopping vegetables in the prep kitchen, today we started to see the Feast…  If you remember earlier in the trip there was always a conspicuous “H” in the wide angle views of the property…  And now, behold – the walls of the water tower…

Me and the Three Johns worked all morning and early afternoon on building forms for the concrete support columns…  It started out great, but then we had to battle the Laws of Physics (which are apparently firm and unyielding)…  But we got by with a little help from our friends – namely, John Fette, John Horning, and Mark Parker…  John F. was the brute strength (thank you, LifeTime Fitness), John H. was the finesse and good cheer and Mark was the surge that pushed us through the finish line…  Mark worked most of the morning on building the most sturdy sawhorses in Africa…

There was a lot of digging going on down the hill…  Jason and Brian were digging support holes for an enclosure for the block making machine…  The ground was pretty rough so Brian came up with, what he is calling “The Bertke One Thousand”…  That guy has a future in Third World construction tools…

Here’s a picture of the Bertke One Thousand in action…

When everything was ready up at the water tower, the guys could finally pour the concrete mix into the forms for the columns…  The guys worked as hard as they could, and they used every grain of cement that we had…  I have a feeling that this is going to be a sturdy tower!

Brian and I went with one of our Nigerian friends, Adi (Eddie) into the Kisayhip village…  We greeted the chairman (who is kind of like the mayor, I suppose) and he took us all around the village…  The next several pictures are people we met and things we saw in the village…  There is a picture of a woman at a well (the most primitive of wells), and there are pictures of children pumping out water at a well that was dug out by bore-hole equipment…

I’ll leave you with a quote from Scripture that we’ve been pondering today…  It’s from the book of Isaiah…

"Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:  to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke?

Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter - when you see the naked, to clothe him, 
       and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?

Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.

Then you will call, and the LORD will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. "If you do away with the yoke of oppression, with the pointing finger and malicious talk, and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, and your night will become like the noonday.

The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame.  You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.

Isaiah 58: 6-11

The Internet is Great! (except in Africa)

I'm working on updating the blog...  But nothing is uploading, so I'm losing hope that I'll have anything up before we lose power...  So there may be no blog posting for tonight (aside from this one)...  But it's written, so if worse comes to worse I'll post tomorrow morning (which will be about 2AM EST)...  

Title Trouble...

I'm realizing that the majority of the work in writing a blog involves coming up with a great title so people will read the post...  Titles I've been kicking around today:

The Walkabout

The Real Africa

The Bull with the Angry Eyebrows

Tin Mine Folklore

A Kitchen on Her Head

Third World Irrigation

The Rock with Three Legs

Leaning Sheaves

They Sleep in the Garage

Workin’ at the Car Wash

So take your pick, it’s all in here…

We started the day with a brisk morning walk behind the property where we’ve been working…  We didn’t have any idea of where we were going or how long we’d be gone…  But we set out determined and excited nonetheless!  The Walkabout into The Real Africa!

We first encountered some herds of goats and cows…  A lot of animals roaming around…  You start to wonder, “Where do these guys drink water?  We don’t see any place to get a drink!”  That might explain The Bull with the Angry Eyebrows...

We kept pressing on…  We had herd (get it?) that there was an old abandoned tin mine somewhere on the property…  We were hoping to find it, but we didn’t really know where it was or even if it was…  All we knew was that The Tin Mine Folklore was irresistible!We had been walking for quite a while, maybe 45 minutes or so, when we came upon a creek…  There was a woman washing her dishes, but also the unexpected sound of a generator…  The woman was just finishing, so she packed up and headed across the creek…  She had a baby on her back and A Kitchen on her Head…

We followed her across the creek and toward the sound of the generator…  What we saw was a lush green field and an education in Third World Irrigation…  The generator was pumping water from the creek into an irrigation ditch that fed into the field…  It was brilliant, and something you don’t expect to see in the heart of Africa!

We were getting a little suspicious about whether or not the Tin Mine actually exists, so we started heading in a different direction…  Within a matter of minutes we came upon The Rock with Three Legs…  We called it Tripod Rock, and we’re sure there is going to be a Disney movie with Tripod Rock as the setting…  It’s just too amazing to not have it’s own movie…

A little more hiking and we came upon a village!  They were very friendly and greeted us with waves and smiles :)  Their huts were very primitive but well built, and you could get a sense of how a community lives and works together…  I wasn’t exactly sure what The Leaning Sheaves were that were laying on the house, but they make for a good picture!

More and more hiking, it felt like we were heading back to the property where plenty of work awaited us!

The water tower block walls are finally coming together, so we started building forms to pour the concrete supports in…

As we were working a group of kids came up to see what we were doing…  It’s interesting, we’re always aware that they are around but they never really get in the way…  They’re actually eager to help out in small ways…  They want to pick up the nails that you drop…  They want to carry the hammer for you…  But they’re favorite thing is to see their picture on your camera right after you take ‘a snap’…  They squeal with delight and point out each other’s face as soon as you turn the camera around…

We couldn’t pour the concrete forms because the blocks for the water tower hadn’t set long enough so we had to pack things up…  On the property there are a couple of night watchmen…  We had heard that they ‘stay’ in the garage but we hadn’t seen where…  We finally used up enough of the materials to see that they do, in fact, ‘stay’ in the garage…  This is where they sleep at night…  They Sleep in the Garage…  Those are old car seat benches…

So we packed up everything and headed back to the place where we’re staying…  Everyday we pass the local ‘Car Wash’…  I keep meaning to take a picture, but this is the first day that I had the chance…  It’s literally (and you see this a lot around town) a water source (in this case a creek) by the road…  Cars pull down to the water, and there are guys there Workin’ at the Car Wash ready to take care of all their clean car needs…  The water is cleaner than the stuff on the cars, but just barely…

We came home and worked on the road outside John and Corrie’s house a little more…  Then we got cleaned up and had another great dinner (Who has to LOSE WEIGHT after their trip from Africa???)

We’re enjoying a quiet night and wondering what it must feel like to be walking in a foot of snow…

Pure Water...

Whatever you are doing right now, go and get a glass and pour yourself some of that wonderful American tap water...  Seriously, this blog can wait - and I'm guessing you probably haven't had your 8 glasses of water today...

What you see in the bucket is Nigerian tap water...  Well, it's well water plus a Pur water filtration packet...  To purify the water so you can drink it you add a Pur packet to 10 liters of water...  You stir for five minutes, you wait for five minutes, then you pour the water through a cotton filter (also known as a t-shirt)...  After you stir and wait (but before you pour), the, umm, sediment, umm, congregates into a floc ('floc' spelling is based on the actual packet) at the bottom of the bucket...  Go ahead and sip some of your tap water while you peruse these two pictures...

After we purified the water, it was off to the property where we’ve been working…  We still have a lot to do, so we were motivated to get to work!  John H. and I worked on a rebar mat (a steel grid that reinforces concrete)…  This will strengthen the concrete that is used in the water tower…

John F. and Brian worked on building some rebar columns (support for the concrete columns) for the water tower…  Then, after lunch, John H. and Brian hauled cement down to the water tower that will be down by the block machine…  Mark worked on laying out a shelter for the block machine…  He also worked with Jason to disassemble and reassemble the cooling system for the block machine…  It’s a pretty daunting task when you can’t just run down to the hardware store!

Here’s a picture of one of the local masons working on the first water tower…  It’s nice to see progress (as opposed to just a big ‘H’ in the ground!)…

We ran some other errands around town, then got back to the house early to rest a little bit…  Trust us, we need it!  The Nigerian heat and altitude here are taking their toll on us!