October 16th 8:49 pm (UTC +1:00)

So, I thought today was going to be a fairly uninteresting day. Abu had come over some this morning and we talked and he tried to teach me Krio, which is a broken form of English, though apparently spelled similar it’s fairly hard to understand when they speak it. It was about 10 this morning, Abu told me he hadn’t eaten since 2pm the previous day which just breaks my heart because I know there are so many other kids like him who have to face the prospect of maybe not getting dinner. Abu has problems because his father died in the civil war and his mother remarried. For some reason his step-father doesn’t like him and usually won’t let him eat dinner with the family. I would love to be able to help Abu and all the kids like him, to make sure they get to eat a good meal at night, but I just don’t have the means. And I know it wouldn’t really do any good in the long run because I won’t be here forever. Also, I don’t believe handouts ever really helped anything because they just breed dependency when what these people need is independence and the ability to support themselves. But their situation here really strikes into my heart with a vengeance. Many times I’ve complained in the past because lunch is late or dinner is late and here Abu hasn’t eaten in 22 hours because he has no choice. It just makes me sad, anyway I didn’t mean to go all depressing on you there. I was supposed to go for a walk with Abdul at 12 but he never came around, I found out later he was helping out the youth which was an acceptable excuse. But things started picking up a little bit after noon. I was helping Tom collect some boxes from the shipment that had come in. The Mahrs had volunteered to help sort some of the books that had come in so that they could get to the appropriate level at the primary school to do the most good. But I don’t think they realize just how much there is. We took them 13 boxes of books and there are many, many more in the storage room where all the boxes are. We packed another 20 boxes of supplies and such into the truck to take back to the house to sort. When we closed the door to the storage room it looked like we hadn’t even been there, the room is full of hundreds of boxes. It’s so awesome that they managed to get so much but it’s such a daunting task thinking about all there is to go through. I don’t think all of it will have been gone through when I leave here in May. We got the boxes back here and started going through them, stuff from pill bottles to blankets, clothing, medical supplies and even some non-perishable food stuffs that one lady packs for the Ashers in her shipments. We had a box that was about 2ft by 2ft, by 1.5ft and it was packed with pill bottles. I figured that would last a while but Tom told me it would last a few weeks which I guess is why they didn’t have any pill bottles till the shipment got here. We just put most the stuff back into the boxes once we figured out what we had there. Karen, Tom’s wife, will go through it more thoroughly when she gets here. She’ll be here on Wednesday. After that we spent some time working on math with Abu, the poor kid doesn’t even know his multiplication tables and he took the test to become a sophomore in high school. After that Tom got a call from one of the welders in the village, John. Tom needed him to come work on a lock in his house, to replace or repair it. But John needed Tom to come pick up his welding machine in the hospital truck to bring it here so he could do the work. Which was interesting, we drove there on the bad roads, loaded it up, and one of the welders helpers sat in the back to make sure it didn’t come loose and fall out. We finally got back here and John went to work. It was interesting watching him work. In the US, when we have the wrong lock for a door, we go buy a new one, here they make the door fit the lock they have. He cut a little bit out of the frame of the door so the door would be able to close with the new lock on it and welded the new lock to the door since it didn’t fit in the space where the old lock was. It was very interesting to watch and he did a good job of rigging it. It’s not the most pleasing looking lock but it’s functionality that they care about here. The whole thing, lock and all, only cost 45,000 Leones, or 11.25 dollars, think about buying a lock in the US, that alone is probably 20 dollars, imagine paying a welder for over an hours worth of work. I don’t know what it cost but certainly more than 5 dollars. But he charges the rates that people here can pay. Anyway, we took the machine back to his shop and this time both of his apprentices rode in the back to keep it in place. I saw Saidu at the shop which was nice. He is a senior in high school, and he was very nice to me and tried to help me the first day when I tried to teach biology and failed miserably. I’m hoping that we will be able to be friends. Right now though I’m still struggling with trying to connect with Africans, I just don’t know how really. Our backgrounds are so different I struggle finding enough significant common ground on which to build a real friendship, but that’ll come in time. Anyway I’m running on battery so I need to finish up, I don’t like to run out my battery at night right now because we don’t always get the power in the morning and I like to be able to look for messages since I usually turn the computer off by 5 or 6 pm US time and most people are busy with life till then and don’t really get a chance to write me yet. Anyway, have a great evening and a good night.

Blessings from Africa
Ryan Brooks