December 4th

Today was nice, breakfast wasn’t until 8 this morning and I made
sure to take advantage of that. (I got out of bed exactly at 8). It
was a really nice morning; we sat around just chatting till almost
10:30. It was a day off for Tom, Karen, Emma, and Rebecca so
there was just no rush. Being Saturday it is pretty much
automatically my day off. After breakfast, Emma, Rebecca and I
went down to the market to see if we could find them some
fabrics they like, some material to make the wedding outfits for
next Saturday and a large bowl for the laundry lady as we gave two
to the hospital so they could do laundry in something not full of
holes. We succeeded on the last one but not the first two. By time
we were done we headed back up to the house for lunch. After
lunch I managed to break the brand new faucet the Asher’s just
finished installing. The material is just plain junk here. They really
need to just bring over some faucets and things from the US. The
whole water system in the house is in poor shape and so just after
Christmas they are having it all pulled out and replace. They
already have done the consulting; they just have to pick up the bits
in Freetown at some point. Then I helped Karen install antivirus
software on to her computer and a computer of one of the
hospital staff. I pretty much did odd jobs all afternoon. About 5
Rebecca came by and she, Emma and I went for a walk. We went
through Kamakwie two, around past the Muslim secondary school
over to where the orphan school is. We met a whole bunch of the
kids, one of whom was a kid named Alusine. He seems like a pretty
great kid, he’s JSS 3 and thinks that he wants to go into the
sciences and ultimately do engineering. He wants me to come back
by tomorrow and I think we might pass by that way on a walk
tomorrow evening. I hope to go over there some because there is
a whole bunch of kids there at the school that have no parents and
I think it would be a great opportunity to really interact with some
kids who need it. I feel like I haven’t done a whole lot of direct
evangelism. I’m here with multiple purposes and while all I do, say
and teach is part of my personal ministry here I feel like I need to
be doing some more direct things. We finished our walk a little late
for dinner but that was ok because Karen was just finishing up
anyway when we got home. After dinner I took some food down
to the OB ward because while we were walking we ran into two of
the women who came here with one of the patients (relatives
come in with patients all the time to handle feeding, cleaning and
a variety of other tasks for the patient). After that, Rebecca, Emma,
Samuel and I went down to Pa Kanu to get a few drinks. It was fun
though they were playing music there so it was kind of hard to talk
very easily. There were many kids there dancing to the music, it was
quite amusing. Pa Kanu brought this one girl over and made her
dance for us, it was slightly disturbing, almost any mother in
America would have a heart attack if their little girl (at most seven)
dancing the way she danced. The little kids really copy what the
older kids do. Samuel expressed deep gratitude for those of us who
come here to help the people, but he expressed how much he was
glad for the three of us especially. He said he really enjoyed getting
to come downtown with us and enjoy drinks together, I guess the
other people who come haven’t really done that with him. I don’t
feel like I’ve done anything particularly special but he really was
quite appreciative and it made me feel good. Many of the people
here don’t know what it’s really like back home but he seems to
understand quite well what we leave behind to come here and it
really means a lot to him. Though, as I’ve said before I really
(beyond the sweltering mid-day heat) am quite comfortable here.
I really wouldn’t mind living here if there weren’t so many people
that I would just miss too badly. Granted, that might be different
if I were here longer term, as it is I know that it really won’t be
much time at all and I’ll be home. I already know I’m going to miss
it here when I go to leave. Anyway, we stayed there for quite a
while, a bit over two hours. Then we went back and sat outside
Emma and Rebecca’s house thing for about an hour and a half,
Samuel retired a bit earlier. Just as a side note, the stars here are
just absolutely amazing. Without all the light pollution it makes for
such a beautiful sight and there are just so many of them you can
actually see here. Anyway, I’m off to bed, have a great day.

Blessings from Kamakwie,
Ryan Brooks