Cables Up!

Praise the Lord! The cables have been finally set! All clamps have been tightened and the deck is beginning to creep along the cables! Behold!

At this point we'd like to thank God, who rightly deserves all of the credit for this bridge, who answers prayers, who has kept everyone safe, in whose grace we live and for whom we exist. It is He who created us, who plans our steps and carries us through. Thank you, God, for this small success and for the fulfillment and satisfaction that comes with it.

Well we're pushing forward but have decided to bring the bridge work to a close this Saturday. Our laborers' contract ends on Saturday, and we leave for Kenya with the Faders the following Thursday, so that will give us a few days in Yabus to relax as a family, maybe make a few adventure trips in the area around Yabus, and work on a few small chores and odd jobs around the missionary compound.

Thank you all so much for your prayers!

Happy Birthday, Jonathan!

Today was Jonathan's 4th birthday! Here are some pictures from our fun day!

I woke up excited to make him scrambled eggs with some eggs the boys found in the chicken coop here...unfortunately, eight out of the nine little eggs had eyeballs inside, so we had oatmeal! Jonathan said, "I like oatmeal in the United States of America, AND I like oatmeal in Sudan!"

And while we're on the food theme...here's what we had for lunch! Canned hot dogs from Nairobi, canned green beans and mac'n'cheese! We invited our friends over for a lunch celebration...

After naps, we filled up a bunch of water balloons!

Three scrawny roosters died for our dinner celebration. Mmmm, Meat!

Here we get a bit out of order (Does anyone else have this problem of moving pictures around in blogger? It drives me crazy!)... After our water balloon fight and before dinner we were surprised by a huge hail storm! It was amazing! Jonathan had fun running out and collecting the ice balls when the worst of it was over. Apparently Phil had to hide under a tree with a shovel over his head at the bridge site!

Bath in a bucket. The blue bucket is always fought over for bath time. Birthday boy got it today!

Here we're back to dinner celebration! I made a chocolate cake in our brick/charcoal oven (it turned out great!), and per Jonathan's request I topped it with chocolate pudding and whipped cream - what a treat!

Presents! A new matchbox car and a card game!

This morning I asked Jonathan how he felt now that's he's four. He told me that he wouldn't be four until after he had his cake and presents. When we came back home to get ready for bed after his party he suddenly realized he was finally four and thought he should try and see how fast he could run now that he was older. He ran as fast as he could back and forth in our small house and was super excited to find that he was indeed much faster than before! He fell asleep a very happy boy with his new car and games around him. Happy Birthday, sweet boy!

Some Pics From Yabus

Here are a few more snapshots of our life here in Yabus.
This is our screened-in porch where I read to Em during rest time in the heat of the day. A breeze often comes through here at night, making it a wonderful spot for visiting at the end of the day too, sharing a cup of tea.
Here is a pic of Bethany, Emily, and all six kids riding the quad bike back home after a visit to the bridge site. As you can imagine, the kids love adventures like these and I love to see them when they visit me at work. It is unusual in this culture for fathers to play with their kids, so I always seem to get funny looks and gasps when I throw Eva up in the air or when Jonathan runs to give me a hug.

And here is our sweet daughter Evelyn. She has been very adorable lately and sings to herself all the time. She also does a cute little jig when she eats something she likes (like watermelon).
This is a pic of an afternoon outing that the ladies took with the kids. They spread out a mat in the shade of a big beautiful tree nearby and let the kids play together. Emily and Bethany are loving this new time of togetherness, this time with their kids. Together they are planning a small vacation for our two families at the Kenyan coast when we leave Yabus in May. (!)
And finally, a couple of shots of the bridge. This one is of our team casting the first deadman anchor. The guy in the foreground, Butros, is a real firecracker of a guy. He has become one of my right-hand men, showing great skill in brick-laying. I'll write more about him later.
This pic was taken during the casting of the second deadman anchor, and if you look closely you can see the other tower on the far side of the river.

A day in the life of Jonathan

A lot of you have been asking my mom and dad what I do all day. Mom took a bunch of pictures of me today to give you a peek at what my life in Sudan is like.

6:30am - I wake up and ask mom if I can get out of my tent because I looked out our bamboo wall and saw the sun was coming up! She said to wait 5 more minutes.
6:50am - I notice Eva is awake and reading a book in her bug tent bed, so I run over and help her out and then together we wake up Dad and ask if he'll make us breakfast!
7:00 - Breakfast on our porch with Dad - I LOVE Wheatabix Cereal!
7:30 - A big black ant bites my bottom while I'm trying to get dressed. OWIE!!
8:15 - Off to play with Isaac and Evan. "Bye mom!"
9am -I invite my friends to come play some of my games with me
9:30 - shoes on! Back out to run and play!
10:15 - Home to watch some "Little Rascles" with Evelyn
11:00 - I help Mommy plant some flower seeds by the side of my house. We feed termites to the big black ants and play with a dumptruck.
12:00 - We wash our hands and eat lunch at the dining hall.
12:30 - Daddy's home for lunch and rest time!
1-3pm - Rest time in our bug huts
3:15 - Isaac comes over to play cars at my house
4:30 - Now that the sun isn't so hot, Isaac, Evan and I play outside again. We make rivers and mountains with our "soil." While I'm gone Mom washes dirty diapers, and Eva takes a fun bath to cool off - she uses a big clump of dirt for her soap! Silly girl.
6:00 - Dinner in the dining hall
7:00 - Bathtime, Bible story, and prayers with Dad
7:30 - Bedtime.

What a fun day!

Other things I like to do are riding in the back of Uncle Eli's truck, home school with Isaac Evan and Praise, playing with the puppies, and swinging in the tree swing.

I told my mom that I want to live here forever!

Discouragement

Work on the bridge has slowed to a crawl. The NGO that had been contributing the wages to pay the labor force has been kicked out of Sudan by the President of Sudan. In response, the World Food Programme jumped on board and offered food-for-work, but the deal has not been well received. We had four men sign up for work last week (when we need about 25), and then nobody renewed work for this week.
This is something that has been hard for us to understand. The amount of food being offered by the WFP is actually more valuable (by 20 percent!) than the wages that were offered in the past. The laborers could actually sell the food for profit if they chose. The local governor was shocked that nobody signed up to work.
This puts us in a weird spot, but one that is also very interesting. One option is to sit back and wait until the community decides that they need the bridge enough to provide the labor force. There are communities in Ethiopia (which is about 20 km away) that have assembled volunteer work crews to build bridges like ours, so the idea that Yabus could pull itself together and see this project through is a reasonable one. The second option is to write home about the need and raise the $2200 (that's right, two thousand, two hunred dollars) in order to pay the wages of the laborers and get this bridge built before the rains start. In a certain sense this is a debate between doing development work and doing aid work, between doing something sustainable and something not-so-sustainable, between teaching a man to fish and giving a man a fish. Option 2 is best for the community for its immediate needs and Option 1 is best for the community in the long run.
I'm a supporter of good development theory and practice, but we've come all the way to Yabus to help this community build a bridge. Our presence here represents a significant investment on our part and on the part of our families, church and supporters. If we don't get started on the work right away, our trip here will have been a waste. And yet, this work and this project and our lives are not all about us and our investments and agendas.
Yesterday morning we talked and prayed about this situation as a challenge to our tendency as Americans to be independent of God, doing things on our own strength. We have encountered an obstacle – do we pray and wait on God for a solution or do we rely on our own strength, ability, ingenuity, and push obstinately forward? This is a tough one for us – please pray with us for wisdom.
In the meantime, we have offered the student work force (which works on various construction or maintenance projects around Yabus in order to pay tuition) the opportunity to contribute to the bridge project. They have class all morning but are available to work from 3 to 6 in the afternoons. Yesterday we had five students show up to help, and we worked on collecting sand and gravel from the river. With five men, we can work at a snail's pace until next week, when work will come to a stop. The cables are very heavy, and without a crew of at least 25 men, we can't move them. In addition, our departure date is about five weeks away (see previous post) and we are especially conscious of that deadline.

Confession

Today marks the first day, since arriving in Yabus, that I have daydreamed about the day that we leave Yabus. If I were to rat out Emily, I'd tell you that she lasted about two days here before daydreaming about that day. Life is tough here. There is no escape from the heat and there are few distractions. Mostly, we are just realizing how spoiled we have been for so long. Our move here has been real whiplash in so many ways.

Yesterday afternoon Em and I were sitting on our porch during rest time (12:00 to 3:00) and there was a hot breeze coming through our porch. Em likened it to when you're baking something and you open up the oven door to see if it's done. There is a whoosh of hot air that escapes the oven. Yeah, that describes it pretty well. There's not a lot of relief in that kind of breeze. Then she said that there are 36 days until we leave (look who's been counting!) and said that, just as in baking, it's like we have 36 days until we're done, completely baked, and ready to be removed from the oven.

Internet Day

Saturday brings extended internet hours, so I wanted to take the chance to post a few more pics.

Jonathan and Evelyn have been loving it here – playing in the dirt with rocks, chickens, dogs. They've been such good sports too – haven't complained once about the heat. Jonathan has been amzing us with his appetite! It must be a combination of the heat and all the exercise he's been getting, but he eats three helpings of rice and beans at every meal!

The other day our work at the bridge was interrupted by a request for help from one of the market truck drivers. He had somehow tipped his truck (which was piled high with bamboo he'd harvested and was preparing to sell at the market) over onto its side. We brought over a winch and were able to tip it back up, and when we returned in the afternoon, the truck was gone. What often happens (and by often I mean every day) is that the trucks are so heavily loaded that they can't make it up the hill on the far side of the existing stone bridge, so they stop there and block traffic in both directions while they unload the bamboo. It takes hours to unload, move the truck and then reload, so you're totally out of luck if you'd planned on crossing in the car. Yeesh.

Here are some shots of the bridge foundations. The first is a shot of the soil anchor reinforcement, which I spent my first couple days here assembling. The second is a shot of the soil anchor formwork. The cage of reinforcement sits in here, and we'll fill it up with concrete next week. This last shot is the threshold on one side of the river. We built these two masonry colums and then filled them with reinforced concrete. The steel piece on the top is called a saddle, and the handrail cable will come up and over it. The traffic will walk in between these columns. Pretty cool, huh?