This is the life!!!

Yesterday, I went to God's Children's Home Construction project. It is the construction project that is affiliated with the orphanage I mentioned from one of my first days here. A couple that met on the Mercy Ship some years ago are heading the project. Carl is from Holland and his wife Inese is from South Africa (she speaks some dutch because in South Africa they speak alt dutch, plus his English is really good). There are 5 two bedroom houses being built that will make up the orphanage. Carl and his wife live in one of the houses that is almost finished. They have been living their for 3 months. They plan to live their until the project is finished. Carl built a well himself so they have running water. They also have a generator so they use electricity on occasion.



Some Liberian women that Inese had been mentoring gave her two pigs as a gift. So we were working on the foundation for the pig pen. I started out digging trenches but I had a hard time with that. We soon moved on to the concrete making process. This was great. I felt somewhat useful. I shoveled rocks into buckets, and got water from the well. They had a small cement mixer that ran by generator. We took a coffee/juice break and a lunch break. We stopped at 1pm for the day. I LOVED this kind of work.



Carl says he loves living outside in the country type area. They have a few gardens. They are growing some onions and sweet peppers, and even some pumpkins. I think my brother John and Dorothy would love it there. It reminded me of them for some reason. You can even go to the beach after a hard days work. I don't think it is very safe however. They have had multiple problems with theft. One time about $900 dollars worth of steal wire got stolen during the night. Another time, while it was raining at night, and Carl couldn't hear anything over the rain on the tin roof, a generator was stolen. He said they were able to retrieve it because the wheel barrel left tracks in the mud, so they followed the tracks the next day and got the generator back. The boys got out of jail in the end because they had an uncle who was an official of sorts. Another time, he said he heard the thieves and ran out after them and chased them away. I think it would be very hard to live under these conditions. I think I would have a tendency to feel like, I don't have to be here, I am helping you people and this is how I get treated! But that is the absolute wrong attitude. They feel that God has called them here and they feel that they will be protected as well, I suppose. Carl was telling us that they got their puppy as a gift. Someone suggested they name him security, which they did. That way if thieves come they can yell "security".

I then came back and went to the beach. Traffic was so bad because of a market we passed that we only stayed an hour--there was no sun anyways. Back at the ship, I watched another documentary on Liberia. It was sad. This country has around an 85% unemployment rate (when the documentary was made a few years ago), which explains why there are sooo many people all over the streets in the middle of the day.

Last night was really great. The ship had a Ceilidh dance on the dock. Ceilidh is Scottish dancing. It is similar to square dancing, or folk dancing. Two of the Scottish crew members led everyone, and taught us how to do the dances. It was so much fun. One of the guys played a few songs on his bagpipes.