Are you listening? Part 2

Hi

All is well here. Very busy though. But what else is new? I have to stop saying that. People will start wondering. After all, everybody's busy nowadays! Too busy.

We're doing concrete work today. The floor slab for the final floor of the large building is going in today. I think it will be (at least) a two day job. They have to throw the cement up grade, one shovel at a time, in order to get it up to the fourth floor. I can't imagine people even DREAMING about doing it that way in Canada! Very labour intensive. We need to maybe see if we can get a winch lift or something the next time. Incredible amount of work!

We don't want to go through the same thing as last time, where people "striked" on us, refused to finish the job. So this time we tried to just find people whom we know. We pray, in that way, that we've avoided hiring any trouble makers. Prior to working I then got everybody to agree to the terms and sign a paper. It's not worth the paper it's written on, but it's better than nothing I guess. Anything just to prevent the problems that so many people have here in ********* when they do concrete work. It's awful! We had over 200 people outside the gate waiting for a job this morning. When our foreman opened the gate to let one person in, they all stormed into the centre. Once they do that they then insist that you MUST hire them. So I immediately went to the gate and threw them all out. At least they listened to me. We were then able to get the people in that we wanted, one by one. What a drama!

In addition to the local people, we also have about 13 people from the refugee camp whom we've been able to give a temporary job. They are so glad for that! Dad's even been able to hire two of the pastors to help, including the guy who lost a hand in ******. He used to be a construction supervisor apparently and thought he'd never be able to do that type of work again. So he is so grateful for the opportunity!

Since we now have a cook we're also able to provide all the workers with a cooked meal. Even have some meat in the meal which is a special treat. The cook tells me it's "African meat". You wouldn't get me eating it! It's pieces of stomach, stuff like that. All the things that are cheap but at least give the flavour of meat. And that's what people like, especially as meat is so expensive!
53 people working up there today! It'll cost us about 60,000 Ksh (at least!) on labour alone to finish that slab. A lot of money. But it'll be good to get that done. Then we can put the walls up for the final floor, and then the roof.

The drama continues down at the Kedong Camp. The police came at night again and tried to get people to get into lorries so that they could be transported "elsewhere". They refused. The police then returned in the morning, yesterday, and confiscated all the tents and other shelters people had set up, including some personal effects, threw them into a waiting lorry and drove off with them. Now the owners wonder if they'll ever get their stuff back. They don't even know where it was taken. Anybody else doing stuff like that, it would be considered theft. But of course, not the police. So people are starting to get tired and slowly are drifting away. Nobody is taking any notice of their plight. It really is sad! We went down yesterday and gave out some food and some more clothing. Someone from our church had donated some brand new stuff. Lovely clothes! People were so grateful! It made it all worthwhile.

Anyway, that's just an update from us. Hope you and yours are doing well.

God bless